Roses and Revenants: A Dark Paranormal Reverse Harem Romance (The House of Mirrors Book 1)

by Cate Corvin

  Besides, we had our own variation on truth. It was more of a confessional.

  “Last time we were up here, I’d thought about kissing you.” I felt him smile, his face moving against my head. “Now I’m glad I didn’t, because that wasn’t the right time. It wouldn’t have been as good as this.”

  “No.” I stared out at the forest and covenstead grounds. “I wouldn’t have been ready then.”

  I turned my back on the familiar sight and wrapped my arms around Joss’s neck, pushing him back to the bed. He kissed me eagerly, his tongue exploring my mouth, and I asked the wards to bring us back.

  The next time I opened my eyes, hours later, for all I knew, we were back in the guest room bed, with our clothes scattered on the floor in a tangle. Joss touched my kiss-swollen lips, traced a bruised cheek and the line of my eyebrow. “You know you’re never getting rid of me now, right?”

  I gave him a crooked smile. “Of course not. We need to christen the watchtower with a new era.”

  “The Era of Being Naked.” He pulled me on top of him. “Seriously, Mor. You have no idea. I knew you didn’t think of me that way, but… didn’t stop a warlock from dreaming.”

  I rested my head on his chest, enjoying the sensation of his fingers slowly running up and down my back. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder, right? No, but honestly… I just needed to figure myself out first.” And realize that Eric wasn’t the only man in the world worth loving.

  He fell silent for a moment, tracing a circle on my shoulder blade. “I’d like you to go to the Blacksea Circle celebration with me. I know it’s not really your thing, and you hate Sophia, crowds, and Melinda in that order, but-”

  “Make that Melinda, Sophia, and crowds.” I lifted my head, propping my chin up to look at him. “It’s in, what, a day? I could probably find it in my shriveled, black little heart to go to a party with you.”

  “Everyone’s going to know Bellhallow’s back on the grid. You might as well come back with a bang- and I can make it super clear to everyone that you’re my girlfriend.” Joss’s grin abruptly faded. “Well… if you want to be my girlfriend.”

  “Hmm. I could probably be convinced over another coffee date. But no Melinda.” I poked him in the chest, driving my point home. “The last thing I need is her crowing about how she’s got me in the palm of her hand.”

  His phone chose that exact moment to chime, and he rolled his eyes after glancing at the screen. “Speak of the devil, and she shall appear. I need to take care of a petitioner, but we’re on for that coffee date.”

  We pulled on our clothes and promptly collapsed back into bed, our lips glued together. Oddly enough, now that I’d tasted Joss once, the last thing I wanted to do was let him disappear off to Rosethorne.

  His phone chimed again… and again… and again. Joss growled when I laughed, breaking away. “Wait till you open up shop again, you’re never going to be left alone.”

  I shrugged one shoulder with a wry smile. “Mom and Dad were always gone. Figured it was par for the course.” I doubted Melinda had changed at all in five years. She was probably panicking over an imp. “We’re heading back soon. I need to take care of Vag Hands before I start any plans to ride off into the sunset.”

  “Vag Hands,” Joss repeated, shaking his head. “I can’t, Mor. The Circle covenheads will collectively lose their minds when you come back and upend all their hoity-toity traditions.”

  “Yeah, it’ll be great.” I walked with him out to the waystone, which was humming quietly.

  Joss stared into my eyes, touching my face, and gave me an embarrassed sort of smile. “You know, this is going to make me sound kinda pathetic, but every time I leave now, I’m afraid you won’t be there when I come back.”

  My heart clenched. “I promise, Joss. I’m not disappearing on you again. Besides, you know all my haunts now.”

  He kissed me, a long, slow, muscle-melting kiss that almost had me pulling him back off the waystone. I raised a hand goodbye, breathless, as he vanished back to Rosethorne in a flash of light.

  The sound of dry leaves being crushed underfoot caught my attention, and Good Kitty-ah, Hecate fuck it, Adrian- came prowling out of the overgrown garden beds.

  “Find what you were looking for?” I couldn’t keep some of the peevishness out of my tone. “Why won’t you just talk to me like a person?”

  The mountain lion stared at me, his pupils constricting in those indigo eyes, and shifted. Creamy fur gave way to silky skin… and I realized why he wasn’t talking as a person.

  Therianthropes’ clothing didn’t shift with them. Duh. Why hadn’t I thought of that?

  Adrian was big. All over. He raised an eyebrow as I took him in, not even bothering to shut my open mouth, and held his hands out. “Like what you see?”

  Well… yeah, yeah I did. Maybe a little too much. “Okay, you can shift back now. Curiosity satisfied.”

  He laughed softly, the sound becoming a growl as hair sprouted over those densely-muscled limbs and he fell back to earth.

  His tail twitched in satisfaction as he prowled around me. Even though I’d just gotten an eyeful of extremely hunky, kinda creepy, and possibly dangerous warlock, I couldn’t stop myself from stroking his silky head and neck.

  “Technically, I’m petting a naked man,” I muttered. “It doesn’t get weirder than this.”

  The mountain lion finally broke away from me and strolled to the waystone. I chewed my lower lip, meeting Adrian’s indigo eyes until the moment he vanished.

  Realistically, I was the last person who should judge someone for being any sort of different. There were a lot of rumors around Fellwolfe, true, but Bellhallow had the same problem.

  I took my time walking back to my room, where I slowly packed my things. With Joss’s disappearance, the cold chill of trepidation reached out for me once more, like skeletal hands reaching from the darkness. So many shadows hung over me here.

  Eric knocked on my door and I shouldered my backpack, hoping my lips were no longer swollen from kissing as I stepped into the hallway. He still carried the book from Dad’s study, the Treatise on the House of Mirrors, that gave me shivers when I looked at it.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said, and Eric’s eyes lingered on my face for a bare moment, flickering down to my lips. Guess my hopes were in vain.

  I locked Bellhallow’s manor doors and gate behind me as we left, pulling the wards back into place. The guest wing and library would remain fresh for some time, feeding on my energy and memories, but if I wanted the damage to remain fixed, I would need to return soon.

  I looked back at the manor as we drove away, the conflicting feelings a terrible weight in my stomach. If only my questions had simple answers… but nothing in life was ever that easy.

  14

  I vowed not to touch the Treatise until we were safely ensconced in Eric’s house, with multiple layers of wards and salt around us. He had relaxed a little as we drove away from Bellhallow and the stirring ghosts of the past.

  “Do you really believe it was my father?” I asked. A faint memory tugged at me, someone whispering in my ear as I slept in the library… Bellhallow’s wards had definitely been trying to tell me something, but I wouldn’t be able to hear its warnings clearly until I had fully committed to the wards again, binding myself back to the land.

  “I knew John’s psychic signature like the back of my hand.” Eric stared at the road ahead without glancing at me. His arms flexed as he gripped the wheel tighter. “Whether his spirit is conscious or not, some part of him was helping us.”

  I had wrapped the Treatise in cloth and stored it in my rucksack. The fabric of the bag was almost cold as it brushed against my leg and I nudged it away.

  We were lost in our own thoughts as night fell, the highway stretching before us in a seemingly infinite line. Finally, Eric pulled over, the shadows beneath his eyes darker than yesterday. I hadn’t even considered whether he’d slept well in Bellhallow, with the shadows lurking a
round us. Guilt flashed through me, hot and bright.

  “I can drive if you want to sleep,” I said sheepishly. As far as I knew, Eric was completely unaware that I knew he’d held me the other night in the motel. It wasn’t something I wanted to bring up, especially after walking among so many memories of the past, but I couldn’t stay with him in a tiny motel room again, or this van. Even if it meant driving through the night.

  “You don’t even have a license, Morena,” he said. He rubbed his eyes with one hand and ran his hand through his hair.

  I didn’t have a license, true. I’d never been particularly fond of mortal machinery, and witches living in covensteads usually had other forms of transportation anyways. I’d once seen a witch from Starlake ride up on a demon horse, which had vanished into oily flames that gave off the scent of brimstone. Things like that seemed way more impressive than a car.

  So, van-camping it was.

  “Take the back,” I said. I yanked a blanket up front and nudged the backpack aside. I didn’t want the creepy book laying against me while I slept. “I can recline this a bit and be fine.”

  I felt him looking over at me, but I busied myself arranging the blanket around myself in a half-assed sort of burrito while he climbed into the back. Everything would be better if we could just keep this simple.

  I closed my eyes and drew my legs up over the center console to lay my feet in the driver’s seat. It wasn’t terribly uncomfortable, all things considered.

  I listened to the rustle of blankets being spread over the floor, the brush of his boots against the walls of the van.

  An hour passed and I was still wide awake, glaring grouchily at the driver’s door. Night pressed in on the windows, the squeal of wood echoing through my mind, the thump of the book hitting the carpet. I saw the study mirror, its titanic eye staring at me, people… no, things… staring out from the other side of the glass…

  And the taste of flames and thorns on my lips, the scent of night-blooming flowers filling my nose.

  “You’re still awake.” It wasn’t a question. He knew me too well.

  “Yes,” I said quietly. I wasn’t surprised he was still awake as well. I heard him sit up and lean around the seat. The planes of his face were just barely visible in the moonlight.

  “Come back here.”

  Stone. I was stone, cold and unforgiving. Hope fluttered in my stomach and I pushed it away. The line was clear between us, the door long since slammed shut.

  I couldn’t lie to myself. I didn’t want to spend another second sitting alone and thinking about the things in the study, lost in the past.

  I climbed into the back, careful to keep as much distance between myself and Eric as possible without being obviously ridiculous about it. Sitting cross-legged in the safe darkness of the van, I knew sleep would elude me tonight, but at least I could take a moment to breathe and clear my head away, away from the tempting clutches of Bellhallow’s memory lane.

  Emotions battled within me, but there were no winners. I was torn and paralyzed, caught between the beckoning future, which could branch one of two ways, and the guilt that hung over me like a dark cloud.

  I was supposed to be in Bellhallow, available to answer the summons of those needing help, not running my exorcisms as a business, but it was satisfying knowing I had made it on my own for at least five years. I didn’t owe a damn thing to any of the other covens, either- especially not my hand in handfasting.

  The second idea had been tugging at me since I’d stepped foot back onto my ancestral grounds, the house where Sarah Bell had sunk the wards and cornerstone, putting down roots for the next thousand generations of descendants.

  I might be making it according to human terms, by all means, but I was still living a pale half-life, a mockery of what I was supposed to be. I hadn’t been born to the Bell coven to let our family legacy slide into dust and decay, forgotten by even the history books.

  Eric leaned against the opposite wall of the van, watching whatever he could see of me in the darkness. “Are you going to do it?” he asked. “Not that we have much choice, but…”

  I mulled it over, winding a loop of hair around my finger. I could be a real covenmistress, the kind of exorcist my parents raised me to be. Perhaps it was time to take up the mantle once more. Maybe if I tried hard enough, I could exorcise those past ghosts from myself, and ensure my father was truly laid to rest.

  “I think so,” I said slowly. An owl called out a hunting screech in the night air outside the van, as though cheering on my own thoughts. “I’ll need to wrap up unfinished business first. But after that… yes. I think maybe it’s time. I managed to go back without totally breaking down, and it felt right to be there.”

  It had, in a frightening way. It was both a burden off my shoulders and a warm embrace, but I was still afraid of the red door and what lay beyond it.

  And even worse, what might lie far below Bellhallow in the darkness of the mountain, on a sparkling granite pyre.

  “I’ll be with you,” Eric said. He leaned forward suddenly, reaching out to grip my hands in his. “You won’t be starting from ground zero. It’ll be the same as before, you and me together.”

  I snorted, ignoring the flush that flared high on my cheeks. “The first few months will be nonstop visitors. We’ll have to re-establish formal contact with the other covens. I’ll barely have time to breathe without someone asking me for something.” His hands were rough and calloused, enveloping mine entirely.

  I wanted to be able to just co-exist in the same place as him without feeling my heart crack open again.

  I could unfairly blame that on the arrival of Joss Thorne. If he hadn’t brought up handfasting, hadn’t made me start thinking again about what I was missing out on, I might have been able to continue my immunity to Eric. Now I had to rebuild that stony exterior all over again.

  “Do you want me to begin preparing for the Rite of Initiation?” he asked. His natural scent, woodsy sea salt, made me want to breathe deeper and stop breathing simultaneously.

  And now the formal rites, the official change of the burden of responsibility, would need to be conducted for me to truly take control of the wards. And it would involve an exchange of blood and breath with Eric, who was bound to me… all in front of the other covenheads.

  I wondered if I would be able to hold back my wounded emotions, or if they would be apparent for all to see.

  “Yes,” I said, exhaling deeply. It felt like stepping over a new threshold, into a strange land that I knew like the back of my hand. “If Joss felt Bellhallow wake up, then everyone else did, which means we’ll be probably be fielding a ton of messages when we get back. I’m sure Melinda has sent me about fifty by now.”

  With just a sliver of moonlight to see by, I could still see Eric’s face darken, a strange sort of determination setting into his features. “Ah. Thorne’s offer.”

  His hands tightened around mine infinitesimally. I wasn’t even sure he was aware of it. “I already said no,” I said. “No handfasting, anyways.” I leaned back, withdrawing my hands carefully from his grasp. His fingers folded in on themselves, clenching into fists.

  “You’ve all but said you’re reforming the Bell coven.” Eric looked up from his hands to meet my eyes. “You forget how well I know you. You could only hope to stray from this path for so long. And once you resume your place in it, and have Bellhallow under your control again, you’ll need strong allies. Turning down Joss Thorne’s offer sight unseen is not the way you should begin your reformation.”

  I stared at him, taken aback by his intensity. “I’m not ready for handfasting at all, Eric.”

  Eric laughed softly. I couldn’t decipher the emotion underneath, which was a foreign feeling for me- I’d always known and understood him. An Eric I couldn’t read in a heartbeat was nearly incomprehensible to me.

  “In the end, it doesn’t matter. Your parents were just lucky that they loved each other so much. You marry to strengthen your coven and cont
inue your lineage, not because you love someone.”

  I thought of the way he had brightened, ever so slightly, when I’d told him I’d said no on the drive to Bellhallow.

  Maybe he was more possessive than I’d realized. “I thought… I thought you didn’t approve of him anyways. You’ve never been fond of the Thornes.”

  Eric had been friendly, as was expected of all servitors. But as a teenage girl, with a nearly supernatural eye and ear for drama, I’d seen the cool dislike in his sidelong glances at Joss as we got older, and used that to my best advantage.

  Honestly, I might even have played up my affection for my best friend in a sad attempt to make Eric jealous. I was ashamed of the girl I had been, concerned with such stupid things when worse things had lain in wait for us all. And now that I knew what Joss had really felt, I knew he’d deserved so much better.

  “It’s not that I dislike him.” His voice was quiet and tense. “Joss Thorne is a decent warlock. I’m impressed with his dedication to his coven.”

  “So you think I should just go ahead and start planning the handfasting? Just because I’m going to reform the coven?” I shook my head and glared at him, wishing I could laser right through to that ridiculous brain of his. “No matter what you say, you don’t like the idea of me handfasting him at all. I don’t know why, but it’s true, which is why I confess to being just a little bit curious as to why you’re suddenly so fine with the idea of becoming his servitor, as well.”

  Something slithered under the van, brushing against the metal underside. I would have to take care of that in a minute, but right now I sensed that Eric was finally on the verge of letting me in after so many years of shutting me out.

  Eric gazed back at me in silence, his jaw set.

  “Hadn’t you considered that?” I asked, allowing a tiny bit of acid to creep into my tone. “You promised to never leave my side. If I join with Joss, you become servitor for us both. He would be yours to guard as much as I am.”