“Oh, guys,” Jordan said, voice breaking a little. “You would not believe what we’ve been going through to get you two back.”
“We’ve been trying,” Dante said, feeling helpless. “I left you Post-its, baby. Did you see them?”
He peered at Cully, who was wearing one of his more flamboyant outfits—ruffly pirate shirt, knee-breeches, and socks. It was something he’d made for a show but had loved so much he’d made one for himself, and it hit Dante that he’d seen Cully in this outfit a lot in the last month.
He just hadn’t remembered until now.
Cully’s eyes went red, and his mouth—usually a firm little pout—wobbled. “I tried to leave a plate there,” he rasped. “So you’d know I saw. I… I couldn’t.”
Dante frowned and stared at Jordan. “J, Goddess. The actual fuck. Man, what’s going on?”
“Remember the heart’s desire spell?” Jordan asked, speaking hurriedly, like he knew they couldn’t sustain their circle for long.
“Yeah,” Dante said, giving a sideways look at Cully. “We were all supposed to read our little verses, and instead we all—”
“Said what we really wanted,” Cully said, looking directly back at him.
Jordan nodded. “We lied to the magic, which pissed it off. And worse, we… we fed into a presence that was already here in the cul-de-sac—it’s sort of a force of… I don’t know. The worst of us. In our case, you’re all such nice people—ouch!”
He glared at Kate, who had stepped on his foot.
“You’re feeding it again!” she snapped.
“Fine—we, is that better? We are all such nice people that what feeds this presence is abnegation. Too much humility. Not speaking up for our own needs. The magic’s been kicking our asses. All of our asses. And the presence keeps trying to take over the cul-de-sac. Man, the animals out there are freaking us out!”
Dante shuddered so hard he almost let go of Jordan’s hand. “Birds?” he squeaked. “Owls? Ravens? Starlings?”
“And turkeys,” Jordan confirmed grimly. “It’s….” He shuddered. “Bad. There are bad things outside. We do a ritual every morning and every evening to keep the presence—and the animals, including snakes and squirrels—from going ballistic and spreading out of the cul-de-sac. And we’ve been killing ourselves trying to get you out.”
Dante saw Jordan’s amulet catch the light, and he had to remind himself not to release Jordan’s hand to touch his. “The necklaces,” he said.
They all nodded, looking grim. “Bartholomew and Lachlan made them and blessed them,” Alex told him.
“Lachlan’s my boyfriend,” Barty chimed in.
“I remember that.” Cully gave him a wicked grin. “He’s pretty hot.”
Bartholomew, for as grim as this meeting was, managed a sweet, self-satisfied smile. “Oh yeah.” He nodded.
“And Alex, J, and Barty did a totally kickass spell with them,” Josh said. “You had to see it, man—there were fireworks and candles, and we all got knocked on our asses, and the dog—”
“Was perfectly fine!” all the others shouted.
Josh opened his mouth, closed it, and then looked from Dante to Cully and back again. “Was perfectly fine,” he agreed. “And then Alex’s boyfriend came by for no reason at all and gave us some direction.”
“Alex’s boyfriend is also hot,” Cully told Dante, nodding.
Dante had an image of the tall, slender man in a black turtleneck and black jeans, with jet-black hair. “Not arguing,” he said. God, as much as he wanted to hear the story the others were telling, Cully’s hand in his, the view of his profile, even the sound of his voice—animated and sassy and not lost and alone—was pulling his attention away at the worst of times. He wanted a lifetime to look at him, to talk to him, to see what he’d been doing as the two of them had wandered this house, always merely a wall away.
“As is mine,” Jordan told them, his mouth twisting in that way that said he was reluctant to call attention to himself but felt he had to. “Do you remember meeting him yesterday?”
They all gasped as a gust of wind seemed to hit them out of nowhere, and Jordan almost stumbled.
“Gonna say no,” Jordan panted. Dante clenched his hand hard and helped him keep his feet.
“Yikes,” Kate said, eyes wide. “Well, guys, he’s powerful—almost as powerful as Jordan—and he’s got a solution for us, but it’s going to take some doing.”
And then they outlined the plan. It was a doozy.
“Move?” Cully said, alarmed.
“Like… like, where?” Dante tried to imagine the two of them somewhere else, and it missed him. They were… they were stuck here.
Like ghosts.
That thought alone was enough to make him jump on board the moving-out train.
But Jordan didn’t do anything by half measures, and the rest of the gang was pretty solid when it came to seeing a plan through. Even the heart’s desire spell had taken all of them, both to set up and to fuck up, and this was no exception.
“So we’ve got a place already?” Dante said, stunned. “Out in the middle of South of Nowhere?”
“Jackson,” Alex said dryly. “Out by Plymouth. They’re both sort of… you know. There.” He nodded his chin generally east. “We hope it’s okay. If you don’t like it—”
“Well, we can live anywhere,” Cully said practically. “As long as coyotes won’t eat our dog and we can get deliveries, that’s fine. It’s just….” He met Dante’s eyes, and Dante could read his mind.
“It’s not like we’re much good at helping you,” he said bitterly. “When you guys leave, I don’t know how much of this I’ll remember.”
“Did marking the calendar help?” Jordan asked. “Because we’re putting a big circle around moving day.”
Dante had to chuckle. “It’s one of the few things that did,” he said, looking at Cully for confirmation.
“It’s the only proof I had, I guess,” Cully agreed. “That, you know, I wasn’t going batshit insane.”
“So if you can, keep looking,” Jordan said soberly. “And we’ll leave you the bare minimum when we move the furniture. We’re moving the big stuff early so it’s set up in the new place, but we can’t leave everything until the last day, or the presence is going to… I don’t know. Mass. Macklin doesn’t seem to think it can read our thoughts, but it can definitely pick up when we’re feeding into it, I guess. So everybody is spending the thirtieth here, then fleeing to the hills on the thirty-first.”
“But….” Dante swallowed, realizing the flaw in the plan. “J, we… I don’t think we can leave this place. I don’t know what would happen if we even tried.”
Jordan met everybody’s eyes, and they nodded. “Well, leave part of that to us. Macklin and I—”
“Who’s Macklin again?” Cully asked, wrinkling his nose.
“My boyfriend,” Jordan said. “He met you guys, but—”