by Cate Corvin
Hugging him now was nothing like before. We used to be in physical contact all the time while sparring and training, but now heat simmered under my skin as the muscles of his waist and chest tightened. “I missed you, Joss.” My words were muffled against his shirt.
“I missed you too, Houdini. And now you’re going to make up for five years of radio silence.”
I groaned, pulling away from him. “Joss, whatever you have planned-”
Joss let me go reluctantly, his fingers lingering on my hair. “Just a drink,” he said, his blue eyes earnest. “I want to know what you’ve been doing.” That hot gaze swept down over my tight shirt and jeans, and the belt of pouches and weapons. “Besides… this.”
“What’s wrong with this?” I asked, wondering if I should be offended.
His smirk was back. A hint of the Joss I used to know peeked through. “Nothing. I like this, in fact. A lot.”
A flush mounted in my cheeks and I clomped back through the field of grass with Joss on my heels. “There’s a bar down the street,” I said, looking back at him. His gaze was fixed firmly on my ass, and I scowled at him. “Joss!”
“I’m not sorry in the slightest,” he said. “Gotta make my interest known before the other covens horn in, you know?”
His tiny witchfires lit the street and a mortal man in the distance scurried away, clearly not wanting to meet up with a witch and warlock at night.
“The Tipsy Mermaid is just up the street.” I led the way, towards the neon signs only a block away. “And I know you’re not sorry, you incorrigible-”
“Don’t start an argument you can’t finish, sweetheart,” he said, sliding his arm around my shoulder. Once I would’ve shrugged him off, laughing.
Now I found I liked the sensation of him touching me. The years felt like they were sliding away in moments, but Joss wasn’t just sweet and playful anymore. There was a forceful undercurrent to him that made my stomach flip like it did for Eric.
“So, you’re all keeping track of me now,” I said, turning us towards the neon. “I saw a witch’s familiar earlier- a mountain lion. Which crazy bastard decided to use that for a pet?”
Joss shrugged. “Perhaps it wasn’t a familiar?”
“It had unnatural eyes. Definitely a familiar. So, you’re not the only one who’ll be looking for me.”
He toyed with a lock of my dark hair. “You’re a hot commodity with the abandonment statute coming up. There’s been a lot of talk among the covenheads lately. More than a few covens want a piece of you, and a few want you to stay put so they can divvy up your inheritance.”
Cold washed over me at the thought of Bellhallow, my ancestral home, being divided among the greedier covenheads, even though the thought of going back was just as painful. “Over my dead body.”
“Then you’ll need to go home soon, Morena.” He squeezed me in a one-armed hug. “Luckily you’ve got me here now to defend your honor.”
“And Eric,” I said thoughtfully, but my stomach was a pit of nausea now. One way or the other, the Pact’s statute was going to force my hand. Could I face my home after what I’d seen there?
Joss let out a deep breath. “He’s still with you. Good. I knew he wouldn’t just abandon you, but…”
“But what?” I asked, trying to keep my tone from growing sour. Besides myself, Joss was the only one who knew how deep my crush on Eric had run when we were younger, but he’d never made fun of my taboo affection for my coven’s servitor.
“Do you still…?” he started to ask, then seemed to think better of it.
I was silent for several minutes. “Of course I do. That was never in question.” Eric’s feelings, on the other hand...
He nodded, his eyes fixed somewhere in the distance. “As long as he’s keeping you alive and well, that’s all that matters.”
My wards were used to Joss now, accepting his psychic signature gamely, but they began to buzz again as another unfamiliar and masculine signature touched them.
This one was different, one I’d never tasted before. It was dark, the velvety blackness of a tomb, the rich sweetness of night blooming flowers, the sultry warmth of a summer night. I reached out for it, intrigued by the lush signature.
The enormous stranger leaned against a brick building up the street from us, as tall as Joss and just as broad-shouldered.
I reached out with my mind, barely touching the dark sultriness of his wards, and he smiled at me, his carved features just touched with a hint of wildness. Pale blond hair curled around his ears.
Midnight blue eyes flashed at me as he pushed from the wall and walked towards us.
“Who is he?” I asked breathlessly. The sense of danger hadn’t left, my prey instinct urging me to run and hide. He walked so languid and casually, moving like water, completely unconcerned with anything but us.
I was starting to feel like the universe was gearing up to play a joke on me. Three deliciously attractive men just happened to walk into my life all on the same day? No way.
“Adrian Wolfe,” Joss said in a low voice. “You know what it’s like to be the subject of shitty rumors, so give him a chance, Mor. He’s been as close to me as my own brother since you’ve been gone.”
I remembered meeting the matriarch of Fellwolfe, Vivienne Wolfe, when I was small. She had frightened me, her earrings of bat bones clicking softly as she leaned towards me, eyes glinting like dusty old coins. She’d smelled of jasmine and henbane, a sharp herbal scent that had surrounded me in a cloud as she took my hands in her wrinkled ones with long clawed nails.
She had never introduced me to her grandson. I’d always been convinced the Wolfe coven would eventually die out on its own, burdened with vicious rumors as they were. “Are the rumors still going strong?” I asked. “That the Wolfes are up to dark sorcery?”
“It’s only dark if you don’t understand it,” Joss said, the slightest drop of irritation in his voice. “Mother won’t stop harping on about it. He’s visited Rosethorne a few times since we got back from Emberfire, but I asked him to come with me to look for you.”
That sounded intriguing, but I chose to keep quiet. Adrian Wolfe wouldn’t have come all this way to the shitty downtown of Ashville only to leave without approaching me. I was suddenly sure I’d find out more about those rumors for myself, and sooner rather than later.
The real question was what Vivienne Wolfe wanted out of me. A handfasting pact, binding Bellhallow’s riches to Fellwolfe, or for me to stay in the human world so she could claim a chunk of my inheritance.
She’d get neither.
Adrian Wolfe’s hands were shoved in his pockets, but he took them out as he approached. “You’ve found her,” he said, his voice deeper than I expected and touched with the faintest hint of a posh accent. “To think I doubted you, Thorne.”
Joss shrugged, keeping his arm around my shoulder. “Never doubt me, Wolfe.”
Adrian held out his hand, and when I took it, he raised my knuckles to his lips instead of shaking like a normal human being. Despite the old-fashioned gesture, I found my heart thumping a little harder than it really needed to.
“Morena Bell. We haven’t met, of course, but Grandmother’s been eager to speak with you again.” Adrian gave me an easy smile, one that made his features even sharper, carved with high cheekbones and perfectly-shaped lips. “Joss has told me so much about you.”
Lovely. The one thing I really wanted was for a Wolfe to know everything about me.
But… maybe Joss had a point. I knew how it felt to walk through a room and know that everyone was whispering behind their hands. Adrian hadn’t done anything to put me on guard yet, like serving me with notices or demanding fines, which made him a saint as far as I was concerned, but still. The rumors around his coven were even uglier than the ones I’d fielded, no matter how pretty he was or sexy his voice.
“Yeah, he knows a lot about me.” I tugged my hand away, and Adrian released it, straightening up. Why was everyone so tall? Life had rea
lly shortchanged me in the height department. “So, when did you guys meet? I was with Joss a lot when we were younger. I don’t remember ever seeing you around.”
Joss’s fingers stroked my shoulder, a ticklish sensation. “That’s a story that requires a drink.”
If there was one thing I really liked about Adrian Wolfe, it was that he seemed as standoffish as I was behind the smiles, giving me the same suspicious eye I gave him. I’d been Joss’s best friend first… even if I’d lost that status, and betrayed his trust, by running away without a word.
“I think you should catch up with Morena alone tonight.” The suspicion in Adrian’s eyes gave way to another smile, and he slid his hands back into his pockets. “Grandmother will want to know she’s safe and well.”
“Give Lady Wolfe my regards,” I said, swallowing back my unease. Vivienne Wolfe would be a formidable opponent. She was living proof that no one should underestimate a nearly hundred-year-old woman.
She had to want me for one reason, and one reason only: the Wolfes, like the Bells, were strong mirrorwalkers. I’d heard plenty about Adrian on that front, long before I’d ever met the man himself. When Mama had still been alive, there’d even been talk of arranging a handfasting… but Father had put a stop to that, saying that I should be allowed to live my life without an arranged marriage to a warlock I’d never met looming over me.
At least they would’ve chosen a very attractive warlock.
Adrian nodded to me and straightened up with an opaque look at Joss. “Night, Thorne. I hope to see you again soon, Morena.”
I didn’t move, watching him walk away (and that ass, my mind whispered, hot damn) until he’d vanished into the night and I no longer felt him against my wards.
With a face and ass like that, an arranged handfasting might not have been so bad.
5
Joss and I turned into the decrepit dive bar, the Tipsy Mermaid, which had plenty of space for us to have a drink without disturbing the mortal patrons. The bartender had metallic gold eyelids, her hair teased sky-high. She stared at me as she poured a pint of wheat ale and I wondered if she was one of those few who were drawn to witches and warlocks, rather than repulsed by us.
The other mortals slowly drifted towards the pool tables in the back, dreamily, almost as though they didn’t realize what they were doing. The warlock and I soon found ourselves alone at the bar.
I sipped my beer, savoring the bubbly-sour taste of it. The gold-eyed bartender glanced at us and drifted away, serving at the far end. That was all the explanation I needed.
Joss watched her linger as far from us as possible and looked at me with something too close to pity for my comfort. “You’ll never truly fit in here, you know,” he said. He took a long swallow from his glass. “That’s why witches have covens. We can coexist because they need us, but you’ll never be accepted and loved by them.”
I glanced at him skeptically. “That’s awfully negative, especially from you,” I said. He shrugged, gazing at the humans, and leaned into me with his arm draped over the back of my chair. I kept my breath steady, but he was incredibly difficult to ignore.
“Let’s face it. They can’t stand to be around us,” Joss said. “And it hurts to see you exile yourself for years, trying so hard to be accepted and wanted by them-”
“Stop right there,” I said sharply. “I don’t want to be accepted, or wanted, or loved. I’ve been making a perfectly acceptable living without the Great Covens digging into my business.”
I realized I was clutching my glass with white-knuckled hands, my fingers trembling. Maybe it had been a mistake to open up to Joss again after so long. He just couldn’t understand.
“I’m sorry,” he said, looking stricken. “I’m not here to piss you off-”
I closed my eyes, counting to ten slowly. When I opened them, Joss looked a little more contrite. “I’m sorry, Morena. I’m just trying to say, in an asshole sort of way, is that I miss you, and unlike the other covens, I actually want you to move past your parent’s deaths and be happy where you belong. And that place isn’t here.”
I thought of the little niche in life I had carved out for myself. I had Bell, Book & Candle, which did steady, if not entirely lucrative, business. I had my terrible apartment, complete with cracks and sagging ceilings. I had a junker van that I absolutely loved despite its likely-imminent death.
And I had a human servitor, as all covens did, a man who guarded my body and guided me home. Eric who I cared for most of all, the only person I wanted to follow me from my old life, who had rejected my affections and yet still refused to leave my side.
But in spite of all that, I was aimless and wandering, unsure of what I was searching for and not finding it regardless.
It was difficult to admit it, but seeing Joss again was like waking up and realizing there was still another world out there… the one I belonged in. It waited for me with open arms.
Joss leaned in, his breath warm against my ear, forcing a shiver down my spine. “Nobody can live alone forever, Mor.”
He was right, that was the hell of it.
I drained the glass and signaled the bartender for another. “I’m not entirely alone. I have Eric. Even if things aren’t what I’d like them to be.”
Joss’s fingers danced along my neck, still playing with my hair. “So, you have Eric. Why not me, too? We were inseparable once. I don’t want you to cut me out again.”
His eyes were shadowed. Joss hadn’t been there when it happened, but he’d seen the aftermath.
The day of my parents’ funeral, the covens had gathered deep beneath Bellhallow. The crypts were rarely opened, carved into the depths of the mountain the manor rested on. A natural cavern had been hollowed out below with a polished granite cornerstone set in the middle of the room. Columns rose around us, reaching up towards the shrouded ceiling, torches flickering below as we laid the bodies of John and Rosalind Bell on the cornerstone and poured the herb-anointed oil over their bodies.
Eric had been at my shoulder as always, and Joss had held my hand on the other side, his fingers laced with mine. He’d squeezed my fingers as I set my torch to their corpses and said the sacred words of release for their spirits.
That had been the last time I’d seen him.
Long after the heat of the fire was extinguished, when my parents had returned to ashes and dust, I’d sent him back up to the light with Eric. I’d stood alone by the cornerstone for several hours, ruminating on the remains of my family, allowing the torches to flicker out until I was left in a darkness so deep, so infinite, I felt I would never see the sun again.
Some part of me was still down there in the darkness, untouched by light and warmth, full of nothing but directionless rage.
The rest of me was withering away, craving a light in the darkness and isolation of the human world.
“I won’t cut you out,” I said, still seeing the blackened pyre in my mind’s eye. Their ashes would have been absorbed by the magic of Bellhallow, used to build and nourish its grounds. Even in death, they still lived on. “You of all people don’t deserve it. I should’ve said goodbye the first time or given you a way to reach me… but all I could think about was running. But the Tribunal’s found me, and I have no choice. I’ll have to go back to Bellhallow.”
“Is it that terrible to go home?” Joss asked. “To be with me again?”
I searched his eyes, and it felt like no time had passed between us at all. It was just the way we used to sit together, with a bottle of stolen booze, talking about our futures before it had all fallen apart. “Not to be with you, no.”
“There’s my Morena,” he said, pressing his lips to my hair. It felt far too good, and I was still afraid of this new, frightening, exciting ocean between us. “Not this mopey wet blanket. That can’t be her.”
I elbowed him gently. “Look, I still have a long way to go to get over it. I’m not going to get better overnight.”
“I know,” Joss said. He was close eno
ugh now that I leaned into him comfortably, relishing the warmth of my old friend’s arms. “But I just like to see a little of the old fire in you. And you don’t have to talk about the past now. Tell me about this weird business of yours.”
I smiled wryly, tilting my glass and watching it foam. “It’s not weird, it’s Bell, Book, & Candle Paranormal Investigation. I perform exorcisms for pennies on the dollar, but it beats running a coven for now.”
Joss glanced at me sideways. “Cute play with the name.”
“Thanks. I thought of it myself.” I rolled my eyes, unable to hold a smile back.
“So, what does Eric do for you, if you’re not a coven?” He took a long drink, glancing at me sideways under those dark lashes.
“He’s still my servitor,” I said, running my recently-healed pinky around the rim of the glass. “He never left my side. I suppose it’s like having a dysfunctional coven, but I don’t get the benefits of a steady paycheck, or even respect. Most of the time we just set up a smoke-and-mirrors show so the clients don’t feel cheated.”
Joss leaned towards me, the smell of his woodsmoke and leather cologne nearly mouthwatering. “Almost sounds more appealing than dealing with my matriarch.”
I’d rather deal with a hundred clueless humans than Melinda Thorne and her matchmaking bullshit. “Oh, it is. Mortals are more than happy to see the back of me, at least.”
He laughed, his teeth flashing in a grin. “Maybe I should join you sometime and try it out.”
It was impossible to picture being crammed in the junker van with two massive men… both of which were absurdly attractive. “I’d have to fight off Melinda for stealing you away from her,” I said. His flirting was obvious- did he think it would be that easy to win me over? It was disarming and exciting at the same time, my old Joss now so different. “So, no thanks. How’d you figure out that cool trick with the fire? Last time I saw you, it wasn’t that simple.”
Joss’s smile faded a little. His witchfire had grown in power throughout the years, becoming more volatile with each passing day. He hadn’t had this much control before I’d left.
