Ghost at the Feast: The Nightwatch Book 3 Read online

  “The Dreaming?” He slid the book toward me and opened it. The pages were aged and yellowing. “Wow, um, what language is this?”

  Kris peered over my shoulder. “Latin?”

  “I don’t read Latin.” I made to close the book, but Luther placed a hand flat on the page to stop me.

  “I can help with that.” He gently gripped my shoulders and turned me to face him. “Look into my eyes.”

  “If you try to hypnotize me to bleat like a sheep, I will hurt you.”

  “Shhh,” Luther admonished. “Just relax.”

  Wow, his eyes were so green … and bright, and they had gold flecks floating in them. Swirling about all psychedelic. Warm breath kissed my lips, and then he released me.

  My gaze caught on the ring on his right hand, noting how the gem glowed bright for a second before settling to its regular hue.

  My head felt fuzzy for a moment but was clear the next. “What just happened?”

  “Look.” Luther tapped the book.

  Words, actual recognizable words, spilled across the pages. “Shit. I can read it.”

  “A simple manipulation.” Luther shrugged.

  My suspicion about him was right. “You’re a weaver.”

  His expression closed off. “I’m my own man, and I belong to no house.”

  Independent. Not an easy task in the weaver community. “Hey, not my business. What I do want to know is why the heck the council can’t just get its weavers to use that manipulation to teach all the Nightbloods Latin and other ancient languages, both verbal and written. It would make life so much easier for us.”

  He averted his gaze. “Best you don’t ask.”

  Wait a second. “That wasn’t just a simple manipulation, was it?”

  He closed the book and handed it to me. “You need to read the section on the Dreaming, and then maybe you’ll be able to find a way to stop your shimmer man once and for all.”

  His tone, his demeanor, was a dismissal. I’d pissed him off or scared him. Either way, it was time to leave.

  Shame, I liked Luther’s tea.

  Outside, in the market square, it hit me. No simple manipulation meant it was a rare one, which meant Luther was probably more powerful than he’d like us to know.

  What was he doing here in the middle of nowhere running a bookstore that hardly anyone visited?

  “He’s hiding something,” Kris said.

  I nodded. “But maybe it’s best to leave it hidden. Not all secrets need to be unveiled.”

  Something cold and wet kissed my cheek.

  Tris’s tail tightened on my arm. “Oh, look, chickie. Look, it’s snowing.”

  I turned my face up to the swirling flakes. A white Yuletide.

  Perfect.

  “Hey!” A voice cut across the square.

  I dropped my chin to stare at the three Primes standing outside the red door across the square. Rich’s beta and two others.

  Kris’s body tensed. “Lance, what can I do for you?”

  “You can pay your blood debt.” He crossed his arms. “Kill the Custodian.”

  Shit.

  Chapter Four

  “Nope, not gonna happen, beta dude.” I stood my ground. “You know the law, you know how it works, and calling the damn mansion every other day isn’t going to change that. Lex is under council protection.”

  “Protection? You’re fucking protecting him now?” The beta spat the words, so actual spittle flew from his mouth.

  Oops, bad choice of words. “I meant jurisdiction.”

  “Nah, you said what you meant, and your weaver guy confirmed it. You’ve been helping the bastard to get clean. Taking fucking care of the bastard who killed Monty.”

  Wow, he really liked the word bastard. “I’m afraid that bastard is part of an ongoing investigation.”

  “I don’t give a fuck about your investigation. We’re owed a blood debt, which you promised to exact from the Custodian once you had the information you needed.”

  Shit, had I promised that?

  Kris frowned. “Kat? Did you make a promise to the pack?”

  I couldn’t remember. Henri would have recalled, but Henri wasn’t here, and why was Kris saying it in that way, the way that made the hackles on the back of my neck rise. The way that suggested a promise to the pack held great significance.

  Oh, fuck! I remembered now. Rich had asked for my word that Lex would be executed, and I’d said yes. Heck, the council loved executions, and Lex had been working with a group that liked to capture supernaturals. At the time, his death seemed inevitable. How the hell was I to know they’d change their minds?

  I lowered the bag containing all the books to the ground and held up my hands placatingly. “Trust me, Lex has been bled. Tortured for information. Nasty, bloody torture. Really painful stuff.”

  “But he still lives.” Lance shook his head. “Nah. There’s gonna be some serious dissonance between you and the Prime pack if you don’t keep your word."

  The three Primes walked closer, fanning out to surround us, and the market square was suddenly silent.

  The snow fell softly between us, a thin veil they could rip apart easily with their claws.

  Tris tightened her grip on me. “You stay back,” she warned the Primes. “Stay back.” Her voice dropped in timbre, and then she was climbing to the ground. Her body pulsed as it grew larger until she was the same size as when she’d saved me from the shimmer man.

  “You want my chickie, then you have to go through me,” she growled.

  The wolves paused, staring at Tris warily.

  “What the fuck,” Lance said.

  “Tris.” I place my hand on her flank. She was hot. Probably burning through energy to maintain this form. “Tris, it’s okay.”

  Her body trembled, and a low growl emanated from her, but then she was shrinking. I scooped her up into my arms as the Primes closed in.

  “Sorry, chickie, I don’t know what happened. I don’t understand why I can’t hold my form.”

  “It’s okay, babe.” I cradled her to my chest.

  Kris placed himself in front of me, and my bravado croaked and died. A shiver of apprehension skated up my spine, and then anger reared its head.

  “You ungrateful wankers. I saved your lives. The Custodians would have had your hides if I hadn’t stopped them.”

  “Which is why you’re still breathing.” Rich appeared through the red door. “You’ve been given a grace period to keep your word, and now that period is over. End the Custodian’s life, or we will exact our blood debt by taking yours.”

  “Rich, please …” Kris stepped forward, and Rich’s jaw tensed. “There has to be another way. The council won’t permit an execution when rehabilitation is possible, especially when the Custodian is ninety percent human.”

  Rich rubbed his chin in thought, and Lance growled. “No fucking way, Rich. That fucking Custodian wanker killed Monty and took my fucking hand.” He held up his stump.

  Rich’s eyes flared. “Then we take the Custodian’s hand.”

  Lance’s chest heaved, and his eyes narrowed as he mulled the proposition over. “His hand to pay the blood debt?”

  Rich nodded slowly. “Death would be a mercy, but a missing hand …”

  Lance grinned, showcasing large blunt teeth. “Agreed. His hand will pay the blood debt.”

  “You have till dawn to bring us the Custodian’s hand,” Rich said. “After that, the Prime pack will hunt.” His gaze was fixed on me, eyes flashing eerily in the night.

  They turned and retreated through the red door.

  “Wait, did he just say they were going to hunt me?”

  Kris cursed softly under his breath. “I should have been there with you that night. I would have stopped you from giving your word.”

  “Kris? Seriously? They can’t do that. I’m Nightwatch.”

  “You entered into a verbal contract with the Prime pack. They have the legal right to hunt you.”

  A hand squeezed the
air out of my lungs. “What the fuck do I do?”

  Kris turned to look at me, his expression smooth. “You do what they’ve asked. You cut off Lex’s hand.”

  * * *

  Jay’s face was expressionless as Kris recounted what had happened with the Primes at the night market. Tris clung to me as I paced the study. Dammit, why couldn’t the room be larger?

  Hunted by the pack … Sounded like a paranormal romance novel title, except in this version, there would be no romance and plenty of flesh tearing once they caught up to me, because there was no doubt in my mind that if the Prime pack wanted me dead, I was as good as dead.

  “Jay?” Kris probed. “What do we do?”

  Jay sighed. “We protect our own,” he said. “The verbal contract is binding, and so we honor it.”

  I stopped pacing and stared at him. “You think we should cut off Lex’s hand?”

  “I think we have no other option.”

  “This is my fault. My big fucking mouth …” I ran a hand over my face.

  “No, it’s mine,” Kris said. “I should have briefed you on how the Prime pack operates. Verbal contracts with them are legally binding.”

  Fuck. I’d killed on duty, sure, but it had always been in self-defense or to protect an innocent, and my targets were always monsters. The Watch did the rest, deciding who got to live and who got put down. Not my problem. But they’d let Lex live, and now he was caged and helpless in our dungeon, no longer hyped up on demon blood, and evidently almost human.

  “I can’t. I can’t cut off his hand.” I backed away.

  “You won’t have to,” Jay said.

  What? And then it hit me. “Bres … You’re going to ask Bres to do it.”

  Jay slow-blinked. “No. Bres won’t wake till dawn. We need to deliver the hand before then.”

  “Then who?”

  Jay’s jaw clenched. “I was trained as a medic in the war. I did my fair share of amputations. I’ll make sure it’s painless.”

  “Like an operation?” Kris nodded enthusiastically. “You operate to remove his hand, and we do it humanely.”

  They were discussing taking a man’s hand and making it sound like we were doing him a favor.

  Horror washed over me in a wave of gooseflesh. “What are we doing? How can we stand here and be so pragmatic about this?”

  “Enough,” Jay snapped. “You were happy to agree to the terms of execution a few weeks ago. All we’re doing now is taking a hand.”

  His words were a slap. I snapped my mouth closed and nodded. “Yeah. I’m sorry.”

  He sighed. “We have no other options. It’s Lex’s hand or your life, and I will not lose an excellent agent.”

  He said it as if he cared, as if he were Nightwatch. It was easy to forget that he was an imposter, a shadow knight hiding from the council in plain sight. A feyblood who’d taken the place of a descendant who shared his face.

  Maybe, after all this time, he’d become the person whose shoes he’d stepped into.

  “Listen to him, chickie,” Tris said. “I can’t lose you.”

  I didn’t want to die, but I didn’t want to mutilate someone to survive either.

  “Kat.” Kris locked gazes with me. “There is no other option.”

  Yeah, there really wasn’t. I closed my eyes. “I need to speak to Lex first.”

  “Do what you need to assuage your conscience,” Jay said. “I’ll be operating within the hour.”

  Chapter Five

  Lark stood at the door to the dungeons, bristling with indignation. Yeah, the weaver was not happy about this turn of events, but faced with the alternative, he’d been forced to back down, step aside, and let shit unfold.

  Lex looked up as I approached his cell. His lip curled. “What do you want?”

  Your hand, please. Fuck, this was gonna suck. “You killed a member of the Prime pack, and you took another member’s hand.”

  His eyes narrowed. “I know what I did, Nightblood, and I’d do it again. You’re unnatural. A monster. You don’t deserve to live.”

  “And yet, we haven’t killed you yet.”

  “What? You want me to be grateful?” He snorted. “Fuck you.”

  Good, he was being an asshole. That should make this easier, right? “Your actions created a blood debt. A life for a life. Honestly, I thought the council would have you executed for your crimes.”

  He crossed his arms and glared at me. “Sucks for you then, doesn’t it?”

  “Thing is, there’s still a blood debt to be paid.”

  “You can’t kill me.”

  “No. I can’t, even though you deserve it.” I took a deep breath. “But the Prime pack has agreed to accept your hand as payment.”

  He froze. “What? Wait, what?”

  My pulse thudded fast in my neck. “I’m sorry. They wanted to kill you in the forest that day. They wanted to exact their blood debt, but I stopped them. I thought the council would execute you. I gave them my word. I didn’t realize it was a binding contract, and now … It’s your hand or my life.”

  His eyes widened. “You’re taking my hand so you can live?”

  I nodded slowly.

  “And you came down here to tell me … Why? You want me to say it’s okay? That I forgive you?”

  He was right. Why was I even here?

  What the fuck had I expected him to say?

  He stood abruptly. “Fuck you, you bloodsucking freak. Fuck you.”

  There was murder in his eyes. Death aimed at me.

  “No, fuck you!” Lark stepped forward, anger etched into the clean lines of his face. “You killed innocent supernaturals even though you have supernatural genes. You’re a bigot, and I can’t believe I’ve spent all this time advocating for you. Kat saved your ass from the wolves. She could have turned a blind eye, walked away, and let them have you. Or we could have extracted the information we needed and handed you over to the pack. The council has what they need. They don’t give a shit if you live or die. It’s me who’s kept you alive, but I’m done standing up for someone who refuses to see the truth.”

  I stared at him in horror. Lark had convinced the council to let Lex live?

  He shot me an apologetic look.

  Jay entered the room carrying a leather bag. His gaze went from Lark to me, then settled on Lex.

  “It’s time,” he said.

  “No.” Lex shook his head, moving to the back of his cage. “Please. No. Don’t do this. Don’t.” He was looking at me now, and the malice was gone, replaced by unadulterated fear. “Please …”

  My fault.

  I turned and strode out.

  * * *

  Kris had left with the hand ten minutes ago, and Jay had retired for the day.

  The hand.

  Better to think of it as a separate entity, not linked to anyone. Just a thing.

  Dawn was minutes away. I stood outside Bres’s door with my palm flat on the surface of the metal. Don’t look at the dungeon door. Don’t think about a sedated Lex who would wake up hours from now to find a piece of him missing.

  Focus on Bres.

  Any second now …

  Bres opened the door with a click, and my gaze leveled with his chest. I’d come to talk. To just chill for a bit and forget about what Jay had been forced to do because of my faux pas. That was all. Just talk for a bit.

  “Kat?” Bres’s breath tickled the top of my hair. “What’s wrong?”

  My body moved as if of its own accord, and before I could think it through or check myself, I had my arms around his waist and my cheek pressed to his chest. Oh, God, that felt good.

  He tensed for a moment, frozen with me hanging off him, but I didn’t care. I needed this contact. Needed it from him. A long second passed, and then he hugged me back, his hand moved up my spine, and he cupped the back of my head.

  “What happened?” His voice was a low rumble as he pulled back enough to look down at me. “Tell me.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut to dispel
the burn and the threat of tears and then began to speak.

  “Not your fault,” Bres said once I was done.

  “Yes. It is. I’m a Nightwatch agent. I should know my shit, and if I don’t, it’s my job to brush up on it. I fucked up. I wanted to get out of the forest and back to base, and I didn’t think. I didn’t fucking pick up on the terminology.”

  “Lex is a killer,” Bres said. “He’s killed many supernaturals in cold blood. Losing a hand is nothing. He should lose his head.”

  The cold conviction in his tone brought me up short.

  “You really believe that.”

  Bres fixed his unfathomable gaze on my face. “So should you. Save your guilt for someone who deserves it, raspberry girl.” He released me and walked over to the tiny kitchen area he’d had Jay set up. “Tea or coffee?”

  Oh, God. I wanted nothing more than to curl up on his bed and have breakfast with him, but, “I can’t. I have to go out of town on a mission to Reverie.”

  “Ah, the coordinates.” Bres leaned back against the counter.

  My gaze drifted down to his abs and then further to the V that pointed at what was beneath his joggers.

  Bres hooked a thumb into the waistband of his pants and ran it back and forth teasingly.

  Fuck. “Distractions work.”

  “Is that what I am to you?” His slight smile belied his serious tone.

  “No.”

  He blinked at me in surprise. “You mean that?”

  Yes … Yes, I did. He was more than a distraction to me. He was a friend.

  “I wish you could come with us.” The words popped from my mouth, unbidden.

  His eyes flared. “Maybe one day, raspberry girl. Maybe one day soon.”

  * * *

  A thick blanket of snow covered the world outside the camper van, and the sky was gray and heavy with the threat of more snow. Tris had turned to stone an hour ago, and I’d settled her in the camper van ready to go. I’d brought one of her new romance paperbacks with me and slipped it into the bed beside her just in case we weren’t here when she woke up. Mai had brought extra blankets and two thermoses filled with hot chocolate for the drive.