Chapter 7 #2
“And they’ve been protecting Viktor this whole time?”
“Not protecting, exactly. Just… not interfering. The Blackwoods bring money into town. Jobs. They fund the library, sponsor the little league team, donate to all the right charities.” She scrubbed pixie dust out of her hair.
“Hard to convict a man who paid for your kid’s baseball uniforms. Hard to testify against someone who funded your grandmother’s hip replacement. ”
“Economic leverage.”
“The oldest kind of power. Make yourself indispensable, and people overlook the bodies.”
“They’ll make this harder.” His voice was matter-of-fact, analyzing a problem.
“Nothing about you is easy.”
Silence except for water.
“I won’t let them hurt you,” he said.
“I don’t need protecting from a bunch of old ladies with pearl necklaces.”
“You need to be protected from everything.” He sounded equal parts fond and frustrated. “You walk into danger like it’s a casual acquaintance.”
“And you act like the world runs on legal codes and proper procedures.”
“It should.”
She smiled despite herself. “Must be exhausting, being right all the time.”
“You have no idea.”
The water shut off in his stall. Hazel quickly finished rinsing her hair, suddenly aware that she’d been lingering.
She emerged to find him waiting by the sinks, fully dressed except…
“Your shirt.” She stared at the ruin of what had probably been expensive cotton. Pixie dust had eaten holes through it like acid, leaving it more hole than fabric. She could see strips of his chest through the gaps.
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine. You look like you lost a fight with a paper shredder.” She gestured at the truck stop’s small convenience store. “They might have…”
“I have a spare in the car.”
Of course he did. Of course Marcus Hawthorne traveled with spare shirts, probably organized by color and thread count.
Ten minutes later, she stood in the parking lot wearing his spare shirt: soft blue cotton that smelled like his detergent and fell past her hips.
The truck stop technically had shirts. Shirts with slogans like “I Brake for Bigfoot” and “Maine: The Way Life Should Bee” with a cartoon lobster-bee hybrid that would haunt her nightmares.
Marcus’s shirt had been the lesser of two evils.
“It was all they had,” she said defensively.
He stood frozen by the car, keys in hand, staring at her in a way that made her stomach flip.
“It looks good.” His voice cracked slightly on “good.”
She swallowed. “We should go.”
“Yes.”
But he kept looking at her like she was something unexpected, something that had knocked him off balance.
“Before more pixies show up,” she added.
“Right. Pixies.”
Back at the car, Hazel fished the anti-nightmare pendant from the glove compartment where she’d stashed it that morning and fastened it around her neck. After today, she wasn’t taking any chances.
They drove with the windows down, her wet hair whipping in the wind. The silence between them felt different than before: charged instead of awkward.
“I’ll handle the Shadow Council,” he said as they passed the Willowbrook town limits.
“We’ll handle them.”
He glanced at her. “We?”
“Unless you plan to take on Margaret Thornfield and her pearl-clutching brigade alone. She’s been running that council for thirty years. She knows where all the bodies are buried.” Hazel paused. “Possibly literally.”
“I’ve faced worse.”
“Have you faced worse armed with nothing but legal codes and a fly swatter?”
That almost-smile again. “Point taken.”
“Besides,” she added, watching familiar landmarks pass: the library where she’d learned her first cantrips, the park where magical kids played after dark, the diner where she’d had her first date at sixteen. “They’re my problem. You’re just…”
“The unwelcome outsider demon lawyer who’s keeping you alive?”
“I was going to say temporary inconvenience, but that works too.”
“Temporary,” he repeated quietly.
Seventeen days until the trial. Seventeen days until he went back to Boston and his perfect suits and his legal briefs, and she went back to her shop and her herbs and her quiet little life.
If she was still alive. If she still had a shop.
“What happens after?” she asked. “After the trial, I mean. Assuming I survive.”
“You’ll survive.” His voice left no room for doubt.
“But then what? The Shadow Council isn’t going to forget that I testified.
Viktor’s family won’t forgive me. Even if he goes to prison, his people will still be here.
” She pulled at the sleeve of his shirt, the soft cotton sliding between her fingers.
“I might have to leave. Start over somewhere new.”
Marcus was quiet for a moment. “The firm has resources. Relocation assistance, new identities if needed. We take care of our witnesses.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
He glanced at her, then back at the road. “What are you asking?”
She didn’t know. Or maybe she did, and she was too scared to say it out loud. What happens to us? Will you forget me the moment the trial ends? Is this just a job to you, or—
“Nothing,” she said. “Never mind.”
“Hey,” she said, desperate to lighten the weight in her chest. “You never tried the gas station coffee.”
“Next time.”
“Next time,” she agreed.
He reached over and turned on the radio. Some classical piece she didn’t recognize filled the car, and she didn’t change it. Small victories.
Behind them, pixie dust glittered on the gas station parking lot.
Hazel pulled the collar of Marcus’s shirt up to her nose. It smelled like dryer sheets. She didn’t move away from the gear shift.