“The hand that touched my hair.”
“As in how they used to punish thieves by chopping their hand off at the wrist?”
“Yes.”
“That seems…extreme.”
“Father is an extremist.”
“Other parts of you are okay, though?”
A smile in his voice, he slanted his gaze toward me. “Define other parts.”
“I walked right into that one.” I snorted. “Let me find you some hairbands.”
“I have some.” He shifted his weight and dug them out of his pocket. “It pays to carry extras.”
“Do you mind if I ask how Black Hat recruited a daemon prince? Lord? Duke?”
“I attempted to murder my father. He didn’t take it well and reported me. He hoped a few centuries as a Bureau lapdog might teach me what it means to serve without choice, without hope, without freedom.”
The fact he didn’t answer my question about his title didn’t slip my notice, but I didn’t press.
And I didn’t explain my scowl when my spam app alerted me to another intentionally missed call.
“Sorry the murder thing didn’t work out for you.” I cut a razor-sharp part. “It sounds like he needs it.”
“I was young and impulsive, eager to avenge my mother’s honor. I’ll be prepared for him next time.”
Next time meant he was actively plotting patricide, which would make him king. Had he done the math? Or was he so blinded by hatred for his father that he couldn’t see allowing his father to live was the only hope Asa had for a normal-ish life? Murder was satisfying, but the price of instant gratification was high.
“Of that, I have no doubt.” I started plaiting, careful to keep his braids tidy. “Done.”
“About time.”
I swallowed a yelp as I spun to find Clay standing in the doorway with Colby on his shoulder.
“I thought you were packing.” Colby twitched her wings. “This isn’t packing.”
“We couldn’t find you in your room,” Clay explained, “so we followed the smell of feelings in here.”
Heat climbed up my nape to tingle in my ears. Black witches—former black witches—didn’t blush.
“You mean the scent of green apple essential oil.”
That I hadn’t bought because it reminded me of Asa. It was popular, okay? Check any haircare aisle.
“Mmm-hmm.” Clay rolled his eyes in tandem with Colby. “Sure.”
Letting them team up, I was starting to see, was a very bad idea. For me.
“We’re done in here.” I backed away from Asa. “I’ll go get packing.”
Colby flitted from Clay’s shoulder to mine as I passed him, wings jittering. “Where are we going?”
“Tennessee, to the mountains.”
Interest fluttered along her spine. “What’s the case?”
“A black witch raised a wendigo zombie.”
“A real zombie?” Her macabre delight bothered me. “Does it eat people?”
“Yes,” I admitted after accepting she would find out soon enough, “but wendigo do that anyway.”
“Why does everything eat people?” A shudder rippled through her. “They can’t taste that good.”
“You would be surprised,” Asa murmured, “what can be accomplished with the right spices.”
The urge to glance back at him after that comment twitched in my neck. “That was a joke, right?”
“He was kidding.” Clay tugged a lock of my hair. “Mostly.”
Eyes wide, Colby studied Asa with new interest that worried me more than the spice comment.
“Our mission—” I jostled my shoulder, “—is to hunt down the black witch and their pet zombigo before they hurt more people.”
“Zombigo.” Her wings tickled my ear. “You’re so lame.”
“Most people don’t sass me and live to tell about it.”
“That’s a lie.” She scoffed as we entered my room. “Camber and Arden do it all the time. So does Clay.”
“I used to be fearsome.” I set her on the bed then started packing. “I don’t know where I went wrong.”
“You gave up the wicked witch life,” she teased. “That means no more hexing people who annoy you.”
“Ugh.” I almost missed the days when I could wreak havoc without conscience. “Don’t remind me.”
“I’ve never been to the mountains.” She walked a circle then settled in the center of my bed. “Will there be snow? Ice? Sleet? Hail? Oh. A blizzard? Will I need a coat?” She hesitated. “Skip that. I forgot. Wings.”
“We’ll use that spell from when it snowed if you get cold.”
Snow was as rare as hen’s teeth in central Alabama. We got plenty of hail, sleet, and ice. Flurries hit us in late winter edging into spring every other year or so, but accumulation was a major event three or four years in the making.
“Promise to build a snowman with me?” She rubbed her hands together. “We’ll need to pack a carrot.”
Based on past experience, I wasn’t worried about the carrot. First came the rush of enthusiasm, then the stinging pain of frozen hands, followed by soggy regret that ended with me using magic to finish the job.
Glamour might be the bane of supernatural law enforcement, but it was handy when you got lazy.
“Pfft.” I waved off her idea. “The guys will be with us.”
Understanding brightened her eyes. “Snowball fight.”
“Heck yeah.” I grinned. “Girls against boys.”
Finished with my bag, I pulled out a rolling suitcase I used for Colby on trips, but the safe distracted me. I hadn’t gotten the grimoire out since the guys left. That wasn’t to say it hadn’t gotten itself out. It had. Three or four times. Just, there had been too much to do getting the shop back in shape for me to crack it open for study. But this trip would afford me time to read while we were on the road.
Still, I wavered on whether to bring it.
Some dark artifacts grew a certain sentience that resulted in them toying with their masters. Much like a cat, they wanted to be stroked and admired and treated with reverence. They used their ambient magic to convince you there was a topic you just had to read up on. Right now. This very minute.
Hurry, hurry, hurry.
The resulting adrenaline would convince people to pick up the book, and contact strengthened the compulsion until you ended up wiling away an afternoon doing exactly what the book told you to do.
Protections on the safe shielded the dark artifacts as much as they protected me from their whispers.
That I was eyeballing the safe didn’t mean I was in its thrall, but it didn’t mean I wasn’t either.
A shudder rippled through Colby as she noticed the direction of my stare. “Are you bringing the book?”
“I’m thinking about it.” I spelled it out for her. “You’ll be safer once I’ve read it and destroyed it.”
Taylor might not have gotten every detail right, but he did his research, and we couldn’t afford to ignore a potential source of information on Colby. His obsession spilled across the pages, ten years’ worth, but I could admit, to myself, the true reason I kept putting off studying it was the fear I would backslide under its influence. There was a whole lot of ugly in that book, and I was not immune to its lure by any means.
The spells contained within would make any black witch salivate. They would kill to own its knowledge.
To avoid its power falling into the wrong hands, any white witch who stumbled across it would set it on fire, dig holes at the four compass points, divide its ashes and then bury them. Any white witch but…me.
“Yeah, I guess.” Her coarser fur stood on end. “That book gives me the creeps.”
“Me too.” I rested my palm on the safe. “It’s a risk, a big risk, taking it outside the wards.”
It might explore the house on its own, but I was ninety percent sure it couldn’t leave without an escort.
“I’ll sleep on it,” I decided, rolling our suitcases down the hall. “Let�
�s go pack your bag.”
Aside from her teeny pillow and tiny blanket, I had little to pack for her aside from pollen and sugar.
But first, I had a surprise for her.
In the hall closet, hidden at the very bottom, I located a wrapped box. “I bought this for your Mothday.”
“It’s not my Mothday for two more months.”
One of Colby’s first requests after she settled in with me was no more celebrating her birthdays. The gap between her mental age and physical age would only grow, and she didn’t want the reminder. She was a kid, an eternal one, and I remembered how much it sucked to go from my parents celebrating every milestone to the director only praising me when I sank to new depths of depravity. So, we settled on her having a Mothday every year where she received presents, we partied, and she ate way too much sugar.
“Open the box and then say that again.” I set it on the kitchen table. “Hurry, before I change my mind.”
No sooner had Colby peeled down one side of the wrapping paper than a sonic squeal burst out of her.
“You bought me a laptop.” She sprang from the table into my arms. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” I kissed the top of her silky head. “You need something to keep you out of trouble on the road. Plus, I wouldn’t want your friends to think you’d died because you weren’t online every second of every day.”
“You bought it for me because you looove me.” She cuddled in, her head on my chest. “I love you too.”
Throat gone tight, I had to swallow before I could tease her without my eyes leaking in front of the guys.
“Yeah, yeah.” I set her back on the box. “Insert mushy feelings here.”
“That’s a sweet laptop.” Clay smiled down at her. “Want me to help with the unboxing?”
“Sure.” She finished tearing off the paper. “I can’t wait to tell my friends.”
Asa gathered the paper and threw it into the trash can, which I appreciated, but Colby didn’t thank him. I had lost her and Clay to conversation about the specs and download times for her must-have programs.
Leaving them to geek out together, I walked out onto the front porch and breathed in the night air.
I wasn’t surprised when Asa followed. Happy. But not shocked he had taken the hint.
We sat on the steps, under the bright moon, and let the cool wind tickle our cheeks.
Angling his head toward me, Asa studied my profile. “Do you mind if I ask you a question?”
As hard as I had hammered him earlier, I expected he would circle back to me. “Knock yourself out.”
“You were thirteen when you were recruited by Black Hat.”
“Officially, yes. That was the age I started working cases with a partner. Not Clay, but another witch.”
“I’ve never heard of the Bureau recruiting that young.”
“You’re not the only special snowflake around here,” I teased, but he didn’t take the bait, and I sobered “My mother was a white witch, and my father was a black witch.” I wasn’t sure how much of my past he knew, so I left it at that. “Theirs was an unusual pairing, especially with their combined power threshold, and it made people nervous. Mom’s people worried Dad would eat her heart. Dad’s people worried Mom would make him weak.” I studied the thick clouds. “Then I came along.” I pitched my tone like a movie voiceover. “A mongrel with the potential for greatness, destined to bridge the gap between dark and light practitioners, a true power the likes of which no one has ever seen.”
He waited, still and quiet, to see what else I would say. Maybe that was why I told him more.
“But I came into those powers early.” Or so the director told me. “And…I killed my parents.”
A hollow ache rang through my chest, a pain I hadn’t let reach me since those earliest days.
“That earned me Black Hat’s full attention,” I continued, “but my age factored into their ruling.” I paused before blurting out the rest. “I was seven, so the Bureau didn’t put me down. The director took me in as his ward to keep an eye on me. He trained me himself.”
The catastrophic show of power had sparked his interest in me, made him wonder if crossing bloodlines wasn’t such a bad idea. But the trauma of my parents’ deaths smothered whatever spark had kindled in me. I went on to have an unremarkable childhood, left mostly to my own devices, until puberty hit and unlocked my full potential.
For my thirteenth birthday, I was given a gift. A hunt. I caught and killed my first victim under the moon.
Initiation for Black Hat awaited me the next morning, along with much tutting from the director, as if he hadn’t dipped my hands in blood the night before. And lectures, for the sake of those watching his every move, about how I should have been put down as a child. How I lived then and now at his mercy.
“I’m sorry.” Asa covered my hand with his warm one. “Rogue magic isn’t a criminal offense in children.”
Had I been anyone else, I could have gotten off the hook, but I was me, and the director chose to put me in his custody until the day he judged me old enough to take a life with intent, by my own hand, of my own choice, and earn for myself what he wanted for me all along.
Eternal indenture to Black Hat.
“I didn’t know that at the time.” The director kept me carefully ignorant to instill gratitude for him taking me in. “By the time I did, I had killed in cold blood, and I belonged in the Bureau.”
Supernaturals earned a lot of leeway in the is it murder or dinner department.
Humans had encroached on many species’ ancestral lands, putting them in hunting grounds that, as far as paranormal law went, made them fair game. Black witches, however, didn’t have to kill to survive. They did it for power, and more talented practitioners added years from a victim’s life to their own.
The leeway shown to other predatory species wasn’t awarded to them, which left smart black witches to prey on others with extreme caution. Get sloppy, get dead. You were made an example to remind other black witches to dine in private and clean up after themselves.
Asa slid his fingers through mine, meshing them, offering me his strength. “Rue…”
“I killed my first partner too.” The confessions kept coming, pouring out of me, as if I wanted him to hear my sins and judge me for them. “Maimed the second.”
“You were too young to control your powers.”
“I still wonder about that.” I flexed my fingers, enjoying the warmth of his palm against mine. “I was so angry, so lost. I lashed out at everyone around me. I had no real control, and the director encouraged it. He wanted to push me until I tipped over the edge, and I got tired of hanging on by my fingernails.”
A low growl poured into the night air, the rumble a comfort that vibrated in my bones.
“Clay was my third partner, and I’m certain he got stuck with me because he’s indestructible. Or close to it. The director felt I could grow into my role as an agent with Clay watching over me, minimizing the risk to others.” I risked a glance at Asa. “I used to hate Clay for that.”
“The director ordered Clay to spy on you and report back.”
“Yeah.” I tipped my chin up to stare at the moon. “He was nice to me, but I didn’t trust him. Not for a long time. Not until I read one of his reports. He told the director I was a bloodthirsty killing machine when the truth was, I had gotten so sick from the carnage of a warg brawl, I threw up on Clay’s shoes.”
Asa’s intense gaze lingered on the side of my face, but I didn’t turn to see what his expression would tell me.
“The director broke me into little pieces until I lost so much of myself, I had no idea how much was missing or what I had lost.” I risked a glance at Asa. “Clay was the one ready with a bottle of glue, a magnifying glass, and a pair of tweezers. He always fit me back together again.”
Over and over and over through years and years and years until mentally I was a patchwork quilt.
“And…”
I dropped my face into my hands, “…I can’t believe I told you that.”
Only the director knew all the gory details of my past. Even Clay had large gaps in his knowledge, despite the director briefing him prior to us partnering. As his earlier outburst proved, the director had left out a lot. I don’t see why he bothered editing his narrative to suit his audience. Habit, maybe?
As the golem’s current master, the director could have ordered him to keep his—and my—secrets.
“I appreciate the gift you’ve given me,” Asa murmured. “I understand how much it cost you.”
“It frightens me that I told you,” I confessed. “It terrifies me even more that I wanted to do it.”
Whatever the reason, I felt compelled to blab my worst qualities, and that left me fragile in my own skin, afraid the next touch might break through the hard shell I had spent a lifetime building to protect myself from feeling too much, from wanting too much.
“The fault might not lie with you.” He ducked his head. “Mother told me once that when her people find their mate, their souls recognize their match in each other and forge a connection that facilitates sharing their hopes, their fears, their pasts. Then, if the bond is proven true, that friendship evolves into…more.”
A spike of relief stabbed me under the rib cage to hear I hadn’t gone soft, that this thing with Asa was to blame for me blabbing old secrets to anyone in hearing range tonight.
“You’re saying our compatibility is giving me verbal diarrhea?”
Asa choked on a laugh that made me grin. “Perhaps?”
“You’ve never done this before?” I lifted my wrist and shook the bracelet. “This is your first time?”
“You are my first, yes.”
“Ah.” Heat rose in my cheeks, and I cleared my throat. “Okay.”
With the fingers of his other hand, he traced the curve of my cheek. “Is this your first time?”
“I have never been given a hair bracelet or an emotional laxative, no.”
More soft laughter parted his full lips, and my gaze landed on his mouth with a startling hunger.
“You’re dae, right?” I tore my focus away from him before I did something stupid. Like kiss him just to see how he tasted. “Who’s to say daemon mating rituals are all that matters? Who cares if your daddy is a king? Your mom sounds amazing. Honor your heritage, both sides or neither, in a way that feels authentic to who you are, not who your parents want you to be.”
Black Arts, White Craft (Black Hat Bureau Book 2) Page 5
