“What what?” he asked back, his eyes stubbornly on the kid slapping their order together behind the counter.

“I can feel your question for me. Just ask it.”

He resisted the urge to roll his eyes, but just barely. He really hated all this psychic bullshit. “You got chili cheese fries.”

“So?”

“So, I assumed you were, like, a vegan or something.” He’d eaten with her before at Sebastian’s house but had been too distracted by her presence to pay attention to what she ate.

She lifted an eyebrow. “Why?”

He couldn’t help but laugh as he finally turned to look at her. He took her in, from her complicated dark braid over one shoulder to her makeup-less face, the silver and gem rings on her fingers and bangles on her wrists. He looked her over, from her loose embroidered top to her equally loose embroidered pants and all the way down to what looked like a pair of velvet slippers. She carried with her the scent of sage and something else earthy. As painfully gorgeous as she was, her look screamed earth-child.

“Because you’re all...” He rolled a hand in the air, searching for the right word. “Organic-looking.”

To his immense surprise, she actually burst out laughing. He was used to making people laugh. It was one of his favorite things on this Earth. But he’d yet to make her laugh like that. He’d thought she was most likely one of those people who never laughed—they merely smirked instead. Or chuckled behind closed lips. But here he was, blinking down at a row of white teeth, her lips, so full in repose, almost disappearing in the stretch of her smile. He got that solar eclipse feeling again and when he tore his eyes away from her, a faded echo of her smile followed his vision for a moment, like he’d burned his retinas on her laughter.

“I also happened to grow up in Louisiana,” she reminded him. “They run vegans out of town down there.”

So, she was a meat eater. He couldn’t say why that pleased him. He couldn’t say much of anything, really, befuddled as he was by her smile, her laughter. Why did he let this woman throw him off his game so much? It was annoying. She wasn’t actually magical, regardless of what she told people. There was no reason at all for him to treat her any differently than he would any attractive woman he happened to be attracted to.

His heart banged hollowly in his chest like a rock clanging against the side of a bucket. Holy crap. He was gonna do it. He was gonna finally do something about the hairs that, even now, were rising on the back of his neck. He’d been an athlete his entire life, and Tyler instantly recognized this feeling. This at-bat, at-the-free-throw-line, let-the-muscles-do-their-thing sort of feeling.

“Let’s go out,” he suddenly blurted to Serafine, his voice a little too loud, his eyes on the ground instead of her face.