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Pansy laughed. “You know I can’t transport myself magically like that.”
“But I can,” Maverick said, brushing the snow off his boots on my door mat. “So, if you alter your wards to accept my magic, Jaydy, I’ll send her over any time you want.”
My laugh sounded more like a sob, but I immediately cast a spell over my wards, allowing Maverick full access. “It’s done.” The fact that he could tell I needed Pansy right now meant a lot to me. “Thank you, Mav.”
Maverick opened his arms wide.
I went to him without a second thought, hugging him tight, my eyes closed. I needed his kind of strength.
“You know you’re my best friend too, now,” he said into my hair as he hugged me back.
I nodded against his chest, unable to speak—to find the words that would convey just how I felt.
Pansy’s hand slipped into mine and tugged me gently out of her husband’s embrace and into a hug of her own. “I’m sorry about your mom, and Christmas, and everything, Jaydy,” she offered softly.
I pulled back and wiped at the tears that had traitorously spilled down my cheeks. “You know,” I said, “same shit, different day.” I shut the front door and pulled my dressing gown tighter around my body. “So, what are you guys really doing here? Not that you aren’t welcome, but there has to be a reason. This time of the year is crazy busy, especially for you two.” Surely, they had family events as well as fancy, festive work soirées to attend?
“Can we sit for a minute?” Pansy asked, gesturing to the couches in the main living area.
“Oh, of course,” I said, moving over to the couch and flicking my hand out to tidy the area of the crumpled blankets, candy wrappers, and sunken pillows. Once it was tidy, I sat down and patiently waited for them to reveal all.
They sat together on the big armchair, which meant Pansy was practically seated in her husband’s lap. I didn’t have the heart to separate them, they were just too cute and obviously happy that way.
My broken heart would just have to deal. “Go on,” I said to Pansy. “Spit it out.”
She tilted her in thought. “What happened with Santa?” she gently asked.
I covered my face with my hands. “Oh my God, I forgot you even knew about that!” Here I was wallowing in my grief, happy in the knowledge that no one else knew about yet another of my failed relationships, but Pansy had been there. She’d met Nicky.How could I forget?The whole thing had been a bloody whirlwind.
Pansy’s hands grabbed my wrists as she pulled my hands down, then sat on the couch next to me. “What happened?”
I heaved a sigh and gave her the quick version. “Basically, we got too hot and heavy too fast, and I freaked out, then he freaked out, then it became clear that Santa is a bit of a man whore, so I lost my shit and zapped him to Canada.”
Maverick burst out with laughter, tears in his eyes.
Pansy and I both turned to stare at him.
The next High Warlock shook his hand at me. “Apologies. Apologies. That was just the most amazing deduction of events I’ve ever heard in my life. Just brilliant!”
I didn’t really know what he was talking about. It was just the truth.
Pansy gripped my hands and tugged my attention back to her. “So, you guys had a fight over... nothing?”
“No,” I defended. “We don’t suit each other. I think that’s obvious.”
Pansy’s lips quivered as she tried not to laugh. “Um, from what I could see, you two were positively besotted with each other.”
I tugged one of my hands free and ran it through my tangled hair in frustration. “Yeah, well... we’re not. Or Nicky wouldn’t be fucking his way through Canada as we speak.”
Maverick coughed a little oddly. As if there was something they knew that I didn’t.
Pansy turned to glare at him.
“Guys, what’s going on?” I asked them.
“Well, mom and dad got a call from Nicky, actually,” Pansy admitted.
“They... did?” I gulped as my heart began to beat a little harder. “What, did he want?” I folded my arms into my dressing gown sleeves, feeling strangely shivery all of a sudden.
