Chapter 41
Afterward, they sort of unfolded themselves backward and sideways, with motions Hazel couldn’t quite track and was sure she’d never be able to consciously repeat, and ended up with her half on top of Maxwell.
His chin rested on her head, and her head on his chest, near one of the lines of sigils.
“Tell me if I get too heavy,” she said, even though he’d brushed off her first protests.
“You won’t.” His conviction made her grin. “Your bed is still, however, truly ridiculous.”
Hazel grinned. “Isn’t it? I don’t think I’ve shared such little space with another person since college.”
“I’m surprised that you managed it. You must like your men to have a lean and hungry look.”
“You’re not my first beanpole, that’s true.” She considered her relatively sparse roster. Being a medium or an introvert wasn’t great for the sex life. Being both was hell. “Brandon was larger than you were. We were students, though. We didn’t need joints.”
Maxwell laughed knowingly, making her suspect he’d had a few similar experiences in his past. He didn’t ask who Brandon was. “He’s my ex-husband,” Hazel volunteered. “And my lawyer, so you might have seen him around.”
“Ah, yes. He seemed to know his business.” Maxwell sounded very neutral.
“Not first in his class, but in the top third.”
“I hope it’s not an uncomfortable arrangement for you.”
He didn’t quite hold up a sign saying I Am Not Prying, but it was close.
Hazel hugged him a little out of impulse.
“No worse than mildly awkward. It’s not like we hated each other when we split up, or did it for a big dramatic reason—though I think my parents might have had an easier time if we had. ”
“It’s easier to separate now, isn’t it? I admit I haven’t kept track.”
“Mm-hmm. I don’t know when no-fault divorce became a thing, but I think you had to go to Reno until the sixties. Brandon and I just showed up at the courthouse, filed some papers, and gave them a credit card. No vacation out West.”
Maxwell brushed a strand of hair back from her forehead, stroking lightly down the side of her face. “Would you mind if I asked why it happened?”
“This is the biggest reason,” she said, then made a face as she realized the other potential meaning there. “My job, not sex. A girlfriend who can talk to the dead is kind of a thrill when you’re young…and when you don’t realize how messy that can get.”
“Here I thought your predicament was unusual.”
Hazel laughed. “I’ll admit the current situation is an outlier. It hasn’t been my first brush with property destruction, though, or with injuries.”
“And Brandon took umbrage at it?” An outraged note entered Maxwell’s voice, and his arm tightened around her.
While the reaction was absurdly pleasant in a way, Hazel shook her head.
“Not umbrage, and I can’t really blame him.
I have a cousin who won’t date firefighters or cops.
Probably schoolteachers now, the way things are going,” she added with a sigh.
“A lot of people won’t get permanently involved with soldiers.
A relationship where you know the other person puts themself in danger pretty regularly is a lot.
What I do isn’t that dangerous—and don’t get me started on the police—but I can see how it’d stress a person out. ”
He glanced down at her, surprised. “You’re very understanding.”
“A decade or so helps with that. I can’t imagine you hold many grudges from back when.”
“No,” said Maxwell, “not against humans, at any rate. But I’ve had more than a decade, not to mention a rather dramatic shift of perspective.”
Hazel shrugged. “I’ve been seeing ghosts since I was ten,” she said. “Maybe my perspective was off from the start.”
“Or wider.”
“But I’m definitely not immune to flattery.”
* * *
Maxwell didn’t point out that Hazel had been in danger as long as he’d known her, and he’d gotten involved with her regardless.
For one, it smacked of insecurity to compare himself to her ex-husband.
For another, he didn’t want to remind her of the danger in question, how high the stakes and how low her chances of escaping.
He didn’t really want to remind himself either.
Instead, he combed his fingers through her hair again and asked, “Do you know why you started seeing ghosts so young?”
“It was a gift. Sort of. I think,” Hazel said, fondly exasperated with what had clearly been a mystery for most of her life.
“I was at the mall in the middle of January. Mom was buying grown-up stuff over in the Bon-Ton, so I was waiting at KB Toys, and an old lady came up to me and asked if I could spare any change. It was pretty suspicious in retrospect. I’d never seen any homeless people in the mall—outside, sure, but even then the security guards would chase them off. Morning in America, you know.”
“Not really, but carry on.”
“Right, sorry. Anyhow, I told her I was sorry, I didn’t have any money on me. I’d already spent my allowance, and she probably didn’t want gumballs or Barbie clothes. She looked cold, though, and she had small hands, so I asked if she wanted my mittens.”
“Generous of you,” said Maxwell, impressed but unsurprised.
Hazel glanced down, her face heating. “I figured I could stick my hands in my pockets long enough to get to the car. And I didn’t like those mittens. They were sort of gray and scratchy.” She chuckled. “Occasionally I wonder what would’ve happened if I’d given her a pair I did like.”
“What did happen?”
“She took them, put them in her pocket—she was wearing an absolutely enormous coat—and said that I was a good child. Then she sort of whispered see true and kissed me on the forehead before I could dodge.”
A little tension had crept back into her body as she told the story. Maxwell didn’t ask questions when she paused, just waited. He was about to tell her that she didn’t have to go on when she did.
“To me,” she said, “the world went sort of bright and transparent, and then I blacked out. The people around saw me drop to the ground and have a seizure. By the time they got there, the woman was gone. When I woke up, well…” She lifted her hand from Maxwell’s chest, then dropped it back, a gesture that said the rest was history.
“Not quite the thanks a child would have wanted, I suspect.”
“Ha. No. Although…” Hazel shrugged. “I don’t know. When I’m in an everything-happens-for-a-reason mode, I can’t imagine my life otherwise. And arguably, it’s better to know and be able to act. It’s not as though the other worlds will go away if I don’t see them.”
“There’s that.”
Without the “gift,” she wouldn’t have come close to death or worse half a dozen times in the last month, nor would she be facing a variety of dire fates and little way to escape them, but Maxwell didn’t bring that up.
He suspected Hazel was thinking of it too.
If she wasn’t, he was glad she’d found a minute or two of reprieve.
“Besides, as supernatural entities go, it could have been much worse.”
“True,” said Maxwell, “though gifts don’t generally get one entangled with demons.”
Hazel glanced up at him, tilting her chin back a little to get a better view. “How does that work? If you don’t mind me asking, of course. And if you can say.”
“I can, I don’t, and it’s a grim business, which I can’t imagine is news to you.
I tracked down the person who cursed my family, read far too many notes in Middle English”—he shuddered theatrically—“and then used an intermediary to approach my current master. Bargains are more direct, though even they have a few steps.”
A light came into her eyes then, the expression of a hunter finding a trail. “What sort of steps, exactly? Were you around for Chapman’s?”
Maxwell nodded. “Enough of it. The first sacrifice is a general one, an offering for any demon that has interest. Another seals the bargain. Chapman’s all had to be specifically dedicated after that, so I suspect that’s the general way of things.”
“Dedicated,” said Hazel, tracing circles over Maxwell’s breastbone with one fingertip. He didn’t think she even realized she was doing so. “He’d have to use its name, then?”
“Yes.” Maxwell said the word carefully, quietly, waiting for his bindings to activate or Perthrux’s wrath to reveal itself. Even in Hazel’s warded bedroom, he wasn’t completely safe, and the line of questioning was potentially a treacherous one.
Her face went blank. “Interesting,” she said, and then all at once sat up. “But it’s about time we had that breakfast I mentioned an hour or so back. My stomach just growled loud enough to bring animal control back out here.”
“That would be hard to explain. In the interest of averting a crisis, I can follow simple directions and boil water, if that would help.”
Maxwell sat up as well. It took an effort, and her absence made him colder, but he didn’t object to the sudden change, nor was he inclined to ask questions.
He thought he understood Hazel’s general motives, or at least could see the shape of them through the fog.
If she didn’t want him getting a clearer look, he suspected he also understood why.