by Ivy Asher
I’m not sure what to expect, but when I dump the bones, a sea of blankness is not it. Every symbol on every bone is face down, making it so I can’t see them. The metal tab and the bread pincher are off to the side as though the bones have rejected their presence. I stare at the spread for a moment to make sure I don’t miss anything.
Well, it was worth a shot.
I pick up the bones one by one and drop them back in the pouch, but when I grasp one particularly large chip, the bone heats in my hand. I flip it over to see the symbol for letters or language, depending on the context and angle of how this particular bone piece lands. I study it, trying to decipher what this could mean, and after a beat, it comes to me.
I set that bone aside and quickly place the others back in the pouch. I look around me, wondering where Elon keeps his scrying tools, and then remember that I don’t need his, I can summon my own, just like I did the bone knife that I used to free Tad from the hex. I close the velvet bag and ask it to give me the scrying board and pendulum I rescued from my evil aunt’s house. When I open the bag and reach in, it’s there, and excitement flashes through me. Magic is fucking cool, and I hum my appreciation as I pull the scrying board and onyx pendulum from my bone pouch. I set them on the table and then place the bone that warmed in my hand back inside the pouch.
I wipe the bone board down with the hem of my shirt, cleaning out the grooves of the center design, which is an elaborate sun with a face that has closed eyes, and a crescent moon that’s cupping the sun from below. It’s the size of a large pancake, with the word yes centered at the top of the board and the word no at the bottom. The alphabet is carved, letter by letter, into the right curve of the circular board, and the numbers one through ten on the left side of the circle.
I give the board and pendulum a moment to get acclimated, and then I grab the bronze chain and lift the onyx stone attached on the other end above the board and demand that they spill their secrets. The pure black stone of the pendulum zings so fast to the letter N, that I have to fight my reaction to duck and find cover. I’m suddenly so glad that Rogan isn’t here to witness this, because I probably look like an idiot, but I recover just in time to see the stone fly to the letter I. K follows quickly, and then an S, M, E, L, S, E, R.
Quickly, with my free hand, I conjure a pad of paper and a pen. It’s the fanciest stationery I’ve ever seen, and the pen is made from a rabbit’s leg, but a witch’s gotta do what a witch’s gotta do. I write down the letters, staring at them for a minute as I try to decipher what they mean.
“Is this another language other than English?” I ask the board.
The pendulum streaks down to the word no and then circles it before going still.
Okay. Not another language. Niksmelser. What the hell does that mean in English then?
“Is this a location?”
No is once again circled, squashing that hope.
“Is this word a code? Is there a key needed to decipher it?”
The pendulum doesn’t move, and then I remember that the grimoire states to only ask one question at a time. “Is this a code?”
No.
“Is it a name?” I ask, hoping for a long shot.
Excitement sparks in me when the pendulum moves away from no and flashes to yes. I stare at the scrying board, surprised by that response, and then I look at the paper. I study it for a moment, trying to pull a name from the arranged letters. I draw a slash between the K and the S of the word to create Nik Smelser.
Holy shit. It is a name.
“How do I find Nik Smelser?” I ask the board, figuring one long shot worked, why not a twofer? The pendulum flies to the letter R, then to the U, and rests lastly on the N. My brow furrows in confusion.
“Run? You want me to run?” I query, and then the onyx stone begins to tremor on the board before it shoots into the pouch out of nowhere. I jump back, startled, and that’s when something catches my eye. I look through the bay window that shows the land at the back of the house, and see a man slowly stalking toward the back door.
Oh fuck, we gotta go!
14
Fear hammers through me and sends my pulse galloping away as though it’s a thoroughbred making a play for the Triple Crown. My throat grows tight, and I have just enough time to realize that we won’t make it out of here before whoever that is comes crashing through the back door.
“Rogan!” I shout in warning as I round the island and thrust out my hand.
I have two warring arguments going on inside of me right now. One is pleading for me to hide, and the other wants to fuck shit up. I lift my hand slowly, tapping into the bones buried all around the yard. When I have a hold of what I need, I close my fingers into a fist, and white missiles rip out of the earth to form a cage around the intruder.
Fuck shit up, it is.
I run for the back door and fling it open. It slams against the wood of the house with a loud bang that sends more adrenaline jolting through me. With my other hand, I call on the bone stakes hidden all around the property. A floating ring of femur-sized spears surround the bony cage, and I take in the trapped intruder as I move cautiously closer.
I expand my senses to see if there’s anyone else here besides him, but I don’t feel another presence. I shove power out into every bone on the property, and a pulse of magic tears out of me in a brutal tidal wave that sends my prisoner crashing against the bones surrounding him and crumpling to the ground. A flash of something pops up in my mind, but I shove it aside so I can magically feel everything around me and assess the threat level. To my surprise, Elon even hung bone chimes in the trees, making it possible to feel an attack coming from above.
I tuck my admiration away, and focus on the man in the cage as he gets back onto his feet and starts to brush himself off. “I just bought this shirt,” he grumps, fingering a tear in the sleeve that must have caught on a bone fragment. My ring of bone stakes constricts slightly, and he looks over at the movement with clear annoyance written all over his face. He turns his gaze on me, his eyes widening a fraction, before a cold wall of indifference slams down in their espresso depths.
“You’re not Elon,” he states evenly, a strange hint of seduction in the obvious observation. “And you’re not any of my missing witches…” he goes on.
“Your witches?” I question as a thumping noise comes from the house. I turn to see if Rogan is coming, but an overwhelmingly enticing voice catches my attention instead.
“Drop the weapons, Love, and then drop the cage,” he commands, but the words are wrapped in something so luscious and delectable that my whole body warms to it regardless of how ridiculous the order is. “Do as you’re told, gorgeous, and then we’ll have a nice long talk afterward,” he practically purrs, and it’s as though his words are a soft blanket on a chilly day. I want to wrap them all around me, snuggle into them, and let the hidden promises in each syllable melt me from the inside out, in all the most sinful ways.
What the hell?
I take a step toward my prisoner but stop myself as doubt pinballs around in my mind. I study him for a moment, arrogance etched in his square jaw, cocked eyebrow, and the sensual curve of his lips. His hair is combed to the side in a perfect blond wave, and as nice as he is to look at, letting him out makes no sense.
Understanding dawns on me, just as irritation flashes in his dark brown gaze. He’s a Vox Witch. I just read last night about the sirens of old. I focus magic in the bones surrounding my ear, and the heady buzz his magic has resonating through me stops like someone just flipped the off switch.
“Very good, Osteomancer,” he commends, no more magic dripping from his words.
“Who the hell are you, and why are you here?” I demand, forcing my bone stakes to streak toward him, stopping only inches away from his throat.
He holds his hands up as if to plead for me to stop, and a booming whoa sounds off behind me. This time, I don’t take my attention away from the witch in the bone cage as Rogan comes running up beside m
e.
“Took you long enough,” I snap, and I don’t miss that the Vox Witch’s face relaxes slightly when Rogan enters the picture.
“Well, if someone hadn’t thrown me off the stairs with their burst of magic, I would have gotten here sooner. What the fuck are you doing?” he snaps at me.
“Exactly what it looks like I’m doing,” I snap back. “I’m getting some answers from the lurker I found in the backyard.”
“Lennox, this is Marx, the witch from the Order I was telling you about. The one investigating the disappearances. I asked him to meet us here.”
I huff out a frustrated breath and turn to him, vexation radiating out of me. “You didn’t think that maybe a heads-up would have been good in this situation?” I grumble, flinging my arms back so the bone stakes and parts making up the cage bury themselves deep in the ground again.
“I got tied up, and he got here faster than I thought,” Rogan defends, turning his attention to the Order member Marx. “Are you okay?” he asks, stepping toward him and extending his hand.
Marx extends his as well, and they grip each other’s forearms in the witch version of a handshake.
“You owe me a shirt,” Marx deadpans, and Rogan gives a humorous snort as they separate and look over at me. “And who is this? I haven’t received word that any of the missing witches’ powers had moved down their line.”
“They haven’t. This is Ruby’s successor.”
Marx’s head snaps to Rogan, shock replacing his swagger, and there seems to be some kind of odd unspoken conversation between the two as Rogan nods his head once in confirmation. The exchange happens so fast I’m not sure what to make of it. But before I can so much as try to interpret what just happened between them, Marx’s eyes are back on mine. He closes the distance between us, his hand extended, and as uncertain as I am, I also don’t want to offend the Order in any way.
When he’s right in front of me, I take his arm, gripping his forearm hard enough to convey, you don’t want to mess with this, without downright offering a challenge. He holds my arm a second too long, his fathomless espresso stare studying me intensely.
“I’m sorry to hear about Ruby. She was greatly respected and will be eternally missed,” Marx offers, and the reminder of her loss makes my throat grow tighter with emotion. Marx releases his grip, his fingers running a line down the inside of my forearm as he steps back. Then just before he pulls his hand away, he flips my palm up and runs his gaze over my wrist.
He does it quickly, smoothly, probably hoping his touch alone serves as enough of a distraction that I won’t think twice about what he just did. But Rogan’s vow mark sits crimson against my skin, and suspicion swells in my gut.
How did he know to look for that?
“What are you doing?” I ask evenly as he casually steps back, an attractive and friendly smile on his face. It’s probably meant to disarm me, but all it does is serve to make me even more uneasy.
Marx’s brow dips in confusion, but his eyes don’t radiate the same emotion. “Getting acquainted with the newest Bone Witch of the revered Osseous line. Why?” he queries innocently.
Rogan moves his weight from one foot to the other, and my eyes narrow.
“What am I missing here?” I press.
“What do you mean?” Rogan counters.
“Don’t answer my question with a question, what’s going on?”
“Lennox—”
“Don’t Lennox me, Rogan. This place is like that bunker the government built inside a mountain in Colorado,” I point out, gesturing to the house behind me. “I swear on my ancestors I will walk right in there and make this bitch impenetrable if you don’t tell me what you two are up to. And don’t even think of insulting me by saying nothing. Something else is going on here, I feel it in my fucking bones,” I snarl at the two shady witches.
They both just stare at me, silently, and I can feel my rancor rising. I spin on my heel, but Rogan reaches out and catches my arm. With a flick of my wrist, there’s a bone spike centimeters away from his throat. He bats it away like the threat means nothing, and it makes me want to scream in frustration. I can’t really do any serious damage to him without risking it affecting our magic.
“Ooh, this is fun,” Marx quips as Rogan and I stare at each other, fuming.
“Three months ago, your grandmother warned the Order that someone wanted to restore the fragmented branches of magic back to one.” Rogan stares, his eyes burrowing into mine. “She didn’t know more than that, said it came to her in a dream. She tried to dig into who and why, but she told us no matter what she did, she was blocked, that she couldn’t see more than the warning itself.”
“We, of course, took note of the cautionary message, but with no one else in the community reporting a similar vision, and with Ruby unable to dig any deeper, it was filed away and forgotten,” Marx adds.
“And then witches started disappearing,” Rogan states quietly.
I pull my arm from his grip and step back, needing distance between us as I reel from what they’re saying. “How do you know all of this?”
“I didn’t at first, not until Elon disappeared. I hit a dead-end and called Marx, hoping he could help, and that’s when he told me about your grandmother and her warning.”
“Guess who was tasked with filing the report,” Marx states, pointing a thumb at himself.
Anger and bewilderment nest behind my sternum, and I try to piece together why Rogan didn’t tell me all of this from the beginning. “So what does all of this have to do with me?”
“I went to see your grandmother, hoping somehow she could shed some light on this. I thought if Elon’s disappearance had to do with her warning, maybe now she might be able to pick up on something. Hopefully give us a lead, but when I got there, I found you.”
His green eyes shoot to Marx for a millisecond before coming back to me, and my hackles go up in warning.
“When I realized that Ruby was gone, it dawned on me that maybe the reason she couldn’t see, read, or sense who might be behind her warning was because the culprit was close to her. So I—”
“You thought I was behind this?” I interrupt, gesturing to his brother’s safe haven behind me. “And what, making me your familiar…”
“Was an insurance policy,” Rogan finishes. “If you were behind it, I could put you in check. If not, no harm done.”
“No. Fucking. Harm. Done?” I seethe.
“I didn’t know you were going to tether us,” he defends, and rage overcomes me.
“Are you insinuating that this is my fault?” I shriek, and I feel the land beneath my feet and the house behind me quake slightly with my fury.
“Whoa, just calm down,” Marx inserts.
“Shove calm up your ass, Siren,” I fling back, and his answering chuckle pisses me off even more.
“My grandmother had just died, you discovered that when you walked into the shop that morning. How could I have done any of this? I didn’t have any magic before then, what would be the point of kidnapping a bunch of people more powerful than me?”
“You don’t have to be a witch to get the drop on other witches. Not having magic doesn’t rule you out as a suspect or make you powerless. You were the next in line, it was a fair assumption Kendrick made,” Marx points out in Rogan’s defense.
“I didn’t know I was the next in line,” I counter. “And I didn’t kidnap anyone. I don’t give a shit about the fragmented branches of magic. So are we good now? Can I go home and be done with all this bullshit?” I question, hating the betrayal I feel and just how badly it stings. I knew there was more to all of this, but I didn’t know I was on the suspect list.
“Why am I here?” I ask, my tone hollow. “You knew before now that I wasn’t involved.”
“I did, but I was hoping you could still help,” Rogan admits. “That maybe you could pick up on something I couldn’t.” He rubs the back of his neck awkwardly, a sheepish look on his face. “There was also the issue of the tet
her. A coven here is the only one I’ve ever heard talk about it, so I knew they could fix it.”
My eyes jump back and forth between Rogan and Marx as I place all the pieces I just learned in front of me. “If you’re the member of the Order, and the one investigating the missing witches, why didn’t you come to speak with my grandmother?” I ask Marx, not understanding that part of the puzzle. “Why would you come?” I question Rogan.
Marx’s eyes drop to the ground, and he toes some ripped up earth from where a piece of bone buried itself. “Because this isn’t an official Order investigation.”
“I don’t understand,” I confess as confusion hammers me so hard I can feel a headache coming on from it.
I need a damn nap.
“It’s not an official investigation, because we don’t want anyone in the organization to know we’re looking into things. That’s why I didn’t go to meet with your grandmother; I can’t leave my assigned district unless it’s for a case, and technically this isn’t one,” Marx supplies.
“Our theory, before we suspected your grandmother, and then subsequently you…” Rogan adds, “was that maybe someone high up in the Order was behind this. Which is why we have to be careful.”
Understanding crashes down on me like an anvil. I don’t like any of it, but I can’t pretend that it doesn’t all fit together. I just wish I knew how to feel about everything they just purged. I want to tell myself that I shouldn’t feel betrayed—I knew Rogan was playing close to the vest—but everything feels tainted with deception now, and it’s bothering the shit out of me.
I shake my head and fold my arms over my chest, as though the stance can somehow protect me from any more duplicity and hurt. “Nik Smelser,” I offer, my tone thoroughly pissed off.
“Nik Smelser,” Rogan parrots.
