Chapter 14
The cursor on the empty email blinked in an accusatory way. It felt judgmental, like the repetitive tapping of an impatient foot.
Maxim glared at it and dragged his hand through his hair.
His eyes felt raw and the screen seemed much too bright.
He’d tried to sleep last night. Genuinely tried.
Whenever something truly awful had happened in his life, it had always seemed less awful the next day.
So he’d turned on the peaceful salt lamp, listened to soothing ambient sounds, and had a cup of tea that tasted like fermented grass—everything he could think of that wasn’t drugging himself.
When those didn’t work, he’d cracked open his medicine cabinet for his first sleeping pill in months.
It had helped, in a way. He’d gone to sleep.
Unfortunately, the pill hadn’t done anything for his dreams. He dreamed of rotting demons and bloodstained sidewalks and wounds that wept black tar.
He dreamed of a cardigan-clad witch who slid her hand between his ribs and squeezed tight.
He’d jerk awake, his heart pounding in his throat, before slipping into a state of half-wakefulness where he’d float until the darkness dragged him right back under.
It had been one of those mornings where he’d watched the sun rise with the exhausted, delirious idea that if he projected enough hatred upon it, it would get uncomfortable and return to its place beyond the horizon.
Maxim scrubbed at the nape of his neck and stood to stretch out his cramping lower back.
At least he wasn’t at work, surrounded by people asking about his unkempt hair and the atypical creases in his suit.
After the elevator “failure” and the hallway “collapse,” the entire building had been deemed a structural hazard.
Ivanov, Barry, and Cruz had sent out a memo that they’d gotten a few rooms in one of those rent-an-office spaces for a few weeks, but those who could work from home were welcome to do so.
Therefore, no one but Maxim was able to see his sweatshirt and his gym pants and the purple circles smudged beneath his eyes.
His computer chimed with an incoming video call.
Maxim had the sudden sensation of combined adrenaline and hope, where it felt like his stomach had been punched up into his brain. He lunged for his computer, desperate to see her name on the screen. He’d see her face. Her smile. She’d tell him that . . .
That what? The hope fizzled. That she’d given up all of her life’s aspirations just so the two of them could keep dating?
But the name on the screen wasn’t the one he’d wanted. Maxim let out a sigh, then sank into his chair and connected the call.
Juliette Cohen’s face appeared on his screen. She looked to have called him from her phone, and was holding the camera close enough to her face that Maxim could see the individual hairs of her eyebrows.
He got as far as saying, “How are you feel—” before she interrupted him.
“Shit, hold on.” Her phone was jostled around, and Maxim briefly felt motion sick before it stabilized.
Her background had changed to that of trees and sunshine.
“Okay, here we— Uh, wow,” Juliette said.
She squinted and brought her phone even closer to her face. A fine crease formed in her forehead.
Maxim frowned. “What?”
“You look like garbage.”
He glanced down at himself. His sweatshirt was clean and free of holes, though the logo claiming that he was an honors student at “R’leah University” had started to fade.
“Your face, Max.”
His frown deepened at her nickname. “What’s wrong with my face?”
Juliette’s sigh was heavy enough to cause a crackling static over Maxim’s speakers. “You look like you haven’t slept all night.” She paused, and her bright red lips quirked at the corners. “Which has only gotta be good, right?”
If his frown got any deeper, it would attract exploratory submarines. “What are you talking about?”
Juliette leveled an unamused expression at the camera, and muttered something that sounded like “Can’t believe he’s got a damn law degree.
” Then, emphasizing each word, said slowly, “Because of all the fucking. Speaking of which, where is she? Can I talk to her? She keeps pushing my calls to voicemail, so I know she’s not dead.
Although if the two of you were going hard enough that you look like that, maybe she might wish she was. ”
Maxim gaped at the screen. Maybe this was why he’d never had a decent conversation with Juliette Cohen. As her words sunk into his brain, he fought past the delicious images of Pippa sprawled in his bed, sweaty and content. He clenched his jaw and his stomach twisted.
“Hold on. You were attacked yesterday, and you watched someone do magic, and all you can think to ask me is if me and the person who did the magic have been fucking?”
For a long moment, Juliette stared at him, blinking slowly, before shouting a frustrated “Yes!” so suddenly that Maxim jumped.
“What is wrong with you?” he said, exasperated.
Jules pursed her lips and looked somewhere behind her phone.
Her expression turned thoughtful. “I bet this is my way of coping. You know? You learn that shit is super fucked, like—I mean, you always knew there was something weird with the world, but then you find out that it’s really, really weird, so you obsess over something that’s comforting and distracting.
” She shrugged and flapped a manicured hand.
“Anyway, if she’s not conked out in your bed, put Pippa on please. ”
“She’s not here,” he snapped. “Sorry, I need to get back to work.” He should probably have continued to ask how she was, or if there was any update from the firm about the building, but every cell in his body was screaming at him to run away from this conversation and nurse his wounds in solitude.
“Oh weird,” Juliette murmured, as if she hadn’t heard the second part of what he’d said. “She said she wasn’t coming in today, so I’d just assumed she was with you.”
A leaden weight dropped inside Maxim’s chest. Had she been accepted into the coven, and this marked the start of her culling her previous life?
First him, then Jules, then her job. He sagged in his chair and let the despair cover him like a cold blanket.
Could he have salvaged any of it? If he’d said something different, or done something different.
If he’d been more open with Pippa about he’d begun to feel about her, maybe she would actually be sleeping down the hall.
The tips of his fingers began to tingle, and the top part of his chest felt just a bit too tight.
Jules must have seen Maxim’s expression. He glanced up at his monitor to see that she’d narrowed her eyes and was leveling a mild glare at her screen.
“What did you do?”
“What did I do?” He opened his mouth to tell her that her friend had—
What had Pippa done, actually? Backed him into a fence and made him fully understand the power she was terrified of using?
Forced him to realize that there had never been any talk of commitment or a long-term relationship and any attachment had been only on his end?
He rubbed his face again. Now his hands were tingling.
His breath was coming quicker, his heart hurling itself into his diaphragm.
“Right,” she said. “Normally, this would be the moment I’d tell you something toxic like, ‘If you hurt her, I’ll hurt you.’ But I feel like Pip’s got it under control.”
Maxim let out a laugh, as dry and brittle as an old leaf. “Yeah.”
Jules was still watching him, head cocked and a strange expression on her face. “Are you doing okay?”
Oh how he hated that question. There had never been a situation where someone had asked it, in the same genuine way that Juliette Cohen was doing now, where the honest answer was ever anything but “No.”
The room was starting to spin around him, and he realized he’d been staring at the corner of his monitor without blinking.
This conversation was deeper than he’d ever had with Jules, yet they still hadn’t gotten to the point where he was comfortable succumbing to a panic attack in front of her.
Maxim forced a tight smile and said, “Yeah, I’m fine.
I’m sure she’ll get in touch with you soon.
” Then he disconnected the call, powered off his laptop, and crawled from his office chair onto the floor where he flung out his limbs and lay splayed, breathing shallowly as he fought the urge to remain perfectly still as if the anxiety were a predatory dinosaur whose vision was based on movement.
The carpet was rough on his cheek.
Focus.
Short and loop pile, it smelled like dryer sheets and dust and feet. Ugh. He had to clean it soon.
Nope, focus.
If he looked closer, he saw the little color variations within each whorl of the clustered fibers. Taupe and charcoal, tawny brown and cream. Every deep breath pushed his chest into it. His stomach and his shoulders, too.
Maxim needed to talk to someone. It struck him then that he hadn’t spoken with anyone outside of work since he’d moved to New Hawkshead, and the urge to hear a familiar and friendly voice became suddenly overpowering.
His phone was in the kitchen though, and after a moment of focusing on that damned dusty carpet, he felt able to push himself to his feet and slouch out of his study.
He’d call William. They’d only dated a few months, but once they realized there was no spark, they slid into a friendship that had held fast over the past decade.
Will had never been much for phone calls when he could easily communicate through a simple and immaculately spelled text, but right now, Maxim wasn’t in a texting sort of mood.
Will picked up after three rings. “Hey!” he said, lengthening the word until it became its own melody.
His enthusiasm surprised Maxim. This “Hey” sounded much less like a greeting of “I’m about to tell you I’m busy,” and a lot more like “Oh thank fuck, I was starting to worry you ran off to join a commune.”