Page 158 of Break Out the Girl

“Of course it could.” London leaps onto the middle of the table, spilling tea, then plucking the bluebells out of the vase and tossing them in the air. “You’re like Robert the Bruce. Tell me, did a spider whisper in your ear? I know it did!”

I lean my head against François’s shoulder, as Clay and Sky wrangle the upset cups and mess of jam.

This is brilliant.

They are all brilliant.

This day couldn’t get any better.

✽✽✽

The golden spring afternoon melts into a deep blue twilight. The picnic tables are pushed back, replaced by a circle of logs as seats and the crackle of a campfire. None of us want to go our separate ways yet.

This is our family, and the best company anyone could wish for.

Tally sits with his arm slung over my shoulders, pulling me tight against his side while his thumb traces lazy circles on my arm. On my other side, François rests his back against a timber bench, long legs stretched out toward the flames, a glass of cognac in hand.

And then there is London.

He is currently cross-legged on a stump, blowing a series of airy, slightly erratic notes into a set of wooden panpipes he’d ordered on François’s account.

“I told you to put parameters on your settings,” Tally growls at François. “Who knows what he’ll buy next.”

The flute drops from London’s lips. “Don’t fret, I’m telling you, it’s an instinctual thing, it will just take a minute.”

“You’re driving that owl crazy, goat,” Layla calls out dryly from where she’s snipping at Clay’s hair with a pair of shears. “I’ve never heard so much hooting.”

“It appreciates my free-jazz, Layla. Unlike you, who obviously still needs to embrace your avant-garde soul.”

I laugh, looking up to see stars starting to appear in the denim blue sky.

Talking of Sky, she’s curled up under a blanket, and has been oddly quiet for the last hour or so.

Suddenly, she shoots upright, shoulders rigid.

“Sky?” I ask, straightening up. “What is it, babe?”

Her head tilts sharply toward the dark canopy of the pine trees surrounding the clearing. “I... I feel funny.” She rolls her neck and shoulders like they are unbearably stiff. “Something, something is pulling. In my chest.”

Before I can even stand, the magic takes her.

The blanket drops to the grass as her form blurs, shrinking and reshaping in a flash of shifting light until sleek, beautiful warm feathers coat her body.

With a sharp snap of her wings, she launches off the log, soaring straight up into the night sky.

“Barn owl!” Layla breathes, a brilliant smile on her face. “How perfect.”

I can’t see her any more and that makes anxiety twist in my gut. What if she doesn’t know how to fly properly? What if she shifts back to human mid-flight?

Tally grips my waist, anchoring me. “Rory, it’s all good. Just wait.”

So that’s what we do. We wait, breathless, until she appears again.

Fuck! So beautiful.

Sky circles the tall Douglas firs at the edge of the yard, hovering near the topmost branches of a massive pine, letting out soft, inquiring hoots.

A beat later, another pale shape detaches itself from the deep shadows.