Page 5 of With All My Haunted Heart

“I don’t mean literally.” Xander wraps an arm around my shoulders and tugs me into him. “I’ve dated witches before. None of them use magic the way you do.”

“Yeah, and I bet they haven’t been kicked out of their families, either.” I mean for the words to sound lighthearted, but they come out bitter and hurt.

Xander squeezes me tighter. “You’re special, Pip. Not the way you do magic. The way you are. Who you are.”

“That’s me. Pippa Ainsley, so special she’s been single for half a decade.”

“Special has nothing to do with that,” Dea says, sliding back into the booth across from us with three bottles of hard cider. “You can’t complain about being single if you don’t try to date.”

“I try!”

“Getting on the apps whenever you lose the cord for your vibrator doesn’t count as trying, Pip.”

Embarrassment burns up my neck, but before I can defend myself—because, really, what modern witch doesn’t have a few self-pleasure spells in their repertoire—Xander groans beside me.

“God, the apps. I didn’t think about those yet.” He takes a long swig of the cider Dea set in front of him. “I’m going to be single forever.”

Dea rolls her eyes. “You’re about to open a B&B. You’ll have a constant stream of hot strangers in your life.”

He glares at his former coworker. Before working with me, Dea was the office manager at a tech company where Xander used to work. They struck up a friendship over their shared love of RuPaul’s Drag Race, and when Dea encountered a small ghost problem after moving into a new apartment, she became one of my earliest clients. “I’m not going to sleep with my customers, Dea.”

“Aren’t B&Bs mostly booked by couples, anyway?” I ask, earning another groan from Xander, which only intensifies my concern that he hasn’t thought this plan through as well as he should have before quitting his job in Brooklyn.

Xander takes another sip and runs his hands over his face. “I’m not ready to think about dating yet, but Pip, at some point, you have to move on. It’s been, what, six years since things ended with Rose?”

My ex’s name makes me flinch, but the hurt is less about Rose than everything else wrapped up in the end of our relationship. She was the first person I fell in love with, the first person I thought loved me for me. In the end, though, she saw me as the same disappointing screwup that my family would ultimately disown.

Rose dumped me nearly six months before the final blowup that ended my relationship with my family. And when I was kicked out, when I had nothing but the clothes on my back and the phone in my pocket, Rose turned me away. The years we’d spent together meant nothing compared to staying in my mother’s good graces. Keeping my mother—the elected leader of NACOW—happy meant more to Rose than I ever could.

If Xander hadn’t taken me in, I don’t know what I would have done.

I brush the memories away and reach for the final mozzarella stick. “I’m not hung up on Rose. I’m just busy. I don’t have time to date.”

My best friend shakes his head. “It’s not about being ‘hung up’ on your ex.” He reaches for my hand and squeezes tight. “The people who were supposed to love you the most acted like you were disposable. It’s normal to guard your heart after something like that. It’d be weird if you didn’t.”

“Xander…”

“And I love that I have your heart. That you let Dea in, too. But you deserve to find someone who can love you in the ways we can’t.”

My chest squeezes tight with emotion. Old hurts, old insecurities, linger at the surface now that the alcohol and the conversation have loosened the cage I normally keep them in. I bump Xander’s shoulder with mine and try to steer the conversation away from tender topics. “Enough about my love life. Tonight isn’t about me. It’s about you and your new business venture!”

Dea raises her bottle in salute. “To Xander! And to the first two-client month in ages.”

“Cheers to that,” I agree, clinking my bottle to hers.

“Wait.” Xander looks from Dea to me. “Is the business struggling?”

“We’ll be fine,” I insist.

“For a few more months,” Dea says under her breath, and I kick her under the table. “What? It’s true. C3 is on target to run us out of business by January if something doesn’t change.”

“Something will change. We’re smart, capable businesswomen. We’ll figure something out.” The words are ostensibly for Dea, who probably would have bailed on the business already if she didn’t know firsthand how life-changing this work can be, but as I hear myself say them, I realize I’m trying to convince myself, too.

I push the worry away and focus on my genuine excitement for Xander, ignoring the anxious prickle I feel when I think about him and Louie going into business together. The stories from their shared childhood were always rather…full of debauchery. “So, what’s the plan? When am I checking this house of yours for spiritual activity?”

“Well, I was hoping you’d drive me there tomorrow morning.” Xander cracks a grin. “I got a hotel for the night, but I returned my rental car as soon as I got to Windsfell.”

“What if I had plans for the weekend?” I rest a hand at the base of my throat, a play at being affronted. Everyone at this table knows my weekend plans typically consist of a good book and Thai takeout. The fact that they didn’t call out my lack-of-time dating excuse is further proof that they love me.