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“Finished?” I ask, pushing my chair back loudly and abruptly standing.
In my periphery, I see my brother’s eyebrows rise, but I’m addressing my wife. I can’t sit here another minute and see her looking like that and not touch her. Take her. Try somehow to sate this hunger because there is too much at stake to feel lust for this woman.
Willow stands, too, and I wonder what she was thinking as she slowly wipes the corners of her mouth with her napkin before dropping it on top of her dish. “Finished.”
The blue of her eyes has gone darker. My wife wants me as much as I want her. That is some comfort.
I gesture toward the French doors that will lead outside.
“Don’t mind me,” Emmanuel says from the table.
“We won’t,” I say without a backward glance. I set my hand at my wife’s back and open the door. She steps outside and shudders, wrapping her arms around herself. I slip off my jacket and set it over her shoulders.
Willow is clearly not expecting such a gesture and I’m reminded of what she said before the marking ceremony.
“Don’t think I’m trying to be a hero,” I make clear.
“Don’t worry, I won’t.”
Her comment makes me smile and, in spite of herself, she slips her arms into the jacket, which is about eight sizes too big for her.
Benedict barks from where he’s tethered by a short chain outside the kitchen door.
“Christ. I’ll be right back.” I go to get him. I’m sure he’s locked out here on Grandmother’s orders. “Hey boy,” I crouch down to release him, and he nuzzles his nose in my hair and neck, tail wagging, happy to see me. “Let’s walk.” I stand and watch him run right to Willow.
I remember her asshole cat last night and decide to let him go. I won’t let him hurt her, but he’s huge and has no idea of his own size. Having him come charging at you if you don’t know him can be frightening.
“Oh, aren’t you a sweetheart!” Willow drops down to her knees as he nears her and Benedict, the traitor, greets her in the way he does Rébecca, nuzzling her, sniffing and licking her, almost careful around her.
“It’s because he smells me on you,” I tell her with a smirk, drawing the dog away and sending him off into the woods.
She straightens. “Or maybe he just has good taste.”
“He likes me too, Little Witch. What does that say?”
“Even the best of us have lapses in judgment. Besides, Fi doesn’t like you.”
“Fi?”
“Fiona. My cat.” She points to my hand where the asshole had scratched me.
“She’s wild like her master.” Willow shifts her gaze higher to the scratch marks she herself left in the library. I bend closer, slide my hand up her back, under the mass of hair and wrap it around the nape of her neck. “I’ll tame her master, though. Teach her how to take it rough and like it. Oh, wait,” I straighten, grin. “You already like it.”
She flips me off, and I laugh out loud, some of the tension easing.
“Where are we going?” she asks as we take the steps off the patio, past the pool house and toward my mother’s greenhouse. There is a more direct route, but that would take us past the cemetery. I find I want to hide her from Shemhazai’s sight, at least for now. I don’t know why or where the thought comes from, but there’s no question about it.
“Nowhere particular. We’re just walking.”
“Why?”
“I need some fresh air. You don’t?” I look down at her, and she glances up at me.
“I’d rather walk alone.”
“No, you wouldn’t, little liar.” I caress the nape of her neck with my thumb and hear her breath catch. We walk in silence, and I know she likes this—being outside in nature, under a clear, starry sky.
“What’s wrong with Bec?” she asks after a while.
“You noticed.”
“It’s hard not to. She told me her birthday is in a few weeks, that she’ll be sixteen.”
A weight settles over my shoulders, a sadness, a sense of powerlessness, spreading through my insides.
“She looks twelve, Azrael. And she’s not well. She hardly eats. I don’t know. But something’s wrong.”
“Do you think I don’t know that?”
“What is it?”
“We don’t know. Doctors can’t figure it out. She was born small, always has been small, but over the last few years she’s just almost stopped growing.”
“Does she have her period?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“At nearly sixteen, most girls have their periods. It’s natural. A milestone.”
I look straight ahead. “I don’t know. Grandmother would know. She looks after her.”
Willow shakes her head, stops and steps in my path, setting her hands on her hips. “Really? Are you blind?”
“What?”
“Rébecca is terrified of your grandmother. And that woman, there’s something not right about her.”
“She’s not terrified—”
