“Cool,” he repeated, then turned his attention to the front of the room where Principal Grim was clinking her ring against her water glass.

Via missed the first ten minutes of the meeting. She couldn’t explain it. Her mind was just elsewhere.

HER MIND WAS still elsewhere, when, later that night, she pulled a lasagna out of her oven and set it, steaming, on the table just under Evan’s nose.

“Damn,” he murmured. “That smells great, babe.”

He finished slicing the bread he’d brought over from his house and slid it into a bread basket. Next, he gave the salad he’d made one more fluff with the tongs and then he gestured outward with his hands like a magician.

“Dinner is served.”

Via laughed and brought over silverware and plates and slid into the seat across from him. One of the things that she’d first loved about Evan was how willing he always was to help cook. She’d given him a breadmaker for Christmas last year and had been pleased to see that he actually used it.

She served herself some salad while he sliced up the lasagna, trying to wipe the frown from her face before he looked up and saw it.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, already sounding a little exasperated. But that might have just been her imagination.

“Nothing!” she said brightly. She felt it would be petty, after he’d made the bread and assembled the salad, to remind him that she really didn’t care for raw onion in her salad. She’d told him before that she felt the strong flavor ruined the entire salad, but either he kept forgetting or he simply didn’t care. She held in a sigh. She’d just eat around it.

He served her some lasagna, took a mondo bite of his own and dropped his head back. “Holy God, V. That is pretty much the best thing I’ve ever tasted.”

Her annoyance with him waned just a little. “I’m glad.”

“So, how was your day at work?”

Pleased that he’d asked, Via opened her mouth to answer but closed it again immediately when it wasn’t her students’ faces who flashed through her mind’s eye, but Sebastian’s. More specifically, it was the concerned look on his face he’d had when he’d asked about Serafine’s psychic abilities. She frowned down at her plate.

“That bad?” Evan asked in surprise, attempting to interpret her expression.

“What? No.” She looked up at him, chewing too much food in his mouth, his movie star hair falling across his forehead, and a strangely familiar feeling opened up in her chest. It was like a cold draft against a window that wasn’t sitting correctly in its jamb. The feeling disconcerted her. She hadn’t had it in years, but it had been happening a lot lately. Somewhere around the beginning of the school year, the feeling had been making itself at home again.

Why in God’s name would she be feeling this chilly, drafty feeling right now? She used to have it when she was younger and completely alone and spinning from one untethered situation to the next. There was no reason for her to be having it now. She loved Evan. He’d helped her make dinner, he was asking about her day and looking so handsome it hurt, with his dark eyes and angular face.