by Cara Wylde
“Please,” she said. “I’ll do anything for my sister. I’ll be a better host. I won’t even fight you.”
“That means nothing to me. No host can fight me. I’ve already possessed a wolf-shifter and a witch, and neither of them stood a chance. You’re only human. Weak, insignificant human. I have no use for you.”
“And what use do you have for Nina? What do you intend to do with her?”
The demon turned his head back to the window.
“First, break her spirit completely. Then, get out of this blasted town, see the world, have some fun, then deliver her to my Commander and get a well-deserved promotion.”
Skye’s eyes widened in surprise. She couldn’t believe the demon’s wishes were just as petty as any human’s. He wanted a promotion? That was why he was doing all of this? Because he wanted a stupid promotion? Well… it wasn’t stupid for him, of course. She guessed that was how lesser demons rose in rank.
“I don’t get it,” said Skye. She wasn’t sure making him talk was the best way to do this, but she had no better idea. “Why Nina? You could have left Misty Falls and found a more experienced, more powerful witch.”
The demon laughed. “You truly know nothing about the paranormal world. I don’t understand what that agent sees in you. Humans are so clueless!” He turned back to her and fixed her with his golden eyes. “Lesser demons like me are bound to the witch who summoned them. I can’t leave Misty Falls unless your Nina does. That’s why we’re leaving together. But, rest assured, this small inconvenience won’t last long. As soon as I get my promotion to a higher level, I’ll be able to do as I please once a witch summons me. It will be harder for her to banish me, too. Oh, freedom! I can almost taste it.”
The demon licked his lips, which made Skye take a step back. She would have never thought Nina could look so frightening. Of course, that wasn’t Nina, but Solas doing whatever he wanted with her body. Still, every gesture chilled Skye to the bone.
“Please don’t take my sister away from me,” she begged.
The demon rolled his eyes.
“That again?”
It was time for Skye to play her card.
“Please. I’ll do anything! I’ve already run away from my mate to come to you and beg you to take me instead.”
That peaked the creature’s interest.
“Your mate?”
Skye nodded. “Yes. The agent… Aiden. The wolf-shifter. He’s my mate. I… I just found out. I didn’t believe in mates, and now that I do… I’d rather save my sister than be with him. She’s still the most important person in my life.”
The demon licked his lips again, but this time for an entirely different reason. A wolf-shifter’s mate. After all, the weak human before him wasn’t as irrelevant as he had thought. And not just any wolf-shifter… An Arcane Affairs agent. Yes, that could work. Taking Nina, a young witch, to his Commander would have gotten him a decent promotion, but taking Skye… Oh, his Commander would surely praise him in front of the entire legion! If Aiden Ashwood lost his human mate, then the Agency would lose one of their best agents. It would be a terrible hit for the entire organization, and Solas would be rewarded beyond his imagination.
Skye yelped when the demon jumped to his feet and caught her by the throat. He tilted her head to the side to look at the bite mark on her neck.
“He claimed you,” he whispered into her ear.
Skye whimpered. It wasn’t just the voice and the glowy eyes, but also the smell of Nina’s skin. The demon’s scent was heavy and putrid, and it permeated through her sister’s pores and clothes. Skye fought to hold her breath.
Solas sniffed her.
“I can smell him on you. Oh, how sweet it will be to take the agent’s mate away from him.”
Just as he said the last words, the golden glow started pouring out of Nina’s mouth and nostrils. As Skye had hoped, Solas was too excited by the new opportunity to impress his superior, and hadn’t even taken into consideration killing Nina before leaving her body. That was his mistake, the mistake that Skye and Aiden had hoped he’d make. She felt the creature’s warmth on her face, then she felt the golden smoke enter her mouth. Her eyes widened and sparked blue one last time, then turned golden, and Skye was deaf and dumb inside her own body, trapped somewhere deep, in a place she hadn’t even known existed, incapable of doing anything. She was vaguely aware of what Solas was making her body do. What was happening around her, what the people were saying, came to her like in a dream.
Skye saw Nina scream and cover her mouth in despair when she realized Solas had possessed her, then she heard Aiden burst into the room, Spell Book in hand. He grabbed Nina by the arm, gave her the book and a piece of chalk, and spread salt all around the both of them. Skye could feel Solas was angry. He tried to run past them, but Nina fixed him with a determined glare, and he was forced to stop. The demon was boiling with wrath. Apparently, Nina had used the same curse he had used on the people inside the orphanage, because he couldn’t move, blink, or speak. Instead, what he could do was torture Skye with horrible images of her own death. It was like a promise… The second he would regain his ability to move, he would snap her neck. Right now, it didn’t matter to him that he was going to be banished. All he wanted was to kill Skye before he was forced to part with this world. He wouldn’t get his promotion, and his Commander would most likely laugh at his epic failure, maybe even punish him for it, if he didn’t manage to kill the wolf’s mate.
Aiden grabbed Nina’s left hand and squeezed it hard. He focused all his energy on her, allowing her to channel him and use all he had to give for the banishing ritual. They were strong together.
Nina had never felt so much energy coursing through her body. She put every bit of it into the sole intention of sending Solas back to where she had summoned him from. Her eyes fell on the open Spell Book once in a while, just to make sure she had gotten everything right. She couldn’t afford to fail. Not this time. If she did, she wouldn’t see her sister again. And it would be all her fault. No, she couldn’t let Skye die because she had been stupid enough to think she could control a lesser demon. But she could control him… Right now, with Aiden’s help, she could make Solas leave her sister’s body, float in the air, then disappear completely.
When the ritual was over, Skye collapsed onto the floor. Aiden wanted to run to her, but Nina squeezed his hand for another second. She focused all her senses on her surroundings, feeling and listening to the energies around her. The golden glow was gone. She couldn’t feel the demon’s presence anymore. Slowly, she let go of Aiden’s hand and let him step out of the magic circle, then the salt circle which had kept the creature away from them.
Aiden knelt beside Skye and took her limp body into his arms.
“My love?” He checked her pulse. “It’s okay. Everything is okay,” he whispered into her ear.
Skye felt as if she had been drowning and had finally managed to make her arms and legs work so she could pull herself back to the surface. She opened her eyes and smiled up at Aiden.
“Mmm… I like it when you call me that.”
***
Aiden carried Skye out of the orphanage while Nina lifted the curse Solas had put over the children and teachers. The witch walked out of the building, but spent a few more minutes in front of its iron gates. When she turned towards Skye and Aiden, who were waiting for her on a bench, there were tears in her eyes. She wiped them off and went to sit with them.
“Are you all right?” asked Skye. She wrapped an arm around her sister’s shoulders and pulled her close. She was feeling better now, but she had asked Aiden to sit for a while so she could regain her full strength and walk home on her own legs.
“No,” Nina whispered.
Aiden leaned forward and rested his hands on his knees to look at the redhead.
“We banished Solas for good. He’s failed so badly that the Commander of his legion will probably take all of his skills away and make him so useless that no one will ever summon
him again. You did well, Nina.”
Nina sniffed and cleared her throat. Her voice was heavy with tears.
“I shouldn’t have summoned him in the first place. I was stupid.”
“What’s done is done,” said Aiden. “Everyone is safe now.”
Nina pushed Skye away and stood up.
“No, not everyone! What about Harriet’s husband? He’s dead. Killed by his own wife. What about that werewolf? Carter Wagner… He’s dead, too. Neither deserved what happened to them. I was possessed by that creature long enough to learn what real torture means. And Skye, too. Skye, you understand, don’t you? The pain, the helplessness… How long did the demon use Carter’s body? One week? A couple of days? I don’t even want to know.”
“Nina, don’t do this to yourself,” said Skye. She tried to stand up, but her knees were shaking too badly. Aiden took her hand and pulled her down next to him. “You’ve been through enough.”
The girl shook her head. She stared at the people around them. How many of them had been the demon’s victims until he found Harriet, and then Carter?
“I should have never summoned him,” she said. “I should have never tried any spell at all. I… I don’t want to be this anymore. A witch…” She turned to Aiden. “Is there any way someone can take it away from me? A greater witch, someone who works for the Agency. There must be a spell, or a curse… I don’t care. I deserve to be cursed.”
Aiden stood up. He placed his hands on Nina’s shoulders, but she shrugged him off and turned away from him. He knew she was crying silently.
“Nina, this is who you are and you should embrace it. We all make mistakes, and yours was an innocent one. Before I started working with Skye, I checked with the Agency to see if anyone under the name of Watson was registered as a witch. You’re not in our database, which means you didn’t even know you were one, and you learned on your own. You had no idea about your heritage.”
“I still don’t…”
“The Agency can help you with that. Your real mother might be a witch, and your father might be a warlock. Or, it’s also possible that only one of them has magic skills. We can help you find them, and then you’ll know exactly who you are and what you can do.”
“I… I was trying to do that, you know?” Nina said softly. “That was why I summoned Solas. Skye knows.”
Aiden cocked an eyebrow. This was getting interesting. He had thought Nina had just wanted to practice her summoning skills.
“I know there are demons who can find people for you. Those are the greater ones, the ones with real power. I knew I couldn’t summon one of those on first try, and I was sure it would be hard to control them if I did manage. So, I decided to try with a lesser one, just to see how it works and to get some experience with summoning. If all had gone well with Solas, my plan would have been to summon a couple more lesser ones until I became confident enough to try with a greater one. All I wanted was to ask a greater demon to find my parents, to tell me whether they’re dead or alive.” She finally turned back to Aiden and Skye. “It has nothing to do with my current parents, you have to know that. I couldn’t have had a more amazing family. I don’t really care about my parents. Whoever they were, they abandoned me and I’ll never forgive them for that. Even if they had a good reason, I’d still not forgive them. But I thought… I thought that if I knew something about them, if I met them… I’d understand who I am, why I’m different, and how I can use my powers to do something good for the world.” She sighed. “All I managed to do was to get a bunch of people killed, or scarred for life.”
Aiden listened to her in silence. Skye already knew the story, but it still affected her. For a while, neither of them knew what to say. They watched Nina as she wiped her eyes and nose with the back of her hand. None of them had any tissues. In the midst of battling a demon, that had been the last thing they had thought about: whether they had a pack of tissues with them, just in case someone caught a sudden cold.
Aiden thought long and hard before making his next decision. He hadn’t made the best decisions in the past few days, so from now, when he felt a strong urge to do something or act a certain way, he’d take a moment longer to consider the options and the possible consequences for each.
“Nina, the Agency can do much more than find your parents,” he eventually said. “It can train you to become an agent. Now, I can’t promise anything, there’s a special department for that, and people who are paid to assess the candidates, but I want you to know this is an option. If you truly want to help people, if you’re ready to give yourself a second chance, then there are witches and warlocks who can teach you all you need to know. And the next time you use your magic, you will save lives.”
Nina lifted her eyes to meet Aiden’s gaze. She couldn’t believe what the agent was suggesting. She had just screwed up, royally, to be more exact, and he was talking about training her to become an Arcane Affairs agent.
“For real?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Aiden loved the spark of hope he saw in Nina’s eyes. He smiled, then turned to Skye.
“You two are coming with me to the Agency, anyway.”
Skye sighed and hung her head. She knew this was coming.
“Don’t look so gloomy,” Aiden added cheerfully. He pointed to Nina. “You, missy, are coming because we need to register you as a witch. If you want, you’re then free to stop by the Recruitment Department.” Then, he pointed to Skye. “And you, Princess, have some papers to sign.”
“What? What papers?”
“You’re my mate now. My very sexy, very human mate. Don’t get me wrong, I like that you’re human. Witches are simply too much trouble. Now that you know more than you should about the paranormal world, you have to sign a whole bunch of bewitched documents and promise to never reveal the secret to other humans. Then, you will be registered as my mate.”
Skye’s heart did that fluttery trick again, and a huge smile brightened her face.
“What does that mean, exactly? That I’m going to be Mrs. Ashwood?”
He chuckled. “That, yes. Also, it means you belong to my world now.”
“Your world…” She cocked and eyebrow. “I can’t say I like your world much, but… yeah, I’ll take it.”
“Awesome!” Aiden spread his arms to the sides, as if he wanted to hug both Skye and Nina. “Shall we? There must be a portal somewhere around here.”
The girls’ eyes widened.
“A portal?!” they asked in unison.
“How else do you think I got here? Trains are for losers.”
THE END
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Arcane Affairs Agency Series
Arcane Affairs Agency is a series of standalone books written by the hottest authors in the Paranormal Romance genre. Starting October 5, 2016, there will be one release every week. To learn more about the series and the authors, please visit the OFFICIAL WEBSITE.
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More Books in the Arcane Affairs Agency Series:
Bear Enchantment, by Cecilia Lane
Coming October 12, 2016
A man of action, Agent Chase Parker is well-acquainted with impossible odds. So when he’s ordered to take a vacation after a long year of undercover work, the bear shifter grits his teeth and prepares to endure the peaceful mountain resort. He never anticipates to find his mate is not only a witch, but a criminal as well.
The last of her coven, Ariadne Wren firmly blames her sister�
��s disappearance and her mother’s shocked state on the shoulders of shifters. When one shows up and requests the special cabin, she knows she must do whatever it takes to secure her mountain home from any more of his kind.
When her magic gets out of control and demons appear, it’s up to Ari and Chase to stop the threat before it leaves the mountain. As the two battle through the obstacles put in their place, they can’t deny the attraction melding them together. Will they be able to set aside their prejudices if they survive the demonic attack?
Fated to the Warlock, by Ava Glass
Coming October 19, 2016
Agent Renee Lowe’s mission is simple: banish a troublesome ghost. This should be a slam-dunk, but the owners of Moorwolf Hall are holding back the truth about this powerful spirit. What’s worse is she cannot stop thinking about her temporary warlock partner – a warlock suddenly too distracted to cast spells. Is his problem her fault? Renee is only a quarter-shifter. This warlock, Gavin, cannot be her fated mate, can he? Is her sense not working right? Is she prepared if it is?
Bear My Soul, by Sophia Barron
Coming October 26, 2016
When Michaela’s sister, Sam, shows up with her boys in tow asking to spend the weekend, Michaela is more than happy to have company. The weekend rapidly becomes a week and then some after Sam vanishes without a trace. Michaela calls the Arcane Affairs Agency for help and gets more help than she bargains for in Special Agent Devlin Quinn.
Can Michaela and Devlin keep the boys safe and save Sam from herself without falling for each other? Because falling for a shifter spells disaster for witches in general, and Michaela in particular…
More Books by Cara Wylde
Carpathian Wolf (Shift Your Fate, Book 0.5) – BBW Wolf-Shifter Romance
