“Good.” I kissed the top of her head. “That’s what I like to hear.”
Heaving a dramatic sigh, she wriggled free and glided to the house in the next best thing to slow motion.
“That kid.” I wiped my mouth to check for drool. “I’m not sure this is wise.”
“The paperwork came through while you were resting.” Asa cut the legs out from under my argument. “The director is willing to work with you on a case-by-case basis. He’s willing to permit you to live here, if you touch base with your team once a week during times when you’re not on an active case.”
For him to agree to such big concessions, he wanted me back for more than this copycat case.
That might change once he heard about my new dietary restrictions.
But I doubted it.
Something else Asa said struck a belated chord with me. “My team?”
“You have to be on call twenty-four-seven to rate a partner.” Clay chuckled. “Part-timers get a team.”
I could see where this was headed from a mile away, but I still asked, “Do I get to pick them?”
A preternatural stillness swept over Asa. “Yes.”
“Hmm.” I tapped a finger against my bottom lip. “Can I interview candidates or…?”
“Yes.” Asa angled his face away from me. “That can be arranged.”
“She’s pulling your leg, Ace.” Clay snorted. “She wants us.”
“You got your butt kicked by a tree earlier.” I could laugh about it now. “I’m not sure you’re qualified.”
“That’s not fair.” The car rocked when he twisted to face us. “I had already pulverized seven trees by the time you got there.” He cut me a scowl that highlighted his pulpy face. “Plus, I’ve got Ace up my sleeve.”
I shouldn’t have laughed, but I couldn’t help myself. He looked ready to climb in the back and shake me. Between the grinding and popping noises the seat was making, I doubted it would hold out much longer.
“Clay, you know you’re the only one I trust to hold my umbrella at the shitshow.”
A wide grin swept across his face, and he pumped his fist, leaving a dent in the roof.
With Asa’s head turned, it was hard to gauge, but I detected a lip twitch at Clay’s enthusiasm.
A single tap on Asa’s hand where it rested on the seat earned me his full attention.
“You had my back.” I searched his face. “I won’t forget that.” I stuck out my hand. “Teammates?”
His warm fingers wrapped mine and didn’t let go. “Teammates.”
“Details are in your inbox.” Clay grunted when he caught his hip under the steering wheel. “Let us—”
Snap. Crack. Pop.
A yelp shot out of me when the seat broke, dropping it—and Clay—into my lap.
“Hold still.” Asa set his hand on Clay’s shoulder. “You’re going to crush her legs.”
The golem twisted his lips, but that was all he moved. “Sorry, Dollface.”
“Accidents happen.” I was just glad Colby had gone in. “There’s a reason you’re a backseat driver.”
“I’ll have to shift to get it off you.” Asa lifted his eyebrows. “It’ll be a tight fit.”
“Do what you gotta do.” I wiggled my toes. “I’m losing feeling below the knee.”
Flame exploded down the length of Asa’s frame, igniting a change that resulted in the same beast from the forest sitting next to me. Mostly. He had to duck to make allowances for his horns, and his upper body required him to crowd me.
The daemon braced one wide palm on the seat behind me then cupped the broken front seat, shoving it upright and holding it steady while Clay contorted enough to ease out the driver side door.
“I’m clear.” He reached in and took the weight of the seat from the daemon, holding it off me. “Scoot out.”
“Stay,” the daemon ordered me then performed a contortionist act of his own to get out his door.
“I could just…” I hooked my thumb toward my open door. “I’m bruised, but nothing’s broken.”
The daemon didn’t appear to trust my self-diagnosis. He wedged a hand under my thighs, placed one on my back, and lifted me out of the SUV and against his bare chest. Now that he had me, he appeared torn on what to do with me. Wards prevented him from entering the yard or house, and the SUV was busted.
“You can set me down here.” I pointed to a patch of thick grass. “I promise not to budge.”
The daemon snorted, not believing me for a hot minute, but the movement brought his hair gliding over his wide shoulder into my lap. His burnt-crimson eyes watched me for a moment, daring me to play with it as I had in the SUV earlier.
Maybe it was an inkling that Asa viewed himself as monstrous that made me slide my fingers through the silken length while he purred around me.
“You really don’t want to do that,” Clay warned me. “Ace, put her down and shift.”
Wide fangs sharpened the corners of his smile. “No.”
As much as I hated playing the damsel, I had witnessed this type of overprotective behavior triggered in predatory males when their female partners got hurt before. Wargs were terrible about it. Gwyllgi weren’t any better. Big cat shifters might be the worst. Even vampires got extra bitey over opposite-sex partners.
Daemons must have the same instinctive drive to care for us puny females under their protection.
“I’m going to let go of your hair.” I opened my hand. “And now you’re going to let go of me.”
The daemon’s brows slammed down, and he looked like he was thinking about growling at me.
Done humoring him, I murmured a tiny spell and jabbed him with my finger. I only had enough juice for a static shock, which was laughable on a daemon his size. But it did the job. He lost his focus. That gave me an opening to shove off his chest, flip over his arms, and land in a crouch.
“Ace.” Clay snapped his fingers in his partner’s face. “I will kick your ass if you take another step.”
A tinkling laugh froze us all in place, and we turned in unison to the porch and the moth on the railing.
“You say a lot of bad words.” Colby fluttered with delight. “More than my gamer friends even.”
As I straightened, I leveled a stare on her. “Your gamer friends use language around you?”
“I hear the microwave beeping.” She spun in a circle. “Gotta go.”
“Can she use the microwave?”
“Oh, yes.” I found Clay standing beside me, half his attention on the daemon. “She enjoys explosions.”
Moths weren’t meant to microwave, but that didn’t stop her from trying to cook when I wasn’t home. I was shocked she hadn’t burned down the house as often as she zapped tinfoil. And utensils. And metal takeout containers.
For a while, I thought it was a cry for attention. Then I realized, no. She was just that bad in the kitchen. Since she was always trying to fix me dinner or desserts for special occasions when disaster struck, I didn’t fuss.
Alarm clanged through his tone. “How…?”
“She watches a lot of TikTok.” She got me hooked too. “It gives her ideas.”
The thirst traps I fell into on total and complete accident gave me ideas too.
“I should go.” I backed away to keep the daemon in sight. “I need to read over that contract.”
No doubt there was fine print buried in there ready to trip me up if I didn’t comb over it.
“You do that.” Clay waved to the moth with her proboscis glued to the drama. “See you tomorrow.”
This twenty-four-hour window Asa sold me on was stretching into a solid forty-eight.
“I have to make the right decision.” I had to say it, even as it caused Clay to drop his smile. “For her.”
“Team,” the daemon growled, “mates.”
I heard the gap between those words, and it gave me a case of the shivers. The daemon in Asa had ideas about me. I chose to believe Asa was reading into the bond I shared with Clay
, and the day’s events gave him a case of overprotectivitis. That I could forgive. You couldn’t change your DNA.
And just like that, I dumped a bucket of ice-cold reality over my own head.
Sure, I resisted temptation today. That didn’t mean it wouldn’t consume me tomorrow.
Each case was another opportunity to succumb, another heart no one would mind me having for lunch.
“Once you sign on the dotted line, I’ll get the files to you.” Clay kept a wary eye on the daemon. “Well, he will.”
The size of Clay’s fingers made it hard for him to use laptops. Phones, at least, could be voice controlled.
Inching back, I banged the fence with my hip, fumbled the gate open behind me, then retreated into the yard, safe behind the wards. All without turning my back on the daemon, who watched me with avarice.
Manners I had forgotten returned to me in a rush now that a ward stood between me and the daemon.
Already dreading the answer, I still forced out, “Do you need a lift to your hotel?”
“Yes,” the daemon rumbled, his fangs gleaming.
“No.” Clay spoke over him. “I called a tow for the SUV. The driver said he would give us a lift into town.”
“Sounds like you boys have it handled.” I pivoted on my heel. “I’ll be inside if you need anything.”
A shiver coasted down my spine, and I glanced over my shoulder to find the daemon sliding a dark claw down the ward that kept him from opening the gate.
6
After Colby fell asleep in her faux-forest bedroom, I retreated into mine to scry for legal help.
Cross-legged on the bed, I sat with a mixing bowl cradled between my thighs. A drop of blood got the party started, and I dialed, for lack of a better word, an old friend from beyond the veil. With Halloween around the corner, the connection ought to be crystal clear.
“Megara, I summon thee.” More blood, more intent. “Megara, I summon thee.”
The stubborn wench refused to show until I jumped through all the hoops, which probably explained why she was aces with contracts.
“Thrice I bid thee.” Even more blood, even more intent. “And thrice I tithe thee.”
I ran a fingertip along the edge of the bowl, and the water rippled, darkened, swirled in a mini whirlpool.
“Hear me,” I called in a resonate voice. “Arise.”
A face appeared wreathed in smoke, not from theatrics, but from the cigarette hanging from her bottom lip. I had baked bread pudding with raisins that had fewer wrinkles than Meg, but I wouldn’t accept legal advice from a dessert, no matter how delicious it might be. Meg, on the other hand, had practiced law in one form or another for a good three hundred years before she took a silver bullet to the heart.
“Your form is rusty, darling,” she chided in a deep rasp. “How long has it been?”
“Eight years.” I squirmed under her disapproval. “Time flies when you’re having fun.”
“Fun?” Her eyes, hidden beneath folds of papery skin, narrowed on me. “You’re having fun?”
“Not particularly?”
“Oh, but you are.” She sat back. “Your cheeks are flush, your eyes are bright, and your heart is racing.”
“You can’t tell that last part.”
“Let’s call it an educated guess.” She glanced at the bed behind me. “Where is he?”
“Who?”
“The man who put that glow about you.”
“There is no man.” I hesitated. “Actually, there is a man. Sort of.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Her lips spread, lipstick spiking the creases. “Tell me all about him.”
“It’s Clay.”
“Darling, no.” She shook her cigarette at me. “He’s a good boy, don’t get me wrong, but he’s…”
“Not anatomically correct?”
“Precisely.”
I could have educated her on how that didn’t slow him down from pursuing his interests, but I was afraid tiny ears might overhear. I did not want to explain the battery-operated birds and the bees to a moth.
“Black Hat found me.” I redirected her. “They want me back.”
“They never let you go,” she said sadly. “Albert would rather die than part with you.”
The director’s name wasn’t spoken, to avoid drawing his attention, but the veil was beyond even his reach.
“I negotiated the terms of my return with the agents they sent after me. I have a contract.”
“I will have to charge my standard fee, you understand, but I can look over it now if you like.”
“That’s more than fair.”
The transfer of one thousand dollars to her former pack’s alpha went through in seconds, and I held the screen up as proof. That she chose to help the loved ones she left behind made me happy to contribute.
“Okay.” She settled in on her side of the divide. “Get your pen and paper ready then start reading.”
The biggest downside with using a deceased lawyer was the time commitment.
Meg couldn’t very well reach through the ether and accept a printed copy, so I had to read and notate. I got a discount for having to play paralegal for her, for which I was grateful, but it meant I wouldn’t sleep much tonight. Not that sleep and I were on a first-name basis these days. Or ever, really.
There was a soothing rhythm to the collaborative process, but that came from years of working together anytime I got twitchy about papers I was asked to sign.
I hadn’t met Meg while she was alive, though she had been friends with my mother. We met when she executed my parents’ wills from the beyond, and it hurt too much to surrender that link when I would never see them again.
Black witches have no afterlife. We simply stop. Here one day, gone forever the next.
I had been taught that we consumed so much life on this side of the veil we ate through our afterlives.
I wasn’t sure what I believed. If I believed anything at all. It hadn’t bothered me, none of it, until Colby.
Not even when Mom, a powerful white witch, failed to appear no matter how often I scried for her.
Six hours later, I squinted at words as they swam across the page, ready to sign anything to get sleep.
“That ought to do it.” Megara took a puff. “Let me know if you need more assistance.”
“I will.” I yawned. “Thanks.”
“I wasn’t wrong about your glow.” She blew smoke against her side of the barrier. “I mistook its origin.”
The safest response I could manage was, “Oh?”
“The thrill of the hunt.” Her eyes gleamed with approval. “Your predatory nature is awakening.”
“That’s the last thing I want.” I studied the notes spread around me. “I don’t want to regress.”
“Your mother ran with our pack on the full moon.” She laughed at the memory. “Naked as a jaybird.”
That woke me up with a cringe. “What did Dad think of that?”
“This was before your father tamed some of her wildness.” She curled her lip. “The point is, you are your mother’s daughter. You’ll always have her fierce spirit. Your father was a good man.” She rolled a hand. “As far as black witches go.” She shook her head. “I can’t blame him for falling in love with her. What she saw in him? That, I’ll never know, but God as my witness, she loved him more than anything. Until you.”
“I have to walk a path that doesn’t haunt me for the rest of my life.”
Curling smoke cast shadows onto her features. “I know, darling.”
“This contract is as good as it gets for people like me.”
“It’s a breadcrumb.” Her mouth pinched. “Follow that path, and you know where it leads.”
Right back to the loaf. Or maybe the bakery? One or the other.
“Clay says they’ve got a Silver Stag copycat. He—or she—is taking young girls in groups of four.”
“Albert couldn’t have baited his hook better if he cut them to chum the waters himself.”
> That painted a vivid mental picture I wouldn’t soon forget. “Do you think he’s involved?”
“No,” she sighed her disappointment. “Black Hat’s reputation for training monsters to hunt their own is his legacy. He would never tarnish the Bureau’s reputation and would kill to keep its record spotless.”
“I’m going to finish this counteroffer then crash.” I rubbed itchy eyes. “Thanks for your help.”
“Next time, dial me up for a chat.” She flicked ash off her cigarette. “It doesn’t have to be all business.”
“I will,” I promised, and I meant it. “Night, Megara.”
“Good night, darling.”
Careful not to spill water on my bed, I carried the mixing bowl to the bathroom to pour down the drain.
Leave a metaphysical doorway open and who knew what might drift through it. The same rules applied to scrying. People who wielded black magic didn’t live long if they got sloppy with it.
With the bowl drained, washed, and set on the sink to dry, I climbed back into bed to organize my notes.
An hour later, I was happy to scan the pages with my phone and email them to Asa to hand up the chain.
So close to dawn, I didn’t expect an immediate response from him, but I got one.
A text.
>>I apologize for my behavior.
As much as I would love to claim I fired off a quip about how he always seemed to be apologizing to me, I debated how to answer until I fell asleep.
* * *
Morning came seconds after my head hit the pillow. That was how it felt, anyway. I strangled my phone, which was bleating its usual time for work alarm, until it shut up and left me alone.
“Hey.”
The tiny whisper almost brought tears to my eyes. I did not want to get out of bed yet.
“Hey, Rue.”
Maybe if I ignored it, it would go away.
“The daemon from last night is on our porch.”
That did it.
My eyes flew open, my heart lodged in my throat, and my feet swung over the edge of the bed.
“Wards?” I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “Breach?”
Soft feet tickled up my leg until a guilty-looking moth sat on my lap. “I lied about the daemon.”
Black Hat, White Witch Page 6