Payback's a Witch (The Witches of Thistle Grove #1)(54)

“Who the fuck would it even be this late?”

“My mom, probably. That sounds like how she knocks.”

Another knock came as if on cue, so light and questing it didn’t even wake Jas by the hearth. My mother, a lifelong night owl, had likely seen the flicker of candlelight through my windows and surmised that I also wasn’t asleep. And bless her heart, she had no reason to think I might be having this kind of company.

The knock came again, but more wanly this time. After a long moment of strained silence, I could hear the receding slap of her slippers on the pavers as she headed back toward the house.

With a whooshing sigh, I shimmied off Talia’s lap, slumping against the loveseat with arms crossed over my middle, the pilled chenille of the cushions cold and scratchy against my bare back.

“So,” Talia said conversationally, turning to look at me from where her head rested against the loveseat’s back, “should we have invited her in, do you think?”

I burst out laughing, flinging my forearms over my face. “Stop.”

“I mean, it would have been the polite thing to do. We’re all adults here, and there’s plenty more oranges, and I feel extremely confident you have more canned wine—”

I groaned into my arms. “I hate you, Avramov. I really, truly hate you.”

“I have it on the best kind of authority that you don’t, Harlow.”

So we were back on last-name terms, then; even though I’d started it, I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. The atmosphere had certainly shifted between us, that crackling tension momentarily fizzled out, blanketed by awkwardness.

“But I do think . . .” Talia peeled my arms off my face enough to let me see the amused glint of her eyes, the color slowly subsiding in her cheeks, “it may be time for me to clear out.”

“I’m afraid so,” I said, my own cheeks still ablaze. “My mom could take it upon herself to come back and check on me again. Make sure I don’t burn the house down, sleeping with the candles lit. Safety first!”

“Kind of what I figured.” She got up, flashing me that lupine smile. As I tugged my blouse back over my head, still throbbing with unslaked desire, she gathered up her things and moved to the door. “Harlow . . . thanks for tonight. I’d say I had fun, but that doesn’t quite cover it.”

I smiled despite myself. “I know exactly what you mean. And, uh, me too.”

“Well, okay, then.” She flicked me a parting smile over her shoulder. “See you soon.”

Once she was gone, half of me deflated at her absence, while the rest of me flooded with something like relief. Telling her about my tattoos had laid me bare, in a way I would normally never tolerate with someone so new. And now that my head was beginning to clear, all I could hear was the damning echo of what I’d said to her when she asked how I felt about Thistle Grove.

After all these years away, all that single-minded effort to banish this town from my soul, and the best I could muster was still a flimsy I don’t know. At least I had enough wits about me to recognize that some of that uncertainty had to do with Talia Avramov herself.

And it wasn’t until I was in bed, the carriage house colder and darker without her there, that I realized Talia had never even held up her end of the deal.

I still didn’t know why she had no tattoos of her own.





19





Anomalous Artifacts


I woke up wishing Talia was there.

As I stumbled from bed to let Jasper out, I inspected the feeling, turning it around in my mind like some anomalous artifact I’d stumbled across by accident, analyzing it from every perplexing angle. I wasn’t one to long for company in my own space; quiet mornings in my own bed, with a book in hand and the ambient noise of Jasper’s whistling snores, tended to be my happy place.

But this morning I felt listless, even a little sad. Worse than that, it was almost like I missed her. Even replaying some of last night’s choicer moments didn’t help put me in a better mood.

I was still ruminating as I stepped out into the chilly morning, in schlumpy sweatpants with a cardigan slung over my shoulders to ward off the cold. I had no Gauntlet-related plans today, so I was hoping to catch up on work email after I scrounged up breakfast at the main house. Outside, the day was overcast, all heaped-up drifts of leaden cloud. Mist clung to the garden in little clumps, wreathing damply around my ankles as I stepped onto the pavers. I’d missed it last night in the dark, swept up by Talia and the magic in the air, but my mother had apparently found the time to decorate. Dad would have missed the spooky season altogether if it weren’t for the tourists and Samhain Eve itself to tip him off, but my mom caught the bug hard each year. Crooked tombstones protruded from between her flowers like an infestation—“By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes!,” “Here Lies Beryl E. Dedd”—and there were jack-o’-lanterns everywhere, along with a blood-spattered ghoul clawing itself out of the ground between the rose bushes. She’d even looped fake spiderweb all over the garden, whole yards of it, and the sequined dewdrops caught in its strands glittered with incongruous prettiness.

“What do you think, darling? Have I done the season justice this year?”

I looked up to see my mother on the ancient porch swing on the back deck, snug in a cozy bathrobe and fleece slippers, a mug of something steaming in her hand. It was almost eleven, but my mom was a big fan of stretching her mornings as far as they could go.