Sam was easy to talk to, which was a little unsettling, to be perfectly honest. Alistair loved all of his siblings, would die for any one of them, but he wasn’t equally open with each of them. He could tell Wanda anything, and Philip got his sense of humor, and nothing he said could ever phase Doris. Teresa mainly focused on getting all the fun out of life that she could, so pretty much the opposite of what Alistair had been doing lately.
The last time he’d washed dishes with someone, the last time he’d felt so at ease, was before the war. With Forrest.
No. No, he was getting addled. Sam and Forrest were nothing alike. Their personalities were completely different, their backgrounds utterly dissimilar.
But this feeling, these moments, with Sam were just as temporary as they had been with Forrest.
As soon as they were done in the kitchen, he headed straight to the couch, throwing himself down on it and studiously ignoring whatever it was Sam decided to do with their time before work. Unfortunately, that became boring fast. When he couldn’t stare at the ceiling any longer, he sat up and peered over the back of the couch.
Sam sat at Eldon’s desk, inks and pens and paper scattered around him. He bit his lower lip in concentration, peering down through the thick lenses of his cheaters as he drew.
“What are you making?” Alistair asked.
Sam started. “Oh! Just practicing. If I’m going to copy a hex to get us into The Black Rabbit, I thought I should work on the exercises Eldon gave me.”
Alistair propelled himself off the couch and went to stand at Sam’s shoulder. “I don’t know a lot about hexwork, to be honest.”
Sam looked up, surprised. “Really? I just thought, as a familiar…”
Alistair shrugged one shoulder. “Plenty of witches don’t know enough to make their own hexes.” Forrest hadn’t, but the army distributed their own anyway, so it didn’t matter. Anti-pain, anti-infection hexes; hexes for light and for darkness; hexes to weaken barbed wire or to silence steps. All short lived, and of course the enemy had the same, but they helped.
“Right.” Sam’s shoulders straightened, and he sat up a bit taller in his chair. “So the way Eldon explained it to me is that a hex is like a container for magic. Think of magic as water. Familiars are the spring it comes from. Witches are the hose transporting it from the spring to where it needs to go. And hexes are the container it goes into. And just like water, magic takes the shape of whatever it is put in—a soda bottle, or a bucket, or a bowl, or whatever.”
Alistair knew that much, but Sam looked so happy to share his knowledge that even he didn’t have the heart to deflate him. “Got it.”
“The parts of the hex form the container. Some of them are simple. For example, here’s the hex for fire.” Sam grabbed a piece of paper and quickly sketched it. “Depending on the strength of the witch-familiar bond, this could be enough for a spark or a bonfire.” He paused, considering. “Let me change the analogy a little: let’s say you’re a spigot.”
“How flattering.”
Sam ignored him. “But a hose with the wrong sized coupling will leak when it’s hooked up. So you’ll get less water in the bucket than you would with the right size coupling. And by water I mean magic.”
Alistair was starting to wish he’d never prompted this conversation. Because in this analogy, Forrest had been the wrong fit for him, and Sam was the right, and he didn’t really want to think about that last part.
“I thought your family disapproved of magic,” he said. “But it seems like you know a lot about it.”
Sam flushed. “Eldon wanted to train me. There’s a lot I don’t understand about witches and familiars. I just know hexes.”
“It’s more than that.” No one got that enthusiastic over a subject they weren’t interested in.
Sam’s shoulders slumped. “I liked hearing about it,” he said, and the quiet note in his voice made Alistair want to kick himself. “I know magic isn’t for me. But hexes…I like the colors. I like knowing what parts go where. I’m still learning the theory. Or I was.”
“So that’s a fire hex,” Alistair said, desperate to put the spark back into Sam’s eyes. “What’s that one there? The one you were just working on?”
Sam brightened a smidgen. “Oh, that’s not a hex, not in and of itself. You can build different hexes using different parts. And of course it makes a difference what inks you use—this one is made from ground garnet. Eldon had me copy whole hexes, but for practice he gave me a bunch of different partials and had me get used to them, so that I’d get the parts right. The whole doesn’t work if any of the elements are wrong.”
“That makes sense. I don’t guess any of these are Eldon’s mysterious hex?”
“If only.” Sam gestured to the stack. “Just basic hexes or building blocks, nothing more.”
“Right.” Alistair ran his hand back through his hair. “I’m going to search the house again. Maybe there’s something we’ve missed.”
“Do you want me to help?”
“No.” Alistair nodded at the paper and inks. “This is more important. We need that hex from Vit copied perfectly.”
“Right,” Sam said. “No pressure, then.”
“I’ve talked to my friend at Club Grimalkin,” Holly told Alistair when she finished her first set of the night.
Alistair completed a calculation on the comptometer, entered it into the ledger, and leaned back in his chair. His back ached from being in one position for too long, and he was sick of staring at numbers. “Great. We should talk to Sam. I’m tired of sitting here, so let’s go out to the main room.”
“Fine by me,” Holly said.
The Pride was busy for a Thursday-almost-Friday. The band had struck up The Charleston and the dance floor was packed. People lined the bar, and a haze of smoke clung to the ceiling.
Sam stood beside an empty table, his bus tub on it, talking to a group of men seated at the next table over. As Alistair approached, one of them smiled and put a familiar hand on Sam’s hip.
Alistair’s chest seemed to constrict, and his fingernails bit into his palms. A strangled “no” lodged in his throat, and he wanted to march over and shove the man’s hand off.
He forced himself to take a calming breath. Sam was perfectly free to flirt with anyone he liked. No reason it should make Alistair upset. Hell, if Sam wanted to do a lot more than flirt, it was none of Alistair’s business. Why would he care?
Grinding his teeth, Alistair marched over. Sam’s face had gone crimson, and he looked lost. “Excuse me,” Alistair grated out. “You’re needed in the back, Sam.”
“We’re talking,” the man said, making no move to shift his hand off Sam’s hip. He had slicked-back black hair and a narrow mustache, and his cheeks were pink from both booze and powder.
“It’s all right,” Sam said, and Alistair thought there was a note of relief in his voice. He made to step away, but the man seized him by the wrist.
“We’re not done talking,” the man said angrily.
Alistair didn’t even think. He grabbed the man’s wrist, grinding the bones together until he let go. “Keep your filthy hands off him.”