Shadow Kissed: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance (The Witch's Rebels Book 1)

by Sarah Piper

  The hooded stranger curled his pale fingers around my shoulders.

  “Do not struggle.” His command was everywhere, outside me and within, reverberating through every cell in my body.

  He pressed his mouth to mine, breath cool and sweet as he sucked the air from my lungs. Sophie's essence was leaving me as quickly as it had entered, one memory at a time.

  He took the first time I met her, delivering cases of absinthe to Illuminae. He took the day we signed the lease on this house, and the one where we busted the door frame moving our couch into the living room because we were too amped up on girl power to ask Ronan for help. He took the last time I’d cooked us dinner—grilled cheese and tomato soup, not three days ago. I’d burned one side of the grilled cheeses, but she ate hers anyway, insisting that melted cheese made everything good. He took her strawberry shampoo and her laugh and her smile and her Tarot cards, took the painted stones from the basket in the kitchen.

  One by one, he took and took and took until there was nothing left.

  When he finally pulled away, I felt like a dry husk. If not for his hands around my neck, I’d probably blow away.

  “It is over,” he said.

  I nodded dumbly, compelled by his strange, otherworldly power to believe him. Obey him.

  With one hand still wrapped around my shoulder, he held out his other hand between us, palm up. A single black feather hovered there, spinning in place. He whispered an incantation that sounded as old as the earth, and the feather transformed into a golden-eyed owl.

  He blew a silvery breath into the bird’s open mouth—Sophie’s soul.

  The owl flapped its great wings and took off through the open window. The shield I’d inadvertently cast disappeared, and Ronan was at my side in a heartbeat, catching me right as my knees buckled.

  Death—that's what he was, I knew now—turned his back on us, closing the windows with a simple flick of his wrists.

  Ronan's arms wound tight around me. He was the only thing holding me up, the only thing keeping me tethered to reality.

  “What the fuck?” Ronan growled at the hooded man, rage rippling through his muscles. “What did you do to her?”

  Speaking to his own reflection in the glass, Death said, “The human body is incapable of eternal rest unless its soul passes through the Shadowrealm. Without this passage, the body believes the soul is merely traveling, and will endlessly seek to be reunited with it.”

  “Say again?” Ronan demanded.

  “If I’d allowed the witch to keep that soul, the woman to whom it once belonged would’ve become a revenant, her body animated, but not alive.” Turning to me, he said, “A mortal body is not made to carry two souls indefinitely. The souls would eventually fuse, feeding off each other, fighting for sustenance until the body could no longer support them. At that time the body would die, and both souls would be trapped inside the vessel for eternity.”

  “You had no right,” I said, but Death either didn’t hear me, or didn’t care.

  As if I was no longer in the room, he turned to Ronan and said, “She doesn’t yet possess the skill to—”

  “You don’t know the first thing about her,” Ronan said.

  “The skill to what?” I demanded.

  Death finally turned his attention back to me, his eyes still glowing faintly. His body, which had initially looked like the same shadowy substance as the raven, had solidified.

  Didn’t make him look any more human.

  “You’re Shadowborn,” he said.

  Shadowborn?

  The word tumbled through my consciousness, snagging on a memory—water? A creek, maybe?—but I couldn’t hold on. I had no reference for it, nothing to make it stick.

  Death put his hand on Sophie's chest and whispered again in that strange, ancient tongue.

  “Where is she?” I asked. “Can you bring her back?”

  “She is dead. Her soul has passed on to the Shadowrealm, as it should.”

  “Why didn't she come back? The girl in the alley… I thought… My magic…” I trailed off, confused and scared. I hadn't told anyone but Darius about Bean, and though Ronan was still in the dark on the matter of my so-called necromancy, I was certain Death already knew my secrets.

  All of them.

  “That is not a fate you wish upon someone you love,” he said. “You brought back certain aspects of the girl she once was, but you were not able to properly reinsert her soul. With discipline and training, you—”

  “Gray,” Ronan said, “what girl? What are you talking about?”

  I untangled myself from Ronan’s embrace and knelt on the floor next to Sophie’s bed, smoothing the hair from her forehead. Her skin was cool to the touch and as pale as her sheets.

  “She can’t be gone,” I said simply, as if that settled things. “We always have tea in the morning after work, and I don’t know if she wants the mint, or the chamomile, or… I mean, I can’t just pick for her, you know? She’s allergic to cinnamon.” I was babbling, but I couldn’t stop myself. Stopping meant seeing reality. Stopping meant acknowledging that she wasn’t coming back, and that wasn’t an option.

  As long as I kept talking, kept pretending, I didn’t have to accept the fact that she was gone. That I had tasted her soul. That Death himself had removed it, sent it on its way, and was now standing in our home like some kind of invited guest.

  You’re Shadowborn…

  I felt Ronan's hand on the back of my neck and flinched.

  “It’s okay, Gray,” he said gently. Softly. “I’m right here.”

  Since my arrival in Blackmoon Bay, Ronan had been my rock. He’d picked me up from my lowest point, dusted me off, helped me find my footing again. No matter how strained things had gotten between us, I knew I could always count on him to give it to me straight.

  I tilted my face up and looked into his eyes for confirmation that everything really would be okay, that somewhere in all this impossible shit, a sane explanation existed. That in a few hours we’d hear Sophie's keys jingling in the front door, and she'd walk in, kick off her shoes, and say, “Oh my God, you guys. Wait till I tell you about my crazy night!”

  But when I looked into Ronan's eyes now, they were black and empty, offering no solace.

  Instead, he said, “We need to call—”

  “No, we don’t.” I rose to my feet, then pulled up Sophie’s comforter and tucked it under her shoulders. I didn’t want her to be cold. “Let’s go. Sophie doesn’t like people wearing shoes in her bedroom.”

  Thirteen

  Gray

  Ronan made the call anyway, and fifteen minutes later, Detective Emilio Alvarez arrived with the cavalry, shattering my bubble of denial.

  Clutching the mandala stone in my hand, I lay on the living room couch with my head in Ronan’s lap, his fingers tracing light circles on my forehead as I watched the muddy boots of half a dozen cops stomp back and forth between the living room and the bedroom of my dead best friend, picking up fibers and dusting for prints and whatever else they did at a crime scene.

  That’s how they were treating this. A crime scene.

  Death had vanished as quickly as he’d arrived, and Ronan hadn’t uttered a word about it. I still couldn’t get my head around it. Death had said things, revealed things, done things in that room that should’ve left my mind spinning with impossible questions, but all of that felt like a distant memory now, like a story I’d been told about someone else a long time ago.

  In Sophie's room at the end of the hall now, one of the cops was shooting pictures. I flinched every time the flash sparked, but Ronan sat still as a statue, trailing his fingers through my hair.

  The cops spoke in hushed voices. I pictured them touching Sophie’s body with rubber gloves and tweezers, and putting her personal things into plastic baggies labeled with black Sharpie, and all I could think was, They’re getting mud all over her carpet. She’s going to kill me for letting them in there.

  After more than an hour, Detective
Alvarez emerged from the bedroom. He looked like an ER doctor coming to tell the crying family there was nothing more he could do.

  I sat up and leaned back against the couch, pulling my knees to my chest. The detective crouched down in front of me, as graceful and powerful in human form as he must’ve been as a wolf.

  Shifter grace aside, everything else about him was totally human. A faded San Francisco T-shirt stretched across his broad chest, the kind of shirt somebody buys you at the airport on the way home when they realized they forgot to get you a souvenir. His skin was golden and smooth, and his wavy, jet-black hair stuck up on one side.

  It made him look young and playful, despite the seriousness in his eyes.

  “Miss Desario, I know this is hard," he said in his light, lilting Spanish accent. “I'm so sorry.”

  I nodded, letting him get away with that comment because he did know. Ronan had told me once that Alvarez was a lone wolf—that he’d emigrated here with his sister from Argentina decades ago, shortly after they’d separated from their pack.

  A wolf shifter without a pack was never something that happened by choice.

  Ronan hadn't called him tonight for empathy though. He’d called him because Alvarez was the only one who cared enough about people like us to do the job right.

  “How did she die?” I asked.

  He narrowed his eyes on my bruised face, but his scrutiny felt more like concern than suspicion. “Are you okay? That… looks like it hurts.”

  “Just a scuffle at work last night. It’s fine.”

  He nodded, and I forced myself to focus on his kind face. “We don’t yet know what killed Sophie, but I can tell you that there’s no obvious trauma to her body. I don’t believe she suffered.”

  I blew out a breath. It was cold comfort.

  “I need to ask you a few questions,” he continued, and I nodded, soothed by the compassion in his warm brown eyes. He flipped open a small notebook and ran through the standard list: approximately what time did we discover Sophie? To my knowledge, had anyone else been in the house tonight? Was it possible she’d gone out earlier, then returned? Did Sophie have any enemies? Did she ever mention any trouble at work, any customers that crossed the line? Any issues with her boss?

  Ronan and I answered his questions as best we could, but there was so much more I couldn’t say. So much more I couldn’t explain even if I’d wanted to.

  Bean, and whatever I’d turned her into. Wherever she’d vanished.

  Death. Something told me we hadn’t seen the last of him.

  Souls.

  I’d seen two souls tonight. Touched them. Done things to them that no human—even a witch—should’ve been able to do…

  “There something else you should know.” Detective Alvarez jotted down a few notes, then flipped the notebook closed. It felt like a thousand hours before he spoke again, and when he did, his voice sounded even more strained. “Two other Bay area witches were killed this weekend under almost identical circumstances.”

  I gasped. “What?”

  “One just a few hours ago in the Bayshore neighborhood, and one shortly after sunrise in Rockport. We haven’t ruled them homicides officially, but my gut tells me that’s what we’re dealing with.”

  As much as I hated to admit it, my gut was saying the same thing. Witches weren’t immortal, but we tended to outlast our purely human counterparts. We certainly didn’t just up and die at twenty-five years old.

  Ronan slid a hand over my knee and squeezed, a little too tightly. “Any leads?”

  Detective Alvarez shook his head. “We’re still gathering evidence, putting the puzzle pieces together.” He and Ronan exchanged a weighted glance. “Be careful—both of you. Whoever did this… He may not be finished.”

  “You thinking hunter?” Ronan asked.

  “Too soon to rule it out,” Detective Alvarez said. “But we haven’t seen hunters in the Bay in, what, thirty years? Not since the covens practiced openly. Plus, they’ve always hunted in packs. This feels like the work of an individual.”

  Ronan nodded.

  “We’re keeping all possibilities on the table right now. I’ll let you know if and when that changes.” Alvarez capped his pen and headed back into Sophie’s bedroom to consult with his colleagues, leaving me to sit with Ronan’s speculation.

  A hunter…

  Could my magic have been enough to create a hotspot? What about the coven’s magic? Sophie said they’d all been practicing—earth magic, blood spells. Hadn’t Norah taken precautions?

  No, it didn’t make sense. Magic or not, there was no way a hunter did this. Hunters were vicious, brutal, and above all else—thorough. They didn't leave dead witches behind to tell their tales with blood stains and fibers and DNA samples.

  They burned us, every time.

  “How late is it?" I stood up from the couch and rolled my shoulders. Everything inside me ached.

  “Just after one.” Ronan rose to his full height and stretched, then slid his hand over the small of my back and nodded toward the kitchen. “Come on. You should eat something."

  I followed him, not because I was hungry, but because I couldn't stand the sound of all those boots.

  I sat at the kitchen table in a daze as Ronan made toast.

  Toast was good. Toast was normal, and normal people didn't have the homicide squad in their home in the middle of the night. Normal people didn't have murdered best friends and visits from Death.

  Normal people weren’t…

  “What’s Shadowborn?” I asked. The word slithered through my mind again like a snake on a far-off trail, there one minute, gone the next. I tried to hold on to it, but it was just too slippery, and by the time Ronan turned and met my eyes, I’d forgotten what I was even asking about.

  We watched each other in silence for a minute, maybe two, the haze of grief settling over us like freshly poured cement, making it difficult to see, to move. We might have stayed like that all night, waiting for someone else to tell us what to do, but the unmistakable smell of smoke cut suddenly through the muck.

  "Shit." Ronan popped two charred bits from the toaster and dropped them onto a plate. Tendrils of black smoke rose from their edges.

  “Shadowborn,” I said as it came back to me once again. “He said I was Shadowborn, and you didn't question it. Why?”

  The plate clattered to the floor, toast overboard.

  “Fuck,” Ronan said. “Sorry about that."

  I shrugged. “It was burnt anyway.”

  “I wasn't paying attention.”

  “You've always been a shitty cook."

  Ronan tried to smile, but it was forced and sad, nothing like the mischievous grin I loved so much. It felt like a knife twisting in my heart, and it was that moment—not discovering her body, not the police in Sophie's bedroom, or Alvarez's questions, or the stretcher on the front porch waiting to wheel her out, but Ronan’s broken, half-assed smile and the blackened toast on the floor—that made me realize nothing would ever be the same again.

  Pain crushed me all at once. Everything inside me liquefied, and I slid from the chair onto the floor, unable to move, unable to cry, unable to breathe.

  Ronan sat down next to me and gathered me in his arms, holding me against his chest. His heartbeat was the only true thing I knew.

  By the time Detective Alvarez poked his head into the kitchen to check on us, my legs had fallen asleep and my neck was stiff.

  He pulled out a chair and gestured for us to join him at the kitchen table. Sophie had left her Tarot cards there, but I couldn’t bring myself to move them.

  The Death card was still on top.

  “Here's what we know,” Detective Alvarez said. There was compassion behind his steely professional gaze, but more than that, I appreciated his efficiency. The sooner he wrapped it up, the sooner they’d all leave. “We haven’t uncovered a weapon, and there’s no sign of forced entry. We—”

  “The door and windows,” I blurted out, remembering suddenly. �
��When I got home, the front door was unlocked, and her bedroom windows and screens were wide open.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I nodded. “The lock sticks—it always takes a few tries. Tonight I put my key in, but I never turned it. Ronan and I got this weird feeling that something was wrong, and we ran inside. I don’t even know where my keys ended up.”

  “Here,” Ronan confirmed, patting his pocket. “I grabbed them when the police arrived. They were still stuck in the door lock. I didn’t think of it before, but yeah, Gray’s right—the house was definitely unlocked.”

  “I know I locked it when I left for Darius’s place earlier,” I said. “I always do.”

  “Does anyone else have a key?”

  “Just Ronan,” I said, “but he was with me at Black Ruby. We walked home together.”

  “What about the windows?” Alvarez asked, pulling out his pad to take a few more notes. “They were closed when we arrived.”

  I glanced at Ronan, then looked down at my hands.

  Oh, that? Just Death popping by for a visit, no big deal.

  “I… closed them,” I finally said. “It was cold.”

  Detective Alvarez wrote all that in his notebook. “So there’s a chance if someone showed up here, Sophie invited him inside. Maybe she knew him?”

  “Or her,” I said.

  “Or her.” Alvarez nodded. “Alternatively, maybe they came in through the windows and left out the front door. Hopefully we’ll know more when we get the prints back.”

  “You said you couldn’t find a weapon,” I said. “But you think it’s a homicide? I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do I. Right now I’m working off a hunch.” His eyes softened, and he reached out and touched my hand, his fingers warm. “But I can tell you that Sophie likely died peacefully.”

  It was cold comfort.

  “All death is peaceful,” I said, my eyes drawn back to the Death card. “It’s the whole leading-up-to-it part that sucks.”

  “You… have a point,” he said.

  I reached for the basket of painted stones, pulling one at random. This one had a pink rose design. Stop and smell me, the white script said.