Chapter 12
The drywall behind the couch had a crack in it the shape of Hazel’s shoulder blade.
Marcus could see it from the kitchen, where he was pretending to read a deposition. Plaster dust still ghosted the floorboards. He had not swept it up. Sweeping would have been admitting it had happened.
“Good morning, Miss Wickwood.” His voice came out crisp, formal, utterly ridiculous.
Focus. Professional distance. He could do this.
“Good morning, Mr. Hawthorne.”
She’d come in barefoot, hair still wet, three feet of polite air between them and growing. Marcus reached for his briefcase; she stepped left. Hazel grabbed the tea kettle; he shifted right.
Azrael appeared on the windowsill, surveyed their performance, and promptly left.
“The familiar has the right idea,” Marcus muttered, opening his case files with unnecessary force.
“Azrael’s hiding under the bed,” Hazel said, measuring tea leaves like her life depended on it. “He only does that when he’s disgusted.”
Marcus glanced toward the bedroom. “With what?”
“Us, presumably.”
Marcus glanced up. “He talks to you about us?”
“He talks at me about us. There’s a difference.” She poured hot water with the concentration of a bomb disposal expert. “Two sugars, no milk, right?”
Two sugars, no milk. When had she learned that? He hadn’t told her. She must have watched him make coffee a dozen times, noticed the pattern, filed it away.
“Thank you, Miss Wickwood.”
“You’re welcome, Mr. Hawthorne.”
They settled into their respective workspaces: him at the kitchen table with case files, her in the armchair by the window with her grimoire.
Marcus tried to focus on his notes, but the words blurred together.
He was hyperaware of every sound she made: the soft rustle of pages turning, the quiet scratch of her pen making notes, the small intake of breath when she concentrated on difficult passages.
And then she started humming.
Just a few bars, barely audible, but Marcus’s pen froze mid-sentence. He knew that melody. She’d been humming it the night they’d kissed in the moonlight, Azrael chasing fireflies around her feet.
She stopped abruptly.
Marcus set down his pen and looked at her. She was staring at her grimoire, pink creeping up her neck.
“You were humming,” he said.
“Was I?” Too innocent. Too quick.
Marcus forced himself to pick up his pen. “Of course. My mistake.”
“Right. Mistake.”
They returned to their work, but Marcus couldn’t shake the awareness of her across the room. Every time he glanced up, he caught her looking at him. Every time she shifted position, his attention snapped to the movement. The morning crawled by with excruciating politeness.
By noon, Marcus had read the same paragraph seventeen times. He could have recited it from memory. He still couldn’t have told anyone what it said.
“We need groceries,” Hazel announced, closing her grimoire with a sharp snap.
Marcus looked up from the case files he’d been pretending to read for the past hour. “I can call for delivery.”
“From where? The nearest supermarket is forty minutes away.” She stood, stretching in a way that made him look back at his files immediately. “We need fresh ingredients if you want actual food instead of whatever’s left in that cabinet.”
“Fine,” he said. “But we maintain appropriate boundaries.”
“Absolutely.” The word came out flat, clipped. “Appropriate boundaries.”
The drive to town was a masterclass in brittle silence. Marcus gripped the steering wheel and stared straight ahead. Hazel gazed out the passenger window like the Maine countryside held the secrets of the universe. Her knee was inches from the gear shift. Her perfume filled the enclosed space.
At the grocery store, they maintained their careful distance.
Marcus pushed the cart, which had a wobbly wheel and kept veering left.
Hazel consulted a list written on the back of a CVS receipt.
He selected items with military efficiency.
She spent eleven minutes choosing between two identical-looking bunches of parsley, then put back both and grabbed cilantro instead.
The locals noticed.
“Everything alright with you two?” asked Beth Morrison, the werewolf who ran the flower shop, when they nearly collided avoiding each other in the produce section.
Hazel had been reaching for tomatoes; Marcus had been pretending to inspect lettuce three feet away.
They’d both moved at the same time, ended up face to face over the avocados.
“Fine,” they said simultaneously, then looked everywhere except at each other.
Beth’s yellow eyes flicked between them. Her nose twitched; werewolves could smell emotions, Marcus remembered too late. The corner of her mouth twitched upward.
“Uh-huh.” She selected a bunch of flowers and moved on, but not before shooting Hazel a look that clearly said we’ll talk later.
They made it through checkout by standing at opposite ends of the conveyor belt, Marcus handling payment while Hazel bagged groceries with violent efficiency. But the universe had a sense of humor.
“You’ll need to move closer,” the teenage cashier said, gesturing at the credit card reader. “The cord doesn’t reach.”
Marcus stepped forward. Hazel shifted to give him room. Suddenly, they were standing shoulder to shoulder, her hair brushing his arm as she reached for a bag. The scent of her shampoo, something floral, something that had haunted him since day one, made his head spin.
Her shoulder pressed warm against his arm, and she stopped breathing.
For a moment, the beep of the register faded to background noise. He could feel the slight tremor running through her.
“Receipt?” the cashier asked, barely concealing amusement.
Marcus jerked back to reality. “Yes. Thank you.”
They loaded groceries in tense silence, careful not to let their hands brush, and drove toward the safe house, the heater running and the windows cracked because Hazel had complained about the temperature.
The afternoon light poured through the windshield, and for five blessed minutes, Marcus almost managed to convince himself the careful boundary between them would hold.
Then they hit the roadblock.
Three figures stood across the narrow road leading to the safe house. Marcus recognized the middle one immediately: Margaret Thornfield, secretary of the Shadow Council, flanked by two werewolves in human form. Big ones. The kind who enjoyed their work.
“Shit.” He pulled the car to a stop twenty feet away.
“Is that Margaret?” Hazel asked.
“Looks like it.” Marcus cut the engine and checked his tie. When in doubt, lawyer up. “Stay in the car.”
“Like hell.”
They got out simultaneously.
“Mr. Hawthorne. Miss Wickwood.” Margaret’s smile was sharp enough to cut glass. “How lovely to see you again.”
“Mrs. Thornfield.” Marcus shifted into courtroom mode—precise, controlled, dangerous. “I wasn’t aware the Shadow Council had authority to establish roadblocks on public roads.”
“Public roads.” She laughed, high and brittle. “How quaint. You’re on Shadow Council territory now, demon. Different rules apply.”
The werewolves flanking her stepped forward. Marcus felt his demon nature stir in response to the threat, golden energy crackling around his fingers. “She comes with us,” Margaret continued, nodding toward Hazel. “The Council has… questions.”
“No.” The word came out in a voice that belonged to something much older and more dangerous than a lawyer.
Marcus stepped forward, putting himself between Hazel and the Council members.
“Miss Wickwood is under the protection of Grimm, Malphas Marcus caught him mid-air with a blast of golden energy that sent him spinning into a snowbank.
The second came at Marcus’s flank, but Hazel’s purple fire wrapped around his ankles, sending him crashing to the ground.
They moved as one, their magic weaving together in patterns that seemed choreographed despite never having been practiced.
His structured golden energy provided scaffolding for her intuitive purple power, while her flexible spells covered gaps in his precise defenses.
When the first wolf recovered and charged again, they hit him together: violet and amber light spiraling around each other like a double helix before slamming into his chest.
He didn’t get up a second time.
Margaret Thornfield was trapped in a cage of interwoven magical energy, amethyst threads woven through golden bars, humming with combined power. Her remaining werewolf had shifted fully now, hackles raised, but he wasn’t stupid enough to attack.
“This isn’t over,” Margaret snarled through the cage.
“Yes, it is.” The demon in his voice made even the conscious wolf step back. “Touch her again, and I’ll show you exactly why hell sent me here.”
He let the cage dissolve. Margaret stumbled, straightened her coat with shaking hands, and jerked her head at her werewolves. They retreated down the road without another word.
Marcus and Hazel waited until they disappeared around the bend before lowering their defenses.
The golden energy faded from Marcus’s hands. He became aware of Hazel watching him—not with fear, not with the wariness most humans showed when they saw the demon underneath. She was looking at him like she’d just seen something she wanted to see again.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.” But her eyes lingered on his hands, on the place where the claws had been. “I’ve just never seen you… like that.”
“I try not to…”
“It was impressive.” She said it simply, like she was commenting on the weather. “The way you moved. The way you sounded when you told her to back off.”
“That was coordinated,” Marcus said.
“What do you mean?”
“The timing. The location.” He turned to face her, mind clicking through implications. “They knew our route. They knew when we’d be returning. That’s not casual intimidation; that’s intelligence.”
Hazel’s face paled. “You think someone’s feeding them information?”
“Someone’s feeding someone information.” He pulled out his phone, checking for signals.
Nothing. The safe house was in a dead zone by design, but right now that felt less like security and more like isolation.
“The name disappearing from the case files. The Shadow Council knowing our movements. The supply blockade hitting your specific vendors.” He looked at her.
“These aren’t separate problems. Someone is coordinating pressure from multiple angles. ”
“The Blackwoods.”
“Maybe. Or someone working for them who has access to both local politics and prosecution files.” His mind raced through possibilities.
Partners at the firm. Support staff. Court clerks.
Anyone who’d seen Hazel’s file, anyone who knew about the safe house rotation.
“When we get back, I need to make some calls. Carefully. If there’s a leak inside the firm… ”
He didn’t finish the sentence.
“Are you hurt?” He was already reaching for her, hands checking for injuries.
“Are you?” She caught his hands in hers, running her fingers over his knuckles where the demon claws had emerged and retracted. The touch sent electricity up his arm.
“Hazel…”
“I know. I know we said…”
“We said a lot of things.”
“The last kiss. Professional boundaries.” She stepped closer until he could count the freckles across her nose. “All very sensible.”
“Incredibly sensible.” His hands tightened on hers. “Practical.”
“The smart thing to do.”
“Definitely the smart thing.”
Neither of them moved away.
The afternoon sun caught the auburn in her hair, turned it to fire. Her lips were slightly parted. He could still feel the echo of their combined magic humming in his blood.
“Marcus.”
“Hmm?”
“This is not keeping things strictly business.”
“No,” he agreed, leaning closer. “It’s not.”
“We should probably…”
Marcus pulled back first.
“We can’t.” Not a question.
“No,” Hazel said. “We can’t.”
They drove back in silence. At the safe house, they moved around each other deliberately, putting away groceries like each item might explode. Neither mentioned the fight. Neither mentioned what had almost happened after.
It wasn’t until they were sitting across from each other at dinner, leftover pasta because neither had been capable of cooking anything requiring actual attention, that Marcus finally spoke.
“This professional distance plan isn’t working.”
Hazel slowly twirled spaghetti around her fork. “No. It’s not.”
Marcus set down his fork and looked at her. Hazel Wickwood. The witch who argued with pixies and made tea exactly the way he liked it and fought beside him like they’d been doing it for years instead of days. The woman who’d turned his ordered world completely upside down.
“Ten days,” he said.
“Ten days until trial.” She met his eyes across the table. “I’ve been counting too.”
“And then?”
“Then you go back to Boston.” She set down her fork, no longer pretending to eat. “Back to your cases and your perfect record and your life.”
“And you stay here. Your shop, your customers, your life.”
“Yes.”
Marcus wanted to argue with it. Wanted to point out that Boston wasn’t that far, that he had vacation days he never used, that the firm had been talking about opening a satellite office somewhere in New England.
“It’s for the best,” Hazel said, though she didn’t sound like she believed it. “You’d hate it here. Small town, everyone knowing your business. No decent sushi for fifty miles.”
“I don’t even like sushi.”
“See? You’d be miserable.”
“Probably.”
She picked up her fork again, pushed a noodle around her plate. “And I’d drive you crazy. You’ve said so yourself. Multiple times.”
“You do drive me crazy.”
“There you go, then.” She didn’t look up. “It would never work.”
“Never,” he agreed.
Azrael jumped onto the table and ate a meatball off Marcus’s plate. Neither of them stopped him.