He reached out and touched the picture again, biting his lip.
“Tell me about them,” Simon said gently.
“They were… well, when we were bug hunting, I thought they were together, and when we left that night for our own dorm rooms, I thought they would end up in each other’s beds. Every time we went somewhere or did something or hung out together, I felt like… like they should be together. Dante—the bigger guy—is a journalist, but I think he hates his job. He’s good at it, makes a living, but he always wants to be, I don’t know, more creative. And Cully is a seamstress. Or seamster. He makes costumes for all the local playhouses, and his house is a mess, and his life is a mess. The only thing he can take care of is the dog.” Alex’s voice was shaking, but he couldn’t seem to stop it. “But they took care of each other. They were constantly going out with the wrong people. Dante was going for all these vapid twinky gym rats and Cully was always talking about his bear crushes, and you know what? It didn’t matter. Because they came home to each other, and we knew that was how it was supposed to be.”
“What happened?” Simon prompted, wrapping his arm around Alex’s shoulders. Alex leaned against him, comforted beyond words. God, they were all so worried. Sunrise ritual, sunset ritual, taking the dog for a walk, getting Barty to the craft fairs, going to work—it all seemed like a cover, a massive, painful cover, for what they really wanted to be doing, which was dragging their friends by the collar into the real world again.
“Well, the same thing that sent our neighborhood spiraling into hell. We did the spell, and it backfired, and everybody spit out the one word that they really wanted, and the next morning nobody’s phone went off and we were late getting Barty to the convention he was working that day.” He fingered the pendant at his neck moodily. “That ended up okay, though,” he said. “Barty accidentally….” He bit his lip against the smile. “His one word was Lachlan, you see. They were like Dante and Cully—”
“Like us,” Simon said softly, and Alex snuggled against his chest a little closer, still gazing at the picture on the table.
“Yeah. So Barty was shy, and he’d been in love with Lachlan for a year and a half and barely even spoken to the guy. And when he was baking that night, all he thought was ‘Why won’t you love me!’”
Simon startled and pulled back. “Like, he cast a spell? Like when he makes his cinnamon rolls magic?”
“Well, yeah, but we didn’t know that yet. So the result was… well, it was pretty epic. Have you ever seen the Beatles movie, Help? Where they’re being chased through London by rabid fans?”
Simon used his free hand to cover his mouth—and his snort of disbelief. “Seriously?”
“Yeah. Barty was sprinting down the convention floor with Lachlan hauling ass after him, and half the convention was chasing them down because suddenly everybody wanted a piece of poor Bartholomew Baker.”
“Oh no!”
“Oh yes!” Alex laughed, because Bartholomew’s epic sprint had been something to see. “Poor Barty. He was terrified. But….” Alex’s voice dropped. “But he found his courage. Told Lachlan he loved him. Made these—” He fingered the charm at his neck. “—for protection, and they’ve mostly worked. Kept the birds out of our hair, kept the snakes from getting too close. I think they’re the reason we haven’t gotten sucked down any portals.”
“Is that what happened to your friends? Like Glinda?”
Alex shook his head. “No—it was weird. We all woke up and helped Barty into the van. Dante and Cully too.”
He sighed. Jordan had quietly questioned him about this after they’d realized what had happened. “Anyway, we all cleaned up, but as we were working they got… I don’t know. Quieter and quieter as they went. And once, I could swear, I saw them walk through each other. We were all so freaked out anyway, I figured I must be just losing my mind. But I was the last one into the van, and I remember this: Dante said, ‘I’m bushed. Let’s go nap, baby.’ And Cully said, ‘Don’t hog the bed.’ And the thing is, at that point they hadn’t hooked up. I mean, ever. Everybody asked them. Friends, strangers. Dante once brought a date home and said, ‘Hey, this is my roommate, Cully,’ and the date took one look at Cully and said, ‘I’m out. I know where this is going.’ I remember them both laughing about it later, but none of us did. It was so obvious. But they don’t share the same bedroom. Their setup is just like mine and Barty’s, but it shouldn’t be.”
“So they were acting like a couple when they left your place?” Simon was thinking hard. Alex knew that expression.
“Yeah. They even….” He shrugged. “They even held hands when they were going down the sidewalk. I watched them. And then they went into their house and—”
“And that’s the last you saw of them?”
“Oh, I wish,” Alex replied bitterly. “No. They’re there when you walk in. I think they’ve even been working. Jordan called his dad and asked to make sure they’d paid their rent, and they had—two checks, like always. They get deliveries; trash shows up in their cans. They are actually in the house. You can hear their voices, and every once in a while, one of them pops out of nowhere. Like, you’ll be walking down the hall, and suddenly Dante is just there, like he was coming out of the bathroom, but the bathroom door is still shut. And then he’ll go into his bedroom and disappear. No Dante. You’ll hear his voice from the front room, but you can’t see him. Cully has a project due pretty soon. We can tell because their couch is heaped with clothes and the sewing machine is going full-time. If you look in his room, the machine is going, the fabric is doing its thing, and then a dress or a shirt will go flying through the air, through the walls, and land on the couch.” He shuddered.
Simon stared. “You’re absolutely serious?”
“You believed the dog got teleported, and you’re questioning me on this?” Alex shot back.
Simon gave a self-conscious chuckle. “I believed the dog because… physics. Math. If I believe you that you and the dog were here—and I have no reason to believe you weren’t—then I have to believe the dog traveled somehow to my house in a heartbeat when it should have taken forty-five minutes. But this other thing, I guess I’d need to see it.” He looked away. “I’m sorry. I believe you, because, well, you’re Alex. I guess I don’t know if I believe it.”
Alex shoved out a breath. “That’s fair,” he said, because it was—it was more than fair. “But—” He gestured with his chin. “—you did notice the new decoration on the table, right?”
Simon nodded. “Yes, looks great. How’d you do it?”
Alex met his eyes grimly. “We lit twelve candles set around like a clock and one in the middle, appealing to magic, bound everything with thread meant to ground our friends in space and time, and recited a few words. Then a big blast of magic knocked us on our ass and ate the fucking dog.”
Simon blinked and turned back to the center of the table. “And the picture had something to do with that?”