Page 77 of Rewitched

“No, I should have paid more attention. Whatever, let’s not let this make things awkward, right? We’re adults, it’s fine. Let’s just go back to—”

“Like it was before. You got it.”

Neither of them moved, Belle standing with her hands on the hips of her Christmas pyjamas, Rune decidedly focused on spinning the ring on his thumb. He went to speak. “Belle, I…”

The house phone rang. “I’ll get that,” Belle said, overly shrill and smiley. “Hello? Belle and Ariadne.” She shot a polite, strained smile over to Rune as he rose to gather his jacket.

“Belle, my dear. Glad I caught you before bed. I was just tidying up the ingredients that we’d left lying around the attic. Nothing to worry about, but I thought I had better let you know.”

“What is it, Arty?”

“The vanilla that you included in the recipe for your infatuation potion. Please do pardon my mistake, but it transpires that the blasted stuff expired a good eighteen years ago. Luckily, the grimoire doesn’t seem to have noted our error and your challenge remains successful, I suspect because it’s no fault of your own, merely the supplies. But it would render the potion entirely a dud, with no effect whatsoever. Not that you’ll necessarily be using it, but I just thought I’d better warn you. I’d stick to sampling your flourish potion, which will remain effective still.”

Belle’s face blanched as she shot a covert glance at Rune. She caught his eye and he immediately looked away, thumbing the side of his jaw. “Great, thanks for letting me know, Artorius. Good night.” She hung up the phone.

“What was that about?” Rune asked dryly, hands buried back in his pockets.

She remembered where they’d been, how they’d travelled across her body. So it wasn’t the potion. There was no spell at play, no magic to blame for the way they’d just collided—not that kind of magic, anyway. The feeling of being drawn to someone so acutely, so undeniably, was something that she had forgotten could exist. She had been purposefully pretending, convincing herself she was mad to think there could be something between them, but only because she had been afraid that she was wrong. Their connection had been something else that she was afraid of ruining, making imperfect.

She hadn’t been imagining it.

That meant there was a conversation to face, one that she wasn’t sure she was ready for, with everything else currently fighting for space in her brain. Worse still, what if he’d changed his mind now that she’d dropped the curtain, let herself be vulnerable enough to let him in a little more. He’d just admitted it, he didn’t tell her she was wrong. The worst thing possible, he’d agreed.

Best to drop it, best to forget about it. She had to protect herself.

“Oh. Crossword answer,” she replied.

25

Trusting Memory

BELLE AND RUNE had been sitting together in a cosy corner of Lunar Books for a while, just talking, tucked between the science fiction and the current charts, watching the sun come up through the shutters and in between the window pumpkins, lighting the pulpy carved faces.

They’d met outside her flat, the world wrapped in a scarf of October mist. He was leaning against a lamp-post when she returned home from Quill Lane bleary-eyed, reading a book she’d mentioned in passing a few mornings ago, she noted. It had felt a little too intimate to invite him upstairs after what had happened last time. Both were pretending it had never happened, and it felt a little maddening. She didn’t like to consider whether the decision not to tell him the truth was the right one and equally didn’t like to admit that she was growing far too fond of his company.

“There’s not many people I’d sit in a beanbag for,” Rune said grumpily.

“It’s either these or the kids’ chairs, and one of those is ice cream–shaped, so this is for your own dignity,” Belle told him. She privately thought he looked adorable, his long legs bunched so that his knees were almost by his ears as he slumped against the yellow beanbag.

“I’ve been wanting to ask you, but I knew you wouldn’t tell me the truth…How are you doing? You know, evidently being the target of dark forces and all,” Rune said, concern clear behind his eyes as his brow furrowed.

“I’m doing okay, especially when you word it like that,” she replied uncertainly, clutching the takeaway cup that he’d been waiting for her with. It contained good coffee laced with another batch of his reviving concoction, which had stopped her from feeling like quite such a creature from the depths and returned her to something that resembled a human being.

“Yes, it looks it,” he replied with a raised eyebrow, gesturing to her fingers, which had been bitten to shreds over the past weeks, three currently wrapped in plasters and one bleeding onto her cardigan.

“Honestly, I’m fine. If we ignore the small matter of four grimoire challenges that still haven’t lit, of course.”

“Never mind the damn book,” Rune dismissed.

“Easy for you to say. I’m not going through all of this for nothing. I’ve lost my best friend. I’ve all but lost this place.” She jerked her head towards their serene surroundings. “I nearly lost my mum. I’ve definitely lost my mind, we can all agree on that. And I’m on track to lose my magic in a matter of days.”

The admission brought out a hidden queasiness in Belle’s throat, all the way down to the pit of her gut. She smiled weakly. “Did you speak to Bronwyn?”

“I did. She’s furious. Mostly with me for letting you continue after the Subfuror Incantare,” Rune said. “I have to tell you, she wants to pull you out of the mentorship—”

“Surely no one can make that call apart from me,” Belle interrupted.

“If you’ll let me finish,” he said. “But I assured her that it was out of the question, that you weren’t normally one to listen to anything as insignificant as logic or reason. And that you absolutely wouldn’t quit the habit now.”