“Old chick,” she said, without bothering to look.
Kelly was right. She turned back to find Cora’s actual assistant lazing against the wall, one knee up so that her shoe was planted above the baseboards. That’s gonna leave a mark, Kelly smirked to herself. Maybe Holly would actually catch a bit of hell for it.
“I thought you were going to hide back there all night. What were you doing in there anyway?”
“Nothing. Just…decorating.”
She cracked off a pixyish grin, dripping with false sweetness. It wasn’t that the two hated each other, but their snappy repartee always had more than a hint of edge to it. Kelly figured her older counterpart felt just a teeny bit superior for actually having a paid gig. Still, with Cora going on leave, they were both out of work.
“Everybody has to have a hobby.”
Holly lifted her cup to her lips, lined in thick, black lipstick. The sprite seemed to pride herself on a kind of calculated carelessness, and leaned hard into a decidedly goth look. It’s like she was dying to be something darker than a sprite, and lived with a heavy chip on her delicate shoulder.
“You know what?” Kelly had no idea where she was going next, and was saved from having to come up with the perfect quip just in time when she was essentially tackled to the floor by Ryan Glittermist. She should have seen it coming—it was her fairy friend’s typical greeting.
“Oh god,” Kelly groaned, holding her head. “Don’t do that.”
“Girl, are you serious? You’re not still…”
“Hungover? Yeah.” Despite the drinks she’d already had, the lingering effects of protracted partying were still making themselves evident.
“You want to know a secret?” He leaned in and cupped a hand around his mouth. “Me too!”
They shared a laugh about his stupid joke, and Kelly was grateful to have a truly friendly face show up. It was going to keep her from getting into a true snark-off with Holly.
“So,” he shook off the laugh but kept the conspiratorial tone, “how is it?”
“How is what?”
“Girl!” Ryan heaved a dramatic sigh, and clapped her on both shoulders. “Being twenty-five? Is it everything you dreamed of?”
“Aren’t you over twenty-five?”
He simply waved off her question with a hand encrusted with rings. They sparkled with cheap green gems, which clashed gloriously with his electric orange shirt. Yeah, he was in full effect.
“This isn’t about me, Kel-leeeeee. This is about you! You’re free now, right?”
“You’d think so,” she scoffed. “But apparently they’re sticking to the sentence. I’m still an official ward of the Holloway clan until I turn twenty-six. Which is the definition of injustice, if you ask me.”
“I’d say it’s fairly just.” Iris Holloway-Santos edged into their conversation, her baby, Willow, smiling placidly in her arms.
Kelly flushed visibly at having been caught out complaining. “We were just talking…”
Her excuse was cut off, or rather brushed aside, by the genial, if slightly haughty, Arcane Sentinel. “I’d say that an added year in recompense for misusing a truth spell is a pretty light consequence. To call it a ‘sentence’ is a little extreme, don’t you think?” She flashed those bewitching eyes of hers, practically daring Kelly to recall that Iris had been the one to impose the added year.
“Oh, I’m just running my mouth. You know that.”
Kelly’s innocent grin was getting a workout that day, and the slightly older witch clearly saw right through it. There was a moment of tension between them, then Ryan clapped his hands and leaned in with a wicked gleam.
“Ohmigod, are you guys going to fight? Please say yes! I love it when there’s drama at a thing like this. Baby showers can be so tame.”
“Fight?” Kelly dissolved into laughter. “Sorry to disappoint you.”
A tray of drinks wandered past, and she scooped up two of whatever cocktail was making the rounds.
“No hard feelings here,” she said, downing the first one in a single swallow. “Just blowing off steam.”
“Not even that much,” Iris smiled.
She tickled her fingers at the baby in her arms, and the little stunner grabbed one of the exquisitely manicured digits and crammed it into her mouth. The domesticity of it settled uneasily under Kelly’s skin. It seemed like everyone she knew was either getting married or having babies. Or both.
“Anyway,” she said, lifting the second of her drinks. “I guess my only gripe is that I’m twenty-five and still being treated like a child.”
“Then stop acting like one.”
Iris's tone wasn’t meant to wound, Kelly was certain, but it stopped the second cup right at the brink of her lips. She cut her eyes up, but Iris was already sauntering away. Malicious or not, her work there was done.
Before Kelly could let herself get too bent out of shape over it, her phone vibrated in her pocket. It was a number she didn’t recognize, so she let it go through to voicemail. If it’s somebody important, they’ll leave a message. If not, fuck ‘em.
For a late afternoon shower, things ran pretty late. That’s what happened when you made a lot of free hooch available to people who needed to blow off some steam. The whole thing rattled along beautifully, but after nearly two hours, Kelly was feeling decidedly over all the baby stuff. Armloads of clothes and toys and teething goodies had been foisted upon Cora. While adorable, it was a lot.
Clambering out into the hall, she was finally able to suck in a breath that didn’t have the word ‘baby’ infusing it. Just standing in that room would be enough to make anybody pregnant—even Ryan.
There was a light movement at one end of the corridor and Kelly started slightly, realizing she wasn’t alone. At the far end of the hall was a security guard. Even with her eyes slightly goggled from some varsity-level drinking, her jaw dropped. Whoever he was, he was the single hottest security guard she’d ever laid eyes on.
Scratch that. He was one of the single hottest men she’d ever laid eyes on.
Calm down, girl. She squared herself for seduction. You got this.
After deploying her innocent face so much over the course of the evening, it was a blessed relief to slip into something a bit more bewitching. Smiling with just a glint of invitation, she waggled her fingers at him. He held his place, his eyes shining back at her across the distance.
Jackpot! she told herself. He’s totally into you. Okay. Keep calm. Let’s just walk down there and… I don’t know. Flash him or something.
Before she could tumble drunkenly into what was bound to be a mistake, a hand grasped her upper arm. Spinning around, she found herself face-to-face with Ryan, who was every bit as much into the booze as she was.
“Kelly, I don’t want to freak you out or anything, but they just busted out a whole new box of liquor bottles. You’re not gonna make me do this alone, are you?”
Stealing a single glance back down the hallway to see which route her evening was going to take, Kelly was a little disappointed to find that the stupidly good-looking security guard was gone. Problem solved. She turned back to her friend and could already feel the three-day hangover waiting on the other side of this night.