I crossed my arms over my chest. “What do you propose, then?”
She grinned. “We stay here. My apartment is warded, and I have a spare bedroom you can stay in, so you have more privacy. There’s a food market right around the corner, and a greenhouse on the roof. We could do well here. Fix your sister. Figure out your demon problem,” she mused. That was definitely one way to put it.
I mulled over her offer, taking a sweeping look of the apartment.
“I’ll need to put in some added security measures—”
“Done,” she agreed readily.
“No more guests,” I added. She didn’t so readily agree to that one.
“Barry is the only person I have over,” she said, twisting the key chain on her finger.
“Don’t care. No guests if Bree is going to be here. Period. You can find somewhere else to fuck—”
“It’s not like that,” she said quickly, her cheeks turning a shade pinker.
I grinned, and maybe it was a little cruel, but after all her poking at me, it wasn’t undeserved. “Oh? Does he know that?” I lifted an eyebrow, and she narrowed her eyes.
“Fine,” she said through thin lips. “No guests. Not even Barry.”
She extended her pinky, and I looked at it dubiously.
“What is that?”
“A pinky promise.”
“What are we five now?” I said. She dropped her hand.
“And here I thought you might like it. Break the promise and you get to break their pinky.”
Well, when she put it that way, I could see the appeal.
Still, I extended my hand and we shook. A surprisingly easy truce forming. A partnership. One built on scattered trust and hard truths.
“Just remember—”
“Yeah, yeah, you’ll shoot me if I betray you,” she said with a wry smile.
I nodded, fighting another grin that was threatening to break through. That wouldn’t do. Nope. Couldn’t have her knowing that I actually liked her.
“I guess that covers it,” I said.
“Come on. Grab a coat and we can head out to get your sister.”
I selected a black one that was a little snug and only zipped up to my boobs. I was going to need to get more clothes. Preferably ones that fit.
We stepped out of her apartment and she locked the door behind us with a wiggle of her fingers, then muttered a spell under her breath. Symbols of protection flared on the white-paned door, then faded.
There was only one other door in the hall, other than the elevator. I eyed it as we passed. “Señora Rosara,” Nathalie said, filling in my unasked question. We stepped into the elevator and it closed with a ding. “She owns the shop below us and shares the greenhouse. Try not to be yourself when you meet her. She’s crotchety enough as it is.” I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant. The doors opened into a place of curiosities.
Incense burned and knickknacks lined the shelves. Dolls that looked suspiciously like voodoo. Orbs that glowed with bits of magic. Vials that contained everything from toenail clippings to eyeballs. I followed behind Nathalie as she maneuvered her way through aisles of junk. We were near the door when a croak called out, “Girl, is that you?”
“Good afternoon, Señora. This is my friend, Piper. She’ll be staying with me for a while.” While Nathalie’s voice was chipper, the sour-faced woman that stepped out from behind a hanging tapestry was anything but.
She wore different patterns of black on her shirt and blouse. Her hair was tied up in a makeshift turban. She had hard brown eyes and caramel skin that had seen better days. Giant gold hoops hung from her ears, and every finger had at least one ring on it.
The woman took one raking glance at me, and said, “She looks like trouble.”
“You think that about everyone,” Nathalie said lightly, unoffended.
“Hmm,” the old woman groused. “She gets one chance. Bring problems to my door, and I’ll turn you into a cat.”
As if on cue, a loud howl came from the other side of the store. A white cat darted through the front of the shop, and an even larger fat orange tabby chased after it.
I looked from the felines to the woman I was now fairly certain was a witch. She smiled in a way that left little doubt that she would do exactly as she said.
“There won’t be any need for that,” Nathalie said calmly. “Piper will be a model roommate. Won’t you?” She directed the question at me.
“Yes,” I said. The witch appraised me again.
“Mhmm. We’ll see. Just remember, you’d make a fine Maine Coon if you aren’t.”
She turned her back and swept aside the tapestry, shuffling away.
Nathalie grabbed my arm and pulled me through the front door. A bell tinkled as we left, then rattled as a sharp wind swept by, its icy chill slapping me in the cheeks.
“Lovely neighbor you have there.”
“She’s an acquired taste,” Nathalie said. I snorted.
“Like tequila.”
She shrugged. “Señora Rosara grew up in a different time. Her husband and son died in the Magic Wars. It’s made her a bit sharp around the edges. Don’t piss her off and she won’t have a reason to turn you into anything.”
“Hmm,” I hummed, not sure I was liking the idea of staying at her apartment quite as much. Then again, a crochety old lady was good at keeping the vandals away. “How’d you end up living with her?”
Nathalie tucked her hands in her pockets as we walked down the sidewalk. It was a nice day. Cold, but not wet or cloudy. The winds were a pain, but the sun helped warm the chill.
“I never cared for witch society. The schmoozing, the parties, all of it. Just wasn’t me. My parents already regarded me as a failure of a daughter when they asked me to join the Antares Coven. My condition was that I got to move out. Never specified where. I approached Señora Rosara because she’s a hermit and they all think she’s crazy.” She smiled as she recalled the memory.
“You wanted a buffer between you and your family.”
“Pretty much.” She shrugged. “Besides, she’s not that bad. She likes Barry. He brings her lemon tarts when he comes over.”
I thought of the fae-witch and the way he looked at Nathalie. I’m sure he did bring tarts to make the old lady like him.
Nathalie came to a stop beside me and pulled out the keys. “We’re still a ways from the car,” I started. She hit a button, and the silver beauty beside us chirped in response.
“You can drive?” I demanded, thinking back on the conversation we had in my beat-up old Honda before we got captured by Lucifer.
“Never said I couldn’t,” she smirked. “You assumed, and I didn’t correct you.”
“I knew you were a Le Fay, but the apartment, the car—have anything else you’d like to tell me about? Maybe a hidden mansion somewhere, or a helicopter?”
Nathalie laughed as she opened the driver door. I walked around to the side and climbed in. How she had a car, and not just any car, but a nice one with a name I didn’t recognize—and it wasn’t damaged—was beyond me.
“No mansion or helicopters, I’m afraid. Although, my family does own a nice place in the mountains of Tennessee. It used to be a ski resort, but after the Magic Wars, business wasn’t exactly booming, so they shut it down. Now they only pop in for secret coven business and stuff.” She shrugged as I settled onto the leather interior. I eyed the fancy dashboard, my incredulity rising.
“So your family pays for all this?”
“I didn’t say that,” she replied, a bit of ice in her tone.
“Do they?”
“No,” she said. “I’m independently wealthy.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Independently wealthy? You? With your weird magic?”
“Yup,” she said, popping the p.
“I’m not buying it,” I said.
“That’s nice. I’m rich, and it’s my money. Whether or not you believe me is your problem.” She smiled with saccharine sweetness that made me want to gag.<
br />
“I can’t believe you let me pay for breakfast.”
“Well, as you like to say, you’re an asshole. You kidnapped me. The least you could do was buy me breakfast after leaving me tied to a chair for a day and a half and making me sick.” She said it both amused and not. A tiny inkling of guilt went through me, but I pushed it down.
“I didn’t know you wouldn’t kill me,” I pointed out.
“Mhmm,” she hummed, pressing a button. The engine started, but it was only a whisper of a thing. Not the loud churn I was used to. She eased out of the spot and onto the mostly empty road.
“How do you keep this thing from getting robbed or broken into?”
She flashed me a look like I was dense. It occurred to me as she said it. “Magic.”
“You don’t have a cloak on it.”
“Don’t need one,” she said, turning onto the highway. We were closer to the cabin than I realized. I’d parked further away. “I got Barry to ward it, same as the apartment.”
“I don’t get it,” I said, leaning back and to the side. “You can do stuff like you did in the pit with Dara, and summon the wind without speaking, but you can’t ward?”
Nathalie sighed. “As you like to remind me, my magic is weird. Basic spells are hard, and mine don’t often work. If someone comes at me, I can defend myself. Sort of. Not even that’s consistent.” She shrugged.
“And the wind?” I prompted.
“I can sense it. Little threads of magic in the air. I wave my fingers and move it around harmlessly. What I did in the park and at the casino was about the extent of what I can do there.”
I stared at the skyline as she drove. “You bluff an awful lot for that to be the case.”
“I gotta. You know how it is. People will jack you around if they know they can. A little wiggle of my fingers, though, and most of them back off because they think I’m a lot more powerful than I am. It’s when they know I’m not that I land myself in trouble.” Her knuckles tightened on the steering wheel, and I couldn’t tell what she was thinking, but I knew her mind had gone somewhere dark. Where they knew what she was, and she couldn’t get out of it.
“You need to learn a more reliable way of keeping yourself alive,” I said eventually.
“What? Like shooting?”
“If you wanted. I could teach you.” I shrugged my left shoulder slightly, matching my poor attempt at offering.
Nathalie chuckled. “No offense, but you don’t seem like the teaching type. I think I’ll stick to bluffing while you blow everyone’s brains out.”
I rested my arm on the side of the door and curled it up to put the back of my hand under my chin. “That’s fair. You’d probably be a shitty shot with your shaky hands.”
Something whacked into my arm. I tilted my head to see Nathalie glaring at me.
“You’re an asshole.”
“If you’re only just now realizing this, I’m going to question how smart you really are. Eidetic memory or not.”
She groaned. “We’re going to have to work on that too.”
“What?”
“You being a dick,” she muttered. I couldn’t help myself as I let out a laugh. She turned off the highway, following the route to the cabin.
“I hate to break it to you, but that’s not likely to change,” I said, feeling more relaxed than I had in a long time.
“We’ll see about that,” she said, like I’d just issued a challenge that she had every intention of winning. The bumps of turning off pavement and onto a dirt road brought our conversation to a halt. I watched as she guided the car through the gap in the trees and all the way up to the edge of the house.
It didn’t look any different than when we’d left it.
“I’m going to go grab Bree and put her in the back,” I said, getting out of the car.
“Yup, you do that. I’ll just sit here in the nice warm car instead of freezing my ass off,” she called, half of it muffled by the sound of the door shutting.
I rolled my eyes as I climbed the steps to the cabin. I was so distracted by Nathalie that I almost didn’t notice the slight crack in the door. It wasn’t completely closed.
And I knew without a shadow of doubt that I had closed it when we left.
My heartbeat pulsed in my head.
My fingers brushed against the rough wood, and I pushed softly. The door swung open because it wasn’t latched.
I stepped inside.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The beat became a roar. It was the only thing that grounded me when I looked at the couch . . . because she was gone.
Bree was gone.
My legs started to work before my brain caught up. I ran at it, shoving the coffee table aside. I threw the cushions and checked the dining room and kitchen.
All the while, the word gone echoed in my mind, replacing the thumping sound.
I bolted down the hall and threw open the door to both the rooms and bathroom. I tore through them. I looked in the closets and under the bed like I was checking for the boogeyman. But they weren’t here, and neither was she.
I went back into the living room and began to pace.
Think, I told myself. Who could have taken her?
Another thought entered my mind. Was it possible that after all these years, she just woke up? Did I dare hope?
“Piper,” the sound of my name jerked me back to reality. I stopped pacing and turned.
The living room was destroyed, though I didn’t remember doing it. I’d flipped the couch and flung the cushions everywhere. The coffee table was knocked onto its side.
Nathalie stood beside it.
In her fingers was a piece of paper.
She extended it to me wordlessly.
I took it. The way she stared at me told me that whatever was written, I wasn’t going to like it.
I lowered my eyes. And then my chest squeezed, and my brands began to burn.
Piper,
You told me I had to find a different way. If chasing you doesn’t work, perhaps you’d rather chase me. Now that you’re awake, I’ll meet you at the pier in three nights’ time.
Ronan
I read the note three times before closing my fist around it. He took her. My sister. He stole her right out from under me, and I was the one that gave him the idea.
A soft touch on my shoulder made me blink. Nathalie stood in front of me.
“We’ll get her back,” she promised.
I nodded because that’s all I could bring myself to do.
The tables had turned.
Ronan hunted me like a dog, now I would hunt him.
I may not know how to kill a demon, but I knew how to catch one.
And when I did, he was going to regret ever answering my summoning.
30
Ronan
I stood in the woods, watching her from the shadows. Piper ranted and raged, but in the end, she pressed those full lips together in grim determination and straightened her spine. Committed to hunting me down.
I knew she would.
She was a hunter, after all. Perhaps not born, but a hunter all the same.
She wouldn’t be able to help herself. She would fixate on me. Obsess over every little way to get her sister back and punish me.
Little did she know, she already was.
Which is why I punished her. Well, one reason why.
I liked to watch her rage. To watch her hate. She could be cold and indifferent to the world all she wanted, but not to me.
She was still muttering my name in contempt when she stormed out of the house and back to the car. The little witch followed behind her, then paused. Her brown eyes turned a shade of gold as she scanned the forest.
I knew the moment she saw me because—despite how well she lied—she stiffened.
I smiled cruelly at the girl and she glared back.
A tense moment passed between us.
I could sense her debating telling Piper the truth.
“Nat?”
my atma called. Irritation and anger still coated her tone, though it wasn’t aimed at the witch.
I lifted an eyebrow, silently asking her what she was going to do.
Her lips pressed together. She shook her head a fraction, conveying her anger. Then with a dismissive look, she turned on her heel, and called, “Nothing. Thought I saw something in the woods. It was just a squirrel.”
If Piper weren’t so angry, she would have noticed the way the witch’s hands shook. She didn’t like lying. In fact, while she could do it, she really hated doing it to Piper.
The car doors slammed shut, and gravel churned as they pulled away. I stepped through the void, into the penthouse, content with what I’d seen.
Piper would stew for the next few days.
Bree would be safe from all the supernaturals looking for ways to get their hands on Piper.
And me?
I would begin the search for Lucifer.
Piper’s power should have wiped him from this existence, but somehow, he’d survived and was again hiding.
But I was going to find him.
And then, I was going to kill him.
31
Lucifer
I’d been wrong.
So very wrong . . .
And now I was paying for it. Magic and fire ravaged my body, leaving me a near husk of a man. A shadow of a demon. A whisper of desire, but nothing more.
The Morningstar. The Devil. The King of the Underworld.
I’d been invincible for ten thousand years.
Until her.
A ragged cough tore through me, my chest seized, and blood splattered my form. I rolled to the side, trying and failing to reach for my magic. But where there was once a vast well of power, now only drops remained.
“Shh,” Sienna said. “You need to rest. You’ll never get better if you don’t.”
Touched by Fire: Magic Wars (Demons of New Chicago Book 1) Page 20
