I wet my lips, glancing at the door. “Can I ask one more favor? Don’t tell Cliff about this… veiled blood I have. Or Sylvia. Not yet.”
Delilah arched a brow, and the slight lift to the corners of her mouth made my stomach twist. “You’re sorely mistaken if I want to be in the same room as Cliff Everett when you break the news to him,” she said, chuckling.
“I’ll figure out a way to tell them both eventually. I just need a second to wrap my head around all of this. This has been the craziest week of my fucking life.”
Delilah nodded, giving my shoulder a reassuring squeeze as though to break through any lingering distrust I harbored for her. “I swear, Nowak—I’ll leave you to your privacy.”
I weighed the texts in my arms. HowwasI going to hide these from Cliff and Sylvia? A problem for later, I supposed. I didn’t anticipate we’d be leaving the safehouse for at least a few days to lick our wounds and regroup—though I’d prefer longer, if Delilah’s patience permitted.
“Why help me?” I asked, unable to shake suspiciousness. She wasn’t like the other witches I’d had the extreme misfortune of meeting, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have an ulterior motive.
“It must be exhausting, being such a stick in the mud all the time.” Delilah shrugged, something gleaming in her gaze that I almost mistook asfondness. “Helping a pair of doomed, star-crossed romantics is another tick on my penance. Certainly the mostentertainingto date. I hope you get what you want, Nowak. But truthfully, I hope more so that Sylvia does.” She shot me a soft smirk, which earned a little laugh from me. “I’ll keep my ear to the ground.”
Before departing, she plucked up a shriveled mushroom cap from a bowl of herbs stored on her workbench and popped it into her mouth as she sauntered off.
Even as her footsteps faded from earshot, my heartbeat plucked up. I set the books down on a desk, flipping through the worn pages of each. A hunter, pursuing the dark arts; I could hardly think of anything more despicable.
Thud, thud, thud.My pulse pounded harder, faster.
Betrayal. Betrayal. Betrayal.
But what did it matter if I was betraying the ideals of hunting that I’d been shaped by? Tammy had already burned that rulebook herself tonight.
I wrestled back the painful clips exchanged with her just hours ago.
No, don’t fucking cry. Don’t think of her glaring at you from the floor of the loading bay like you’re a damn abomination.
Eros probably had men in place to tie up loose ends, even in a contingency. She was probably safe on another transport with Rhett and Cliff’s asshole of a father—what was left of him, anyway.
I let one tome lie open, tracing the spell rune inked on the page: a tri-forked whirl that branched out into interlocking curves. Aneldritch manipulation, the text claimed. I leaned closer, whispering the first few words of the incantation, even knowing nothing would happen with no blood drawn. The very taste of the Latin on my tongue felt bitter and strange, but I swore the hair on my arms rose to attention. Distant or not, maybe that was a sign of the dormant power stirring inside of me.
Maybe my time wielding fae magic in the spectral realm wouldn’t be wasted after all. I almost found myselfexcitedto hold that glowing power in my hand again. Here, in the real world.
A voice carried down the hall, and I flinched like a guilty child.
Cliff’s voice.Shit.
I slammed the spellbook shut and stacked the three of them on the workbench to hide Delilah’s experimentation on my blood. Hopefully, any passerby would assume she always stored those tomes here and think no differently. At least until I could figure out a way to smuggle them out.
And what was I hiding, exactly? A part of me chafed with embarrassment, hiding from my best friend like this. I hadn’t even done anything yet.
He was halfway down the stairs when I caught up to him.
“Nice threads,” I called, jogging to meet him. “Looks like you and Lee could share a closet.”
Cliff glowered at his borrowed clothes and then at the dark joggers and zip-up sweater I was wearing. “How come you gotthe comfy shit? Lee said he didn’t own any—what did he call it?Clothes that double as a cry for help.”
I snorted a little. “Got lucky. Delilah said one of her last guests left them.”
“Must’ve been a tall freak like you,” Cliff muttered, noting how the cuffs hung perfectly just past my ankles.
An excruciating hesitation followed as I looked him over. It was quiet here, all the others’ voices muffled in the lower levels of the house. Just us, and the falling snow beyond the vast floor-to-ceiling windows. Acidic tension still cloyed the air between all of us, but for Cliff, it was like walking into a silent hurricane. It was well past midnight, and his eyes were bloodshot, but I doubted either of us would be sleeping more than a few restless hours. Adrenaline still surged through our blood—andgrief.
“You okay?” I asked. The two words could hardly encompass everything that we’d been through tonight.
Cliff put a hand on his chest pensively. “That healer Zia. She fixed me up. It was…something.”
Physical healing wasn’t what I meant, but judging by the solemn look he gave me, he knew that.
