Page 32 of The Spellreader and the Phoenix

“I’m not sure when it’s from,” he admitted. “But it’s mostly sugar, so it’s probably okay.”

Rory snatched it up and liberally squirted chocolate sauce all over his ice cream—which was rocky road, so it wasn’t like there wasn’t an abundance of sweetness and chocolate already.

“Can I put whatever I want on it?” Rory asked.

“Of course,” Max answered, even as he worried that he was about to witness a hot sauce debacle.

But no, Rory had apparently just decided that there weren’t enough nuts in there already, and he added more from the mixed nuts he’d gotten at the grocery store before holding them out to Max.

“No, I’m good,” Max assured him.

He’d never been a huge fan of the salty and sweet combo, and those were salted nuts. Rory shrugged, popped another nut in his mouth, and then snapped the lid back in place.

They settled back at the dining table, Max with his little bowl of undoctored ice cream, and Rory with his bowl mounded high with ice cream, nuts, and chocolate sauce. He made ridiculous happy sounds as he ate his ice cream—but he was fully concentrated on his dessert, so Max didn’t think he was trying to be alluring. (One of his short-lived boyfriends in university had made overblown moaning sounds while eating food, and this was apparently supposed to be appealing. He’d been really annoyed when Max hadn’t been the slightest bit aroused.)

When Rory scraped up the last of the ice cream and swallowed it down, he had a rapturous expression on his face.

“Ice cream is delicious,” he declared. “I mean, I guess I knew that before, but it’s been a while, and it’s extra noticeable now.”

Max was going to have to get some whipped cream in a can, wasn’t he?

Rory insisted on cleaning up, claiming that Max had done dinner. Since they were talking about a couple bowls and utensils, Max decided it wasn’t worth fighting over. The apartment had a dishwasher, but he rarely bothered to use it. With just him—and his propensity to eat sandwiches—it had never been worth it. Evie usually put it on when she came to visit, claiming they needed to make sure it still worked.

“What do you want to do now?” Max asked.

Rory looked confused. “Aren’t we going to go downstairs so you can work on the spellbooks? That’s what we usually do.”

That’s what they’d done when Max hadn’t realized he’d had a guest; he’d simply had a bird on his shoulder who followed him everywhere and didn’t get to voice an opinion on their activities.

“You wouldn’t mind?” Max asked.

Now Rory looked as confused as Max felt. “Why would I mind? It’s what we normally do.”

That wasn’t exactly the point, but maybe it wasn’t not the point, either. Max had asked the question, giving Rory an opportunity to indicate literally anything else that he’d like to do, and he’d brought up the one thing that Max preferred.

“Right,” Max said, still feeling nonplussed. “Let’s go, then.”

It was different heading into the room with a person rather than a bird, at least in theory. Max missed the tiny weight on his shoulder, if he were being totally honest. But he liked talking to Rory more than he thought he would. He usually found people irritating. Even the rare people he loved, like his sister, could be too much. (Though he’d never say so out loud, it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing that there was an entire country between them most of the time.)

But Rory, despite his boundless enthusiasm—or perhaps because of it, somehow?—wasn’t annoying. And just like he had during the day at the store, he did his own thing. At first, it was distracting, and Max found his eyes constantly straying from his books to see what the shifter was doing. But it soon became apparent that Rory was careful, which was what really mattered. (The dangerous spells were locked away, and Rory was a shifter, so he couldn’t cast spells anyway.)

He was attentive as he removed and shelved books, he was gentle with the books themselves, and he wasn’t at all hesitant about sprawling on the floor with Nōwē and petting her, which his prickly feline seemed to think was a vast improvement to how they normally spent their evenings. The purrs were very soothing, and Max was soon able to concentrate on his work, getting through the requests he hadn’t managed during the day. (Someone had requested a spell that made a cloud of soap bubbles around someone for a few hours. Max was sure he’d seen something that would probably work, but it had taken him longer than he expected to track the spell down.) Once he was finished, he continued his own work of detailing all the spells in his possession.

He was startled by his ten thirty alarm, which was meant to remind him that it was time to wind down and go to bed soon. He hadn’t realized it had gotten that late. He looked over sharply at Rory, but he was still on the floor cuddled up with Nōwē, and he was reading a book—not a spellbook but a novel, so at some point, he’d apparently gone out and come back, and Max hadn’t even noticed.

Rory smiled at him. “Time to head upstairs?”

Max raised his hands above his head and stretched. Witches lived longer than humans did, but he was still getting older. He leaned back and forth a few times, stretching out the kinks.

“Yes,” he agreed. “How’s your book?”

Rory held it up so that Max could see that it was almost definitely a romance, given the half-naked man on the cover. Why was he half-naked when he was standing outside in the snow?

“Great!” Rory told him enthusiastically. “Well, it’s very silly, but I like that.”

Max couldn’t help but smile. “Fair enough.”

“The main characters are trapped together in a snowed-in cabin.”