Mika wondered if she was hallucinating. “How are you even here? Didn’t you and Ken go off on an errand earlier today?”

He rolled his eyes. “Yes, this. This was the errand.”

He pointed. Blinking at the misty windshield, Mika just about made out the shape of Jamie’s black sedan in the space opposite hers. Ken was behind the wheel. He gave her a smile and a wave.

Her brain was mush, so it took her a minute to crack this riddle. “You’re saying you and Ken left Nowhere House two hours before I did just so you’d get here in time to find me?”

“We had a hunch you wouldn’t be in a fit state to get yourself home. Looks like we were right.” Jamie arched an eyebrow. “If only someone had warned you before you embarked on this unnecessary escapade.”

“Be honest. You came here just for the pleasure of being able to say you told me so.”

His mouth twitched, but the furrow between his eyebrows didn’t budge. “Would you rather Ken drove you home?”

“No,” she said before she could think better of such disastrous honesty.

“Well, good, because he just drove off.”

Mika laughed, but her teeth were chattering so hard that the sound came out all wrong. She felt damp and clammy, from cold sweat rather than the drizzle outside, and she was about to make the herculean effort of reaching out a hand to turn the heating up even higher when she saw Jamie shrug off his coat. He manhandled her into it, to which she didn’t object in the slightest. His coat was butter-soft and radiated the heat from his own body. She drew her knees up to her chest, turned sideways in the seat to lean back against the door, and snuggled deeper into the coat. The shivering quieted down at last.

“Pine needles and the ocean,” she said sleepily. “It smells like you.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“By me?”

“No, it must have been one of the other witches who make a habit out of sniffing my neck.”

“Once does not a habit make,” Mika objected, but couldn’t quite suppress a tiny smile. That worried line between his straight, dark brows was still there. Quite beyond pedestrian concerns like propriety, she raised one hand and smoothed her thumb over the furrow, trying to make it go away. “You’ll get wrinkles if you frown like that.”

His eyes were almost silver. He reached for her hand and drew it away from his forehead, but didn’t let it go. Instead, he turned it over to trace a scar on her palm. Her skin tingled. “What’s this from?”

“Thorns.” She moved her hand out of his and back to his face. He stopped her, his hand tightening around her wrist as she drew her fingers over the line of his jaw. “It’s as hard as it looks,” she marvelled.