Page 41 of Hopelessly Teavoted

“Vickie, this is genius. I’d marry you on the spot if you had coffee with this.”

Her cheeks pinkened a little and she coughed.

“Well, I do have a thermos and some cups.” Now he was blushing, too, and trying not to think of the way her mouth had tasted last month, like mint and the tail end of berry lip gloss rubbing off between their lips and bodies.

Of how normal he felt at the casual offer to spend forever with her just for a donut. He’d offered more for less.

“How far is the drive?” Vickie’s eyes were bright and her smile wide, cheeks still red from his faux pas of a proposal joke. In light of the soul-sealing option, it seemed more serious than he had intended.

Or exactly as serious, depending on how he looked at it.

“After the hospital, it should be three hours if we can avoid the traffic. Which we can, of course, because Evelyn and Prissy helped me charm the GPS.”

“Have I told you lately that I love your family?” She said it offhandedly. Casually, he was sure, but it froze his tongue.

What if he dropped it on her now? What if he told her right here what he felt? There was so much love and memory, the two twined together.

Azrael shut his eyes and remembered his mother in her midnight rose garden.

She wore that black velvet dress with the cap sleeves and the breezy sheer gray cardigan over it, deadheading the roses because they made excellent potions for easing everything from stomachaches to heartaches with the petals, and the thorns.

She mixed magic with the ordinary at the tea shop to make the world a little brighter.

Never enough to violate the code, the way he had with Vickie’s friends in college. He was pretty sure that it was only Priscilla keeping Evelyn from retroactively reporting him to the Council, which would definitely slap him with some sort of community service at the least.

The hospital was only a twenty-minute drive from Hopelessly Teavoted, and he couldn’t help but spend most of that time thinking of his mother, and how she and his father had died there, in the end.

Witches were allowed small magics to make things easier for mundanes.

It was difficult. Humans were cranky and ill-tempered and often made decisions that could not be righted with simple spell work.

But his parents had believed in healing the world.

Making it better. As a Jewitch, Persephone’s craft was mixed with the practice of healing the world.

Her spells were for kindness and her potions for health.

She had brewed and distributed, for free, an effective gender-neutral birth control Az had been on since he was thirteen.

She also made a useful tincture that magicked a temporary thread tattoo around your finger if you were sick and needed to seek medical care or a heart on your palm if you could rest at home to recover.

Persephone would have known from the thread that she should go to the hospital and would have gone right away. Neither medicine nor magic could have saved her or his father from death in the end.

When they pulled into the parking lot, Vickie’s hand on his arm, far up enough to touch only fabric, for just a moment, pulled him from his reverie.

“I know you miss them. And I know it hurts to talk about them and that you’d rather sulk and brood, because that’s your brand and you’re entitled to it, but Az, you have to talk to me about it sometime.

” Her voice cracked a little, and with it, his resolve.

“I need to know you’re okay,” she finished softly.

“Let’s talk after this.” He didn’t tell her that if he didn’t go into this hospital, the place that had seen the end of half his family without him, right now, he might never go in at all.

She nodded, leading the way inside. He watched her put on the armor she had talked about, rolling her shoulders back. Standing a little bit taller. Grinning cheerfully and greeting the receptionist.

“Hi, I’m Connie Witherspoon’s niece, here to visit her again.”

The nurse looked up from her clipboard and tucked a pencil behind short gray hair, skeptical.

“Sign in here.” She pointed to a visitor’s log. “And wait just a moment.”

The skin on the back of Azrael’s neck prickled.

“Something’s off,” he murmured to Vickie.

“I know. Just be calm.” Her voice was barely a whisper, the lines of her smile still intact, and when she picked up the pen, she froze.

“Az.” The sudden pallor of her face was almost enough to have him press his hand to her forehead, death wish and all.

“Excuse me,” a stern voice interrupted. “I’m Dr. Wordsworth, the attending on duty, and I don’t care how many more of you charlatans come in here, Ms. Witherspoon has no siblings. First that insufferable man claiming to be her son, now a mystery niece. Whatever you’re selling, get out of here.”

“We’ll just go.” Azrael gestured to the door.

The woman crossed her arms. “Get out before I call security.”

He hustled Vickie out the door, careful to only touch her coat.

“That was a bust,” he muttered, half running to the car.

“No,” said Vickie breathlessly. “Not entirely.”

“What?” He turned to her.

“What did you say your boss’s name was? Chet something?”

“Chet Thornington.”

She smiled, satisfaction creeping across her face. “I thought so. Azrael. I saw the log. Chet Thornington was the last person to sign in.”

“The insufferable man. Of course. That’s a spot-on description.”

“Now why would Chet be sniffing around Madam Cleopatra?” She picked at the polish on her fingernails. “I guess it’s also possible that he was visiting someone else. It’s a big hospital.”

“That’s true. Being an asshole isn’t a crime on its own.” He pulled out of the lot, and within minutes, he was on the freeway.

“I’ll keep an eye out at school, though he does seem to be all business, even when the business is cruelty to children for some sort of twisted fun.”

Vickie shook her head. For a few minutes, he thought that maybe they would drive silently. It was kind of nice, just being here in the car with her.

“Before we went in. About your parents. You were saying.”

“You want honesty?” He gripped the steering wheel.

“Yes.”

“No pretending, then,” he started, voice hoarse. “I was an ass to them.” Focusing on the road, he told himself he was avoiding looking at her because of the winding curves and not because of the shame rattling around his rib cage. He felt hollow. Small.

Vickie’s hand pressed against his shoulder, thumb to clavicle, and the risk of the inch of fabric separating life from death made him swallow. That and the unbearable closeness of her.

“Hey. You were who you were. They knew you, and they never expected you to pretend to be anything you were not. They accepted you. They love you, Azrael.”

“I wish I could tell them,” he said. Her face lit up.

“You can.” She rummaged around in her bag, pulling out a velvet box.

She opened it to a shiny pair of cuff links shaped like skeletal ravens.

They were a gift from his mother to his father for their twentieth anniversary.

“I found these last night, along with a rather ominous noose, when I was looking for extra donut molds. I figured we could ask them what more they know about the situation, and that maybe you could talk with them. I could help. It could be good for you.”

He inhaled deeply, holding it for four counts and releasing it for eight. Letting the anxiety and the self-loathing roll off him. He tried not to linger on how much it meant to him that she saw him, really saw him, for all he was.

Azrael wanted to dance with her in libraries or swoon over her while sipping on coffee and tea.

Though a small, angry part of Az’s brain told him he should let Vickie go so that she could find someone who could really be with her, the larger part of it, the rational part, told him that this was the anxiety, and the depression, fucking with him.

He had made his choice about not pretending.

And he would let her make her own choice, too, rather than deciding for her.

“Is it too weird to summon them in a car? After last time?” She bit her lip, and he wondered if she was also thinking of the way she’d writhed in his lap. The way they’d burned for each other before he, well, almost actually burned for her.

He shook his head to clear the cobwebs of lust. “What the hell. We have hours. Yes, let’s do it.” He swallowed, hoping he didn’t regret this decision.