by T. S. Snow
Frenetic
Book 4 of the Arcane Mage Series
T.S. Snow
Frenetic by T. S. Snow
Copyright © 2021 by T. S. Snow. All rights reserved.
No portion 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.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. They are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Cover Design: CJ Romano @CoversbyCJRomano
Editing: Bookish Dreams Editing
Proofreading: Lorie Collins
Created with Vellum
Contents
Foreword
Foreword
Prologue
1. Charisma
2. Charisma
3. Blaze
4. Charisma
5. Andres
6. Theo
7. Charisma
8. Bastille
9. Blaze
10. Andres
11. Logan
12. Charisma
13. Bastille
14. Charisma
15. Charisma
16. Theo
17. Charisma
18. Logan
19. Andres
20. Theo
21. Logan
22. Charisma
23. Andres
24. Charisma
25. Bastille
26. Charisma
27. Blaze
28. Theo
29. Charisma
30. Andres
31. Charisma
32. Blaze
Epilogue
Also by T.S. Snow
Acknowledgments
About the Author
To Ann,
The best mentor a baby author could hope for...even if you kept throwing markers at me. Good thing I’m good at dodging.
Foreword
Mom, I’ll literally pay you not to read this book. I mean it. Just name your price. Seriously.
Orgies ahead.
Stop. Right now.
This book is a slow build Reverse Harem, that means the main character slowly collects men to form her happily ever after, without having to choose.
Prologue
Theo
“Are you sure about this, Annie?”
To anyone passing by, I looked like a fucking lunatic talking to myself as I walked the streets of New York at night. More than one person had given me a wide berth, not that there were that many people around. This place was the perfect murder mystery scenario, with the rundown buildings and empty restaurants. I was pretty sure I’d passed at least one alley where humans were up to something shady.
After years of seeing and talking to ghosts, I’d gotten used to being looked at as if I’d lost my mind. At least amongst mages, I was considered normal. Well, normal for a Soulbinder, that was.
“Yes, I’m sure. C’mon, Theo, have a little more faith in me, will you? I wouldn’t lead you into a trap just for shits and giggles.” She paused. “Okay, well, maybe I would do it as a prank, but not an actual trap that would actually put you in danger. I may think you’re lame most of the time and an idiot when it comes to Charisma, but you’re my brother. Just because I died, that doesn’t mean I’ve lost all sense of morals, dammit.”
Annie hovered above the ground as she “walked,” her red hair falling down her shoulders. She was wearing a shirt that had a cartoon ghost and “I don’t know what I’m booing” written on it. If not for the fact I could see through her, and the fading in and out whenever someone passed through her ghostly form, it would be almost as if she were still alive.
It didn’t matter how many souls I’d seen over the years, how many ghosts I’d helped cross over or banished, seeing my sister this way was fucking creepy, not to mention heartbreaking.
Sometimes, when she was talking my ear off about something or another, it almost felt like I had her back, but then I’d open my eyes or look at her and see what she had become, and it was like losing her all over again.
Still, I wasn’t quite ready to convince her to cross over.
I was selfish, but what was love if not selfish?
Besides, she was adamant that she had a mission she needed to complete before she saw the light.
Not that she was willing to tell me what her mission was, but she kept saying it was important.
Which was why we were in a shady as fuck part of town at eleven in the evening. She’d convinced me that she knew someone who could help us infiltrate the resistance. Someone who had the inside scoop. Someone who was a member of the resistance, but she refused to tell me who it was or why they’d be willing to help.
“She’s usually at the library during the day, but at night, she will go one of two places—the gym where she goes to kick people’s ass in the ring, or the bar she’ll go to when she needs to let out some steam. We’re hitting the bar because I have a feeling that’s where she’ll be tonight. If I’m wrong, you can buy yourself a drink and then tell me why the fuck you haven’t told Char everything yet. So hey, either way, it’s a win-win situation, huh?” Annie grinned at me, and I rolled my eyes.
She was like a damn dog with a bone. For five years, she’d been saying the same thing, asking the same thing. The answer never changed.
I didn’t know why she thought that now she was dead it would be any different.
“You know why I can’t, Annie.”
I rubbed my eyes, asking the Goddess for patience. I wanted to go back to my house, sulk, and plan how best to worm my way back into Char’s good graces. I didn’t want to be out at this hour, on my way to a fucking bar in the hopes I could maybe find someone who might be able to help.
There were too many uncertainties in this whole scenario, and I hated that.
Annie rolled her eyes at me. “This is dumb. It’s not like Grandma actually cast the binding on your soul that would prevent you from ever talking to her if you approached her. She just threatened to. There was a chance she wouldn’t have gone through with it, you know?”
“Yeah, because she’s never done that kind of shit to anyone, right?” I scoffed. Had Annie forgotten what the matriarch did to her own daughter?
“Oh, c’mon! You know our aunt Kate’s case was different!” Annie exclaimed, putting her hands on her hips. “She would’ve run away to live with the humans. I’m not saying I agree with what Grandmother did, you know I’m against it, but you staying in a relationship with the woman you love for a few more years before you eventually propose instead of proposing at eighteen to force her into the family hardly seems like the same thing. I know she told you to either marry Charisma or never speak to her again—which was kind of a weird ultimatum, but it still wasn’t the same as what happened to our aunt. You could’ve married Char.” She tilted her head to the side as if in thought, before continuing, “I have no idea why she thought forcing two teenagers to get married would end up in anything good and I totally do think you did the right thing in not complying, but you should have told Char about the whole thing.”
I stopped walking to look at Annie in frustration. I desperately needed this conversation to be over as soon as possible. “Do you honestly think if I told Char about the matriarch’s ultimatum, she’d have accepted the breakup? You don’t think she would’ve married me just to keep me in her life because she loved me? Don’t you think I suffered all these years, worried that if I
so much as looked at her for too long, our grandmother would find out, get suspicious, and force Char to marry me? Or worse, force me to marry Char just so she could be used? What would happen if she used her powers on Char too? Did it ever occur to you that the reason I’m not willing to risk it is so Charisma won’t fall right into her hands and become a puppet, just like Aunt Kate?” I ran a hand through my hair, frustrated.
This fucking conversation again, over and over. It did nothing but remind me of how weak and pathetic I was. How much harder I had to work so I could be strong enough to protect Char. I hated that I’d been reduced to some creepy stalker who had to watch over her from the shadows instead of being with her.
Even now, when I was trying to pursue her again because I just couldn’t stay away any longer, part of me wanted her to not forgive me so I wouldn’t put her at risk. I hoped I was strong enough to keep any of the matriarch’s spells from taking Char’s free will away, but I had yet to put my skills to the test.
Maybe one day, I’d be able to free my aunt too, so she could finally live life as she pleased. After all, wasn’t that what we all wanted?
Her only sin had been to fall in love with a human and want to run away with him, but my grandmother had found out and used her Soul Magic to force her own daughter to break things off with her lover and marry someone suitable. As the name itself implied, Soulbinders were one of the few Soul Mages who were able to actually bind a soul to a specific command or set of commands. The person who was bound would never be able to go against those commands unless the mage died, and even then…it was a toss-up as to whether they’d be free or not.
My grandmother’s commands had snuffed the life out of my aunt. She became empty inside, a shell, there to serve the matriarch. She was physically incapable of going against her mother now, and whenever she tried, something inside of her just…stopped.
“Oh! Idea! What if I tell Char about it? Then you’ll have nothing to worry about! It’s the perfect loophole,” Annie exclaimed excitedly, her form fading out and then reappearing as she skipped around me. “Besides, it’s not like Grandmother can do anything to me now.”
I reached out with my hand to hold her arm, activating my Soul magic so I’d actually be able to touch her rather than have my fingers pass right through her.
She froze upon contact, her green eyes going impossibly wide.
“Annie, for the last time, we’re not doing this. And you can’t even talk to her anymore, remember? Just drop it, seriously. I don’t want to keep going over it. I’m not a little kid who needs his sister to fight his battles for him, for fuck’s sake. I’ll win Charisma back in my own way. She loved me once, so I’m sure I can get her to fall for me again…eventually.” Or spend the rest of my life pining for what I’d lost because I was too weak to hold onto it.
“How dense can you be, Weasley? You do know Grandmother will push you to get engaged soon, right? You won’t be able to keep putting it off forever, and this time, if you don’t pick, she will. And if you think for one second Charisma will just—”
“Enough!” I exclaimed, knowing exactly what she would say.
Hell, I was already having to face the harsh reality that Char wasn’t just waiting around for me to get my shit together and beg for her forgiveness. I’d seen it firsthand, and I didn’t blame her, even though it fucking hurt. After all, it was completely my fault we had broken up, and that she’d moved on. Like Annie constantly reminded me, I’d never told Char my reasoning for ghosting her.
Even though every time I thought about it, I felt pieces of my damn heart breaking over and over again, like a constant physical pain.
Especially when I knew she was my fucking soulmate. Oh, Arcane society as a whole might have abandoned the concept long ago, making it nothing more than a story for kids nowadays…except to Soulbinders. Because of our control over Spirit and our ability to see auras—or rather, the ability some of us had—we knew the fairy tale was very much real. Souls did have a pair, or pairings, and Char was mine. Her soul was bright and colorful, so full of light, so full of love. Mine was probably dark and bleak in comparison, but that only meant I needed her even more to balance my darkness out.
But I’d lied to my grandmother when she asked me about it, said Charisma wasn’t my soulmate. It was how I’d managed to get Char off the hook, so to speak. Even though Grandmother wanted to use Char for her abilities, the idea that I might have a powerful soulmate out there was even more attractive to her. It was why Grandmother had given me the ultimatum—marry her anyway, or pretend she never existed. In the matriarch’s head, that would’ve been enough to make sure I got over Char and moved on.
Little did she know.
“Oh look! We’re here!” Annie exclaimed, running toward a rundown building that had probably been a trendy bar at one point. The old name was written in golden paint, but that was now half blacked out. Near the door, there was a sign that said “Bar” that was full of graffiti, and the background, which might have once been white, was now a dark cream color. There was a pile of trash right by the door, and I was pretty fucking sure I could see mice running around it.
Disgusting.
“This? This is the place?” I asked Annie incredulously.
She just smiled. “Oh, c’mon, where’s your sense of adventure?”
“This looks like it’s two seconds away from being shut down, Annie.”
She shrugged. “Well, it has…character?”
I rubbed my eyes. “You know what? I’m not even going to ask.” I took a deep breath and headed to the shady as fuck bar. “I don’t give a shit. Let’s get this over with so I can go home.”
Annie beamed at me as if I’d said the most delightful thing as I opened the door and stepped inside.
Whatever I’d expected, it wasn’t for me to find a bar with exactly four people inside. There was the bartender, a huge dude with a beard and tattoos, a kid who didn’t look eighteen, let alone old enough to order a drink, and two guys older than dust, who seemed like they’d fall apart with a strong wind.
The kid tilted her head towards the door when I entered, and she smiled. “Oh good, you’re here! Took you long enough.”
I stared at the kid sitting alone at the bar, noting her straight dark hair, big blue eyes, and the entire constellation of freckles on her face. She was a cute kid, but she had clearly lost her damn mind.
“C’mon now, are you going to actually step closer, or are you planning on yelling at me from the other side of the room?” she asked, still staring at me.
I looked around me, just to make sure there was nobody behind me, but nope. Just Annie and me at the door.
“Excuse me, do I know you?”
My question had her rolling her eyes.
At my side, Annie giggled. “That’s her, dummy, that’s Jess. She’s the one you came here to find.”
1
Charisma
“What? What? Backtrack a little for me, please. I don’t think I quite got what you just said,” I demanded of Andres, sheer panic seeping into my very bones and freezing my blood.
I couldn’t have just heard what I thought I did, could I?
Standing in front of me, on the doorstep of Bast’s apartment in the middle of the night, was Andres-freaking-Illudere, with his gorgeous golden skin, dark hair, and pretty hazel eyes that had specks of green and gold in them. Andres was dressed in his usual jeans and shirt combo, but his dark blue shirt was rumpled, and there were bags under his eyes. Not to mention his hair, which was standing on end like he’d been electrocuted.
I’d never seen him looking this chaotic before.
“Andres, hey, why don’t you come inside and sit down?” Bast asked, in front of me, I stood frozen behind him, unable to move, unable to think. I wanted to close the door on Andres and go hide in my room, pretending none of this was happening. Pretending Andres had not just told me his dad had gotten sick, and his uncle had challenged him for a duel.
Bast cleared his throat, an
d I blinked, realizing I was blocking both their paths.
“Right. Yeah. Uh.” I took a step back so Bast could move and Andres could come inside. Bast closed the door behind them, and I watched as Andres followed Bast into the living room, heard Bast offer him coffee or alcohol, and just stood there. Frozen.
Objectively, I knew Andres had said his uncle was planning on challenging him for the title of heir, but I didn’t think Ricardo Illudere would actually do it. His own flesh and blood. His nephew. Had I just stepped into some medieval book? The timing of his dad falling ill was too convenient for it to be anything but a coup.
A coup.
In this day and age.
When I said I wanted to live inside a video game, I meant I wanted the cool clothes and cute village settings, not…this. Whatever this was.
This was some next-level conspiracy theory stuff, and I had not signed up for it. I mean, I had signed up to work for an intelligence agency, so technically, I sort of had signed up for conspiracy things in a way, but this was completely different. When I was recruited to work for AMIA, I was promised a state-of-the-art lab to make my nerd heart happy and tools to play with. Not…family poisoning family and dueling them to death. Besides, this wasn’t technically AMIA-related work, so it didn’t count, right? It shouldn’t count. I was so not prepared for this.
