“Not bad for a morning’s work,” she said.
“It’s past one.”
“Not bad for five hours’ work doesn’t have the same ring to it.” She turned to face him, her teasing fading. “Marcus, I… thank you. For last night. I know I was difficult about it, but you saved my life. Again.”
“It’s my…”
“If you say ‘job’ one more time, I’m hexing your tea for a week.”
He shut his mouth.
She held his gaze for a moment, then shook her head. “I should do laundry. Very important, laundry.”
“Of course.”
“Right.” She backed toward the cabin. “You should probably check your emails or review legal things or whatever it is you do.”
“Hazel.”
She paused at the door.
“We make a good team,” she said, not quite meeting his eyes.
“Don’t get used to it, witch.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” She smiled despite herself. “Demon.”
She disappeared inside. Marcus stood among the wards, hands in his pockets. He should reinforce the southwest line;he’d done it sloppy. He didn’t. He stood there until the cold drove him in.
6
Marcus Hawthorne had survivedplague outbreaks, prohibition raids, and the entire disco era with his sanity intact. But waking to an empty cabin with no trace of his witness might finally be what broke him.
“Hazel?” His voice echoed through the cramped space. The bedroom door stood open, bed neatly made. No answer from the bathroom. No humming from the kitchen where she usually massacred breakfast.
The protective pendant he’d given her lay on the kitchen counter like an accusation.
“Azrael?” Nothing. Even the cat had vanished.
Losing a witness meant career suicide. Losing Hazel meant?—
No.
He burst out of the cabin, October air sharp in his lungs. No signs of struggle. The wards he’d reinforced yesterday remained intact, which meant she’d left willingly. The stubborn, reckless, absolutely infuriating witch.
There. A trace of her magic, faint but unmistakable, leading into the woods. Lavender and lightning, uniquely hers. His demon senses locked onto it like a bloodhound catching scent.
Marcus plunged into the forest, following the magical trail. Pine needles crunched under his Allen Edmonds oxfords, completely inappropriate for hiking, but he hadn’t exactly planned a nature walk when he’d dressed this morning, expecting to find his witness where he’d left her.
The trail wound through dense trees for what felt like hours but was probably twenty minutes. His shirt snagged on branches. Mud splattered his perfectly pressed pants. A branch caught him across the cheek hard enough to draw blood.
None of it mattered. He had to find her before something else did.
In five centuries, he’d protected dozens of witnesses. Professional about all of them. Detached.
Voices ahead. Marcus slowed, recognizing the buzz of commerce. A gap in the trees revealed a clearing filled with vendor stalls and supernatural citizens haggling over goods: a magical market.
And there, examining a display of herbs like she hadn’t a care in the world, stood Hazel Wickwood.
