Ghost at the Feast: The Nightwatch Book 3 Read online

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Other books by Debbie Cassidy

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2019, Debbie Cassidy

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, duplicated, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Cover by JMNart

  Created with Vellum

  Chapter One

  The alarm went off, and I was instantly awake, pulse fluttering in anticipation. It was three in the afternoon. The sun would set in two hours. Winter meant shorter days, which was great for Nightbloods but not so great for those creatures confined to the day.

  Creatures like Bres.

  Compelling, addictive Bres.

  Tris would have a fit if she knew I’d been spending so much time with the fomorian, but I’d be back before she woke up. She was still and silent on the pillow beside me, her romance novel still clutched in her tiny stone hands. I bit back a smile. Wow, it had to be an awesome book for her to get caught reading at sunrise.

  Nightgown and slippers on, hair scraped back into a hasty ponytail, I headed out of the room and down the stairs to the basement.

  The smell of coffee reached me as I hit the bottom of the basement steps. A grin tugged at my lips. Breakfast with Bres, what a way to start the day. Look at me, I was getting all poetic.

  The door to his cell was open in invitation, and Bres stood at the counter at the back of the room buttering toast with the gentle scrape of a knife. He kept his back to me as I entered, and damn, what a back. Nope, Kat, do not drool. But heck, did I want to run my fingers over those shoulders and down his spine. I’d trace the ink that swirled over his body with my tongue.

  “Are you done drooling?” Bres turned his head to offer me his profile. “We could skip breakfast and the small talk and simply fuck.”

  I sucked in a sharp breath. Who knew that fanny flutters were an actual thing? “I’m not sleeping with you, Bres.”

  Nope, that did not come out convincingly.

  “We wouldn’t do any sleeping. Guaranteed.”

  Oh, lord. “I need caffeine.”

  He turned to me, clutching a mug. “Is that all you need?”

  Not answering that one, especially when he could taste my lies, and wow, holy moly, that chest. Inked and taut with the ab action going on. If ogling was a sin, sign me up to be a sinner. My gaze snagged on the runes that were hidden amongst the tattoos on his skin. Runes Jay had added over the years to hide Bres from Nightwatch council detection. Runes that etched the walls of his cell. He couldn’t stray too far from here. He couldn’t be gone too long, but Kris was working on the problem, trying to find a way to break the binding between Jay and Bres and reinforce the runes so that Bres would no longer be trapped in this building.

  “If you want to touch, all you need to do is ask,” Bres said.

  I tore my gaze up to his beautiful face. “Can’t you wear a shirt when I come to visit?”

  There was amusement in his eyes. “You don’t like the view?”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Ooh, clever. Nope, not answering that one.”

  He took a step closer. “Do you want to play, touch, and taste?”

  My pulse quickened as if I’d taken a couple shots of espresso. This was dangerous ground. A dangerous game. This push and pull where we skirted around the attraction between us. This close, it was impossible not to have all the fizzing, fucking feels.

  But it was just pheromones, and casual sex wasn’t in my repertoire.

  Henri’s face filled my mind.

  Yeah, and there was that.

  Stupid fucking heart. Still, there was no denying that over the past two months, Bres had become a dangerous addiction. Like caffeine or sugar or those cute mini donuts that looked like bum holes … donut holes, that’s what they were called.

  “Do you want to taste me?” Bres asked, his voice low and rumbly, his breath warm on my face.

  “No.” The lie fell easily from my lips.

  “Mmmm, sweet.” He closed his eyes. “Do you want me to fuck you, raspberry girl?”

  He asked the question casually, conversationally, almost catching me off guard.

  “Pfft. No.”

  He smiled. “That one was sweet.”

  Crap. Locked gazes with him. “How about we drink coffee, eat toast, and just … be together?”

  His eyes darkened with an emotion I couldn’t decipher. “You’ll tell me about your night?”

  I smiled up at him. “And you’ll tell me about your day.”

  Bres reached up to lightly touch my cheek. “All right, raspberry girl. We’ll do it your way. Again.”

  * * *

  How much longer before Henri stopped holding my heart? It had been two months since he’d skulked off in the middle of the night, leaving only a note.

  The anger hit me a day or so later.

  We were partners, friends … Fuck it, we’d been more than friends, and he’d left without saying goodbye to my face.

  Coward.

  That’s what he was.

  I wanted to hate him for it, but there was nothing but empathy in my heart for the golem. He was a soul torn from his living body and forced into a clay and metal one. There were still no answers as to why Vinod had done it. Why had he taken a soul from the aether and trapped it in a golem instead of using the usual method of imprinting essences from different animals?

  Maybe the head weaver had wanted to test his skill in creating something unique, maybe he’d experienced temporary insanity or a mini-god complex. Heck, who knew? The fact was what he’d done was cruel, inhumane, and totally against the rules. Golems weren’t meant to have souls.

  If Vinod wasn’t dead, I’d sic Tris on him with a whole batch of bodice-ripper romance novels and make her read to him until his ears bled. But he was gone, murdered by the shimmer man. He’d taken his answers with him and left me with a golem who had way too many emotions. A golem that I’d fallen in love with.

  Henri.

  Where the fuck are you?

  There was a note on my door—Jay’s neat script calling an urgent team meeting at eight sharp. Urgent. A new case, maybe? After the run-of-the-mill issues we’d dealt with over the past few weeks, a juicy case was totally in order.

  * * *

  I entered my room to find Tris sitting on the window seat with her arms crossed and that look on her face that said
I know exactly what you’ve been up to, missy. Yep, this was totally a caught-with-your-hand-in-the-cookie-jar moment, and shame of shames, I hadn’t even tasted the damn cookie yet.

  How had I lost track of time with Bres? Oh yeah, I’d been busy staring into his crimson-rimmed irises, admiring the thick curl of his eyelashes and listening to his deep, rumbling baritone while imagining wrapping my legs around his waist and bouncing on his c—

  “Cock,” Tris said. “Is that what you want from Bres? Hmmm?”

  Play it cool, Kat. Just play it cool. I rolled my eyes. “What? No. Bres? Pfft. I went for a walk.”

  “Down to the basement.”

  Lying to Tris was like trying to lick my elbow. Impossible. “Fine. So what?” I shrugged.

  She pressed her lips together. “You’re using him.”

  “No. I’m not,” I groaned. “Trust me, he’s begged me to use him, and I haven’t.”

  She pursed her lips. “You miss Henri. You love Henri, and Bres is a distraction that you’ll drop when Henri comes back.”

  When … If only I knew it was a when. “If he comes back.”

  “Fine.” She threw up her hands. “You’ll drop Bres if Henri comes back.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Then what?” Tris said. “What are you doing? What is this thing you have with Bres? You tell me you two aren’t doing the horizontal tango, so what is it you’re doing?”

  “We’re friends.”

  “Friends who want to be doing the horizontal tango?”

  Urgh. “No. There is no sex involved.” I waved a dismissive hand. “Tris, I don’t want to talk about it, okay.”

  “But we have to talk about it.” Tris followed me across the room to the bathroom. “From what I’ve heard from Jay, Bres is a good guy. Have you considered his feelings? All this time you spend together … What if he falls in love with you?”

  I let out a bark of laughter. “Bres does not do love. He does sex, and that isn’t happening.”

  “So, what is happening?”

  She was asking questions I didn’t want to think about, and anger surged up inside me. “Enough! What I do with my spare time is none of your business. You were created to stop me dreaming. Stick to doing your job.” I stepped into the bathroom and slammed the door, instantly regretting my words.

  What the fuck was I doing yelling at Tris like that? She’d been like a mother to me all these years. What the hell was wrong with me?

  I opened the door to find Tris standing exactly where I’d left her. Her expression was unreadable, but the slight tremble of her mouth told me I’d hurt her feelings. Bad.

  I fell to my knees. “I’m sorry, Tris. That was uncalled for. I didn’t mean it. I love you. You know that, right?”

  She cupped my face. “And I love you, which is why I have to say that you can’t use Bres to fill the Henri-shaped hole in your life.”

  Oh, man, she had to go there, didn’t she? Just take the knife, plunge it in, and twist. My eyes burned. “You want to know why I spend so much time with Bres?”

  “Yes, chickie. I do.”

  “Because he makes me happy, okay. He makes me really fucking happy.”

  She sighed. “And maybe that’s what you need right now.”

  The fomorian made me happy.

  And right now, that was all I cared about.

  * * *

  Hot water sluiced the raspberry shampoo out of my hair and down my back. God, the beat of the spray felt good on my fevered skin. My body was still sensitized from being around Bres, aching for a release that even Tris’s questions hadn’t dampened.

  Luckily, the shower was the perfect place to get off. My hand crept down to the throbbing place just as awareness pricked the back of my neck.

  “Motherfu—” I grabbed the towel and scrambled to cover myself. “I swear to God, Philip, I will fucking exorcise you.”

  Philip, my little spy ghost, winced from his position by the sink. “I needed to speak to you.”

  “And you can only do that while I’m in the shower?”

  “Bad timing?” His wince was totally fake.

  “Every time? No. You’re a pervert, you know that, Philip, and I think you’re lying when you say you only like cock.”

  He grinned. “You’re good.”

  My cheeks heated. If he hadn’t been invaluable over the past few months, I’d kick his ghostly ass. But Philip’s tips had helped us solve several cases. Still. “You could deliver your reports to Lark. He can see you too, you know.”

  He pouted. “Lark has warding runes on his private quarters.”

  Shit, why hadn’t I thought of that? I could get wards on the shower. I moved it up to the top of my mental to-do list.

  Philip’s lips turned down as he realized his faux pas. “Really?”

  “You can bet your spectral ass. What do you want?”

  “There’s a disturbance in the spirit plane. We’re all feeling a disconcertion. It started a couple of days ago.”

  “You think something’s wrong?”

  He frowned. “Not sure. But Harmony felt you should be aware of the ripple.”

  Harmony, the new owner of Good Spirits, was a tough cookie. She’d arrived in town toward the end of the shimmer man affair and taken over the ghost bar after Vera’s demise. We’d clashed at first. Harmony was vocal about how she felt things should be done and who should be doing them, but she had the ghostly community’s best interests at heart, and when she’d realized we were on the same page, she’d stopped giving me the stink eye and threatening to have my friends haunted.

  “Last time we felt this kind of disturbance, the shimmer man came,” Philip said.

  My heart squeezed in panic. “Is it him? Do you think he’s back?”

  He shook his head. “No, this feels different.”

  The panic ebbed a little. “Okay, keep me informed.”

  He offered me a salute and then vanished through the wall.

  * * *

  I exited the bathroom twenty minutes later, showered and wrapped in a towel, to find Tris waiting with a cup of tea.

  She held it out to me. “Peace offering.”

  I took the cup. “I was a dick. But you need to know that although Bres may have started out as a crutch, things are different now. I enjoy his company.”

  She nodded slowly, and an emotion I couldn’t decipher flitted across her face.

  I sipped my tea. “What?”

  “Oh, nothing.” She slid across the floor to the table where her books were piled up. “You were quite harsh, slamming the door in my itty-bitty face.” She pouted at me. “But I know what you can do to make it up to me.”

  “Let me guess … More books?”

  “I’ve read some of these three times, and now I’m experiencing cock withdrawal.” She paused. “Wait, that didn’t come out right.”

  I bit back a laugh and slipped into a long-sleeved black polo top and dark jeans. “Fine. We’ll hit Wicked Imaginations after the team meeting.”

  “Ooh, I love team meetings. Emmett’s pound cake is to die for. But wait, didn’t we already have one this month?”

  “Yeah, but there’s a note on the door from Jay calling another one. It must be something important.”

  “Ooh, maybe Kris will take his shirt off again,” Tris trilled.

  “That was one time, Tris, and he was hurt.”

  She tapped her chin. “Maybe I’ll take him up on his offer to watch him shower.”

  “I think someone may have beaten you to that privilege.”

  Her brows shot up. “Kat!”

  I choked on my tea. “No. Not me. Philip. Remember the ghost I told you about, the one who offered his services to me in the shower.”

  Her mouth fell open.

  “Spying services, Tris, spying services.”

  Her face fell. “And it was just starting to get interesting. Wait, does Kris know?”

  “Yeah, but you know Kris. Exhibitionist. I bet he’s taking ext
ra-long showers just to put on a show.”

  “But he can’t see the ghost.”

  “No. He can feel the drop in temperature, though. Philip just paid me a visit. Warned that there were ripples in the spirit plane.”

  “Shimmer man?” Tris’s eyes were wide.

  “He doesn’t think so, but we need to be wary.”

  Her chest puffed up. “I won’t let him get to you, Kat, I promise.”

  I crouched and pulled her into a hug. “I know, babe. Come on.” I stood with her clinging to my arm and waited as she settled across my shoulders. “Let’s go find out what’s so important Jay had to call an extra team meeting.”

  Chapter Two

  Tris and I snuggled on the sofa as we waited for the others. The fire in the grate crackled merrily, and the room had a cozy feel to it. Someone had added crimson cushions to the sofa and draped a red throw over the back of the single-seater.

  Kris padded in, barefoot, and headed for his spot by the window, but then caught my eye and altered trajectory to wandered over and park his butt beside me. He threw an arm across my shoulder and pulled me close, so his damp, sweet-smelling hair kissed my cheek.

  “And how is my favorite demon tainted?” he asked.

  “Good. How was your shower?” I couldn’t help but grin at the thought of the voyeur who must have joined him.

  He wiggled his brows. “Let’s just say Philip will never be the same again.”

  I pulled back a little to study his face better. “Oh, God. What did you do?”

  “A little light relief on myself.” His smile was filled with mischief. “With all the sound effects.”