Page 24 of Resting Witch Face
“Same thing you are doing,” Sissily spat at me through her teeth. “I swear, Hazel, one of these days I’m going to fry your ass so bad you’ll think twice before getting anywhere near me.” Raising from her sprawl, she dusted off her leggings and t-shirt with jerky movements.
“Where is Blondie?”
“On his way to your house to apologize to you for the word vomit.” An evil grin split her face. “I even told him which window is yours and advised him to beg forgiveness through it because you’ll never open the door.”
I barked out a laugh, my shoulders sagging. “You are a mean creature, Sissily. Anyone ever told you that?”
“I learned from the best.” She pointed her nose at the ceiling, sniffing at me.
“The student has suppressed the master.” We both chortled at that. “Danika?”
“Shadowblood cornered her before she had a chance to escape, so they are locked in her office.” My friend shivered in disgust. “I swear if I spent another lifetime around that man, I still wouldn’t be able to stand him.”
We both agreed on it when it came to our high priest. Shadowblood had this aura around him, especially when I was near, that made our stomachs churn. Since I could remember, not once has he looked at me with anything but contempt or hatred. Why I bothered him so much was not a hard guess, but the reason he hated Sissily was an ongoing mystery. It was more than just her hanging out with me. He was good at pretending in front of Danika, but we’d seen him staring daggers at us more than was called for.
“Girl, same.” I shivered just thinking about Shadowblood.
“Did you get a start already?” Sissily got back to business, determination burning in her blue eyes.
“Not really. It was getting pitch black in here.” My hand swirled around the light switch. “The first row is out since it’s all elemental magic, though. I managed to look through that only.”
“You want to start at the back or the front?” Lifting her arms, she took hold of her ponytail and yanked on the strands in hopes of straightening it. It made it more crooked and really puffy, forcing me to eye it critically. “I don’t care if it starts talking from my head,” she snapped when I pursed my lips.
“It’s your hair.” Hands up in surrender, I took a step back. “I’ll take the back. That way if Danika or River decide to join us, I’ll be able to hide.”
With a firm nod, Sissily jumped to work with gusto. I had to duck when I walked around her because she was pulling books off the shelves like she had a personal vendetta against them, her eyebrows pinched low over her eyes. Not for the first time, I thanked whoever found me worthy to give me a friend like her. I personally never thought I deserved her, but I refused to give her back. Sissily Stormblood was one of a kind. She was loyal, strong, caring, and I was grateful to have her in my life.
My bare feet slapped over the smooth stone as I shuffled to the far end of the library. I could barely hear my friend muttering to herself and the smack of books hitting the floor when she dismissed them. With clenched teeth to bare the pain returning with each breath, I mimicked Sissily and started on the dusty books. People rarely came to this end since most of the useful texts were lined closer. Plus, nobody wanted to take a ten-minute walk just to get here. Modern times had even made witches lazy and entitled. We expected everything at our fingertips the moment we needed it and not a second later.
The imprint of my fingers was left on the dust accumulated over the leather, but I sucked it up and dug my way through one row. Most of them were in a language I didn’t understand because I didn’t find it useful to learn without magic, and the rest were in a dead language no one understood. Well, maybe Danika knew the language, but no one normal did otherwise. No wonder they had two fingers of dust on top of them. I was wasting time looking at free-hand drawings made by a toddler who got his hands on a box of crayons, I was sure of it.
“And I am the weirdo with no magic.” I snorted under my breath, twisting my head this way and that trying to understand what I was seeing. Hysterical laughter bubbled in my throat when I realized it was a drawing of a penis with ivy twisted around it. What made me choke was the fact it was sitting upright in a chalice like a damn umbrella shoved in a cocktail glass.
“Stop that, Hazel, and get to work,” Sissily whisper-yelled from down the row, not lifting her face from the pages she was flipping through.
“It’s a penis.” My choked snort was much louder that time, and her head whipped in my direction. I raised the book to show her with my fingers spread to hold the page open, my other hand twirling around the drawing like I was a hostess on a game show. “In a cup.” A giggle escaped me. “Like an umbrella.”
“You’re so stupid.” But she was biting back a giggle, too. I could see it.
“Would you like a penis in your cocktail, milady?” Butchering a British accent did earn me a straight-out laugh from my friend. “We do have edible and inedible options.”
“Very mature, Hazel Byrne. You are pulling off adulthood like no one else.” She could say whatever she wanted because the grin was scrunching her eyes.
“I quit adulthood a long time ago. It’s boring.” Closing the book, I dumped it at my feet to join the other useless ones. “The only time I like it is when they ask for an ID at the bar. I’ll deal with it for a drink.”
“You and me both, sister.” Her tone was absentminded, and I knew I’d lost her.
After that, I really put my back into it and dove through the books with desperation fed by each passing minute. Voices floated through the closed door, forcing us to stop our search and hold our breaths, but luckily no one came. Thoughts of River talking to a closed window tried to pull my focus, but I refused. I needed to stay alive and not shunned by my kind first. I’d think about why Blondie popped in my head more often than not after that.
Magic bloomed around us, filling the air when our covenmates started and finished their rituals. Hours trickled by slowly and too fast for my liking at the same time. A few times I found myself drifting off, until my head ducked sharply and my body jerked as I gasped awake. Sissily didn’t fare better, either, leaning heavily on the bookshelves or crawling on all fours around piles of books on the floor. I could feel dawn approaching like an itch under my skin, and we had nothing to show for it.
All the searching had been for nothing.
“You could try this.” Sissily swayed on her feet, her jaw cracked on a wide yawn, and stuck an open grimoire under my nose. Swallowing the scream that lodged in my throat told me I must’ve fallen asleep. Again.
“Isn’t this a call to a deity a seer would do?” It took quite a bit of blinking to bring the looped scrawl into focus. My eyes were scratchy and dry when I lifted my gaze to her face. “You want me to pull a prophecy out of my ass? Are you insane? They’ll kill me if they find out I’m lying.”
“Like they can prove all the nonsense the seers spew day and night. Most of it is gibberish anyway.” My heart skipped a beat at her slurred words.
