Love Potion: A Valentine's Day Charity Anthology

by Graceley Knox

  Soft as a summer breeze, with the faint scent of orchids, the power drifted away. Moments later, it was gone, leaving me hollow and exhausted.

  “You gave it back?” Izzah whispered. “You could have kept the spell going until it ran its course!”

  Opening my eyes, I rubbed my thumb over the back of her hand. “Keeping it for selfish reasons didn’t seem fitting for such a selfless spell.”

  Her brow furrowed, then she smiled. As she slipped the ring off her finger, flickering lights reflected on its polished surface. Together, Izzah and I looked up.

  Downtown Vancouver was dark, the orange light pollution snuffed out. A blanket of glittering stars dusted the velvet sky, and hundreds of meteors sped across it. They flashed and streaked, burning heads with blazing white tails. Undimmed by the city’s glow, falling fire rained across the sky.

  For a long minute, we watched with breathless wonder, then Izzah whispered, “Kai?”

  The falling stars reflected in her eyes, and I didn’t want to look up again. “Mm?”

  “Now that this is over …” Pulling her gaze from the celestial display, she waited a beat. “I like coffee.”

  My brain buzzed blankly, then I clued in. “I know a good coffee shop by the museum. Do you like museums?”

  Her dimples came to life. “However did you guess?”

  With a quiet laugh, I pushed to my feet and held out my hand. As she grasped it, I looked across the wrecked terrace and into the penthouse.

  The spot where Icarus had lain was empty.

  “No!” I snarled.

  Izzah twisted to follow my gaze, lost her balance, and fell onto her butt. “Go after him,” she said, wincing. “I’m too tired to keep up.”

  I hesitated.

  She waved me toward the penthouse. “I’ll be waiting right here.”

  With a quick nod, I hastened across the terrace and down the stairs into the pitch-black hallway. As I switched on my light, a thump echoed out of the foyer. A bright glow flashed through the crack between the doors, and I halted. Was Icarus right there, waiting to ambush me?

  Steps approached the door, then someone flung it open. Light flashed across the room, blinding me.

  “There you are.”

  I blinked to clear my vision. Two men in black combat gear stood inside the doors. Aaron’s hair shone vibrant red in the glare of my light, one hand planted on his hip. Ezra’s eyebrows were arched in amusement, the scar running up over his left eye and into his dark brown curls pale against his bronze skin.

  My throat bobbed but I couldn’t make a sound.

  “Oh,” Aaron exclaimed. “Look at that, Ezra. He’s actually speechless.”

  “Don’t jump to conclusions, Aaron,” Ezra said seriously. “He may have sustained a throat injury in battle.”

  Snorting, Aaron strode toward me—and only then did I notice the heap of a human being he was dragging behind him. He casually dumped Icarus at my feet. Angry red burns marked the man’s unconscious face and blood matted his grizzled hair.

  “We found this guy in the stairwell,” Aaron explained, “one level down from here.”

  “He seemed suspicious,” Ezra added, “so we brought him along.”

  “Not in the same condition we found him, though. Hope that isn’t a problem.” Aaron raised his eyebrows. “Where’s the girl? Izzah? Don’t tell me you were too busy saving the damsel to catch the bad guy.”

  Ezra tsked in mock disapproval.

  I finally found my voice. “Why are you here?”

  “It turns out,” Ezra said, stuffing his hands in his pockets and rocking back on his heels, “that the nexus at the lighthouse washed away last winter during a storm.”

  Aaron nodded. “No sooner did we get there than we turned around and came right back. Figured you might like some help.”

  “We would’ve told you the plan,” Ezra mused, “but you stopped responding again.”

  “I didn’t get any notifications.” I hesitated. “Unless my phone died …”

  They gave me smugly knowing looks. I scowled.

  “Did you recover the artifact?” Aaron asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Cool. Then you can have whatever reward the collector gives you for recovering his artifact, and Ezra and I will split the bounty for this extremely wanted rogue.” He kicked Icarus in the golden sandal.

  “Fat chance,” I growled. “Haul that sorcerer downstairs, and I’ll get Izzah.”

  “We’re leaving already?” Aaron groaned. “You do realize that, because you knocked out the power, we had to climb sixty-one flights of stairs? Now we have to go right back down?”

  “Actually,” Ezra interjected with quiet disbelief instead of amusement, “I think he did more than knock out the tower’s electricity.”

  He was peering out the windows. Aaron joined him to stare at the inky vista broken only by the fiery meteors, then they both looked questioningly at me.

  I answered with a shrug. As their expressions morphed to annoyance at my lack of explanation, I left them to stargaze and headed for the terrace to collect Izzah. The adventure was over, the damsel was safe—all in all, she hadn’t needed much saving—and the demigod …

  I glanced back one last time at the darkened city.

  The demigod’s power could return to the ancient legends where it belonged.

  Read more stories in the Guild Codex world:

  www.guildcodex.ca

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  Andromeda’s Incantation

  Most beloved in my heart, endure:

  Unbreakable, unwoundable, untouchable

  As a flame dancing among the stars

  About Annette Marie

  Annette Marie is the author of YA urban fantasy series Steel & Stone, its prequel trilogy Spell Weaver, romantic fantasy trilogy Red Winter, and sassy UF series The Guild Codex.

  Her first love is fantasy, but fast-paced adventures and tantalizing forbidden romances are her guilty pleasures. She proudly admits she has a thing for dragons, and her editor has politely inquired as to whether she intends to include them in every book.

  Annette lives in the frozen winter wasteland of Alberta, Canada (okay, it’s not quite that bad). She shares her life with her husband and their furry minion of darkness—sorry, cat—Caesar. When not writing, she can be found elbow-deep in one art project or another while blissfully ignoring all adult responsibilities.

  Chapter 1

  Jez woke with his hands bloodied, thinking, What the fuck? A red scab started from the right top of his palm and ran down to his wrist. Bits of dirt and dust were caught in the creases of his fingers. He recognized the familiar sensation of his blanket around him and the softness of his mattress. He sat up and glanced down. His shirt had been torn.

  By whom?

  He had no recollection of how his scars came about, or what happened.

  “Fun night?” Loki asked from the doorway. He held a cup of coffee in one hand.

  “Why are my hands bloody?”

  “Should have thought about that before drinking the moon tonic. You’re lucky you woke up back home this time.”

  The sunlight streaming in from the window almost gave Jez a migraine. He turned his head from the offending sight and looked at Loki. “Did I kill anybody?”

  Jez was the admiral of the Diremere wolves. One of his duties involved catching the delinquents from their own clan and putting them to justice. Loki mentioned him being more efficient whenever Jez had a swig of moon tonic, since the liquor had the ability to make one quicker and temporarily more alert. Jez had to use it after getting ambushed last night.

  Moon tonic also had a side effect of causing short-term memory loss.

  A terrible hangover clawed its way up the side of his temple.

  “Nobody important to speak of,” Loki said. He strode from the doorway and set down his drink on Jez’s desk. In his other hand, he carried a bottle of iced c
offee. Loki plucked a handful of pills from his pocket and passed it to Jez.

  Jez accepted the coffee to slug down the pills. He flicked off the bit of crust sticking to the side on his index finger. “Then why are my hands like this?”

  “You killed Karla,” Loki said, resting his weight on the side of the bed. The metal underneath squeaked.

  Jez froze. “What?” Karla had been his pack mate for the last three years. He’d never managed to find proper chemistry with her, however, and they had agreed to call it quits. Jez wished he was one of the lucky ones to have a mate. Not like Karla, but a true mate, one whose soul tied to his and blended perfectly together. Two parts of a whole. Stories made it sound like it was the best experience in the world, but only a select few wolf shifters were allowed it.

  “You tried to kill her,” Loki continued. “We stopped you before you went too far in your rage.” He pointed at Jez’s cheek. “Explains the bruise.”

  Jez hadn’t noticed that his cheek had been injured till then. He cupped it and felt a small ache there. “Who did it?”

  “Does it matter? You’ll heal up in a few days.” As a wolf shifter, and one of the strongest in his bloodline, Jez had supernatural healing. It wasn’t anything grand, like with wounds stitching up immediately, but wounds that took a month or two for humans could patch up in a week at most for him.

  Which meant that his hands had been bloodier earlier that night. “And that’s why?” He lifted his hands.

  “Oh, that?” Loki said. “You were fighting a tree.”

  “What?” Jez blinked. He wasn’t sure if he’d heard wrong.

  Loki leaned backward, treating Jez’s bed as if it belonged to him. The slimy bastard always liked intruding on boundaries. “Yep. That was exactly what happened. We weren’t sure what the tree did to offend you.” A small smile cracked the side of his mouth. “It might be the tonic. Made you hallucinate.”

  “How much did I drink last night?” Often, the tonic gave Jez heightened strength and senses, and the memory loss came at the end. For the most part, he’d stay lucid enough to not do anything stupid, like fighting a damn tree.

  “I think Karla accidentally forgot to dilute the mixture.” Loki rubbed a thumb over his nose.

  Jez sighed. He wanted to brush his hand across his hair, then hesitated because of his wounds. “Damn Karla.”

  “You could mix it yourself next time, you know?”

  He ignored Loki’s comment, since everybody knew that mixing tonics was a difficult art, and his skills weren’t nearly as good as Karla’s. “I need to wash up and get to work.”

  Loki smirked. “You know the story of you and the tree has spread, right?”

  Jez rolled his eyes. “Don’t remind me about it.”

  “Stay lucid, pretty boy.”

  Jez gave his housemate a dismissive wave before kicking the door of his bathroom open. He stepped in, over the grayish tiles, and spun to look in the mirror. “I look like shit.” A deep bruise stained the top of his temple and his chin. Cuts stuck to the bottom of his jowls and traveled to the nape of his neck. He ran the tap and splashed water on his face. He needed a howling good shower to get rid of all the nicks and the blood glued to his body.

  Jez brushed a strand of copper hair away from his forehead. He knew he was a good-looking guy, especially since the she-wolves in the pack couldn’t stop talking about him. His better sense of hearing made eavesdropping easier.

  He wasn’t going to charm anybody with this look. He unbuttoned his shirt and tossed it onto the ground.

  What was that about me attacking Karla?

  He ought to check up on her, considering he still cared for the she-wolf. He’d tried to kill her and all. But first, he needed to get himself sorted.

  He took a quick shower, thankful that he didn’t have many injuries under his shirt, and dried himself. He wrapped a towel around his waist and stepped out of the bathroom.

  Loki was still sitting on the bed, sipping his coffee. His eyes did a once-over of Jez.

  “Whatcha staring at?” Jez asked, rubbing a smaller towel over his hair. “Don’t you have something better to do than sit around in my room?”

  “I like sitting around in your room,” Loki replied. “It’s cozy. Nice temperature. Has a fun bit of entertainment.” Loki reached for a dart that Jez kept at his bedside and threw it sideways without looking. The dart hit a poster of one of Jez’s favorite metal artists, and not the target. Jez actually liked that poster.

  Jez picked up a jacket and threw it over his shoulder. “You’ve overstayed your welcome. Get out.”

  “No thanks.” Loki placed his coffee cup down and lay down on the bed, kicking his feet up to the sheets. He hadn’t bothered to take off his boots, even.

  Jez rolled his eyes. He pulled on a shirt and a pair of jeans. Sometimes he wondered if Loki’s sole purpose in life was to annoy the shit out of him. A soft warning growl that did absolutely nothing to threaten Loki rumbled from Jez’s throat.

  Jez slipped on his jacket and thudded his way toward the exit. “I’m heading to check on Karla.”

  “She’s fine.”

  “Yeah, but I just want to make su—” The tip of Jez’s boot nearly crunched over something when he halted. He squinted and peered down while moving his foot away. A red hairpin lay on the ground, against the wooden floorboard. “What’s this?” He bent down to pick it up.

  “What’s what?” Loki asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Weird asshole.”

  The item felt tiny in his hands. Smooth and cool to the touch. Red crystals clung to the side of the hairpin, giving it a shiny, reflective quality. A ruby decorated the top of the object, looking like it was too heavy for the metal shaft. Jez wondered why he was so drawn to it.

  A flicker of an image snapped across his mind. It was that of a young woman. Fiery hair. Rose-colored lips. Striking blue eyes and tousled hair that fell perfectly around her shoulders. She was smiling up at him, and she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

  The image was gone as soon as it came. He clenched his fingers over the hairpin.

  “You’re spacing out,” Loki told him.

  “Finish your coffee, then get out.”

  “I quite enjoy your room.”

  “I don’t enjoy you being in it.”

  Jez pushed the door open and entered the hallway of their apartment.

  A need to find the mystery woman slithered up his chest. But where would he start? Did she even exist? She seemed so familiar, and Jez wondered whether that might be an effect of the moon tonic.

  A faint name nicked the corner of his memory and brought a pang up his chest. He banished those thoughts before they could return.

  It’s not important.

  There’d always been something, someone haunting him. And he never wanted to remember.

  Chapter 2

  The crane lifted a container and dropped it on top of another one. A shifter waved to another, beckoning for him to stop. Jez picked up the rusty scent of the air mixed with the salty breeze coming from the oceans outside. He scraped through the warehouse, feet heavy due to the mild headache the moon tonic gave.

  “Where’s Karla?” he asked Thomson, the shifter who had been waving.

  “Sir,” Thomson said. He saluted.

  Jez was to lead the wolves as alpha one day, but as things were, he was still too young. Too easily riled. He was their best fighter, but being a good fighter didn’t mean one was suitable to lead. For now, his father, Caspian, led the wolf pack.

  Uneasiness bothered Jez every time he thought about his father. Caspian was alive and well, and, as such, controlled his every move.

  “Where is she?” Jez prompted.

  Thomson pushed up the tip of his nose before pointing to his right. “Keeping stock, sir.”

  Keeping stock? It sounded like she was fine. A sense of relief that she hadn’t been injured by him washed over Jez. He picked his way across the grungy tiles of the wareho
use and peered over a couple stacks of containers. Behind, he saw Karla flicking her way through a clipboard and making notes. She wore her overalls, as usual, and had her brunette hair bundled up behind her head. A second pen protruded from behind her ear.

  She didn’t even have to look up to know that Jez stood there. “Feeling shitty?” she asked.

  “How’d you guess?” Jez took a step to his left and leaned against the wall of a container. “You all right?”

  She looked up from her clipboard, unamused. “Took five men to hold you down yesterday. And you broke a few of their noses.”

  “Just a few?” He smirked. “Thought it would have been more, considering the state I’m in. Must have been a brawl. Did I win?”

  Karla rolled her eyes and continued scribbling onto her clipboard. “What’s that in your hand?”

  Jez furrowed his brow, then glanced down at the hairpin. “Oh, this? I’m not really sure why I’m holding this, really.” But he felt a need to keep it close. He put it into his pocket, making sure it fit snugly so it wouldn’t fall out accidentally.

  “You need help?” he asked, picking up a couple sheets of paper from one of the wooden boxes Karla used as a desk.

  “Oi,” Karla said. “Hands off. Don’t touch the sacred papers.”

  Jez snorted. “Would be easier if you just let other people help.”

  “Aren’t you busy?” she asked. “Shouldn’t the mighty Jez Diremere be out catching criminals and whatnot?”

  “Not sure if I should be in the line of fire, considering I have a couple broken ribs and whatnot.”

  “Go be a detective.”

  “I’m not one.” Jez led the enforcement team amongst the Diremere wolves. He normally aided in pursuit, especially with the more troubling criminals, but a team that he’d gathered dealt with investigations.

  It was right after that thought when one of those men came running in through the front entrance of the warehouse. He wore a vest over a tank top and sported a pair of torn blue jeans. He stopped in front of Jez before gripping his fists at his sides tightly. “Sir.”