Drinking Demons

by Kat Bostick

  “Mari—”

  “Dad thinks I’m dangerous.”

  “You are.” He caught her, forcing her to a standstill. “And you bear the responsibility of that.”

  “Shit, Jasper.” Mari leaned into him, hiding her face in his sternum and muffling her next words. “What if you’re stuck with me?”

  “That’s kind of the point of this wedding, isn’t it?”

  “But I’m evil.”

  “You’re not.”

  “I am!” She quieted, her voice dropping so low he barely understood when she whispered, “I wanted to hurt him.”

  “Your father?”

  “Yes. I was so angry at him, I didn’t even realize I was drawing. I don’t know any spells that incinerate people, but I don’t know that I can’t do it, either.” She chewed her lip so hard the blood drained from it. “I feel like I’m a ticking bomb and it’s only a matter of time before I hurt someone.”

  “Some prophecies are self-fulfilling, don’t you think?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If your grandmother never told you about your father’s dream and his expectations for who you would become, what do you think would have happened?”

  Mari stilled, her mind rushing through memories of the last six months. “Maybe I wouldn’t have tried to leave the pack. I thought you were the beasts at my back and if I got away from you, I couldn’t hurt you.” She put a hand up before he could answer her thought. “But that doesn’t matter because the past already happened. I killed Lyse with that dagger. I can’t undo that.”

  “And you can’t assume that changed you.”

  “I know it changed me.” That despairing feeling that had been trickling from her for weeks suddenly became clear. Jasper thought Mari was anxious about him. Obviously, there was much more going on in that overactive brain of hers than she was letting on.

  “You’re strong, Mari.” He took her hand again, rubbing away the chill. “And you always know what’s right.”

  “I don’t know if I do.”

  “When it’s important, you know.”

  Jasper pushed her in the direction of the house, not willing to let her wallow outside any longer. They were halfway back to the porch when she pulled at his forearm, eyes beseeching. “Don’t let me hurt you. You or your family. If I…if something is wrong with me, don’t let me hurt anyone.”

  “You won’t hurt anyone.”

  “Promise me, Jasper.”

  He wasn’t entirely sure what she was asking for, but he knew he couldn’t keep a promise that meant he would have to hurt her. “Promises are as fleeting as sunrises to a wolf, honeysuckle.”

  “Jasper—”

  Two fingers pressed to her lips, he repeated the words she spoke to him in the darkest moment of his life. “You won’t hurt me.”

  “But—”

  He squeezed the space between her hips and ribs until she squealed. “Come back inside. Have a glass of champagne. Pretend you don’t want to cut your ears off every minute that you have to listen to your stepmother talk. And tomorrow, put on that sparkly dress I wasn’t supposed to see and marry me. Everything will be better once this is over. Trust me.”

  Indignation replaced anguish. “You looked at my dress?”

  “I wouldn’t have been tempted if you didn’t act like it was such a big secret.”

  “Jasper! That’s bad luck!”

  “What could possibly go wrong?” He grinned, dodging the spray of snow she scooped up with her hand and tackling her backward. She shrieked as snow wet the back of her neck and tumbled into her shirt.

  Much later, in one of those too silent moments that sleepless nights bring about, Jasper would wonder if perhaps he’d tempted fate with that question. If maybe their plans wouldn’t have unraveled like a loose thread if only he hadn’t spoken those five words beneath the starlit sky.

  Chapter 18

  Deak

  Drinks continued to pour in Mari and Jasper’s absence. Frilly finger food rapidly disappeared from flashy serving platters. A miasma of perfume, body lotions, makeup, and God knew what else thickened the air until Deak felt like he was swallowing the disgusting stuff. Even the hands on the antique grandfather clock that was just visible through the doorway to Charlie’s office seemed to be moving slower as it inched through the liquifying air.

  And it wasn’t even time for dinner yet.

  Why Mari and Jasper felt the need to get married when they were already mated, Deak didn’t know. A wedding was a tedious ceremony with half a hundred rules and nothing to hold the union it celebrated accountable but a handful of words. Any religion associated with what should have been a divine contract between two people was eroded and meaningless. It wasn’t exactly shocking when humans and magic folk alike broke their vows.

  Neither the mundane or their spell wielding counterparts could be trusted. Their word meant nothing. A werewolf, at least, was bound to his words by more than a ceremony and an overpriced dress. He couldn’t betray his mate if he wanted to. And as far as Deak knew, no wolf wanted to. Ever. It went against their nature to disrupt that sacred bond.

  Perhaps that wasn’t the same for Mari and that was why she wanted a marriage. She was a witch, after all, and that might mean she felt nothing of the bond that linked her and Jasper. Hard to believe that when Deak and every other member of the pack could feel it between them, as tangible as if they each held one end of a rope. It would be a terrible pity for Jasper if that were the case. Loyalty was clearly not a trait exhibited by Mari’s role models.

  If her father were a wolf, he wouldn’t be jealously eyeing the cloying blonde that leaned over the kitchen island to murmur something to Teal. He would be alone. Forever. That was the fate of a wolf who lost his mate. And that was also why many male wolves found mating so unappealing.

  Nothing was as unappealing as his current predicament, he thought bitterly. Twice Mari’s stepmother had approached him, two champagne glasses in hand, and twice he’d given her the stink-eye until she walked away. Charlie was either becoming reckless as he aged or he was bending over backwards to please Mari because he felt guilty for nearly getting her killed. There was no other logical explanation for why he would risk their safety by letting humans into their home. By letting a wizard into their home. Clueless or not, Mari’s father was a liability.

  And that stepmother wasn’t far behind. Deak hadn’t been downstairs for two minutes before he caught her “looking for the bathroom,” in Charlie’s office. She was either nosy or a thief. Both were unacceptable as far as he was concerned.

  These damn people were all over the place with their emotions, too. The most annoying part of being a werewolf was reading a room too well. A headache was quickly building in the front of Deak’s skull. Was it the fake scent of sugar that formed clouds around the three human women in the room—why the fuck did women insist on smelling like dessert?—or was it the Goddamned misery?

  Mari’s father was such an overwhelming combination of furious and anxious that his face was flushing. Her short friend with the grey hair was lonely in a room full of people. The stepsister was dripping with envy. And her stepmother? The woman felt wrong. That was the only way he could describe it. Each time Deak caught her eyes wandering over him, peeking at the glass of water in his hand, he felt dirty in a way that penetrated his skin.

  What was wrong with them? Weren’t people supposed to get whipped up and excited about weddings?

  Coralee certainly was. Jesus, if her grin got any wider she was going to permanently stretch her face out. Looked like Deak had officially lost the war. His only ally was on Mari’s side. Cora still acted the venomous part but it was posturing and nothing more. She liked Mari. The whole pack liked Mari.

  It wasn’t that Deak didn’t like her. Objectively, she was a nice person. She was good to his brother. Willing to risk her life to protect him, even. But she was a witch and Deak’s finite experience with witches left him scarred—mentally and physically—and incapable of
trusting their kind.

  When it really came down to it, Deak didn’t trust anyone outside of his pack. He and Jasper were the same in that way. Which was another reason he just couldn’t understand this whole wedding debacle. Jasper was sacrificing their communal space, letting strangers into their home, simply to please Mari.

  Mate or not, Deak would never make that kind of concession.

  “It’s going to start raining in here if your mood gets any darker.” Great. Why him of all people? Mari was flushed from cold, the front of her shirt wet for reasons Deak didn’t want to know. “And I think you have to be tall to pull off the ‘tall, dark, and handsome’ thing.” Her fingers drummed over her bottom lip. “Ooh, sorry. I didn’t think I said that out loud. At least I called you handsome, right?”

  “Did you need something?”

  She sipped from a flute of champagne, made a face, then sipped again. “I know you’re not happy about having my family here.”

  “What gave it away?”

  “I just wanted to say…” More sipping. “Sorry. I wanted to say sorry. This was a bad idea.”

  “Yeah, it was.”

  Mari stood quietly beside him, watching the rest of the pack play at being normal. Charlie even had them each arrive separately, introducing themselves one by one. As if that would make it less noticeable that they were each adults living under the same roof, Charlie’s children that bore no resemblance to him. Yeah, Deak already heard Mari’s father muttering about it more than once.

  Dammit, where was Jasper? Wasn’t he supposed to be orbiting her like a moon?

  A wave of goosebumps rolled down his arms as the temperature seemed to drop. Beside him, Mari stiffened. It was almost imperceptible, probably something an ordinary person wouldn’t have noticed. Deak reacted despite himself, searching the room for whatever was making him feel watched. He easily found a set of bleary blue eyes. They were deep set over the shallow cheeks of a woman who clearly wore too much makeup and drank too much alcohol.

  Deak wasn’t happy with any of their guests, but there was something about Veronica that just didn’t sit well with him. She spent the entire evening with a glass of some alcoholic beverage in her hand. Her intoxication was obvious by the way her lips wobbled into a clumsy smile. That smile sharpened, turning calculating, when it pointed in Mari’s direction.

  “Do you feel it too?” He murmured, his lips barely moving.

  “Yes.” Mari answered briskly. “It’s not…it’s not me?”

  “It’s her.” Deak motioned with the side of his head subtly, like he was turning to glance at Mari. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “Veronica? Nothing, that I know of. Besides she has a bad attitude and she’s an alcoholic.”

  The longer Veronica watched them, the more tempted he was to break into a snarl. “I don’t like it. It’s not right.”

  “I think she’s just wasted.” She didn’t sound like she believed her own words.

  “Where’s Jasper?”

  “He went to change his clothes.”

  Deak wrinkled his nose. “I really don’t want to know.”

  “Relax, prude.” She bumped his shoulder with hers, then jolted when she realized who he was and what she was doing. Oddly, Deak didn’t bristle the way he expected himself to. “It was a snowball fight.”

  “Is that what the kids are calling it these days?” Cash shoved between them, taking Mari’s empty glass and replacing it with a full one. “Your highness.”

  She snorted. “Are you implying that I’m spoiled?”

  “Coralee said we’re supposed to pamper the bride.”

  “Please, don’t.” She shook her head.

  Cash and Mari fell into one of the playful verbal spats that were becoming commonplace for them and Deak took it as his cue to leave. He was halfway to the backdoor, eager to step outside and breathe the crisp winter air instead of the suffocating cloud in the kitchen, when instinct reared up inside of him. Pausing to debate with himself, he finally looked over his shoulder and said, “Mari.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t let her catch you alone.” Deak didn’t know why that was important, only that it was. The instincts of the wolf were never wrong. It was the man’s interpretation of them that sometimes missed the mark. His limbs tingled the way they did as a thunderstorm rolled in, his body anticipating something that his mind didn’t understand.

  Mari’s hazel eyes brightened, the amber coming alive. In that moment, Deak would have believed it if someone told him that she was a wolf—kin. But she was not. Just because they shared a drop of blood from countless generations before didn’t make them the same.

  Still, the understanding that passed between them as their gazes steadied onto each other was the kind that only pack shared. She nodded softly. By the way she touched her temple, he knew her brain was struggling to understand exactly what it was that had her hackles raised.

  Deak ducked out the back door before he could follow his current thought any further down its trail. The cold pounced at him as he shut the door, running thousands of icy fingers over him in an attempt to penetrate his skin and enter his blood, grow frost on his organs, solidify his heart. Even in the cleansing winter breeze, he had the sensation that those hands did not belong solely to the cold. Something pushed at him lightly, carefully, testing his weaknesses. It was something much hungrier than the fanged northern air, something more heinous.

  Breath eased from his lungs in great puffs. This was a familiar darkness, a sticky, inky presence that he’d felt glimmers of earlier this year. And earlier than that too. Much, much earlier. In the dawn of his life as the creature that he was. Something insidious was out there, hoping for an opportunity to strike.

  Or, he thought with a sinking feeling, something was in there, knowing that an opportunity was coming.

  Chapter 19

  Mari

  Mari’s stomach growled as she slipped down the stairs. She’d slept later than she should, which was completely and absolutely Jasper’s fault. Well, Cash took some of the blame too because she wouldn’t have thrown tradition out the window and spent the night with Jasper if she hadn’t been “in her cups,” as Cash would say. At least she didn’t have a hangover.

  The scent of bacon lured her down the stairs, making her momentarily forget that Jasper’s family wasn’t the only one attending their wedding today. Veronica’s voice felt too sharp for the early morning as it carried through the kitchen. She prattled on and on as eggs were whisked and pans were shifted on the stove. The air in the room when Mari walked in wasn’t awkward, but it was clear both Charlie and Clem were tense. How long had Veronica been down here drinking coffee and pestering them?

  “Good morning,” Charlie murmured, the expression on his face unreadable.

  Clem was cheerier, lifting her coffee mug and announcing, “Today is the day!”

  “Mari, you’re up late. Aren’t you worried you won’t have time to get ready? Do you have a stylist coming?” Veronica piped up, her smile brittle.

  Cora made a show of untying her frilly apron and tossing it onto the kitchen island. “I’m her stylist.”

  “This is a once in a lifetime event. Don’t you think it would be better to hire a professional?”

  Mari ignored the comment, allowing Coralee to respond with one of her catty remarks. Instead she snagged a piece of bacon and scarfed it in two bites. “Damn, Charlie. You do bacon right.”

  “Oh, Mari! You can’t eat before you put the dress on. You’ll look so bloated. I didn’t have anything but black coffee on my wedding day.”