Page 17 of Go Luck Yourself
Then ablack catappears on the desk.
Hex groans. “Oh. I hate when it’s a creature.”
“Oh mygod! She’s so cute!” Coal lunges for it.
The cat, justifiably, hisses, back arching, and bolts off the desk.
Wren leaps aside with an alarmed squawk as it bounds between her legs, but the door is shut, so it rockets back across the room and lodges itself under a bookcase.
I gape at Hex. “What.The fuck?”
“How the traditions of Holidays evolve throughout the world affects our magic. And cursing, in relation to Halloween, has come to do…” He waves at the cat. Beady eyes glint from under the shelf. “Similar, I suspect, tothis.” And he motions at the clover.
Not a clover.
A shamrock.
“So. Wait.” I wave my hands, mind reeling. “You’re saying someone fromSt. Patrick’s Dayis stealing our joy?”
Coal sits on the edge of his desk. His levity dips. “Quite possibly.”
“Have we interacted with St. Patrick’s Day? Likeever?”
“No,” Coal says. “And I’d know. I’ve been eating, sleeping, and breathing Christmas’s records for the past two months. We don’t have anything to do with them.”
“Do you think they know they left a shamrock?” I ask. “Or did they intentionally leave it, to taunt us?”
Hex nudges it with his finger. “I am not overly familiar with the attitudes prevalent in St. Patrick’s Day, whether they would do such a thing with calculation—”
Someone knocks on the door.
Coal directs a cringe of apology at me before he spins to Wren. “My god, woman, you arefast.”
Wren’s still expertly juggling being in a heated phone conversationwhile typing on her tablet, but she breaks long enough to give my brother an absent smile.
“Fast?” I eye the door, then Coal. “What—”
“As we were finishing up with the Merry Measure, I asked Wren to invite… well. St. Patrick’s Day is a spring Holiday—Easteris a spring Holiday—it’s business. I thought it best not to tell you since you’re still acting soweirdaround her.”
“Around—? Oh my god. I hate you.”
So not only did Coal covertly get Wren to bring Iris here ASAP, he figured out it was St. Patrick’s Day the moment he saw this shamrock. In retrospect,duh;but to be fair, I didn’t know magic by-products were a thing, and I’m unsettled from Dad’s bombshells, and fuck, Coal’s good at this.
Wren opens the door.
All that building strain pulling on my lungs drops into my stomach.
I take a breath, school my expression, and look back at Iris.
It really is no wonder I thought I was in love with her. She’s stunning, inside and out, one of those rare people who glows with natural kindness. The first time I laid eyes on her, back when we were kids, she hit me with an awe that still lingers in the base of my chest. All the people I’ve been with have given me that same feeling, now that I think about it. Not that there’s a wide assortment of people to take a sample from; I committed to myI’m in love with Iris Lentoraidentity to the point of only having two brief romantic encounters outside of her, and she wasn’t even a fullromantic encounter.
But all three people I could feasibly consider my exes gave me the same feeling of gentleness and comfort. Coal and Iris have never been shy about their bisexualities, but I’ve always been more fluid with any labels. It’s a feeling I’m after rather than a type of person, the one Iris first ignited in me.This is right. This is safe.
Unprompted, the study room guy pops into my head. Nothing I felt towards him wasgentle.So whatever that was had to have been base-ass lust.
… poor choice of words.
It was straight-up lust.
