“Fine,” he told her, but his brother had married a damn smart woman, and she wasn’t so easily put off.
“I know you look . . . well, you look . . . like that,” she said, waving at his face, “a lot, but it just seemed like something was bothering you.”
What was bothering him was a strange mix of guilt—Declan would never have this, would never sit at a table with his family again, and whose fault was that?—and something else, something he was less used to.
Loneliness.
He was lonely, even as they included him, even as they pulled him into their arguments and their conversations, because he could feel how easy this was for all of them, how natural. How apart from it he was.
By choice, but it ached all the same.
Clearing his throat, Bowen answered her, but addressed the rest of them at the same time. “I, um . . . I know we’d talked about me staying through the new year.”
That brought Rhys and Wells’s discussion to a halt, and everyone turned to look at him now, causing a dull flush to creep up Bowen’s neck.
Folding her arms over her chest, Gwyn fixed him with a steady look. “Not just talked about, Bowen. Planned. First big Jones-Penhallow Yule celebration. All of us together for nearly the whole month. Cutting down the Yule log, wassail . . . Esquire here even agreed to wear the holly crown!”
She elbowed Wells in the ribs, sloshing his wine.
“I did,” he confirmed. “Once I had an assurance of no photographs.”
Bowen nodded. “Right. Right . . . I . . . Right.”
“And they made you a wee, sad little hut out back!” Rhys added. “So you’d feel at home.”
Christ, he hated when it was two against one.
“It’s just . . . I’m working on something right now,” he said, telling a partial truth at least. “And I can’t spare a full month away from it.”
“You can work on it here,” Gwyn said, and Wells nodded.
“Plenty of space upstairs, and as Rhys noted, we made you a hovel in the woods, since that’s more what you’re used to.”
“And between the college, Aunt Elaine, and the store, I’m sure you’d have anything you’d need to do your weird magic science,” Vivi said, brightening.
Taran babbled something at him, too, then gave him another one of those gummy smiles before trying to eat Vivi’s hair.
“Of course,” Elaine said, “if you’ll tell me what kind of work you’re doing, I’d be happy to help.”
“Ooh!” Gwyn sat up straight in her chair. “And you’re welcome to anything in Something Wicked, too, but I feel like your kind of magic probably doesn’t call for sage and lavender bath salts.”
“Right,” Wells said with a clap of his hands. “So that’s sorted then, yes? You’re staying.”
St. Bugi’s balls, he hadn’t reckoned with the combined force of these people.
But then Bowen could be stubborn, too.
In his way.
“I’ll stick around for a few days,” he said. “But that’s all I can promise.”
It’s all I can give.
Bowen had just thrown another log on the fire when the ghost appeared.
It was, he had to admit, the perfect setting for a spirit—December night, howling storm outside, remote Welsh mountainside, man brooding in the general direction of a fireplace—but he shrieked like a wee girl all the same.
“Calm yerself, Bo, Christ. It’s just me,” Declan said, raising one translucent hand as Bowen stood by the fire and tried to stop his heart beating out of his chest.
“You oughta get chains like that fella in A Christmas Carol,” Bowen told him with a scowl. “Or a bell. Like a cat.”
His former classmate and best friend flipped him off, bluish fingers wavering in the firelight. “Wanker.”
“Arsehole,” Bowen replied, then sighed. “Don’t tell anyone I made that noise when you appeared.”
“Oh, because that was gonna be a big topic of conversation for me and all my ghosty buddies at the lunch table, sure,” Declan replied with a wry grin.
It made Bowen’s chest hurt, that grin.
That was one of the first things he’d come to like about Declan, all those years ago, the way he smiled like the whole world was a big joke, and weren’t the two of you lucky to be in on it?
It had reminded Bowen of Rhys a bit, and maybe that’s why he’d become friends with his roommate at Penhaven College so quickly.
Graves Glen might be a lovely place now, but all those years ago, it had seemed like millions of miles from home, the mild winters and hot, humid summers of Georgia so different from his wild Welsh homeland.
But then he’d met Declan, a Scottish lad from Edinburgh who was as passionate about ancient sorcery as he was his beloved Midlothian Hearts football team, and they’d become best mates almost immediately. No one was smarter when it came to magic than Declan, no one quicker to pick up a spell or know exactly what book in exactly what part of the shadowy, cluttered library would have the ritual they were looking for.
