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"Cat," Pete says seriously. "You can't keep doing this."
Cat looks up at him with her little heterochromatic eyes, entirely unapologetic for spitting up all over the front of his shirt.
Pete rolls his eyes and bounces her gently against his chest. He loves babysitting for Cat while Sof and Dale are busy with the Order even with all the trouble a five month old can cause. "Kiddo. You know I will always love and forgive you. But this is the third shirt this week! I can't keep up!" He keeps his tone light, just teasing as he magics himself clean again. Purple sparks shower down his front in the wake of the spell, and Cat's fat little baby hands reach up to grab at them.
He lets her catch his index finger to play with as he continues to bounce her in her arms. She's going to need to be fed in a few minutes so with an easy word Pete sets the bottle levitating to fill itself from the fridge and then over into the warmer.
"What the fuck?"
Pete turns and promptly loses concentration on the spell, sending the bottle crashing to the floor in what is sure to be yet another wet mess to clean up. Maddie is standing in the doorway, jaw dropped and staring at them, face still red from the cold outside.
"Don't-don't swear in front of Cat," he says, and his voice is horrible and squeaky. Fuck. Fuck .
"That cup was just levitating," Maddie says. Her hands are white-knuckling the doorframe. "Pete, what's going on?" She sounds scared, like really truly frightened. "Am I- am I okay? I'm hallucinating. Did I take something by accident?"
"No," he says firmly and she only looks worse. Cat starts to fuss a little in his arms and he coos carefully to her before settling her back in her high chair. "Please, come, come sit? You aren't hurt. I won't hurt you. I'll explain."
"Pete, I don't understand-" Maddie says. Her eyes look red and watery, shit . He should've told her sooner. He should've done this right, he's so stupid, he forgot she was coming over to hang out tonight.
"It's okay," he says. Then he pulls back the Umbral Arcana just a little more, and points at the mess of breast milk on the floor and it all floats upwards and neatly into the sink. Maddie's eyes are about ready to pop out of her head. " Please , Maddie, sit down."
She sits, absolutely wordless. Cat reaches towards her and Maddie gives her her pinky finger to play with without so much as blinking, her eyes still glued on Pete. There's something like awe and something like horror in her eyes. "Explain," she says, voice faint.
"Magic is real," he says. "It exists in a different layer to our world, hidden by something called the Umbral Arcana."
"No it's not," Maddie says. "Pete, that's impossible. Did you take something?"
Pete lifts an eyebrow at her. "You just saw me levitate a bunch of things."
Maddie's brow furrows. "Maybe we both took stuff. Group psychosis is a thing."
He summons her a big bouquet of roses and hands them to her. "Maddie, babe, I work at a bookstore. Where do you think I get all the flowers for you from?"
She takes them with her not-baby-occupied hand, looking suspicious still. "I've seen magicians do that before."
Pete scoffs. "I'm not a magician. I'm a sorcerer." Maddie looks unimpressed. "I'm the literal voice of magic in the city, babe. Vox Phantasma and everything."
"Like your knuckle tattoos?" She asks incredulously, but at least she's smiling a little bit. No more tears on the near horizon.
"Yeah," he says. "Look, it's going to be a lot to get used to. Esther will do a better job explaining it than I can."
"Esther knows?!" Maddie says, looking shocked. "So it's like, actually real and legit then."
Pete fixes her with a look and she properly smiles then, a terrible mischievous thing, the little shit. Maddies's going to be such a terror if (when) she learns magic.