Page 31 of Warlocks Don’t Win (Singsong City #9)

“I’m very stupid. Particularly about you.

Clary, I know it’s not rational, but everything you say is always so precisely what I need to hear, to think and feel and do, that I thought it was manufactured for the sole purpose of enslaving me to your will.

From the beginning I was suspicious of you, more than suspicious.

I’d already written you into the role of villain.

Since then my villains have gotten more nuanced.

You can ask Vilus. He hardly ever uses his diabolical laugh anymore. Pity. It’s so good.”

“I’m not the one who enslaves people to my will. Taking life and magic is a very straightforward process, as is burying the bodies in the back yard. I guess you couldn’t help but see the world through your lenses- manipulative, evil, self-righteous…”

“So perfect.”

I very nearly strangled him, but then the door opened and I was handed a sausage dog with a bag of chips.

I ate instead of killing him. I didn’t give Winston his, nope.

I ate them both. I was eating my anger like a sensible person who owned a mostly respectable shop in a thoroughly disreputable city and wanted to keep the shop instead of being thrown in jail for publicly murdering the most irritating warlock in the entire world.

His house was in Cara’s neighborhood, grand enough he could throw a ball there. It had the feel of a rental, somewhere people didn’t really live. Where did Winston really live? Not that I cared. None of my business what he did with his life. Even if I was married to him.

He took the clothing I thrust at him with a soft ‘thank you,’ that made me want to strangle him again.

The man desperately needed strangling. He’d kissed me.

And yes, I’d kissed him before that, but he still had no business…

I shook my head to clear it of thoughts of the Warlock after I was alone in the bathroom instead of with him.

When I wasn’t with him, he shouldn’t still be in my head.

I frowned at Tolly. “Do you like him carrying you around? I noticed that you didn’t bite him.”

She curled up on a round ottoman and looked adorable. Do you want me to bite him or do you want to bite him?

Familiars were extensions of your own mind, as in, she probably knew my motivations better than I did.

She knew I wanted to bite him, and kiss him, and drown in his arms until I died.

Absolutely. Also that I wanted to strangle him with his own coat and hold him down in a mud puddle until he was messy and dead.

Not really dead though. I didn’t like killing people.

Maybe I just disliked killing people I loved.

It was okay when I had to end a threat to my city.

Mostly. It was even better not to have to kill anyone, because Winston just messed with Parody’s mind.

Except that it would probably end up being worse in the long run.

I bathed, using a fancy hair serum he had stocked in this bathroom he never used. He was certainly conscientious about his hair care if he was stocking every bathroom of every house he owned. As I groomed, plucking brows and slathering on lotions, I started feeling a niggling of guilt.

I shouldn’t have talked to Winston about his father that way.

This is why people shouldn’t tell me their sorrows, because I lacked a proper empathy reaction.

My dad was dead long before I was born, but I understood losing someone I cared about.

I’d killed my mother, so it felt stupid to miss her when I was the reason she was gone.

Not that she was too far gone while her ghost hung around Sage House.

Anyway, I should apologize. Just because he lived to irritate me didn’t mean I had to return the sentiment. The point of this whole thing was for me to get closure, to stop feeling too much about him. I needed to be above the destructive feelings that he inspired. So I’d apologize. I’d just say…

Winston knocked on the door. “Are you ready?”

I stared at my face, makeup perfect, brows dark, like my lashes, green eyes bright and glittering, skin dewy, hair glossy even if it was purple and green.

“Just a second.” I grabbed the dress and pulled it over my head, careful not to rub off my perfection.

The dress was purple, the corset was striped green and purple, and the underskirt and shoes were green.

The style was on the side of sleek over opulent, with a skirt that flared rather than poofed from the waist. I looked a bit like a poisonous flower, beautiful, deadly, and intentional.

It would be such a relief to stop changing colors every day and stick to something flattering, unless the stripes were a symptom of my bindings to Winston.

I put on my leather green glovelets and opened the bathroom door.

Winston wore a velvet tuxedo of deepest purple, with a green and lighter purple striped shirt underneath. That’s fine. Those are the clothes I’d given him so I wasn’t surprised, but he looked like a movie star in my clothes, and the way he smelled…

It didn’t help that he looked at me like I made him forget to breathe. Literally, he wasn’t breathing. I wasn’t either. We should breathe. One, two, three… I gulped a breath and nodded briskly. “Excellent. Everything seems to fit.”

I strode past him while he fell in, smelling so heavenly I wanted to sink against his neck and breathe him in until I asphyxiated. I shook it off.

“Clary,” he began, low, growly, sending a shaft of lightning down my spine.

Oh, right. I was going to apologize. I turned stiffly to look at him.

He held up a corsage, a dark purple lily with green spots that matched the one he wore on his lapel.

He put it on my wrist while I stared at him, dizzy from his touch, his nearness until with a slight smile, he held out his arm, and then we walked together.

Right. I was his wife in this debacle. Not that I wasn’t actually his wife, but I was trying to act like it.

The kind that would never murder her husband.

In the car, I turned to him and blurted out the words, “I’m sorry for insulting your father’s memory.”

He raised a brow. “You didn’t.”

“I did.” I frowned.

His eyes softened. “My mistake. In that case, I accept your apology. You look stunning. You’re going to start a new trend: stripes.

I can see it now.” He smiled a soft smile that summoned his dimple and crinkled around his eyes.

Sweet. Soft. I wanted to touch every line and flex of his face until I knew every piece of it. I was such an idiot.

“Do you start a lot of trends?”

“Not particularly. I have fans that do cosplay of the characters, but I don’t think that’s considered a trend. Vilus has more players than me. His costumes are more striking.”

“Vilus? You mentioned him earlier.”

He gave me a look. “You’ve watched the show.”

“Five minutes of it.”

“Five minutes of my show, and you saw me kissing Lois? Felicity Raven is her show name.”

I sniffed. “Thank you for that information. I’m sure I find it so wonderfully interesting.”

“She’ll be there tonight.”

I stiffened up. “Will she? I suppose the two of you are great friends. She’ll be so happy to hear that you’re married.”

“Actually, she’ll be the opposite. I wonder if you’d mind being possessive and demonstrative around her.

She’s the actual part of the reason I’m thinking this season would be a good time to kill myself off.

I have another young actor on the show playing my apprentice who could take over who is also a great ambassador of neutral magic. ”

“He sounds too young for your girlfriend.”

“I really like you being jealous, but it isn’t necessary. I’ve never had feelings for Raven or Lois, and the only reason she’s pushing the story of our real life relationship is for the press. Also to cover the string of disreputable men she tends to make mistakes with.”

“You never make mistakes with women.”

He gave me an intent look. “Mistakes with women, oh yes. But not mistakes in choosing women. Just in letting them go.”

I sniffed while my heart twinged. This conversation was unnecessary. Although it was good to have a heads up about his co-star so I didn’t react stupidly when I saw her.