“Eh, you get used to it,” I said, which might have been one of the baldest lies I’d ever managed with a straight face. Though to be fair, compared to Talia, I’d been weak all my life. “And there are a lot of upsides, like actually good sushi and killer pierogies. And being valued for something besides your bloodline.”

Talia flicked me a doubtful look, but before she could say anything, Morty deposited three flamboyantly garnished mini cocktails in front of each of us with a flourish.

“May I present Demonic Decadence, Pumpkin Pandemonium, and the Flirty Mermaid, for miladies’ tasting pleasure.”

“Speaking my language, sweet pea,” Talia said, scooting her cocktails closer with both hands, like an animated dragon hoarding treasure. Morty flashed her a grin and a saucy wink, then ducked out back again.

“Where does one even begin, when all options inspire equal fear?” I pondered aloud, gaze shifting skeptically from the Flirty Mermaid’s glitter-speckled surface to the Pumpkin Pandemonium’s neon-orange froth.

“Don’t be precious about your cocktails, Harlow.”

“Not all of us were lucky enough to be born with a taste for liquefied gummy worms, Avramov.”

She held up a commanding finger. “Not born with—acquired, through hard work and sacrifice.”

When I burst out laughing, she gave me that wolf’s grin again, her eyes narrowing above it. “Just suck it up and trust me, okay? Upon my honor, I promise you’ll be pleasantly surprised.”

She scooped up her Demonic Decadence, which came in an admittedly adorable coupe with a devil’s tail wrapped around the stem.

“To fucking Gareth Blackmoore,” she pronounced, lifting the glass toward me, “whose heart is darker than even his ancestral name. May he step into a puddle and ruin his uninspired and overpriced Italian footwear every day for the remainder of his life. Which will hopefully be as brutish and brief as the poets promise.”

“To a toast that literally can’t be improved upon,” I agreed, clinking my plastic pumpkin to her coupe, then taking a devil-may-care swallow of my drink. It was richly creamy but not at all cloying, with notes of bourbon and maple bitters and only a hint of sweet pumpkin pie.

It was also so strong that I could feel a smolder catch in my belly, the heat radiating upward to my chest like smoke off a fresh-lit bonfire.

“Tasty, right?” Talia said smugly, catching my startled expression. “Told you. Morty’s this town’s best-kept secret. I mean, besides its generations of real-life witches.”

“I’ll allow that it tastes way less like a Chili’s seasonal special than I feared.”

“Aha!” She pointed at me with her cocktail toothpick, speared with a chocolate-dipped strawberry, before taking a nibble of its tip. A vivid sense impression popped into my drink-hazed brain of what kissing her might taste like—tart and fruity and candied sweet—before I hastily banished it. “So you admit that you’ve actually sampled a Chili’s cocktail!”

“I have made the occasional late-night Chili’s run in my misspent youth, yes, before I came to know better. It’s called personal growth.”