A Little Dark Magic (The Little Coven Series Book 2)

by Isabel Wroth

  She leaned in, impulsively pressing a kiss to his belly before standing up.

  “I’ll be happy to tell you all about them. Shirt.”

  Kerrigan went up on her toes to help guide the opening over his head, keeping the material from scraping his face, stumbling, and knocking into him when she dropped to her heels.

  His arms were around her, steadying her instantly, her name on his lips coated in concern.

  “I’m alright, just a little lightheaded still. It’ll pass. Did I hurt you?”

  “No, love, and I may not be able to see at the moment, but my hearing is perfectly fine. Your heart is beating irregularly, your breathing labored. You’re about to drop.”

  He cradled her close, and Kerrigan trusted he was strong enough to take her weight as she settled into his embrace.

  She closed her eyes, not having realized how heavy her eyelids were until she let them fall shut.

  “It’s been a long day. I’m alright.”

  “Kerrigan.” There was a bite to his tone now, a reprimand that made her wrinkle her nose.

  “I’m probably dehydrated from all the crying, and the astral travel I did last night with Astrid to find you took it out of me, but I’m fine. I’ll be even better as soon as we get the hell out of this house. I can rest in the car on the way to the morgue.”

  “How many hours until sunset?”

  “I dunno,” she sighed. “A few hours.”

  From the other side of the door, Doyle shouted,

  “Six hours till sunset, and she’s lying through her teeth! She was exhausted when she woke up, and after what went down in the dungeon, she’s gonna keel over and be absolutely useless to do any more magic if she doesn’t slow the fuck down and take a beat to recharge. Got a bedroom that doesn’t stink like dead witches or sex right around the corner with all the windows blocked off. I don’t think there are any ghosts in there, but I can’t be sure.”

  “I said I’m fine!” she insisted, grunting when Maksim tightened his hold on her and shouted back to Doyle to get the door. “Maksim, really, I’m good. All that food made me sleepy, is all—”

  “Good, then as Doyle has been kind enough to find a room for us, you can sleep,” Maksim responded firmly.

  Digging her heels in did nothing to stop their momentum, and she knew she was struggling when the death glare she shot at Doyle only made him smile at her like she was the cutest little bunny he’d ever seen.

  “I can’t sleep! We need to go to the morgue so I can pull the stitches out of your face and get to work. You’re in pain; I can’t just lay down and let you suffer while I nap!”

  Maksim let Doyle guide him forward with a hand on the hairy traitor’s shoulder.

  “For the first time in many years, I am in no pain. Between your blood coursing through my veins and the potion you’ve given me, I can wait for a few more hours while you recover.”

  “But—”

  “No buts,” he commanded, “I will have six hours to hold you in my arms while we both rest, and that’s the end of it.”

  Doyle gave a manly sound of approval in response to Maks putting his foot down.

  “Nice, bro. All the bedding seems to be free and clear of dust. I don’t smell body oils anywhere in the room. Nobody has been in here for a long time. It seems almost… sterile.”

  Kerrigan sighed in defeat and crawled up the length of the deep, soft mattress to flop down among the pillows, ignoring the cluster of ghosts who watched on with vacant eyes.

  “Vivica very proudly told me about the self-cleaning spell one of her coven members put on the mansion. We could trash it, set fires in every room, and by tomorrow morning, it would be like nothing happened.”

  “Guess they didn’t bother to do the dungeon, huh?” Doyle drawled, making sure they were comfortable before retreating and closing the door behind him.

  Kerrigan lifted her hand to meet Maksim’s, pulling the blankets aside for him to join her. He spooned right up, curling himself around her back, hugging her up in his arms even as he threw his thigh over hers.

  “Sleep, little witch. I’ll still be right here when you wake.”

  Kerrigan closed her eyes, folding her hands over his, tucking them right over her heart with a sigh.

  CHAPTER NINE

  As she led Maksim into the morgue, Kerrigan grudgingly admitted those six hours of hard sleep had definitely been vital. If she’d still been running on fumes, she wouldn’t have had the juice to command the morgue workers into a magical sleep.

  There were so many souls wandering around in confusion, Kerrigan had to do a quick spell to contain all the extras to one room.

  It would wear off by the next night, but for now, the supply closet was hella haunted.

  After the third living person Kerrigan commanded to sleep, Maksim gave her arm a squeeze.

  “It sounds as though you’re using something similar to a vampire thrall to make the humans obey you.”

  “It is kind of similar,” she agreed, peeking around the door to the autopsy suite, glad to see the steel refrigerator doors where the deceased lay waiting to be prepared for their final rest.

  The final morgue tech was ordered to stand at the entryway doors to warn anyone coming in that they’d had a chemical spill and were waiting on a hazmat team. “I didn’t really develop the ability until about a year after… after. Here we go. Nice, clean table right here. Have a seat while I find someone willing to donate.”

  Maksim felt his way along the edge of the table before hoisting himself up to sit on the cold metal surface.

  “You’re going to summon the dead, here?”

  “Of course. I’m not taking body parts without asking; that’s just rude. Not to mention the fact that the spirit of the deceased can latch onto his or her body parts and make the recipient’s life hell. Do you have a preference on eye color if I can’t find blue?”

  “So long as I can see you again, no. I don’t care.”

  Kerrigan nodded briskly, going to the wall of charts to look for the freshest body in the racks.

  She found three candidates and hustled to open the drawers, carefully lifting back the white sheets to peer at the cold, blue faces of the dead.

  The first was young, in her twenties, and after snapping on a latex glove, Kerrigan discovered she had dull brown eyes.

  The chart Kerrigan held said the young woman had died from a drug overdose, which explained why the sclera of her eyes were horribly bloodshot. Kerrigan dismissed the girl as a possible donor and moved on to the next corpse.

  The man was in his late forties, his dark hair liberally salted with silver. The self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head was terrible to look at, the metallic smell of gunpowder and violence so intense she pressed the back of her hand to her mouth and didn’t even bother to look at his eyes. Asking his spirit into the room would be traumatic all around.

  Candidate number three was a handsome bald man with strong features and wrinkles around his mouth and eyes, likely from age and smiling.

  A quick scan of his chart said he’d had a heart attack, which wouldn’t damage his eyes in any way. When she peeked, she found pale, mint-colored eyes staring sightlessly up at her.

  “Lovely,” Kerrigan sighed, taking a candle and some salt from her bag. She poured the grains all around the body of Gregory Simpson, and on the floor around herself to ensure nothing went awry.

  She lit the candle and set it carefully on his chest, taking a deep breath to open herself to the other side.

  Gregory’s spirit came easily and gently, a wispy, billowing shadow of his former self. He seemed surprised, looking around the morgue and down at himself with a wide-eyed expression of shock.

  She smiled at him reassuringly, calling him by his name to solidify her hold on him.

  “Hello, Gregory. I’m Kerrigan; you don’t have to be afraid.”

  Gregory’s form shimmered, only his head and shoulders outlined in perfect detail; the rest was a whirling gust of ether and spir
it.

  “Am… am I dead?”

  “Yes, I’m sorry Gregory,” Kerrigan murmured gently. “It looks like you had a heart attack two days ago.”

  “I… I see. I feel different.” Gregory looked to where Maksim waited patiently, head tilted to listen to Kerrigan’s conversation with a dead man. “Somehow, I know you’re not human, and neither is he.”

  Kerrigan kept smiling, spreading her hands with a playfully guilty shrug.

  “You see things now you couldn’t see when you were alive. I’m a witch; that’s Maksim, and he’s a vampire.”

  Gregory’s already wide eyes rounded in surprise, even as he gave an impressed sound.

  “No shit?”

  “No shit,” Kerrigan chuckled.

  “Guess that explains a few things,” Gregory answered, looking back to Maksim, his voice dropped to a whisper, “What happened to him?”

  “He was tortured, and I brought him here to help put him back together, but I need your help, Gregory.”

  Gregory, the ghost, gave a helpless shrug. “I’m dead; how can I possibly help you?”

  Kerrigan took a deep breath and made her pitch. “Would you be willing to donate your eyes and a few fingers so I can make Maksim whole again?”

  Gregory blinked like an owl, looking at his body, at Maksim, and back with a thoughtful frown.

  “I um… I suppose I don’t exactly need them anymore, do I?”

  “No,” she murmured. “I can offer you a final favor in exchange for your generosity. Anything except doing harm to myself or another person.”

  The ghost made a sad, agreeable sound. “My wife and son, I don’t have any family to check in on them or help take care of them. I worked two jobs to make ends meet, and my son wants to be a marine biologist.”

  Kerrigan gave a sympathetic hum. “I give you my word, your family won’t suffer any financial burdens from this day forward. I will happily check-in—from a distance—to make sure your wife is taking care of herself and that your son makes it into the best marine biology program in the country. He’ll have to do all the hard work, but I will see to it he has every opportunity to make his dreams come true.”

  Relief made Gregory’s smoky shoulders droop, and after another few moments of quiet, he nodded.

  “Thank you. Yes, I’m willing to donate. What do I do?”

  “Repeat after me: I, Gregory Simpson, give of myself freely. I give the gift of sight and touch, and relinquish all claim to my flesh.” Gregory obeyed, and Kerrigan breathed a sigh of relief herself. “Thank you, Gregory. Rest in peace.”

  She blew out the candle and Gregory’s ghost disappeared in a soft shimmer of white light.

  “Okay, now the icky part.”

  Kerrigan fetched a clean metal bowl from a rack of dishes, checking in with Maksim on her way.

  He’d been quiet as a mouse for the entire conversation with Gregory, and when she asked him if he was okay, if he was having second thoughts or disturbed by what she’d done, he shook his head.

  “I was thinking of the first night we met. I watched you from the shadows for a time while you set up all your implements and tools, going back and forth to your little book of spells to make sure you had everything arranged just so.

  "You were so nervous, and now, speaking to Gregory… if that’s how you conduct all your business with the dead, I find myself insanely proud of you and rather angry to have missed out on seeing you grow and come into your power.

  "I can’t help but wonder if you would have made the same leaps and bounds had I given you my blood and bound us together before you could complete your schooling.”

  Kerrigan curled her hands around his, not letting go even when he tensed, still acting as though he worried she was repulsed by his missing fingers.

  “We’re going to talk about all that later because time is of the essence here. The employees won’t stay asleep forever, and it’s going to take me a while to work on you.”

  “Of course, forgive me.”

  She pulled her bottom lip through her teeth, nervous what he would think about what she’d have to do next.

  “Don’t freak out if you smell my blood. Necromancy can get a little messy.”

  His lips canted in a crooked smile right before he raised her hands to brush kisses across her knuckles.

  “I’m not squeamish, Kerrigan. I have seen necromancy performed before; it is an ancient practice, and to have mastered it at so young an age is impressive.”

  With cheeks on fire with a mix of shyness and pleasure, Kerrigan fidgeted and muttered, “I wouldn’t say I’m a master, but I know enough to make this work.”

  “Good, then get to it, little witch.”

  She clicked her tongue at his playful demand, squeezed his hands, and obeyed. She was as respectful as she could possibly be when removing Gregory’s eyes and fingers, laying them in the metal bowl, steeling herself for the bite of pain when she cut into herself again and let her blood fill the bowl enough to cover the bits and pieces.

  She covered Gregory’s body again, giving an idle thought to what the human staff would say when they found Gregory later, hoping they didn’t tell his wife his body had been desecrated.

  With a shrug, she focused on laying her implements and scalpels out on the tray beside the autopsy table, helping Maksim lie back and get comfortable on the cold slab.

  As she was preparing a solution to clean out his orbital sockets, he made a mild sound of surprise.

  “What?” she asked, glancing his way.

  “I am slightly disturbed by how comfortable this table is,” Maks answered with a frown. “The neck support is quite good.”

  Kerrigan laughed, reaching over him to pull the big light closer and flipped it on.

  “I’d be a little disturbed, too. Is the willow bark still helping to manage your pain? Don’t be tough and fib. I need to know.”

  Maksim sighed, resting his hands on his belly. “Currently, I feel a dull throbbing. Nowhere near the level of prolonged agony I have become accustomed to. I should have been in a deep hibernation considering the level of my desiccation, but I could never sleep through the burning. I believe there is something silver packed into the empty sockets that seeps out slowly.”

  Fury made her hand shake when she picked up her scalpel, wishing she’d been there to see the Fae warriors butcher the Silver Wives.

  “I’m going to cut through the threads as carefully as I can, if it gets bad, if I hurt you, say something.”

  “Alright.”

  “I mean it, Maksim.”

  “I promise.”

  Kerrigan nodded, giving his hair a stroke, steeling herself to cut into the man she loved. It was to help him, but still, her stomach churned with nerves.

  “Okay. Turn your head toward me. Once I get these open, I’m going to irrigate them with some stuff to nullify any spells or other potions. It won’t hurt.”

  “Perhaps you should rinse the area with your potion first. I can’t tell you how many times I tried to claw out the stitches myself, but it was impossible. No matter what I did, the thread refused to break.”

  “Good idea.” Kerrigan wound up rinsing the threads twice after they started to steam. She blew out a breath, got a good grip on her scalpel, and lowered the hooked end to the first stitch.

  For a time, the only sounds in the morgue were the hum of the refrigerators and the snick of her blade through the threads.

  Her uneasiness faded as she concentrated on the task at hand, using tweezers to carefully pull the stitches from Maksim’s skin.

  The whole time, he lay perfectly still, making no sounds to indicate any discomfort.

  Beneath the furiously reddened flesh, Kerrigan found a little muslin pouch stitched closed with the same black thread, and when she sliced it open, silver powder spilled out on the medical table along with two teeth. Fangs. Maksim’s fangs.

  Angry tears pooled as she carefully pulled the teeth from the silver dust with another pair of tweezers, washin
g them first in water, then in the nullifying potion, and finally put them in the bowl of her blood before repeating the process on his other eye.

  She found another pouch with the same contents inside, and was glad to know she wouldn’t have to harvest teeth from another vampire—from Etienne as she’d planned on doing—and could truly make Maksim whole again.

  Kerrigan swiped at the tears blurring her vision with the back of her hand, taking a breath to steady herself.

  “You were right about the silver.” He only grunted in response, his lips pressing together in a tight line. “Nearly there. I’m going to do a rinse,” she murmured, starting with a gentle stream of water, then her potion.

  When she finished, Maksim heaved a sigh of deep relief.

  “I feel much better already. No burning.”

  “Good. This next part will probably feel a little strange. My, uh, previous attempts have all been on wholly dead things, so I can’t say just how strange.”

  “Whatever it takes, love. I’m ready.”

  “Kay. Here goes.” Kerrigan put her scalpel down, cupping her palms over his damaged sockets, closing her eyes as she began to hum.

  There were no words needed with necromancy, only a specific thought wrapped around a throaty melody.

  To her surprise, Maksim’s body responded immediately, the skin pulling together to fuse seamlessly, the devastating damage repaired in no time.

  Eyebrows, eyelids, and eyelashes reformed, lids open wide in readiness to accept Gregory’s eyes. She spooned blood into the cavities and carefully inserted the donated organs, murmuring softly to Maksim to reassure him.

  “They need to settle for a little bit. I’m going to lay a cloth across your face, okay?”

  “Yes. It does feel strange. Heavy. Hot. Not unpleasant, just… unusual.”

  “Well, I have some good news, sort of. Vivica had a cruel sense of humor and put your fangs into the pouches she stuffed in your eyes. I’ll be able to reset them without a problem.”

  His throat worked in an audible swallow. “Just make sure you don’t put them in backward, eh?”