Chapter 16 #2
A coil of tension dissolved inside Ramona’s chest at the words.
“If the Council finds out I summoned a demon, they’ll fully strip my powers.”
They lay in silence for a long time. The radiator clanked. The raccoons had apparently resolved their dispute and moved on. The light through the curtains was getting stronger, less gray, more gold.
Zara hadn’t moved. Hadn’t pulled away. But the tether was warm between them — steady and present and achingly gentle, like Zara was pouring everything she felt into the connection between them.
“I’m sorry,” Ramona whispered finally. “For last night. For all of it. For being…” She gestured at herself. At the mess. “This.”
“Don’t,” Zara said. The single word was sharp enough to make Ramona look up.
Zara was watching her with an expression Ramona couldn’t quite read — fierce and sad and furious all at once. Not at Ramona. At something else.
“Don’t apologize,” Zara said quietly. “Don’t you dare.”
Ramona opened her mouth to argue — to say that she wasn’t apologizing for being alive, just for being broken, just for being dangerous.
But the words died in her throat. Because Zara was looking at her like she meant it. Like Ramona was worth defending even now, even after everything she’d just confessed.
They were quiet for another long moment. Then Zara shifted, her arm tightening around Ramona’s waist.
“I was about to be demoted,” Zara said.
Ramona blinked. “What?”
“When you summoned me. Hell was about to demote me.”
“Demoted? You?” Ramona turned to look at her properly. “Why?”
“Performance. Or lack thereof.” Zara’s laugh was dry. “I’d been coasting. For a while.”
“How long is a while?”
“A decade. Maybe longer.” Zara pulled the duvet up slightly, a gesture so human it made Ramona’s chest ache.
“I used to love it. The work. Hell’s bureaucratic systems are elegant, in their own way.
Centuries of institutional structure, layered on top of centuries more.
Understanding how it all fits together, finding the inefficiencies, optimizing the processes. I was good at it. I cared about it.”
“And then?”
“And then I stopped,” Zara said simply, matter-of-fact.
“I don’t know when it happened exactly. It was gradual.
The reports started feeling like busywork.
The departments I managed started feeling interchangeable.
I’d sit in meetings and realize I couldn’t remember a single thing that had been said, and I didn’t care that I couldn’t remember.
” She glanced at Ramona. “Hell noticed. They always notice. When one of their own starts to drift, the system flags it. I was given a performance improvement plan six months ago.”
“A performance improvement plan?”
“Lack of engagement. Declining initiative. Failure to demonstrate commitment to departmental goals.” Zara recited the phrases with flat precision. “Standard HR language for ‘you’re becoming a liability.’”
Ramona absorbed this idea, the mental image of Zara, bored and lonely and unfulfilled. Her heart ached.
“So when I summoned you…”
“I was just starting a demotion hearing.” Zara stared at the ceiling.
“Which sounds dramatic. It wasn’t, really.
It would have meant a transfer to a lower department.
Less responsibility. Less visibility. A smaller office.
” A pause. “I should have been furious when you pulled me here. Three hundred years of building a career, and some mortal accidentally yanked me out of it right before everything fell apart.”
“Were you?”
“For about five minutes.” A ghost of a smile crossed Zara’s face. “And then I saw your apartment. And that terrible bed. And you. And I thought…” She stopped.
“What?”
Zara was quiet for a long moment. Ramona didn’t fill the silence. Just waited.
“I thought, this is interesting,” Zara said finally. “This is actually, genuinely interesting. And I hadn’t felt that in years. Decades, maybe. A century.”
The honesty in her voice was startling. Zara, who never said anything she didn’t mean. Who was always precise, always measured, always in control. Saying this like it cost her something.
“Being here,” Zara continued. She still wasn’t looking at Ramona.
Was looking at the ceiling, at the window, at the slowly brightening sky.
“With you. Your ridiculous roommates and their terrible taste in movies and Gerald. The shop. The fox on the fire escape.” A pause.
“It’s the first time in centuries I’ve felt like I was actually alive. Not just… functioning.”
Ramona’s throat had closed up. She pressed her face into Zara’s shoulder, refusing to cry again, not now, not when Zara was finally saying something real.
“I don’t know what happens next,” Zara said softly. “With the binding. With Hell. With any of it. But I know…” She paused, hesitating. “I know I don’t want to go back to the way things were before.”
Ramona lifted her head. Zara was looking at her now, her dark eyes soft in the early morning light.
“Me neither,” Ramona whispered.
They lay there as the sun came up, tangled together in floral bedding, the tether between them warm and steady and finally — finally — feeling less like a chain and more like a choice.
“Ready?” Ramona asked.
“Yes.” Zara’s hand found hers. Not possessive, not desperate. Just… there. Steady.
They walked to the car like that. Holding hands. In broad daylight. In the parking lot of a bed and breakfast where they’d just spent the night together in a room with chintz wallpaper and a four-poster bed.
It should have felt momentous.
It just felt right.
Ramona pulled out her keys, already mentally preparing for the drive home — how long they could reasonably avoid talking about what happened next, whether they should stop for coffee, if the tether would feel different now — and then she saw it.
The fox was curled up in the driver’s seat.
“Oh,” Ramona breathed.
It looked up at her through the windshield, amber eyes calm and watchful. Its tail was wrapped neatly around its body, and there were small muddy paw prints on the center console. It had clearly let itself in through — well, however foxes let themselves into locked cars. Magic, probably.
“We’re nearly a hundred miles from your apartment,” Zara said quietly. “Through unfamiliar territory.”
Ramona opened the driver’s door slowly. The fox didn’t move.
“You came a long way for me, didn’t you?” Ramona said softly.
The fox’s ears flicked forward. Not quite agreement, but acknowledgment.
“I need the driver’s seat, though.” Ramona gestured to the back. “Can you…?”
The fox stood, stretched with deliberate slowness, and hopped gracefully into the back seat. It turned in a circle twice before settling into the corner behind Zara’s side, eyes half closed but still watching.
Ramona slid into the driver’s seat. Zara got in the passenger side. And just like that, they were three: witch, demon, and fox, driving back to Fernwick together in Ramona’s ancient sedan that smelled like old coffee and lavender car freshener.
The fox was silent the entire drive. Ramona checked the rearview mirror periodically, finding it in the same position each time — alert but resting, present but not demanding attention. Zara typed something on her HellBerry, then closed it and just watched the landscape pass.
No one spoke. There was nothing that needed to be said.
When they finally pulled up outside the apartment building, the sun was straight overhead. Ramona put the car in park. Turned off the engine.
The fox was already on its feet.
“What do we do with you now?” Ramona asked, twisting to look at it as they climbed out of the car.
The fox met her eyes for a long moment. Then it jumped over the center console and out Zara’s side of the car, landing lightly on the sidewalk. It didn’t run immediately. Instead, it looked back at Ramona through the open car door, tail swishing once.
“Thank you,” Ramona said, though she wasn’t entirely sure why. It just felt right.
The fox held her gaze a moment longer. Then it turned and bolted, a streak of red-gold fur disappearing into the alley between buildings. Gone as quickly and mysteriously as it always did.
“Well,” Zara said, still holding the door open. “That was interesting.”
“You think he’s…” Ramona paused, searching for the right word. “Connected to me already? Before a formal claiming?”
“I think he’s been connected to you since the first time you heard him screaming in the alley.” Zara’s mouth curved slightly. “The claiming ritual is just making it official.”
Ramona glanced up at her apartment building. “Well, four more weeks.”
“At least.” Zara nodded, threading her fingers through Ramona’s. “Come on, let’s go see if Princess Buttercup ate Felix while we were gone.”