Page 58 of Solar Shadows

“I should get to work on the outfit,” I said to myself out loud.

Ollie positioned himself before me. “How are you feeling?”

Unexpected. I thought he’d walk off in silence. “Eh?”

“You didn’t seem too good just then.”

“Oh. I’m fine. You?”

A curt nod. “Good.” He left the spell room without another word.

Mental note: repair my classy crown before I lost all my dignity.

Ha! Did you ever really have one?

Chapter 16

OLLIE

Mum laid out a black suit with a white shirt, black tie, and a black flat cap on her bed.

“This will be prefect,” she said, adding shiny shoes and sunglasses. “Try it on. It’s for the bodyguard lie.”

I did, the whole thing fitting perfectly, then gave her a twirl.

She clapped her hands together, her eyes glistening. “You look so smart.”

I cocked a brow at her, wishing for an evening of football down at the city’s big AstroTurf center. Man, I missed the beautiful game so much, the itch to play had been driving me crazy.

“Where did this come from?” I asked.

Sadness swam across her features. “It was your father’s. You’re the same build as him now.” She closed her eyes.

Sorrow shook my soul, an old enemy back again.

“He bought it because we thought he mightchange jobs,” she said. “Almost started work as a doorman at the Glitter Fox nightclub.”

“You never told me that before.”

“He changed his mind in three days.” She laughed. “Decided he might as well go the full hog of being a High Coven Agent.”

I looked in the floor-length mirror, thinking about the last day I saw my dad. Seven years ago, he left the mansion in a hurry because he’d slept in. Late for work for the first time in his life. He never told me goodbye, hurrying out the door one last time.

I mean, it wasn’t supposed to be the last time I saw him. I’d been expecting him home to make his legendary hot dogs and chips, always served with a chocolate milkshake he made from scratch. And he was supposed to retire this year at the age of sixty-eight.

“He’d be so happy seeing you in this suit,” Mum told me, dabbing at her eyes with a hanky.

My parents had me late, with Mum being forty-two, and Dad forty-four—a year after Juliet Aurora gave birth to her triplets and took her own life.

Part of me wanted to take this suit off and never see it again, but the rest of me liked the idea of Dad looking down on me with pride.

Was he proud of me?

I hugged my mum. She buried her face in my chest. “I miss him so much.”

I soothed her, holding against the force of ourshared grief. Allowing her this moment to be with her sadness.

Ben hated my relationship with Mum. He said she depended on me too much, used me as an emotional punching bag. She didn’t, not one bit. In fact, Mum bottled her emotions a lot, so when they broke out in front of me, I made sure to be there for her.