by Emma Dean
Mika didn’t say anything to that. They both knew summer could be rough on relationships.
She paused for a split second and then popped the cookie in her mouth. Would her relationship with Ethan survive the summer? What about Lucien when they were still…nothing right now?
Sure, he’d asked her out, but that wasn’t very permanent and honestly even though Ethan was her official boyfriend, Mika didn’t know how things would go with her in San Francisco and him in New Mexico.
Unless he was taking a summer class, then she could at least visit him here on the weekends or something.
There was a knock on the door and Mika popped up to answer it. Ethan grinned down at her, kissing her with just enough heat to remind her of everything he could do with that mouth and more.
Lucien cleared his throat and Ethan smirked as he walked by so she could greet the fox. Mika didn’t see Malachi anywhere in the library behind Lucien, but she honestly didn’t expect him to come after he’d ditched the last time.
She kissed Lucien’s cheek, lingering longer than she normally did.
It wasn’t like she’d never kissed him before – a real kiss that made her knees weak and her blood heat. But she’d agreed to go on a real date with him, and that kind of made things weird. It felt less like messing around and more serious.
“So the raven is gone, gone?” Lucien asked.
She stepped aside and let him in, closing the door.
Something stopped her and Mika looked up to see Malachi holding the door. His eyes were dark – haunted.
“Is it still okay that I’m here?” Malachi asked, shadows falling across his face.
Mika considered the captain and wondered what it was he was hiding from her, and if the raven being gone would help her get answers, or if Malachi would be stubborn and keep it to himself.
Without a word she opened the door all the way and let him pass. He’d sworn a blood oath after all, it wasn’t like he could talk to anybody about her secrets.
“The raven is gone, gone,” Mika confirmed. “But only for a few days. He said he had to take care of something.” Right after he’d asked why she was so special.
Mika didn’t have an answer to that – even she didn’t understand what was happening with Ethan, Lucien, and Malachi.
Looking up she considered Malachi. He’d said he was protecting her.
“Tell me everything.” Mika passed out the tea, and then poured one for Malachi. She hadn’t thought he’d come, but she’d brought him a cup just in case. She was glad he had.
“Well, I spoke to Selene like you asked,” Audrey said, going first. “I asked her to get in contact with Jessica James and tell the hunter that there is a seal to hell here. But it wasn’t something I could really do over the phone. I don’t want its location getting into the wrong hands.”
“That’s something,” Mika murmured, wondering what the hunter thought about her message and if she’d dismiss it or not. “Did you set up a meeting?”
Audrey nodded. “Selene invited me to stay with her and Kenzie over the summer if I didn’t find a class I wanted to take. I will be able to meet Jessica then and give her the location.”
Mika separated out the macarons one at a time, trying to hide how disgruntled and annoyed she was.
But somehow, her dorm mate always knew. “Selene invited me to stay there because she didn’t want me living here during the summer with everything going on, and she also didn’t know if the raven would still be with you over the summer. It seemed safer.”
Lucien threw an arm over her shoulders and Ethan placed a hand on her lap. Mika was grateful for their comfort, but she felt stupid that she needed it at all. Audrey was her sister, not Selene’s. Selene already had a sister who loved and cared for her.
And Mika…Mika had Claire.
“If the raven goes back to where he comes from I can stay with you, if you like,” Audrey said carefully.
Her emotions were becoming volatile. Carefully Mika shrugged off Lucien’s arm and stood so she could pace, no longer interested in tea and cookies.
“If that’s what you want to do,” Mika told her. “You are your own person, but just know you’ll always have a place in my house.”
Lucien cleared his throat awkwardly. “Ethan and I also have been working on the assignments you gave us.”
“Lucien even managed not to get poison ivy all over him,” Ethan teased as he sipped at his tea. Grimacing, he dropped in a few sugar cubes. “The plants haven’t seen anything suspicious and no one has turned up in the infirmary with a rash.”
“Hey, let me finish my report,” the fox snapped. “Always trying to steal my damn thunder.”
“Not hard to do when I actually have thunder,” Ethan smirked, conjuring a small storm in his palm.
“Show off.” Lucien rolled his eyes and popped a macaron in his mouth, chewing aggressively. “So I went back to Patricia’s den. It’s completely wiped clean of scent, but not pain.” He grinned viciously at that. “So I took a little looksee.”
Mika stopped pacing and stood behind Ethan’s chair, one hand on his shoulder as she waited for Lucien to grace them all with his information. “What did you find?”
“I didn’t really get a lot of information. But I did see that she performed a spell to communicate with someone. It was all one sided though.”
“What were they talking about?” Mika asked, glancing only once at Malachi.
Audrey was just as interested as she was. Her chin was propped up on her hand as she listened raptly.
“The spell to open the seal – who exactly they needed to open it. All I know is the other person was a man, and that they needed a witch of each bloodline – pure, human, and one with both.” Lucien looked at Malachi then, who was unusually pale once again. “Lucky it wasn’t you they sacrificed.”
“Yeah, lucky me,” Malachi muttered.
Lucien popped another cookie in his mouth and chewed all while staring at Malachi. “Clearly Patricia wasn’t able to open the seal,” Lucien drawled. “But she’s not the only one interested in trying. She’s working for a bigger group, one that supposedly has members here on the island from what I gathered through their conversations.”
No one could miss Malachi’s reactions by this point.
“Why don’t you tell us what you’re protecting me from?” Mika said quietly. “Why you’ve really been avoiding me?”
A few words with a complicated series of finger movements and Audrey had the entire study room sealed, even the fire chute. Another word put the fire out completely so they didn’t choke on the smoke.
“Nothing and no one can overhear us, or even sense that we’re here,” Audrey told him. “We’re all allies, so just tell us.”
“We’re honestly the only ones who can probably help you,” Ethan said gently.
“Yeah, we killed a fucking hellhound,” Lucien reminded Malachi. “I’m sure we can take on a secret society of dumbass witches.”
Malachi glared at the fox, not appreciating the jibes that always rolled off Ethan’s back.
“They want you, Mika,” Malachi finally said. “They know what you can do.”
One could hear a pin drop in the room.
Mika felt hot and then cold, her hands shaking as she tried to understand how and most importantly why. “Who exactly are they?”
Ethan moved to get up, but she pressed her hand down on his shoulder to keep him in place. She still needed to process. This time, she didn’t want comfort. She wanted answers.
Malachi glanced at Audrey and something unreadable passed between them. Mika didn’t think they were keeping secrets from her, but she did think they had a connection she would never really understand, born of their time together the semester before.
“While I was at home in Vegas for spring break they approached me. I don’t know who exactly or what their real plans are, but part of them is to unleash an apocalypse to cleanse the earth. Not that I really disagree with them in the sense that h
umans could do with a fresh start, but I don’t know what will come through that seal.” Malachi finally took a sip of his tea.
So much information and yet…it was fucking useless. Mika glared at nothing in particular. “How did they find out about me?”
“Seems they know more about blood magic than most which I guess makes sense given their goals and the ways they like to achieve them.” Malachi shrugged, almost an apology. “So when they heard what had been done to Patricia, they knew blood magic had been involved. Your name was splashed all over the place thanks to the Council naming you as the one who found the killer. It wasn’t difficult to put together.”
Lucien and Ethan shared a look and Mika didn’t like how tense everyone was, like they were waiting for her to explode. She took her hand off Ethan and wished Corbin was there before she could stop the thought from occurring.
He was the only one who wasn’t apprehensive about blood magic in general.
Malachi sighed in defeat and gave in completely. “They call themselves the Hellfire Society.”
20
The Hellfire Society? Mika studied Malachi, but he didn’t seem to get the significance. “You mean like hellfire?”
Malachi frowned and Mika realized how dumb the question sounded out loud. She looked to Audrey. She was the one who was supposed to be in contact with the hunter.
“Jessica James is a hunter,” Audrey said carefully, sliding the business card Hunter had given them before spring break to the center of the table for everyone to see. “She is half demon, half witch. I’m not sure if she has actual hunter powers as well since witches and hunters have been in her family for generations – case in point Jesse James, yes the outlaw. Well, she has this magic that only demon witches have and it’s called hellfire.”
Malachi sat back and ran his hand over his face. “Every time I think this can’t get any weirder, or any worse—it does.”
“What exactly is hellfire magic?” Lucien asked, looking to Ethan for help.
Ethan shrugged. “I don’t actually know.”
But Mika knew. Supposedly they were cousins after all – if what Kenzie had said was right.
“It’s a gift,” Mika murmured, staring at Jessica’s business card. Audrey would need to get a message to her as soon as possible. “Demons actually don’t have it. It’s a gift from hell that only the half-breeds can use. They say it comes from Lucifer himself.”
“But what does it do?” Ethan asked, frowning as he considered the possibilities as he always did.
She sighed and sat down, nibbling on a cookie. “I don’t know the full extent of it, but I have heard stories.” For some reason those glowing red eyes of hellfire came to mind. “It burns so hot a single touch will incinerate someone in a split second and they become nothing more than ash. I don’t know what else it can do.”
Probably an infinite number of things if it was anything like blood magic or maybe it was simplistic yet powerful like the gift of Sight.
“So, what does that have to do with the society?” Malachi asked. He rolled a macaron between his fingers until it crumbled into a million pieces. Audrey glared and wiped it up. He shot her an apologetic look before turning back to his tea.
Mika glanced outside the window, half expecting to see the raven there, but all that she could see was the glittering night sky. It was almost the full moon.
“If they want to open the seal to hell, do they think that will gift them the power?” Mika asked. “Do they want demons to owe them so they can have more demon witches? I think there are currently only three of them. And if that’s the reason, why do they need demon witches? Why do they want to bring on an apocalypse?”
No one had any answers to her questions and the only sound in the room was the ticking of the clock on the wall.
“I found out who my father is,” Malachi said, filling the potent silence.
What exactly did his father have to do with anything?
Mika felt a chill run down her spine as she considered all the implications. “Who is he?”
Malachi looked down at his hands as if contemplating the color of his skin and everything it meant. “My mom is black, and I never knew my father. I never asked because it didn’t matter to me when my mother was the one raising me. I was always lighter than my cousins, but I never thought twice about it.”
It was one of those things no one else in this room could really understand, except maybe Lucien, but he’d grown up with foxes. It wasn’t quite the same thing.
“During spring break my father reached out to me. Imagine my surprise when I saw he was white.” Malachi looked up at Mika then. “And blood doesn’t lie. He’s definitely my father. He was kind enough to prove it to me.”
Audrey glanced at Mika with a worried look in her eyes. They both knew how something like that could be proved, and it wasn’t pleasant.
“Why now?” Lucien asked.
Malachi shrugged. “I asked the same thing. He simply said it was time. Then took me to the Hellfire Society’s meeting place in Vegas. It’s a lot like Morgana in the sense that it connects to all the others in the country.”
“Through a portal door?” Ethan asked, rubbing his chin in thought.
“Yeah, like that.” Malachi drained his teacup and set it down with a ‘clink’ before sliding it over to Audrey. “Apparently my father is a pure witch which makes me half I guess. He’s even high society.”
Mika wondered who it could be, but she didn’t know every high society clan in the United States, just most of them. “But what does he want with you?” Mika asked again, still not seeing how any of this was really relevant.
“Apparently he wants me to bring you in thanks to you being on my team. He doesn’t know about our…personal relationship,” Malachi told her, glancing between Ethan and Lucien before looking back down at his hands with a grimace. “If I do he will officially claim me and I will be a high society witch. If I don’t, he will use me in the next sacrifice for the next seal.”
Ice ran through her veins. No wonder he’d freaked when Lucien had mentioned that.
Mika had to sit down.
She pulled out her chair and slumped into it as she considered. “So they’re still trying to open the seal under the school?”
“Yeah, among others and with your help,” Malachi muttered. “Since they lost their best blood witch to the Council.”
Mika snorted. “She’s not a real blood witch, but I know what you mean.”
“Do you know anything about that?” Lucien asked. “Did they talk about their plans…or maybe your bio dad filled you in?”
Malachi nodded. “To some degree. He wants me to join them as well. But you guys, it’s not just him and a few people. It’s a massive underground society that dates back to the inception of this school.”
If the society was that old… “Do you think it has anything to do with the seal being here in the first place?” Mika asked. “Remember that story you told me, Lucien?”
“How could I forget?” he scoffed. “My entire House is haunted.”
“Forty-nine witches,” Ethan murmured. “Maybe their deaths were used to open the seal?”
Malachi shook his head. “They were convinced it only took three, not forty-nine. If it was the same spell I think there would have been a lot more deaths.”
Mika drummed her nails on the table as she considered everything. “We need to talk to Lucifer, or get Jessica to talk to him for us. He’s the one who sealed it in the first place.”
Everyone looked uncomfortable at that so Mika smiled. “Don’t worry, I’ll do it now to make sure it’s done before Corbin comes back.” She pulled out her phone and selected Kenzie’s contact.
The phone rang. It was late, but Mika had a feeling her ‘cousin’ was still awake.
“What do you want?”
“It’s Mika.”
“Yeah, I know. I have your phone number saved.”
Maybe she should have waited until the morning. Lucien’s shou
lders were shaking from keeping his laughter in and she slapped his thigh in irritation.
“I need to talk to Lucifer.”
Silence on the other end. Then, “Why?” Kenzie demanded.
Mika sighed. How many people should she bring in on this? “I just do. I’m not sure telling you over the phone is safe, or even a good idea. Can you make it happen?”
More silence, but this time Mika heard the ticking of keys in the background. “Done.”
Pop.
“Hello again.” Eisheth, the fucking demon, gave her a vicious grin before grabbing her hand and popping them both out of existence.
Mika gasped as she could suddenly breathe in air again. Then she ripped her hand out of the demon’s, grateful she hadn’t accidentally sucked the blood from his body. Did demon’s even have blood?
“What an unusual request, especially considering how careful you’ve been not to draw my attention.” Eisheth snickered. “As if I would ever forget a blood witch when there are so few of you now.”
She ignored the demon as she tried to get her bearings. Where were they? It looked like a posh penthouse – all white and glittering silver. Finally, she turned her gaze on the handsome demon she’d only ever seen once before.
His white tailored suit was perfection as always, linen if her eye was right which would explain the warm climate and the open doors to the balcony over the ocean and glittering city.
“Los Angeles?” she asked, walking toward the open night. It was balmy compared to Morgana, but the air was still crisp at night. No doubt it was quite warm during the day when it wasn’t raining.
“Good catch,” Eisheth murmured, watching her like a hawk. “Jessica will be here shortly, with Lucifer.”
Mika’s heart started pounding as she considered the fact that she would meet the prince of hell in mere moments.
“In the meantime, why don’t we get to know each other a bit? Would you like something to drink?”
“Something strong,” Mika muttered. “Whiskey?” She went out onto the balcony and rested her hands on the railing.