Page 32 of The Witch They Fear

How long had he been watching before he decided to announce himself? How much did he see?

I don't ask. Something tells me I wouldn't like the answer.

We reach Zeva. She straightens, falling into escort position automatically—

"You can go," I say to her. Casual. Like I'm dismissing a server at a restaurant. "Pretty sure the guy with the kill switch in his pocket has me covered."

Zeva's expression doesn't change. She looks at Aamon. He gives a nearly imperceptible nod. She turns and walks away without a word.

I watch her go. Then I face Aamon.

His jaw has done the thing—the centimeter shift, the micro-tell I've been cataloguing. The kill switch comment landed. Good. I wanted it to.

"Lead the way, Professor," I say. "Let's get this over with."

He turns. I fall into step behind him. And I don't miss the fact that he doesn't correct me. Doesn't say it's not a kill switch. Doesn't defend himself, doesn't explain, doesn't soften.

He just walks. And I follow.

I look down at my hands. My fingertips are still buzzing—faint arcs of light flickering under the skin like embers that won't die. Kage's handprint is a ghost on my shoulder and my magic is awake in a way it wasn't an hour ago, churning and restless and running hot, like someone grabbed the dial and cranked it.

Which is exactly what happened. He touched me and my magic went haywire and now I'm walking into a private training session with the man who can put me on my ass with one button while my power is spiking like a heart monitor in a horror movie.

Great. Just what I fucking needed.

Hex.

Damn it. It's already sticking.

Chapter 6

The room Aamon takes me to is not what I expected.

I expected the testing room, I guess. Stone walls, ward-lines in the floor, the bunker where they put dangerous things and wait for them to explode. I expected cold and clinical and designed for containment.

A jail cell basically.

What I get is a library.

Underground, yes—Aamon leads me down a narrow staircase behind his office, through a warded door that hums against my skin as we pass through it. But the room at the bottom is warm. Low-ceilinged, softly lit by sconces that flicker with the same not-quite-electricity as the ones upstairs. Bookshelves line three walls, floor to ceiling, packed with volumes that range from leather-bound and ancient to cracked paperbacks with broken spines. A worn leather couch sits against the far wall, the kind that sags in the middle from years of use. A heavy wooden coffee table takes up the center of the room, and on it: crystals arranged in neat rows, bundles of dried herbs tied with twine, glass vials of things I can't identify, smooth stones in various sizes and colors, a brass bowl, a mortar and pestle.

Tools. Not weapons. Not containment equipment. Tools for work.

It’s like a witch’s wet dream down here.

The wards are dense but different from the testing room. Those were built for explosions—heavy, industrial, designed to absorb force. These are finer. More intentional. Woven into the stone with a precision that reminds me of embroidery rather than engineering. They don't press against me the way the testing room's wards did. They settle. Like a blanket pulled over something restless.

And the room smells like him.

I don't mean to notice. I don't want to notice. But it's there—old paper and cedar and something warmer underneath, like woodsmoke or sandalwood, the kind of scent that suggests a person has spent enough time in a space for the space to start smelling like them. It's in the leather of the couch, in the book spines, in the air itself. I've been in this room for ten seconds and I'm already breathing him in.

File that under things I'm going to aggressively ignore.

"This is where we'll work," Aamon says. He moves to the coffee table. Starts arranging things—shifting crystals, pulling a bundle of herbs closer—so casually I’m not sure how to react. "The wards here are designed for sustained practice, not emergency containment. You'll be able to work at your own pace without the pressure of a testing environment."

I look around. At the couch. The books. The herbs that smell green and sharp and alive. Then back at him.

"Is this your little antisocial cubby?" I ask. "Where you come to brood and avoid making eye contact with people?"