Gray Witch (Black Hat Bureau 5)

Biting the inside of my cheek, I didn’t correct him. I was trying to get better about taking compliments.

Even if they were one thousand percent wildly inaccurate.

“Shorty incoming,” Clay warned as she peeked out of his pocket, breaching the spell that kept her in a bubble of quiet, the better for letting the grownups talk.

Instead of her usual chatter, we got silence as she took in her new surroundings.

“Do you want to play your game?” I cast about for her laptop. “I can set you up before I go.”

Without a word, she ducked back into Clay’s pocket, spooked by my disembodied voice.

“I’m not winning any contests here.” I headed for the door. “Clay, we’re out.”

Twice the coverage meant twice the drain on my magic, so we needed to get going anyway.

“This isn’t your fault,” he protested. “You can’t blame yourself.”

“If I had a nickel for every time someone told me that, I could use Benjamins to wipe.”

Frustrated I couldn’t help Colby by waving a magic wand, I barreled out the door into the parking lot.

The thing about trauma? It lurked in the recesses of your brain, let you hope you had finally, finally won. Then it pounced, digging in its claws and reminding you of each and every scar you did your best to hide.

“Let’s stop by the front desk,” I told Asa in a huff. “I want to see what Myrtle is doing.”

“All right.”

We didn’t go inside, as it would be hard to explain the door opening, but I did peer through the glass.

Elbows on the counter, she filed her nails while she watched the TV mounted in their tiny guest lounge.

“Good deal.” I got my bearings. “The woods are about a twenty-minute walk that way.”

“All right.”

Checking both ways before stepping into nonexistent traffic, I prowled across the pockmarked road.

“Are you stuck?” I flicked him a glance on the other side. “Do you need me to feed you a quarter?”

“You stew. Often. Mostly about your responsibilities to your loved ones. I worried about pulling you out of those dark moods at first, but now I see it’s part of your process.” He noticed he had my attention. “I can’t convince you what others do isn’t your fault. I can’t convince you you’re not to blame when things go wrong. You require time and space to work through it until you convince yourself you did the best you could under the circumstances.”

Unnerved by how well he read me, I cocked an eyebrow. “Who says I don’t stew on guilt 24/7?”

“You’re too busy,” he reasoned. “Busier since we started sharing a bed.”

A half-choked laugh forced through the knot in my chest. Smug looked good on him.

As we set off toward the woods, I gave what he had observed serious thought and decided he was right.

Weird.

When had I become a person capable of forgiving myself? Not shucking blame. Not immune to the consequences of my actions. But truly able to look at a situation, evaluate all factors, all participants, and determine I wasn’t at fault?

Okay, so I wasn’t that progressive.

Safer to say I was cutting myself slack when I never had before, not when it mattered, not when I cared.

In taking on Colby, I had duked it out with Atlas for the right to carry the weight of the world on my shoulders. I wanted to believe that meant I had made headway in becoming the person I wanted to be, but I wasn’t sure if letting myself off the hook was progress or regression.