I mashed the mute button, but I was too slow, and the director chuckled into the receiver.
“Colby Timms, I presume.” His laughter reminded me of the rustle of old bones. “Tell her I said hello.”
Fingers trembling to hear her name on his withered lips, I ended the call and blocked the number.
“Are you okay?” Colby lit on my shoulder. “Who was that?”
“Wrong number.” I cleared my throat. “Let me get my kit, and we’ll get glamoured up, okay?”
Butting against my jaw, she rubbed her furry head on me in a comforting gesture. “Okay.”
I dropped her in the kitchen then headed to my room for supplies. I paused when I noticed the grimoire. I had left it under my pillow. Now it sat in the middle of the bed. I doubted Colby would touch it, and we were alone in the house. As I perched on the edge of the mattress, recalling the director’s quiet menace, I was tempted, so tempted, to crack open the book penned in hate to discover answers to my problems.
“I’m not going to use you,” I told it, and myself. “The information on Colby is all that interests me.”
The grimoire sat there, emanating blackest magic, but it gave no outward indication of sentience.
“I’m glad we got that settled.”
The cover left my palms tingling when I lifted it and carried it to my closet to a magically insulated safe.
As I secured the grimoire in with other dark artifacts in my macabre collection of relics too dangerous to entrust into others’ care, I reflected on Asa’s comment about me punishing myself. Maybe he was right. Maybe I had to hurt, to crave, to hunger, in order to keep myself strong enough to resist temptation.
And resist I did.
I might be a Black Hat again, but I was still a white witch.