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When everything was positioned exactly where he wanted it, he removed the box’s carved lid. The wood came off with a delicate scrape, revealing the object inside, which looked exactly like a human heart. A live human heart. It contracted as Bex watched, the dark-red muscles pumping in the deep, regular motion of a heartbeat. It didn’t look bloody or wet. It was just a heart beating in Adrian’s hands as he removed it from the box and began to bury it in the ground.
“You brought your house with you to Seattle?” “I wasn’t going to leave it behind,” he said as he hurried up the steps of his new front porch. “Do you know how long it took me to build this place?” “You built this?” Bex asked, more amazed than surprised now. “We build everything we use,” Boston told her smugly as he trotted past. “It is called witchcraft, after all.”
Craft in witchcraft was italicized.
“If you’re looking for Bex, she’s upstairs,” she said without looking up from her book. “Not that it matters, since we’ll all become the same dust at the end of time, but that’s her current spatial location.”
Demon of existential dread :)
This one wasn’t even a choice specimen. Despite being in his true shape rather than a human guise, he was barely taller than Iggs. His skin was literally bronzed, as shiny as polished metal and just as hard, and his flat, bone-colored horns covered his entire skull like a helmet. He had two arms, not four, so he must have been very young, but his gleaming neck was ringed only with the same tattooed slave band that Iggs had painted on himself and Bex. There was no sin iron control collar or pain cuffs, which meant this baby war demon was already a trusted bootlicker.
“But you can still taste it, right?” Adrian asked. “Iggs likes candy.” “Well, yeah, food is delicious,” Bex admitted. “But it doesn’t do anything for us, so there’s no point.” “Being delicious is the point,” he argued, a smile creeping over his face as he held the menu in front of her. “Go ahead. Pick anything you want. My treat.”
“Blackwood witchcraft is a braid of three parts,” he told her quietly. “The bones, the flesh, and the soul. Every witch uses all three, but we dedicate ourselves to just one. Those who bury their bones are witches of the past. Those who bury their souls are witches of the future. I buried my heart. That makes me a witch of the present, and in the present moment, there is no greater gift than joy.”
“Holy shit.” Everyone froze. Adrian, the demons, even Boston went stone-still as the woman coming out of the café behind them—the human woman with scales clearly visible in her wide eyes—dropped her freshly made cup of boba tea. “It’s a giant talking cat!”
Scales in the eyes and getting "kicked" is one of the most elegant ways I've seen to deal with the "hidden magical world" trope common to urban fantasy
“I’m going back to my room to work strangers into a froth on dating apps,” Lys announced. “It’s the lust equivalent of instant ramen, but if Iggs can maintain those huge shoulders on nothing but gamer rage, I suppose I can take one for the team.” “Thank you for your sacrifice,” Bex said solemnly.
but knowing and experiencing were two wildly different things, and as Bex watched Adrian fit the last of the standing stones into the new circle that already felt ancient, all she could think was that this was why Gilgamesh had stomped out all the other witches. This was real magic, deep power of the sort that couldn’t be copied by chugging quintessence and saying a few lines of poetry, and the Eternal King was right to fear it.
“Adrian Blackwood, I’ve been your cat since you were seven and your familiar since you were thirteen. When you say ‘I’m worried,’ I know what you actually mean is ‘I’m about to do something colossally stupid,’ so don’t even try.”
The clarion call of Jimminy Crickets everywhere. :)
Moths’ flights were so chaotic, and unlike butterflies, they were fast. No matter how closely she watched, the girl could never guess which direction their frantically fluttering wings would take them, which was a real treat for her. Most things were so predictable she have could set a clock by them. The grave by her feet, for example, would be bursting open in three… two… one…
“Just because I don’t technically need to eat doesn’t mean pasta isn’t life,” Iggs argued. “And you eat food now. Someone has to make that, and Adrian knows how. He also comes with a hidden base, medical skills, and a cat! Seriously, we are making out like bandits here.”
