Page 1 of Enduring Magic

1

“We have a problem, C.C.”

Cooper Carlyle hung his head and heaved a put-upon sigh. The last time this happened, he ended up in a relationship with a beautiful, zany witch. She’d turned out to be the love of his life, but the drama associated with her family was never ending.

After a moment, he turned off the burner, put down his spatula, and faced his brother. “What is it, Keaton?”

“The squirrel mafia.”

“What’s Saul done this time?”

Keaton moved in on Coop’s bacon and snagged a slice. “He’s making eyes at Chloe’s new rabbit.”

“Fucking Saul!”

“Ucking Saul!” a sweet little voice repeated.

“C.C., try to remember my son is a parrot,” Keaton warned.

“I’m a parrot!” Jolyon shouted from his high chair, with one fist in the air and the other wrapped around a mashed-up pancake.

Coop gritted his teeth in a semblance of a smile for the kids’ sakes. “Fucking Saul,” he muttered in a low voice so his nephew and his daughter, Olivia, wouldn’t hear.

“I think that’s what he wants to do with the rabbit,” Keaton returned dryly.

Coop rolled his eyes and snorted. “I promised Summer I could handle her beasts while she was off with her family.”

“Yeah, well, how do you think I feel? What am I supposed to tell my daughter when she comes home to mutant baby squirbits.”

“What the hell is a squirbit?”

“An animal that is half squirrel, half rabbit.”

“Squir-bit!” Jolly shouted as he banged his palm on the chair’s tray. “Squir-bit! Squir-bit!”

Olivia, little angel-faced cherub that she was, laughed at her cousin’s antics. Jolly and Ollie were partners in crime and practically inseparable.

Coop couldn’t keep his own laughter contained. “I don’t claim to be a vet like Summer; however, I doubt you need to worry about baby squirbits.” He picked up his coffee and sipped it. “But I promise to ask her when she calls tonight.”

“Good, because if it’s a thing, I need to know. In the meantime, talk to him, man, okay?”

“Sure, but I can’t promise he’ll listen to me. Saul is Summer’s familiar, but he’s got a screw loose. I don’t even pretend to know what goes on in his pea brain.”

Keaton’s eyes widened as he locked onto something just beyond Coop’s shoulder.

A sinking sensation started in his chest and ended somewhere around his butthole. “He’s behind me, isn’t he?”

Saul’s tough-guy accent was pure Goodfellas when he said, “Sleep with one eye open, mudder—”

“Children!” Coop shouted to drown out the f-bomb at the end of the squirrel’s tirade. Never mind that he’d just forgotten himself and swore a minute ago. The feral snarl on Saul’s face told Coop he’d be lucky not to be whacked by the furry thug in his bed tonight. “Now, Saul, Summer wouldn’t like to come home and find me dead.”

“Dead? Who said anything about killing you?” Saul puffed out his little chest. “I’m just going to do to you what I should’ve done the first time you hurt my girl—cut your balls off!”

Coop cupped himself. “No! There will be no cutting off balls in this house.”

The atmosphere around them thickened, and the crackle that followed was an indication of an incoming witch or warlock. But Coop didn’t take his eyes from the rabid squirrel. As a veteran sheriff with a number of years under his utility belt, he knew when a threat was real.

“Stand down, Saul.” Alastair Thorne had a commanding quality that brooked no argument. When he spoke, people—or in this case, animal familiars—listened.

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