Page 101 of Hopelessly Teavoted
He winked. “Benedict Hart rule. We always have time for mood setting.”
“He said that?”
“He sure did. Used to embarrass the hell out of me, but I kind of get what he was talking about now.”
He moved from plant to plant, and she followed.
“Lavender, for protection, and because you love it.” She smiled and watched him with the shears, cutting as carefully as Persephone ever had. “Myrtle, for love.” She held out a gloved hand to hold the sprig as they moved on. “Sage. We write our names on it with wild honey.” He gestured to a little jar sitting next to the plant.
“You already got the honey.”
“Of course I did, sweetheart.” The nickname struck a chord in her heart that made her wonder if it would be fine not to make it out of the excursion tonight. She could die happy knowing that this moment had existed, when she and Az had finally dropped all pretense between them.
“A few more things here, if you want to meet me in the library with those?”
She nodded, picking up the jar and the other clippings.
“Don’t be too long,” she said. Azrael winked at her, smiling crookedly and making her knees a bit weak before she hurried from the room.
“I’ll be there. And, Vickie, when it’s time, I’ll tell you what’s in my wallet.”
Desire pooled in her stomach, her core clenching. An ill-advised longing, for the soul-binding magic would take time, and it wasn’t like they could reallybetogether until it wasdone. They had a trip to take, and then, upon their return, a seal to set.
There was a promise in Azrael’s voice, though, a reverence. Yearning.
She had a feeling that his confession would untether her, body and soul.
CHAPTER 33Azrael
Preparing the potion had been the easy part; waiting for it to brew would be difficult. How he’d longed for the slip of his fingers against each other so that he could touch her, even if only with magic and not with his actual hands.
But longing looks from the back seat of the car would have to suffice. Evelyn was driving, and to avoid potential death, Priscilla shared the back seat with him like they were small children pranking each other with real snakes in cans again.
“Remember the time you almost killed me when I was ten?” Azrael asked fondly, though the recollection was harrowing.
“Ah, you were fine. You know how I love a classic copperhead-in-a-can trick,” said Priscilla, examining her black fingernails.
Once the venomous thing had bit him in fear, his mother had to snap her fingers to remove the poison quickly while his dad magicked the snake out of the car.
“Yeah, Prissy, almost killing your only brother. You’re hisssssterical,” Az teased.
Priscilla rolled her eyes, but Vickie laughed so hard that she snorted a little bit in the front seat, and the sound of it filled him with the sort of warm fuzzy feelings that he recognized from so many books. He may as well have stretched out his armtoward a light, or declared how ardently he loved her, or compared her to the sun.
He was hopelessly devoted to her.
And somehow, in a moment more magical than anything he had ever wielded, she loved him too. She chose him, and had agreed to the binding. To set the seal. Their eyes locked as she turned back to look at him, pupils dilated.
“How long again until the spell work is ready?” Vickie asked.
“Seven hours precisely from when you began brewing it,” answered Evelyn.
They had five hours, then, to investigate, get to the megachurch, and stop Chet. It was this or go through the staff directory at the church, asking intrusive questions or tricking people into magical scans until someone allowed them in, and he didn’t relish the thought of doing that, so they had agreed to break into the church.
A mundane crime, he supposed, was justifiable in this situation.
“Explain to me again why we can’t just portal in,” Az said, scrubbing a hand across his face. “Can’t Evelyn get a special exception to the portaling suspension?” He was tired, and he wanted to talk to Victoria again in private.
Well. Maybe he wanted to do more than talk.
