9. Research
CHAPTER NINE
Research
Gertrude sent us off at sunset with a stack of half-translated pages and a look that lingered a beat too long on Hawk.
“Bring him back tomorrow in one piece, darling,” she said to me, patting my cheek. “I like this one.”
I scowled and, for once, thought my real words might have been meaner than what the curse twisted them into. She chuckled and shooed me out the door.
Hawk was already on his bike, sticking a lasagna Gertrude had made him into the saddlebag. He glanced over his shoulder as I came down the porch steps and smiled, his red goggles flashing in the dying light.
“Ready, boss?”
“Just drive, Mothman.”
I climbed on behind him, and he pulled out onto the empty road. The sun was nearly gone behind the trees, and I held on to his waist and thought about nothing for the entire ride home. Nothing except the warmth of him beneath my hands and the small buzz of his wings trapped under his jacket.
We reached home, and he killed the engine. Neither of us moved or said anything as the stars started to blink to life in the sky above us.
No, we had work to do. No time to linger on soft moments.
“Okay, let’s head inside and get to work.”
His head turned between the door and the path that led back to the greenhouse, and he rubbed the back of his neck.
“Look, I know Gertrude said we had to work together on this, but…I don’t really know anything about magic or spells or whatever. I was thinking…maybe I could just work on fixing the greenhouse? I did break it, after all.”
“It’s almost a hundred years old. I don’t know how much you’ll be able to do.”
He gave me that shy smile. “I’m pretty good with my hands.”
The sentence hit both of us at the same time, and I swore the night air rose five degrees with how quickly both our minds hit the gutter. The goddess really was testing me, and this desperate, horny witch was found wanting.
“I—I mean I’m good at fixing things,” he stammered, a cute flush on his cheeks.
It wasn’t a bad idea. And with the October chill cutting in, some of my tropical plants were already throwing tantrums. Besides…I wondered how much help he would really be with the spellwork.
“Okay. Help me bring my stuff from the parlor.”
“The serial killer setup? You got it.” He grinned, and I laughed.
“It’s not that bad, is it?”
“Bad? No. Intimidating? Definitely.” His lip piercing glinted in my porch lights as his tiny brethren danced around the glowing orbs.
“Like I said, efficient.”
I waited for the annoyance. You’ve always been too much. Too ambitious, too direct, too cocky. Even before the curse, I’d heard those words from all the small people around me who couldn’t handle a woman who wasn’t willing to wilt herself into a delicate flower for their comfort.
I’d followed in my brother’s footsteps. But whereas he had been patted on the back and lauded for his business acumen, I’d been labeled difficult to work with and eventually cursed to a small-town manor.
Hawk shrugged, but underneath it, I didn’t feel annoyance. Instead, something warm and clear—she is so much—but it wasn’t a complaint. It was the tone you’d use to describe a good song. Like he wanted more of me, not less.
Heat flooded my cheeks, and I turned away fast. “Parlor, Hawk.”
“After you, boss.”
Inside the parlor, the task was more daunting than I’d planned on. Years of notes and graphs, translations from a dozen different sources, meticulous records on the horticulture of rare flowers. All of it organized, but analog and not very portable.
“Ugh, I’ve been putting this off, but I guess it’s time.”
Hawk cocked one of his antennae at me, and I motioned for him to take a step back, which he obeyed immediately.
From beneath a pile of black-and-white photos of old ruins, I pulled out my silver laptop.
I set it in the middle of the parlor, then whispered to the pothos growing in the corner.
Its green-and-yellow leaves twirled gently as the vines grew rapidly, creating a makeshift casting circle around the laptop.
I whispered a spell in Latin, then walked over and picked up a pile of notes.
I let them drop over the laptop, and they floated down like oak leaves before shrinking and disappearing into the screen.
“Whoa.” Amazement shot through Hawk, and it definitely did something for my ego. “Never seen magic do that.”
“What, you thought STEM just stood for Sorcery, Tarot, Enchantments, and Magic?” I grinned, and he laughed.
The sound resonated in his chest and in mine, a foreign feeling I hadn’t had for years. It wasn’t barbed or strangling. It was easy and soft, and like a man drowning at sea, I wanted to cling to it.
No matter the cost.
Dangerous thinking, Lucia. You can’t keep him.
Without asking, he started gathering more documents and dropping them in. Together, we moved quickly, and a task that would have likely taken me all day—partially because of my tendency to get distracted by a new discovery or translation instead of the task at hand—took less than twenty minutes.
The vines pulled back and wound up the doorframe, and I grabbed my laptop, now humming as it tried not to overheat. It felt good in my hands as we walked into the crisp night air and toward the greenhouse, which seemed in greater disarray than I remembered.
Glass lay scattered everywhere, along with various shattered pots and the broken candles from the night before. The east wall, where he had crashed through, had several bent supports that were putting strain on the windows that hadn’t broken.
Hawk eyed the broken wall and the floor. “I can start on that while you work on the translation.”
I nodded and pointed out my toolbox hidden beneath the morning glories.
He shrugged out of his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, and went to the toolbox. I moved to the workbench and told myself very firmly that I was going to translate the new passage Gertrude had worked on and not, under any circumstances, watch him work.
I translated for eleven minutes.
Then I watched him work.
He was undoing the bolts along the broken frame section, kneeling in the dirt with his sleeves shoved to the elbows.
The muscles in his forearms shifted every time he leaned into a wrench.
His hands were beautiful. Veiny. Long-fingered, elegant, and strong—I could tell they were strong because the bolts were seventy years rusted, and he was getting them out like he was pulling weeds.
Stop looking at his hands, you fucking creep.
I’d basically taken this man prisoner, forcing him to live with me while we figured this whole bond out. The least I could do was not objectify him while I did it. Even if his hands were—I wondered what else those hands—
He chuckled. Didn’t look up.
“Enjoying the view?”
Goddess curse this fucking bond and my fucking hormones and his pretty crimson eyes that saw exactly the kind of pervert I was.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I turned back to my laptop and read the same set of translated glyphs about five times.
He just laughed, and I could feel him grinning through the bond I was about ready to rip out my own heart to escape. That felt less extreme than trying to tamp down the swirling thoughts of his hands and his shoulders and his pierced lip that just wouldn’t leave my head.
I made myself read. Really read this time. We didn’t have much time to break this bond, and I had to come up with a new way to break my curse. I didn’t have time for distractions. Make the plan. This I could do.
I’d translated two stanzas of the song for my ritual but now we needed the counter.
Two more remained, and I knew they held the answer.
But translation was annoyingly fluid. There were so many ways to interpret the glyphs that it was like trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle without the cover photo.
I preferred the rigid rules of alchemy, but this needed to be done.
Luckily, Gertrude had gotten through a great deal of it already.
Her ███ sleeps where prying eyes cannot see,
The nimble ███ alone shall hold the key.
Whom she desires must ███ of her deep,
She binds forever what she means to keep.
The first I found in my notes from a cross-reference I had from some cultivation notes I’d paid a farmer in the region for. Nectar, which paired well with the third glyph that was clearly a cup running over for drink. I caught myself smirking at my reflection on the computer screen.
“So…what exactly are you doing over there?” Hawk asked over his shoulder.
“I’m trying to translate more of the song about the Moon Queen. Hopefully, it will reveal what we need for the counter-curse.”
He wandered over and peered at the screen over my shoulder. “So not only can you do, like, fancy plant science magic, you can also translate dead languages. You’re crazy smart, huh?”
I realized then that it had been literally years since someone had complimented me, and let me tell you, that was like Papaver somniferum straight to my veins.
I’d been called beautiful, and it normally came with the expectation of deflection. Apparently, the right answer wasn’t “I know.” The same went for smart. I was supposed to toss the compliment away like I wasn’t worthy of it. But I was.
“Well, I’ve been studying this particular language for five years and plant alchemy since I was sixteen. It shouldn’t be surprising.”
He smiled. “It’s not, but it’s still majorly impressive.”
The bond was thrumming with his kindness, his admiration. I practically felt my pupils dilate as I realized he meant it, with no backhandedness at all.
His smile widened. “There you are.”
My heart was beating out of my chest as the bond filled me with a feeling that was far too vulnerable for my liking.
My first compliment in years, and because it was real, I had to deflect it.
I looked back down at my screen.