Coven of Lies (The Bayshore Witch Legacy Book 2)

by C. J. Beaumont

  I cut a sideways glance at the cat as I plated our bacon and eggs. "You wouldn't happen to know anything about why Ray's powers are suddenly developing, would you?"

  Logan yawned and stretched. I might...if one of those strips of bacon is for me.

  I chuckled. "You're getting spoiled, and it's totally Ray's fault." I grabbed one of the strips and blew on it before depositing it in his bowl. "Okay, spill."

  Soulmates can sometimes stimulate things in each other that might otherwise remain dormant, especially if you're descended from mythological beings. Desiree was an immortal siren. One of Ray's ancestors was so favored by Aletheia that she gifted their line with magical abilities related to discerning the truth. They are unique magics, sure, and very different, but the magnetic attraction you feel for each other is a magic all its own. The way you interact as partners could potentially affect your powers in many ways.

  "Soulmates?" My pulse thundered in my ears. "What if I don't deserve a soulmate?"

  You know that's not how soulmates work, right?

  I started to tell him to stuff the sarcasm up his little furry ass, but the sound of tires crunching on the driveway derailed my train of thought.

  "Finally," I muttered. "It's about time I got a good look at Misty's autopsy report."

  Are you sure breakfast is a good idea right now, considering that you're about to look at pictures that could turn almost anybody's stomach?

  "Good point," I muttered, setting the plate I'd made for myself aside.

  Ray's familiar footfalls thundering up the stairs spurred me and I raced to the door.

  My hand trembled as I jerked the door open, revealing a pale, ashen Ray. He clutched a thick manila envelope in a white-knuckled grip. A tingle of adrenaline shot down my spine, numbing my legs and turning them to lead weights.

  "How bad is it?" I whispered around the fearful lump in my throat.

  Ray pressed his lips together so tight the skin around them blanched as he shook his head. Cold sweat turned my palms slick and I wiped them on my sweatpants as I shuffled out of his way. He swallowed and trudged in, slumping down in the dining room chair closest to us.

  "I think you should sit down, Rox."

  Every cell in my body went cold. I shivered as I pulled out the chair beside his and slumped in the seat. My gaze darted to the envelope and my stomach knotted.

  His face was still colorless, his eyes haunted and hollow. "I've seen a lot of fucked-up shit in my life, but nothing like this." Tears pooled in his eyes and he dropped his face in his hands. "I'm begging you as your partner—as your friend—please just let me sum it up for you. If you have to, just read the file. From the bottom of my heart, I'm begging you with everything I have not to look at those pictures."

  I swallowed and took the envelope, clutching it in my cold fingers. "Misty was like a mother to me after I lost my parents. I owe it to her to find her killer, Ray."

  I unwound the string holding it closed, trying to steel myself for whatever it might contain. My teeth chattered as I dumped the contents out on the table.

  "Roxy, don't—" Ray's voice died in his throat as I picked up the first picture that caught my eye. It was a picture of the pier at a nearby boat launch.

  The tide was out and a dark shape slumped at the bottom of one of the pilings. I squinted, looking closer with a strangled cry. It was Misty. Her arms were bound behind her back, securing her to the post. There was a cinderblock on the opposite side of the piling from Misty, and the rope looped through it. The water was pink with blood where her arms had scraped against barnacles.

  My fingers lost all feeling and the picture slipped out of them, fluttering to the floor. The next picture screamed for me to pick it up. It was a head-on shot, instead of a side view. A row of dark x-shapes stood out stark against Misty's pale skin. My brows pinched together as I struggled to process the image.

  "Her mouth." My voice came out strangled. "They sewed it shut."

  A sick, hot wave of nausea made my limbs weak. Everything went fuzzy and I swayed on the spot. My shifting weight made the chair wobble and tip sideways. I expected to smack face-first into the cool linoleum floor, but Ray's hands gripped my shoulders. I blinked, trying to focus on his face without success.

  "I told you not to look at the pictures," he said. He scooped me up and carried me to the couch. Laying me down, he tried to pull away.

  "No," I whispered. "Don't let me go."

  "Okay, I won’t," he said. He scooped me up again and adjusted so he was sitting on the couch and I was cradled on his lap, slumped against his chest. "I'm not going anywhere, I promise."

  "Tell me," I said, shuddering at the image of the pictures burned into my brain. "Just tell me the rest."

  Ray stroked my hair. "She was alive when they tied her to the piling and cinder block at low tide. She suffered, probably trying desperately to get away as the water level rose and eventually drowned her some time during the night."

  I sobbed, loud and harsh against his chest.

  "Do you want me to stop?" Ray murmured.

  Unable to answer, I shook my head and hoped he would understand that I needed him to continue.

  He hesitated, and then cleared his throat. "She was tortured beforehand. Battered and branded with a cross. There's one more thing...There was another laminated message inside her sewn-up mouth."

  Hot rage flashed through me and I stiffened in his embrace.

  "What did it say?" I growled through gritted teeth.

  "It said…" He paused, blowing out a reluctant sigh. "The wages of sin is death."

  I hurtled up off Ray's lap, hissing my fury through my teeth. "I'm done with this shit."

  Power hummed in the air around me, pulsing in time with the beat of my heart.

  Ray stood, too, but gave me my space. "What are you going to do, Rox?"

  "What I have to," I growled, storming down the hall to Granny's bedroom.

  Ray followed but hung back in the hall as I hauled the family grimoire off the dresser. Lugging it to the dining room table, I thunked it down and started flipping through, desperately searching for a reconciliation ritual like the one Misty had suggested.

  There, in the last written-on page in the hefty tome, the spell I needed was scrawled in Misty's neat hand. There were hundreds of still-blank pages waiting for future generations of Bayshore witches to fill them. I whirled, ready to search the cabinets for the candles I would need. Ray grasped my wrist and gazed deep into my eyes.

  "Hold up a sec, partner," he murmured. "Clue me in, here."

  I took a deep breath and steeled myself, preparing for fear or resistance as I pointed to the spell in the open grimoire.

  He gazed down at the page, scanning it before turning back to me. Ray's adam's apple bobbed several times before he finally spoke. "Is there anything I can do, or any way I can help? Just tell me what you need."

  I bit my lip hard for a long moment, my heart pounding and skipping erratically. I know what I want, but I'm not sure I should ask.

  Logan's voice broke into my thoughts. I forbid you from doing this alone. Tell Ray what you need from him.

  "There's not a lot you can do, but..." I paused and massaged my scalp, trying to stave off the headache building there. "But I'd love it if you could maybe stay with me while I do this."

  Ray's fingers wrapped around mine, his touch warm and steady as always. "I wouldn't have it any other way."

  He leaned down and brushed a kiss against my lips before leaning back to study the spell.

  I watched him through the fringe of my lowered eyelashes, my nerve-endings humming with equal measures of anticipation and gut-wrenching anxiety.

  His brow furrowed and he tugged me a little closer. "Be honest with me, Roxanne...what are the chances that something could go wrong with what we're about to do?"

  I opened my mouth to dismiss his fears, but found that I couldn't. Only the truth spilled out in a harsh whisper.

  "You're not going to like the answer." T
aking a deep breath, I reached up to caress his cheek, savoring the roughness of his beard against my palm. "Yes, things could go wrong. If I don't do the reconciliation ritual, I'll never be able to reliably access my magic to help Kat and the rest of the coven. I'm sick of being useless and helpless."

  "And if you do go through with the ritual?" Ray prompted, his voice rough with emotions I wasn't prepared to identify.

  "If I go through with the ritual and everything goes perfectly, I don't know who's going to be in control of my body when I emerge from the water." My mouth went dry as Ray searched my face, a frown tugging his tempting, full lips down at the corners. "And if things don't go perfectly, I could end up in a split personality kind of situation, or..." I trailed off and bit my lip hard, not wanting to say it.

  "Tell me, Rox." His harsh, gravelly voice touched deep, tender places inside me. "I need to hear it."

  "There's a slight chance that the reunification ritual could kill me." I pressed my lips together and closed my eyes, not wanting to witness the terror playing out on his face.

  "Then don't do it." His voice was harsh, and his arms tightened around me.

  "We're out of options, Ray, and you know it. This is the only chance we have, and we're going to take it." I gripped his hand and gave it a firm, reassuring squeeze. "You run the bath water while I get ready."

  Ray nodded without a word as I slipped into my bedroom. I changed into a form-fitting black dress meant to evoke the Night Realm, and then slid Misty's calming charm off and placed it in the top drawer of my nightstand.

  "Here we go," I murmured, squaring my shoulders as I tugged the door open and strode into the kitchen to gather seven white candles from the supply cabinet, one for each year Shadow and I had existed as separate entities.

  My heart stuttered and swelled, feeling as if it might explode as I grabbed a box of matches off the top of the microwave and padded into the bathroom.

  Ray's breath left his body in a low whistle as he surveyed me from where he sat on the edge of the tub. He turned off the running water.

  The grimoire sat open on the closed toilet lid.

  "I wanted the instructions close by to make sure we get everything just right." He extended a hand to me and helped me into the bath water.

  Logan padded into the bathroom to join us and hopped up to lie down on the blank grimoire page facing the reconciliation spell.

  Follow every instruction exactly, he ordered. Be careful and trust each other.

  I eased down into the warm water and reached out a hand to Ray. "Hang on and don't let me go?"

  He nodded, twining his fingers around mine and tugging my fingers up to his lips. He pressed a warm kiss against my knuckles, never breaking eye contact with me. "Always."

  His whisper reassured me as I laid back, submerging everything but my nostrils. I cleared my mind, tugging Ray's hand under the surface of the water with me, clinging to it like a lifeline as I drifted downward inside my own mind. I focused on my memories of the temple. The distant glimmer of Hecate's torches on either side of the entrance greeted me.

  I followed the glimmer, suddenly feeling outside myself as I crossed through the temple entrance. It took me a moment to realize that I could, in fact, see myself in a light, almost-translucent chiton. A blindfold of the same gauzy material covered my eyes, and I walked the path into the depths of the temple blindly.

  Every pillar in the cavernous, seemingly endless temple, held the shape of an ancient deity. So many cultures stretched on and on, standing watch in every direction except one. The path ahead led to the edge of a yawning chasm. On the edge, a statue of a woman ten times my size but who looked exactly like me, stood with a sword in one hand and a scale in the other.

  Despite the blindfold covering her eyes, she sensed my presence and her towering, otherworldly voice boomed, shaking me to my core. "Roxanne Louise Cole, you stand before Thetis, goddess of justice. What do you seek, daughter of Hecate?"

  Before a single word left my mouth, people and objects began to materialize. Shadow lay, pinned and squirming beneath the tip of the sword in Thetis' hand, her eyes as wide as a fearful child's. A sword and scales appeared in my own hands, and I shifted my gaze to the scales in Thetis' other hand.

  Those scales featured cages, and my heart dropped to my feet when I realized who they contained. Kat was on one side, and Ray was on the other. Bone-deep terror rooted me to the spot as I watched the blindfold melt away from my eyes.

  "What do you offer, my lady Thetis?" My voice, so small and brittle, sent a chill slithering down my spine.

  "Opportunities...and choices." Thetis' voice was cool and detached. "But know that no matter what you choose, a price must be paid to balance the scales."

  I watched myself dip in a deep curtsey, my head bowing reverently as I waited for her to continue.

  "You have so many conflicting desires, young one. I can offer you only one, so be careful what you choose, and make sure you're willing to make the necessary sacrifice...in blood."

  I went still, and a chill blasted from the crown of my head to the tips of my toes. I shivered.

  Thetis turned her head toward Shadow, where she cried out in pain beneath the tip of the sword. "I can give you the thing you've desired the longest. I have the power to rid you of Shadow and all the magic trapped inside her."

  Involuntarily, I licked my lips and leaned forward, my chest aching with the desire I'd held onto for so long. "And what would that cost me?" My longing whisper set off alarm bells in the back of my mind. Don't you dare.

  "Sacrificing your Shadow self would satisfy the blood price by virtue of taking your bloodline’s magic as payment, of course. It is a blood price, if not blood in the traditional sense." Thetis shifted the sword, making Shadow scream and writhe. "It will hurt and cost you dearly, but you've longed for this for the last seven years."

  My heart thundered like a runaway train and I winced as the pounding made my whole body tremble.

  "What about Kat and Ray?" I whispered, my gaze darting back and forth between them.

  "To have one, another's blood must be spilled,” Thetis said.

  I swallowed, preparing to ask something I never thought I would. My gut boiled with uncertainty. "And what if I wish to reconcile with Shadow, to be whole and reclaim the power that is my birthright?"

  Thetis frowned fiercely, apparently thrown by the unexpected suggestion. “The course you choose, however surprising it may be, still demands that a blood price be paid." Thetis crouched, holding out the scales so the two cages were close, but just beyond my reach. "Choose."

  Ray lifted his gaze to meet mine and shot me a bittersweet smile. "It's okay to do whatever it takes to get your little sister back, Rox."

  Tears welled in my eyes and I shook my head. "No," my voice cracked. "There has to be another way."

  "What are you doing, Roxanne?" Kat shrieked, her voice shrill with indignation. "I'm your baby sister! I know you're not thinking about letting me go for a shot at hooking up with your high school crush! We're family, for fuck's sake!"

  I recoiled at Kat's willingness to sacrifice the only person who was making any effort to help me find her and bring her home safe.

  "What are you saying?" I gritted my teeth so hard I thought they might break into a hundred pieces and fall out of my mouth all at once.

  "I'm saying he's expendable! He can't matter as much to you as I do." Kat gripped the bars of her cage and rattled them at me with impressive violence. Tears poured down her impossibly pale face. "You can't give up your magic and you have to save me. He's obviously the perfect sacrifice. It’s an easy choice."

  "No," I growled, "It isn't!"

  "It's all right, Rox,” Ray said. “I love you, and I understand that I'm the logical choice, here."

  My teeth chattered as a fierce, bitterly cold wind blew up out of the chasm and enveloped us.

  "Which path have you chosen?" Thetis rumbled.

  I looked back and forth between Ray and Kat, my h
eart aching. I felt as though it might shatter at any moment.

  "I choose to reconcile with Shadow and reclaim my magic," I whispered.

  Ray and Kat both froze in their cages.

  Kat went pale and hysterical, hammering her fists against the bars.

  "Choose me!" she screamed over and over until I was nauseated. I retched at the strain her pleas caused and turned my gaze to Ray.

  All he did was shoot me a quiet smile and whisper, "I love you Roxanne."

  Tears streamed down my cheeks and I quaked with barely-contained emotions. "I love you, too, Ray."

  Thetis straightened back up, dangling the scales in front of me. "Whose blood will you use to pay the price with?”

  My eyes darted to the sword in my free hand. I couldn't contain the grim smirk. "Mine."

  Amid howling protests from Thetis, Ray, and Kat, I turned the tip of the sword toward my heart and fell on it.

  Pain lanced through my chest and I struggled to breathe. Chaos erupted, Ray and Kat both screaming at me. Thetis' mouth formed a shocked 'o' as she lifted the sword off Shadow's chest and raised it toward the sky. Bright, blue-white lightning exploded out from inside the chasm, striking Shadow and me at the same time and the whole world disappeared, giving way to darkness and silence.

  There are so many people without whom this book would have been a hopeless mess.

  First, I must thank my husband. Lake, I’m so grateful for your support and understanding when it comes to the passion I have for writing and publishing books. With your help, I am learning it’s possible to do things well before the last minute. You have no idea how deeply I appreciate you because I don’t possess the words to properly express it.

  Second, I must thank my parents, Betty and David. Thank you for believing I can make a career of writing. Your support means the world to me.

  Next, I must thank my baby boy. River, your unending love lights up my whole universe. Mommy adores you more than you can ever possibly know.