Page 36 of Bad Witch

“Thank you.”

His eyes glowed crimson in the dim light. “Whatever you need, Temp, you just need to ask and it’s yours.”

There he went again, saying things that were confusing and made my belly go all fluttery. “We should keep going,” I said.

“Give me your arm,” he said, taking it in his and inspecting it. “If you don’t want to leave any trace of your blood, we need to heal this. Will you let me?”

“How?” He wasn’t a healer.

“Hounds have healing abilities.”

I’d had no idea. “How quickly does it work?”

“For something as small as this? Minutes.”

I was a healer, but healing myself was different. “Then yes, please.” I couldn’t risk walking around dripping blood anywhere else.

He lowered his head, and his hot tongue darted out, swiping over the slice. I jumped. “What are you⁠—”

He did it again.

“Fender?”

“Our saliva, it’s how we heal others.” He swiped once more and his eyes drifted shut.

I watched transfixed as he slid his tongue over the slice again. My skin warmed and tingled.

Finally, he lifted his head, and his gaze, now a beautiful gold, searched mine. “Better?”

I looked down at the spot where he’d licked me. There was a red line, but the wound was gone, and the pain along with it. “Yes, much.”

He lowered my hand but didn’t let it go. “Good.” We started walking, following the glyphs still glowing on the walls. Fender glanced my way. “So who’s Matilda?”

Chapter

Ten

Fender

* * *

“That voice. It said Matilda,” I said when she didn’t answer right away.

She stared up at me wide-eyed. I was far from an expert, but I was pretty sure what I was looking at was alarm. Not good, but better than the way she’d looked while she was in her trance. It’d been her…but also not. There’d been so many subtle differences to her features that I’d barely recognized her. It had been her eyes that had truly freaked me out. White, distant—and not fucking hers.

“Matilda?” she said.

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure.”

Her mouth twisted to the side. “Hmm. It could have been some ancient language. It was pretty drawn out. Are you sure that’s what you heard? There’s really no way of knowing what she was saying.” Her hands kind of flittered around her. “No, now that I think about it, I’m positive it was something else.”

She was getting all panicked again, just like she had when we were camping. “You good?”

“Yes.” She started walking faster. “We should probably hurry. There’s no way of knowing how long Brigid will let us stay in her domain.”