Chapter Fourteen

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

One of the best things about being friends again was definitely all the stuff Cassie got to tell Seth. About Nancy and the shelf she couldn't see, and the creatures that were suddenly visible, and the tiny Hogarth with its saddle. Plus there was all that weirdness with Hannigan, and the feeling she'd had that he somehow knew. "I think it might just be that sweater and the way it keeps revealing your scandalously nude shoulder," Seth said.

And then she got to laugh about it, instead of feeling anxious.

Heck, she didn't even feel anxious about Seth noticing it. Because even when she caught him looking a second time, she knew it didn't mean anything. Like at the quarry, and in the closet, and when they had seen the fairies doing all of those sweaty things.

It was just how their friendship was. Sometimes they got a little mixed up.

But they always went right back to being normal again. Like right now—they just went right back to cleaning. She wiped down counters with a lemony, super-powerful cleaning potion she'd created; he scrubbed soot off the walls. Then they both tackled the pots, and the pans, and the definitely sentient microwave.

Its readout now said, What am I?

Plus it got mad when Seth tried to clean it.

Put your hand in me again and I will boil it , the digital letters spelled out. And it didn't seem to make a bit of difference when they unplugged it. They had to hold it open with a broom, and squirt cleaning potion inside using a spray bottle. Twice it tried to snap the wooden handle in two. Once, it almost succeeded.

Before it finally gave in. It let them finish.

And then it had the nerve to say it felt much better.

All of which was much more fun to deal with together.

Everything was more fun to deal with together. And so much so that she had to tell him about the potion she wanted to try, once the kitchen was pretty much done. She just saw him holding up an almost-clean pan, wearing an apron she didn't remember him grabbing, face all grubby and a grin as big as the world, and there it was. The almost inescapable urge to go ahead.

"Okay, so don't freak out when I explain this," she started.

But of course he immediately did just that.

He stopped dead in the middle of trying to scrub the last stains from a pan that now had an extra handle that hadn't been there before. And his eyebrows were already at alarmed. "If you say your television is also alive I'm definitely going to. Just FYI," he said, and really she couldn't blame him. It had started making disturbing noises about half an hour ago.

But she stuck to the matter at hand.

"Great, because that isn't it. And so absolutely nothing else can be an issue."

"Wait, no, I didn't say that. I didn't agree to that. That's not how it works."

"Okay, but I'm gonna pretend it does, and expect your calm reaction to me saying that I may have an idea for a potion that could make me fly. And that I need your help with it, because I'm afraid I will go up and then not be able to come back down," she said. Quickly, so he didn't have a chance to look at her with incredulity.

Like he absolutely did anyway.

"You sound like a billionaire who's about to be exploded in a spaceship he poorly designed," he said, in this exasperated way she really wanted to argue with. But before she could, he seemed to consider. And then he laughed and shook his head. "Except you have no money, I definitely want to be involved, and I have total faith in your ability to pull off something so deranged-sounding."

Much to her absolute delight and surprise.

She almost bounced on her toes, before reining it in.

Better to seem reasonable about this, and not like a toddler on a sugar high.

"Wow," she said. "That is a lot more support for this scheme than I expected."

"Well, you know. That's what friends do. They help their friends."

"Even though helping your friend in this case might kill us both?"

"We're not gonna be killed. Mainly because we can't be, but still."

He shrugged one shoulder and turned back to the pots and the sink.

And she almost returned to her job too—arranging her growing collection of potion jars in the pantry. Then she realized what he'd said, and stepped back out again. "Did you just say we can't be? About being killed?"

"Well, you know. I mean technically we can. Someone could chop off my head, or make a spell or a potion that turns me inside out, or maybe cut out my heart with a silver knife. So really it's more like… we are super hard to kill," he said, and so matter-of-factly, too. Even though there were several problems with his statement.

"Yeah, but that's just werewolves. You could kill me with any knife."

"Only if you didn't have a potion protecting you, for some reason."

"So you're saying there's a potion I could create that makes me unkillable?

"Cassie, the potion you've just used to clean the kitchen could probably do it," he said, then gestured at the spray bottle full of the stuff on the kitchen counter. The one she'd labeled Make Nice, because that was what it had felt like to her when she'd come up with it. She'd even heard it in her head, like a commercial jingle for a solution that gets your oven sparkling. Use it twice to make things nice.

So what he was going on about she didn't know.

"Be serious," she snorted. "I just made a kind of soap."

"You cannot possibly really think that."

"Well, why wouldn't I? Look at my gleaming counters."

She spread her hands to illustrate. But he just rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, they are most likely gleaming because this place was covered in germs and it destroyed them to protect you. Or maybe one of the ingredients was laundry detergent, I don't know. Either way, a protection spell is definitely what this is," he said.

And this time, her brain responded with way less of a "no." It started ringing that witch bell like whoa. But still, she couldn't quite let him have it. "Okay, I am going to need to know where that ‘definitely' is coming from," she said with as much skepticism as she could still muster. And again, all she got was that maddening casualness.

"Before I slapped some of this extra-strength stuff on, I felt myself start to turn, a little bit. I got the jitters, I was sweating. And then suddenly the water coming out of the faucet was scalding hot. Like it wanted to hurt me to stop me. Check it out," he said, as he held his hand up. But it didn't look that burned to her. And even if it had, what did that prove?

"That might not mean anything. Maybe the water heater is set too high."

"Well, there's only one way to find out, isn't there? Let's see if the cleaning potion will try to subdue or neutralize any other threats. Grab that spray, put it on yourself, and I'll try to jab you with this broom."

He picked up said broom. And even though she wasn't quite sure what he was planning to do, she trusted him enough to grab the bottle and squirt some of the potion into her hands. Then when he pointed, she slicked it over that bare shoulder.

Too messily, she knew.

His expression was a peach when she finally finished rubbing. Just completely bemused, in a way she had to snap him out of. She had to click her fingers in front of his face, and tell him, "Hey, at least it's done," just to get him to refocus on what they were doing. But to his credit, he didn't make any snarky remarks about her clumsiness.

He just attempted to poke her in the shoulder with the handle end of the broom. Gently, she thought. Though gently didn't seem to matter. The instant the handle got within a foot of her, the whole thing jerked away. As if someone other than him had grabbed it. Then that someone seemed to yank it back, away from her.

And somehow smashed it directly into his face .

Like right into it, hard enough to make a cracking sound. It made his whole head snap back. He actually stumbled a little—it was that brutal and violent. And when he finally managed to right himself and look at her, oh dear god in heaven . His mouth looked like a car wreck. All she could see was blood.

Then he spat into his hand to clear it and—fuck.

There was a tooth. She had knocked his tooth out with a potion she thought erased stains.

"Okay, you could have told me it was going to bludgeon you," she gasped out as she tried to grab paper towels, and excavate some ice, and find a spell called Teeth Restorer, all at the same time.

But he just laughed. He laughed. His mouth was a bloody mess, and he was laughing. "I didn't need to," he said, as he dropped the tooth in the trash. "It hasn't hurt me."

"Seth, you just had an incisor in your hand."

"Yeah, and it'll grow back in about five minutes. Because like I just told you—even my heart can do that, after it's been stabbed. Heck, I'm not even sure if decapitation is a real killer. I think it's entirely possible that my head will just sprout another body. While my body sprouts another head."

She tried not to look aghast. But failed horribly, obviously. Her face felt like a rigid rictus of disgust. "And you're telling me that horror story now, while I'm still trying to process the last horror story you told me? Do I have to worry that there might end up being two of me if someone attempts a beheading?" she asked. Yet somehow all she got in return was an eye roll.

"Nobody is going to attempt a beheading."

"That's not what I am concerned about, Seth."

"Then what is?"

He looked genuinely curious, she thought.

And right as it was dawning at her that none of her concerns really mattered.

"I have no idea," she said. "Now that I'm calming down, being sort of invincible seems like something I am supposed to be really pleased about. And also should have understood. Because seriously, I don't know why I didn't grasp this. Or what made me miss it when I was updating this potion."

You still can't really believe your own power , her witch brain informed her. And that sounded right. Or at least more right than what he said a second later. "Maybe it's like me not wanting to think about hell."

"Hell is a lot more horrible than being sort of indestructible."

"Possibly so, but it takes a similar amount of shifting things around in your head." He set down the pan he'd picked up. Folded his arms. "Suddenly you don't have to worry quite as much about getting your brains bashed in. Or having to have an operation for your bashed-in brains. Or needing to somehow pay for the bashed-in-brains operation. You just smother yourself in that potion, and if someone aims the brain-bashing hammer at you, they knock out all their own teeth."

"It does sound pretty goddamn mind-melting when you say it that way."

"Gets even more so when you process that you, like me, won't ever age."

"Fuck you. There's no potion that'll stop that," she said, half laughing. Even though she knew she was already mostly believing him. In fact, more than already mostly believing. The confirmation was there, in the back of her mind, tingling away. She felt it before he replied.

"You already know there is."

"Okay, fine. But I'm not going to drink it."

"Oh, I think you will, eventually."

"How do you figure that?"

"Because you'll realize how many movies you won't get to see once you're gone." He gave her a smug look, on the end of his sentence. He had a right to, though. He was so bang on that she couldn't stop herself from groaning in despair. And of course he understood what that groan meant. "Yeah, I figured that out because I, too, was weirded out at the thought of never aging. Until I realized The Conjuring 37 could be but a month away, when I'm on my ninety-year-old death bed."

"You motherfucker, you understand just how to get me."

"Of course I do. I know you. And I'm gonna use that for this, especially."

"Why this especially? What the hell does it matter if I live forever?"

"Well, it matters because I want you to be around. I mean, I don't want to just drift for all eternity without you," he said. Then he snorted, like that was just obvious. Or not a big deal at all. In fact, it was so little of one that he didn't even wait for her reaction.

He turned his back. Grabbed a saucepan to check on his newly regrown incisor.

And finally he clapped his hands together. "Now, are we going flying, or what?" he asked. As if he wasn't even thinking about their shared immortality anymore. He was on to the next thing. While she stood there, still stranded in the land of oh my god, he wants to be with me always .

Worse than that, really, because all she wanted to do was say the same thing to him.

Five minutes too late, and too heartfelt to stand.

So instead, she nodded. "Sure," she said.

And that was the end of that.