Page 108 of Blood and Bells

Not aftermath, which is its officious cousin—the one that arrives with recriminations and the unavoidable sum of what’s happened and what went wrong. No. After. The better relation. The one where you remember how to sit.

Holly appears beside me with the stealth of a cat and the temperature of a furnace. She steals my spoon, tastes the stew, considers it with alarming seriousness, and drops in three more grains of salt with the gravitas of a microsurgeon.

“Perfect,” she says.

“You are the only human I know who salts by millimeters.”

“Salt is an art form. Besides, you like it when I meddle.”

I do. It is not a secret.

We migrate to the small table by the window because that is where Holly likes to eat, and I have learned that preferences, once established, are to be treated as law. She tucks one leg under herself, steals my glass of Cabernet Sauvignon, and takes a sip without asking.

She nudges my foot under the table. Keeps it there.

I blow on a bite of stew. “Ronan complimented Marcy’s confectionery skills today.”

Holly pauses mid-chew. “I’m sorry—he what?”

“The way she beats eggs,” I say. “Apparently, it’s impressive. Figures that Ronan would be impressed by what is, essentially, a culinary assault.”

She lowers her spoon slowly. “That’s either courtship or a hostile takeover.”

“I am monitoring the situation,” I assure her. “There may need to be guidelines.”

“For chocolate or axes?”

“Both.”

She laughs and reaches across to pinch a piece of bread off my plate like it has always belonged to her.

We circle like that for a while—small things, local things, things that would once have struck me as dangerously unimportant. The stew disappears. Her knee stays pressed to mine as our legs have their own gravity.

When we’re done, I collect the plates out of habit.

“Don’t you dare vanish into vampire efficiency,” she says, pointing her spoon at me like a warning.

“I am incapable of doing anything inefficiently.”

“You’re humming.”

I pause. “I am not⁠—”

“You are,” she says, delighted. “Keep it. It’s festive.”

This is how I find myself at the sink, washing dishes at a pace that would embarrass my ancestors, while she dries them with exaggerated care and commentary.

“This one survived the Great Cocoa Spill,” she says, holding up a mug.

“A veteran,” I agree.

“Bit chipped.”

She passes it back. Our fingers brush. Neither of us makes a point of it.

“Nick,” she says, and it lands in me the way it did the first time she said my name without flinching.

“Yes.”