The Bone Coven Chronicles: The Complete Series

by Jenna Wolfhart

  “Mabel Bennett,” I whispered into the apartment.

  A storm of shivers went through my body as the magic built inside my chest. It sprung up from the depths of me where I tried to hide it out of sight. The darkness threatened to whisper its sweet and dangerous words into my mind, but I kept my focus on the task at hand. Track Grams. Find her, wherever she’d gone.

  When I opened my eyes, the world was blurred like a smudged painting. Before me, a shimmering black cord hovered in the air. One tug, and it would take me straight to Grams. With a deep breath, I reached out and wrapped my hands around the magical rope.

  With a whoosh, my breath was knocked out of me, and I tumbled from the apartment and out into the cold Boston night. All around me, the bright lights rushed by in a twinkling splendor. The cord took me deeper and deeper into the city. Buildings grew closer and lights grew bright, and suddenly, my body jerked to a stop.

  Glancing around, I found myself in the center of the Bone Coven headquarters. Specifically, one of the offices used by the council for the day-to-day business of running a coven. But instead of finding Grams standing before me, doing whatever it was she was doing now, I found nothing but an empty, dark room. No sign of my grandmother.

  That was strange. I’d cast this spell several times before. Each and every time, the cord would take me straight to the person in question and I would see with my own eyes where they were, except in the case of Professor Wagner. When I tried him, a cord didn’t even appear, so this was odd to say the least. Why would it bring me here if Grams wasn’t in the building?

  Frowning, I returned to where my body sat waiting on the floor of my apartment. Dorian’s familiar face blurred back into focus. Behind either shoulder, Anastasia and Laura hovered with expectant expressions.

  “Did you find her?” Laura asked.

  “I’m not sure,” I said slowly. “The spell took me to the Bone Coven headquarters, but I think there’s something wrong. She wasn’t there.”

  Chapter 5

  “Looks like I won’t need to use my lock picking kit,” I said as we stood clustered in front of the open door that led into the dark depths of the Bone Coven headquarters. The hinges creaked as the door swung open on a light breeze that slid through a cracked window in the hallway. Inside, there was silence, quite the opposite of the usual bustle of activity as council members strode up and down hallways to discuss coven matters.

  “Do you think someone broke in?” Laura asked as she put a timid hand on the door. Closing my eyes, I took a sniff of the air. Nothing felt off. But the wards were down. Had they been broken? Or left down by the council? It was hard to say, but my intuition suggested there was no danger here now if there ever had been.

  “It smells like vampires,” Anastasia said, stepping through the open door as she took a deep breath in through flared nostrils. She whirled to face us, her phone’s light casting eerie shadows across her already-eerie face. “I think my Clan has been here. Recently. Maybe in the last hour or two.”

  My heart thumped in my chest, and I strode through the doorway without abandon. If the vampires had been here, there was no telling what they could have done to an old woman. “Grams? Grams, are you in here?!”

  Silence answered, and my heartbeat throttled into next gear. Nothing about this felt right. Grams had been here, and so had the vampires. Had they ended up in this building at the same time? If so, what the hell had they done to her?

  “I don’t smell your grandmother,” Anastasia added, as if it were an afterthought.

  “What does that mean?” I asked, whirling to face her. “She hasn’t been here?”

  “Well, no. She might have been here at some point,” Anastasia said, “but it would have been a couple of days ago. I can really only smell people who have been here recently. So, I’m getting a whiff of my Clan and a couple of bone mages. That’s about it.”

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, scarcely daring to ask the next question. “Do you smell any blood?”

  “No blood. Just Daywalkers. If there was a fight here, no one got hurt.” She glanced around the room, her eyes lighting on some tables that had been knocked to the ground. “It does look like there was a scuffle of some sort, but your Grams was most likely not involved.”

  A deep sigh exploded from my lungs, and I turned to the wall to flip on the light. Bright overhead bulbs flickered on, and blindingly yellow beams filled the room. The place was a wreck. Tables were overturned and chairs had been thrown against the walls. Chunks of plaster were missing, and bricks were exposed underneath. Every drawer and every piece of carpet had been ripped apart like a pack of wild animals had torn through the place on the hunt for food.

  Dorian let out a low whistle as his eyes scanned the room. “Seems like your Clan was definitely on the hunt for something.”

  “Any idea what it might be?” Laura asked as she fingered a patch of carpet that had landed on top of the nearest table after it had been ripped off the floorboards.

  Anastasia lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I’ve been stuck with you guys and the rebels for the last week. I have no idea what’s going on.”

  “Do you think it has anything to do with my Grams?” I asked.

  “Doubtful,” she said. “Like I said, they weren’t here at the same time. My guess is your grandmother came here looking for you. But my family came here for something else entirely.”

  “Well, let’s take a look around,” I said. “There has to be a reason why my tracking spell led me here. Let’s split up. Anastasia and Laura, you can take that end of the hallway, and Dorian and I will head down this side. Check all the rooms. See if there’s anything at all you can find.”

  Anastasia and Laura nodded before disappearing down their end of the hallway. Dorian fell into step behind me, and I could tell by the quiet thrum that passed between us that there was something on his mind, something he didn’t want to say.

  “Out with it,” I said as I pushed open the first door. It was one of the meeting rooms, one we’d been in many times before. There was a single round conference table that squatted inside, surrounded by ten uncomfortable office chairs. A computer sat next to a white board that stretched across the far wall. It was just any old conference room, boring and bland. Back when the coven had owned their own mansion, the decor had been a lot more elaborate. Chandeliers, antique tables, floor-to-ceiling windows with a gorgeous view of the lush gardens. Now, the council was stuck in a high-rise downtown and saddled with a corporate setting I knew they must hate as much as I did.

  My heart sunk when I realized that even that was no longer true. There was no council. Not anymore.

  “What do you expect to find here, Zoe?” Dorian asked in a soft voice. “A sign pointing the way to your grandmother? A map with an X to mark the spot?”

  “A sign would do just fine. Or a map,” I said, closing the door behind us with a click and moving to the next door on the hallway. There was nothing to see in that room. Even the vampires had decided it wasn’t worth the trouble.

  “She isn’t here, Zoe,” Dorian said softly. “Maybe she was at some point, but she isn’t now.”

  “She led me here for a reason,” I said.

  “You think she actually led you here on purpose? It wasn’t just your spell telling you she was here recently?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “Actually, I do. If something was wrong, she would figure out a method for communicating in a way that she felt was safe. Obviously, at that point in time, she thought the coven headquarters was safe. If Anastasia is right, and Grams was here a few days ago, that meant she was here before the fighting started at the Sun Coven.”

  Dorian gave a nod. “Perhaps.”

  “You don’t sound convinced.”

  “I just don’t want you to get your hopes up,” he said. “There’s a strong possibility we won’t find anything here.”

  “Zoe!” Laura called out from several rooms down the opposite end of the hallway. “We found something.”


  Giving Dorian a quick glance, I smiled in triumph. He didn’t know my Grams quite the way I did, and she was unlike anyone else I’d ever met. Now that I knew she was a shadow, I couldn’t understand how I’d never seen it before. She fit the profile almost to a tee, minus the whole consumed-by-darkness side of things—she didn’t suffer from that the way other shadow mages did. But she’d spent her entire life masked as a member of the Bone Coven, hiding her powers not only from the council but from her family as well. Hell, I didn’t think even my mom or dad had been aware of Grams’s shadow magic. And only a shadow mage could pull off that level of deception.

  She’d always liked games. When our family gathered around the table for a night of board games, Grams would always choose the game where one person had to play a spy. Any time she was the spy? She’d win. So, this kind of thing was right up Grams’s alley. For some reason, she’d set things up so that I would come here. Now, I just had to figure out what that reason was.

  “What is it?” I asked when I reached the room where Laura and Anastasia were waiting.

  Laura handed over a piece of folded paper. On the top, someone had scribbled “For Zoe” in old-school cursive.

  I’d recognize that handwriting anywhere. Grams had written this letter and had left it here at headquarters specifically for me to find. My heart flipped as I grabbed the paper and unfolded it with trembling fingers, and then my eyes tripped down the page to read the handwritten words.

  Zoe darling,

  I know you’re in trouble. I’ve tracked you from here, to Colorado, to Scotland, and back again. And I have seen the Nosferatu attacking you. Thankfully, I also know that Dorian is with you and doing his best to keep you safe from harm. Thank the goddess for that. If you find this note before I’m home, then you have found an empty apartment. Please don’t fret. I’m only out there looking for you. I’ll be right behind you soon enough.

  Stay safe, and love always,

  Grams

  “Feel better?” Dorian asked as he scanned the note from over my shoulder.

  With a sigh, I folded the note and pressed it to my chest. So, Grams was fine, after all. She was only out and about because she had worried about the situation I’d found myself in, dashing all over the world in order to track me down. According to this note, everything was fine, and she’d be home soon enough, when she realized that I was back in Boston for good.

  But, for some reason, the unease in my heart still remained. I couldn’t shake the sensation that this note was very wrong.

  Chapter 6

  A light knock on the door jerked me out of my reverie. Dorian poked his head into my bedroom, took one glance at my crossed legs, the open grimoire, and the bottle of perfume in my hands, and he sighed. Quietly, he eased into the room and shut the door with a soft click.

  “I thought I felt something strange happening,” he said as he settled onto the floor beside me.

  “Felt?” I asked. “You mean, you sensed my mood through our bond.”

  “That, and it’s not like you to go hide in a room all by yourself away from everyone,” he said. “You like to come across as a loner, but you hate being alone.”

  “Is there a way to undo our bond?” I asked with a mock frown. “Because now it feels like you have way too much insight into my thoughts.”

  He leaned closer, and his cool breath whispered across my face. “That isn’t something I know because of our bond, Zoe. I’ve spent enough time around you to understand how you think. Besides,” he said with a slight smile, “you don’t truly want to undo our bond. You like it far too much to let it go.” His lips twisted into a delicious smile as his tongue darted out between his teeth.

  I smiled back, feeling the heat rising in my cheeks. “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “You mean, is there a way to break our bond?” He arched an eyebrow. “There is always a way to reverse every spell. Nothing is truly permanent in our world as long as we can find the correct rune. But, unfortunately, there’s only one way to break our bond, and it requires my death. Or yours. I don’t think either of us wants that.”

  “So, you’re telling me the only way for the bond to break is for one of us to die?” I widened my eyes. “That’s a pretty permanent kind of magic if you ask me.”

  “Bonds aren’t meant to be taken lightly,” he said softly, wrapping his cold hand around mine. “We’ve bound our souls, our minds, our hearts…our bodies.”

  My heart thumped in my chest, and I sucked in a sharp breath when Dorian shifted closer. Electricity hummed between us, and I ached to feel his body on mine. We were alone. In my bedroom. With nothing to do but waste the night, but there was still so much left unsaid between us. We’d jumped into bed while we’d been hiding at the Sun Coven, but that hadn’t erased all the questions in my mind.

  “You’re thinking about something,” he said, tapping my chin and smiling. “And I wouldn’t have to feel it through our bond to know that either. Those little brows of yours always knit together when you’re deep in thought. And worrying.”

  With a laugh, I shook my head. “Stop doing that.”

  “I’ll never stop doing that.” He stared deeply into my eyes as he pressed his forehead against mine. When my eyelids flickered, realization dawned on his face. “Ah. That’s why. You’re still thinking about what we discussed in Scotland.”

  “Less discussed. More like argued,” I said. “But yes. I know you say you don’t care what the future holds, but I worry what’s going to happen when you realize that I’m going to become an old woman someday. When you realize that I’m not like you. My life is short, and yours isn’t. One day, you’ll wake up to an old lady you won’t want anymore.”

  “I will never not want you, Zoe Bennett,” he said quietly. “And remember, you’re only twenty-one years old. We have decades to spend with each other.”

  “Decades don’t feel like enough,” I whispered, flicking my gaze to the carpet, heart pounding hard in my chest. Because that was the truth that had been plaguing me ever since the bond had tightened between us. Eternity didn’t feel long enough either, but I didn’t even have that. Next to him, my mortal life felt so fleeting, and every second mattered more than the next. What we had between us felt bigger than that, and my heart hurt when I imagined the day it would end.

  “That is life, Zoe Bennett,” he said with a sad smile. “Do I wish I could spend longer with you? Of course. But I can’t. The only way to make us last forever is something I refuse to even comprehend. I would never want you to become like me and to be forced to live with the curse the way I have. There’s a feeling I’ve never told you about because I didn’t want to worry you, or scare you, or freak you out. But it’s part of the curse, and it’s always there.”

  “What are you talking about?” I breathed.

  “Pain, Zoe,” Dorian said. “Every breath I take, every beat of my heart. The cravings are always there. It hurts. And I live with that every damn day.”

  Chapter 7

  “You’re late,” Belzus said when we met the fae in the middle of the cemetery grounds. The graveyard looked different in the daylight. Less creepy. More mundane. People were milling about, and the sun shot through broken clouds to highlight a green sea of grass and rows of carefully trimmed hedges. Nothing to suggest supernatural creatures prowled these paths at night or that the graves were more than just vessels for loved ones lost.

  “There was traffic,” I said, but that was a lie. I’d used my travel spell to send us over here after I finally broke myself away from the apartment. I hadn’t wanted to leave. What if Grams showed up? Despite her letter, it was hard to walk away, wondering if at any moment she might return. But Dorian had convinced me to come back to the graveyard—Grams was obviously fine, but the world wouldn’t be unless we found this shadow mage. And, as soon as we were done in the faerie realm, we could return to the apartment again.

  “You would think a shadow mage would be better at coming up with untruths,” Belz
us said with a sigh as he ruffled his dark hair. Today, in the daylight, he’d taken on a different illusion by donning a faded pair of jeans and a plain black shirt. His pointed ears were gone, as well as the glow of his skin, but he had done little to mask his beauty. “Come along. There’s only so long I can leave the veil open.”

  We followed Belzus into a crypt, the very same one where he’d asked me to banish a demon, the same one that Dorian had been trapped in by the Blood Hunter Coven. Being inside the place made my mouth go dry. The pillar still sat in the center of the room like nothing had ever happened here, but the images in my mind told another story. The blood mages had put Dorian inside that tiny stone box and they’d planned to keep him there for as long as eternity kept going.

  “I apologize for the location,” Belzus said with a wave of his hand when he saw the dark expression on my face, “but there are only a few safe places where the veil can be opened between our worlds, and this is one of them.”

  “The same place the demon came through,” I said. “Seems like a bit of a coincidence.”

  “It’s not a coincidence at all,” he said frankly. “Because we can pass through here to the faerie realm, the veil to the demon realm is weaker in this particular spot. It’s an unfortunate side effect.”

  “Maybe you should close your opening for good then,” Anastasia said. “You know, stay out of this damn realm if you’re making matters worse.”

  Belzus’s eyes glittered as he stared at Anastasia. “The damage is done. Closing it now would not repair your veil. It would remain the same, forever weakened by the contact. No, the only way to prevent demons from entering this realm is to use the blade’s magic.”

  “Which closes the veils permanently.”

  “The demon veil. All others would remain open.”

  “Then, let’s go,” I said with a nod.