by Nora Ash
When he disappeared into the bushes on the other end, I shook myself out of it. Whatever it was, he was dealing with it—and this was the chance I’d been hoping for.
Slowly, I crept out of my hiding spot and snuck toward the small spread of weapons on the ground.
There was a machete, a couple of handcuffs, and a wooden stake among what looked like an array of different colored bullets. Nothing that would take a demon down, as far as I knew.
But then a shimmer from the opening of the bag caught my eye.
I frowned at it as I crouched down to have a closer look—and gasped. In a black, velvet pouch was a palm-sized crystal. Its many facets reflected in the sun when I pulled it out, but it was the pulse of strong magic against my hand that convinced me to quickly stuff it into my own pocket.
A strong witch made that trinket. I couldn’t tell exactly what kind of magic was infused into the crystal, but it felt right. Like it had just been waiting for me to come and find it.
As I fled the field, looking back over my shoulder to ensure Jackson was still nowhere in sight, I felt a huge weight lifting off my chest.
It had been a long time since I’d done any real magic, but with that crystal in hand, I felt confident I’d be much more successful than I had when relying solely on my own powers.
5
JACKSON
Probably just a fucking squirrel.
I’d spent a good ten minutes rummaging around in the undergrowth lining the northwestern part of the field I’d picked for my shift, searching for whatever had been watching me. My Wolf was unusually agitated, even after I’d given in to the urge to shift and run until it tired—something it’d been since I decided not to waste another day shadowing Poppy—and that noise from the bushes hadn’t helped calm it down.
I’d spent the day chatting to a couple of the locals and mapping out any connection between Poppy and the victim—and had interestingly found a rumored friendship between the two of them. Something she’d denied when I questioned her.
All in all, a very productive day, and my Wolf should have been happy as a clam that I was one step closer to solving the murder. Not making my skin itch with the urge to shift and hunt and kill and mate.
A flash of Poppy’s ample bosom playing for my mind’s eye made me groan as my cock stiffened to half mast in my jeans.
For fuck’s sake.
I’d seen plenty of tits in my life. Why my Wolf decided to fixate on hers, I had no idea, but one thing was certain—I wasn’t screwing the suspect in a murder case that would determine the rest of my career, so he could just pipe down.
Irritated as fuck, I stomped back to where I’d spread out my Agency supplied weapons. There were basically all things an agent needed to take down a paranormal being, including a wooden stake for vampires and silver handcuffs for shifters—not to mention my trusty Glock I’d loaded with compressed salt bullets after arriving in Thompson’s Mill. Not that salt could kill a demon, but it could slow them down just fine.
For actually vanquishing whichever demon had killed poor Mrs. Perkins, one of the Agency witches had supplied me with a magic-infused crystal that would send it back to whichever hell dimension it came from.
I paused as my fingers skimmed over the black velvet pouch where the crystal was supposed to be.
It was empty. The crystal was gone.
I spun around as I patted the ground in frantic search for the one weapon I had at my disposal that could fully take out a demon, but found nothing. It hadn’t somehow accidentally slipped out onto the ground.
Which meant someone must have taken it.
I grabbed the pouch and pressed it to my nose, inhaling deeply. It smelled like magic and me and the witch who had created the crystal for me, but there was also something else—the briefest touch of Poppy.
My brain flooded with recognition as her smell filled my senses, and I growled with fury.
Fucking witch had stolen the one thing that could vanquish the demon while I’d been busy running off the burst of hormones she’d stirred. No doubt she’d cast some fucking attraction spell on me to scramble my brain so she could get rid of the one thing that would stop whatever her diabolic plan was.
And I’d fallen for it, like an idiot recruit out on his first assignment.
AS MUCH AS I wanted to kick in the door to Poppy’s apartment in my fury, years of training allowed me to control my temper enough to pick the shoddy lock on her front door and silently sneak into the hallway.
A myriad of impressions hit me as I entered her home, chief among them a waft of Poppy’s mouthwatering scent.
My cock stiffened to half mast as I breathed in deeply to locate the source if it, and I bit the inside of my cheek to swallow a frustrated growl. Really? Even while sneaking up on a dangerous witch suspect my damn libido still thought it prudent to raise its flag? Fuck, I needed to bone someone—or make the blasted witch recant whatever sick spell she’d put on me. Or preferably both.
A small noise from where I knew her kitchen to be located drew my attention, and I gritted my teeth against my body’s mutiny and snuck toward it, gun drawn.
Poppy stood behind the kitchen counter with her head bent over a large book and a granite pestle in one hand. Her red-golden mane of unruly hair stood around her like a messy halo, and she was wearing a heavily smudged apron. The smell of burned herbs mixed with her delicate scent.
She was far too preoccupied to notice me, even when I took up stance in the doorway to her small kitchen and aimed the gun at her. My Wolf snarled in my chest, but much to my surprise it wasn’t with anger at the witch who’d stolen my crystal. It was with desperate need to lower the gun and remove the threat to her life.
Damn, how the fuck had she managed to bewitch me so thoroughly?
I clenched my hands around my Glock and pushed the need to protect her aside. “Where’s my crystal, witch?”
My growl made Poppy squeal and jump about a foot, her pestle clonking noisily to the floor as she whipped her head up to see who’d broken into her home. At the sight of me—and my drawn weapon—her eyes widened with fear.
“I’m going to ask you one more time—where is my crystal?” I hissed, keeping my eyes trained on her so I could anticipate any incoming attack. Witches were tricky, but their reaction speed was human. As long as I kept my guard up, this little hedge witch would never be able to get the jump on me.
But Poppy didn’t look like she was considering an attack. Instead, she raised her hands, shaking like a leaf. “D-don’t shoot! I-I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Bullshit,” I growled. “I smelled you all over my weapons—you were in that field, spying on me. I suggest you stop lying to me right fucking now.”
Her throat worked as she swallowed, her eyes never leaving my weapon. “I…”
“Where. Is. It?”
Finally, she glanced down to her side. I followed her gaze, and didn’t manage to stop the curse that slipped past my lips at the sight of what she was looking at. Inside a large granite mortar was a pile of sparkly dust.
“You crushed it? You fucking crushed it! Are you out of your mind?” I didn’t give her time to summon her demon, rushing toward her as I grasped my iron handcuffs. They might be designed for the Fae, but they worked wonders on humans, too.
Poppy squealed again and flinched away from me, but I was much faster than her. I had her hands clasped in the cuffs behind her back before she’d even fully realized what was going on.
There. I stared at her with a small measure of satisfaction. Most witch magic required the use of their hands to grasp amulets or magical what-nots, and a witch with her wrists in irons was usually much safer to be around.
“Let me go!” Poppy protested, her voice high with panic. My Wolf growled at me until I brutally shoved it down.
“Not a fucking chance, sugar tits,” I said, leveling a hard stare at her. “You’re under arrest for the murder of Molly Perkins and summoning of a demon. And probably
a whole host of other crimes, once my investigation here is done. But before we get to that, I suggest you tell me more about your little demon friend. Specifically, how to banish it.”
Her eyes went—if possibly—wider. “I’ve not killed anyone, and I don’t know anything about that demon!”
“Yeah? Then why are you crushing the one weapon that could take it down?” I arched an eyebrow at her, but despite my cool tone, something in her scared eyes made my conviction of her guilt falter. I’d seen hardboiled dark witches before, and unless Poppy was an Oscar-worthy actress… she wasn’t one.
“The crystal?” she asked. “It’s a weapon? I felt the power and I… I was going to use it in a protection spell.” Her voice faded under my incredulous stare.
“You’re trying to tell me you just pulverized a weapon-grade talisman without realizing what it was?”
Poppy blushed a beet-red shade, probably at my disbelieving tone. “I’m not very good at magic.”
“Those attraction spells in your shop’s window work just fine,” I said as I stared her down, trying to pick up on any sign of deceit. “And you managed to spy on me without me noticing you. Unless you used magic, I would have heard or smelled you.”
“My mom made those trinkets,” she said with a small sigh. “And my grandmother made the amulet that protects me from other paranormal beings’ abilities.”
My eyes slid to the little silver locket around her neck.
“And the spell you put on me?”
Her face scrunched up in confusion. “What spell? I haven’t bewitched you, or anyone else, for that matter. And I swear on the moon and stars that I did not make any demon kill Molly.”
I bit the inside of my cheek as I considered her expression. Everything about her, from the way she carried her body to her scent, told me she was telling the truth.
“If you want me to believe that, you better spill about what made you steal my crystal, cupcake. And make it good.”
Poppy’s face heated further, and I got the sense it was from anger at my nickname this time. “I was scared. After you told me Molly’s death might be unnatural, I went to see her body, and I saw… It looked like a demon’s touch.” The last bit she whispered as an involuntary shiver traveled up her spine. “I figured you’d have some way of vanquishing it, so I spied on you. And then I saw the crystal. It’s obviously very powerful, so I…”
“Crushed it into powder,” I said dryly as her voice trailed off. “I know this might seem like an outlandish suggestion, but how about you’d just, I dunno, let me do my fucking job?”
She lifted her chin, a haughty look much like the one she’d leveled at me when I first entered her bakery finally slipping across her pretty face. “Oh, I don’t know, maybe because you seemed too busy trying to accuse me of murder to actually find the real killer. And demons have this nasty reputation of trying to suck witches dry of their magic, so excuse me for trying to protect myself while you were grinding your witch-hatred.”
I shot her another dark look, but my initial rage had all but withered and died. She might be a witch, but as I looked at the small woman still cuffed next to the crushed leftovers of my only weapon to take down Thompson’s Mill’s resident demon, I knew she wasn’t my perp.
Fuck.
I stared at the powder in the mortar. I could still technically arrest her for stealing Agency property and endangering the lives of innocents, but the second my supervisor found out I’d lost the crystal he would undoubtedly use it as an excuse to hook me up with a witch partner. Permanently.
But... Technically, I already had a witch available…
I looked from the powder to Poppy. When given the choice, I’d go with the lesser of two evils any day.
“All right, here’s the deal, cupcake. I don’t waste a day or two hauling your round ass to HQ for destroying the only sure-fire weapon we’ve got against rampant demons, and instead you’re going to find a way to use the remnants of that crystal to take him out instead. Got it?”
She gaped at me. “Uh… Can’t you just get a new crystal?”
“It’ll take a top-level witch three full months to make a new one. We don’t have three months. Demons rarely kill just one victim.”
Poppy looked from me to the powder, and then to the tome on her kitchen counter. Then she took a deep breath, squared her shoulders and looked me straight in the eyes again. There was a calmness and conviction that hadn’t been there before.
“Okay. I’ll do it.”
I gave her a small smile and fished out the keys to the handcuffs from my pocket. “There’s a good witch. But Poppy…” I slid the key in the lock, and felt her shiver when the back of my hand brushed over her arms in the process. “Don’t for one second think I trust you. If you try to pull a fast one on me, I will take you down. I’ll be watching you.”
The cuffs slid off her smooth skin, and she turned around to look at me. There was equal measures of distrust in her eyes as I knew there was in my own. “Noted—shifter.”
I smirked at her tone as I wandered out of her kitchen and toward the exit without answering. She had spine, I’d give her that. Too bad she was a witch—the way my Wolf was whining for every step I took away from her, I was pretty sure screwing her would have been just what the doctor ordered to get my inner beast back in line.
6
POPPY
The problem with being Jackson’s new go-to witch buddy—apart from the obvious—was that it gave him an excuse to pop in on me several times the following day to “check on my progress.” AKA, to bug the bejeezus out of me.
“That’s not how it works!” I snapped at him when I’d—finally—been able to close up shop and rush upstairs to try and work with a promising spell I’d found last night in my grandmother’s old Book of Shadows.
Jackson quirked an obnoxious eyebrow at me from his seat on my kitchen counter. “Then what the hell is the point? You have a script—if you can’t be sure of the outcome, then why even bother writing it down?”
I failed at holding back an eye roll. “It’s a guideline. Magic is an individual thing—you have to feel it. It’s like baking. A recipe will help point you in the right direction, but you have to feel your dough to know when it’s just right. This spell is written for my grandmother’s magic, not mine.”
“That’s some serious bullshit,” he said, reaching for the dried sage smudge I’d pulled out earlier to cleanse the kitchen before beginning. He gave it a sniff and wrinkled his nose before putting it back down. “If shifters had to rely on our Animal to feel right before we could phase, I’d be dead multiple times over. You need to wrangle your magic, show it who’s boss.”
I gave him a reproachful stare that he ignored in favor of sticking his fingers in my spice rack. “I’m not surprised you brutes think magic is something to be conquered. Maybe you’d all be less boneheaded if you listened more and commanded less.”
“Yeah-huh, I’ll be sure to take advice from the witch who thought grinding up a weapon-grade talisman was a splendid idea,” Jackson said as he stuck his nose into a jar. Without warning he sneezed loudly and pulled his head back, face scrunched up. “Ugh, what the hell kind of black magic is that for?”
“That’s cayenne pepper. For cooking,” I told him, not quite managing to keep the disdain out of my voice. I reached out and snatched the jar out of his hand. “Shouldn’t you be out looking for our demon, rather than hanging out and pestering me?”
“I have been. He’s been clever—hiding his tracks with magic of some sort. Once you’ve cooked up something to take him down with, I’ll need you to whip up a thing to break through whatever shields he’s using so I can track him.”
I gaped at him. “Uh…”
Jackson shot both eyebrows up at me. “What? I’ve seen the Agency witches do this multiple times.”
A flush heated my face and I bit the inside of my cheek to stem the brush of humiliation. “I’ll try. But it would be quicker—and probably more reliable—if you j
ust got an Agency witch to do it.”
His face darkened a little. “Not an option, cupcake. You’ll have to do.”
“Right.” I took a deep breath and pushed the flurry of anxiety down. I’d already decided to do this when I stole Jackson’s crystal. I had to keep believing in myself, or I was screwed no matter what the outcome. If Jackson told the Agency about me, I was likely going to spend a long time in a jail cell, and if he didn’t and I failed… then there was a good chance the demon would kill me. Even if it wasn’t my demon, the second it knew a witch was trying to get at it, I’d be toast unless I could defend myself.
Which meant the only option I had was to trust myself.
For some odd reason, it was made easier by knowing that Jackson had no hesitation in trusting me with it. He was with the Arcane Affairs Agency, after all. He had to know his stuff, even if he came across as a bit of a dunce.
I closed my eyes and focused my attention inward until I reached that place inside of me where everything was calm and light. Breathing deeply, I waited for the rush of energy to form a cocoon around me. It seemed to come quicker than normal this time, and I smiled at the elating presence of my magic. It hardly ever came to me this easily, and it only helped to bolster my confidence.
Humming the same tune my mother always had when she was working with spells, I began.
My grandmother’s recipe called for several items I didn’t have lying around, but as I read the spell before bed last night, I’d made notes of suitable substitutions. I might not have practiced witchcraft in a long time, but both my parents and my grandmother had done all they could to give me a solid foundation in magical know-how. My problems didn’t stem from lack of knowledge, at least, and the only thing I hadn’t been able to find a substitute for in my own kitchen was mandrake.
When I got to the point in the spell where it was time to slice up mandrake root—right between sprinkling with salt and setting it to simmer over an open flame—I sprinkled in some rosemary from my spice rack and then put the cast iron pot on my electric stove and leaned back against the counter with a happy smile. It was way too early to tell what the outcome would be, but for the first time in my entire life, I felt a sense of power and completion after working with my magic, rather than frustration.
