Page 27 of Vengefully Matched

Damn meddling manor, she thought to herself.

CHAPTER 10 Agatha

Hart looked so pretty that Agatha had to recite facts in her head to focus.

Like how there were more chickens in the world than humans, by about a three-to-one ratio. Good. That was kind of terrifying, like some sort of avian uprising could damn them all to a fate of beaks and feathers.

“There’s something else I wanted to talk to you about,” she said, trying not to get lost in Prissy’s brown eyes. “I’m not sure I should, but, well, the fact of the matter is, I do think that if the Council calls you in, they’d expect you to know.” She squeezed her eyes shut, hoping it would dull the shine of the alluring mistress of darkness before her.

Agatha paused. Hart crossed her arms, staring across the library at her. It was a gorgeous room, with the kind of staircases and ladders that book lovers everywhere dreamed of, like something out of a storybook.

A rather macabre one, if you included the suits of armor and the steepled framing of the mahogany bookshelves. A fluffy white cat sat next to the high-back chair Priscilla had taken by the roaring fire, which seemed to make the temperature of the room perfect, despite its height and ferocity.

“Well?” Priscilla’s voice was sharp. Acerbic. And something else, something that twisted in Agatha, that strain of anticipation. Goddess, Agatha shouldn’t, but she wanted Prissy Hart, claws and all.

Staring at a wall of large, unsettling oil paintings, Agatha rubbed her temples.

“I’ve been working on a dangerous project for the International Council.” That did help dull the longing. Complicated Council business reminding her that they were colleagues, first and foremost, was an excellent buzzkill.

Hart sat up, interested.

“Oh?”

“It’s high clearance.” This would have been easier if she had told Priscilla earlier, but she had her reasons. Namely, the suspicion that she could be the attempted murderer. And surely there were things about Hart that she didn’t know.

“I am also a Council member.” Hart crossed her arms. She frowned, which, unfortunately, was still unsettlingly hot. Those pouty lips made Agatha want to do devious things. And was the wall getting closer? Agatha stepped forward, now an inch away from Priscilla. She looked at the damask-patterned wall, certain that it had moved.

“Yes, technically you are cleared.”

Priscilla glowered. “Then why don’t I already know?”

Agatha sighed. “I wasn’t entirely sure if I could trust you.”

“And now you can?” That crimson mouth pursed, an expression that filled Agatha with slight dread and slightly more longing.

“Now I can’t afford not to,” she bit out, ignoring the hypnotic scent of Priscilla—lemon and mint, clear on the air at such a small distance. She shouldn’t be thinking of her as something more intimate than Councilwoman Hart. Priscilla was not just any beautiful temptress. She was a woman who had left the previous Council president at the altar. A woman who had then tried to fight her way to the presidency. So what if the smell of her, the shape of her thighs, the pout of her lips, made Agatha want to throw all of those perfectly good reasons for reservation out a window. Emotional defenestration was stupid, but she wanted to be stupid, for a moment in her one wild, beautiful life. She sighed a little, unable to help herself. Priscilla cocked her head, frowning, and Agatha jolted out of the daydreaming, remembering what needed to be shared.

“It’s code-named Elixir,” she began. Any witch worth her salt would know immediately what the project was. And Prissy, staring at Agatha with the disbelieving intensity and abject sex appeal of Elvira herself, was worth a whole heap of salt.

Hart’s mouth opened. “Your top secret project is immortality?” She shook her head. “Immortality.” Realization dawned on her. “That makes sense now. One of the forbidden magics.”

“Hush.” Agatha jumped a little, though they were alone in the library. Well, presumably alone. She’d heard something clatter beyond the wall that could have been Azrael returning, or whatever else might haunt these surprisingly cheery halls. An interesting description, given that she was in a room with a six-foot painting of an anatomically correct human heart being grasped in a hand. But she found Hart Manor to be… oddly comforting. Kooky and strange and wonderful. Even if the walls of the place did seem to be literally contracting, as though conspiring to squeeze her and Priscilla together. At her feet, the cat meowed loudly, and brushed against her leg. She reached down to pet it, and the cat chirped, bobbing its head in satisfaction.

“What’s the cat’s name again?”

“Emily.” Hart paused. “Emily Lickinson.”

That made Agatha laugh. “Your brother really leans into that English teacher persona, then?”

“You know those English major types.” Hart smiled, slightly crooked, and Agatha had to remind herself that this was someone who had broken Evelyn. Priscilla Hart could break her, too, if she wasn’t careful. She needed to think of her as a colleague and a potential criminal. She needed to focus on facts, and to ignore the funny skip her heart did at the sight of that insouciant half smile.

Agatha trained her attention on Hart, telling herself it was for business and not for drowning in the depths of them. There was something that bothered her.

“How do you know about Project Elixir?”

Hart shrugged, examining her nails. “I know almost everything about the Council. I started interning for my dad in high school, and by my freshman year, I’d decided that I wanted to be just like my grandmother.”

President. Her grandmother had been president, but Agatha thought it best not to bring up the sore subject of the election she had won.