Page 32 of Hopelessly Teavoted
“The megachurch?”
“Yes. They’re not the first shades to warn me about them. I actually wanted to talk to you about that.” She blinked, and her face tensed. “Another ghost mentioned something off there. Your father is not sure what they’re doing precisely, and he doesn’t know who is to blame, but he said to start with what happened to Madam Cleopatra. He said there are consequences to what they tried to do to her,” she said. Her brows drew together, and hairs raised on his arms. It was a bad sign that two sets of ghosts had warned Vickie about this church. He stepped toward her as the flames increased.
She frowned. “I don’t see what that has to do with anything, but fine. I’ll tell him.”
“Madam Cleopatra, the fake psychic? And tell me what?”
“Yes, her. Tell you that I, ah, ran into the devil who made the bargain with my parents. Olexandre. They cut me off, like I said, formally with a lawyer. Your mom says he’s a lesser devil, and his gift should be harmless, but still. I owe him. Three souls.” She wasn’t quite meeting his eyes, and he noticed that she wasblushing, of all things.
“I’ve heard about Olexandre, the heartbreaker. When you told me your parents disowned you, you left out the part where you met a handsome devil to whom you are now legally bound,” growled Azrael. He pressed his lips together, feeling a muscle in his cheek jump. “Are you all right?”
“I’mfine, Az. He’s just a lesser devil. They give out nice gifts, really. As I’m sure you know. Like talking to ghosts. Charm. Persuasion. Dream walking. That would have been a cool one, actually. And who says he’s handsome?”
Azrael ran a hand through his hair anxiously. “They arealwayshandsome, Vick. It’s never a deal with an ugly devil. Come on now.”
She shook her head.
“I’m sorry, Az, it’s about to be over.” The heat next to himwas scorching, and he gasped at it, reminding himself that it couldn’t harm her. “Az, they said to be careful. To stay away from the church until we know more about it. To find Madam Cleopatra. To alert the Council. Anything else you want to tell them?”
The burning licked up toward her elbows now.
“I love you,” he said once more, to the air over her shoulder. Hoping it would land on his parents’ ears as the salt and pepper shakers went up into flames and he stepped back, watching the fire shoot up from her palms and eventually flicker out. The ash remaining fell to the floor.
A small, stubborn part of him that refused to give up also hoped the three words landed in Vickie’s ears.
Even if he had given up on honesty some years ago.
CHAPTER 10Victoria
Azrael looked like his heart was breaking, and it made sense. It was tragic not to see them himself to say goodbye.
Goddess, why couldn’t she and Az have just let go and loved each other the way the Harts did? Like an old-fashioned movie or slow music that wound its way around the table of a record player, pumping out blood and passion and sensations. She was caught in a memory, the temptation to want that with him. To dance a tango in the grand ballroom of Hart Manor under the moonlight. To share passionate kisses like the ones she’d witnessed between Benedict and Persephone from inside a claw-foot soaking tub when she and Az would sneak around the house as kids.
All that and more.
Her words had fallen short in showing how his mom had reached for his tearstained face, or how his dad looked both formal and welcoming in a suit as always, white hair brushed back and clean in death. If only she had real magic to show him how much his parents cared. If only she and Azrael hadn’t been so perfect and so awful together for that one day. Then she could at least touch him and distract him from the grief and loss winding into his soul.
But he had been absolutely clear. After two years of late-night clumsy phone calls, confusing texts, and summerinternships keeping them on their respective coasts, one day, he had just shown up. She had been dreaming of him, and in the dreams, she ran through flames and called his name. The next thing she knew, he was on a red-eye flight. He walked from the train station near her school in the rain. Said he’d used what was left in his bank account on the round-trip ticket. Told her he had just needed to be there. That he had to see her in that moment, even just for the weekend. That he’d heard her calling to him in the universe. Summoning him. She had thought, for a foolish instant, that it was the soulmate-level love that his parents had.
When she asked why Benedict and Persephone didn’t pay for the ticket, he laughed. Thunder booming overhead, he told her that when you finally decide to seize your destiny and go for what you want, it ought to be on your own terms and with your own money.
It had been so perfect then.
Before he’d changed his mind.
They had stood in the rain awkwardly for a few moments, six years ago, chests heaving in a tense pause while they decided. Droplets gathered and fell from his long lashes. She remembered all too well how his lips had pressed against hers, gentle at first. How he had cradled her face, how desperate she had been to give in to the inevitability of the moment. Kisses turned harder. Hands wove into soggy hair. The feel of his mouth against hers had been like coming up for fresh air after breathing smog for her entire life. His hands had traced her sides, his fingers warm, stable, and unwieldy all at once. She had wanted him to touch her everywhere. The imprints of his thumbs felt tattooed into her hips. His fingers slipped under her shirt to the dimples where her back met her ass. Venus dimples, he’d called them, kissing them reverently in her room later and then moving lower, while she thanked her lucky stars her roommate had agreed to clear out for the weekend. She wished she didn’t remember the slick drawl of those moments quite so accurately.
Somehow, on the creaky and uncomfortable twin bed of her dorm room, Azrael had touched her like they were more than two brash twenty-year-olds hooking up in a dormitory. It had been a homecoming, his lips on hers and the taste of his name on her tongue, and then the way she came undone when he moved that lush, magical mouth lower and lower.
Afterward, she had thought this was it. That this would be forever. She woke up to the smell of him, woods and tart lemonade, and she had wanted to tell him she loved him. To make him scream her name and beg and profess his love for her.
But he got up to go get them coffee, promised that he could never let her want for anything, and he came back an hour later, with two cups gone cold and a strange expression on his face as he explained that this was just one time, just to get it out of his system, and that they had no obligation to each other.
We’re just friends, he had said.
I don’t think of you that way.
It doesn’t mean anything.
