Chapter 15
Pippa stretched her neck, and her upper back gave a satisfying pop. She’d been whirling about in the kitchen for hours, accompanied by a long-cooled mug of tea and forcibly peppy music blasting from her computer.
Demonic auras still hovered around her apartment, but they weren’t the solid, vibrant ones of a recent or lengthy visit. They were keeping an eye on her, watching her movements. Fine, whatever. Let them. Her wards were refreshed and solid. Nothing was getting in.
She’d barely managed to type out an email last night saying she was taking the following day off before she collapsed in a messy pile on her bed, somehow simultaneously exhausted yet unable to keep the day from replaying over and over again.
In a single day, she had destroyed a relationship, upended a friendship, and had enough gut-punching realizations to leave her winded and directionless.
Visiting her mother yesterday had gone about as well as Pippa had expected.
“They’ve been manipulating me,” she’d said as a greeting when Mary had opened the door.
Mary’s thick gray hair was tied in a braided crown around her head. She had a short sprig of rosemary pushed into a lock above one ear, and dirt smudged her cheekbone and the tip of her pointed chin.
Pippa had been ushered inside and was offered a freshly-picked apple. The duplex smelled like cinnamon and anise, and steam rose from a large simmering stock pot on the stove.
“The demons?” Mary said. “I’ve been trying to tell you, they’re royalty—”
“And they have scrying stones. I know.”
Mary had given a little frustrated huff, then muttered, “Glad to know you’re having conversations with someone.”
Pippa pretended not to hear. “No, it’s . . .” She’d rubbed some dirt off the apple’s shiny green skin and took a bite. Sharp and sweet. Perfectly ripe. Between more bites, she told the story of visiting the Ash Coven and what she’d overheard in the bathroom.
“They used me,” Pippa said. “It was awh ah jhock—”
“What?”
She swallowed some apple. “It was all a joke. They strung me along. It’s finished, I’m finished with them.”
“They could have been talking about someone else. Are you sure it was you?”
Pippa gave her mother a look that had Mary raise her hands defensively.
“All I’m saying is that—”
“No.” That same resoluteness, the one that ended with her flipping off the Ash Coven with their own sacred relic, warmed in Pippa’s chest. “I’m done.”
With excessive gingerness, Mary had sat on a creaking wicker chair at her table. “Are you sure? You have strong magic, Pumpkin. Strong enough for you to do something big, and they would be a way for you to do that.”
The apple soured in Pippa’s mouth. She’d set it, half-eaten, on a napkin on the coffee table. “I know how strong it is. Shouldn’t that be even more of a reason for it to not be puppeted by a coven who doesn’t give a shit about the person it comes from?”
“But . . . what else would you do?” Mary’s face had twisted in genuine concern. “What else are you—”
“Am I good at?” Pippa finished for her, unable to stop the snap in her voice.
“That’s not what I meant.” It had been Mary’s turn to snap.
“Do you think I’m happy to see you in that job you hate?
I know how much potential you have, and I can see how it hurts you not to live up to it.
” Her expression had softened, and she’d come over to Pippa, reaching to her in the tentative way that suggested she wholly expected Pippa to snatch her hands away.
Pippa grasped back, feeling potting soil and the paper-soft texture of her mother’s palms.
Mary had sighed. “Pumpkin, if I had the magic you did, I’d feel like I could do anything. I don’t want you to look back in twenty years and curse yourself for sitting back when you should have charged forward.”
Pippa looked at her mother’s brittle smile and saw a woman who had been through horrors. Mary had picked up the pieces of their shattered life by herself, and did her best to lead Pippa along while the ghosts of memories, mistakes, and regrets fluttered behind them.
“If you think I can do anything, could you trust me to find my own way?” Pippa squeezed fingers that had begun to bend with the very beginnings of arthritis. “I’m a capable witch, Momma.”
Mary had nodded. A dimple creased in one tanned cheek. “I know. I’m sorry I made you think I didn’t know.”
Pippa wrapped her mother in a hug. “I’ll figure it out. Somehow.”
“Of course you will.” Strong gardener’s arms squeezed Pippa right back. “One more thing, though, Pippa.”
“Yes?”
“Answer your damn phone when I call you.”
After refreshing the wards around her mother’s home, a quick run to the grocery store left her with a considerable hit to her bank account, but a truly excellent range of possibilities for her day.
So instead of thinking about Maxim’s eyes and hands and laugh and smile, she thought about flour-to-water ratios and what herb best complimented cheddar.
She made a pan of mini quiches and a tray of gooey brownies, and was currently waiting for the icing to set on a platter of intricately decorated lacelike cookies.
Pippa tapped the handle of her spoon against her lips in thought. She could invite Jules over and, while plying her with treats, do the knowledge dump.
She could invite Maxim over and ply him with treats.
Please forgive me. Have a cookie. I’m a monster, but I’m a monster that makes a perfect pastry crust.
The knock at her door startled her into dropping her spoon. It could be the Ash Coven, come to tell her that they’d made a mistake and she would be accepted immediately. It could be a neighbor asking her to turn down her music.
Or it could be Maxim.
Where once the first option would have been the one to get her pulse racing, now it was the latter.
She would have no idea what to say to him.
Part of her hoped that she would come across as aloof and suave, as if she were completely unaffected by it all.
But another part dreaded that he would look just that way, as if nothing they had done or experienced or talked about had stuck with him.
So when she opened the door to see Maxim Sheppard standing on her doormat, her brain shorted, leaving her capable of only stunned silence.
Light stubble shadowed his jaw, and the sleeves of his shirt were pushed to his elbows.
Weary smudges lay beneath his eyes and accompanied an expression that fluctuated between determination and hope.
He was here, and he seemed like he was the one who needed to apologize, which didn’t really make sense, but she figured she’d get to that in a minute.
Maxim slipped his hands into the pockets of his jeans, and Pippa was drawn to the shifting muscles in his bare forearms. The rumpled state of his hair made her want to sweep her fingers through it and tug until he groaned.
Oh God, and she was wearing sweatpants and hadn’t bothered with any sort of bra and her hair was a tangled mess, and here he was, just .
. . effortlessly glorious. Then she remembered how she’d treated him, then realized he was waiting for her reaction to him turning up at her door, and in a desperate attempt to say something, she let out a choking gasp that sounded like she’d inhaled a bug.
Maxim’s expression grew tortured, as if he’d interpreted her choke as one of outrage.
“I’m sorry,” he blurted. “I shouldn’t have . . . I’ll go.” He turned and made for the stairs.
“Wait, Maxim.” Pippa had unknowingly reached out as if to grab onto him. She pulled her hand back. He was here. Here. He couldn’t possibly leave now. “Do you— Would you like a brownie?”
He paused, one foot on the landing and the other on the step. His head was down, angled just right for Pippa to see that thin press of his lips and the furrow in his brow and the tight squeeze of his lashes against his cheeks. Quintessential turmoil. Pippa hated to be the cause of it.
But Maxim stepped back up to the landing and came to her door.
“Yeah,” he said. “Okay.”
He followed her inside, and Pippa closed the door in a gentle way that she hoped came across as “No point in leaving this open” instead of “You’re never leaving, I’m about to magic you into oblivion.”
Maxim faltered, then blinked. “It smells amazing in here.”
“It’s the butter.” She gave him a quick smile, though disappointment pricked her when he didn’t return it.
He didn’t say anything else, and Pippa occupied herself with navigating the kitchen and the trays of pastries and desserts cooling precariously on upside-down dishware functioning as improvised trivets.
The brownies were warm to the touch but had chilled enough that their surface cracked as she sunk a knife into the pan.
She scooped one out and deposited it onto a plate.
A little drizzle of a melted chocolate chip stretched across the plate, and before she realized she’d done so, she’d swiped at it with her thumb then licked it off.
When she turned to hand Maxim the plate, he was staring at her mouth, his brows drawn together and gaze intense. He blinked rapidly, then cleared his throat and took the offered plate with a swiftness that startled her.
It would have been easy to glide back into that mindset where she reveled in his reactions. Easier still to let satisfaction settle on her because of that involuntary stare, the taste of it as rich and sweet as the brownie she’d handed him.
Pippa tried not to watch him as he bit into it, but she did so anyway. A flash of white teeth, the barest flick of his tongue to catch a rogue crumb that lingered on his lower lip. He chewed slowly.
She waited until he swallowed, then blurted, “I didn’t think you’d want to see me again.”
Maxim frowned at her. “What? Why?”