Chapter 13
The wards were screaming.
Hazel bolted upright from the kitchen table where she’d been stealing glances at Marcus doing paperwork. The protective barriers around their safe house pulsed from violent red to gold to a sickly green: colors that shouldn’t exist in a healthy ward system.
“We need to move. Now.” Marcus was already on his feet, case files scattering across the floor.
“What?” But even as she asked, Hazel could sense it: the probing tendrils of magic testing their defenses. Professional work. Coordinated. Multiple casters working in sync. “The Shadow Council?”
“Worse. Blackwood specialists.” He was moving with the speed of someone who’d done this before, shoving documents into his briefcase without looking at what he grabbed. “Professional breach pattern. They’re using a seven-point dissolution spell. We have maybe two minutes before they punch through.”
The wards flared bright orange, a warning pulse.
“One minute,” Marcus corrected.
The front window exploded inward.
“Thirty seconds,” he said grimly.
Glass shards scattered across the floor.
Hazel dove for her bag, cramming in grimoires and herb pouches with shaking hands.
A handful of grimoires sat on the shelf by the door: modern volumes she’d bought at conferences, reference texts on ward construction and potion theory.
Not her grandmother’s irreplaceable collection — those were still at the shop, shelved in the back room where they’d always lived. She reached for them anyway.
“Hazel.” Marcus’s hand landed warm and steady on her back, guiding her toward the bedroom. “Focus. Essential items only.”
“But the ward notes—I spent three days on those schematics—”
“I know. I’m sorry. We don’t have time.”
When she stumbled under the weight of her bag, he steadied her elbow without hesitation.
He grabbed the first aid kit while she snatched Azrael from his perch.
She tossed him his spare shirt while he handed her the protective charms from the nightstand.
No discussion, no questions. Their magic hummed in sync, weaving a hasty shield around them as they ran.
“Car,” Marcus said, slinging his briefcase over his shoulder.
They hit the back door just as the front one splintered completely.
Through the trees, Hazel caught a glimpse of dark figures in tactical gear: at least six of them, moving in formation, weapons that gleamed with magical enhancement.
Professional. Military. The kind of people who did this for a living and did it well.
One of them raised something that looked like a crossbow. Marcus shoved her behind the car as a bolt of blue energy scorched the air where her head had been.
“Get in!”
Marcus’s BMW started on the first try, tires spinning on gravel before catching.
They were speeding down the narrow forest road before their attackers could round the cabin.
In the rearview mirror, Hazel watched flames lick up the sides of the building.
Not from the attack, but deliberate. They were burning the evidence.
They were burning everything.
“That was everything I brought,” she said. “My reference books, my notes, the ward schematics I’d been building all week. Gone.” She pressed her forehead against the cold window. At least her grandmother’s grimoires were still at the shop. Small mercy.
Marcus gripped the steering wheel harder. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t.” She turned away from the mirror. There was nothing left to see anyway. Just flames and smoke and another safe place gone. “Just drive.”
They rode in silence for several miles, the adrenaline slowly draining away and leaving exhaustion in its wake. Azrael had wedged himself into the footwell, ears flat, fur still standing on end. He hadn’t made a sound since they’d grabbed him.
“Blackwood specialists,” Marcus said. “Military training, magical augmentation. The kind of team you send when you want someone dead, not captured.”
“Comforting.”
“They’ll have to regroup. That buys us time.” He glanced at her, headlights of a passing car briefly illuminating his face. “Are you hurt?”
She took stock. Scraped knuckles from grabbing her bag too hard. A bruise forming on her hip from hitting the doorframe. A burn on her forearm she didn’t remember getting, probably from the energy bolt that had missed her head. “I’m fine.”
“Hazel.”
“I said I’m fine.” But her voice cracked on the last word, and she pressed her forehead against the cold window glass. Everything she’d built. Everything she’d saved. Everything her grandmother had trusted her to protect. Reduced to ash because she’d witnessed something she shouldn’t have.
Marcus’s hand found hers in the darkness. His fingers were warm and steady, and she held on like he was the only thing keeping her from falling apart.
“There’s another safe house,” he said after a moment. “Twenty minutes north.”
“Please tell me it has two beds.”
Marcus squeezed her hand once before releasing it to grip the wheel. “It’s an emergency safe house, Hazel. We’re lucky it has a roof.”
The emergency safe house made their previous cabin look like a luxury resort.
It sat at the end of a dirt road that barely qualified as a path, hidden among pine trees so thick they blocked out what remained of the moonlight.
The building itself was smaller than Hazel’s bathroom at home: weathered wood siding, a roof that looked questionable, and windows so grimy she couldn’t see inside.
Marcus went in first, checking corners with the practiced economy of a man who’d done this more times than he’d probably admit.
Golden energy flickered around his hands as he tested for magical traps, hexes, anything the Blackwoods might have planted in advance.
Hazel waited in the doorway, Azrael tucked against her chest, watching him work.
“Clear.” He lowered his hands, the golden energy fading. “The wards here are basic. I can strengthen them, but it’ll take time.”
“How much time?”
“A few hours. Maybe more.” He looked at her, expression flat. “If they find us before then…”
He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to.
Hazel stepped inside and stopped.
The space could generously be called a studio apartment and more accurately described as a glorified shed.
One room containing a kitchenette with a two-burner stove and a mini-fridge that hummed ominously, a tiny bathroom she could see through a half-open door, and a bed that took up most of the available floor space.
One bed.
One tiny bed, shoved against the wall under a window sealed shut with what might have been paint or might have been the collective despair of every previous occupant. A faded quilt covered it, probably hand-stitched by someone’s grandmother fifty years ago.
“This is fine,” she said faintly.
“Completely fine,” Marcus agreed, his voice strangled.
Hazel set down her bag—lighter now, missing half its contents, missing her ward schematics and reference notes, missing everything she’d built up in two weeks—and forced herself to assess the practical.
The cabin had running water, if the rust-stained sink was any indication.
Electricity, based on the single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling.
A door that locked, even if the lock looked like it could be defeated by a determined squirrel.
They both continued staring at the bed like it might spontaneously multiply if they concentrated hard enough.
“I’ll take the floor,” Marcus said.
“There is no floor space.” Hazel gestured helplessly at the room. The bed dominated everything. Even if he somehow squeezed into the narrow strip between the bed and the kitchenette, maybe eighteen inches wide, she’d have to step over him every time she needed the bathroom.
“I could sleep in the car…”
“It’s October in Maine. You’ll freeze.”
“I’m a demon. I run hot.”
“Marcus.” She turned to face him fully. “We’re both adults. We can share a bed for nine nights without it being weird.”
His laugh was sharp, almost bitter. “Nine nights of this torture? Hazel, I can barely handle ten minutes in the same room without…” He cut himself off, mouth snapping shut.
“Without what?”
“Nothing. Forget it.”
Azrael chose that moment to saunter out of her arms, leap onto the bed, and claim the exact center with feline authority. He circled twice, kneaded the quilt with his claws until he’d created a perfect nest, and settled in like a furry chaperone determined to prevent any inappropriate behavior.
“Well,” Hazel said weakly. “Looks like we’re sharing.”
“This is going to be the longest nine days of my life.”
Marcus spent the next three hours reinforcing wards while Hazel unpacked what little they’d saved. Her bag held two grimoires she’d managed to grab, a handful of herb pouches, and the clothes she’d been wearing when they ran. Everything else from the cabin was gone.
She’d been holding the same jar of moonbell extract for ten minutes, staring at nothing. The jar had been a gift from her grandmother, the last batch they’d made together before she passed. Now it was one of the only things Hazel had left of her.
“Hey.” Marcus appeared in the doorway. He’d finished with the wards; she could feel the strengthened barriers humming around the cabin. “You should eat something.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Hazel.”
“I know.” She set down the jar carefully, afraid she might shatter it if she gripped too hard. “I know. It’s just stuff. It can be replaced.”
“Not all of it.”
She let herself lean against the counter and just breathe for a moment.
Weeks of ward research, gone. The schematics she’d painstakingly developed with Marcus, the notes on combined casting techniques, the supply lists and client schedules she’d been maintaining from hiding.
All of it, ash. At least her grandmother’s grimoires were safe at the shop.
She held onto that thought like a rope thrown to a drowning woman.
Marcus didn’t try to fix it. He just moved to stand beside her and waited.
“Thank you,” she said. “For getting us out.”
“That’s my job.”
“No.” She looked up at him. “That was more than your job. You got us out of there alive when six trained specialists were trying to kill us. That was you. So thank you.”
His face softened. “You’re welcome.”
Then Azrael meowed pointedly from the bed.
“Right,” Hazel said, stepping back. “Bedtime.”
The bedtime routine was awkward as hell.
They took turns in the bathroom that was barely large enough for one person.
The shower was a trickle of lukewarm water; the mirror was so spotted with age that Hazel could barely see her reflection.
She went first, brushing her teeth and splashing water on her face, trying not to think about the sleeping arrangements waiting outside.
When she emerged in her thin sleep shirt and cotton shorts, the only sleepwear she’d managed to grab, Marcus was standing by the window with his back to her, shoulders rigid with tension.
“Your turn,” she said.
He nodded without looking at her and disappeared into the bathroom. The sound of running water filled the silence, along with Hazel’s thundering heartbeat.
When he came out wearing only pajama pants, Hazel forgot how to form words.
She’d seen him in various states of undress over the past eleven days: shirt sleeves rolled up, tie loosened, that one morning when he’d been doing pushups.
But this was different. This was Marcus prepared for bed, sleep-warm and unguarded, barefoot on the worn wooden floor.
The demon marks on his chest caught the dim light, dark lines that traced across his skin like living tattoos.
He was moving careful and controlled, like he was trying very hard not to notice her noticing him.
“So,” she said, her voice pitched a fraction too high. “Bed.”
“Bed,” he agreed, not moving.
They stood on opposite sides of the narrow room, separated by three feet of space that felt like three inches.
“This is ridiculous,” she muttered and stalked to the left side of the bed. Azrael cracked one eye open, assessed the situation, and refused to move.
Marcus approached the right side like he was approaching a bomb. “Ground rules.”
“Ground rules are good.”
“Stay on your side.”
“Obviously.”
“No stealing covers.”
“I’m not a cover thief.”
“No…” He paused. “No cuddling.”
Heat flooded her cheeks. “I wasn’t planning to cuddle.”
“Good. Neither was I.”
They climbed into bed like they were handling explosives.
Azrael opened both golden eyes now, assessed the situation with obvious judgment, and somehow managed to take up even more space despite being the size of a house cat.
Hazel ended up pressed against the wall, Marcus clinging to the edge on the opposite side, the cat sprawled luxuriously between them.
The mattress was old, soft in the middle, which meant they both rolled slightly toward the center. Hazel caught herself before she made contact, bracing one hand against the sagging middle to hold her position.
“This mattress is trying to kill us,” she muttered.
“Noted.” Marcus shifted, trying to find a position that didn’t involve sliding into her. “I’ll add it to the list of things attempting murder this week.”
Despite everything, the attack, the loss, the impossible situation, Hazel felt a laugh bubble up. It came out slightly hysterical, but it was still a laugh.
Something close to a laugh moved through him in the darkness. “Get some sleep, Hazel.”
She lay on her back, arms at her sides, staring at the ceiling. Marcus did the same, the mattress dipping under his weight, both of them fighting the slow slide toward center. Between them, Azrael purred.
“Goodnight,” she said into the dark.
“Night,” he said back.
Neither of them moved. Neither of them slept.
Outside, wind rustled through pine trees. The strengthened wards hummed a low bass note that Hazel felt more than heard.
She counted ceiling beams. Got to seven. Lost count because his breathing changed, and she held hers to listen.
Azrael purred between them.