Page 80 of Vengefully Matched

“Congratulations again. You’ve always been family, you know.” She smiled.

“Thanks, Prissy. I’m so happy.” Vickie waggled her fingers, the light glancing off a beautiful antique ring that had once belonged to their grandmother. Az had had it refitted for the proposal.

“Between this and the office he built me in your dad’s old shed, I got pretty lucky.”

“You both did,” said Prissy softly, and Vickie blushed, turning back to her schedule.

When Prissy shut the door, she decided.

It was time to finally talk to Agatha about her feelings.

CHAPTER 26 Agatha

After days of back-and-forth with the International Council, she’d finally persuaded them to let her have a shot at reprogramming the Loculus. And they had agreed to let Priscilla help her in her quest to reform the outdated glass prison, though she’d been careful not to emphasize Hart’s involvement too strongly.

If she could just go through the research one more time, she almost had the perfect spell to overwrite the old automated deployment magic and reset it so that the Council could give it individual wishes and instructions. She was so close, and after many late nights and magnification spells to decipher notes and records addled by time, elements, and in a few instances, magical interference, she knew what she needed to do. If she was correct, it would take her plant craft and Priscilla’s shadow craft to get it just right, and the significance of their powers pairing together so well was not lost on her.

Still, it would be tricky. She rubbed her temples, trying to clear her head with sea turtle facts.

Olive ridley turtles were, in her opinion, the cutest type of sea turtle, though leatherbacks were also majestic and ancient-looking. Both turtles migrated yearly from where they hatched and laid eggs in Indonesia to California, which meant that turtles swam about ten thousand miles a year.

Agatha could do about ten laps in the twenty-five-yard lane at the local Y twice a week. At five hundred yards a week, and fifty-two weeks a year, give or take a few she skipped, she figured she swam twenty-five thousand yards a year. It took her a few minutes to figure out about how many miles that was; by her calculations, it was about fourteen. If a sea turtle could swim over seven hundred times the number of miles she could, that was an oddly comforting fact in the universe. No matter what she did, there would always be creatures swimming longer or faster. All she could do was her best.

And her best in Witchery Council business was no small task. She breathed and focused on the issue at hand.

The Loculus had been enchanted ages ago, with the help of witches from both sides of the Atlantic, and there were decades of finicky residual spell work to untangle. She needed to check one more thing before she could be sure it wouldn’t do something awful, like freeze them all in time, or implode the entire building, or something.

She pressed the button on the intercom in her office. “Kevin, can you bring me the 1966 repair report documents, please?” The Loculus had been overhauled sixty years ago, so the records had been specially preserved and mailed delicately from the International Council archives to avoid damage.

Kevin had returned, albeit reluctantly, and she’d been walking on eggshells around him just to try to make sure that he didn’t quit on her entirely after the pranking fiasco.

His organization system alone would be nearly impossible to replicate.

“Here you are.” He deposited them on her desk, tone not exactly frosty, but not what it once was either.

Agatha sighed. She had work to do to repair their relationship, like she had work to do on the Loculus, and she had to figure out how to talk to Priscilla about her more than friendly feelings. Her emotional to-do list was creeping close to matching her work list.

Kevin opened the door to leave, and as though summoned by the power of Agatha’s gaze, Priscilla looked up, locking eyes with her. Goddess, Agatha saw those gold-rimmed brown orbs in her dreams, the beautiful and the dirty alike.

Determination flickered across Priscilla’s face. She stood up and caught the door from Kevin, ignoring his side-eye as he passed and pulling it shut behind her.

“Hi,” she said, a smile inching up her face.

“Hi,” said Agatha. Her chest was doing something weird and warm and fluttery.

A few awkward seconds stretched, and Agatha cleared her throat. “Do you want to give this paperwork a second glance? I think that if we can figure out how to untangle a patch from the sixties, that would clear things up to reroute the original spell from the bit they were fixing.”

Priscilla’s eyes lit up. “I’d love to help. And then maybe we can also talk after work?”

“I’d like that.” Agatha’s cheeks heated as she thought about the way Priscilla had looked up at her, a few strands of hair falling across her forehead as she rewired Agatha’s entire brain from between her legs. She blushed. There would be time for that later.

“I think that with the correct bioorganic compound, a simple tracing spell could illuminate where the patch was, and then we can use a counterspell to undo the patch and work our way in.”

Priscilla studied the papers, playing with her long black braid. “Your plant craft would definitely help,” she mused.

“I see what you mean. I think I have everything I need to put this together, and I can brew it in the conference room if you give me about an hour.” She paused. “We will need a third witch. Someone trustworthy and very powerful.”

Agatha nodded. “I can ask Otho and move the Loculus in carefully enough not to trigger it in the meantime.” She looked at Priscilla. “Can you bond it? With shadow craft?” Priscilla closed her eyes, concentrating, and snapped her fingers. A wooden braid, about two inches long, appeared in her hand. She opened her eyes. “One of the last few I carved with my dad. It’s strong enough to hold.”