A Little Dark Magic (The Little Coven Series Book 2)

by Isabel Wroth

“Babe, seriously?” Kerrigan called out incredulously, having opened a drawer to reveal his collection of watches. “How many different ways does a man need to tell time?”

  Maksim shrugged unapologetically, enjoying the view.

  “What can I say? I appreciate a fine watch. What became of my safe, Thomas?”

  Beside him, Thomas shifted from foot to foot and reached up to rub at the back of his neck.

  “When he claimed your suit of rooms, Hector destroyed it and claimed the contents. You know what he’s like.”

  “There are almost two hundred watches in here!” Kerrigan declared, shutting the lid to go off in search of more, skirting the racks of his suits, each set protected in its own plastic garment bag.

  “I do know what Hector’s like.” Maksim sighed, not excited by the prospect of his overly possessive brother aggressively staking his claim on what had once been Maksim’s, as though Maks would attempt to take it from him. “When will he return?”

  “I’ve sent word of your arrival, so depending on whether or not he’s found a brothel to fall into after his mission, Hector is due back within the week.” Thomas replied, his tone warm and sincere when he said, “She’s perfect for you, Father.”

  Maks couldn’t help but smile while he watched Kerrigan shake her head over a towering stack of shoe boxes.

  “Yes, she is.”

  “Do you believe it’s possible for her to summon Dhiraj’s Bride?”

  As far as Maks was concerned, there wasn’t much Kerrigan couldn’t do. “I do believe it’s possible. Kerrigan is unique in many ways. I’ve never known anyone as stubborn or so single-minded when focused on attaining what she wants. Thomas, you understand I must ask.”

  Thomas turned to him and met his gaze without flinching.

  “Yes, Father.”

  “By the blood that binds us, I command you to speak the truth. Did you conspire—alone or at another’s will—to see me imprisoned by the Silver Wives?”

  “No, Father,” Thomas answered gravely. “I would never betray you, and I wish no ill will toward you or your Bride. I should have kept looking until I found a body, and I am glad she succeeded where I failed.”

  “The Silver Wives did their job quite thoroughly, Thomas,” he conceded, clapping his hand down on his progeny’s shoulder, relieved. “Thank you.”

  “The rubies I gave you aren’t here,” Kerrigan announced, looking extremely put out as she lifted another display box of all his tie pins.

  Clever little minx.

  Thomas looked to him with a frown of confusion.

  “Rubies?”

  Kerrigan brought him the box of trinkets, and Maksim obligingly looked through them.

  “On one of our last outings together, Kerrigan gifted me with a ruby tie pin and matching cufflinks set in platinum.”

  “I remember them,” Thomas confirmed. “I could tell you admired them because you wore them almost every day. Everything I collected from your quarters is in this room, Father. I made a very thorough inventory.”

  To prove it, Thomas fetched a binder from a nearby shelf and showed off his exemplary organization skills by flipping to a page that described every single tie pin and where it was located.

  He seemed genuinely distressed by the absence of the rubies.

  “Were you wearing them the day my mom called you, Maks?” Kerrigan asked, very convincingly too.

  Maksim almost ruined her stellar performance by smiling.

  “No, love. I was preparing for a meeting with the vampire council at a gentleman’s club. Tuxedos are the required. Perhaps they were in the safe.”

  Thomas made a rude noise. “If they were, Hector certainly wouldn’t have worn them on one of his dates. No doubt they were used as a form of payment.”

  Kerrigan’s eyebrows slid up at the scorn in Thomas’s voice, but Maksim chuckled and took the box of pins to set it aside in favor of pulling her against his side.

  “Hector has a rather unhealthy addiction to prostitutes.”

  Kerrigan snuggled into him and wrapped her arms around his waist.

  “If your brother used those rubies to pay a hooker, I’ll make sure he never gets it up for another prostitute ever again. I’ll lie right to his face when I tell him how sorry I am such a terrible thing has happened to such a nice man. Must be what happens to a vampire after a certain age.”

  “I will pay you half a million dollars to do it even if he didn’t,” Thomas told her, deadpan, completely serious.

  When Maksim looked at him askance, Thomas shrugged unapologetically.

  “What? I’ve paid at least twice that to cover Hector’s appetites in the last six years. I assure you, Miss Gray would be doing us all a favor.”

  As fussy as Thomas was about Hector’s sexual habits, he was certainly eager to pay for Kerrigan’s services as a witch.

  “I seem to recall having several other witches who could perform such a spell, Thomas. Did you fire them all?”

  “Of course not, Father. We have a fully staffed magical arm of the company which handles a great number of projects. None of them would do this for any amount of money I offered.”

  At Maksim’s disbelieving look, Thomas pulled a face.

  “Would it truly surprise you to learn they’re all terrified of Hector?”

  “Not in the least. How have you managed to maintain your seat as head of the company if you’ve been unable to control Hector?”

  Thomas harrumphed, tugging at his lapels even as he drew himself up to his full height. Maksim regretted that Thomas hadn’t lived long enough to grow into a man.

  He was perpetually frozen in time at nineteen years old, and Maksim understood how hard it must have been for their clients to take him seriously.

  Thomas had the scrawny body of a boy just starting to come into his own as a man and the face to match.

  Honestly, Maks was proud to know Thomas had succeeded in taking his place as head of the company, and yet, he was undeniably suspicious.

  “I learned many lessons from you, Father. One of the most important was to pick my battles. Hector isn’t afraid of me, so there is no force I possess that could control him.

  “Hector is our most sought after agent and has an aptitude for rescue and recovery unlike anyone else that’s ever been employed here. Because of his skill, I landed us a major contract with the human government six years ago that requires Hector to share his experience by training their operatives and soldiers. As long as we train them, the US government pays all the taxes and utilities for the building.”

  That was impressive. Beyond impressive, as the company lost millions every year in taxes. Utilities? Out the roof.

  “The second most important thing I learned from you was to unearth a man’s truest desire or his darkest addiction and feed it.

  "I needed Hector to train the human soldiers and refrain from ripping their heads off when they vex him, so I agreed to foot the bill for his habit because it was much easier to feed his addiction than uncover his true heart’s desire.”

  Intrigued by his progeny’s methods, Maksim remained silent, waiting for Thomas to say what was obviously on his mind. Maksim didn’t have to wait long.

  Thomas rubbed at his neck again in a sure sign he was nervous and uncomfortable.

  “Did you mean it when you said you’re not back to take over? That you’re only here to find out who betrayed you?”

  Under the cover of his suit jacket, Kerrigan’s hand tightened on his vest as though she was nervous about Maksim’s answer.

  “I’m here because whoever betrayed me put Kerrigan in terrible danger. Her safety is my priority, now and always. It is not my intention to take over, Thomas.

  “You’ve obviously kept things running quite well in my absence and I see no cause to immediately replace you. I’m behind on the advances in technology that have happened in the last twelve years, but yes, I will resume control if it becomes the only option I have left to protect my Bride.”

  Thomas ac
tually looked… disappointed. “If it would help you in any way, I would of course cede control to you. Immediately.”

  “Is that what you want?” Maksim made the question as casual as possible.

  The hope that flared in Thomas’s eyes was impossible to miss.

  “Honestly? Yes. I only fought for control because I didn’t want to see your vision for the company wither and die in the hands of the others, and to be quite frank, none of them could have done this job. We’d be bankrupt in a month.”

  “Is that so?” he chuckled, genuinely amused.

  “Dhiraj has the most patience, but he has no acumen for numbers and would set fire to the accounting department after his first experience with quarterly reports. He lives to fix problems, so I begged him to take over client relations.

  “With his cavalier attitude about everything, Virico would never be taken seriously by clients, and as often as he smacks women on the ass as they walk by, we’d be drowning in lawsuits before he made it past his first week.

  "He is insanely paranoid about security, so I told him no one else could do a better job running in-house security in conjunction to threat assessments for clients.

  “Aubin does have a rather Machiavellian mind for strategy—which is why I made sure he thought it was his idea to take over intelligence and mission control—but he’s so apathetic and bloody French that I couldn’t in good conscience let him take control.

  “Hector would hire every prostitute in the district to meet our secretarial quota, and nothing would get done because he wouldn’t be able to walk past one of them without…”

  Thomas made a suggestive noise accompanied by hand gesture to explain just what Hector would have done.

  “And Isaiah?” Maksim asked blandly. “He was Bronagh’s right hand for many years.”

  Thomas’s suggestive gesture morphed into one driving the point home. “Exactly. If Isaiah sat at the head of the table, the core value of the company to provide services to any and all, to remain neutral, would be obliterated as soon as his arse hit the big chair, and the firm would serve only as the vampire council decreed.

  “Zero profit to be made there, and from everything I think I know about him, I believe Austmathr would roll in his grave if Armistice became the council’s personal army. Which is why I’ve kept Isaiah out of the building as much as possible.

  “He runs the weapons and asset acquisition in the field, mission support basically, because no one else could possibly get our people back home alive without his vast network of contacts.”

  “You know, Thomas,” Kerrigan said after a moment, “I completely understand how you’ve maintained control of the company. If Maksim’s brothers aren’t afraid of you, then they should be.”

  Thomas just barely refrained from scuffing his toe as he ducked his head and tried to look like a shy teenager, given the greatest compliment of his life.

  If her snort was any indication, Kerrigan didn’t buy it for a second.

  “We all have our talents, Miss Gray,” Thomas told her humbly—what a laugh that was. “You made it look so easy, Father. I had no idea how difficult it was to run the business.”

  “Yes, well, heavy lies the head and all that.” Maksim chuckled, turning to touch his lips to Kerrigan’s forehead.

  Thomas looked on, carefully watching the way Maksim treated Kerrigan, and he could practically see the wheels spinning in Thomas’s head.

  Maksim waited quietly while he rubbed his hand up and down Kerrigan’s arm, leaving plenty of room for Thomas to fill the silence, and he did so quite eagerly.

  “Your Bride is obviously most important, and I’m sure she would be quite cross with me if I dumped the entire mess of the company back in your lap, monopolizing all your time.

  "What if… what if we went in halfsies, eh? Shared the load, so to speak? That would give you plenty of time to devote to Miss Gray, and things can go back to the way they were before you left.”

  And that was Thomas’s true heart’s desire. Not to have things go back to the way they were. No, Thomas wanted to retain the lion’s share of the power he’d gained, without the headache of having to deal with the sons of Austmathr all on his own when they finally figured out just how well Thomas had manipulated them all.

  Kerrigan gave him another brief hug and relaxed against him, sign enough to say she didn’t object.

  They were here to discover which of his brothers wanted the secret to Etienne’s daywalking potion.

  Not wanting to reveal his hand too early, Maks hadn’t asked Thomas if he knew about the daywalking potion or Etienne.

  If his response to the missing rubies was any indication, Thomas had no idea, and he didn’t act as though he’d been receiving regular reports on Kerrigan’s whereabouts.

  But Thomas was a master at infiltration. A spy of spies. Without using their blood bond, there was no true way to tell.

  Returning to rule the empire with the premise he was seeking a traitor would make it that much easier for Maks to find the bastard, so he kept quiet about the potion. “Alright, Thomas. I’ll think about it.”

  “Most appreciated, Father. The Green Room is ready for you, and if you find it suitable, I’ll have all your things brought up immediately.”

  *****

  The Green Room was over the top.

  That was her first conscious thought as soon as Kerrigan walked in.

  The hardwood on the floor was patterned like a herringbone coat, the rugs and drapes on the floor-to-ceiling windows neutral shades of beige and white.

  She supposed it had been named the Green Room because of the enormous emerald green velvet couch in the living room and the tapestry of a forest covering the entire length of the wall behind it.

  There were white marble sculptures set on black pedestals, an emerald bowl filled with flowers on the black coffee table, and a large spray of ferns separated the living area from the dining space.

  The apartment had a kitchen with pale mint green cabinets with silver fixtures and white marble countertops.

  Thomas went on to list all the amenities in the apartment—most important were the shades that automatically went down to cover all the windows thirty minutes before the sun came up—but Kerrigan wandered through on her own.

  She strolled into the bedroom, impressed by the recessed alcove where the bed sat. The twelve-foot arch was papered with a textured fabric of some kind, top to bottom with a pattern of palm fronds. Not her style, but Ivy would certainly have liked it.

  Another emerald green ottoman sat at the foot of the king-size bed, making the contrast of the pristine white bed linen that much brighter.

  It was an enormous bedroom, with a sitting room flanked by his and hers walk-in closets that she had to walk through to get to the bathroom.

  There was a shower, a double vanity, and of course, a toilet, but it was the clawfoot tub that sat in front of an enormous gold-framed mirror that excited her.

  When full of water, the bather would be forced to face their reflection, their feet pointed at the mirror that stretched up and covered the wall in front of them.

  It was opulent, decadently sensual, and filled her mind with all sorts of naughty thoughts.

  “Well, love? Will this suit your needs?”

  So busy imagining all the things she could do with Maksim in the bathtub built for two, Kerrigan hadn’t heard him approach.

  She met his warm stare in the mirror, looking at how casually he seemed to be leaning against the door frame. Ankles crossed, hands tucked into his pockets, suit coat flared back over his elbows. So sexy.

  “Is there somewhere I can work? In private?”

  “There’s a private office!” Thomas called from somewhere. “You can access it through a hidden door in the bookcase.”

  Maksim lifted his brows to silently ask if that answered her question. Kerrigan nodded, and without looking away from her, tipped his head to shout back at Thomas, “Send someone to fetch Kerrigan’s bag from the car, please. My t
hings can wait until tomorrow.”

  “Of course. Should I have them just leave it outside?”

  “A knock to say they’ve arrived will be sufficient. Thank you, Thomas.”

  “Certainly, Father. I had the staff stock the refrigerator with items for Miss Gray. I’ll, ah, see you tomorrow evening.”

  “Thomas?”

  “Yes?”

  “If I find a single camera in this apartment, I’ll bribe my lovely mate with all manner of delights to bind as many ghosts to your person as she can manage. I have a feeling it will be a sizeable number.”

  Maksim’s threat was met with a brief silence, and not long later, Thomas came in with an armful of trinkets, nodding with a tight, uncomfortable smile when he came in to retrieve a wooden owl perched in the soap dish.

  Kerrigan bit down on her cheek to keep from laughing at the nervous glance Thomas shot her. He lifted up the owl, like it was a glass of champagne needed for a toast.

  “Forgot about the cameras. That’s it then.”

  “Are you certain?” Maksim purred dangerously.

  “Erm…” Thomas juggled the knick-knacks to get his phone from his coat pocket, sending his maker another quick smile that seemed genuine enough.

  “Theresa, the cameras in the Green Room, where are they?” Theresa must have started to list them off, because Thomas made affirmative noises intermittently while looking at his haul.

  “Bloody hell! No, no, don’t turn them on. My maker will be taking up residence with his Bride, and their privacy is of the utmost importance. Well, yes. I’ve only got the one. Senator Locke? What… bugger! Yes, yes. On my way.”

  Thomas hung up, accepting the metal trash bin Kerrigan offered him to hold all his toys. “Missed one in the dressing room. Right. Well, things to do. Goodnight.”

  Thomas took off at a nice clip, making it really hard to keep her composure when she heard him swear under his breath from the next room.

  “Oh, sod you! What the bloody hell is it doing up there?”

  The door to the suite slammed shut a few seconds later, and Maksim took one hand out of his pocket in order to point at the floor in front of him.

  Kerrigan took her time, feeling her temperature rise with every click of her heels on the marble floors. By the time she crossed the room to him, her inner thighs were slick with arousal.