Talia nodded, resting her elbows on the table and interlacing her hands. “So how long is this checklist, and will Temporary You be allowed to sleep?”
I waved my hand at the notion. “No time for such frivolities when you’re bringing magic to the masses. She can nap when I get back.”
“You really do love that job, don’t you? You get all . . .” She pondered the right word, resting her chin on her laced hands and surveying me with those frozen-pond eyes. I struggled not to squirm under the discerning keenness of her gaze, the way it made me want to blush. “Agleam when you talk about it. Dewy-eyed.”
“Well, it’s my thing, right?” I spread my hands, shrugging a little. “My life, really. It feels so truly weird to be here, instead of heading in to work every day. Almost as strange as it feels to be quasi-living with my parents again. Tell you what, I was not prepared for the wealth of awkward silences.”
Talia took a sip of her espresso, which she drank so black and bitter even I’d have considered it a punishment. Apparently, when it came to coffee, the same girl who liked her cocktails mega fruity and with extra cherries took sweetness as some kind of personal affront.
“I can’t even begin to imagine,” she said, shaking her head in puzzled wonder. “How strange it must be, not being comfortable around your own. What Elena and my siblings are to me, even all the aunts and uncles and cousins . . . they’re not just family, they’re my home. They’re me.”
“Yes, well,” I said a little tightly. “We can’t all be Avramovs, blissfully living in each other’s pockets. And I might not have family in Chicago, but I do have a wonderful network, plenty of friends who always show up for me. It’s not like, Big City, Little Orphan Witch, the famed tearjerker musical.”
“But still, doesn’t it get lonely sometimes?” she pressed. “I mean, friends are good, sure. But blood is blood. There’s no substitute.”
Despite myself, I thought of having tea with my mother in the mornings since I’d been back, the quiet oasis of those moments, and how much I’d missed my father’s flashes of droll humor, the gentle fun he poked at the tourists’ expense.
“I make it work,” I said, trying to force my shoulders to unhunch, telling myself I had no reason to feel defensive about this. “And I like my space. I’m not sure I could ever do things the way you all do, living on top of each other in The Bitters.”
“Oh, we’re hardly on top of each other. It is just the five of us, plus whichever handful of relatives happen to be staying for a stint. And that crumbling old pile is so huge that we could each commandeer a wing for ourselves, play at being broke British peerage, never even see each other if we didn’t want to. Trust me, there’s plenty of space . . . and plenty of privacy.”
She smirked a little at that, the devilish glint in her eyes drawing sudden heat to my belly as the memory of our kiss in the woods flared hot, an invisible flame hovering in the air between us.
“But at the end of the day, we just like being in arm’s reach of each other,” she finished with a shrug. “It means dinners together, impromptu dress-up cocktail parties, all manner of fun shit at random hours. Always someone around to grab if you need a partner for a tricky spell.”
“To each their own, then,” I said, taking a swallow of my drink and setting my mug down to signal the subject closed. “So what’s the deal with all the new stores on Yarrow? I know the Emporium and the orchards are struggling to keep up with Camelot, but they don’t seem to be hurting for business at all.”
“Many of them are affiliated with the Blackmoores, in one way or another,” she replied, mouth twisting into a bitter moue. “Tenants, or merchants carrying their products. The ones that aren’t . . . well, I don’t think the same rules apply to normie vendors. Thistle Grove magic doesn’t seem to care about them as much, so I’d assume they sink or swim on their own merits.”
“So it’s just the other families getting screwed over,” I said grimly. “What a bullshit take. By both the Blackmoores and the magic, to be frank.”
“Except for you,” Talia said pensively, toying with the ends of her hair. “Tomes hasn’t suffered any, has it? Or is it that your parents play their cards that close, and I just haven’t heard about it?”
“You know, they haven’t mentioned anything like that at all,” I said, frowning a little; the discrepancy hadn’t really occurred to me. I’d just figured the Blackmoores hadn’t yet bothered to try elbowing in on our humbler domain. “If anything, my dad has seemed a little overwhelmed with the tourist influx. I don’t think he’d even mind if things were a little quieter, and I doubt he’d feel that way if they weren’t doing reasonably well.”