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“I’m sure Azrael will love it too,” I reply dryly.
Cordelia offers me a coy smile as if to say that’s exactly why she made it.
“Okay, we’re off now,” Raven says, turning the phone back to her as she marches upstairs to her room.
I know what’s coming, but I play dumb as I rifle through my crystals, trying to get a feel for the right one.
“Tell me everything,” Raven hisses the moment she enters her room and shuts the door.
“I already told you everything,” I mutter, choosing an amethyst and setting it beside my jewelry kit.
Raven rolls her eyes. “I mean the stuff you didn’t tell Mom and Dad.”
“Like what?” I shrug.
“Are you really going to make me say it?” she asks.
I cut some wire to wrap the crystal, avoiding Raven’s gaze. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Seriously?” she grumbles. “You’re going to do me dirty like that after everything we’ve been through?”
Now it’s my turn to roll my eyes. “Dramatic much?”
“Just tell me,” she presses.
“Tell you what?”
“Oh, for crap’s sake. Mother Goddess, grant me strength to deal with this nightmare of a sister.”
“I thought I was your favorite sister,” I muse.
“Did you survive his monster cock or not?” she screeches so loud my eyes widen in horror.
“What the hell, Raven,” I hiss. “Could you ask any louder? I don’t think the whole city heard you.”
“I’m sorry, okay.” She blows out a breath. “But it’s a serious question. I was worried about you.”
“I told you, I’m fine.”
“I know that’s what you told me,” she says. “But I want to know the truth. Come on, Willow. It’s me. We tell each other everything.”
I sigh, setting the crystal aside as I meet her gaze. “I survived. It wasn’t… terrible.”
She leans closer, far more interested in this conversation than I ever expected her to be. But then again, Raven is a virgin. I’m the only reliable source she has for this information, apart from her friends, I suppose. “By not terrible, you mean…” She leaves the words hanging.
I shift, trying to figure out how to reply. “Well, I didn’t die.”
She snorts. “Obviously. But it was good, though?”
“It was… unexpected.” I feel my cheeks heating as I admit it. “I don’t know how else to describe it.”
“So you’ll do it again?” she asks curiously.
“God, Raven, I don’t know. Probably. I mean, he’s my husband now.”
“More like captor,” she mutters under her breath.
When I don’t respond, she changes the subject, much to my relief.
“What are you making?”
“A necklace.”
“For me?” She bats her eyelashes.
“Not everything is about you,” I say. “This is for Azrael’s little sister.”
Raven’s features pinch in concern. “Don’t tell me you’re replacing me already.”
“As if I could.” I return my focus to the necklace, trying to find a chain to accompany the crystal. “Bec is young and really sweet. I’m worried about her.”
Raven lets that settle over her for a moment before she asks. “Why?”
“I don’t know. Something’s off. I haven’t figured it out yet. But I want to make sure she’s protected.”
A beat passes, and I worry that Raven still feels like I might be replacing her. But when I look at her, I can see she’s not jealous. The concern has returned to her eyes because she knows Bec isn’t the only one who might need protection in this house.
“Use the silver chain,” she says quietly. “And don’t forget to bless it.”
14
AZRAEL
I leave Willow to entertain herself. I’m tired, fucking exhausted. I had woken early this morning with my head pounding, feeling like I was suffocating. The same damned nightmare played again, but this time it felt like there was a hundred-pound weight on my chest—like that weight was stealing any breath I managed to take.
There was one difference in the dream, though. Elizabeth Wildblood was absent.
It was Willow who came riding up in that cart wearing ragged clothes, a lock of her hair having been ripped from her head. Willow whose eyes I met on Proctor’s Ledge as she was taken to the hanging tree, the noose dropped over her head, tightened around her neck. Willow not with the hate Elizabeth had in her eyes but something else, something different. Willow with that hollow darkness I glimpsed in the photograph at her home, her sister laughing and her trying to but looking haunted instead.
When I gasped awake, I was shocked to find myself staring into a pair of green eyes. It took me a minute to realize what the weight on my chest was and why it felt like my breath was being stolen.
That goddamned cat sat on my chest, staring at me like the Queen of fucking Sheba, and she didn’t budge when I opened my eyes. Instead, she just kept on looking at me as if I were the fucking intruder.
“Goddamned cats,” I mutter again at the memory of the morning. Well, the middle of the night.
