by Tarah Scott
Reckless Witch
An Illumina Academy Reverse Harem Novel
Book One
Tarah Scott
Reckless Witch: Book One Illumina Academy Copyright © 2020 by Tarah Scott
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
Cover Design: Dreams2Media
Editor: Kim Comeau
Contents
Trademark Acknowledgments
Acknowledgements
Glossary
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Ten
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Rogue Witch
Trademark Acknowledgments
Grey Goose
Cartier Oud
Santal Parfum
Glenfiddich
Mack Truck
Wookie
Websters
Lyft
The Big Bang Theory
Uber
Netflix
Hotel California by The Eagles
Acknowledgements
To the greatest editor around, Kim Comeau. You’ve taught me everything I know.
Now if I can just get you to teach me everything you know.
Many thanks to my friend Liv Chatham.
Glossary
Margidda—All magical beings
The Illumina—World government that rules over all Margidda
Abaddon—Magical underworld where magic is practiced illegally
Zidruhin—Religious order that follows Damien, demi-god of The Shadows
Elohim—Ancient god of the angles
Elyon—The Most High
Anunnaki—Followers of the old god Elyon, God of creation, God of the angels
Clans
Silwood: Sirens and Fae
Longthorpe: Warlocks/Witches
Middlewich: Mages and potions
Penncarrow: Wolves/Shifters/Vampires
Chapter One
LEILAH
A Dragon Walks into a Bar
I was four when The Shadows came. Perhaps the vague nightmares and the images I can’t quite identify stem from those days. I don’t really know.
I don’t want to know.
World governments attributed the near annihilation of Margidda as a pandemic virus that science cured. But those of us who survived face constant reminders of the apocalypse: a flash of fear that arises from the illegal use of magic, the unexplained disappearance of one precious remaining member of our kind, and our need to hug natural shadows in an effort to cloak ourselves from The Shadows. According to my grandmother, the apocalypse left behind a compulsion to hide our true selves from humans.
For me, it’s first nature to hide what I am from the mundane world. Margiddians were once numerous. Now, we number fewer than three million worldwide, which makes each life valuable. Still, despite the fear of discovery and the threat of annihilation, we find a way to live.
It’s ten past midnight at The Witching Hour Cabaret Club. From my table at the rear, I watch three long-legged drag queens strut down a twenty-foot runway. Leave it to vampire queens to own glittering, sequined evening gowns that any woman would kill to own. The lead queen tosses loose blonde hair over her ebony shoulder and the crowd cheers as she sashays back to the stage, the other two close behind.
A man in the audience shouts, “You free after the show, baby?”
All three queens spin toward the crowd and throw kisses as they back toward the rear curtain. I sip my vodka. How would the man who wants to hook up with the queens react if he knew the three beauties had lived a collective millennia? The blonde, Desiree, owner of The Witching Hour, is over six hundred years old. There are older vampires, though many ancients perished in The Shadow War. A few were murdered by Margiddians who fed on The Shadows in an attempt to grab power during the war—as well as after the fall of Margidda. According to Grams, those criminals were almost as hard to extinguish as The Shadows had been to drive away. At least, we were able to kill the criminals. The Shadows never die.
My heart clenches as her words haunt my memory. “Sweet pea, when we began to reveal ourselves, the world called it the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Then The Shadows came.”
This last Shadow War was even worse than the war in fifth century BCE Athens, which killed nearly three hundred thousand people. Modern historians attributed the deaths to everything from smallpox to typhus to the bubonic plague. They classified the plague that swept through Egypt, Libya and Greece as the most lethal in all of Classical Greece. This most recent war, however, claimed twenty times those numbers. It’ll be millennia before Margidda recovers the eighty percent loss of our population.
A shiver slides down my spine when I remember the evil that I seemed to inhale at the deserted academy Grams took me to in Massachusetts. If what I experienced were remnants of The Shadows, how much worse had it been for the victims when The Shadows spread their infection of fear and hatred?
What would life be like if The Shadows hadn’t destroyed the possibility of our acceptance by humans? I wouldn’t have to hide my magic from the Illumina.
I gulp half my drink. As a result of the war, the Illumina now rules our magic with an iron fist. What right have our leaders to forbid Margidda from practicing magic without their permission? Guilt stabs. It’s the one subject Grams and I argued about with heat. She informed me I would one day attend The Academy, just as she did. Admission to The Academy is by invitation only, but Grams had an uncanny way of knowing things. I told her I wouldn’t attend that prison. Was that why she’d kicked me out at fifteen?
“Stop it, Leilah,” I mutter.
Seven years is long enough to have tortured myself over that question.
She’s gone. You’ll never have the answer.
Maybe I made a mistake in returning to New York. So far, I’ve only succeeded in dredging up old resentments I’ve worked hard to put behind me. Why should I care that the only family I’ve ever known is dead? Is taking possession of the only real home I’ve ever had worth facing the memories that fill every corner of that house? In the two weeks I’ve been here, why haven’t I visited her grave…or tried to call her from the dead?
Loud applause jars me from my thoughts and I realize the queens have left the stage. Dammit. My customer is late. I scan the club but see no sign of him. The door opens and I tense when, instead of the large, muscled shifter I’m expecting, tall, dark and handsome steps inside. I blink. That isn’t just any tall, dark and handsome. That’s war hero and Illumina Academy student recruiter Commander Ethan Bordeau. I’ve only seen Ethan from afar, and that was before I left New York seven years ago. Ethan Bordeau and Illumina Cadette Commander Raith Vanderkoff are two of the oldest beings to have survived The Shadows. Grams said that Ethan’s strategy and Raith’s sheer strength saved The Academy forty miles north of the City, maybe even saved what remains of Margidda.
Since when do the high and mighty slum with peasants?
Ethan’s eyes slide over the crowd until—
I go perfectly still. No way he’s looking at me. He’s got to be looking at someone near me. I glance left, where a man and woman hold hands across a table. To the right, two blondes have their eyes glued on Ethan. I grimace. Their breasts, practically spilling out of their tiny dresses, look as fake as their hair color. So, the dragon is on the prowl for bleach and silicon.
He starts forward. I hunch over my drink and allow my long, dark hair to cascade round my face. If there was a way out without passing him, I would take it. He’s not a Watchman, but he’s too damn close to the law for my taste. Hell, if he gets in the way of tonight’s deal, I’ll kick his ass and take whatever’s in his wallet.
A shadow falls over my table. Through the veil of my hair, I glimpse jean clad legs that go on forever. I lift my drink. When Ethan slides into the chair opposite me, I freeze, the glass barely touching my lips. I snap my head up and lock gazes with the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. Dragon eyes are almost as compelling as a siren’s.
I stare for three heartbeats. “You’re sitting at the wrong table.” I tilt my head toward the blondes. “You’ll get a twofer there.”
He lifts a hand to signal the waitress who, I realize, must have followed him. “Glenfiddich, neat,” he says without taking his eyes off me. “Would you like another drink?”
I only stare. He flashes a smile at the waitress and she hurries off. His attention returns to me.
I command my pounding heart to slow. “I’m not in the mood for a hook-up.” Damn, if he were anyone else, I would hook up, down and any way he wanted me. I’m dying to run my fingers through that dark hair.
Something flickers in his eyes. Amusement? I blink. Can’t be. Dragons aren’t known for their sense of humor.
“Maybe some other time,” he says in a deep voice that could melt sin on a frigid winter’s day. “I’m here on business.”
“Business?” I blurt before catching myself. He—the Illumina—can’t possibly know about my business.
“You have the honor of being chosen to attend Illumina Academy New York,” he says.
I stare. Of all the things in all the worlds—hell!—in any dream I might have dreamt, that is the last thing I could have imagined him saying.
“What?” I stupidly reply.
The waitress arrives with his drink and sets the glass on the table in front of him. He looks up at her and murmurs, “Thanks.”
Her eyes widen and I half expect her to melt into a quivering puddle of estrogen right there at his feet.
“I’ll let you know if we need anything more,” he says.
She hesitates, then leaves.
His looks back at me. “You are to report to Illumina Academy in the morning. Like all students, you’ll dorm at the school. Your classes have already been assigned.”
Well, fuck a duck.
“Not interested,” I say.
His eyes narrow almost imperceptibly. Most likely, he’s never been refused by a recruit. When Illumina Academy informs you of your acceptance, you don’t refuse. You jump for joy. It’s like winning the lottery. Newly chosen students are beyond thrilled. But my grudge against the Illumina is huge. Their laws are the reason I practice magic illegally. Why I can’t sleep in my bed in the house that is now mine. Well, Grams started the whole mess when she exiled me, but they finished the job by seizing her home a month ago, right after she died.
As one of the only three academies left standing in the States, the prestigious school wields unholy power, which gives commanders like Ethan and Raith god-like power. Raith, in particular, is known for his unyielding ruthlessness. He’s intensely private and spends most of his time behind the walls of the massive fortress-school.
On the brightly lit stage beyond Ethan’s broad shoulders, a woman dressed in a slinky, short nightie belts out, “Hush. Don’t tell Mama. Hush. Don’t tell Mama.” While the orchestra crescendos, she lets her slinky robe fall to the floor. The crowd cheers and whistles.
“Don’t be a fool,” Ethan says so only I can hear.
“Does the name Crowe ring a bell?” I struggle to keep the hostility out of my voice.
I’m careful about wishing people ill. I’m not saying I never have, just that I’m cautious about doing so. Those sorts of wishes have a way of biting you in the ass when you least expect it—kind of like the three too-good-to be-true wishes those trickster jinns grant. But I too easily envision Ethan’s gorgeous body smeared across asphalt after being struck by a double decker bus. Of course, it would be simpler to drop just the right tincture into his drink and watch him melt into a pile of dragon goo. That, however, will get me into deeper trouble with the law than I already am. In this post-Shadow War era, I walk a fine line as a street witch. Which means I’m not going to tell Ethan to fuck off, like I want to.
His eyes remain locked with mine. Most women would melt under those icy blues, but my talent for sniffing out secrets causes a stir in my solar plexus that tells me he has a whopper. A being as old as him must have many secrets. Sadly, I don’t always figure out the secret. But when I do…
He’s still staring as if trying to read my soul and I have the unexpected desire to press my cheek to his chest and listen to the rhythmic beating of his heart. No human heart beats within that chest. He’s pure dragon. Any witch who forgets that is likely to find herself bowing to his will as easily as that waitress. Small wonder he’s The Academy’s most renowned recruiter.
“Miriam Crowe,” he murmurs.
Grams’ name coming from those full lips ignites a new wave of anger. I grasp the glass tumbler sitting in front of me in order to keep an eye on my hands. They’ve been known to smash noses without my permission.
“You’ve got balls,” I hiss. “The Illumina seizes my grandmother’s home and drags her good name through the mud—a name I share—and now they decide to mess with my life?”
Ethan takes a large swallow of his drink then says, “She broke the law.”
That’s the news on the grapevine, but I don’t believe that rumor for a minute. Hell, witches of her stature practically wrote the laws all witches live by.
An image of Grams’ brown eyes, snapping with anger, flashes across my mind as she shoves me through her shop door and says, “Leave and don’t come back. You’re dead to me.”
I thought she was being overly dramatic. I didn’t know the exile would last years…that I’d never see her again.
Why? Why?
I shove aside an avalanche of pain and focus on the dragon shifter across the table. “Broke the law?” I repeat. “My grandmother helped the Illumina enforce the damn law,” I scoff in an effort to head off tears. “It’s damned easy for the Illumina to act as judge, jury and
executioner against a dead woman. No investigation—no trial necessary.”
He hesitates.
There it is. That secret. What the—
My grip tightens around my drink as his eyes shift past me. In the corner of my eye, a tall blonde sashays past our table. I tamp down my anger and do my best not to envision him getting hit by that bus. The Illumina has ripped away my past and intends to steal my future, and I’m supposed to wait while their messenger boy watches some tall, thin lovely walk past.
He gives a tiny nod in the woman’s direction and I realize he knows her. Ethan reaches for his drink and the sleeve of his expensive dark suit jacket drifts up to expose the edge of a silver-laced tattoo. Most dragons love showing off their clan markings. The symbols are considered prestigious, and human women have an almost obsessive need to rub against bronze muscle bearing silver markings they don’t understand. Maybe it’s the magic that draws them.
I lift my gaze to his face and glimpse his darkening pupils in the instant before his eyes returns to me. Magic? Hell, it’s the pure maleness that radiates off dragons that ensnares women.
He sets down his drink. “What makes you think there wasn’t an investigation?”
Well, well, Ethan Bordeau might get distracted, but he gets back on track in a trice.
“Fucking evidence,” I retort. “The precise lack thereof.”
“The Illumina doesn’t publicize its business.”
I snort. “Sure they do. Miriam Crowe, consorting with Shadows? Not a chance.” I’d heard the vicious rumors clear over in Chicago. “And don’t try giving me the bullshit that she committed suicide.” He opens his mouth to reply, but I cut him off. “What right does the Illumina have to prevent me from living in my grandmother’s home? That’s my home now.”
I don’t mention that I still can’t find the damn house. He doesn’t need to know that Grams’ defense spells against me are still effective, even after death. When she kicked me out, she made the entire structure invisible—to my eyes only. I can wander around the vicinity all day and never see or touch the damn place. But come hell or high water, I’ll find the house. It’s mine now. My chance to have a real home again, neighbors who will notice if I go missing, even a reputable business.