Page 71 of Want Me, Take Me, Haunt Me, Make Me

He’d heard about her battle, she thought. Granted, that hadprobably been obvious in the ethereal for miles around, but it fit into the rest of the puzzle. “You had to be here,” she repeated slowly.

“I did.”

“Why?”

“I can’t tell you.” He faced her without apparent impatience, but he was barely breathing, like he was in front of a judge and waiting to hear his sentence. Carefully, he went on. “I promise I wasn’t trying to exploit you for any reason when I confronted Gordon, when I gave you the wine, or now. I can’t promise to answer more questions, but I’ll try.”

Hazel nodded and met his emerald gaze squarely. “One question,” she said, deliberately choosing wording she’d used before and calling up all her knowledge of magic. “Maxwell Redfern, are you the being who calls himself Ligat?”

The whole yard fell silent. Energy filled the air like the moments before a thunderstorm, though the sky stretched clear and blue above them Hazel felt the hair stand up on the back of her neck.

Red sigils flickered to life on Maxwell’s face, then subsided, just as light flared behind his eyes. Hazel gathered the strength she had left in case she’d just made a very stupid mistake.

Nothing moved.

Then Maxwell opened his mouth. “Yes.” He pronounced the single syllable like it might explode, paused, and then said it again. “Yes. I am.”

Chapter 38

The sky should have split, Maxwell thought, or the earth should have shaken. God knew it felt unstable enough beneath his feet. That was only his perception, though; in the outer world, the sun still shone, the birds started singing again, and Hazel stood watching him with no sign of unsteadiness.

He braced himself for backlash, whether that was the bindings tightening around him, Perthrux’s direct wrath, or some contingency spell that would turn him inside out. Pain would hit soon. Maxwell had been sure of that each time he’d tested a boundary, but it had never been so dramatic, nor come with the rush of energy and the roaring in his ears that had arisen when Hazel asked his identity. He waited.

Nothing happened.

Hazel’s hair stirred in the wind. Shadows drew lines across her face, making one eye look very blue. Maxwell tested his mouth and found that it still worked. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t tell you before.”

She flicked one hand sideways, dismissive. “I figured that out. What was the wine?”

“The—” The woman’s conversation occasionally had hairpin turns that would put the Grand Prix to shame, but Maxwell couldunderstand why that would be her first question. “Peaches of—well, not immortality, sadly, not really, but a certain amount of fortification. Magical and physical.”

“Why would you bring me that?” Her gaze was sharp but not hostile, not even as combative as Maxwell had seen it when he’d first spoken with her as Ligat. This was Hazel as a professional, the woman he’d only briefly glimpsed in Chapman’s bedroom. “I can’t imagine it was on your master’s orders.”

“No, but I…I discovered I had a bit of leeway. Could interpret statements the way I wanted if it was unclear. It mentioned the ultimate result might be more dramatic if you held out longer, which gave me an opening.”

“Okay.” The word became a long exhalation. “I can believe you weren’t any more thrilled about letting a bunch of demons into the world than I am. I’m going to assume you weren’t actually trying to increase the pressure on me. You’d deny it if you were, and you obviouslycanlie, so that’s a rabbit hole we don’t need to go down.”

Bitterness put an edge on her tone for the first time in the conversation. Maxwell winced and couldn’t blame her. “I wasn’t just thinking of the world,” he said, “though I probably should’ve been, and I understand if you don’t believe that. Or don’t want to hear it.”

Hazel blinked, started to speak, and then caught herself. “No. I mean, yes, I believe you, though I’m not petty enough to get annoyed if youhadbeen keeping the bigger picture in mind. And I’m sorry. You’ve been enslaved for, what, a hundred years—”

“I’m not completely free now,” he said, feeling cautiously at the spells that still lay on him. “It’s a long leash rather than a set of leg irons, but we should still be careful how we go.”

“How we go,” said Hazel, “is inside to have a drink and a bag of pretzels. We’ll both think much better after that.”

* * *

There was a kind of ritual in refreshments: putting so many cubes of ice in each glass, pouring the soda to just the right level so that it foamed and sank back without going over the top, even opening pretzels into a bowl. Hazel’s mother had impressed that on her without meaning to, and she remembered it better than most of the lessons the woman had clearly hoped would stick. It was calming, almost meditative, and just then it meant she didn’t have to look at Maxwell (or Ligat).

Hazel wasn’t angry at him. She almost wanted to be, because he was a single person with a face and a name for her to direct anger at, but rationality kept intervening. Yes, Maxwell had lied to her. Yes, he could have probably done more to keep their relationship impersonal, and by not doing so he’d kind of set her up for humiliation and hurt feelings. He’d also spent a century under the command of a demon, which Hazel guessed didn’t involve a lot of opportunities for human contact, and he’d helped her at no small personal risk.

If she was angry, it was at the entire situation—but, she realized, anger just made up a small and simple part of her emotions. Embarrassment came in way in front. Not only had she gone to a lot of trouble to pretend she had a normal life around Maxwell, she’d told Ligat about most of her history with what turned out to be his alter ego. He knew exactly what she’d left out, too, and probably why.

This never happened to Lois Lane.

She handed Maxwell his glass and, she hoped, managed not to blush like a sixth grader when their hands touched. “Thank you,” he said, and took the pretzels as well. “Where to?”

It should have been a simple question, but apparently Hazel just couldn’t have simplicity even in the basics. “Can the demon monitor what we’re doing?”