When the fae guy—Argent, I guess was his name—returned, she took the bottle of crystallized petals from his hand, crushed them up, and added them to the mixture. Grace put her beautiful hands around the cauldron, careful not to touch the hot metal, and started a spell.
"Goddess, Hecate," she whispered, purple steam rising from the cauldron's surface. "Make it right, make it right, make it right." Grace drew her hands back as the steam changed from purple to white, almost see-through. She then poured it over ice cubes handed to her by the vamp guy. They all had little flowers frozen inside of them—pansy flowers, I think.
Grace stirred the new mixture until all the ice was melted, and then smeared the paste all over her palms.
She looked at me, and then up at her husbands. All three of them were now standing in a circle around me. Fantastic.
"Do you want the tissues again?" Grace asked, and I made a rough sound in my throat as the vampire guy handed them over to me. I snatched them up, and closed my eyes, biting down on my tongue so hard I thought I might sever it.
Slowly, carefully, I undid my pants and freed my already-hard-again shaft. I could probably come a thousand times, and I’d still be hard, I was so damn pent-up. No way was I coming again, not in front of these assholes. But like, I couldn't really ask for privacy, now could I?
Grace smeared the warm paste over my dick, and my body gave an involuntary shudder. That last release … was not really a release at all. In fact, I was even hornier now than before that orgasm. It was like my body had gotten used to not getting any, and now I was starving for it.
Fortunately, she released me before I managed to embarrass myself again.
"Goddess Hecate," Grace repeated, and I felt the warm glow of magic on my shaft. "Make it right, make it right, make it right."
The power surged into me, and … I fucking lost it. I groaned, my hips bucked up off the chaise of their own accord, and I just barely managed to clamp a tissue down over the head of my shaft before I made yet another mess in this family's fucking shop.
Panting, and red all over with a mixture of anger and embarrassment, I opened my eyes and found my dick was back to normal, covered in ink for women's pleasure, for my own, spelled against STDs.
I heaved a sigh of relief and slumped back into the chaise, fixing my pants up.
"Thank goddess that's over," the fae murmured in that ancient as fuck voice of his. He sounded like he belonged on the other side of the Veil in faerie, not flitting around some witch's shop. Fuck, I hate the fae.
"Thanks," I murmured, before I could lose my manners again.
"You're quite the cat's meow," Connard purred, giving Grace's familiar a little rub. "Thank you for helping this idiot."
"No problem," Grace said, wiping the last of the paste from her hands, and then turning back to the sheet of vellum again. "The spell signature should've settled by now …" Her voice trailed off as she picked up the paper again and checked it over.
One half of the page was blank, while the other held a distinct pattern that I recognized quite well because … well, it was fucking mine. Grace sniffed and shivered.
"Sandalwood and cinnamon," she murmured, and a hot flush went through me. It was quite clear she liked my smell. When she leaned over, I just happened to notice that her nipples were as hard as rocks beneath her black dress.
Oh fuck.
I adjusted myself so her husbands wouldn't see me getting hard again. I was really starting to regret that refractory spell, the one that let me get insta-hard again if I wanted to. Fan-frigging-tastic.
"Clearly you cast your own purple dick spell," she said, tapping at the sheet with a black fingernail. "But the other side says there's no spell signature." She let me take the vellum in my hand, and I pursed my lips, glancing up at her. I wanted to get mad, accuse her of tampering with it, but … nah, that wasn't her style.
"I'm sorry I accused you," I said, and the werewolf snorted.
"You better be fucking sorry,” he snapped as I stood up, taking the vellum with me. It was definitely time for me to get going.
"The supplies for the other spell should be in soon. We'll unblock that cock, spell or no," Grace said with a small smile. Our eyes met, and I found myself unable to look away. When our gazes connected, it was like being throat-punched—in the best way possible. "Keep in touch, okay?"
"If it's blank …" I started, because I don't think I'd quite grasped the concept.
"Then you're not spelled, Hex." I shivered when Grace said my name, nodded, and turned to leave the store, meeting the vampire's and the fae's eyes as I went. I did not look at the werewolf.
If I did, he'd probably see how into his wife I was.
And neither of us wanted to acknowledge that.
"I don't like him," Caine said, browsing the artists' portfolios as we lounged in the seating area of the tattoo parlor, waiting for our turns.
Well, I wasn't getting inked, but everyone else was. Fae skin did not absorb tattoo ink, not even witchblood ink. No, in order to get our skin to hold any color, we needed a mixture of bone, ash, and pure faerie blood. I'd take my chances without any inked spells on my flesh. Besides, the glamour I used to hide my real wings looked like a tattoo on my back. That counted, right?
"Can we please discuss something else?" I drawled, hating the cloying feel of the glamour on my skin. I usually went without in the store because, well, to be quite frank: I didn't give a fuck about what any human being thought.
Humans.
Bunch of mindless rats, in my opinion.
And if I had a major fault, it was that I held my own opinion in fairly high regard.
"How can we possibly discuss something else?" Spec asked, his voice as smooth as the surface of a shiny, black coffin. The fae were sexually fluid—most species are, anyway—and I had no problem checking out my wife's husbands. Caine had no interest in me, but sometimes Spec would play. We were friends first and foremost however; Grace was the center of our universe. But at least I’d graduated from hating my other soulmates … to occasionally playing with them.
"Let's try to figure out who can watch the kids on Halloween for us?" Graceley said, looking up from her Inked Beasts magazine. It was a periodical for the Numinous—non-human, non-animal species—and it was only available in a physical format. It was also spelled to disintegrate within forty-eight hours after purchase.
Sigh.
So much work to keep the ignorant masses from knowing there were species out there that could slaughter them all. If the Numinous stopped fighting with each other, humans would cease to exist within a number of years.
But the wolves wanted to keep the balance, the vampires wanted food, and the witches wanted the power. Coven Apothecary dedicated their entire existence to keeping the world free of demons. Anything more than a half-breed was sent back to Hael where they belonged. That guy, that Hex, he was a good fifty-percent demon, just below the threshold for being sent back.
Too bad.
"Because if we're going to cure Mom, we have to do it on Samhain, right at the witching hour." Grace pushed some hair back from her forehead. She was sporting a tiny black witch hat covered in claws, nails, and talons from various animals. It was just weird enough that humans stared, but they never really said anything. I heard that's because we lived in the Pacific Northwest. I'd been told that if we lived in a different country, or even what's known as the South that people might have more of an issue with her witchiness.
It was almost enough to make me want to go back to Faerie.
Almost.
Being with Grace, Caine, and Spectre was more important. I'd waited hundreds of years to find the reincarnations of my soulmates. Hundreds of years. There was no way in faerie-fuck I was giving them up now.
But … I'd never met Hex before, not even when I'd been with the others in their past lives.
"We missed the autumn equinox, and the winter solstice isn't for another two months. Mom …
she won't make it that long." Grace sighed and looked up at the ceiling of the tattoo shop, like she was searching for her own inner calm.
I stood up and moved over to sit next to her, threading her fingers through mine. Her skin was a sort peach-pink color that stood out in contrast against the too-pale color of my own. Even my glamour had a very slight silver tint.
"Everything will work out," I promised her. I'd make sure that it did. I didn't much care for coven politics, despite being a half-witch myself. But Coven Apothecary was important to Grace, her mother more important still. Besides, I liked knowing that they were busy keeping sulfur-stinking demon scum where they belonged.
Oops, that sounded racist.
I wasn't racist; I was fae.
"Ask Mahou to watch to the kids," I suggested, but Grace sighed and picked at her fishnet tights. I'd once punched a man out at a parents-and-me get-together for telling Grace that thirty-two was too old for fishnet tights, and that she looked like a whore.
That was the last time I went to one of those playdates. Not because I was banned, but because next time, I'd probably kill someone. There were so many judgmental supermoms there that I wanted to drag over to Faerie and leave near the river for the kelpies to eat.
They loved human flesh, you know, the kelpies did. For the uniformed, a kelpie is a carnivorous faerie horse that lives in running water and loves the taste of bones and sinew. Nasty, filthy fucking things.
"Mahou is twenty-one and wants to party," Grace said, the buzz of tattoo machines and the stink of iodine filling the air. This was a Numinous owned and run shop, but that didn't stop humans from occasionally wandering in. Other than the fact that they had witchblood, vamp blood, and werewolf blood inks on tap, it was hard to tell by just looking at it. "I tried asking my sister for babysitter recs, but she says she doesn't have anyone to watch her kids either."
"Of course she doesn’t," Caine murmured, and Spec gave him a shut your fool mouth sort of a look. I pushed some of my hair back, and wished I'd braided it. In my glamoured form, it was only as long as my shoulders. In reality, it reached halfway down my back. Back in Faerie, I'd be expected to keep it floor-length.
What a pain.
"There should be enough high-ranking coven members there to watch the kids, right?" Spec asked. He had a point.
"Unless we have Hael breaches to deal with," Grace said with a loose shrug of her shoulders. "Last Halloween, we had an entire cabal break through the Fire Veil." I narrowed my eyes. The Fire Veil was the natural barrier between the demon realm—Hael—and the human world. Whereas, the Iron Veil was what separated Faerie from this world. Most people however simply said the Veil when referring to the fae. As it should be.
"I guess that's just something we'll have to deal with," Spectre said, taking Grace's other hand and giving it a squeeze. "We'll make it work. We won't let your mother die."
"Speaking of …" Grace started, pinching her nose. "She wants to meet Hex before Samhain. She wants him to go to family dinner on Friday night. Can you even fucking imagine?"
"He can't handle it," Spec said, his dark purple hair falling over his brow as he glanced up and out the window at the falling rain and leaves. "That guy, he's just not the type. The domesticity of it is going to freak him the fuck out. And if Abigail and Giles meet him … I'm sorry, but I just don't see it working out. She'll have us sell the house and the shops to pay Coven Northbank."
"She also said she won't go through with it without meeting him first," Grace replied with another sigh. "And you know Abigail: she only says what she means. We'll have to talk it over with him, prime him for the occasion, I guess. I mean, when Mom met Argent for the first time? She hated him."
"Well, the feeling was mutual," I said, letting a slow smile crawl across my face. The old witch—no pun intended—was not happy meeting someone older and more powerful than her. She still didn't like me, but at least we'd learned to tolerate each other. "Schedule the dinner, and we'll deal with issues as they arise."
"Just explain to him that if he fucks up the dinner, he can't do the spell, and if he can't do the spell, he's in violation of the contract." Spec nodded in the direction of Grace's magic mark. Breaking the covenant on a binding bargain like that was never a good idea and generally resulted in a cursing, maiming, or death. Only an idiot would make that mistake.
However, I was quite certain that Hex Sorciere was exactly that.
"Grace, you guys are next," the tattoo artist—some hotshot named Ace—called out. A group of giggling girls—wolves, based on the smell—left together, showing off their new tattoos as they went.
And as they left … in walked the man of the hour himself.
Fucking Hex.
I felt my lip curl up in a snarl as he paused in the lobby of the shop looking confused as all hell. He stared at us like he expected stalking. Trust me though: if I were stalking this man, he would not know about it until it was too late.
"What the fucking hell are you doing here?" he asked, eyes wide as he took in our little family group. I did my best not to meet his gaze. No point in feeling that wild pang of energy between soulmates, not when he was planning on fucking off to marry into some demon cabal.
I suppressed a shudder.
"We're getting our annual ink," Grace said looking perplexed as all hell, following me as I stood up from the sofa. She probably wasn't aware that she was tugging on that red thread between them. Chance meetings between soulmates are not often so chance at all. The more Hex and Grace thought about each other—or the more the three of us thought about him—the more often we'd run into each other.
"Annual ink?" Hex asked, taking a weary half-step back. He looked like he was about ten seconds away from bolting and never coming back.
"Once a year, sometime before Samhain, we get new ink spells," Grace said, and I could see was struggling not to check out his tight t-shirt, even tighter jeans, and that all of that ink on his muscular arms. I tilted my head to one side and checked him out, too. Hex growled at me, but I simply gave him my best fae smile, and he shivered in disgust.
Or fear.
Perhaps it was fear?
I'd prefer if it were.
"What are you doing here?" Grace retorted, and I had to control the urge to roll my eyes. To hear Caine, Grace, and Spectre talk, you'd think entering their thirties was the worst thing that ever happened to them. My opinion? They were practically children. "We were here first, after all."
"I … have an appointment," Hex said, edging around us in the most awkward way possible. If he had walked in, raised a hand in greeting, and then moved up to the register, we could've avoided this entire horrible encounter.
"An appointment you made when?" I asked, and the sound of my voice snapped his attention over to me.
"Last week. When did you make yours?"
"Last year," I retorted, and an awkward silence fell over the room. Gods above and below … "We were wondering if on Thursday you might be able to come over to our place to discuss spell preparations?" I folded my hands in front of myself, like a human bodyguard. The move made Hex shift uncomfortably, his tiny wings erased from sight. Right. One of those self-hating types. I bet he barely understood what his demon blood could do for his witch side.
"Yeah, sure …" he started, but I wasn't done.
"And on Friday, we have dinner with Coven Apothecary. The Mother wants to get a good look at you before we work the spell. But don't worry, to thank you for your assistance in curing the magical rot that's eating away at our children's grandmother, we'll make sure your dick is in tip-top shape."
Hex's mouth dropped open as I raised my chin, smirked, and headed off to join Caine and Spec as they moved into the back of the shop.
"Fuck yes," Caine growled, grabbing my hand and giving it a hard squeeze. His amber eyes were shining, and the tips of his fangs were sticking out. Spectre gave us both a disappointed look, and a sigh, but what can I say? I might’ve been half-witch
, but my fae blood ran strong. Antagonizing others came naturally to my race. "That selfish, fucking prick. He deserves to know what a piece of shit he is."
"That piece of shit can still hear you talking about him," Hex called out, taking a seat on the black velvet sofa in the front as Grace made her way back over to us. She gave me a look that I returned with a deadpan stare.
"Okay, that was a dick move, but you had a good point," she whispered, taking a seat in one of the chairs and glancing up at me. I stared back, some of that iron in my blood melting a bit. It was hard to maintain the princely prick attitude when Grace was around.
She made me want to be a better man.
And I had never been a good man.
My hands were bloody, my heart was dark, and my soul was tainted.
She reached out to me and took my hand, giving it a squeeze. I would do whatever it took to make this woman happy—even if it meant putting up with a prick like Hex Sorciere.
At least I could rest easy knowing he had no interest in joining our family. I didn't have to feel guilty about it either, knowing it was his choice. What a lucky break that was.
Lying on my stomach with nothing on but a pair of bikini bottoms, a needle in my skin, Hex's eyes focused on my naked tattooed side … that was not how I expected to spend my afternoon.
The five of us, trapped together in the sensual confines of the tattoo parlor, with their slick black-stained concrete floors, their velvet baroque furniture, the chandeliers dripping with crystals.
Argent sat in a chair nearby, arms crossed over his chest, and watched the rest of us get inked. The shop did not have pure fae blood on tap—for good reason. But making ink for the rest of us was a fairly simple process.
Caine only ever got very small tattoos on his lower left hip, right along his Adonis belt muscles, and he used the spells liberally. He just wasn't a fan of ink on his own body. Spec and I got huge, sweeping pieces and turned our bodies into works of art.
The Family Spells: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance Page 9
