Chapter 46
When Hazel invited him in, Maxwell tried not to read more into it than that her plan needed his participation and she needed to sit down indoors.
She didn’t seem to hate him for what he had to do, she might even have figured out a way to use it, but that didn’t mean she would welcome his company.
If she viewed him as a threat now, she had good reason.
He took care not to follow her too closely as they went into the living room. When she took her phone out of her pocket, he turned away to look out the window. The sun had almost sunk behind the trees. The first day was nearly over; Perthrux wasn’t the sort to be generous with technicalities.
“Do you like spicy food?” Hazel asked, and he nearly jumped.
“Pardon?”
“I’m ordering dinner. It costs an arm and a leg to get delivery out here, but”—she shrugged—“I’ve earned it and, you know, you only live once. As far as I know…”
Hazel trailed off, giving Maxwell an expressive glance. He laughed, less out of amusement at her obvious prompting than out of sheer relief that she was still speaking to him as she had before, as a confidant if nothing else. “I’m afraid I haven’t learned either. And I’m not averse to spice.”
“Wonderful. I’m going to be a jerk and order for you, though, unless you’ve had Mexican before. I don’t have the brain to explain the menu.”
“Believe me,” he said, “whatever you order will be better than many meals I’ve had.”
She wrinkled her nose in sympathetic disgust. After a few more taps on her phone, she pocketed it again, then crossed the room to Maxwell’s side. “It’s a pretty sunset, anyhow,” she said. “Whoever built this house didn’t do too badly with the windows.”
“They have to have gotten something right. The law of averages and all that.” He watched her rather than the sunset: the faint curve of her lips, the way she stretched her shoulders back, the faded blue of her shirt against her pale skin. She might have been the only real part of the room.
Sensing his gaze, Hazel turned toward him, her own eyes dark and calm.
Maxwell wondered if she was too weary for fear, or rage, or grief.
Perhaps the last few weeks had burned it out of her.
“Whatever I can do, I will,” he said, and felt the urge to fall on his knees like some knight in a Pre-Raphaelite painting pledging fealty. “Just command me.”
* * *
It was a very tempting offer, even when Hazel was dead tired and still feeling filthy from Chapman’s basement.
Her body’s response paled in comparison to other times, but it was still notable, and she was about to say something about keeping that in mind when she saw the expression on Maxwell’s face.
Remorse was part of it, and grief, but also a devotion that left her stunned for a second, blinking like she’d stared too long at the sun.
She couldn’t reply teasingly to that. She couldn’t even find the words to do it justice or to express her own feelings, not when she had half a brain at most. All she could manage to do was hug him once more.
He tensed again in surprise before his arms went around her, but this time he let out his breath, and the sound he made was miles away from his forced laughter earlier.
“I probably shouldn’t tell you too much,” Hazel said into his chest, and then rolled her eyes at herself. “I don’t know a lot, not yet. Ideas are starting to kind of…line up, but I’m not sure how well they’ll work, just that following them seems like my best option.”
“Your judgment’s gotten you this far.” Maxwell’s voice rumbled against her ear.
“My judgment, a lot of luck, and plenty of help, but thank you.” Hazel glanced upward, watching Maxwell as she went on. “Speaking of help, what do you know about the anchors demons use to stay in the ethereal? Do they actually exist?”
Maxwell paused in the way that Hazel was coming to learn meant he was testing the limits of what he could say.
“Yes. My master has targeted a few of its rivals’.
It—” His hands flexed against her back, and his jaw clenched before he finally shook his head, sighing.
“I can’t tell you what or where it is. A demon would need to be in regular contact with its anchor, and it would likely be the place where it has or can draw the most power. ”
“Could I track it through sympathetic magic, or with Casper? Like I tracked you when I ended up in the city?”
“If you had an item with a close enough link.”
“Or a person?”
“Yes,” he said, “but I doubt I could let you use me.”
Ignoring the chance for innuendo, Hazel grinned against him. “But hypothetically, if somebody had been using your master’s power, and I had that person in a jar—”
“That…could work,” said Maxwell, sounding stunned. He pulled away just enough to stare down at her. “Yes. That’s a definite possibility.”
* * *
This time, Hazel didn’t invite him to join her in the shower. “I’ll be done when the food gets here,” she said by way of explanation. “I just need to scrub myself before I can eat anything.”
“An unpleasant day, then.”
“I succeeded, so it wasn’t too bad, but—yeah, ‘unpleasant’ is probably the right word. I can go into detail after we eat. Make yourself at home meanwhile.”
Her instructions left Maxwell slightly aimless, pacing from the living room down to the front door and back, then grabbing the book on which he’d been taking notes before and giving it another try.
The second attempt was going somewhat more successfully when Hazel returned, clad in a fluffy yellow chenille robe with her hair wet and combed back from her face.
“Very glamorous, I know,” she said with a sheepish little smile, “but I couldn’t quite justify breaking out the cocktail dress. Another time.”
“I do hope so,” said Maxwell, and not only out of the certainty that she’d be stunning in formal dress. Another time meant more time for her.
He doubted he’d be there. Destroying Perthrux’s anchor would most likely send all of the demon’s servants back into Hell with it, and Maxwell’s bonds, light as they now were, meant he counted.
Hazel might have known that and simply been speaking bravely; if she didn’t, he had no intention of telling her.
“You’re fantastic,” she said, and at first Maxwell wondered if she’d picked up on his thoughts. Then he realized that Hazel was looking at the notes he’d been taking. “Do you mind going on until dinner?”
“Not at all.”
Maxwell had forgotten how it felt to work in comfortable silence with another person, or perhaps the silence had simply never been as comfortable with anybody else.
Hazel sat across the table from him, at first completing a few more tasks on her phone, then getting her own notes and book.
Once in a while Maxwell would lift his head to clear his vision, and the sight of her dark head bent over her work always made his research seem easier.
It would have been nice to spend more evenings that way, he thought, though hopefully with less urgent business to occupy them both. He’d been alone too much in his time to share that sort of peace with anybody he fancied, and the rules of that time had been too strict.
His bargain had been foolish. Many of the errands he’d carried out for Perthrux had been vile. For his family’s sake, though, Maxwell had never quite regretted the deal—and with Hazel as a wholly unexpected silver lining, he could lament the bargain even less.
* * *
Over nachos, Hazel told Maxwell about the ghosts.
She didn’t talk about the basement. The memory didn’t kill her appetite—she’d learned to compartmentalize, and magic took enough out of her that she probably could have eaten in the basement itself—but she had no urge to put it into words.
The ghosts deserved a story, though. “They were magnificent,” she said, dunking a chip in her salsa. “Scary, but if Chapman had killed me, I hope I’d be just as terrifying if I got a chance at him.”
“You would be,” said Maxwell. When Hazel blinked at the certainty in his voice, he smiled. “I’ve seen you fight. You weren’t even a vengeful spirit then.”
“Spirit, no. Vengeful…probably, if I’d had time to feel it. Making me spend time in that room was enough cause for revenge.”
She hadn’t really talked about her job with anybody in a long time—maybe ever, really.
Summer had swapped tales with her a few times, almost always well after the fact except when she’d gone to him for help.
She’d given Tiffany some brief outlines once in a while, and she’d tried to talk about it with Brandon in college.
Hazel couldn’t remember ever getting to lay out what she’d done and what had happened, relatively at leisure, to a person who’d understand and appreciate what it meant.
She wished the business she was talking about could be slightly less dire, or that she didn’t have to get back into investigation mode so soon, but wishes and horses and so on. “Speaking of Chapman, was he the one who ratted you out, or does your boss have another spy?”
“Yes and no.” Maxwell turned a menacing look on his perfectly innocent enchiladas. “Your reporter told him.”
“My—” When Hazel caught on, she set down her chip hard enough to crack it in half. “That little bastard. I was feeling sorry for him too.”
“I could almost pity him more now, knowing what he’s thrown his lot in with. Almost.” Maxwell pronounced the last word very tightly, with thin lips.
She glanced toward the door outside, where the trunk of her car, a box, and the iron jar imprisoned Chapman’s spirit. “Do you think he’s still skulking around?”
“He wasn’t when we came inside. He might have returned since then, but I doubt he can come in the house now that you’ve renewed the wards—and you’ve deprived him of a patron.”
“I probably shouldn’t feel smug about that, should I?”
“No,” said Maxwell, and leaned over the table, lowering his voice. “You should feel extremely smug.”
* * *
Hazel started yawning about halfway through dinner.
By the time she’d eaten the last of her nachos and Maxwell had devoured a series of chicken enchiladas, she was slumped back in her chair, seemingly unable to open her eyelids more than halfway.
“Sorry,” she said, in the middle of another yawn.
“Probably won’t be much more use tonight. ”
“I’m not here to use you,” said Maxwell.
“If I had a brain, I’d make a dirty joke about that.” She dragged herself to her feet.
Maxwell rose, feeling himself back in limbo now that another moment of decision had come.
You have every right to change your feelings, he’d told Hazel before.
That was still true now—especially now—and asking if she had changed them felt too much like an imposition, as obvious as it must be that he wanted a particular answer.
He was searching for the words that would weight the scale the least when Hazel came around to his side of the table. “I can’t offer anything but sleep until I’ve had about ten hours,” she said, “and my bed hasn’t improved, but if you want to squeeze in…I’d like that. More than the extra space.”
Maxwell turned toward her, took her face between his hands, and kissed her. “I couldn’t wish for more.”