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Gus sighed, dramatic to the very last. “I thought you’d finally admit your all-consuming passion for me. I know it burns with the force of a thousand suns.”
Even Eilidh laughed at his over-dramatics, though the sound was subdued. Joy held her hand tighter, worry spiking, but Eilidh avoided her gaze. Joy studied her more closely as Gus and Victoriya began to bicker.
Eilidh’s hands were clean, her clothes smudge-free, and it was so strange to see her without a single bit of charcoal staining her—evidence of hours spent in her makeshift studio in her garden shed—that Joy wanted to question her. But there was something about the way Eilidh held her chin up, her expression tight, that made Joy hesitant to push.
Instead, her eyes drifted of their own accord to Gabi. Part of her still couldn’t believe she was back, after all this time. Gabi looked up at that same moment, sensing Joy’s attention, and her stomach flipped. It was like she was thirteen again and seeing her for the first time. It was like she was sixteen and head over heels in love.
“So, how did you two lovesick morons break up?” Victoriya asked abruptly.
Joy’s whole body stiffened. She could no longer meet Gabi’s eyes.
TWELVE
GABI
Gabi nearly choked.
“Emphasis on the lovesick,” Victoriya went on, “because this shit is nauseous.”
“It’snauseating, technically,” Gus corrected at the same time Salma gasped, “Victoriya!”
With a frown, she added, “I’m so sorry, Gabriella.”
Gabi waved a hand, feeling more awkward than she’d felt in the entirety of her life. She wanted to fall into bed and block out the past few days, or burn them out of her memory completely on the rowing machine upstairs, but neither were viable. One, there was only one bed and Joy needed it more, and two, there was so fucking much Gabi needed to do and even standing here, keeping an eye on Joy as she was, she was still conscious of the time slipping away. The witch-killer moving freely through the town.
“Seriously, though,” Victoriya pressed, green eyes bright with vicious curiosity.
Gabi sighed and repressed the urge to massage her tired eyes; Victoriya wasn’t going to drop this.
Gabi suddenly wished she was somewhere else,anywhereelse. She didn’t want to relive that day she’d stood outside Joy’s bedroom door, her heart breaking clean in two when Joy said she’d fallen out of love with her. But it had been a lie, if Gabi believed what Joy had told her yesterday. Which she did. Even when the truth hurt, she knew it when she heard it.
A lie had kept her away all these years, even when she could have—andshouldhave—come back on weekends and holidays to visit her dad. To visit other family members she’d neglected, too.
“Victoriya hasn’t been house-trained yet,” Gus very seriously told Gabi, ducking a sharp elbow from his friend. “We haven’t managed to teach her a single manner, let alone manners,plural.”
Victoriya just arched a dark eyebrow, looking from Gabi to Joy and back again. If Gabi ever needed a suspect interrogated, she’d found the perfect candidate to do it. “Well?”
“Stop hassling themrightthis minute,” Salma hissed, clipping Victoriya’s ear.
“It was … stupid,” Joy murmured before Gabi could formulate a response, something that would both satisfy the witch and not reveal anything personal.
Gabi gripped the counter behind her tightly at Joy’s words. A stone had dropped in her stomach; Gabi’s body had gone perfectly still.
“I was…” Joy twisted her pale fingers together under her too-long sleeves. Gabi was acutely conscious, had been since the moment Joy had come back down, of Joy wearing her clothes. Fae were the territorial, instinct-driven species, but even as an elf Gabi was not unaffected by the idea of her scent being all over Joy again.
“It was just after my mum died, and I wasn’t …me. I was angry,” Joy said in a lowered voice. Gabi wanted to hug her, the impulse so strong she had to take a deep breath to fight it off. “I said some things I didn’t mean, and I should have apologised, but by that point we’d already … drifted.”
Gabi had already moved to Liverpool, she meant.
Gabi felt like all her insides had crumpled. She couldn’t stop herself, the urge to comfort Joy so severe she had to reach out and lay her hand on Joy’s arm, just for a second. Joy’s eyes flashed with an unidentifiable emotion as she looked at Gabi’s fingers, curled around her forearm, and right when Gabi was about to snatch her hand back, Joy smiled.
Her heart pounding, Gabi leaned close enough to whisper without being overheard, “I’m sorry too. And I forgive you.”
Joy’s answering smile lit up her whole face. For a split second, the girl who was terrified and burdened because of the past two days faded—at least until Victoriya spoke.
“Well, shit,” Victoriya murmured, flicking her lighter open and shut, open and shut. “That’s fucking tragic.”
Eilidh, who’d been so silent Gabi had almost forgotten she was there, pushed back from the table, dropped her hand from where it clutched her necklace—a bird’s talon and several grey and white feathers—and bound Joy up in a big hug, her mess of blonde and blue curls falling on Joy’s shoulder.
