Page 164 of Jinxes and Drumsticks

I shrug, a bit of discomfort itching at the back of my neck, like there’s a detail I’m missing or a task I’m forgetting. The bell on the door rings as a customer comes in, and Aemon blinks away before they round the wall and see him.

“Hey, welcome to the Odd Bird Apothecary. How can I help?”

ㅤ

“Doing alright?” Damien asks me. “You seem tense.”

I am tense. And anxious. It’s the day of the triple crescent moon, and everything has been prepared without a hitch. Which has me on edge, because I feel like something catastrophic is going to happen when I actually lie down in the center of that spell circle.

“I’m fine,” I lie. Because Damien still has no idea what we’re getting up to tonight, and it’s kind of impossible to hide my edginess from him.

“Little bird,” he says, on the other side of the line, his voice dipping into that dominant rumble that makes me want to be a good and obedient little girlfriend. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

I nibble on my lower lip, trying to think of something that is bothering me aside from the fact that my intuition is screaming at me that something terrible is on the horizon. Something that he’d actually buy.

“I’m just feeling kind of impatient. I thought these couple of weeks would go quickly, but the longer you’re gone, the more I miss you. The more I miss you, the more irritable I get.”

I hear him shift the phone, maybe to his other ear. “I’m sorry,” he says, sounding guilty enough that it makes me feel like a piece of shit for fabricating it. “I know that... well... you know this part of dating a musician is hard for everyone, I think. And if we can figure things out soon, I promise I’ll take you with me everywhere, if that’s what you want.”

“I know,” I say.

“You don’t sound satisfied with that,” he says.

“I... I just feel on edge when I’m away from you,” I say.

“Yeah,” he says. “Me too.”

“Did you guys finally get everything worked out with the production company?” I ask, trying to change the subject. I don’t want to lie to him any more than I have to.

He heaves out a sigh that peaks the receiver on his phone. “Yeah, it took me being kind of a dick, but it looks like it’s worked out. That’s the only thing about playing these larger venues; you don’t know who you’re going to be working with at each one. One production company can be great and another one can be ass.”

I let out a little chuckle.

“What?” he asks.

“You’re starting to sound like a picky little professional. Are you going to start requiring a bowl of only brown M&Ms to make sure they’re reading your contract?”

“I thought it was with all the brown ones removed. The VanHalen thing, right?”

“Well someone has to eat all of those brown M&Ms,” I say.

“From 1980? You want me to eat forty-five-year-old M&M’s?”

“Eugh, don’t say that. The eighties were twenty years ago.”

He laughs and it makes everything feel okay for a second. Like doom isn’t hovering in the corner of my bedroom. It feels good to talk to him like everything is still normal, and my life hasn’t exploded in ways I didn’t expect or want.

“Any movement on the whole blood parasite thing?” he asks, tentative, like he’s also hesitant to shatter the normalcy.

“I think we’re putting something together. We might have a plan in a few days,” I say.

“How’re the bruises looking?”

“Mostly healed.” I say. Which is true, aside from the plum-colored collar that seems to get darker with every passing hour.

“Good,” he says, sounding relieved. “Hey, uh... It looks like one of our dates might get cancelled because of weather. I thought I might spring for a ticket and come home for a day. What do you think?”

My chest warms to know that he thinks of my place as ‘home’. More and more, even I only consider it home when he’s here. “You won’t get too tired?”