Page 42 of Hopelessly Teavoted

The cuff links heated in Vickie’s hands, and she turned in her seat, catching Azrael’s eye before he returned his glance to the road. He was searching for the things only she could see.

“Victoria, please tell Azrael that we are with him when he needs us. Always.” From the back seat, Benedict spoke in that rough, stony voice, and his gold eyes flickered over his son.

Persephone, ethereal arm linked through her husband’s, as though she couldn’t bear to part with him, even in the afterlife, nodded and met Vickie’s gaze.

Vickie tried not to blush at this, and she hoped they had not been haunting the library yesterday and watching the striptease that had accompanied the dancing. Vickie reassured herself that she would have sensed that.

Probably.

“I saw what he keeps in his wallet, still,” said Persephone softly.

“Tell my son that I understand. He thinks reserve can shield him from the harsher parts of reality, but he deserves everything. Even if it is difficult. Tell him that it is worth the risk. All of it. He deserves every single moment of joy that his father and I had, and will continue to share in whatever awaits us. We chose this life together, and death won’t stop us from choosing each other. Always.”

Vickie cleared her throat, her chest twisting at the pain in the shade’s voice.

“They are with you, always.” Vickie glanced back at Benedict and added, “And they both love you very much.”

Benedict’s ghost raised an eyebrow, but the corners of his mouth quirked up. It was not untrue.

A person wearing a pink puffy coat and rhinestone sunglasses, after all, knew how embellishments could sometimes make a message even more honest.

Azrael’s face was tight, and he swallowed.

“Your mom said that she knows what you have in your wallet, which I personally hope is a condom, because as you know, safe sex is very important.”

And because she was wondering if it would be possible, very cautiously, to use barriers to master the logistics of sex with a person she couldn’t touch.

Especially given that after Halloween, if things didn’t go as planned, she wouldn’t even be able to see him, let alone fuck him without touching.

But she didn’t think she wanted to bring that up at this particular moment.

Azrael let out a stunted laugh at that, an anemic thing, but still enough to make her smile.

He was grieving in a way that was healthy.

Like the pain wasn’t gone, but he was allowing it in.

Learning to move forward with it. Vickie wanted to make him laugh a thousand times, until it felt hearty, and she had other ideas.

Ideas that could blend magic and latex for the kind of sex that could be safe for them.

Some people were worth trying new things for, especially if it meant touching and not dying.

Azrael’s mouth quirked up. “I guess you could say that right now my parents are two spirits with the best sheets in the house back there.”

Vickie couldn’t help smiling. The joke was so bad. She had forgotten, because he still looked so devastatingly cool, what an enormous dork Azrael Hart was sometimes.

Good grief, it was those moments that made her certain she was doing more than pretending.

Az was fantastic. And touchable or not, part of her already knew he was hers.

In the mirror, she could see the ghost of his parents exchange a look. Good goddess, one couldn’t even count on death to halt parental scheming. She ignored it pointedly.

“Your mom said you deserve everything. She said you deserve what she had with your father.” Vickie paused to make sure she didn’t miss anything. “No, what she has with your father. You deserve everything, Az, everything you could possibly want.”

Even if what we have shatters, and it gets too intense. Even if I have to cut you loose so I don’t kill you, and even if that person isn’t me.

But Vickie didn’t have time to linger on more thoughts of self-loathing.

“Ask them what they know about where we are going. Ask about the historic church in Havenwall.” Az’s face was clouded, and she couldn’t tell if it was irritation at the message or concern about their mission.

Vickie didn’t need to repeat Az’s words; his parents could hear him just fine. Persephone wound the train of her long gray sleeve around the opposite fingernail. Even in death, it was polished to a lovely wine-red point that looked as though it could draw blood.

“We know a few things,” Persephone said.

“For whoever it is to go undetected, they had to have made a deal with a greater devil. It would be all-consuming. When the dealmaker uses their power, it doesn’t just call forth a person, living or dead.

It absorbs that person’s soul. It kills them in body and in spirit.

We think the particular devil who made this trade either miscalculated or was tricked.

But every bargain, even the ones made in trickery, has rules.

Fine print. The power still has to be linked to something, probably a greater sacrifice.

Someone who was important to the person making the deal. ”

“Lex didn’t mention the trick part,” breathed Vickie, anger curling in her stomach. The devil hadn’t clarified that they were looking for someone sharp enough to trick a greater devil.

Persephone’s and Azrael’s heads snapped up, asking the same question. Azrael was scowling, though the tips of his ears were red enough that she knew he thought of the devil in a way that made him at least a little bit hot to go.

“Lex?” The chorus of their voices made her smile, but both the shade and her son stared at him with the same intense expression that for some reason made her inclined to confess to having once stolen lip gloss from the local corner store and to more than once having thought about Az at inconveniently intimate times.

Az gripped the steering wheel hard enough that the car jerked a little.

“I know it’s a sore subject,” Vickie said, not meeting Azrael’s eyes. It wasn’t entirely the bad sort of sore, either, for either of them, she suspected. Anyone with a pulse could see what a smoke show Lex was. “But we need to know.”

Azrael cleared his throat and looked in the rearview again. “Before he strolled in, distractingly charming, and did this”—he gestured between the two of them—“Lex helped Vickie capture the first of the three souls she owes him.”

“Humph,” grunted Benedict. He and Persephone exchanged another look, and holy hell, these two had endgame-level romance to keep holding these silent conversations that were half eye-fucking, half imparting of essential details.

“We know you would never harm Azrael,” said Benedict. “Not if you could help it.”

Vickie nodded. “Of course, I would never hurt him. I’ve already collected one soul. The other two will be deserving of capture, I swear. I won’t reap Azrael. We agreed they would be wretched souls. The first was a gun lobbyist.”

Persephone smiled, and her eyes and teeth glinted in a way that was otherworldly.

“Good riddance to bad men,” Persephone said, her voice scraping like cold sandstone. “We need to talk about what to do when you find the villain. You’ll need to be careful not to—”

In Vickie’s hands, the cuff links smoked, cutting her off.

“I’ve got another object,” she said. Benedict and Persephone burst into flames and dissolved into ash.

“We have one last chance to finish this.” She reached into her bag for the odd noose she had found in her apartment’s storage; it had beckoned to her strongly enough that she had put on gloves and stashed it with the other precious objects.

She had wrapped it carefully in an old scarf.

“I once worked with a devil out of a film studio in LA. The Lucifer. Called himself Frankie,” Az said.

“Wait, Az. The alleged king of the greater devils goes by Frankie?”

“I know, right? But it’s pretty typical for devils to take on names that fit more easily into the current age.

The two I am named for, Azazael and Ashmedrea, go by Al and Ashley.

Anyway, we need to be careful here. We can’t afford to accuse the wrong person, but whoever we’re dealing with, they managed to trick a greater devil.

They’re dangerous.” Azrael’s voice was sharp. Laced with fear.

He was right to be scared. She’d been talking to dead people her entire life, and it scared her.

“We need to know what else your mother had to say. She was telling me about how to stop the person who tricked the devil. She said that even if he tricked Lucifer himself, there would be rules to it, still. We need to know as much about those as we can, and we need to ask your parents about the church in Havenwall. See what else they know.”

“Wait, did she say it was a man? Do we know it was a him? We can’t just assume a name on a hospital visitation sheet is an admission of guilt.”

Vickie snorted. “Even if it’s not him , it’s always a him. I’m taking a wild guess. For safety, anyone could be our suspect. But until I know otherwise, I’m using ‘him.’?”

She reached for the creepy rope, unspooling the scarf around it carefully.

“I only have this one left, so this is also it, Az. The final goodbye,” she started. She left out the reminder that he was the true final goodbye, should she mess up and touch him. No need to say it. They both knew.

“Let me think of what I want to say,” he said.

They drove in silence for a few minutes before he spoke again. “Got it. I’ll talk first, be really quick, I promise, and then you ask about Havenwall.”

She nodded, pushing the rhinestone sunglasses up into her hair.