Witch Unexpected: The Thirteenth Sign Book 1 Page 3

  I locked gazes with him. “Back off and let me take the kids. They don’t belong to you.”

  “They don’t belongs to yous either.” He snarled, and his face contorted into something feral and monstrous,

  My pulse spiked in fear, but like hell would I let him see that. Fuck this. I attacked, lunging at him, eager to get Trixie a bite. He raised his arm to deflect my attack and the blade snagged briefly on his limb, but then he was gone.

  Shit, shit, where was he?

  Pressure circled my ankle, and the world slipped out from beneath me.

  I hit the ground with my back, knocking the breath from my lungs, and then thick ropes slid over me, snagging my wrists and my thighs, tugging and holding me down.

  “What the fuck?”

  I turned my head to try and catch a glimpse of my abductor but caught sight of the furry in the cage instead. It continued to sing, but its mouth was downturned, eyes mournful and sad.

  I strained against the ropes, which on closer inspection weren’t ropes. They were thick, fleshy, mottled appendages. Oh, hell no.

  Lightning shot out from my hands in an attempt to burn free.

  “Oh dear, you almost hit the childrensies,” Cheese Face said. “You don’t want to hurt the babies, do you?”

  Fuck. My hands were pointing in their direction. The fucker was right. If I fired, I might hit them.

  “Let me go, and I might not gut you alive.”

  He held up his blade, and I had a feeling my poor choice of words was about to bite me in the torso.

  “I’m going to enjoy eating you,” he said, peering down at me with his grotesque face. “Magic from the other side makes for sweeter flesh.”

  I willed the appendages to catch fire, to melt, to shrivel. But my power didn’t work that way—at least I didn’t think it did. I’d never really tried to do more than shift or blast the shit out of things.

  Shift. Fuck, could I teleport out of this trap?

  I made the jump, and the world tried to fracture. It was working. It was—

  Fire lashed across my skin and sank into my blood, burning like lava.

  Well, that didn’t work. Why hadn’t I taken Elijah up on his offer to train? Oh yeah, because I hadn’t trusted his motives. Hadn’t wanted to get embroiled in whatever ancient war he and the Grimswood witches were involved with.

  I should have taken the damn training because hindsight was a bitch.

  The blade arched toward me. Fear pooled in the pit of my belly as if preparing for the slice of his blade, and a scream clawed its way up my throat.

  The fae’s head twisted to the left with a crack. He swayed for a moment, then he was gone, shoved out of my line of vision, to be replaced by a face I both hated and craved.

  Jasper looked down at me and tipped his head to the side. “If you wanted to be tied up, you could have just asked. This seems a little extreme.”

  I was so glad to see him that the urge to leap up and wrap my arms around him was a real thing. I soon shut that down.

  The appendages fell away. I was free to scramble to my feet and away from Jasper, very aware that I was amulet-less and at his mercy if he chose to exercise his mojo on me.

  We stood meters apart in an eye-lock.

  “I believe the words you’re searching for are thank you,” he said.

  Fuck it. “Thank you.” I wasn’t a total douche, and credit where credit was due, he’d just saved my ass. “But if you try to use your mojo on me, I’ll—”

  “You’ll nothing,” he said, eyes blazing sudden and bright. “If I want to rip you from this place and take you to my bed, then there is nothing you can do to stop me. And once you’re in my bed, you’ll willingly part your thighs.”

  He had a sexual power over me I both craved and despised. He was my curse and my sickness, but I wasn’t about to submit without a fight.

  I opened my mouth to argue.

  “But.” He held up a finger to hush me. “I won’t do that.” His smirk was sly and smug, and all the more chilling for it. “I’ll take you back to your witches. I’ll even carry the little brats, and I’ll stand by and watch you don your pathetic amulet.”

  “But?”

  “But nothing.” He shrugged.

  “Bullshit. There’s always a deal with you. What is it?”

  He sauntered closer, and I locked my knees to stop an involuntary step back and glared up at him.

  His gaze tracked over my face, lingering on my mouth like a caress, and my pulse kicked up in response.

  “You don’t intimidate me, Jasper.”

  He touched my cheek and then trailed his finger down to the corner of my mouth before sweeping it over my bottom lip. It took everything I had not to flick out my tongue and lick the pad of his finger.

  “No,” he said. “I suppose I don’t.” His eyes darkened in that way they always did before he kissed me.

  I turned my head to the side, breaking eye contact, pissed that I’d blinked first, but self-preservation was a fucking thing. “What’s the deal, Jasper?”

  “The deal is that when you next remove that amulet, you do so with the knowledge that you must never put it back on and the understanding that you’re mine.” He gripped my jaw and forced me to look at him, his fingers hot against my skin. His warm breath kissed my mouth. “An oath, Cora. Say it. Say the words.”

  I’d broken the first deal between us by using the amulet, but the deal hadn’t been fully binding. Jasper hadn’t had the power to exact an oath; he’d relied on my naivety and my honor to abide by the terms. Yeah, turned out honor could take a leap if it meant being free of his touch. But things were different now. He had more power, and if I took the oath, if I said the words, I’d be bound. But if I didn’t, then he’d take me now.

  I needed the chance to have a choice.

  “Fine.” I gritted my teeth. “I give you my oath.”

  He smiled, showcasing even, white teeth. “Oh no, Cora. Say it all.”

  Fuck. “I give you my oath that the next time I remove the amulet, I’ll be giving myself to you.”

  A zing rushed over my skin.

  “It’s done,” he said.

  I wanted to ask why he’d given me this chance; why not just take me? But only a fool looked a gift horse in the mouth, and—

  “Mummy?”

  I looked across the clearing at the children, all wide awake now and staring at me in confusion.

  “Where’s my mummy?” the girl asked.

  “Fuck.”

  “Language…” Jasper warned.

  He walked over to the children, and my body tensed, thighs bunching, ready to react if he hurt them.

  He crouched and tilted his head to the side. “You’re dreaming,” he said. “This is a dream, and when you wake up, you’ll be safe at home with your parents.”

  He reached out and touched their foreheads one by one.

  Their eyes closed, and their chins fell forward to rest on their chests. He scooped them up. He was wiry, all lean muscle, but he was tall and broad, and the children looked tiny in his arms.

  “Shall we?” he asked.

  “Please take Wren too,” a small voice said.

  My head whipped to the wooden cage where the tiny furry thing was gripping the bars with its little paws and looking up at me with huge brown eyes flecked with gold.

  “Please take Wren too,” it said again.

  Okay, so maybe it wasn’t at the same level as a dog or cat, and it was cute, but… “You helped that thing take those children, didn’t you?”

  It stuck out its bottom lip and nodded, tears brimming. “Merkle make Wren do bad things. Wren not want to be bad.” He looked past me into the darkness beyond the clearing. “Wren not want to be alone here. Take Wren with you.” Its eyes grew huge and round, pupils dilating until they were all I could see, and fuck, he was too cute to leave behind.

  I had no clue what it was, but it was obviously a prisoner, and it had tried to warn me about Merkle.

  “F
ine.” I crouched and reached for the cage.

  “That’s a bad idea,” Jasper said. “Mogwai are dangerous.”

  “Mogwai?”

  “They’re rare,” he said. “And like I said, dangerous.”

  I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “Yeah, cos he might sing me to death.” Wait. “Can you do that?”

  Wren shook his head. “Wren only make small childrensies sleepy. Better be sleepy than scared.”

  There was nothing but sincerity in his eyes, and my cold, withered heart melted just a little. I unlocked the cage and held out my hand. He climbed out and hopped up into my arms.

  He was warm and soft, and my instinct was to hug him. He made a low chirping sound and rubbed his head against my cheek.

  “If you’re done snuggling the dangerous fae creature, can we go?” Jasper drawled. “The sooner you put your amulet back on, the sooner you can take it off again.”

  The oath was suddenly a rock on my chest.

  There had to be a way around it.

  And I knew just the person to help me with it.

  Jasper adjusted the children in his arms. “Grab hold of me,” he ordered.

  I obliged, because shifting out of here was much more appealing than trekking back to the rift. As the world fractured, taking me with it, my mind was decided.

  It was time to call in some warlock assistance.

  Chapter Four

  “You did what?” Elijah said over the phone.

  His voice sounded gruff and unused, as if he’d just woken up and I was the first person he was speaking to.

  Considering it was predawn, I guessed that was exactly the case.

  “I’m not repeating myself, Black.” I tucked the phone between my shoulder and ear while I spread mayo on my chicken sandwich. “I need you to get me out of it.”

  “You need me to—” He cut off his words with a sigh of exasperation. “You took an oath with a malevolent spirit after I specifically warned you not to.”

  I stifled the pang of shame his authoritarian tone evoked. He might have slipped into mentor role, but he wasn’t the boss of me. No one was.

  “It’s not like I had much choice.”

  He sighed again.

  I got the impression I was testing Mr. Black’s patience more and more of late. A warlock shouldn’t be my first point of call when it came to all things magical, but going to my local coven would mean way too many questions about my abilities.

  Elijah worked for the Grimswood Coven, a different breed of coven that used an alternate power source to miasma to practice magic. To tap into it, they needed an anchor witch, one born under the sign of Ophiuchus.

  Someone like me.

  There was a whole deal about some ancient threat being kept at bay, and dire wolf packs, and goodness knew what else. To be honest, I hadn’t paid too much attention when he explained it all. A: because I’d been too busy staring into his blue-green eyes and wondering how an older dude could be this hot, and B: because as soon as he’d said the word anchor, I’d switched off. Being tied down to anything or anyone was a huge no for me.

  Which brought me back to my current predicament. “Can you help me or not?”

  “You want my help, and yet you refuse to help us.”

  Us as in the Grimswood Coven. Elijah was an anomaly of a different nature. A rogue warlock working for witches. Warlocks and witches didn’t, as a rule, mix. From what I’d gleaned, they didn’t even like each other. I mean, you wouldn’t see a witch and a warlock getting it on, which was weird because surely bloodlines would be stronger that way. Still, there was a ton I didn’t know about the witch and warlock world. Deliberate, of course, because learning too much might drag me into their world, and I was all about the not-being-dragged and not-being-tied-down. Unless it was for fun sexy times.

  I digress.

  I cut the crusts off my sandwich. “You don’t need me, Black. You have several potentials capable of being your anchor.”

  “You’re special, Cora.”

  “Oh, you know just how to give a girl tingles, don’t you?”

  “I don’t have time for girls, Cora. Now, women are a different matter.”

  My mouth went dry at the reminder of who I was dealing with.

  “You are special, Cora. It’s a fact.” He sounded almost weary.

  “Yeah, and I’d like to stay that way. Special and unfettered, so get your ass into gear and help me fix this.” I bit into my sandwich and suppressed a moan of pleasure as flavor exploded on my tongue. “I’ll owe you a favor.”

  “Are you speaking with your mouth full?” he asked.

  “Yeah, enjoy it. It’s the only time you’re gonna get to hear that sound.”

  “We’ll see.”

  Why did I even play this game with him?

  My neck heated. I chewed and swallowed quickly. “Just hurry with a loophole.”

  “Next week,” he said. “This week is…busy.”

  “Oh, you have a hot date?’”

  “Several, actually.”

  Several? No, I wasn’t even going to ask. “Fine.”

  I supposed I could refrain from taking the amulet off deliberately or accidentally for a week.

  He hung up without saying goodbye, but there was no offense taken. Elijah was just…Elijah, and despite his connection to the Grimswood Coven, he was one of the few people in the witchy world I fully trusted.

  I polished off my sandwich, grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, and carried the second sandwich I’d made into the living room.

  “Here you go, Wren.”

  My furry little friend was curled up on the sofa, fast asleep.

  His stomach had been grumbling when we’d got back, but the soft snores emanating from his tiny body told me what he needed most right now was rest. I set the food on the coffee table, grabbed a throw off the back of the sofa, and gingerly draped it over the tiny creature.

  What had Jasper called him?

  Mogwai.

  I’d need to look that up. Do some research, but not tonight. I glanced up at the gap in the drapes and the gray predawn light beyond. Okay, so it was morning already. A yawn battled with my jaw, and I bit it back. Yeah, yeah, I needed sleep.

  I was almost at the door to the hallway when a thought occurred to me. What if Wren woke up and got spooked? I mean, this wasn’t his world. He might get scared.

  Fuck it.

  I scooped him up, blanket and all, and carried him to bed with me.

  For the first time in a long time, I wouldn’t be sleeping alone.

  * * *

  I was woken by the shrill ringing of my phone. I was sure I’d put it to vibrate before I’d gone to sleep. I rolled over and made a grab for the bedside table. Something brushed the inside of my arm. Soft, warm, and furry. I froze, a scream trapped in my throat as an image of a humongous spider flittered through my mind, but then my memory returned.

  Wren.

  I pulled back the duvet to peek at my furry friend, still fast asleep despite the screaming mobile.

  Speaking of which. “Hello!”

  “Wow, you’re still not a morning person, are you?” Fee said.

  I rubbed my eyes. “What time is it?”

  “Lunchtime. Were you working last night?”

  “Yeah. Fucked-up case.”

  “How about you tell me all about it over supper later?”

  I sat up as the implications of this call sank in. “When did you get back from the Underealm?”

  “Last night, and I’ll be at the pack house later tonight. So, you in?”

  “Do demons fly?”

  She chuckled. “Love you. See you later.”

  We ended the call with smooches, and I lay back against the pillows, the empty day ahead no longer so dismal. Part of me hated that I was so ecstatic about Fee’s return. She’d been all I’d known for the longest time. My whole world.

  I’d broken away, needing to find my own feet and find myself, but whenever she called, it was like coming
home.

  I both loved and hated that because it showed I still hadn’t found my place yet. That I still hadn’t found me.

  Wren made a soft chirping sound then sat up suddenly, wide-eyed and alert.

  He stared at me for long seconds, and then he smiled. “Cora saved Wren.”

  His stomach grumbled.

  I poked his belly gently. “And now I’m gonna feed you.” I pushed the covers off the bed, stood and stretched, sleep shirt riding up to allow the midday sun to kiss my skin. “Come on, buddy. Let’s have some brunch.”

  * * *

  I scrambled eggs, fried bacon, and made toast. Once a pot of tea was steeping, I joined Wren at the kitchen table. My house was small and cozy, and the furniture was all second hand, but it was mine. The kitchen was my favorite room in the house. Old style cottage décor with wooden cabinets and an Aga stove that heated up the whole house when turned on. The kitchen was the heart of my home.

  “Who was Cora speaking to earlier,” Wren asked as I placed a plate in front of him.

  He was so small I’d had to put cushions on his chair to help him reach the tabletop.

  “I thought you were asleep.”

  “Wren heard Cora in his dreaming.”

  “My friend Fee called me. My best friend. She just got back from a long trip to the Underealm.”

  He stared at me blankly.

  “You don’t know what that is, do you?”

  “A place?”

  “That’s right. The home of demons.”

  His eyes went wide. “Cora is friends with a demon?”

  “It’s a long story, but demons aren’t monsters. Well, not all of them are. Fee is… She’s special.”

  His eyes were glazing over as they studied the plate of eggs and bacon in the center of the table.

  I spooned food onto his plate. “Dig in.”

  He was instantly animated as he scooped scrambled egg into his tiny mouth and chewed with gusto. Fuck, he was adorable.

  He slowed as the plate emptied and looked up at me with a smile showcasing tiny, white, razor-sharp teeth. It was the only vaguely threatening thing about him. The rest of him was cute and cuddly. A moon-shaped face with big round eyes and small round ears positioned at the top of his head like tiny plates. They twitched and twisted from side to side as if picking up radio signals. He had two small slits in his face where a nose would be, and his mouth had a sulky look to it. His hands and feet were paws with tiny talons poking out of them, and his body was covered in soft fur so dark it looked blue.