This Coven Won't Break (These Witches Don't Burn, #2)

by Isabel Sterling

This is one of the few downsides to dating a Blood Witch, besides the strange looks my fellow Elementals give me: it’s impossible to hide my feelings when she can sense the literal rhythm of my heart.

We spend the rest of the afternoon watching movies while we paint each other’s nails. I decorate Morgan’s with little flowers and tell her about my meeting with Natalie Flores.

“I can’t hear your heartbeat, by the way. I feel it like a second pulse next to mine. Mostly in my wrists, and only when you’re close.” She turns and presses a kiss to my neck, giggling when she returns to using my shoulder like a pillow. “Your heart always skips when I do that.” “Hey, that’s cheating.” “What? You have more experience kissing girls than me. I’ll take any advantage I can get.”

“Ladies, gentlemen, and nonbinary patrons.”

I settle for a shrug, trying to crumple my emotions like an unwanted Post-it Note.

PEOPLE ARE MUCH MORE agreeable when there are unconscious bodies on their floor.

My covenmate-turned-girlfriend-turned-terrible-ex-turned-friend goes silent on the other line.

You can’t fight a hurricane with half an umbrella.

I’m trying to spare you their weird parent humor. Especially Dad’s. That’s the one downside to having a bisexual dad. You get Dad Jokes and bi puns.”

“Should we go to the aggressively hetero school dance when the world is falling down around us?”

“I’d tell you to be careful, but I don’t think you know how to do that.”