Page 22 of How to Charm a Coven (How to Flirt with a Witch #2)

Katie and Hazel’s School of Questionable Inventions

“ W e’ve got twenty minutes left to revolutionize chimera-catching, and this isn’t looking good,” I tell Hazel, scanning the carnage. Sweat prickles under my T-shirt, and I pluck it away from my chest to let some air in.

“This one will work,” Hazel assures me, pushing back the hair plastered to her face. “Pass me the duct tape.”

I wade through the tools, toys, and sports equipment, stepping on a rubber duck in a top hat that somehow made it into the pile, and hand her the nearly empty roll.

Two hours have flown by since Natalie smuggled her in, and the pair of us are alone in the same Alchemy lab Natalie and I used, frantically trying to reinvent a century of chimera-catching techniques before Fiona is done meeting with the Shadows.

A T-shirt cannon sits defeated between a tangled fishing rod and a bow and arrow.

And those were our more successful attempts.

Hazel suppresses a yawn as she winds the duct tape around a hockey stick. The bags under her eyes and the dreamy smile she’s been fighting all afternoon tell me all I need to know.

“Long night?” I ask teasingly.

Her smile breaks free like she’s been dying for me to ask. “She’s a dream , Katie. My jaw is sore.”

I laugh as she keeps winding tape with a loud rrrip .

“Have you done any actual talking between all the face-sucking?” I ask, going to collect the net from where it got hung up on a bookshelf. (Fun fact: a leaf blower will explode if you try to launch an enchanted net out of it.)

“We talked!” Hazel says defensively, then flushes. “For a few minutes.”

With both ends of a bungee cord taped to hockey sticks, I grab the middle and walk back. “What’d you learn?”

Hazel holds the hockey sticks vertically and ducks her head while I put tension on the bungee.

“Well, she loves cooking and gardening… Used to have a pet snake…” Her voice softens. “Sounds like her family life is rough, to be honest. Not a great relationship with her mom, her dad died when she was little, and her brother died recently. The dog was his.”

“Damn. That’s really sad.”

I ball up the golden net and lay it against the bungee, chewing my lip. This might work?

What we’ve essentially made is a giant slingshot.

The idea is to launch the net much higher into the air than I’d be able to do by hand.

Aiming, however, might get interesting. This is either a genius invention or the most absurd fucking thing ever to exist within the walls of C.S.A.M.M.

And that’s saying something, considering I once set eyes on cursed bagpipes .

“I know,” Hazel says, her arms straining as she fights against my pull. “She feels like Wyatt is one of the only tangible parts of him she has left.”

I freeze, the name sending a chill through me. “Wyatt?"

She must hear something in my tone because her brow pinches. “Yeah.”

Coincidence. Must be. Wyatt is a common enough name. Except…

Dead brother, dead father, shitty mother…

“What kind of dog is he?” I ask, the hairs on my neck prickling.

“German Shepherd.”

My fingers fail me, and I let go of the bungee. Hazel stumbles. The golden net flies into the air, hits the ceiling fan, whips around a few times, and smacks into the wall. The ivy ripples and shudders as if offended.

No. No, no, no.

My heart is beating out of my chest. My lips are numb. “Hazel, what’s your girlfriend’s name?”

The confusion on her face intensifies. “Oaklyn.”

I step back. “Oh my God. Tell me you’re joking.”

She drops the hockey sticks with a clatter. Her eyes glint with excitement. “You know her?”

I lunge for her, knocking some ping-pong paddles off the table, and grab her flannel shirt in my fists. “Hazel! You’re dating a Madsen!”

“I—” She splutters. The excitement vanishes as quickly as it came, replaced by blank shock. “No I’m not.”

“Tall, pale, could bench press both of us at the same time?”

“Th-that could describe…” She falters, and the color drains from her face as realization begins to take hold.

“Septum piercing? Razor lines in her eyebrows?” I shout, pulling her closer. “Black hair—”

“What the hell?!” Hazel shrieks, tap dancing like she’s landed in a pit of cockroaches. “No. That’s not… Sh e can’t be…”

I release her. “She wrote the note on the cursed plushie that nearly murdered you!”

“FUCK!”

We’re both screaming, our voices carrying into the high ceiling.

“Did you not clue in that her last name is Madsen?” I shout.

“Her last name hasn’t come up! I’ve only gone out with her twice!” Hazel presses her palms against her temples. Her eyes dart across the floor like she’s reviewing every interaction, searching for clues she missed.

I let out a sound like a deflating balloon and drag my hands down my face.

This is my fault for not telling Hazel more about the Madsens.

I should have at least told her their names.

God dammit, I should have shown her an entire PowerPoint presentation titled ‘The Madsens: A Comprehensive Guide to the Family That’s Trying to Kill Me. ’ Screw the coven and their secrets.

Hazel doubles over, hands on knees. “I’m gonna puke. Where did that bucket go?”

She scans the pile of stuff. I offer her a mosaic planter, but she waves it away.

“What do I do?” she moans.

I set down the planter and wave my arms. “Ghost her! Block her!”

“But—” She straightens up, staring at me with huge eyes. “But I care about her.”

I freeze, trying to process this sequence of words in reference to Oaklyn fucking Madsen.

“She’s been lying to you!” I cry. “She’s not a personal trainer, she’s a criminal!”

“But she’s been so nice! She makes me food and cuddles me and…” She balls her fists over her mouth, her eyes growing glassy and distant.

I splutter and flail my arms as if to swat these words right out of the air. “She kept Natalie’s dad caged in a basement! ”

My ears ring from all the screaming. This is surreal. My genius best friend is dating a literal murderer and didn’t know it.

Hazel turns and begins stress-organizing everything on the table, her hands shaking.

I draw a few deep breaths to calm my racing pulse. “You haven’t mentioned me, have you?”

“Like I said, not a lot of time spent talking.”

“Okay. Good.”

There’s a chance we can get Hazel out of this mess before something bad happens.

We stare at each other. A long, uncertain moment passes.

“Didn’t you say the dog is sweet ?” I blurt, scrabbling through my memory to fit the pieces together.

“Yeah. He cuddles up with us when we watch a movie. Puts his fuzzy paw on my leg.”

“What the fuck…” I whisper.

Is the dog different now that Freddie’s dead? Did their telepathic connection make him aggressive? Or is the dog only vicious on command, and when he’s off-duty, he’s a snuggle-bug?

My ankle throbs, the memory of his jaws still fresh after all this time.

When Hazel doesn’t immediately reach for her phone to delete Oaklyn from her life, nausea churns in my gut.

“Are you going to keep seeing her?” I ask.

She hesitates. Keeps stress-organizing. The screwdrivers are all perfectly lined up now.

“The fact you’re even thinking about this is a little concerning, Hazel.”

“You don’t know the other side of her.” Her voice is soft. Too soft. “She’s really hurting since—”

“Why are you talking about her like she’s a human being?” I snap.

She faces me, folding her arms tightly. “She is a human being! ”

“She tried to kill both of us!” I cry. I pace in a circle, shaking out my hands.

Then, a critical question zips through my mind like an angry wasp: does Oaklyn know who Hazel is, and is she using Hazel to get to me?

My blood turns to ice as I imagine her becoming another hostage like Troy, locked away in some dark basement. The Madsens have already proven there’s no limit to what they’ll do—and now they have their claws in my best friend.

I fumble for my phone.

“What are you doing?” Hazel asks.

“Calling Natalie.” I tap her name and put the call on speaker.

Hazel covers her face. “ Please don’t give her the full details. This is mortifying.”

I nod.

“Everything okay?” Natalie answers after half a ring.

The fact that this is her greeting says a lot about the state of our lives.

“Hazel’s new girlfriend is Oaklyn Madsen,” I say, pinching the bridge of my nose to ward off the headache threatening to come on. “She’s here with me. We just realized it.”

There is a long pause. So long that I check to make sure the call didn’t disconnect.

“Do you think Oaklyn planned this?” she asks at last.

I meet Hazel’s eye—and read the flash of pain in her expression. Sympathy hits me like a punch. A minute ago, she was head-over-heels, gushing to me with that dreamy smile. If she was being used all this time…

“It’s possible. But it’s also possible that Oaklyn has no idea who she ended up on a date with.” I assumed they met via a dating app, but Hazel never actually said this. I lower the phone to address her. “Where’d you two meet?”

“In the cafe in White Rock, after you arrived to deal with the pig. ”

I squint at her. “So you saw someone just hanging out near a chimera, sipping a coffee, and didn’t think she might be somehow connected to it all?”

“Well—I did, kind of.” Hazel twists her fingers together, looking everywhere but at me. “I thought she might be a witch, and I intended to ask her about it. But we’ve been…too busy to talk about that…”

I try not to picture my best friend going down on Oaklyn fucking Madsen, focusing on the more important problem. “Did you mention that you were with me and Natalie that day?”

“No,” Hazel says quickly. “I told her nothing.”

“Okay. Natalie, there’s a chance Oaklyn doesn’t know Hazel is connected to us.”

Natalie is quiet, probably unconvinced.

“You think she should cut contact?” I ask.

The gym door whips open, and Hazel and I both spin with startled gasps. I reach for the nearest object to use as a weapon and come up with a Sharpie.

But it’s just Natalie, who ends our call as she uses magic to shut the door behind her. She glances around at the mess before storming over and stopping in front of us with her arms crossed. Her expression is grim.

“Hi.” I set down the Sharpie and pocket my phone with trembling hands.

“Don’t cut contact,” she tells Hazel. “Not yet, anyway. If Oaklyn has no idea who you are, we can use this. How would you feel about learning what the Madsens are up to for us?”

Hazel’s eyes go huge. “I—I don’t know if I can be a spy!”

My breath catches. This is the Madsens we’re talking about, and it’s a terrible plan. I hold my palm up to Natalie. “I don’t think we should drag her deeper into this.”

Not to mention how cruel it is to ask Hazel to start using the person she was falling for .

“I know it’s asking a lot,” Natalie says. “But we need to do whatever we can to stop the Madsens, and having an inside woman could change everything.”

I chew my lip. It isn’t like Natalie to put someone in danger. She fought her hardest to keep me away from this world and insists on protecting me at every turn. The situation must be seriously dire for her to suggest this.

“You’re smart enough to pull this off,” I tell Hazel. “All the spy novels you read as a kid, yeah?”

“That’s not exactly the same as being a real spy!” she squeaks.

She’s right, and in truth, I don’t like this plan at all. I don’t want Hazel fucking around with the Madsens—in any sense of the word.

“First, we need to figure out whether Oaklyn is using Hazel to get to us,” Natalie says. “Then we can go from there.”

Hazel leans against the table, looking stunned. A broken umbrella clatters to the floor. “What, so if she starts asking too many questions about my friends, I should fake food poisoning and get the hell out?”

Natalie hesitates, her dark eyes troubled. “I wouldn’t ask you to do this if we had another option. You’re the closest person to the Madsens we’ve ever had.”

“We do have another option, and that’s to not ask Hazel to do this!” I say, watching Hazel closely as her love life crashes down around her. Again.

“Katie, you know as well as I do how desperately we need to catch Oaklyn and Sophia,” Natalie says.

Hazel and I stare at each other, silent. An entire conversation passes between us in one look. What if? Why? Why not ?

I don’t know what to tell her. If Oaklyn finds out…

Then again, what if Hazel helps us win the war against the Madsens? This would be huge—for her, for me, for everyone .

“Oh my God,” she says suddenly, throwing her hands over her mouth.

“What?” I cry.

“I—I told Oaklyn where the next chimera might show up,” she says into her hands. “I showed her the map and… I guess that’s why she was so interested in it…”

The words hit me like ice water.

Natalie swears.

I sprint for the golden net, snatching it up from where it landed in a tangled heap against the wall. “Why are we still standing here? Let’s go!”

Hazel spins to the table full of junk. “With what?!”

“Which contraption worked the best?” Natalie asks.

“None of them!” Hazel and I shout together.

“Then we’ll have to do it like last time.” Natalie abandons our inventions and races for the door, pulling out her phone. “I’m calling Sky.”

Before running after her, I bend and grab the bow and arrow off the floor. Just in case.