by Jade Bones
Copyright © 2020 by Jade Bones
All rights reserved.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions or locales is completely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Heart & Soul is a paranormal romance with graphic descriptions of intimacy and potentially triggering sexual situations. Intended for mature readers.
Heart & Soul
Witches aren’t meant to have power of their own; our magic comes from demons and the bond we share with them. Power without a source is unnatural, dangerous.
I never wanted this magic. This magic wants to take, to consume…
I’d do anything to get rid of it, or at least control it.
But nothing works, and on top of all that, now I’m stuck back in the past while a faceless threat looms over both me and my stubborn demon.
Oh, and did I mention Aeden apparently hates me?
My power wants to take.
After everything that’s happened, maybe I should let it.
Heart & Soul is a paranormal romance with graphic descriptions of intimacy and potentially triggering sexual situations. Intended for mature readers.
Heart & Soul
Jade Bones
Contents
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
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Also by Jade Bones
ONE
Mal
If this amulet sasses me one more time, I'm throwing it in the river.
The breeze whistles through the cracks in the window, making me shiver and reminding me that if I want to get out of this freezing abandoned classroom, I need to see some progress. But with every unexpected noise and every breath of air, I lose several minutes making sure I really am alone. The tingles down my spine tell me I'm not.
Honestly? There’s something in the air tonight—a heaviness, like some wild animal is prowling the corridors... stalking me, surrounding me. But whenever I look, there's nothing there.
"Come on, baby," I mutter to the amulet hooked over my leather-covered fingertips. "Just keep it together."
Finger by finger, I ease off the glove.
It begins as it always does: an ice-cold sensation beneath my nails that has nothing to do with the Arctic weather howling outside. The shivers radiate outward, like ripples on a lake, and the magic that should never have belonged to me latches hold of the object pressed to my skin and blooms.
The amulet shudders, flickers, and breaks itself in two—each half the perfect mirror image of the other. I wince at the shattering sound, hating it, even after all these years. The empty husk of what was once the metal amulet lies flat and worthless in my hand. Its loss of life overwhelms me, making me shudder. I don't want to touch it, don't want to look at it or acknowledge its existence in any way.
I turn to the other half, the translucent one that shimmers with an inner glow and calls to me with words I hear in my heart. Goodness radiates from it. The protection spell that should infuse the metal husk has completely transferred to this ghostly pendant. Not a drop of its magic remains within the original necklace's body.
Because what I hold in my left hand is the amulet's spirit.
I stare at the spirit, willing it to reach back for its body, to not be quite so eager to sever the connection. But it only sparkles brighter, hovering a little in the air and reaching for me, imploring me to skim my fingers across my face and allow my own spirit to leap free from its earthly chains.
Melodramatic little shit.
Seriously, if anyone had told me family heirlooms had this much personality, I would have left them in Granny Potts' jewelry box.
"Just... hop back!" I beg, giving the spirit a little shake. "Only four inches to the right. Come on, baby, you can do it. It’s a tiny jump away."
I shake my hand to punctuate my point, trying to guide the spirit back into the flesh, but the ghostly amulet only spins where it is, sparkling in the flickering candlelight. I should have gone with the cursed ring instead, but I'd chosen the protection spell because I stupidly thought the spirit of something good would be easier to bargain with than the spirit of a cantankerous cursed object. Silly me.
"Should have remembered good people are fucking obnoxious," I snap at the amulet. "Always think they're right."
The amulet glows. Obnoxiously.
"Listen here, you little pipsqueak." I lean in close to the pendant, whispering. "I don't want this magic. You don't want me to have this magic, because you know what this magic is? It's bad. Not protective at all—it's dangerous. So why don't you do me a massive solid and help me learn how to control it?"
When sixty slow seconds pass and nothing changes, I smoosh the two amulet-halves between my palms and wriggle them around a bit. Because if it isn't already painfully obvious, I'm completely out of ideas. I need to anchor this thing somehow, or just get it to listen to me all together. Maybe I should take off the second glove, as a metaphorical show of intent. Two wrongs do make a right or something like that. Fuck, I don’t know.
I wish I were back in my dorm, so I could at least consult my textbooks and compare the amulet's spirit to diagrams, but that’s a bad idea. Stacey’s great, but the other girls keep hounding me. Not even for anything important, just stupid shit like switching beds with Rachel—because she's like seven foot and deserves my queen bed more than me or something—or wanting to borrow my books and knowing I won't say no.
Because I won't. If I ever said no to them, they’d push me and push me, and then I’d get mad, and... I can't do that around people.
This power inside me… it wants to be used. Which is why I have to control it. And why I have to hide until I do.
I ease off the second glove carefully, glancing at the door to make sure no one has come to check on the dim light illuminating the West Wing's chief abandoned classroom—or come to hook up in it, since that's basically the only thing that happens here anymore. For good measure, I cast a fresh ward on the room that will chime if anyone is nearby.
"That's it, Malory," I whisper, turning back to the amulet. "Just don't touch yourself—easy as pie. Well, not that kind of touching. Get your head out of the gutter and keep your hands off your own skin. You know what, stop talking to yourself, too, because this is getting ridiculous."
I clench my jaw shut, pull off the glove from my left hand, and throw it on the table. It passes through the spirit amulet without trouble, and as my skin touches the spirit for the first time, a tiny shiver of unease ripples over the transparent metal. A grin spreads across my face—at last, progress. Perhaps I should have tried this earlier, except it really is dangerous to attempt this on my own.
The last thing I need is to get knocked out of my body when there's no one around to lead that body to safety. Anything could happen to me out here. I can extend my stay outside my body, if I want it to, but returning early is as impossible as controlling this stinking amulet.
And with Professor Eaken
stalking me, waiting for me to slip up, that isn’t a risk I can afford. His instruments are closing in on me—hunting down extraneous magic. It's taken him two years, since magic in a magic academy is hardly an anomaly. But he knows. He's waiting for a chance to pounce on me. I won't give it to him.
Shuddering, I turn the spirit amulet over in my palm, careful not to let my hands brush against each other. One guides the pendant, the other lifts the chain, but even with that barest of touch I can see how the amulet's surface writhes unhappily. Before it was vibrant, almost cocky in the way it sparkled and hovered above my skin. Now it looks trapped. Fidgety. Guilty.
Or maybe I'm projecting a little too much onto inanimate objects again.
I startle as something outside the room howls, like a wolf. It sounds much too close to be from the forest. It's probably prowling the grounds.
"You could go home, you know," I suggest as seductively as possible when speaking to a necklace. "It's right over there. Don't you miss it? All those senses, gone. You can't feel anything like this, can you? You're just a big old blob of thought. Can’t smell anything, taste anything, touch anything..." Okay, this argument would have worked a lot better on the cursed ring, since at least that has a ghost inside it which might remember what taste means.
Still... the amulet does twist a little in my hand, like it knows what I'm saying and is no longer my number one fan.
"It's so nice to have a body," I try in my most tuneless, sing-song voice.
A soft footstep scuffs against carpet. The amulet drops onto the table as I startle, leaping backwards and scanning the room for intruders. But the space is empty, and my wards are clear, and there's no way I heard a footstep that quiet on the other side of the door when it's closed.
My eyes land on the painting hanging on the back wall.
The footstep falls again, but I can't tell where it's coming from. Three sets of eyes stare at me from the picture, one belonging to an elegant woman dressed in red and seated in a chair I recognize from the Dremen Academy principal's office. The two men standing behind her are slightly more forgettable, although as soon as I turn my full attention to them, I realize that's only because I hadn't looked at them properly yet. My legs turn weak, and I have the strangest urge to bow or fall to my knees or something.
And I mean every possible euphemism of that, despite how it makes my cheeks flush with embarrassment.
The scene depicted is similar to any other academy classroom, which is why I've never paid the painting much attention before. I assumed it was an old principal no one really cared about, immortalized in a room everyone had forgotten.
Now... I'm not so sure.
I walk over to the painting, my heart racing. A faint jingling sound comes from somewhere behind me, but I can't focus on it. The eyes seem to follow me, and the blackboard that rests behind the painting's subjects gives me the surreal impression I'm looking at a mirror. It's empty, just like the blackboard in the room with me, and I feel the strongest urge to break the trance by drawing something stupid on the one in the classroom. Anything to destroy the sensation that I’m walking towards a reflection of myself.
The woman watches me, and all the hairs along the back of my neck stand up in protest. I want to look at the two men to see if their eyes have also followed my movement, but I can't break away from her stare.
What would happen if I touched the painting? Would her ghost break free?
Would the men emerge and command me to kneel?
Sweat breaks out along my forehead, and I reach out to the frame with no solid awareness of what I'm doing. Like I'm caught in a trance. I can't stop. There's an urgent, chiming sound behind me, but I only need to touch...
The creak of a door makes me spin around reflexively, my palm only narrowly missing my face as I jump in fright.
Aeden, my demon, stands in the doorway, and for a second the shadow that stretches along the wall is... grotesque. Unrecognizable. It's crouched on all fours with a ridge along its neck like a mane.
Then it's gone, and I'm left staring at an angry demon, his eyes fixed on mine as he slowly closes the door behind him. Black tendrils of hair escape the loose knot at the nape of his neck, giving the impression that he ran here.
Or that he’s worked up in some other way.
Light flickers in the center of his chest, behind his dark shirt: his demon heart, painfully, undeniably inhuman.
Even after two years, I lose my breath a little when I catch sight of his heart. At first, this was because I thought it was horrifying to be bonded to a creature with such a creepy aesthetic. But now... I don't know. There's something soothing about it, about witnessing the steady thudding of his heart. About the way the flame simmers like a log cabin's fireplace late at night.
I almost wish I could see it more.
"It's after curfew," he says quietly, brown eyes glinting. "What are you doing here?"
I search for a lie, but I can't find one. "What are you doing here?"
I never quite know where I stand with Aeden. If the world turned on me, I don't doubt he'd have my back. But I've never been able to shake the feeling that Aeden believes I'd turn on the world first.
And then we wouldn't be fighting back to back. Then I'd have no one.
Aeden laughs, low and rich. "I heard there was a student out of bed." He raises one eyebrow. "You know whatever punishment you earn, I suffer too." He tuts. "Kind of selfish, if you ask me."
Heat rises in my cheeks, embarrassment flushing through me. "I didn't ask you. You're here uninvited, so why don't you leave?"
"Not until you're safely back in bed." He grins, eyes glinting in the light from my candle. "I'll even tuck you in, if you're a good girl."
He does this all the time. Not quite flirting—that would be insane—but using the pretense of it as an attack. Sometimes, I'm more scared he'll find out what that does to me than I am of him discovering my power...
Then he crosses the room and reaches for me, and I remember how much I need to hide that too.
But he's only reaching for the painting, running his finger across the canvas. With a frown, he murmurs, "Did it always look like this?"
"Like what?" A shiver of unease races up my spine.
"Like they're watching you."
Shit, so I'm not the only one who sees it. An unnamed emotion swells in my chest, begging me to reach forward and touch the painting. But I'm not that stupid... If something wants me to free its spirit, ten bucks says that's not a spirit I want freed.
Spirits reveal a person’s truth—both their true nature and the truth of what they want. And as the old fairy stories about succubi tell us, knowing your dreams is the first step to bringing them to life. Whatever this painting dreams, it can stay dead.
I take a step away from Aeden and hold my hands out by my sides, so they can't touch anything, but luck isn't on my side. The strange movement only attracts Aeden's attention, and the look in his eye turns suddenly feral. My heart races in fear and I take another involuntary step backwards, nearer the painting.
Aeden's voice grates as he mutters, "Is this it?" His gaze is fixed to my curled fists, and while his lip is curled triumphantly, the gleam in his eyes looks more like... fear.
He reaches for my hand, and without thinking I snatch it back so violently it whacks against the wall.
Except it isn't the wall.
The painting moves. There's a moment where the expressions on the subjects are contorted into equal parts surprise and confusion, and it would be hilarious except for the fact that immediately after it, their features go stock still and lose all expression entirely.
I've only seen it three times before on a human face. Once, the first time, when I was four years old and cuddled my mom. The second time, when my glove tore as I was play-fighting with my friend Isobel by the river with our kindergarten class. And the third time, in the mirror at age sixteen, when I was lonely and upset and wanted to see what would happen.
Outwardly, not much happe
ns when your spirit leaves your body. It floats around for a little while, aimless and bored, waiting to be reunited with its body. Because there's nothing to do as a spirit. You have no senses, no touch or taste or smell. You can't manipulate anything; only I can see you; and your body is in temporary danger for as long as the magic lasts.
But then my magic calls to the spirit, like it wants something more, and I’m too terrified to discover what that would be.
Witches don't have magic on their own, not without our demons, who we don't bond with until we're eighteen. Beyond simple spells that rely on potions and herbs with existing magical properties, witches can't do anything magical on our own. Except for me.
My kindergarten teacher called me the devil's daughter.
The painting shimmers, and both Aeden and I back away compulsively as three new figures appear in the room with us: the spirits of the painting’s occupants. Their faces shudder as their spirits twist and find their shape. Mostly, their spirit faces look the same, but there’s a darkness to their features that I don’t want to look at too closely. Twisted limbs. Barren smile. While the true nature of a child like Isobel, or a protection amulet, is exactly as it claims to be, such is not true of men like these. Nor of my mother, when I hugged her. Nor of myself.
Something settles around my neck—a weight—but I can't spare the time to work out what it means other than that it's a key on a chain.
Like a child yelling for their mother, I want to scream out for help. But this magic in me is dangerous, and how can anyone help me without being exposed to my power in the process? What will it do to them when it senses fresh meat? It’s already calling to this key it drew free from the painting. To the spirits before me.