I scowl at the thought. “I told him to stay away from you.”
Her eyes are wide. Before she can say anything else, the waitress arrives with plates of food. Mine is a simple burger and fries, but she piles a plate of eggs, bacon, and toast in front of Reggie, along with another plate of biscuits and hash browns, and one more of pancakes. The woman smiles at us. “Figured she could use everything we had.”
“Excellent. Thank you.” I make a mental note to give her an enormous tip.
Reggie is momentarily distracted by the food in front of her. She picks up a piece of bacon and shoves it into her mouth, licking her fingers, and then grabs one of the pancakes off the stack and does the same. I watch her eat with a mixture of amusement and disdain. I’m not sure if manners have gotten worse in modern times or if this is particularly a Reggie trait.
She notices me staring and gives me a sheepish look, a smile curving around stuffed cheeks. “Didn’t realize how hungry I was until now.” She takes another bite of the pancake she’s holding in her hand and nods at me. “Tell me more about Maurice?”
I say nothing as the waitress refills our coffees and then saunters away. Once she’s gone, I shrug. “He was my aunt’s familiar at the turn of the century. A bit of an idiot, I suppose, but very devoted.” I put a little salt on my fries and eat one, but I’m not really hungry. I mostly ordered so Reggie wouldn’t feel awkward eating all the food I plan on shoving into her. “Maurice also fancied himself a bit of a ladies’ man and tended to bed-hop, even when it wasn’t appropriate. He slept with the wrong witch, and when she found out he was fooling around on her, she cursed him.”
Reggie swallows hard, then washes her food down with a swig of coffee. “So why doesn’t he change back?”
“No one can find his tablet.”
“Tablet?” Her eyes are wide. “What tablet? Like a computer tablet?”
She’s chewing with her mouth open. Normally I’d find this horrific, but on Reggie, it manages to somehow be slightly charming. Only slightly, though. I nod in her direction. “You have butter on your chin.” When she mops it up with a chuckle, I look at her eyes. They don’t seem nearly as dark, which means her pupils are probably retracting. Her hands are shaking slightly less, too. Good. “Curse tablet,” I explain. “They’re the medium for most of our spells.”
“What’s a—” she begins, shoving more food into her mouth even as she talks.
I interrupt, because I already knew this question was coming. “Have you seen the lead bricks at my aunt’s house?” I gesture with my hands. “About the size of a cell phone, maybe? Those are the basis of a curse tablet. You make a thin sheet, and you inscribe it with the curse you want to befall someone. The spell can be broken if the tablet is found and destroyed, so most witches hide theirs away in secret locations. A long time ago, many people used to just toss them down wells, but we’ve had to become more creative since you want to keep the tablets hidden.”
“Lead in your drinking water?” She gives me an incredulous look. “What dummy’s doing that?”
“Most of ancient Rome,” I admit. “No one realized it was a problem until much, much later.”
She makes a noise of agreement and then reaches out to steal one of my fries. I arch an eyebrow at her, but she just grins at me and goes right on eating, and I don’t have the heart to move my plate away. Something about feeding her is stoking that protective feeling inside me. I like it when Reggie smiles at me. I like sharing this moment with her.
Willem would laugh his ass off if he heard how soft my thoughts were in this moment. He’d mock me for all eternity for having a stupid infatuation with my aunt’s “mongrel” familiar.
“What does ancient Rome have to do with anything?” Reggie asks, stealing another fry. “How did you guys get into that shit?”
I blink, because the question comes out of nowhere. She really has no idea who we are? Of course not, I realize a moment later. She didn’t believe magic was real. Why would anyone stop to explain to her that Dru is two thousand years old or that I’m five hundred? She wouldn’t have believed a word of it. I drum my fingers on the countertop, trying to figure out the best way to point this out to her. She’s already been hit with a lot tonight. “How old do you think I am?”
Reggie straightens, a confused look on her face. She takes a fork and pokes at her eggs. “What does that have to do with magic?”
“Everything. Nothing. Just guess.”
She shrugs, and for some reason, color flushes her cheeks. “Thirty? Thirty-five?” She stabs at her scrambled eggs and points the fork at me. “I know you’re a Cancer sign because Lisa told me, but she didn’t say how old.”
“I’m five hundred and ten.”
Reggie chokes on the mouthful of eggs. She coughs, then spits the food into her napkin, giving me an incredulous look. “You’re what?”
I lower my voice. “Five hundred and ten. I was born in the year 1512, in London. Henry the Eighth was in power, the Spanish were exploring the New World, and the Medicis were struggling to keep control of the Mediterranean.”
She stares at me. Just stares.
“My aunt is even older,” I admit. “Her full name is Drusilla Grattidia Magnus the Elder of House Magnus, and she’s two thousand years old, though she won’t tell me the exact dates. Just that she was born sometime in Augustus’s reign, which puts her somewhere between two thousand and eight years old and two thousand forty-nine.”
Reggie’s nostrils flare, her only physical response. The rest of her is completely still. She watches me for a moment longer and then shakes her head. “You’re joking.”
“I’m not. The bloodline is very long lived. Once you access the part of your system that houses magic, everything else slows down. You stop aging at the same speed as everyone else. It’s why most witches and warlocks won’t let their children practice magic until the age of twenty-one. You don’t want someone to get locked in at fourteen and have it take seven hundred years for them to come of age.”
She pokes at her eggs, her expression unreadable.
“You think I’m lying,” I say, and I’m disappointed in her. After all she’s been through tonight, I thought she’d be more open minded than this.
Reggie glances up, an apologetic look on her face. “I don’t, actually. I just don’t know what to make of all this.” Her expression grows shy. “You both must think I’m a baby compared to you. Worse than a baby. A zygote.” She wrinkles her nose. “No wonder you both laughed at me that first day when I told you how old I was.”
“We weren’t laughing at you. We were laughing at the situation.” I shake my head. “I wouldn’t laugh at you.”
She nudges me under the table with her foot, and it makes my cock respond again. Her smile blossoms once more. “Thank you, Ben.”
I nod, because I don’t know what else to say. I’m not good with touchy-feely shit. For centuries, I’ve had a reputation as a ruthless, unlikable warlock, and it’s served me well. My enemies live in fear of me, which means they won’t cast against me. And if it means I don’t have friends, well then, I don’t have friends. I don’t care. Success is all that matters to me, and everyone knows I’m at the top of my game.
But Reggie’s expression is soft as she looks at me, and I find myself thinking about other things. Things that aren’t about magic. Things like waking up with Reggie in bed beside me, seeing that bright, sunny smile first thing in the morning. Sharing a day with her. Sharing an evening with her. Companionable, cozy meals like this throughout eternity . . . And I feel achingly empty in my solitude.