Page 102 of Jinxes and Drumsticks

Lillith sits on the edge of her bed, her pale bed sheet held to the front of her body like she’s a boudoir model. It’s golden hour in the photo, and the warm sunshine streaming through the windows cast a silhouette against the sheet from behind. Whatever she obscures with the sheet reveals itself with that shadow. The soft peak of her nipple, the gentle slope and supple fold of her middle where it meets her wide hips. She hides her face behind her phone, perched to take the photo of the mirror, her nails sharp as needles and painted a new design.

Hunger stirs insistently in my groin. God, I want to fuck her pretty little mouth until she chokes on it. I want to make her cry before soothing her. I want to—

I’m so focused that I don’t notice Oren leaning over me from behind. Not until he lets out a low whistle. “Well, hello,” he growls next to my ear.

I slap my phone face down on the table. “Fuckhead,” I grumble.

“Did you... ever tell her about—”

“Yes. And yes, she was interested. But not until her birthday.”

“Lillith’s birthday?” Wren asks, somehow wrestling her attention away from Satoshi. “It’s coming up, you know.”

“Is it?” Oren says as he plops down in the seat next to me. I watch him shift his hips a little bit and hold myself back from glaring at him. I know a boner adjustment when I see it.

“When?” I ask.

“Tsk, tsk, Damien. You don’t know your girlfriend’s birthday?”

“It hasn’t come up between the—” I almost let the visits to The Buried City fly out of my mouth like an idiot.

“All the mind-blowing sex?” Oren supplies.

“Exactly,” I say, taking the out.

Wren smiles knowingly at me before rolling her eyes. “Right at the end of Gemini season. June twentieth.”

“Right around Litha, then?” Oren says.

Wren’s brows lift before she smiles. “Right you are,” she says. “Do you follow the sabbats?”

“I try to be aware of them,” Oren says. “But hmmm—Lillith never gave me Gemini vibes before.”

“Oh my god, don’t listen to that pop astrology bullshit. First of all, Gemini is just her sun placement. She has the cutest little Libra Moon, and she’s a Pisces rising,” she says.

All of the men at the table nod like they understand what she’s talking about, but I’m two thousand percent certain that none of them do. Except for Oren, maybe.

She looks over all of us with a withering stare until Roxie slides into the booth and lets out a dramatic sigh. “The only one who knows any Astrology here is Oren, babe. Explain it like they’re five.”

“You fucking narc,” Satoshi grumbles.

Wren lets out an exasperated groan and the entire meal winds up being overtaken with a crash course in astrology, including Roxie, Oren and Wren making all of us give them our birth times. Somehow, Fletcher wriggles out of this interrogation, fleeing to the van, citing the need to check on some equipment or some shit. I try to escape the invasion of privacy by informing Wren that I don’t know my birth time, but she’s completely unbothered.

“Bitch, I know how to do a chart rectification. You’re not getting off that easily.”

Roxie and Wren read everyone at the table to filth, and by the time our plates are empty of food I’m wondering if I need to start seeing my therapist two times a month instead of just once. Oren is locked in and filling his online shopping cart with books about everything from pop astrology to something called ‘Draconic astrology’ (sounds like a furry thing), and Satoshi is looking increasingly nervous as Wren stares at his birth chart with eyes so focused I’m worried she’s about to diagnose him with chronic idiocy disease.

I heave out a breath and Roxie catches my eye. “Hey, we should check on Fletch and make sure he didn’t get kidnapped by the cutie patootie traffickers,” they say.

I snort a laugh and nod. “Yeah you’re right,” I say standing up and leaving Oren to supervise Satoshi and Wren. Those crazy kids.

When we make it outside, Fletcher is sitting at the back of the van with his legs dangling off the back bumper. He’s smoking out of a little round-bent pipe that I always forget he keeps on him. The smell of tobacco drifts warm and almost sweet on the air as he puffs it out, and I recognize this little time out for exactly what it is.

Fletch only smokes his pipe when he’s feeling lonely. Every single time I’ve teased him for it, it’s never been satisfying. Because he always looks so damned sad, and he always complains of being homesick—of missing his ‘mam’.

“You doing alright, man?” I ask as we near, squeezing his shoulder and giving him a brotherly little jostle.

“Fine,” he says, his accent giving the response a bit of edge. “Just fine.”