Page 45 of To Tempt a Witch to Sin

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Hazel carefully closed the door behind her, then trudged through the shadows of the foyer, up the staircase, and down the hallway to her bedroom.

Another night, another homecoming to a dark, quiet house.

Rolling her tight shoulders, she stretched her neck and took a deep breath. It didn’t do anything to alleviate the slimy feeling coating her skin, the hard ball of lead in her stomach.

How could she have been so clumsy? So tactless? Beth’s words replayed in her mind, and each time, the sting sank deeper, hurting all the more because the other witch had hit home with her accusations. Shame heated her face, made her throat burn. The need to apologize to Beth was a consistent ache in her chest, but it wouldn’t do any good, would it? The damage was done, Beth’s opinion of her humiliatingly low, a bridge burned instead of repaired.

Hazel wanted to crawl out of her skin, if only to escape this nauseating feeling of wrongness. It was so familiar, this sensation. So many of her interactions with Robert had left her feeling this way, like she couldn’t do anything right, like every word she said, every step she took broke some unspoken, arcane rule of civility. For years, she’d tried so hard to mold herself into someone who’d never step on anyone’s toes. It had never been enough for him.

She passed Rose’s room. No light underneath the door, so Rose was either asleep in her bed…or out doing whatever it was she did these days. Or, rather, nights. Not like Rose confided in her. Just one more thing to add to the growing list of things Hazel was failing at.

She’d gotten no further in finding out more about the sigil the unknown witch had used with the blood sacrifice. Days of research, and she had yet to chance upon that exact symbol in a book. Sigils were an ancient, rarely used piece of magic. Accordingly, the information on these symbols was hard to come by. In all her life working with spells and weaving power, Hazel hadn’t once used a sigil herself.

And all the while, the witch who’d committed the murder walked free. Likely to murder again.

A heavy breath, more weight settling on her chest, choking her.

At the door to her bedroom, her phone pinged in her pocket. With a frown, she took it out as she walked over to her dresser, dumping her pouch onto it.

A message from Tallak. Hey, you awake?

With a sigh, she typed, What is it now?

Just what kind of trouble had he gotten himself into this time?

Her phone rang. Startled, she almost dropped it, barely holding back a squeak. She fumbled to answer Tallak’s call.

“What do you want?” she said, trying hard to keep the complicated brew of feelings inside her from making an appearance in her voice.

A considering pause. “What’s wrong?”

Hazel frowned. Damn perceptive demon. “Nothing. I just—”

Tallak clucked his tongue. “It ain’t nothing if it makes you sound like you’d like to commit some violence but are sadly too tired to do so. Which is a shame. It’s glorious when you let loose and draw blood.”

Hazel blinked, stumped for a moment. “I—was that a compliment?”

“Want some more?”

This demon, he absolutely rattled her. She closed her mouth with an audible click. “I don’t really—listen, it’s been a long night, and I—”

“Hazel.” Her name on his lips, spoken in such a quiet tone, it stopped her cold, then caused a hot, prickling sensation to course through her. “What happened?”

Maybe it was the late hour of the night, the fact that she’d been awake for way too long, or how she sat here in this huge, dark, quiet house with no one to talk to, or maybe it was the rawness of the pain inside her eroding her walls that made her answer him.

“I messed up.”

“How so?”

Swallowing past the thickness in her throat, she said, “Tonight, on patrol.” And as she proceeded to tell him what had happened with the Callahans, she struggled to make sense of how she rationally knew opening up to him like this was a bad idea, while at the same time the weight on her chest lifted with every word she spoke. When she finished, she felt wrung out and relieved, soothed and raw in such an odd combination that she had to catch her breath.

“So,” Tallak said after a moment of silence, “to sum up, you’re feeling guilty because this witch with only two functioning brain cells couldn’t take the serving of truth you offered her and instead yelled at you for hurting her fee-fees?”

Hazel blinked rapidly. “Um, that’s—” She shook her head. “No, I mean, I should have been more respectful of the fact that her mother just died. She was right to be offended, and I—”

“Hazel,” he interrupted her spiraling into a self-conscious monologue. “Fuck her.”

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