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“No, I mean Eamon and I aren’t a couple.”
Iris only brushed it off. “Don’t be silly; of course you are.” Then she turned and beckoned me to follow as she headed to the greenhouse.
Eamon grinned and put an arm around me, a sparkle of mischief in his eyes. “Of course we are, honey. I’ll do all the cooking and all the gardening. You do all the thinking and the magic. It’s the perfect arrangement.”
I rolled my eyes at him. He was playful when he needed to be too. But did he know his playful touch was sending shivers down my spine?
Gah! Why couldn’t I have met him under normal circumstances?
Did it really matter? Shelby and Grayson had gotten together while he was protecting her. It wasn’t like Eamon would lose his job; he was the boss.
But what if Eamon wasn’t really interested? He did say he didn’t date.
No. He had to be. I recalled the feel of his hard cock on my back last night and the passionate kiss we shared in the library. Things like that wouldn’t happen if he wasn’t interested, at least physically.
He was a demon though, and they weren’t interested in commitment. Was I okay with that? I could try to look at that as a pro and not a con. I’d spent my whole life under someone’s thumb; wouldn’t it be better if I spent some time learning to be myself?
In that case, a no-strings-attached liaison with a demon was just the thing I needed. I wasn’t sure if I truly believed that, or if my brain simply tried to rationalize it. Surely, having Eamon’s attention once or twice was better than never having it at all.
We finished our tour of the grounds, which included a greenhouse of tropical plants and seedlings, raised beds full of herbs and medicinal plants, an in-ground plot for veggies, and a wild-looking decorative garden full of flowers. By the end of it, all the plants looked the same to me: green.
I didn’t realize Eamon still had his arm around me until we met up with Grayson and Shelby back at the house. Grayson raised his brow but didn’t say anything.
Shelby and I spent the rest of the afternoon before dinner learning spells from the spell book with Iris watching over and giving tips. Iris was ecstatic that Shelby was interested in learning magic at all.
The menfolk were out in the garage checking out the classic muscle car Alex was working on in his spare time. Iris’s husband was a man of many hobbies.
There was a roast in the oven, and despite eating my fair share of cookies, my stomach was starting to complain about how empty it was. They hadn’t been kidding when they said magic used up a lot of energy, even the easy spells meant for kids.
“So what happens if you don’t read or speak the right language?” I asked, remembering the pages after pages of notes in foreign languages I’d found at the library.
“Usually, it’s not the exact words that make the spell, but the intention,” Iris explained. “This is why some magic users don’t even need to open their mouths to do magic. Having the right words makes it easier and more predictable. Higher-level incantations are best done verbatim though. Magic is wily, and you can never tell how it will interpret your words, even if the intention is correct. Here, I’ll show you.”
She walked over to the laundry room, came back with a hamper of clean clothes, and dumped them on the table. She flipped to the page with the clothes-folding spell. Yes, there was a spell for that.
“See that towel? Use the spell exactly as it is on the page and fold it,” she said.
I studied the page. I hadn’t tried this one yet, but so far, I’d been able to do everything I’d tried from the book. After reading and re-reading the process, I gave it a try. I sent tendrils of my magic over—a strange feeling I still wasn’t used to—incanted the spell, and willed it to fold itself. The towel lifted into the air, folded itself neatly, and landed back on the table.
“Wonderful.” Iris picked out a second towel from the pile. “Now try it again, but this time, change up the words.”
I frowned. “Is that safe?”
“For something like this, yes. As long as your intention is still the same.”
I did it again, but instead of the cutesy rhyme on the page, I simply said, “Fold, bitch, fold,” which had Shelby and Iris both trying not to crack up.
The towel lifted into the air again, folded into an unrecognizable shape, and flopped back down onto the table as if it were mocking me for calling it a bitch. It took me a moment to realize what the magical origami had created. There were four bumps, the second one much taller than the rest. The towel was flipping me the bird!
Iris lost it first, her cackle filling up the cottage. The Shelby burst out laughing too.
“I don’t think it liked being called names,” Shelby said between guffaws.
“That’s the best example of magic being ornery I’ve ever seen!” Iris had tears in her eyes.
When both finally stopped giggling, I asked, “Why is it so much easier to do things like dishes and laundry than it is to lift a random object? Shouldn’t it be harder? I mean, I’m lifting itandfolding it. It’s more intricate.”
I already knew that the energy used to lift an object depended on the object’s weight. In that way, magic didn’t operate independently of physics but rather in harmony with it. But somehow, the spells used to do housework seemed to defy this logic.
