To Tempt a Witch to Sin

by Nadine Mutas

  Hazel heaved a sigh. “Believe me, I’m not happy about this either. Knowing the witches I’m sitting down with on the council voted to hunt down Lily not too long ago makes me want to curse each and every one of them with an incurable case of diarrhea—”

  Merle spit out the sip of water she just took, and giggled.

  “—but we can’t permanently bar half of the witch community from our leading body and expect the rest of the witches to fall in line with our agenda and close ranks around us when the time comes to fend off whatever other ancient beasts are awakening. Not to mention other gods…”

  Merle grimaced and shifted her weight on her chair.

  “We need to bring the former Draconian witches back into the fold,” Hazel continued. “And to achieve that, we must be able to let go of the past. If we hold on to our grudges here, we won’t be ready for any outside threats. By the time the next god decides to stroll in here with another monster, we won’t be any help to Arawn in the fight—because we’ll have killed each other settling scores.”

  Merle clenched her jaw and looked to the side. “I hate it when you make sense.”

  Hazel gave her a weary smile. “It’s easier to cling to the need for vengeance than it is to figure out how to use diplomacy to achieve at least some political progress.”

  The gods knew she’d rather have punished the former Draconian witches in a way that was a lot more fitting to the severity of their crimes against the rest of the witch community… Her own need for revenge still burned in her blood, and her heart thundered with rage just thinking about it. And yet…rage and lust for revenge rarely made the best advisors when it came to leading a community, and certainly not when the overall survival of that community hinged on its ability to fight together—and not each other.

  “Right.” Merle pressed her mouth into a tight line. “It just seems so unfair to give the former Draconians amnesty and move on when we lost good witches to their fanaticism.”

  Hazel’s heart stung at the thought of Hanna Roth, one of the witches she’d been friends with for years, who died in the final battle between Draconians and Aequitas. Hanna was one of a handful of witches who lost their lives during the conflict stirred up by Juneau Laroche and her followers. One of several lights forever extinguished.

  “And the Draconians had to bury a few of their own, too,” she reminded Merle, swallowing her grief. “All of us suffered losses, and the fact that the Draconians started the war notwithstanding, if we keep throwing our dead in each others’ faces and insist on ever more retribution, we’ll end up throwing spells at each other again before we—”

  The door to the adjacent living room opened—again—and in sauntered Tallak. Hazel’s pulse sped up—much to her consternation—her eyes glued to the way his scuffed jeans hugged his hips and butt… Said butt had played a prominent role in her fantasies over the past months, what with the way her hands still remembered what it felt like to grab on and feel the muscles flexing.

  Heat flushed her face as memories of one stolen, inappropriate, and entirely secret moment in Faerie flooded her mind. No one knew. Not Merle, not Lily, not even those with whom Hazel and Tallak had traveled back from Faerie after they found Basil and Rose. If there was one thing Tallak and Hazel readily agreed on it was the vow that “what happened in Faerie stays in Faerie.”

  Tell that to my unruly libido… Just being in the same room with him made her body hypersensitive, let her heartbeat throb in delicate parts, yearning for another taste of him.

  Ridiculous. Behaving like an addict who desperately fought the urge for a fix. How unbecoming. She was an adult witch in control of powerful magic, not a teenage girl overwhelmed by hormones. Lusting after the biological father of her adopted son heralded nothing but trouble, especially considering who—and what—that father was.

  She was not going to fall prey to the animal magnetism of a demon who slaughtered an entire room full of fae in an unhinged rage.

  In that moment, Tallak glanced over, and their eyes met in a searing flash. His expression darkened, his upper lip curled, and he couldn’t have looked more disgusted if he’d caught sight of a puddle of puke. The unbidden desire sizzling in her veins fizzed out, washed away by a wave of bitter irritation.

  Just as well. A good reminder of why her attraction to him could never, ever be acted upon, why she had to get her wayward hormones under control again. He was the most cantankerous, disdainful male she’d met since she’d cut herself on the shards of her shattered marriage, and—by the gods—she’d sworn never to let any man close to her again who looked at her with anything less than the respect she deserved.

  Her walls up and hardened once more, her unhealthy craving for an off-limits demon stuffed inside a fortified box deep inside her, she lifted her chin as Tallak opened a cupboard and took out a bag of tortilla chips.

  “Are you comfortable raiding my kitchen?” she asked. “Would you like a helping of salsa to go along with your lack of manners?”

  Tallak stopped—and her heart did an annoying pause-and-flip in sync with that motion—scrunched up his forehead as if pondering, and said, “We still have the cheese dip, so, nope. But what I’ve been wondering…if you had adopted another boy, would you have called him Oregano, or Thyme?”

  Hazel narrowed her eyes at him, and the air crackled with the charge of her magic. “Sage,” she replied coolly.

  He bared his teeth and stalked out of the kitchen, muttering something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like, “Who the fuck names their kids after herbs?”

  As soon as the door closed behind him, Merle cleared her throat. Hazel mentally shook herself and focused on her fellow witch again.

  “Are you two going to get this cleared up soon?” Merle asked.

  “There’s nothing there to be cleared.” Hazel shrugged. “He hates the fact I named his son Basil, and I don’t care.”

  Merle rolled her eyes. “I mean this tension between you. I could cut it with a knife, it’s so thick. So, are you two going to have angry-sex and get this out of the way so all of us can breathe freely again while in your presence, or are you going to keep pretending there’s nothing between you?”

  “I have many responsibilities,” she replied, picking at stray thread on her cardigan, “but maintaining good air quality around here is not one of them.”

  “Gods.” Merle rubbed her forehead with one hand.

  Hazel opted for a change of subject. “I wonder what Sophie wants.”

  The middle-aged daughter of Juneau Laroche was the de facto leader of the family after Merle bound Juneau in the Shadows during the Baldwin House Battle, which had decided the war between the two witch factions in favor of the Aequitas. Sophie had now petitioned the Elders for a formal hearing, and the meeting where she was to plead her case was set for tomorrow.

  “I’m sure it’s about her status.” Merle shrugged. “Can’t imagine she’s happy about not being the official head of her family, or an Elder.”

  Usually, the title of head of family passed from the oldest witch in a family to the next-oldest one upon her death, and the new head of family could then claim her place among the Elders of the witch community in a special ritual. In the case of the Laroches, there was a very unusual problem, which had prevented the title of head of family from passing from Juneau to Sophie, who was the next in line: Juneau was not dead.

  By being bound in the Shadows, Juneau was technically still alive—and could be brought back, albeit only by Merle—and thus the transfer of her title hadn’t been triggered. Which left Sophie in the uncomfortable position of having to lead her family without actually getting the title, the amount of magic that went along with it, or the privilege of becoming an Elder.

  “And as long as Juneau stays in the Shadows,” Hazel mused, “the Laroches will be without a head of family and representation among us Elders.”

  “Serves them right.” Merle’s blue eyes bore a hard glint. “They all backed Juneau and what she did. They
can rot without representation forever, for all I care.”

  “As much as I sympathize with that sentiment, I fear this has the potential to turn into a messy problem for us. It’s quite possible we’ll have to consider bringing Juneau back.”

  And seeing as it was Merle who held the power over how to release Juneau from the Shadows, it would likely take a fight to get to that point…

  The younger witch proved Hazel’s assumption when she crossed her arms again and glared at her. “Over my dead body.”

  Hazel grimaced. “Let’s hope we won’t get to—”

  Laughter spilled over from the living room. The sound—two male voices, one of which licked over her skin like a physical caress, raised the hairs on her arms, and made her shiver oh-so-good, much to her chagrin—was accompanied by faint noises from whatever game Tallak and Basil were playing. Basil whooped and hollered, laughed again, and her heart squeezed at the knowledge he was happy.

  This man she’d raised from when he’d been laid in her arms as a newborn, whom she’d loved like her own from the very beginning—who now, for the first time, had a real father who loved him unconditionally, who was actually there for him. Not like Robert, her late husband, whose unconfirmed—even if true—suspicion that Basil wasn’t his had led him to treat the boy like an unwanted burden.

  As much as she disliked Tallak, she couldn’t help being glad he found Basil, and a piece of her heart melted—quite irritatingly so—at the way the demon doted on his son. He spent time with him, listening, talking, laughing with him, bonding in a way that gave Basil the father-son relationship he’d always yearned for. Tallak butchered an entire court of fae for Basil, and there was not a single sliver of doubt in her that he’d wipe out all of Faerie and beyond to keep Basil safe.

  A mother had to admire that sort of brutal devotion to one’s offspring.

  But any admiring would be done secretly, and from afar. She’d be darned if she ever let Tallak know how much his love for Basil meant to her, lest that pesky demon get any more ammunition against her. He was snarly and territorial enough, and barely accepted her as Basil’s adoptive mother, as irrational as that was.

  And, above all, she could not let him know how he affected her. The razor-sharp vulnerability of it would hand him way too much power over her. The last time she’d given a man that sort of edge, she’d ended up in a marriage that bloodied her soul.

  Revisiting that stolen moment in the woods of Faerie while she lay awake in her empty bed would have to suffice, and any fantasies of an encore with Tallak would remain her hidden, guilty pleasure.

  Chapter 26

  One of these days, I’ll either kiss him or kill him.

  Hazel Murray grimaced and closed her eyes to block out the visual of the very male for which she harbored conflicting impulses—who currently strolled over to the fridge in her family’s kitchen. She’d always prided herself on being levelheaded and composed. She’d survived an emotionally abusive marriage and fought demons without losing her cool. She was the reasonable one in the family.

  So why the hodgepodge did she lose all focus as soon Tallak sauntered into a room, suffusing the air with his devil-may-care attitude, looking far too appealing for a demon, with his summer-tan skin, his blond hair shining like polished gold, amber eyes with razor-sharp intelligence, and lazy tension vibrating about his lean form…

  Snap.

  Hazel startled at the sound, blinked at the fellow witch sitting across the table from her in the breakfast nook.

  “Earth to Hazel,” Merle said, lowering her hand from where she’d just snapped her fingers in front of Hazel’s face. Her sky-blue eyes were narrowed, her ginger hair fastened into a ponytail.

  “Sorry, what?” Hazel glanced back at that infuriatingly distracting demon, who now walked out of the kitchen, two beer bottles in hand. He and Basil, his adult son—whom Hazel had raised as her own while Tallak languished in a fae dungeon—were enjoying some quality time over video games in the adjacent living room. Only once Tallak was out of view did she focus on Merle again.

  “Did you hear what I was saying?” Merle asked.

  “Of course,” Hazel lied.

  “So you agree?”

  Hazel bit her lip. “Well…”

  Merle raised a brow and crossed her arms over her rounded belly. Now five months along, the younger witch’s pregnancy definitely showed. “Uh-huh.”

  “Okay, I wasn’t listening.” Hazel sighed and rubbed her chin. “I just have a lot on my mind…”

  “Um-hmm. A lot of someone.”

  Clearing her throat, Hazel opted to ignore that comment. “So what were you saying?”

  With a deep breath, Merle said, “Just that I think it’s absurd we let the former Draconian Elders back on the council, with full voting rights.”

  The air crackled around the younger witch, who was the same age as Hazel’s own daughters, Lily and Rose. Since Merle had become head of her family, however, and claimed her place among the Elders of the witch community, Hazel had come to regard her more as a friend on equal footing than a daughter by anything but blood. Over the past year, they sure went through enough together, fighting side by side as fellow Elder witches, each carrying the responsibility for their family’s magic on their shoulders, that Hazel now conferred with Merle in a way she usually did with witches her own age.

  “I understand your frustration,” she now said to the young head of the MacKenna line. “But we’ve been through this. We couldn’t leave them under house arrest and restricted in their magic use indefinitely.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Merle regarded her finger nails. “Seems totally fine to me.”

  “Not if we want to have any chance of moving on and reuniting the witch community.” She shot Merle a stern look. “And I mean really reuniting. With what Maeve told you is heading our way, we can’t afford to stay splintered. You know that, Merle.”

  “I don’t have to like it,” she grumbled.

  Hazel heaved a sigh. “Believe me, I’m not happy about this either. Knowing the witches I’m sitting down with on the council voted to hunt down Lily not too long ago makes me want to curse each and every one of them with an incurable case of diarrhea—”

  Merle spit out the sip of water she just took, and giggled.

  “—but we can’t permanently bar half of the witch community from our leading body and expect the rest of the witches to fall in line with our agenda and close ranks around us when the time comes to fend off whatever other ancient beasts are awakening. Not to mention other gods…”

  Merle grimaced and shifted her weight on her chair.

  “We need to bring the former Draconian witches back into the fold,” Hazel continued. “And to achieve that, we must be able to let go of the past. If we hold on to our grudges here, we won’t be ready for any outside threats. By the time the next god decides to stroll in here with another monster, we won’t be any help to Arawn in the fight—because we’ll have killed each other settling scores.”

  Merle clenched her jaw and looked to the side. “I hate it when you make sense.”

  Hazel gave her a weary smile. “It’s easier to cling to the need for vengeance than it is to figure out how to use diplomacy to achieve at least some political progress.”

  The gods knew she’d rather have punished the former Draconian witches in a way that was a lot more fitting to the severity of their crimes against the rest of the witch community… Her own need for revenge still burned in her blood, and her heart thundered with rage just thinking about it. And yet…rage and lust for revenge rarely made the best advisors when it came to leading a community, and certainly not when the overall survival of that community hinged on its ability to fight together—and not each other.

  “Right.” Merle pressed her mouth into a tight line. “It just seems so unfair to give the former Draconians amnesty and move on when we lost good witches to their fanaticism.”

  Hazel’s heart stung at the thought of Hanna Roth, one of t
he witches she’d been friends with for years, who died in the final battle between Draconians and Aequitas. Hanna was one of a handful of witches who lost their lives during the conflict stirred up by Juneau Laroche and her followers. One of several lights forever extinguished.

  “And the Draconians had to bury a few of their own, too,” she reminded Merle, swallowing her grief. “All of us suffered losses, and the fact that the Draconians started the war notwithstanding, if we keep throwing our dead in each others’ faces and insist on ever more retribution, we’ll end up throwing spells at each other again before we—”

  The door to the adjacent living room opened—again—and in sauntered Tallak. Hazel’s pulse sped up—much to her consternation—her eyes glued to the way his scuffed jeans hugged his hips and butt… Said butt had played a prominent role in her fantasies over the past months, what with the way her hands still remembered what it felt like to grab on and feel the muscles flexing.

  Heat flushed her face as memories of one stolen, inappropriate, and entirely secret moment in Faerie flooded her mind. No one knew. Not Merle, not Lily, not even those with whom Hazel and Tallak had traveled back from Faerie after they found Basil and Rose. If there was one thing Tallak and Hazel readily agreed on it was the vow that “what happened in Faerie stays in Faerie.”

  Tell that to my unruly libido… Just being in the same room with him made her body hypersensitive, let her heartbeat throb in delicate parts, yearning for another taste of him.

  Ridiculous. Behaving like an addict who desperately fought the urge for a fix. How unbecoming. She was an adult witch in control of powerful magic, not a teenage girl overwhelmed by hormones. Lusting after the biological father of her adopted son heralded nothing but trouble, especially considering who—and what—that father was.

  She was not going to fall prey to the animal magnetism of a demon who slaughtered an entire room full of fae in an unhinged rage.

  In that moment, Tallak glanced over, and their eyes met in a searing flash. His expression darkened, his upper lip curled, and he couldn’t have looked more disgusted if he’d caught sight of a puddle of puke. The unbidden desire sizzling in her veins fizzed out, washed away by a wave of bitter irritation.