“Magic?” Bowen supplied, his eyebrows raised, and Gwyn’s smile faded.
“Shit. I’m letting a baby ensorcell my customers, aren’t I?” Then she shrugged. “Oh, well. He usually likes the cheapest stuff in the store anyway.”
“So when you two have kids, are you going to make them split their time between the stores?” Bowen asked, but Gwyn shook her head.
“Oh, kids are not for us,” she said. “We already decided that. A of all, we have the Baby Witches, and that’s all the parenting we can handle.”
Bowen was fairly certain the “Baby Witches” Gwyn and Wells so often referred to were all people in their twenties, but he wisely held his tongue as Gwyn went on. “And B, Sir Purrcival has very strong opinions about babies, turns out. The first time Taran tried to pet him, he used words we didn’t even think he knew.”
“Right, but that cat can’t live—” Bowen started to say, only to immediately swallow the rest of that sentence when Gwyn—and Wells, to Bowen’s surprise—shot him a glare that should’ve incinerated him on the spot. “—that cat . . . can’t live . . . with a-a baby,” Bowen managed to get out. “That’s what I was going to say. Just agreeing with you. One hundred percent.”
Gwyn gave a firm nod. “That’s what I assumed you were saying. But just in case it wasn’t, your punishment is to wear this to family dinner tonight.”
Reaching into the box she’d brought up from the storage room, Gwyn pulled out a bright red sweatshirt and tossed it at him.
Unfolding it, Bowen stared at the demonic face sneering back at him, bright green script underneath its curling tongue reading “Christmas Really Krampuses My Yule.”
Bowen grunted.
“In retrospect,” Wells said with a frown, “it was a mistake to let the Baby Witches design a holiday shirt for the stores.”
“It’s possible we’ve neglected pun skills when it comes to their education,” Gwyn agreed, then put her hands on her hips and fixed Bowen with a determined look. “But you’re still wearing it.”
She snapped her fingers, and Bowen felt a draft of cold air before looking down to see that somehow, the perfectly normal black jumper he’d been wearing was now on the floor, and the forked-tongue Krampus was snarling up at him from his chest.
“At least it’s comfortable,” he grumbled, and then, almost without thinking, reached into his back pocket and pulled out his phone. Snapping a quick picture of himself in the sweatshirt, he was halfway through his text to Tamsyn when he realized the store had gone uncomfortably quiet.
Looking up, Bowen found Wells and Gwyn both staring at him like he’d grown an extra head. Worse, actually, because that had happened to Bowen when he was thirteen, thanks to one of Rhys’s pranks, and Wells had looked significantly less disturbed then than he was now.
“What?” he asked.
“Did you . . . Bowen, did you just take a selfie?” Wells asked, and Gwyn grabbed her boyfriend’s arm, her eyes wide.
“Wells, he took a selfie of himself wearing a stupid novelty sweatshirt. Who are you sending that to? Are you putting it online? Do you know how online works? Is there, like, a secret Facebook for witchy mountain men? Or! Oh!”
Practically levitating, Gwyn pointed a finger at Bowen, who could feel blood start creeping up his face.
“That is for a woman. You are sending that to someone because you like her.”
“It’s not like that,” Bowen heard himself say, but Gwyn was on a roll now.
“Or a guy! I guess it could be a guy, I’ve never even asked you about that kind of thing, Bowen, because frankly I was more concerned with whether or not you were a werewolf than who it is you bang. Which”—she wrinkled her brow—“are you? A werewolf? You can tell me now, we’re family.”
“I’m not,” Bowen replied. “They’re not actually re—”
“Okay,” Gwyn went on, waving that away. “Good to know. But point is, you are sending that to someone because you are into them.”
“I’m sending it to a mate,” Bowen corrected. “As a joke.”
“Nope,” Gwyn said, shaking her head. “You angled that phone, Bowen. You almost smiled. I saw it. Or at least I think I did, the beard really remains insane, dude.”
Scratching at that beard, Bowen studied the selfie on his screen, the still unsent text to Tamsyn underneath.
Since you like making fun of me so much, some new material.
Fuck, he had angled the phone, and yeah, definitely a hint of teeth there.
He’d just delete it. Bad enough to have a crush on someone who’d flat-out said she wouldn’t get involved with him so long as they were working together. Even worse, bringing up the mistletoe the other night.
But it had been late and he’d been lonely, and seeing her message pop up in his chat had made him so bloody happy for some reason.
Talking to her always did that. Even when he was fucking it up, even when he was wishing there was some way to unsay the stupid shit that tended to fall out of his mouth, any conversation with her tended to be the highlight of his day.
Which was . . . pathetic.
The past year had been good. They were a solid team. And that’s all they were, all they should be. He was a fucking mess and in no shape to offer anything to anyone. She was smart and beautiful and sharp as a fucking obsidian blade. Best to leave her to find someone who actually knew how to be a person.
A human.
Bowen knew all of that.
But he still hit send.
Chapter 2
It wasn’t easy sending a text with one hand while you held an Etruscan knife that some fifteenth-century witch had used to castrate a demon in the other, but Tamsyn had always prided herself on her ability to multitask.
And besides, a rare Bowen Penhallow selfie deserved an immediate reply, even if a girl had just pulled into her driveway after a very long flight and several hours of hellish traffic.
