Page 39 of Hell Hath No Fury
Reason somehow won over want because I told him to sleep in the main room. The tilt of his head and the fire in his eyes told me he wanted to argue. And if he had, I would’ve submitted. Immediately. Even with the broken leg—which was not giving him nearly as much trouble as it should’ve been, even with me using magick to take the edge of the pain—the obvious head injury, amnesia and healing stab wound on his torso. I would’ve taken advantage of him… Though despite how I’d come to discover him, I was almost certain that Max was the kind of man no one took advantage of.
My fury, my constant companion since my mother’s death, burned in a new direction. Toward those who hurt him.
It was that fury that gave me the clarity I needed. I went to that cozy bedroom that felt wrong and laid awake the entire night, thinking of the man across the house, thinking of the way I’d slept tight against his chest. Then I ran over the day we’d had together. Over and over.
It was, quite simply, one of the best days of my life.
* * *
Three more days passed almost exactly like the first one. I spent the mornings up early, baking pastries for us. Unlike the first morning, Max did not sleep through that portion. He sat at the breakfast bar, nursing his coffee, watching me.
Just watching.
Those mornings were spent in a sacred silence, the birds and gentle breeze the only sound.
I waited tensely for questions. Ones I would be bound to answer honestly. Bound by what, I hadn’t discovered. And I hadn’t been tryingthathard to discover.
We were left alone because of my wards, and because everyone likely thought I was getting acquainted with my new residence. It was not unheard of for witches to sequester themselves, placing their own wards around the property, letting the house get used to them.
Even Ridley wasn’t brazen enough to try to interrupt.
But my friends might. Each of them well-meaning, and they might even be able to make it onto my property, past my wards because of their concern and their connection to me. Not to mention their powers. Even Minerva would be torn away from her books if I was gone much longer.
So I’d begrudgingly gone to the compound, ignoring the stares, the way everyone gave me a wide berth.
I decided not to go looking for my friends—why would I need to when one was an Oracle?—and go to the garage to tinker with my bike.
It was an odd addition to the large, renovated Victorian house that served as the main house with vines crawling upit, a wraparound porch with various sitting areas and a lush, wild garden that bloomed year-round. Pretty much the cliché witch house. There were other, smaller buildings where we kept supplies, a small health clinic and food stores. Each were smaller versions of the main house, built with wood, nature crawling over them. The garage was the structure that stood out… Black with rolling, metal doors, bikes parked in front of it. There was a weapons room, heavily warded. Pretty much where we kept everything that wasn’t in keeping with our ancient identities but matched up with our contemporary one.
“You’re keeping a secret,” Nyx observed.
I jerked, scowling up at her but more pissed at myself for letting someone enter the garage without noticing.
She stood above me, looking down to where I was working on my bike.
After scowling for a few seconds longer, I returned my attention to the bike. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said to my motorcycle, mostly because I did not want to lie to Nyx. Not that she was convinced in the slightest. She likely knew the lies I would try to tell before she even strutted in.
“You’re at the cottage,” she observed. “The place you said, not one week ago, that you were going to burn down.”
I chewed my lip. I did say that. Among other things that could’ve been considered blasphemous.
“We all know I was being ever so slightly dramatic on that one,” I replied. “Even I wouldn’t anger the Goddess by burning down one of the Thirteen.”
“I wouldn’t put it past you,” Nyx muttered.
I sighed, knowing that I wasn’t going to get any work done, and Nyx wasn’t going to go away while I pretended to get work done, so I rolled out from under my bike.
Nyx was sitting backward on a chair, resting her forearms on the back of it, regarding me through her dark bangs.
Her gaze was far too penetrating, so I avoided it, wiping my hands on a rag I pulled from my tool bench before reaching into my mini fridge for a beer. I wordlessly handed it to her, and she took it thankfully.
Technically, Oracles were not supposed to drink. Or they were expressly forbidden to, if you wanted to be a stickler… Something about booze altering their visions. But Nyx was the biggest booze hag I’d ever met and one of the strongest Oracles in generations, so I was pretty sure the booze thing was bullshit.
“I wouldn’t put it past me either,” I agreed, taking a long pull of a beer of my own. My mind wandered, not to the cottage itself but to the man inside of it.
With every passing day, I was risking more. Even without magical intervention, he was healing. Quicker than a normal mortal. Not because he was anything but mortal, but because of the cottage and the land. He was drinking and bathing in the water. Eating foods grown in that soil.
Letting a mortal, let alone a man, do that was an offense that could result in banishment. At best.
