No one had been more willing to embrace the wilder side of magic, either.
Bowen had told himself a thousand times that what had happened wasn’t his fault. Hell, Declan had said the same.
But it had been Bowen who’d found that spell.
The log on the fire popped, releasing a shower of sparks, and Bowen stepped back a bit, dusting his hands on the back of his jeans as he studied the spirit that had once been his friend.
“Haven’t seen you for a bit,” Bowen said. That wasn’t unusual—he’d once gone nearly a whole year without seeing the spirit, and he’d hoped maybe that meant whatever it was tying Declan’s spirit to the earth had finally been severed, but no such luck. “Where’d you get yourself off to now?”
Declan went a bit “thin,” as Bowen always thought of it. His form didn’t seem quite as substantial, the bookshelf behind him now very visible, his football jersey barely readable.
Then the room got a little colder, and Declan started coming in clearer again, still translucent, but a little more solid, and for the first time, Bowen realized he was holding something in his hand.
An envelope.
Bowen took it from Declan’s outstretched fingers and frowned at the heavy weight of it in his hand.
“Wedding invitation,” Declan said, but Bowen was less concerned with the what of the thing and more the how. As in—
“How the hell did you manage to get this thing here?”
Ghosts could move objects, but rarely did they have enough power to transport something.
“That’s why I haven’t been around for the past few months,” he said, nodding at the envelope. “That showed up at my mum’s house back in July. It’s taken me this long to get it here, and now time is pressing, mate.”
Bowen pulled out the card inside and squinted at the elaborate calligraphy. “Morgana’s tits, I can barely read this.”
“Don’t worry,” Declan said with a gusty sigh. “I’ve had time to memorize it. It says that Sir and Lady Meredith have the pleasure of inviting you to the wedding of their daughter, Carys, to a Mr. David Thorsby on December twenty-fourth.”
“Carys Meredith,” Bowen said, throwing Declan a sharp look.
The ghost threw up his glowing hands. “Yes, that Carys.”
“Your fiancée,” Bowen went on, and Declan scowled, folding his arms over his chest.
“Former fiancée. This David apparently now holds the title.”
Given that Declan made the name “David” sound like a communicable disease, Bowen refrained from pointing out that it wasn’t like Declan was exactly able to take a wife, so maybe moving on had been good for Carys.
Bowen had never met her, but he remembered her picture in its place of honor on Dec’s desk in the room they’d shared. She was pretty in a delicate sort of way, her hair so blond it was nearly white, but her eyes were dark brown, and in the picture Declan had, she’d been laughing at the camera, her head tilted back, her arms thrown wide.
Declan had been mad about her, and Bowen had always wondered what she’d been told about what happened to her fiancé.
What she must have thought.
“It’s not just a wedding,” Declan went on, pointing at the invitation. “Whole long weekend sort of thing. A Yule celebration mixed in. Carys’s family always was a little over the top, to be honest.”
Shaking the card at Dec, Bowen asked, “And it’s next week?”
Declan gave a grim nod. “Told you, I’ve been trying to get this bloody thing to you since July. I almost thought I wouldn’t make it.”
“Hmmph,” Bowen snorted, thinking that over as he thwacked the card against his palm. “You know—”
“I could’ve come to you, told you about the wedding, and then had you magic up an invitation, or possibly contact my parents and get it yourself, yes, these were all things that occurred to me the second you picked the fooking thing up, thank you, Bowen.”
That was a thing with ghosts—they got so fixated on whatever quest it was that was keeping them tied to the mortal plane that they sometimes forgot the way the human world worked. It was both endearing and a little sad, and not for the first time, Bowen wished that he’d been a little bit more forceful trying to talk Declan out of that bloody stupid spell.
Still, it was done now, wasn’t it?
“Why bring it to me at all?” he asked, and Declan gave him a look that Bowen remembered very well from their university days. It was the one that said, How can one man be this thick?
“Because I want you to go,” he said.
Bowen could actually feel his frown deepen. If Tamsyn were here right now, she’d probably already be doing an exaggerated impression of it.
“You . . . want me to go,” he echoed, “to your ex-fiancée’s wedding.”
Declan nodded, his hair—which had been bright red when he was alive, but was now more of a sort of grayish blue—flopping over one eye. “Mmm-hmm. I need you to whip up a really nasty curse. Right at the vows, stand up and proclaim it, maybe add some thunder and lightning for effect? Ooh, can you do, like, a scary black cloud thing, too? You know, just to really sell it.”
Bowen stared at his friend for a couple of beats as the fire crackled away and sleet rattled against the door.
Then, slowly: “You’re fucking with me.”
Declan’s eyes went a little wider as he crossed his arms over his chest. “Huh. Usually takes you a little longer to figure that out.”
“I’ve had more practice lately,” he muttered, Tamsyn’s dark eyes, bright with amusement, suddenly springing to mind.
He should introduce her to Declan one of these days. They’d like each other, Bowen was sure of that. But then explaining Dec to Tamsyn would mean explaining his own role in how all this had happened, and Christ, wouldn’t that be a mess?
