Page 16 of Wolf, Willow, Witch
Ah, yeah, there it is.Tehlor painted on a grateful smile.Pride. That’s her language.She’d stroked Rose’s ego just enough to earn an invitation back. Or something like an invitation. Assurance, maybe.
“I see your husband’s found the boy’s club.” Rose sighed, trading a Starbucks cup from one hand to the other. Her attention stayed on Lincoln and Phillip, surrounded by other men, but she continued speaking. “I’ll be hosting a cookout the night before the revival next week. You should stop by.”
“Oh, yes,” Amy exclaimed, grinning. “I’m making a keto casserole.”
Tehlor almost saidIand stopped herself. “We’d love that, thank you. Is there anything I can bring?”
“Whatever you’d like,” Rose said. Another test. She offered a lukewarm smile. “I’ll let Phillip know. He’ll send your husband our address.”
“Perfect,” she said.
Lincoln's gaze snapped to her. He smiled, nodding along to something someone said. His sly eyes hooked around her ribs. Pulled. Cinched everything a little tighter. She wanted to extinguish the fire he lit. Wanted to walk into the ocean and let the waves pummel her, then crawl back onto shore renewed and restored, unchanged and unbothered.
But the spark he'd carried back from hell continued to grow, and Tehlor Nilsenburned.
Chapter six
“Whiskeysour,”Tehlorsaid.She hoisted onto a stool at a dive bar on the outskirts of Gideon. It was a small, ugly place that shared a parking lot with a roadside inn and a strip club. No one from Haven would be caught dead in the vicinity. When the bartender asked if she had a liquor preference, she shook her head. “Well is fine, thank you. What do you want?”
Lincoln took the seat beside her. “Whatever IPA you’ve got.”
“You’re in Colorado,” Tehlor deadpanned.
The bartender nodded solemnly. “Yeah, we have five on tap. Any favorites?”
“Surprise me,” Lincoln said. He eyed Tehlor down his straight nose, assessing her in a swift pass from forehead to chin. “What’s next?”
She waited for the bartender to leave their drinks and cruise to the other end of the bar before she sighed and said, “The stupid barbeque, I guess.”
“Don’t you think you should replenish before an outing like that?”
The hair on the back of her neck stood. In all fairness, she should’ve anticipated his ability to perceive her stunning lack ofumph. She hadn’t fought back when he’d choked her in the bathroom. She hadn’t shown any sort of power besides the ritual she’d performed in Bishop’s basement, and truthfully, that was more a bargain than a spell, anyway. She sipped her drink and pushed the liquor around in her mouth, coating her gums. A part of her wanted to lie. But the rest of her—the braver, reckless bits—slithered toward the surface, curving her lips into a smile.
“What makes you think I need to?” Tehlor asked. She dipped her finger into her drink and sucked the digit clean.
“You don’t seem like the kind of woman who’d take shit lyin’ down. Call me a liar, but I think we both know bringing me back took a lot out of you.”
Her expression hardened. She snorted, lifting a brow as she drained the rest of her cocktail.
“You’re not wrong,” she rasped, breathing through the whiskey-burn. “Godhood is transactional. If I give something, my deities will return the favor. Hel gave you back, so.” She shrugged. “I could manage a few spells, but nothing fuckin’ useful.” She really, seriously wanted to stuff her own fist in her mouth. But Lincoln had worn her blood and felt her pain. Even if telling him the truth made her want to puke, enduring her honesty was part of the deal. “I could try to make a blood offering.”
Lincoln ran his bottom lip across the edge of his glass, collecting a bit of foam. He was alarmingly attentive. The longer he looked at her, gingerly sipping his beer, elbow propped on the cracked wood, the more inhuman he became. Hellfire still blazed in his mismatched eyes. When his throat flexed around a swallow, Tehlor glanced away from his neck and stared at his hand, then tore her eyes away from that too, and turned toward the shelf behind the bar, reading the labels on each bottle.
Most men bored her. Most men didn’t practice demonic sorcery, though. Not seriously, at least. She’d slept with a few who claimed to know power—alt-goth he-bitches who looked the part—but she’d never met a guy whose bite wasactuallyworse than his bark, and she hated how quickly she turned into a pathetic simp after finding one.
In a wall, no less. Wrapped in a garbage bag.
Christ, she wanted to kick her own ass.
“A sacrifice? In this economy?” He tapped his pint against her empty glass. “Good luck finding anyone worth a damn.”
“Myblood,” she corrected.
Lincoln tilted his head. Muted light scaled his jaw, sending a shadow along the seam where his neck became two pieces. “I’ve heard your deities accept other forms of worship, too.”
“Sex?” Tehlor stole the power of a proposition from him. Took his ability to make her blush or stumble, and mimicked his posture, allowing her head to loll. The whiskey gave her courage. “Yeah, we could fuck. That’d probably do the trick.”
The self-proclaimed sorcerer didn’t bother with an eyeroll. Instead, a boyish laugh punched out of him, and he furrowed his brow, slack-jawed and struck halfway to a grin. “Well, call me Tucker Carlson, because I must be a fuckin’ idiot, but aren’t yougay?”
