Without knowing Taylor’s true name, I couldn’t ask the Kellies to ferret out any links to other witches in the Bureau. An official inquiry might tip off what I was beginning to suspect must be an entire rogue coven operating within Black Hat’s ranks. One with a sole target, and I had painted it on Colby’s back the night I saved her from the Silver Stag.
Too bad we had reduced Taylor to ash. I would have loved to have this witch bring him back so I could kill him all over again for ruining the good thing Colby and I had going.
15
Colby had booked two suites, which worked in our favor. It gave us one big table for her to commandeer for her laptop and other essentials and us a place to work in a separate room, away from tiny moth ears.
The guys had a narrow balcony, just enough to step onto, but it overlooked the parking lot entrance. The cabin view had been lovely. This? Not so much. They would pay for the view with exhaust fumes wafting up through their open sliding door. And the noise. Yeah. They could keep it.
“Backup is forty-five minutes out,” Asa reported. “The Kellies advise us to sit tight until they arrive.”
“Works for me.” I stretched. “I’ll see what I can do about food.”
The only place open at this hour was a squat Italian restaurant that smelled like onions. We hadn’t eaten in ten forevers, so I placed a delivery order for three and hoped for the best.
“He could sense the ward.” Clay watched the security footage I’d sent him. “See that? He held up his hand to feel the magic. He must not have much if he had to trace its path like that.”
“There’s witch blood in that family.” I paced the floor in front of the small kitchen. “I chose Arden for the latent power in her. Camber’s family has magic too. That’s probably why they’re friends. Witches crave a coven. Their bonds, as well as those with their families, fulfilled that need. Until I arrived. Young witches gravitate toward powerful mentors. That was why they came to me asking for odd jobs until I took them under my wing. That’s why they satisfy that same drive in me—to belong to a community and better it.”
“That’s white witch logic.” Asa set down his phone after viewing the same link. “Black witches are loners until they require extra hands, blood, or power for spells.”
“Yes and no.” I turned his comment into a teachable moment, since that was my job description. “There are familial groups, multigenerational covens who live together their whole lives. They tend to perform sacrificial magic. On each other. They often sacrifice their own children. Infants, mostly. They get pregnant for the sole purpose of fulfilling a ritual and then spend the next nine months planning it.”
Aside from the obvious, that I was in the habit of throwing the worst of myself at people to force them a step back, I wasn’t sure why I felt the need to share that tidbit. Or watch while he absorbed it as if it might reveal some flaw in his character I could capitalize on. But that wasn’t me. Not anymore.
I was flawed, broken, ruined.
I was cruel, bitter, hopeless.
But I was trying. I was growing. I was learning.
I was closer to embodying that person I saw in my mind when I meditated on who I wanted to be.
Given my own struggles, I wasn’t going to shine light on his or anyone else’s until the glare blinded them to my faults. That was petty and small and wrong. Wrong. A concept that was beginning to take on new dimension for me.
A tentative knock on the door sent Clay sprinting for the food. I couldn’t tell if he was that hungry or that eager to escape the topic, but I wish he hadn’t left me alone to face the conversational fallout with Asa.
“You expect me to curl my lip or spit on you.” He kept his seat. “You know who my father is, what I am.”
“You aren’t your father, and being a daemon doesn’t make you a monster. Your choices determine that.”
“You’re willing to pardon me, but you can’t forgive yourself?”
“I’ve done horrible things,” I said softly. “I was a terrible person.”
“Your choices say otherwise.”
“You can’t use my words against me.” I glowered at him. “That’s not fair.”
“You haven’t sacrificed any babies.” He rose with fluid grace. “You never would have either.”
“You can’t know what I would have done. I was high on black magic. I had no moral compass.”
“The needle might have spun a bit, but you had one. Otherwise, you and I wouldn’t be here now.”
Asa crossed to me, took one of my wrists in each of his hands, and unfolded my arms from where I had cinched them across my stomach. That habit was damning in the wrong company. Any sign of weakness could get you killed in our line of work. I had to shed the tics living among humans had allowed me.
“You don’t know that.” I stood there, shackled by him and not minding it. “I might have enlisted aid from a daemon prince to help me conquer the Earth.” I bounced a shoulder. “If he wasn’t too busy ruling Hael to pen me onto his schedule.”
“I don’t want to rule.” His thumbs caressed my inner wrists. “Though I might not mind being ruled.”
“Eww.” Clay lumbered in, burdened with bags of food. “I don’t want to know Rue’s kinks. Or yours.”
Heat flashed through me, and Asa smiled, his thumbs telling him exactly how my heart had leapt.
Goddess bless, I was still thinking about his horns. Clearly, I had problems. Two of them. A matched set.
“What are you thinking about now?” Asa murmured. “Your pulse keeps jumping.”
“That lasagna is turning me on,” I lied, jerking out of his grip. “Parmesan really does it for me.”
“Literally just said no kinks.” Clay spread out the food on the table and tossed me a plastic fork. “Keep them to yourself.”
“I was talking about food.”
“What did I tell you about daemons and food?”
“That food fights are foreplay.” I stabbed a meatball in Clay’s spaghetti and bit down. “Oh, baby.”
Asa moved in behind me, leaned over me, and took the fork from my fingers. His growl vibrated through my spine to rattle my teeth. I didn’t enjoy having my food taken from me, so I pinched another meatball in my fingers and popped the whole thing in my mouth, giving myself ultra-sexy chipmunk cheeks. Twisting to see over my shoulder, I dared Asa with a look as I chewed, swallowed, then smacked my lips.
“Don’t tempt me.” He ate the meatball off my fork. “You won’t like what happens.”
That was the whole problem. I was pretty sure I would like it. I might even ask him to do it again.
“Can you two fight over something besides my balls?” Clay snatched the fork. “Seriously. Not cool.”
A second knock on the door raised my eyebrows, and I checked with Clay. “You order dessert?”
Asa shrank back, giving me space, and fitted himself into the kitchen, as far from the door as possible.
After wiping my mouth clean of sauce, I scooted around the counter. “I’ll get it, I guess.”
I glanced back to check on him, but he was doing his invisible man impersonation. He must have scented the people on the other side of the door and recognized them. Black Hat. Must be. And they were early.
The zombified team could have called in an SOS before the witch took them out. That would account for a fresh secondary team arriving ahead of schedule. But the Kellies handled dispatch for all active agents.
They would have known.
They would have told us.
And that meant, whoever our guests were, they weren’t our backup team.
Tuning in, I picked out four heartbeats, but that was all I could tell. The door opened under my palm and revealed four agents dressed in their Black Hat best. I greeted them with an expression I used to wear as easy as I smiled these days. Total lack of interest meets an utter willingness for violence. “You have ID?”
The agent on point, a gorgeous redhead with an athletic figure, reached into her sui
t jacket and pulled out standard Black Hat-issued ID.
“Melissa Rivers,” I said loud enough for my voice to carry over the crunch of garlic bread to Clay’s ears.
“Hey, Lis.” He joined me at the door. “RJ, good to see you. Timothy, looking good. Vanessa, hey.”
“The director sent us.” Melissa made no move to cross the threshold. “He explained your problem.”
Her face didn’t ring any bells, but her voice struck me as familiar. I couldn’t place it, though.
“Come in.” He slung an arm around my shoulders and hauled me back. “Guys, this is Rue Hollis.”
“Any friend of Clay’s…” Melissa said to me while smiling at him. “It’s good to see you.”
The other three were less chatty, but I wasn’t sure if the problem was me or if they had noticed Asa.
How he managed to make himself smaller, less threatening, was a feat to behold, but it made me twitch how he put himself into a box and shut the lid around others to make them more comfortable. Maybe it made him a better person than me. He wouldn’t have to try hard to win that title. But I didn’t like how it made me feel. Which just proved that, yeah. He was a better person than me to put others’ comfort first.
“Asa,” Vanessa said softly, the only one to address him. “It’s good to see you again.”
“Vanessa.” He kept his gaze on his feet. “Always a pleasure.”
“It could have been,” RJ quipped, “if you had called her back. She’s been pining after you for months.”
A delicate flush turned her pale cheeks rosy, and she found her shoes of sudden interest too.
Me?
I considered using my athame to peel her boots like apples then feed them to her, soles first.
“Aww hell,” Clay breathed. “Vanessa, you might want to step back. RJ, shut the ever-loving fuck up.”
Interestingly, Timothy got the memo I was the immediate threat over Asa. He hit his knees, quick, then slid into a bow that resulted with his forehead pressing against the floor. He murmured a prayer or the next best thing, and he didn’t budge. He barely breathed. The others watched him with tight frowns.
“Asa is fascinated by Rue.” Clay put it out there. “You might not want to give Rue an excuse to kill you.”
“I’m not going to kill you,” I assured Vanessa blandly. “Keep looking at him, and you might wish I had.”
The shift of the mood in the room tingled along my skin as Asa lifted his head fully for the first time since our guests arrived. A smile twitched in his cheek, and he rubbed a hand over his mouth, failing to hide it.
“Let’s all cool down.” Melissa fell in beside Clay. “Haven’t enough agents lost their lives?”
The truth of that sobered me, and I retracted my claws, even if the urge to rake them down Vanessa’s all-too-beautiful face still twitched in my fingertips. Which were tinted red with sauce. A reminder how easy it was to reach in and pluck a tastier off-menu item from her chest. I should have felt ashamed, but I was too irritated with myself for how I was behaving.
Asa wasn’t the last fry in the bag or the last slice of cake in the fridge or the last cookie in the jar.
He also wasn’t food, but that was beside the point. I wasn’t fighting with anyone over him.
Moving slowly, as if afraid I might startle, Asa approached me. He stood beside me, our sides flush, and I pushed out an exhale as the coil of anger toward Vanessa relaxed into the chill vibe I had been struggling to manage on my own.
“Now that we’ve got that out of the way.” Clay clapped his hands, and everyone jumped at the shock of noise. “Melissa, you said you guys are here to help with the zombie problem?”
“Zombies?” Her eyes widened to cartoon proportions. “There are zombies?”
“If you didn’t know about them,” Asa said, twining our fingers, “why are you here?”
And how did she know agents had died working this case, if she had no idea what killed them?
The Kellies would have briefed her, had they sent her, to prepare her team for battling the undead.
“The director told us a black witch was causing problems up this way. That you had seized a grimoire.” A wrinkle creased her forehead. “We were ordered to collect it and transport it to the compound while you hunted down the witch.”
Except we hadn’t told anyone about the grimoire.
Crap, crap, crap.
We had found our second black witch, or she had found us, but what about the others?
Would her team stand with her or against her? Did they know the truth? Or were they following orders? Had we identified our rogue coven and its leader? The questions kept churning, turning my thoughts this way and that, attempting to make sense of all the peculiarities of this case. Hard to do with an audience.
One probably sent to kill Asa, disable Clay, capture me, then ferret out the grimoire and locate Colby.
A subtle tension pinched Clay’s shoulders, proof the wheels of his brain were spinning hard and fast too, but he turned the twitch into a sweeping gesture toward the table.
“Oh good.” Clay winked at her. “We’re just about to sit down to dinner. Care to join us?”
A slow smile crept across Melissa’s face, and she reached for her wand. “What gave me away?”
The other agents mimicked her, drawing their wands and sinking into ready positions.
Friends or foes? I couldn’t tell yet. They might only be guilty of following her lead.
I didn’t want to kill them if I could avoid it, a blip of conscience, if you will. But given the sheer volume of zombies we had dusted so far, a proficient coven made more sense than a gifted solo practitioner with a Frankenstein fetish. Many hands make light work, and all.
“Tell me mine,” Clay teased, hoping to deescalate, “and I’ll tell you yours.”
“You offered to share food with us.” She shook her head. “You’re selective about your dining partners.”
That wasn’t strictly true. Clay showed affection through food, yes, and he taught me to do the same. But he also showed respect for his fellow agents when he brought them coffee or treats he baked.
For her to believe otherwise spoke volumes about his read on her character. Whatever their past relationship, he hadn’t shown her those same courtesies, which told me all I needed to know about her.
With a polite nod, he fulfilled his end of the bargain. “No one knows about the grimoire.”
“More people than you know are aware of its existence.” Regret shadowed her features, eclipsed by her determination. “Give me the book, Clay, for old times’ sake. Don’t make me hurt them.”
A prickle stung the base of my spine, and magic hummed under my skin.
Colby.
Her magic friend must be whispering in her ear again, warning her I was in danger, since the familiar bond didn’t work like that.
“We don’t have a book.” I drew her attention from Clay. “Sorry for any confusion.”
“Oh?” Her eyes glittered. “What’s that on the table?”
Before I could cut my eyes in its direction, the foul presence of black magic slid over my skin in a rush.
That grimoire was going to be the death of us if we didn’t figure out how to lock it up tight.
“You don’t have to die today, Rue.” Her voice softened. “Let us have the book, and we’ll go.”
“You’re an accomplished liar.” I smirked with every ounce of arrogance in me, which caused her façade to crack. “How many people have you killed to herd us into this trap?”
This whole case smacked of premeditation, in hindsight. The rogue coven members accepted they might die in the attempt to retrieve the book, and they were okay with that. They felt it was a worthwhile sacrifice, their lives or ours, and that kind of zeal never ended well for the opposition.
“Your wards were too strong at the cabin.” She pursed her lips. “The revenants could cross, but all living things were rebuffed.”
That explained why I was ale
rted to the ward breach. It hadn’t been the zombies but one of them attempting to break in that tripped the magic. There had been too much chaos at the cabin for me to think twice about it. No doubt, that had been their plan.
“You killed those quicker than anticipated,” she continued. “We were forced to create zombies, because of time constraints, and I don’t have to tell you how lacking they are when it comes to even the simplest orders.”
The zombigo and the zipper-head worm had been fancier than the shamblers for sure.
Revenants sounded witchier than fancy zombies, so I filed away the difference to read up on later.
As much as I had studied, the director felt necromancy was beneath us. That if a witch required a sack of animated meat to defend their claim to a territory, or to perform other menial tasks for them, they were unworthy adversaries.
“You killed fellow agents to have enough bodies to throw at us.” Clay kept his tone even. “What in that book could be worth the loss of so much life?”
Understanding dawned in her expression, and her gaze skipped to me. “You haven’t read it.”
Bobbing a shoulder, I lied through my teeth. “There was nothing earth-shattering in it.”
“Then you haven’t truly read it.” Her lips kicked up in a grin. “The book chooses who it reveals itself to.”
Given what I suspected, that it was whispering in Colby’s ear, I wasn’t sure how picky it was about insinuating itself with potential vessels. But that link—that possible link—was one I would have to investigate after we got home.
“You’re saying—” I forced my face into confused lines, “—it gave me the CliffsNotes version?”
“You’re not powerful enough.” She jerked her chin up a notch. “You couldn’t comprehend it if you tried.”
No one in my entire life had ever accused me of being the least powerful witch in the room. From when I was a child, I was treated as a future power. Then I had become one. Granted, I had changed my diet, but Colby’s magic was beyond me on my best day. Make that my worst day.
For her to be so clueless, Asa must be right.
Black Arts, White Craft (Black Hat Bureau Book 2) Page 18