Page 73 of Vengefully Matched

“Azrael wants me to meet him in the conservatory,” Vickie remarked, stuffing her cell phone in her bag. She was sitting in the back of the car, looking conspiratorially between Prissy and Agatha, and Priscilla tried not to notice her back-seat scheming.

She also tried not to interrupt said scheming, because it was a great distraction from the proposal she was determined to help her brother get right.

“Do you want to take bets on whether he’s got some nerdy plant allusion in a book that he wants you to help him with?”

Vickie huffed a laugh. “It wouldn’t be the first time! I tried telling him that death powers really don’t help in plant craft or any sort of magic, but he says that when I’m around him, it helps him focus and tap into his magic.” She got a goofy sort of smile at this last part, and Prissy snuck a glance at Agatha, who grinned.

“That sounds like him. Down bad, one hundred and ten percent of the time.” Priscilla joked, but it wasn’t far from the truth. If people were fates and destiny, Azrael was the Norns; Vickie was his past, present, and future, his what had been and what was and what was always going to be.

It would have made her parents proud.

“So, I was thinking,” said Priscilla. “Maybe you can stay with us at the manor a little longer, if you want. You don’t have to, obviously, if you feel safe to return and you’d like to have your own space. But the house likes you.”

“I’d love to stay a little longer,” said Agatha softly.

Not for the first time, Priscilla wondered what her parents would have said if they were here. She thought they would love Agatha. Her mother had always stressed the importance of not shaping herself into a box to fit anyone else; her father had been willing to commit fierce shadow-craft hexes if anyone so much as raised a voice against who she was and who she loved. They wanted her to be herself, fully, and wouldn’t it be honoring them, really, if she explored this thing with the Council president?

Perhaps she would find that once she’d had Agatha, it would be easier to move forward when the fake relationship drew to an end. Perhaps bubbling up between them was too much lust, like a champagne bottle that they had been shaking for months, that just needed to be unstoppered to let the friction run its course, have a nice toast, and toss the thing into the recycling respectfully.

She didn’t want to think of herself as a used wine bottle, but it was better than this thick longing, this oppressively hot desire.

“I’ll catch you later,” said Vickie, making for the conservatory.

“Come on. They’ll be in there for hours, I’m sure. I want to take you to my secret spot in the library.”

Agatha’s eyes lit up, and Priscilla hoped she wouldn’t take offense if that turned out to be a euphemism for something much more naked than a room full of books.

CHAPTER 24 Agatha

The door to the library slammed shut behind her and locked itself with a definitive slide and click. Agatha looked up at the enormous room in front of her, bigger than her entire apartment put together.

She supposed she should feel bad that she hadn’t been back to said apartment in going on two weeks, but all she felt was fortunate to be standing in this beautiful room once again. She’d visited it daily since Priscilla showed it to her, but the sight still left her breathless. It was a bookish girl’s dream. If someone had told a thirteen-year-old Agatha that she’d one day be able to stand in a personal library that looked as though it had been magicked straight out of a fairy tale, she would have thought there wasn’t enough magic in the witching world.

Even her beloved Council library didn’t have the warm touches of Hart Manor, with generations of the family and the house itself to perfect it.

She took it in again, the sweeping shelves, the kind of ladders she’d dreamed of swinging off of as a little girl.

“Oh,” she said softly. “Oh, every time it’s still so breathtakingly beautiful.”

Priscilla hesitated. “Do you want to see more?”

Agatha paused, trying to figure out what she meant. Priscilla had given her a house tour, but if there was more library, she certainly would not say no. “I would love to,” she said.

“I have a secret spot on the second level.” Priscilla pointed next to the full wall of books that ran all the way to the extra-tall ceiling. Along the right wall was a second floor and a spiraling staircase, the banister of which extended along the edge of the thing. “This was always my favorite when I was younger.”

Priscilla snapped her fingers and lit the fireplace, which she had explained was enchanted not to get too hot. Agatha ran her hands along the high-back velvet chairs, took in the enormous, beautifully woven rug, the hardwood floor that glistened underneath. A suit of armor stood proudly in the corner, and beside it, two leather armchairs so wide that they could have easily accommodated two people each.

“Can you show me your secret upstairs?” She hadn’t meant for it to come out quite so throaty, but she also didn’t not mean for it to be tinted with possibility. The promise of the unknown stretched between them, and Prissy’s lips parted, and then curled into a satisfied half smile.

“I can, honey. I really can.” Her eyes darkened for a moment before she pointed to the staircase.

Agatha wanted to climb the ladders, to reach the tallest shelves, but more than that, she wanted to see the place that Priscilla had loved. She might not want to admit her feelings in full, but she did want to know everything about Priscilla Hart, even if it hurt her all the more when she left according to their bargain later on.

The agreed-upon ending of their fake relationship loomed; just as soon as they caught the would-be killer, that would be the death of this too.

She didn’t want it to die, but after all, it was just physical. A crush at most.

Wasn’t it? Surely she wasn’t such a fool as to think she could have a real future with her fake girlfriend.