Page 24 of Vengefully Matched

The behemoth rumbled home, smoking slightly on the uphill toward the small garage that sat next to the conservatory where her mother’s plants still grew. The Packard was parked in the front, its cheery cherry-red paint shining in a way that suggested that Az had washed it recently.

Her brother had been using the car; it made sense during the school year, especially since if she didn’t want a long walk, she could take the hearse or a bicycle. Portals were still restricted due to the unstable nature of disease transmission. Witches were COVID cautious, even after safe and scientifically proven vaccine mandates had resulted in the end of the pandemic.

And it was reasonable, she reminded herself, to be cautious about an epidemic that had robbed her of both parents. Illness didn’t go away just because a silly man with a microphone and a fear of needles pretended years of scientific research was suddenly false.

The knocker on the door to Hart Manor groaned, and she patted her favorite haunted little thing.

“That’s my girl. Let’s give Azrael some extra trouble next time he comes home, shall we?” The knocker stilled, as it always did when it listened, and she stroked her hand along the filigree carving. The haunted fixture scared her brother, and that made her love it all the more.

It was an epic door, and her loyal partner in pranking Azrael for all these years.

“Next time he comes in, I think add a little bit of a chill to the air, give him your most ghastly moans, and make him drop his keys a few times. Just until he gets shaky and spooked.”

The knocker moaned in agreement, and a satisfied smile crept up her face. Her life might feel like a magical train wreck, but she would always have pranking Az to carry her through.

When she walked in, the door shut gently behind her on its own, and Azrael, who was standing in the middle of the foyer sorting through mail, frowned.

“How come the door is so nice to you?”

She shrugged. “We understand each other. You’re too old. You wouldn’t get it.”

Az shook his head, and ran a hand through his hair. “Sometimes you’re worse than the teenagers,” he grumbled. “I’m barely two years older than you. That’s not old.”

Priscilla slid next to him, peering over his shoulder at the letters and plucking out one from a credit card company advertising completely free and absolutely painless debt recovery!

She snapped to give the company’s owner an impossible-to-reach wedgie that would plague him all day, intensifying during important meetings.

“What’d you do to that one?” Azrael asked, snapping at his own junk mail.

“Incurable wedgie for a predatory lender. You?” They might fight, but there was always one thing the Hart siblings agreed on. It was fine, fair even, to pester peddlers of capitalism the same way those greedy corporate shills pestered mundanes.

Azrael held one up. “Health-care junk mailer about how a corporation cares while the executive just collected a bonus for cutting coverage, and premiums just went up twenty percent.”

“Ew. I hope you hexed him good.”

Azrael smiled and lifted his chin. “I gave him a nasty fungal rash somewhere dreadful.” His grin deepened. “It won’t do permanent damage, but it also won’t go away without medical intervention.”

“Rash on his junk for junk mailing. Noted. It was far less than he deserved,” Priscilla agreed.

“How about you?” Her brother’s expression was careful, as though he had been considering this. “How are you doing?”

“I’m not currently plotting the justified murder of predators, but there’s always tomorrow.”

Az bumped his shoulder into hers. “You know what I mean.”

She sighed. “It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got time. Vickie’s at work, and everyone else besides her who lives here is dead, except Emily Lickinson, and it gets old to only talk to a cat, so…”

Priscilla choked out a laugh. “So we’re left with each other.” It hurt, but they had come to a tacit agreement that joking about it was better than crying, at least sometimes.

“So spill.” He walked into the dining room, not bothering to see if she followed. He knew she would, and she sprawled into one of the high-back chairs in the corner, across from where he sat down at the table next to a pile of essays and his laptop. He shoved them to the side and put his head in his hands. “Tell me.”

She groaned, throwing an arm over her eyes.

“Can you level with me?”

“Sure.” It was easier to ask without looking.