Page 96 of Witchness Protection

“Save them for the wedding.” She pulled him toward her by his tie and kissed him. He tasted like coffee and old books and the particular relief of a man who’d prepared for fourteen different outcomes and been ambushed by the simplest one.

From the windowsill, Azrael cleared his throat. Neither of them had seen him arrive. Neither of them was surprised.

“I expect to be consulted on all wedding planning decisions,” the familiar said. “Non-negotiable. I’ve been with Hazel since she was fifteen and with you, demon, for the most stressful month of my nine lives. I’ve earned a seat at the table.”

“Noted,” Marcus said, not taking his eyes off Hazel.

“And the catering had better include sashimi-grade tuna. Not the canned kind. I will inspect the supplier’s certifications personally.”

“Noted.”

“And I refuse to wear a bow tie larger than the one I wore to trial. It was perfect. Don’t try to improve on perfection.”

“Azrael,” Hazel said. “Shut up.”

The familiar shut up. It was possible that he was purring.

They stood in the empty storefront. A desk. A half-organised bookshelf. Two people who probably needed to eat lunch at some point.

The shop next door was still being rebuilt. Cassandra’s trial was pending. Margaret Thornfield was still out there somewhere, doing whatever Margaret Thornfield did when she wasn’t ruining lives.

None of it was finished. That was fine. They had time.

Evening.Hazel walked through Willowbrook.

The streets were different now, not healed, but changed. The murraue were gone, driven out by the ward network that still hummed at the edges of town, silver and obsidian buried in the soil like a second nervous system. People slept through the night. That counted for something.

She passed Beth Morrison outside the flower shop. Beth nodded. Hazel nodded back. Not friends. Allies. The distinction mattered, and neither of them pretended otherwise.

She dropped off a tonic for Jeremy Hollins. His wife still hadn’t come back, but the wolf was under control again, Hazel’s stabiliser, brewed from memory, adjusted by instinct. Jeremy took the bottle, paid in cash, and said thank you like a man who meant it and couldn’t afford more.

The Castellan twins had their fertility charm. Hazel had remade it from memory, not identical to the original, because the original’s instructions had burned with the grimoire, but close. Close enough. The magic knew the intention, even if the recipe was different.

Her shop was half-rebuilt. The front wall. The framing. The stone doorframe, smooth now, scrubbed clean. The new sign leaned against the interior wall, waiting to be hung. Same name. Same font.

WICKED BREWS

She stopped at the door. Touched the frame where the obsidian runes had been. The stone was warm from the afternoon sun.

Behind her, across the street, Marcus was closing up his storefront for the night. She heard the click of the lock, the rustle of his jacket. He was silhouetted against the window: tall, precise, adjusting something on his desk that was probably already perfectly aligned.

He caught her eye across the street. Did that thing where he almost smiled. Not quite there, five centuries of practice at notshowing what he felt, broken open by a hedge witch with terrible tea and a cat who knew too much, but not broken enough for a full smile. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

But the almost was enough.

Hazel thought:Five hundred years old and he still can’t just smile like a normal person.

She smiled enough for both of them.

From the half-rebuilt shop, she could hear Beth’s wolves arguing about drywall thickness. Someone had left a Dunkin’ cup on the new windowsill.

She went inside.