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

by Cate Corvin

  I tried on dress after dress, but none felt right. I didn’t like the materials or the modern cuts. For some reason my eye tended towards scarlet, but nothing stood out.

  It wasn’t until I was ready to give up entirely on this plan that I happened across it. Wine-red silk, fluid as water under my fingers. It was perfect. I pulled it on, admiring the shimmer of it like a glass of endless merlot, a ruby soaked in blood.

  This was it. It made me look like an adult, elegant and refined, not like a delinquent living out of a van. When I took it off and put my jeans and shirt back on it was like an illusion vanishing, once again my old self.

  I bought the dress and a pair of black stilettos, the heels as slender and pointed as needles, a perfume scented with jasmine… I spent more money on myself in one day than I had in three years. It was a little terrifying.

  But I wanted to feel beautiful, which wasn’t a crime. Especially when I’d be with Joss, who could’ve made a potato sack look like the height of sex.

  I took the bus back home to my apartment, afraid to lay out the silk dress, as though the dinginess around me would contaminate it. It shimmered at me as I sipped half of the awakening brew, energy jolting through my limbs.

  I showered and sprayed the perfume on, pinning my curly hair into a fall at the back of my head. Somehow the messiness of it managed to look deliberate.

  The silk dress plunged low, revealing the curves of my breasts and the glimmering tourmaline beads, hugging my hips like a caress. For a moment I was in the garden again, winding my hands around Eric’s neck…

  I shook the thought away, sliding my feet into the heels. He didn’t own me tonight. Not my body or my heart. But it disturbed me that everything I had chosen reminded me of that night, like a memory had driven my eye rather than my own wants.

  Even so, I felt pretty again. An adult witch ready to take on a covenstead, the youngest of the Great Covens’ leaders, no longer the girl that had run from the other covens.

  I took a deep breath and downed the second half of the awakening potion. It fizzled through my limbs like sunshine, my shoulders relaxing, the circles under my eyes vanishing. Perfect.

  The doorbell buzzed, and my wards prickled. Psychic thorns crept through my mind like they were tickling my brain.

  “Time to take on the snake-pit,” I told my reflection. No one else was reflected there, just me. She smiled back at me, and I walked out, ready to take on Melinda Thorne and Edgar Black.

  Joss was waiting for me… and Warden fucking Stone.

  The Past: 17 Years Old

  Morena slid off the motorcycle with a grin, pulling the helmet off her head. The gates of Brynden Muir loomed above them, the gaudy gold of the bars somehow less garish in the half-light.

  Melinda was going to explode when she saw the black streak they’d left across the white marble of the courtyard.

  She waited for Joss under the natural canopy of magnolia trees, breathing their creamy scent in deeply. It reminded her of another night, so long ago and not that far away…

  She shoved it aside. Eric wasn’t here. He was probably anchoring her father tonight, but it wasn’t her problem. Not if he wanted to leave like she’d meant nothing to him at all.

  Joss had brought her somebody new to play with, hoping she’d stop moping for a while, somebody with green eyes and flaming hair. She had to admit, Joss was an excellent friend. It had been his idea to stay up late with a bottle of Melinda’s aged vanilla bourbon, riding the motorcycle down the winding roads of Brynden Muir.

  It was a plan that gave her plenty of time to get closer to Tristan Vega, the youngest witch in the Vega coven, visiting from Starlake. He was eighteen, a year older than Morena, but she liked the sly laughter in his almond eyes and the way the sun caught the red of his hair like flames.

  Melinda was apparently courting his father, though Joss thought nothing concrete was likely to come of that alliance. Tristan’s presence was, however, a good way for Morena to get her mind off the unattainable one, who haunted her thoughts like a dark specter despite the wall of ice she had formed between them.

  A distant roar met their ears and Tristan rode up, pulling smoothly alongside Joss’s scarlet Triumph. His laughing green eyes found Morena and she felt her heart flutter. Not a lot, as she would have felt for Eric, just a tiny flit, as though a hummingbird were caged in her chest, but it was better than nothing.

  She had wondered if she were broken somehow, no longer able to feel romantic love for anyone else.

  This affirmed that she was not broken, which was a relief. She wouldn’t have to feel that deep ache forever.

  He strode over to her, his hair deepening to the color of blood in the dim light. Joss had already procured their vanilla bourbon from the stump where they had hidden it.

  “Now I know you’re a daredevil, what else does feisty Morena like to do?” Tristan asked. He smelled of the bourbon, rich caramel and a tang of leather and sweat. It wasn’t a pure and clean smell at all, which suited her just fine. He smelled of danger and desire.

  Morena leaned on Melinda’s marble retaining wall, taking the bottle from Joss. Her best friend glanced between her and Tristan, an indecipherable expression on his face.

  A healthy swig went down her throat like smooth fire, her stomach becoming a comfortable inferno. She licked her slightly-numb lips, feeling the buzz in her head. “We train, mostly. It’s probably not nearly as exciting as we’re making it out to be.”

  Tristan was corded with muscle under his leather jacket. She’d seen it earlier, when the weather was warmer. “Training suits me just fine,” he said, his smile crooked. “We use the sea cliffs next to Starlake for our training back home.”

  She suddenly wanted to take a sabbatical to Starlake and test her mettle against the sea. “We use the forest here. And sometimes…”

  Joss elbowed her, harder than he meant to. He was slightly unsteady from the bourbon. “Probably not a good idea right now, Mor.”

  Tristan couldn’t hide his interest. “Sometimes what?”

  Morena leaned in, as though sharing a secret. “This whole part of the country is riddled with natural caverns and mineshafts from a few decades ago.”

  Interest gleamed in his eyes. “What say we find one tonight?”

  She and Joss knew of an entrance precisely a mile from the front gates of Brynden Muir, looking like nothing more than a hole in the ground under a rock. If they snaked down through it a mere ten feet, it opened up onto natural caverns, where they often did their physical training, as well as practicing with Joss’s elementalism. It was treacherous enough to provide a real challenge, and she often rose from the ground sweat-streaked and smelling of deep earth minerals.

  Joss’s eyes flickered between them. Morena wanted to say yes, to delve deeper into the mines than she and Joss had dared to on their own. Tristan’s gifts lay mostly in telepathy, but he might be able to help out with a small amount of earthwitchery.

  “Look, I’d usually be down to do this, but the mines aren’t a game. You know that, Mor,” Joss said, a hint of reproach in his voice. “Going in while drunk would probably be suicidal.”

  “We just rode motorcycles while drunk,” she said reasonably.

  “That’s not an excuse.”

  “In the dark. On winding, twisty hills.”

  Joss stared at her in exasperation and ran a hand through his dark hair, making the curls stand up like the clock of a dandelion. She saw the resolve hardening in his eyes. “They’re enchanted motorcycles. We literally couldn’t crash if we tried. And Eric would murder me if I let anything happen to you on my watch.”

  The oaky-vanilla taste of the bourbon soured on her tongue. “Well, Eric isn’t here, so what he would and wouldn’t do is immaterial.”

  She looked up at Tristan, leaning into him. He clearly sensed the tension of divide between them, and she felt the lines subtly shift. He was on her side. “Besides, there’s three of us. We could probably make it further than ever now.�
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  For a moment she thought Joss was going to spill her secret in his need to stay on Eric’s good side, her forbidden love for the servitor, which would probably make her an imbecilic laughingstock in Tristan’s eyes.

  She thanked Joss silently when he just shrugged, dropping it completely. Of course he wouldn’t sell her out. He was her best friend. “Fine. But you can be the one to explain when one of us ends up dead.”

  Morena grabbed the bottle, taking another deep swig, lighting her veins up like fire. “Let’s go, then.”

  She had barely walked three steps when Bellhallow’s wards screamed around her, sirens exploding in her mind. The air left her lungs in a sharp spray as though she’d been punched in the gut, and she fell to her knees, gripping her head in her hands with white knuckles.

  “Morena,” Joss whispered. His face had gone as white as milk as she groaned, vomiting the bourbon onto the white marble drive.

  Bellhallow called her, the wards grinding and shrieking as they tried to pull her back. Danger! they shouted. Danger! She stood shakily, her mouth as dry as cotton, her chest gone hollow. “I need to get home,” she gasped. Joss felt it too, from as much time as he spent there, though not as strongly.

  “What happened?” he asked. They shoved through the gate, Tristan supporting Morena as they stumbled towards the waystone.

  “I don’t know,” she whispered. Her stomach lurched again as the wards continued to scream, tugging at her like a million tiny threads that had been anchored in her skin.

  A softer voice whispered to her under the shrieking alarm: It’s yours now. I’m here for you, Morena. The voice of the covenstead, a chorus of a thousand ancestor’s voices melded into one.

  She wouldn’t think about what that meant. She couldn’t.

  They reached the circle, shimmering silver in the moonlight. “Stay here,” she commanded. “Eric will be there. I’ll let you know what’s happening as soon as possible.”

  She reached towards the middle of the circle as Joss and Tristan stared after her, their eyes strained with alarm. Her own regret at leaving Joss behind was swamped beneath the growing panic that rose like a tidal wave.

  She felt the waystone’s circle reach out to her and open a door, shining silver like an eclipse around its edges. Morena stepped through, closing her eyes as the world bent and warped around her.

  She stumbled out onto the front lawn of Bellhallow, which was eerily silent in contrast to the mental wards that screamed even louder now. The moon hung in a pale slice over the manor, barely illuminating the darkened spill of the gardens.

  She took a deep breath and forced herself into a sprint, the gravel crunching under the frantic beat of her steps. The windows were lit with soft, warm light, the front door was closed… everything was as it should be-

  Morena passed under the columns and ripped the front door open, barely stopping to acknowledge the dark shape that came hurtling after her from the darkness.

  She stopped in the foyer, the thick scent of freshly-cremated ashes hanging in the air. The chandelier overhead was swaying softly, the skylight over the stairs shattered and lying in a sparkling carpet in front of her.

  “What happened?” Eric breathed. He stared up at the destruction in shock. Morena’s lip curled. “Where have you been?” she snarled. “You were supposed to be with him!” He didn’t reply, his entire body rigid with shock.

  The study. Find your father.

  Morena bolted up the stairs, tripping and falling to one knee. A shard of glass dug into her leg, but she barely felt it, ignoring the warm wash of blood down her leg as she saw the black door ahead of her, dark and ominous as a moonless night and beckoning her-

  She shoved it open, Eric hard on her heels, and stopped in the doorway, gagging as the taste of bourbon rose in her throat again.

  Father was curled on his desk like a human comma, his body bent in ways she hadn’t known a human body could move. His eyes bulged from their sockets, glassy and unseeing. One arm was bent backwards, the elbow snapped like a twig, his sickle still clutched in his frozen hand. His left leg was missing entirely.

  She moved forward jerkily, reaching out to pry his fingers from the handle, her mind processing only one coherent thought: she needed a weapon. She needed the sickle.

  They were still warm, but so much dead meat, and they finally parted and relinquished John’s blade to his daughter.

  Morena turned to face the mirror. For a second she thought she saw something there, a shadow standing twice as tall as a man and staring down at her with flat, fish-like eyes, dead, cold coins in a desiccated face.

  But there was nothing. She stared at herself, eyes huge and pupils enlarged with shock, her father’s warped body lying behind her… and the shriveled, blackened thing lying at the foot of the mirror.

  Morena went to her knees once more, leaning on the blade of the sickle for support as she gasped, the world going black around the edges.

  Rosalind Bell was hunched, as though she’d been sitting with her knees to her chest. All defining features had burned away to leave a blackened husk, slender stripes of scarlet showing through her cracked outer shell and a gaping red pit in her chest. A rowan knife lay at her side, scorched and shattered.

  Morena heaved, vomiting again as she took in the remains of her parents, Eric leaning on the door frame with his face gone gray.

  She was grateful when the wards stopped blaring in her mind, leaving her in blessed silence as she leaned forward to press her forehead to the carpet, sobs ripping from her chest.

  Whatever had taken them had done so quickly, leaving her no time to say goodbye, leaving her nothing at all.

  The wards were now hers, and she was alone, her coven shattered.

  The last of the Bells.

  16

  Joss looked absolutely gorgeous in a tailored suit, his blue eyes standing out against his dark skin and hair, dimples carved into his cheeks. He took me in slowly, sucking his lower lip in to bite it a way that made me feel a little weak-kneed. “Damn, Mor, did you paint that on?”

  Warden Stone gave me a once-over too, but all I felt was irritation the second he opened his mouth. “Good, you dressed up. I might not have to be embarrassed to be seen with you after all.”

  He’d swapped out his Warden uniform for a suit as well… and it looked damn good. If he wasn’t the world’s most obnoxious tool bag, I wouldn’t have kicked him out of bed for eating crackers.

  “Yeah, no. We’re not going to be seen together.” I slammed my door shut behind me and pulled my wards over it, just in case. “Who’d you have to harass into an invite?”

  “Breakstone and Blacksea have a long history, Bell. Some might say I’m more welcome there than you are.”

  I pushed past him, taking Joss’s hand. His fingers curled around mine as I smiled up at him, taking a deep, appreciative whiff of his leather-and-ember scent. But not even Joss’s gorgeousness could distract me from how much Stone made me want to punch him.

  “I doubt that. Don’t you have some hedgewitches to ticket?”

  Joss led me down the stairs, but Stone remained with us until we hit the parking lot. “Why waste time on hedgewitches, when I’ve got much more satisfying prey in mind?” I turned on my heel, glaring up at him. He cut a damn fine figure in a suit, but he’d look even better with my fingers wrapped around his neck, squeezing until he turned blue.

  “That’s your brilliant plan, Stone? Follow me around until I fuck up? On principle, I would rather cut off my own hand than pay Grimmcliff for doing absolutely nothing, so you can run off to the Tribunal and report me as a thief all you want, but it’s not gonna happen.”

  The Warden just smiled, his fingers casually hooked in his pockets. “You went home, didn’t you, Bell?”

  My muscles tensed. “Did you follow me there?” I couldn’t do a thing about it, as long as he wasn’t on covenstead property, but the idea that Stone had been somewhere out there, watching from afar as my sordid history came back to
bite me, was an unpleasant one.

  “I didn’t need to. The problem here, Bell, is that there are specific conditions that need to be met to appease the statute.” He took a step closer, still giving me that maddening grin. “Staying in Bellhallow for one night doesn’t qualify. You need to live there. You need to call it home. As I said before, it’s not a vacation house for you to dick around in when it’s convenient for you. So yeah, I will be following you around until it’s clear the terms and conditions have been met. Otherwise, you can plead your case in front of the Tribunal.”

  He pulled a runestone out of his pocket, rolling it between his fingers. “Eyes on you, Bell. Figure it out.”

  Stone vanished, leaving sparkles behind. My irritation was a maddening itch I couldn’t scratch.

  “Don’t let him get to you.” Joss slid his hands around my waist, finally claiming my attention from the Warden’s irritating presence. “Stone’ll be in Blacksea, but he won’t mess with you there. Edgar just likes to flaunt how many Wardens he’s tight with.”

  “I was going home soon,” I muttered through gritted teeth. Who the hell was Luka Stone to assume anything about my life?

  “Are you ready for this?” Joss held up a tiny runestone of his own.

  I looped my arm through his and we strode out into the warm night, the moon hanging fat and full above us. “I was born ready.” Not true. I was still steeling myself.

  The runestone Joss had been given would be keyed to a certain radius, tied to a door. I assumed he knew where he was going as we turned in the direction of the haunted schoolyard, towards the dive we had gone drinking in.

  I had to stop myself from wondering what Eric was doing right now. It was his business if he wanted to be left alone, and I wasn’t going to waste my one opportunity to represent myself to the covens, nor miss out on getting to go anywhere as Joss Thorne’s date.

  There were no illusions about the nature of this invitation. Edgar Black had thrown the gauntlet at me, daring me to come forward or brand myself a coward. I had every right to remain solitary, but Bellhallow would’ve been divided like the spoils of war.