And now, going into their house was a nightmare of epic proportions, because the two men were both there and not there, and everybody on the cul-de-sac had to courage up to so much as bring the dog by to visit.
Since the heart’s-desire spell had gone so terribly wrong, they’d all spent their spare waking moments studying the spell books left for Jordan in the witch’s cottage, trying to find a counterspell to fix things. Once Glinda was a panting, dazed furry mountain of pleasure, Alex had grabbed a couple of stacks of books from the witch’s cottage, brought them to the kitchen table, and tried to deal with having his mind blown.
For one thing, the titles were just so weird.
Candles, Crystals, Sage and Spice—the Happy Wiccan’s Guide to Impractical Magic
Having the Time for a Spatial Dilemma—Spells Across the Continuum
Loop-de-loops—the Pathways of Rogue Magic
And they all seemed to be by the same guy—a Mr. A. Nonymous.
But that didn’t stop Alex from grabbing the one on top and scanning spells until he got to the next one, and so on. He’d never been the flashiest guy in the class, but he did have a reputation for getting the job done.
By the time the others had started to gather for the sunset ritual, he had half a legal pad full of notes and suggestions to go over that night, and he’d sent Jordan a list of ingredients to pick up on the way home.
And the whole time, like a hum in the back of his head, he’d been replaying Simon Reddick’s kisses.
And how they blew out of the water everything Alex had thought he’d known about human sexual contact.
Oddly enough, he’d been attracted to Simon for the persona he projected: the guy who had everything together. But the more they talked, personally, stripping the veils of who they each thought the other was, the more he realized that Simon was just as insecure, just as diffident, just as vulnerable as any other person with a true heart—only Simon had a lot more practice hiding all of those qualities. As a boss, he was perfect—Simon, Gabby, and Chris all seemed to project the ultimate in progressive, forward-thinking young professionals.
As a person, he was… kind. Funny. And surprisingly human.
And Alex wanted more of Simon now, not because he wanted the boss who could lead him into the mysterious caverns of carnal delight. He wanted more of Simon because Simon made him smile, made his heart warm, made the most frightening moments—like thinking he’d lost Glinda—into something completely manageable.
And he seemed to be taking the magic in stride, which was always a plus.
So in that way of true multitaskers, by the time the Sebastian Circle coven—or the Hedge Witches’ Lonely Hearts Club, as Jordan dubbed them—had gathered under the lowering light of the sun, Alex had completed two entirely different tasks.
The first was that he had an approach for them to use that night to try to reverse the course of the misdirected magic so hopefully they could talk to Dante and Cully in regular time and maybe help them stop haunting their own house.
The second was that he’d become completely used to the idea that his entire body—skin, heart, blood, mind, soul—seemed to want to touch Simon on a quivering, joyful, molecular level that Alex would dearly love to investigate further.
But their number-one priority was getting their friends out of space/time continuum hell.
So after Alex bid Simon a reluctant good-night, he trotted up the walkway to his and Bartholomew’s house to see what the others had done with his instructions.
He was not disappointed.
In the center of Lachlan’s beautiful table, Jordan had set up twelve candles in a circle, each candle a progression in color, starting with white at twelve, then gold at one, orange at two, pink at three, red at four, and so on. The center of the circle was occupied by a large black pillar candle sitting in a plate of earth from Jordan’s backyard. The smaller candles were each sitting in a small pile of spice or herbs—something that corresponded with the candle itself, so, say, the lavender candle was sitting in a pile of dried lavender buds, and a small stone of matching color was inside the candle circle as well.
Each small candle had a thread of the same color linking it to the big black candle in the center, and the circle of candles was bound on the outside by a black thread.
“Ooh…,” Alex said, looking at it.
“That’s damned powerful,” Jordan agreed.
“And pretty,” Kate said with a shrug. All the men stared at her, and she raised a shoulder. “Just saying. Anyway, we tweaked the herbs a little—we put cinnamon with the orange candle instead of cardamom because cinnamon is a little sweeter, a little more attractive. And Bartholomew thought to put licorice drops around the black candle—they’re both sharp and sweet, and we had six of the drops and six pieces of onyx, so that worked well too.”
Alex nodded and let out a breath. “Good thinking, Barty,” he said, smiling when his friend ducked his head and blushed. “Now I’m trying to figure out….” He looked around at Jordan, Josh and Kate, and Bartholomew and Lachlan. “There’s six of us,” he said at last, helplessly. “That’s not a great number. Six is a really crappy number for a good spell outcome.”
Lachlan held his hands up, completely without ego. “I’m out.”
But Jordan shook his head. “Yeah, but that’s not… it needs to work with twelve. Five and twelve is no good, and seven and twelve is awful.”
“Three,” Alex said, but he shivered. “I mean, ideally, nine, but three works best with what we’ve got.”
The others nodded, and it was Josh who said the thing that had bothered Alex all along.
“Okay—so, I’ve been looking at the words of your spell, and you guys, I’m totally missing Dante here, because he was the one who did words, and we all suck at it. The spell itself looks sound. It’s white magic. But the black candle—we used one of those before, and it just didn’t seem to, uhm….”
He let the words trail off, but his tone—and his expression—indicated he had definite opinions.
And judging by the way everybody else nodded, Alex guessed they did too—but he’d been the one studying.
“Look, guys,” he said, “I know we’re all trained to think of black candles equaling super-strong magic—and we thought we would make our wishing spell real, which was why we used it, and yeah, it backfired. But I swear, I read witchcraft up to my eyeballs today, and that’s not always the case. Blood and a black candle—that’s bad. That’s evil magic, and that’s some powerful shit that I don’t want to mess with. But even though the wishing spell backfired, we need to remember—the black candle doesn’t have to be super-strong knock-’em-dead magic. We’re trying to appeal to pure magic. We’re appealing to the forces of magic itself—not any other element.” He looked around the kitchen and shrugged. “I mean, we pissed the magic off. The spell is written to sort of, you know, appease the magic. Tell it we’re sorry. Ask it for help to set things right. So I have the clock for time, and the herbs and soil for grounded space, and—” He glanced at his friends. “—who’s got the picture?”
“I do!” Jordan said, pulling a machine-printed snapshot of Dante and Cully on the coven’s last trip to the sea. They had their arms around each other, buddy style, and Alex couldn’t help thinking that—like every other picture where they posed “buddy style”—the photo was wrong. God, these two men belonged to each other if anybody did. With a sigh of misgiving, Alex took it from Jordan, who asked, “What were you planning to do with it?”