Page 55 of Hopelessly Teavoted
“You left these on the copier,” Az said, and she looked up, sniffling a little like she had been crying, quietly, alone in her classroom on the first day of school.
“I—thank you. Dust got caught in my contact.” Her expression was defiant, and he nodded wordlessly. “Welcome to Hallowcross High,” she said. “Sorry your first interactionwas with Chet. He’s not exactly our most pleasant department member.”
“No,” Azrael said slowly. “I imagine not. Listen. It may not be my business, but anyone who is going to talk to you like that is not worth your time. You don’t deserve that.”
Aurora stared at him, and Az wondered if he had overstepped. They had only spoken briefly at orientation, but he hated the idea of the first friendly face he’d seen here being trampled by the first unfriendly one.
Aurora’s eyes snapped shut, though, and she sighed. “I know. We aren’t even a thing anymore, but he keeps texting and calling.”
“Don’t pick up.”
“It would be rude. We’re colleagues. He’s kind of my boss.”
“He’srude. I’m telling you. Don’t pick up. Don’t answer his text messages. Don’t argue with him, just stop responding. Block his number if you have to.”
“Why do you even care?”
Her words were more curious than accusatory, but Az was angry.
“Because I have a person I love, who loves me, and we wasted years—almost a decade, in fact—dancing around instead of being honest with ourselves and each other. And now things are complicated, but I would still do anything,anything, to fix my relationship. You clearly know Chet is not that person for you. Go find your person. Don’t waste any more time. There could be thirty perfect partners out there for you, in fact. Thirty not-Chets, or even thirty fun flings. Just, life is short. Don’t waste it on the Chets of it all.”
Aurora’s mouth opened in surprise.
“Wow, new guy. Out the cut with the serious opinions.” Aurora paused for a moment, and he was pretty sure she was going to laugh at him. Then she said, “That’s cool, though. Do you want to tell me about your partner at lunch? I eat with some of the other teachers. I’m the disaster youth who keeps them entertained with my bad choices.” She looked at him andsmiled. His first real work friend. “They’re about your age, too, so you’ll have things in common. There aren’t any other people in our department my age, but I sometimes hang with the math teachers. There’s one, Kelley—she’s really nice. Her husband died when she was like three months pregnant, and she has the most adorable little baby.”
Az noticed that Aurora blushed when she mentioned the math teacher, and he smiled.
He’d accidentally adopted a catanda work friend now.
At least it would keep him distracted from Vickie while they figured shit out.
CHAPTER 16Victoria
Vickie told herself she was giving him space during the busiest month of the school year, but part of her also needed the time to process the gravity of it all. So she had insisted on visiting Madam Cleopatra in the hospital on her own, telling the orderlies she was a niece and touching everything she could get her hands on in the room to see if she could rustle up a spirit to talk. There was nothing, which made sense. Madam Cleopatra wasn’t dead, and hospital rooms didn’t generally hold objects of significance. All she’d found was a chart that said Connie Witherspoon had no changes since she’d been admitted in July.Persistent vegetative state, it read, but the cause was still unknown. She’d have to look for leads elsewhere.
When she brought Azrael a basket of muffins, she left them with Priscilla on her day off while he was at school. She didn’t trust herself not to ask him to pretend with her again, creatively and from a distance this time, and she wanted to think it through without the temptation of his fingers, snapping and so dexterous.
The trill of the phone a week and a half later reverberated through her. The clock said it was barely still Saturday, and she was bone tired after the day at the shop plus the evening’s preparation for tomorrow. There was only one person whowould be calling her. And the thought of his lips made her thighs clench.
Remembering that her kiss would kill him sobered her up from her own longing immediately. He never called, usually. Goddess, she hoped he wasn’t hurt. It had to be serious for him to call in the middle of the night. No one was more considerate than Azrael Hart, especially now that he was two weeks into a lifetime of early wake-up alarms.
“What is it? Is someone sick?” Vickie asked. Az couldn’t possibly be expected to withstand much more heartbreak. She’d make her own deal with a devil to avoid any more loss in Azrael’s life. However ill-advised such an arrangement would be.
“No, no one is sick or dead. Priscilla and I are fine, but someone broke into the house. It shouldn’t have been possible to trip the magic alarms, but they were delayed, somehow. It didn’t wake us up until after. Someone stole some plants from my mom’s garden. Pretty powerful stuff, things you would use to immobilize people or build dangerously impenetrable wards.” He stopped, his voice intense enough that she wanted to murder whoever was responsible. “They painted a giant cross with a circle around it on one of the broken panes of glass. That’s the logo for the Brethren of One Love church. I think someone there wants us to know they did this.”
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine. I swear.”
“Then I need to tell you. Az, I stopped by the hospital to see Madam Cleopatra. It was a dead end, and she was just there, roots growing out a little blond, looking unassuming. There were no objects I could find, no traces of anything. But what if someone knows? That was Wednesday. What if someone did this because I got too nosy?”
“This isn’t your fault. Listen. In witchcraft, and in my mom’s people—well, my people, too—we’re certainly no stranger to this kind of thing. It’s never your fault if a bad person takes issue with a thing you did that you needed to do.”
“Still. I should come over,” Vickie said. She needed to see that he was, in fact, as fine as he claimed.
“It’s late. You don’t have to.” He sighed. “I know I’ve been busy with work, and we haven’t had the space I wanted to talk it out. Later, at another time, I do need to tell you about something Prissy and Evelyn figured out about the curse.”
“Friends don’t let their friends put their fingers in each other’s pants, sustain epic curses, and then just walk alone into danger.” She said it firmly, ignoring the fact that she had done just that with the hospital. “And besides. I am thinking about it. A lot. I miss you. I want to be there if you’re in trouble.”
