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“Cops.”
“Shipwreck,” she hissed. “Someone must have noticed something and called it in.”
Checking the backyard, they ran toward the fence.
“You used to be a gymnast in high school, right?” he whispered.
“What?”
Instead of an answer, he grabbed her around the waist and flung her over the six-foot fence. He followed right after with the ease of his demon physique and found her staggering to her feet, her hair all messed up and full of leaves.
“You need to work on that landing,” he said and ran before she could give him the magical beating her sour expression promised.
They stopped sprinting two blocks out from the house, and Hazel doubled over, her hands on her knees, her breathing ragged. He watched her haul in air, his own pulse barely kicked up from the brief run.
“Maybe you should give that treadmill you’ve got in the spare room some love.” He examined his nails for non-visible dirt.
“Keep that up,” she ground out between heavy breaths, “and there won’t be enough of you left for Basil to identify.”
He clucked his tongue. “So bloodthirsty.” Turning on the spot, he scanned the area. “Are you parked close to the house?”
“One street over.” She straightened. “I walked a block.”
Smart thinking.
She looked in the direction of the house, her brow furrowed. “I should have done cleanup. The human authorities will have a field day with this.”
He scoffed. “Sure. They’ll chalk it up to some crazy kids playing at Satanic rituals. They wouldn’t recognize real magic if it slapped them in the face.”
“Well,” she said, picking the leaves out of her hair, “I hope you’re right. The witch community has more pressing issues than doing a full-scale mind scrub of the police station. Again.”
He raised a brow, but she didn’t elaborate. Letting it go with a shrug, he said, “So, about my proposition…”
She tilted her head. “You really are serious.”
“Yes. Just one night. No one will know.”
With a sigh, she massaged her closed eyes. “In that case, let me make it clear for you.” When she looked at him again, her smile was sharp like a blade. “Take that preposterous proposition of yours, stuff it down your throat, and choke on it.”
“So that’s a no?”
She turned on the spot and stalked off.
“Now who’s being rude?” he yelled after her.
CHAPTER 4
By the time Hazel got home, her annoyance at Tallak’s outrageous proposition hadn’t lessened one bit. If anything, her irritation with him grew the more she thought about it. Her hands gripped the steering wheel hard as she brought the car to a halt in the wide, circular driveway in front of the Murray mansion.
Who did he think he was? And, maybe more on point, who did he think she was? That comparison to the random guy who’d messaged her on Facebook wasn’t even a joke, not in terms of how little consideration for her as a person was packed into Tallak’s “offer.” No matter his smug assumption that she wanted him as much as he wanted her—and even if that might be true, the fact that he just presumed it to be the case made her want to give him a nasty bout of crotch itch—his suggestion was all about him, a self-centered move so obviously lacking in respect for her that it was laughable.
She got out of the car and closed the door with maybe a little too much force. The slam echoed in the gloom of the early morning, and she flinched. A glance up at the dark windows of the house, a few seconds ticking by…and she exhaled. Apparently, she hadn’t woken Rose, Basil, or Isa.
The keys jingled when she took them out of her pocket to unlock the massive front door. Well, at least there was one good thing that came out of Tallak’s infuriating proposition—now she knew he was just as affected by her as she was by him. How often had she wondered, over the past seven months, whether that one stolen moment in Faerie haunted him as much as it did her, whether he craved a repeat with the same kind of insidious viciousness that seemed to carve at her bones?
Now she knew. And, in a very petty sort of way, it made her feel so much better. Vindicated, in a sense. I’m not the only one suffering from this mad, irrational longing.
She closed the big door carefully behind her, the familiar scent of the old house a soothing balm. Marble and worn wood, the faint fragrance of herbs from the kitchen, the low-level buzz of passive magic. This house had once been filled with children’s laughter, several generations of Murrays living in its many rooms…with only a handful of the family remaining now.
