Black Arts, White Craft (Black Hat Bureau Book 2) Read online

  Rubbing four hands together, Colby tore off the lid then plastered on the expression every kid who ever asked for a gaming console but received Monopoly instead wore to mask their disappointment. Or so I had been led to believe by the Christmas movie marathons Colby forced me to watch each December.

  “It’s great, Asa.” She injected false cheer into her voice. “Thank you.”

  “He hasn’t told you the best part.” I elbowed him in the ribs. “Go on, explain it.”

  Still not looking at her, shoulders bowing under her expectation, he murmured, “It repels bad dreams.”

  “Like a dreamcatcher?” Her wings flittered with a rush of excitement. “And it works? For real?”

  “Its magic only works for you,” he said, peeking up, “so you’ll have to test it.”

  “Ace has never given anyone a bum gift,” Clay said in his partner’s defense. “It’s the real deal.”

  “It feels…” she lifted it and buried her face in it, “…like a warm hug from Rue.”

  With a practiced move, she slung it across her shoulders then tugged it up until it covered her head.

  “Thanks, Asa.” She tucked it around herself. “This is the best present ever.”

  Only her eyes peered out of the cowl of fabric. Even her antennae were in hiding. Out of the box, I could tell it was a four-by-four square. The perfect size for Colby to carry around with her at home and on any cases that required our assistance to maintain the letter of my bargain with Black Hat.

  “You’re welcome.” Gaze sliding away, he tugged on one of his earrings. “I’m glad you like it.”

  “Want to see my moves?” She jostled Clay’s elbow to get his attention. “Show him.”

  The two of them settled in to watch her slaying her enemies while I returned to the hot stove, thankful the cabin hadn’t burned down around us, and made us all breakfast. I kept sneaking peeks at them while I plated the food, and I couldn’t help but feel like this was as close to a family as I’d had since my parents died. As much as it streaked my black heart with rays of much-needed lightness, it cost me my appetite.

  To have a family meant I had something to lose.

  After everyone had eaten and retired to their rooms to sleep, to binge baking shows, or to battle the orc scourge, I selected the largest mixing bowl from beneath the kitchen counter. I used the deep sink to fill it with water then sloshed to my room.

  Cross-legged on the bed, the mattress as fluffy as a down pillow, I sat with the bowl cradled between my thighs. A drop of blood earned me a dial tone, for lack of a better explanation, which I used to call an old friend beyond the veil.

  Megara had practiced law in one form or another for three hundred years before she took a silver bullet to the heart after a divorce case turned violent in the courthouse parking lot. I hadn’t known her then. I didn’t meet her until after my parents died, and she executed their will from the beyond.

  Had she survived, I liked to imagine she would have taken me in. Or at least been the Rue to my Colby.

  “Megara, I summon thee.” I squeezed out another drop. “Megara, I summon thee.”

  The stubborn wench always refused to show until after I observed every formality, which could probably be blamed on her former occupation. She remained the best lawyer on either side of the veil, but death did impact her business. Her fees were steeper these days, she was harder to contact, and she also required her clients to play secretary for her. There was no way around that when you hired incorporeal legal aid.

  “Thrice I bid thee.” More crimson plinked into the water. “And thrice I tithe thee.”

  I ran a fingertip along the edge of the bowl, and the water rippled, darkened, swirled in a mini whirlpool.

  “Hear me,” I called in a resonant voice. “Arise.”

  A face appeared wreathed in smoke, not from theatrics, but from the cigarette hanging from her bottom lip.

  “Darling.” Her yellowed teeth glinted at me. “Two calls in the same year? Why, I’m flattered.”

  Between her and Clay, they excelled at guilting me about…well…everything.

  “I have a question for you.” I couldn’t peel my gaze from my bloody fingertip. “It’s about Dad.”

  “I didn’t know him as well as your mother, but I’ll answer as best I can.”

  “I heard a rumor my paternal grandmother was a daemon.”

  “Heard a rumor, huh?” She took a long drag. “That dirt clod finally told you, didn’t he?”

  “Meg.”

  “I heard the whispers, of course, we all did.” She pursed her lips. “Your father was exceptional. You can’t begin to imagine the power at his command. I’ve never seen anything like it. But it was a dark power fed by dark deeds.” She tapped her cigarette. “How your sweet, joyful mother found anything to love in that miasma of death, I will never know, but she was like that.” She shrugged a frail shoulder. “And, I confess, he was made better by her. He tried. For her sake. He became…not a bad sort, but not her equal.”

  Given the great divide between us, I felt comfortable confessing, “I have a daemon…acquaintance.”

  A lascivious spark lit her clever eyes. “Ah.”

  “I seem to be experiencing some daemonlike reactions to him.”

  “Like ripping his clothes off and licking him head to toe? Remember the horns, dear, they’re sensitive.”

  Sex with the daemon half of Asa, I could safely say, had never crossed my mind. Horns on Asa, though…

  “Um, not quite.” I fought not to squirm at the mental picture. “More like an emotional attachment.”

  “Feelings.” Her glee dimmed as she took another drag. “Not my forte.”

  Lifting my hand, I shook my wrist to show off my bracelet. “We’re sort of…fascinated…with each other?”

  How I made it sound like a question when I had agreed to it not once but twice, I had no idea.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.” She coughed until her eyes watered. “Who is he?”

  “His name is—”

  “No, no, no.” She waved the cloud of smoke away. “Who are his people? What is his father’s name?”

  For a beat, I debated faking interdimensional interference to get off the hook. “Orion Pollux Stavros?”

  “Vonda, you would have loved this,” she called, as if my mother could hear her. “You’ve been claimed by a prince of Hael. One of the high princes, no less. They’re the only ones who do the hair thing. They are a peculiar caste and very particular about their hair, which I’m sure you’ve noticed if you’re wearing that. I can’t believe it. I just can’t.” Her bark of laughter stretched into a long howl of mirth. “It’s too delicious.”

  Cheeks burning from her raucous amusement, I dipped a finger in the water. “You’re not helping…”

  The ripples broke up her features, and she used the time while they settled to rein herself in.

  Leaning forward, she flicked ash off the tip of her cigarette. “Have you test-driven him yet?”

  “No.”

  “You aren’t serious.” Deep wrinkles did little to hide her disappointment. “You’re not still a virgin.”

  “No.” A hard edge honed my voice. “I had sex at thirteen to protect myself.”

  That encounter had been one part advance planning to one part magical high from my first kill.

  The guy was harmless enough, and human to ensure he was clueless as well. I scouted him out weeks earlier. A male witch would have run screaming from the proposition, aware of what I was sacrificing. A human, though? At fifteen, he didn’t much care that I was younger. Only that I would take off my pants.

  A snarl vibrated through our connection that I felt in my bones as she cursed the director’s existence.

  Black witches weren’t any more or less powerful for being virgins in their day-to-day spellwork, but their willing sacrifice of that last barrier of innocence was a potent boost to any major working. Both men and women saved it for a once-in-a-lifetime spell they otherwi
se couldn’t have cast on their own.

  “I’m surprised the bastard explained it to you,” Meg snarled. “Then again, I’m sure he had a plan for it.”

  “I overheard a girl on the grounds bragging about how she planned to seduce a man so she could drain a lake where merfolk hid their gold and gems.” I was the only child tutored by the director, but there were others on the property now and again, most of them the children of Black Hat agents come to check in. I think he requested their presence, to socialize me, but I was too shy to warm up to others after an hour. “I never saw her again. I wanted to believe then it meant she had succeeded, maybe bought a new life.”

  “Sweet child,” she sighed. “The girl told someone. That was her first mistake. She let herself be overheard. That was her second mistake. There are no third mistakes for black witches. She was as good as dead the moment she opened her mouth, poor thing.”

  “Letitia and Maria.” I would never forget those names. “Letitia came back, years later, and I asked about Maria. She was flattered I noticed her, I think, and happy to regale me with the details of how she talked Maria into having sex with her older brother. That made it easier for her to follow them to the lake.”

  Once it was done, her brother called to tip her off when to drive his truck up there to collect the haul.

  “After the couple had sex, the brother pretended to leave but actually joined Letitia. Maria drained the lake, stole the mermaids’ treasure before the water rushed back in, and the brother and sister were waiting for her. They killed her and shared her heart.”

  The whole thing had an incestuous vibe that still bothered me, a twisted fairy tale in gossip form.

  “That convinced me the best course of action was to pick a guy, rid myself of the potential, and hope I survived my punishment.”

  The last part had been a near thing. The director was so furious, he beat me within an inch of my life with his cane. But I was older then, around eighteen before he’d decided how best to use me, and my years in Black Hat had hardened me to the pain.

  And he wondered why I didn’t leap to answer the phone each time it lit with his private number.

  “Have you tried again?” Meg broke into my grim thoughts. “Please tell me you didn’t quit after that.”

  “I went through a man-eating phase,” I said and left it at that, not wanting to relive those days.

  “Good.” That satisfied her. “Men are like shoes. You won’t know who fits until you try them on.”

  Uncertain if she meant that literally, I let the topic drop. “So…daemon blood.”

  “The only way to be certain is to ask your grandfather for your grandmother’s identity, and I will send a passel of my great-great-grandsons to whoop your tail if you try. That man would charge more than you can afford for the information, and he would keep the salient details to himself to sell to you later.”

  “That’s pretty much what Clay said too.”

  “He might have rocks for brains, but he’s not wrong.”

  I wasn’t clear on the details, but Clay and Meg disliked one another so intensely they refused to speak to each other. All I knew for certain was they met while he was on a case, and she was alive, but the odds were good he put down someone she loved for Black Hat.

  “My…friend…is half fae,” I found myself confessing. “His mother’s people do this thing where—”

  Nose mashing against the barrier, she exhaled a wall of smoke. “Do go on.”

  “Stop being a perv.” I twisted my mouth into a disapproving frown. “I’m being serious.”

  “Oh, fine.” She settled back with a huff. “Go on.”

  “They compel their potential mates to…”

  A glint returned to her eyes. “Yes?”

  “…talk. About themselves. A lot. I can’t shut up around him. I just word vomit all over the place.”

  “Dear heart, I’m not prone to romantic sentiment, that was your mother’s forte, so I won’t offer you my relationship advice.” She crushed out the glowing tip of her cigarette. “This is all I will say on the matter. You’re not a picture book left on a coffee table for just anyone to flip through at their leisure. Far from it. You’re a grimoire, kept in a private library, wrapped in a girth of chains, and cinched with a padlock. If Fate decided to arm your beau with a pair of bolt cutters, perhaps she worries you might spend your life waiting on a perfect man with a perfect key to fit your lock when perfect…doesn’t exist.”

  Shades of regret colored her tone, and I wondered if she wished she had taken a chance on a not-quite-Prince Charming of her own.

  “Is it real?” That was what I wanted to know. “Or is it biology?”

  “When you’re with him, does it feel real? Better yet, when you’re apart. Does it feel real then?”

  “Yes,” I decided after considering my answer. “That’s what makes it mortifying.”

  The urge to confide in him felt authentic. He was only half fae. How much of my confessions were simply my awkward attempts at navigating an undeniable attraction to a man whose opinion mattered to me? I wasn’t sure how much to blame on his nature versus how much to blame my failure at flirting etiquette.

  “There you go.” She pinched a fresh cigarette between her lips without lighting it. “Question answered.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “Ah.” She gave a slight nod. “You want me to tell you what to do.”

  “That would be nice.”

  “As I said, not my forte.” She studied me. “Only you can decide what—and who—is right for you.”

  “We got off topic.” I rolled the bracelet between my fingers. “I only meant to ask about my dad.”

  “This is my parting salvo.” She held up a lighter with her initials engraved on the front. “If you didn’t care about your daemon, would you still be so curious about having daemon blood? Aside from how this may affect your relationship with him, does it otherwise impact your life? Will that knowledge change who you are?” Her eyes grew shadowed in the flame summoned by a flick of her thumb. “At the end of the day, does it matter?”

  The short answer was no.

  The more complicated one was yes.

  A knock on the door drew my attention from Meg. “Come in.”

  Expecting Colby, who had an uncanny radar for when I was talking to Meg, I startled to find Asa.

  “Hello,” he said slowly. “I heard voices and came to make sure everything was all right.”

  Given his excellent hearing, I was willing to bet he heard more than that if he had been listening in.

  “Who is this delicious morsel?” Meg wet her lips. “You’re lucky my biting days are done, tidbit.”

  Asa slid his questioning gaze to mine in a clear plea for rescue I was reluctant to give.

  Meg was fun when she lit into someone. As long as the someone wasn’t me.

  “Megara Baros, this is Asa Montenegro.” I gestured between them. “Asa, this is Meg.”

  “I’m her godmother.” Meg rested her chin on her palm. “You gave Rue the bracelet.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” Asa made an elegant gesture at his waist. “I apologize for intruding.”

  “I was about to go.” Meg faked a yawn. “Why don’t you tuck in my darling girl for me?”

  Heat splashed my cheeks, and I wished I could reach into the ether and strangle her.

  “Good night, Meg.” I pulled the plug on our connection then turned to Asa. “Sorry about that.”

  “I didn’t mean to interrupt…” He quirked a brow at the bowl. “What were you doing?”

  “Meg was Mom’s best friend.” I set it aside. “I figured if anyone had the scoop on Dad, it would be her.”

  Leaning against the doorway, he let his keen interest show. “Did she know anything?”

  “No more than Clay.” I rolled a shoulder then noticed his hands. “Hey, what does your bowl do?”

  Black glaze cupped the base and lightened to a vibrant crimson at the lip. A
deep notch pierced its side, shaped like an old-fashioned spit curl, and a noodle was escaping through it. No. Not a noodle. A length of cream-colored yarn.

  “It’s a yarn bowl.” He dipped his chin to hide the flush in his cheeks. “I was about to start a new project.”

  This was not the next High King of Hael or anywhere else. Sure, he could be terrifying, but it cost him. He was more at home like this, with his yarn bowl cupped in his palm and his glasses hanging from the neck of his dress shirt. I couldn’t picture him ruling over a people who relished destruction and chaos, who let their worst impulses act as their conscience, when he preferred creation and quiet.

  We were a bad idea. Terrible. I couldn’t think of a worse one. For either of us.

  So, of course, I waved him in then patted the mattress beside me. “Having trouble sleeping?”

  “I always knit before bed.” He sat, stiff as a board. “It helps me unwind.”

  Eyeing him, I decided to ask, “Was that a yarn joke?”

  His soft laugh told me I hit the mark with his subtle humor.

  “I should go.” He didn’t budge. “You need your rest.”

  “Sleep and I aren’t on a first-name basis. Or last name.” I sawed my teeth over my bottom lip. “I planned to read until my eyes gave up and forced my brain into submission. Want to join me? I read, you knit?”

  Asa twisted to see me fully, and his gaze dropped to my mouth, proving romance novels knew what they were talking about.

  “In your bed?” His voice lowered to the rumble of distant thunder. “You want that?”

  I hopped up like lava had bubbled out of the mattress, snatching the bowl to cover my nerves.

  “Leave a metaphysical doorway open, and who knows what might drift through it.” I sloshed water onto my toes. “I have to cleanse this first.” I inched toward the bathroom door. “Do you need anything?”

  Peridot eyes flashed to burnt crimson as he studied my face. “Only you.”

  Chills raced up my spine, tingling in my scalp, and I hurried to empty the bowl.

  “I can do this.” I gave myself a pep talk. “It’s sharing a hobby. That’s it. Nothing wrong with that.”