Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
Dark-tipped nails dragged along the bare skin of her abdomen, gently at first, then growing in insistence. She writhed under the touch, burning up from the inside. Molten heat between her thighs made her impatient, and she lifted her hips — hoping, begging.
“Not yet, little Mortal,” the honeyed voice in her ear crooned.
Zara.
Zara above her, the weight of the demon’s body on top of hers, pressing her down into the bed.
Oh. Oh.
Dark hair fell about Zara’s face as she looked down at Ramona, those smoky eyes staring into her own, into her soul, knowing exactly what she needed. Zara’s hands, her slightly elongated canines, her tongue, her entirety.
She reached up and touched Zara’s cheek, the skin under her hand impossibly hot and soft at the same time. A moment passed between them. Trust, perhaps? Permission.
Light flooded her senses, and Ramona jerked awake, immediately pressing her thighs together to dampen the throbbing ache between them.
She looked around the room to get her bearings, finding Zara standing at the window, her hand on the cool glass.
Tiny frost designs spiraled out from where her hand touched the window, as if the merging of heat and ice sparked a bit of winter magic.
Ramona’s cheeks warmed, embarrassed by the fact that she was just having a sex dream about the demon she’d accidentally bound to her. She scrubbed a hand over her face. “Um, good morning.”
Zara was breathing fast. “Yes.”
Ramona eyed her. “Are you all right?”
Zara nodded quickly, turning away. “Of course.” She cleared her throat, and Ramona watched as she clenched and unclenched the hand that wasn’t against the window.
Was it just her embarrassment, or did Zara know what she’d been dreaming? Had Ramona done something like moan her name in her sleep? She bit her lip, unsure whether to ask or completely leave the topic alone.
“Shower, Mortal. We’re late for work,” Zara said. Her voice was still strained, but surely Ramona was reading into things. “I’ll enlist Felix to make you a cup of coffee to go.”
Ramona did as she was told, turning the hot water up higher than she normally did, scalding her skin to wash off the embarrassment and any lingering truths about just exactly what she’d been dreaming about.
The next two days of work went by quickly, with Zara creating a long list of inventory, suggesting organizational changes, and putting forth three ideas for pivoting the self-help section into something that would get them a better ROI, whatever that meant.
The only moment of pause was when Iris texted her, asking her to bring bread rolls to her family’s Imbolc dinner the following week.
Ramona had stared down at her phone, and with Zara’s help, had worded a careful response to let Iris and her mother know that she’d be officially missing Imbolc dinner this year.
Iris had sent back seventeen questions within a span of thirty seconds, but her mother had simply given Ramona’s message a quick thumbs-up. She’d silenced her phone for the rest of the day, not ready to come up with a response for Iris.
A sharp stab of guilt stayed under her sternum for hours, annoying and insistent, but how could she bring Zara to her family’s manor? To dinner? There was no way.
Both evenings were spent sitting on the couch with Posey and Cammie, watching new episodes of Love Potion. Zara joined in only from the distance of the kitchen table, asking questions no self-respecting witch ever would about the magical world’s most popular dating show.
“You’re telling me all of these gorgeous, intelligent witches are trying to get this man to fall in love with them? Why?” Zara asked.
Posey sighed dreamily. “Because it’s true love.”
Zara snorted. “But he’s not even that powerful. He’s really got nothing other than his mother’s impressive ancestry to lean on.”
Cammie glanced toward Zara. “And he’s hot. Isn’t that enough?”
Zara openly grimaced and Ramona couldn’t help but grin, hiding her smile behind her hand.
“Yeah, it’s all bullshit,” Felix said from the kitchen counter, where he was finishing up a batch of dark chocolate and cherry brownies. “But aren’t most things?”
Ramona’s two days off were a chance to take a breath.
Zara had asked to visit the library, and so they’d walked to the Fernwick Public Library.
Upon Zara’s request, Ramona had taken her to the floor reserved for magical literature that was off-limits to non-mages, where Zara had spent hours looking through literature that might help with their severing.
Ramona had passed the time browsing the romance section, then settling into a comfy chair and enjoying a little escapism about hot vampires.
On her other day off, while snow blanketed Fernwick in crisp white, Ramona did laundry and tidied her room while Zara pored over the books she’d checked out, cross-referencing A Comprehensive Guide to Magical Contracts and Their Dissolution with Infernal Agreements: Legal Precedents and Loopholes.
Back at work the next day, she and Zara had tested the tether by having Zara sit in the café next door to the shop for most of the day while Marcus was around, strategically positioned in one of the booths against the wall shared between the businesses.
It had worked well enough, and Ramona had loaned Zara her laptop, where Zara caught up on the latest season of Love Potion, all thirty-four episodes of the season so far.
On Sunday evening, Zara used the toe of her shoe to sweep away a few discarded T-shirts and dresses and knelt in front of Ramona’s bookshelf, pulling out one of the old academic tomes.
“You were a professor, right?” Zara asked casually.
Ramona tried to shove down the queasy feeling that word inspired. She forced a casual nod, keeping her hands busy by loosely braiding her hair for bed. “In another life.”
Zara glanced up, tilting her head. “Humans remember reincarnation?”
Ramona rolled her eyes. “It’s just a saying. I mean, I was a professor, and now I’m not… anything.”
“Dr. Greenbriar,” Zara said, her thumb trailing over the gilded spine of another book she lifted.
Ramona grimaced.
“Tongues of Power: The Strategic Use of Multilingual Construction in Medieval Magical Texts,” Zara read aloud. “Wow, riveting stuff.”
Ramona scoffed. “Don’t make fun of my dissertation. I spent many, many years writing that—”
Zara blinked. “Mortal, I’m not… making fun. I honestly find it very interesting.” She sat back on her heels, flipping open the book. “What kinds of courses did you teach?”
“I had two sections of Intro to Magical Languages, and Reading Medieval Grimoires in the spring with History of European Magic, 1200-1600, in alternating years. I was developing this graduate seminar on code-switching that would have been incredible, though, and the dean had talked to me about an advanced paleography course.”
It felt like a full lifetime ago that her life had been in the wood-paneled halls of Thornwood. She remembered her first day in her office, the terribly small one too close to the furnace room, sitting at her desk and feeling like she’d really made it.
But the worst part wasn’t losing the job. The worst part was losing the students.
The grad student who’d wanted Ramona to chair her dissertation committee.
The undergrad who’d finally understood why magical Latincane mattered.
The teaching assistant she’d been training.
They’d all found other advisors. Other mentors.
Other professors who could actually do magic.
Because what use was a magical languages professor who couldn’t cast a basic spell?
What use was expertise without execution? None. No use at all.
So now Ramona sold crystals to non-mages and tried not to think about the students who’d once waited after class to ask questions.
Who’d gotten excited about grimoire paleography.
Who’d wanted to be like her. She hoped they’d found better role models.
They deserved better than a washed-up academic who couldn’t even reheat her tea without catastrophe.
Zara was looking at her, watching. “What made you leave?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I’ve got a few weeks without much else going on, Mortal,” Zara said with a sardonic smile, leaning back against the wall, Ramona’s dissertation still in her lap.
“Not tonight.” Ramona sighed, and thankfully, Zara didn’t press.
Zara gestured toward the bottom row of the bookshelf where all the textbooks were gathering dust. “Maybe there’s something that can help us in all of these books, something that only your expertise would be able to find.”
“Well, it’s a good thing demons don’t need much sleep, because that’s all you,” Ramona said. “I hung up my academic robes a long time ago.”
“If you taught a course about medieval grimoires, why didn’t the grimoire you used to summon me strike an odd chord with you?” Zara asked.
Ramona wrinkled her nose. She’d been asking herself the same thing.
The text had seemed clear to her upon its first reading, and she’d missed so much.
She cleared her throat. “Well, first of all, that wasn’t a medieval grimoire.
That was a more modern text. Second, it’s one thing to critically study a spell, and another altogether to perform a spell.
Think of it like analyzing a contract versus writing one. ”
“I do love writing them,” Zara mused.
“And let’s just say my head’s been out of the game for a minute, you know? I wasn’t looking at that grimoire like Dr. Greenbriar. I was looking at it as sad sack Ramona,” she said.
Zara frowned. “That’s…” Her voice faded, but Ramona looked away before the inevitable pity could reach Zara’s face.
Ramona chewed on her thumbnail out of nervous habit.