Page 37 of Hopelessly Teavoted

The fluffy white cat meowed loudly at him, making her presence known as he pushed open the double doors to the library.

As soon as he stepped inside, the earthy scent of old books and amber wood shelves alleviated the tension in his shoulders as the cozy room welcomed him. He’d always loved it here.

Vickie knelt down and smiled, holding her palm out to Emily, and to Azrael’s utter surprise, the indomitably aloof Emily Lickinson purred and rubbed her head against Vickie’s outstretched fingers.

It had taken months for Emily to warm up to him in California, but she’d welcomed Vickie from the start.

“You are the bustle in this house after death.” Vickie said it softly, almost to herself.

Az tried not to lose his mind. It wasn’t fair that she was beautiful and kind and smart, and that they quoted poetry at each other but couldn’t touch.

Emily Dickinson herself would have rolled over in her grave to know it; she was certainly no stranger to pining.

Sometimes Az lost himself in obsessive details from his memory, like the feeling of sliding his fingers along Vickie’s skin or the deep dimple behind her knee where her plump flesh gathered under his fingers.

The sort of touch he’d only know in dreams now.

Emily hissed at Az a little as he gestured for Vickie to get up.

“Come on, Vickie,” he said, reaching for her, and trying not to cry at the way she shook her head and took a step back, reminding him. His hand dropped, flexing in agony instead of tingling, as it had before the curse, when their fingers could lace together.

Just because they couldn’t feel their magic hum on contact now didn’t make it any less real for him.

The library was a sweeping, two-story affair with bookshelves stretching up to the top of the grand ceiling and a cutaway loft furnished with couches he and Priscilla had turned into the bows of pirate ships and hangman’s stands as children.

On the first floor, near the back, there was a set of magnificent high-back chairs facing a fireplace, which he snapped his fingers to light.

Another snap and the temperature set so that the roaring fire warmed them comfortably.

“It’s a bit risky, isn’t it, a fireplace in a library?” Vickie asked, smile stretching wide as she moved closer to it.

“Well, you know what they say.”

She looked at him suspiciously. “What do they say?”

Azrael grinned and winked. “I just can’t help my shelf.”

Vickie groaned. It was reminiscent enough of other moans to heat his skin.

He walked over to the grate and lifted it, setting the pewter cauldron directly into the flames.

“It’s enchanted so that it can’t burn outside of the fireplace, and it’s better for spell work like what we will need for the tracing.

I just need to look it up.” He snapped his fingers.

Books shuddered out of the way, and pages ruffled from the highest shelf.

The familiar heft of the family grimoire landed in his hands, and Emily Lickinson made her way back to them along with the book.

She purred once, circled his feet, and padded away to sit watchful at the door.

A few strands of long white hair lingered at his pant cuffs, tickling his nose.

A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

“She’s a mortal cat familiar,” said Vickie, and her laughter made his chest warm. Her eyes glinted. “She’s a fur midable guardian.”

Devil damn him, it was sweet agony to be around her. Finding someone the exact brand of weird he was, well, that was rare.

The leather cover of the Hart family grimoire was worn with time, but the carving of their name and crest was still clearly visible in the flourishing lines of an anatomically correct heart with magic eyes and runes encircling it.

Leaves patterned the inside of the heart, and in the flickering firelight, it almost looked like it could genuinely be beating.

Only a Hart witch could summon this book in this library, and Az relaxed knowing this was one way he would always be connected to his parents, even in their death.

Witches had ancestral magic. Bone magic, passed down from parent to child, whether by blood or by choice. When predecessors died, their magic seeped into the grimoire and into the next generation, strengthening their inheritors, so long as those children did not take the powers by force.

It’s how Az had known, heartbreakingly, the moment it was too late to come home.

When his parents died, it had felt like the time he went on vacation in Costa Rica, and dove into a beautiful pool after a long hike, resurfacing refreshed, like he could do anything.

The cool wash of power and then emergence into a different self, an Azrael who could no longer avoid his magic, had told him that his parents were gone.

One after the other, like diving in twice.

Az already felt the pages flip with greater ease than they ever had, and he knew, as though a reassuring hand rested on his shoulder, that part of Benedict and Persephone that would never leave him.

The passing of that magic was never intended to be a burden that reminded the younger generations of the dead, but rather a nudge, that the shock of grief was a gift.

That it was the thing that allowed the memory of his parents to persist.

“Witches know that our dead loved ones are never really gone,” Az said. “They live on in our memories. In our spells, and in every decision we make. In our magic, and in our bones. Every step.”

“That’s lovely,” said Vickie, stepping closer, though not close enough.

Az could smell her again—berries and lavender, and, he thought, with his hand deep in the ancestral magic of the grimoire that sharpened his senses, lust. He had so much power, touching this book.

He could read her, and he knew, knew , that she wanted him as much as he did her.

The knowledge of it burned through him, tautening his entire body like a rubber band pulled back and stretched too thin, ready to snap.

“Here,” Az said, feeling the warmth of her next to him and of the fire, and fighting the uncomfortable instinct to go completely rigid against the zipper of his jeans just knowing what Vickie was feeling.

Az pointed at the book to distract himself from the blood rushing to his lower body.

“The tracing spell is simple.” He snapped his fingers, summoning the necessary herbs from the garden, and a speck of gravedirt from the pot that Priscilla used to ferment it, mixing in the ashes of a gravedigger, willingly given, every so often to ensure that it was potent enough to provoke truth.

At the behest of his snapping fingers, the ingredients stirred themselves in the cauldron with a long metal spoon.

“Now what?”

Az shut the grimoire, stroking the cover once, lovingly, and then snapped his fingers, making the book disappear again.

“Now we wait, and in an hour, you offer something of yours to it, and we hope that it’s enough to trace a similar gift.”

“The question is…” she started, stepping closer to him, close enough that it was hard to ignore all the tiny moments of her perfection.

So.

Hard.

“What should we do in the meantime?” Vickie’s eyes were wide, her cheeks flushed.

The house shuddered a little, and the doors to the library slammed shut, the large wooden bolt sliding closed. Velvety drapes swished shut with care. Soft flame jumped up in chandeliers, and the record player popped on; a vinyl recording of a passionate tango flooded the air.

“I think the house has some ideas for us,” Az said, and he wondered if maybe the house was right.

Perhaps he could let himself be wild and untethered with her for just a little while.

They almost certainly were approaching dangerous territory, and who knew how long any of their lives were, in the end?

“There’s something I need to tell you, but how could we deny the house?

The Hart Manor wants what it wants, Vickie.

Let’s pretend. We can be normal, for a moment. ”

The smile she gave him in return for his foolishness dazzled him. His heart could hurt for this later; he didn’t care. He closed the distance between them, as far as he could without dying, and snapped his fingers. The recording switched to Hozier, she was his darling, and Azrael was starving.

He snapped his fingers, donning gloves to avoid catastrophe. Eight years too late, his traitorous fingers finally listened, running across her cheek and tucking her messy brown hair behind her ear. Vickie sucked in a sharp breath at his touch.

“Shall we dance?” She asked it so solemnly that it almost broke him.

Az swallowed. His clothes felt too tight, and the tension building against his zipper pressed an outline into his jeans he definitely could not pretend away.

“What did you have in mind in terms of avoiding death?” Everything was too much for him now: the memories, the chemistry, and the clothes. There were far too many clothes. He smiled at her. “Or would you like me to die holding you? I’d be willing. It would be worth it.”

It would, he realized, and he thought his heart might beat out of his chest, or explode entirely with all the things he wanted from her.

“Don’t die. We can think of something.” Vickie’s mouth tugged a little. “How hard can it be for two people who can’t touch to dance?”

“How much do you want to pretend?” Az reached up to trace the side of her arm, a glove’s fabric between him and the utter annihilation that he longed for. She stepped closer.

This was such a bad idea.

“Pretend that this isn’t just one stolen moment in a very romantic wingman of a library. That things are easier. No curse. No restrictions. No misunderstandings.”