Marie’s chest shook with a laugh as she took off with Luc in her arms. This was probably her favorite use of her magic, getting to carry her girlfriend in her arms.

  “This is kidnapping,” Luc complained. “Pretty sure that’s illegal. Wouldn’t want to ruin your perfect image.”

  “Maybe I’m not worried about my perfect image,” Marie said, trying to keep the bitterness out of her voice. Perfection was her power, but it was such an annoyance at times. A perfect body was awesome, but the need to be perfect to be stronger? It was simply frustrating. “I just want to be with you.”

  Luc rolled her eyes. “That’s gay.”

  “Oh, my bad,” Marie drawled. “I hadn’t thought it was possible to be too gay with my girlfriend.”

  She leaned down, closing the space between them with a kiss before Luc grabbed her chin and pushed her away, leaving her hand on Marie’s throat. It bobbed under the light pressure of her fingers, heartbeat picking up, but it was just a tease. Luc only did it to rile Marie up, not because she was going to do anything herself. “Eyes on the sky when you’re flying. You’re not crashing me into a tree because we were kissing again.”

  Marie chuckled but did as she was told. It was a fair request, even if it had only happened once. And really, that tree had come out of nowhere.

  It didn’t take long for Marie to reach the little picnic she’d managed to set up between jobs. A mage-tech shield surrounded it, keeping back any stray magical creatures or imps that might want to mess with it. It wasn’t as good as anything Luc could make with scraps, somehow, but it worked.

  She touched down on the ground outside of the shield and let Luc slip out of her arms. The girl turned to her, slim eyebrows raised.

  “When did you have time for this?”

  Marie shrugged and dropped the shield long enough for them to step inside. Inside the ten foot dome of the shield, she’d laid out a picnic blanket and a wide collection of food, mostly fruits and veggies that wouldn’t go bad in the heat. There was also a small ice chest with sandwiches, a far cry from a picnic basket, but far more functional.

  “Here and there throughout the day,” Marie said. “I ruined our date this morning and I wanted to make it up to you.”

  “You didn’t ruin our date,” Luc muttered as she crouched on the blanket. “You were just doing your job.”

  “I should be doing it with you,” Marie said, keeping her voice neutral. Luc hated it when she sounded too soft or understanding, as if it was some slight, instead of empathy. Luc may as well have been allergic to sympathy. “It’s kind of boring without you.”

  “Don’t lie,” Luc snapped.

  Marie let out a sigh, shoulders slumping as she sat down on the blanket across from her girlfriend. She’d begged and begged her father to change Luc’s sentence, not that Luc knew, but he hadn’t. Whether he wouldn’t or couldn’t, she wasn’t sure, though she had her suspicions. In his eyes, Luc had almost ruined Marie’s career. As if he hadn’t caused half the problem himself.

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  “It is boring without you,” she said, trying to meet Luc’s eyes. “I never enjoyed it the way you did. And I miss having you as my rival.”

  “If you wanted to fight, you could just say that,” Luc said, tilting her head back with a smarmy grin.

  “Oh yeah? And who do you think would win?”

  “Obviously me,” Luc said with a scoff.

  With a grin, Marie closed the space between them, easily wrestling Luc down to the ground. Luc put in a good effort, but she wasn’t a fighter the way Marie was, and soon she had her pinned between her knees. Just the way Luc wanted.

  There was a reason Marie had picked such a remote date spot.

  ******

  Breathing hard, Marie pulled a thin blanket over their bodies. Though it had grown dark, it wasn’t cold, but she didn’t want them to be laying there completely naked either.

  “I should let you plan dates more often,” Luc quipped.

  “I’m the only one who plans dates,” Marie said with a roll of her eyes. “If you were in charge, we’d only ever… fight monsters and fuck.”

  “Would you be complaining?”

  Marie did her best to shrug, though it was hard, with Luc using one arm as a pillow.

  “This is better than us hanging out before work,” Luc admitted, curling closer to her.

  “I thought so too,” Marie said. Her fingers danced up and down Luc’s arm, her skin seeming all the more pale under the ghostly moonlight. Occasionally her fingers paused at the raised bump of a mole, or faint indented scar, mapping out Luc like an astronomer. “I’m not sure how much of this we’re going to be able to do over the summer.”

  “Speaking of summer…” Luc turned over, lifting off of Marie’s arm and propping herself up on her elbow. “Maisey was asking what the plan for tomorrow is.”

  Marie went stiff, body going cold as she stared at Luc. “We’re together, and all you can think about is Maisey?” she demanded. Her heartbeat quickened inside of her chest, pounding against her ribcage like an angry drum.

  “What? No,” Luc said, shaking her head. A piece of her thin, dark hair fell across her face, black in the dim lighting. “I just want to figure out the plan for tomorrow.”

  “And what exactly does Maisey have to do with that?” Marie demanded.

  Luc scoffed and sat upright, pulling the blanket with her. Marie shivered at the sudden burst of air. “We can’t not talk to Maisey forever.”

  “We absolutely can,” Marie said. “She almost got you killed.”

  “I almost got me killed,” Luc said.

  “She was involved,” Marie said. “And she keeps trying to get you in trouble. It would be better if she’d just stay here.”

  “She needs to earn back her license too,” Luc said. “And she’s our friend.”

  “Do friends really lead each other into that much trouble?”

  “I feel like you’ve never read a book, because that’s all they do,” Luc said flatly. “She’s my friend. I miss her.”

  “Right.” Marie climbed to her feet, gathering up her things. What a date this had been. All this effort to spend time with Luc, and she wanted to talk about Maisey. “If that’s how you feel, why don’t you go spend time with your other girlfriend.”

  “I miss all of us being together!” Luc shouted after her. “I just want everything to go back to the way it was. Is that so wrong?”

  Luc’s voice broke, and Marie let out a sigh. Taking in a deep breath, Marie let it unwind the knot of tension in her chest before releasing it out into the air. Luc was just being Luc again, that was all. She didn’t see how much trouble Maisey could be, or the way she wanted to drag Luc into said trouble, whether that was into a fight or into a relationship. But Marie missed Maisey too, even if she was annoying.

  “Fine. We can talk to Marie again. But if she causes any trouble…”

  “She won’t.”

  “We’ll see about that.”