CHAPTER THREE || BRYAN
T he crumbling book of necromantic spells stood on the breakfast bar in front of me, open to the page about warding away the various different types of ghosts. I had to admit, I was proud of myself. It had taken me about an hour of prep time, but I had mixed ordinary table salt with a small amount of holy water to create a compound the book referred to as ‘blessed salts.’ Then I’d mixed the blessed salts with iron filings and used the resulting blend to create what was an admittedly lopsided circle around the breakfast bar I stood at. No ghost—regardless of what type—could cross the boundary of the circle in order to get at me.
Allegedly. According to a sketchy book of necromantic spells I had, erm— borrowed —from Tobias’s coven archives.
But still.
I was here. I was doing the thing.
I was at the house at the end of Pickery Road, where the murder had taken place last week. I had expected it to still be an active crime scene, with law enforcement and lab techs coming and going. But the house had been completely dark and quiet when I had parked one street down and trudged through the narrow pathways between houses, picked the lock on the back door, and let myself in.
My goal was pretty simple: I needed to figure out exactly what kind of ghost I was dealing with so I could banish it properly. According to the book of necromancy I knew that there were many types of ghosts capable of killing a person and, because nothing is ever easy, they each required special tactics in order to banish them properly.
For instance, revenants and wraiths manifested similarly, but left different markings on their victims. And while wraiths could be dispatched by piercing them with an iron weapon that had been coated with a blessed substance, like holy water, doing that to a revenant would just piss them off. Revenants required a sharpened oak stake coated in blessed venom, which was snake venom mixed with a dash of holy water and prayed over, which would do exactly nothing to a wraith.
There were other types of ghosts, too. Poltergeists, for example, were easily hypnotized by music and movement. It was impossible to destroy them, though. Instead, they needed to be trapped inside of an object enchanted for the sole purpose of imprisoning ghosts. I hoped I wasn’t dealing with a poltergeist, because if I was, I had no idea how I’d go about trapping a spirit and the book I had was a little sketchy on the details of how to create an appropriate housing object to do it with. Probably because it required an experienced witch to create it.
Or an experienced warlock.
No, I reminded myself for the umpteenth time. I gritted my teeth against the sudden pang of longing that probably would have caused my heart to go all pitter-pat, provided it could still beat.
I absolutely, positively, in no way, shape, or form, was going to call Tobias for help.
You’re doing this all on your own , I told myself firmly. And you’re doing a super good job of it already.
I had even cut my own palm to draw a bit of blood so that I could sketch a few of the manifesting sigils from the spell book around the outer edge of my protective circle, which was supposed to attract the spirits of the dead and give them the power to manifest physically, which was helpful if I wanted to discover the spirit’s nature. It was also necessary for the spirit to be in corporeal form to dispatch it properly.
Supposedly, the sigils would work even if you didn’t possess the ability to cast spells. An experienced warlock could make them out of anything, but for the rest of us, they had to be drawn in blood.
I didn’t need Tobias, or anyone else. I was going to get this spirit to show itself to me so I could figure out what type of entity I was dealing with. Then I’d return, fully prepared to fight it.
Simple. Easy. How hard could any of this even be?
Though, as the afternoon turned into evening, it became clear to me that the ghost didn’t agree with my plan, because it was a total no-show.
I should have at least brought a book. One that I actually wanted to read. Or at least some scrap paper to draw on. When I’d been mortal, I’d been a fair artist, though it had never been more than a hobby for me. Still, I hadn’t considered how boring staking out a ghost would be, but I was getting ready to tear out my own hair.
The last thing I wanted was a bunch of uninterrupted time to think.
For the tenth time, I frowned down at the symbols on the crumbling parchment page opened before me, trying to figure out if I had drawn the manifesting sigils incorrectly.
And yet again, I had to conclude that they seemed correct to me.
Then my cell phone rang.
Tobias, yet again. He had called me at least a dozen times in the last twenty-four hours. He’d left me several long voicemail messages, which I hadn’t listened to. He’d also sent me a dozen more text messages I hadn’t opened.
Though I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t the teeniest bit tempted to answer it, just to hear his steady and reassuring voice, I let it ring. I had no idea why he was calling out of the blue like this, but I also knew it didn’t matter. It wasn’t going to help either one of us to give him any ideas that a relationship was even remotely possible.
The phone stopped ringing and I let out a sigh of relief.
Then, abruptly, the temperature in the room plunged. The change was rapid enough to cause my skin to break out with gooseflesh. The hairs on my forearms raised. I felt a crawling sensation on the back of my neck, exactly like someone was standing directly behind me, staring at me intently.
I turned. It was just an empty hallway that led out into the living room. Nothing moved. It was like the whole house had sucked in a hushed breath, waiting for my reaction.
“Okay,” I said to the room at large, fighting for bravado. “So far, so creepy. You’re definitely scaring me. Any second now, I’ll be running for the door. I promise.”
Then, as if in answer, on the other side of the kitchen, I heard rattling. I jerked my head toward the sound. It was coming from one of the drawers.
A surge of triumph tore through me. It was happening. The ghost was manifesting.
The drawer popped open and a dozen kitchen knives darted out of it. They jumped onto the counter in unison, standing upright on the tips of their blades. For a long moment, they were perfectly still and motionless.
“Oh shit,” I whispered, my eyes going wide. Knives couldn’t kill me—unless, of course, my head was severed from my body. But still, getting stabbed by a dozen kitchen knives would hurt like hell.
From directly behind me, I heard a high-pitched cackle. It sounded like a woman, perhaps—except the laughter was so totally unhinged that it didn’t sound like the type of noise an actual person should be able to make.
The knives launched themselves at me.
Without even meaning to, I threw myself sideways, moving at vampire speed, which meant that I probably would have looked like a blur to anyone watching. The knives buried themselves halfway to the hilt in the wall right behind where I was standing.
Realizing I had stepped out of my protective circle, I darted back over the threshold to safety. Then I spun to face the wall, ready for another attack. But the knives stayed where they were, still quivering from the force of their impact.
I shivered as the temperature in the room plummeted even further. The lights began to flicker. I glanced around warily, certain that the ghost wasn’t done with me yet.
Sure enough, a bloodcurdling scream suddenly split the air. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once. The sheer force of it was like a physical blow, making me stagger. I clapped my hands over my sensitive ears, but it did little to muffle the bone-chilling sound.
I started to realize I might have bitten off more than I could chew. Still, I couldn’t back down now. I had to see this through. If I left before it actually showed itself to me, all of my effort would have been for nothing. I needed to know what kind of entity I was dealing with if I had any hope at all of banishing it.
The scream died away, leaving a heavy silence in its wake. The circle of blessed salts and iron filings still surrounded me, offering some protection, though I suddenly doubted it would hold for long against the onslaught of this spirit once it really got going.
I tensed, senses straining, as I waited for whatever was going to happen next.
I saw a flicker of movement out of the corner of my eye. I turned to face it and saw my own reflection in the darkened glass pane of the kitchen window. And something else, too. Teresa Dames, the first witch I had murdered, stood directly behind me, just outside the protective ring I had drawn around myself.
I whirled to face her. But no one was there.
Had I imagined it? Or was she hovering somewhere nearby in the spirit world, haunting me? If so, maybe the manifesting sigils were working on her, too.
A loud crash came from the direction of the living room, followed by more screams and wails. The ghost who resided in the home was clearly on the move, tearing through the house, overturning furniture and smashing anything fragile. I winced at the cacophony but held my ground.
A door creaked open on the other side of the kitchen. A mop came floating out, seemingly on its own, which was just about as unnerving as you might imagine. Then, with surprising speed, it flew straight toward me, handle aimed directly at my chest.
I caught it in mid-air, before the wood could pierce my heart.
Was it a coincidence, or did this entity somehow know exactly what I was?
The coffee table I had seen earlier in the living room skittered into the kitchen. It stopped right at the boundary of my circle. The blessed salts sparked with blue energy for a split second.
Good to know those actually worked, at least.
The table rebounded, only to hurl itself up to the ceiling like gravity was a thing that no longer mattered to it. Then it slammed itself down onto the kitchen floor with enough force to shake the walls. The wood shattered into approximately a million pieces.
Then the fragments—many of them sharp and plenty long enough to be makeshift wooden stakes—began to float in midair, directly in front of me.
Uh-oh.
Maybe I had drawn the manifesting sigils a little too well.
That was when the front door exploded inward, torn off its hinges by a massive blast of magical energy. Framed in the doorway stood the last person I expected to see. Yet, somehow, I wasn’t even surprised.
Tobias strode forward, hands already moving to cast another spell. With a few sharp words and a flicking gesture, he turned the jagged wooden fragments hovering at the boundary of my circle into ash, which then harmlessly floated to the floor, coating it in gray.
“Bryan!” Tobias hurried over to me, face creased with worry. “Are you alright?”
The spirit must have realized that Tobias was a huge threat to its unlife, because its ire immediately transferred to him. Without warning, a hideous flower print loveseat came sailing in through the arched doorway leading to the living room and would have totally creamed Tobias if I hadn’t darted out of the safety of my circle and pulled him out of the way.
Warlocks were literally magical and they’re probably a lot more powerful than vampires, provided that they actually get the chance to pop off a spell. But they’re basically just humans with special powers, meaning that their reflexes aren’t the sharpest. Knocked off balance, Tobias stumbled forward, into my arms. I braced myself to absorb the impact of a fully grown man suddenly colliding into me, but my foot slipped on the ash that was now coating the ground.
We both fell backward.
Vampires have the ability to speed ourselves up considerably, which means that our perception of time slows way down. It sometimes happens involuntarily—a reflex. Like, for example, when the warlock who has pledged his undying love to you accidentally runs you over and causes you both to topple to the ground while an evil spirit tries its best to murder you.
With the way we were falling, even though he had stumbled into me and sent us both toppling backward, somehow we’d spun like dancers in some off-brand danse macabre, and now he was plummeting to the floor with me on top of him, where he’d soften the blow of our combined fall with the back of his very fragile, very mortal skull.
No. Absolutely not.
Using every bit of my vampire strength, I pulled him on top of me at the last possible second, so that it would be me and not him who took the brunt of the impact.
The force of my body hitting the linoleum floor caused my teeth to snap together and I tasted my own blood in my mouth. Blinding white light obscured my vision for a split second.
Tobias scrambled off of me and he must have pulled me up, then hoisted my arm over his shoulder, because suddenly I was moving, with his strong arms around my body, even before I had fully recovered from the blow I’d taken.
A moment later, my vampiric healing abilities kicked in and the world righted itself again. Just in time for me to see literally every object around us that wasn’t bolted down floating several inches off the ground.
Including the knives, which had pulled themselves free from the wall at some point since I’d last looked at them. Those were aimed directly at Tobias.
I grabbed at him and used my vampire speed to get us through the shattered front door and out onto the relative safety of the front lawn.
Behind us, I heard every object in the house crash to the ground at once. It was loud enough to set off a car alarm from the black luxury sedan parked in the driveway next door.
Tobias let out a sharp, startled exhale as I halted our momentum.
“Warn me next time!” Tobias gasped out, doubling over.
“I just saved your life!” I retorted. “Be thankful I was fast enough to outrun those knives.”
“I saved your life first!” He raised his gaze to mine and held it, his deep blue eyes were hard and dark for an instant. But then something went soft in his face as he examined me. “Hey, are you okay?”
Seeing him was a shock to me, just like it had been the first time I’d ever laid eyes on him. He was warm, solid, alive , and so handsome that it just made me want to draw him into my arms and never let him go.
His reddish-brown hair was wavy and a bit unruly, his shoulders were wide, and every part of him was strong, hard-edged, and masculine. He had major boy next door vibes. Except, if the boy next door in question happened to be a powerful warlock who could have probably also moonlighted as an underwear model if he’d wanted to.
But that wasn’t all I noticed.
His pulse was hammering in his throat, circulating hot, rich, red blood through his body…
I took a step back from him, terrified my fangs would drop.
“I’m fine,” I snapped, deciding that offense was the best defense. “Or, well, no. I’m not fine. You totally ruined my hunt. And my book is still back inside the house! Along with all my supplies. Plus, I never even saw the ghost manifest. So this whole thing was a waste, thanks to you.”
Tobias blinked at me, his jaw dropping open like it had lost a hinge.
We stared at each other for a long moment, my anger wavering and then draining away from me until I basically felt like a giant idiot.
“Your…” he trailed off, still staring at me. Then he tried again. “Your hunt. As in, you were here on purpose. With a book. And supplies. Trying to get a ghost to… manifest itself?”
I didn’t like the way he said that one bit. Like it was ridiculous. Like I had no right to redeem myself for all the evil I had done. I jutted my jaw out defiantly, glaring at him. “And if I was?”
“Then I’d ask you what the hell you were thinking, trying to take on a spirit this powerful alone,” he replied immediately. But then his tone softened, and he added, “What the hell is this, Bryan? I get that you’re going through something I will never understand. But what is this?”
“I don’t need to explain myself to you,” I bit off, fuming again. He couldn’t just show up like this and question all my decisions. And now he was implying that I couldn’t do this.
I could and I would. Once I regrouped. And I didn’t need anyone’s help.
Least of all, his.
“Leave me alone, Tobias.”
Then I turned on my heel and walked away from him, down the pathway between the houses and to the safety of my car, parked one street down. I walked quickly, but still at human speed, determined to storm away.
Tobias, of course, followed me. “Just tell me, are you trying to get yourself killed? Is this some kind of weird martyr thing?”
“It’s not. I’m pretty hard to kill,” I muttered, not slowing down.
“About that.” He caught my arm. “Bryan, I saw something. A vision.”
“Right,” I replied, turning back around to face him. “Let me guess. You saw something spooky-bad. And now you’re here for my protection. Because of course you are.”
“No, I’m here because I’m in love with—”
I cut him off, feeling another surge of anger tear through me. “Tobias, if you tell me you’re in love with me right now, I swear I might never talk to you again.”
At the stricken expression on his face, I immediately felt terrible.
Tobias’s mouth snapped shut and he gave me an unhappy look. “Then what? What do you want me to say, Bryan?”
“Tell me then, Romeo, what college did I go to? What’s my sister’s name? What’s my favorite book?” I glared at him, trying to ignore how fucking delicious his scent was—like cinnamon and nutmeg, which had an annoying way of reminding me of holidays spent with family. Of home . It was so powerful, in fact, that I had to force myself to keep speaking, to keep saying the words that would send him as far away from me as possible, which is exactly where he belonged. For his own protection. I added, “Tobias, think about it. What, exactly, do you even know about me?”
“I know that you’re a good person,” he replied, crossing his arms over his chest. “The second the spell Giles cast on you broke, your first instinct was to turn yourself in, even though you knew it probably meant that your life would be over.”
“My life ended three years ago, when I became a vampire.”
Tobias went on as though I hadn’t spoken, holding my glare with one of his own. “You’re kind and you’re funny. You’re stubborn as hell. And you don’t like anyone taking care of you. I know those things and I could learn all the rest if you let me. But I know who you are already. What else actually matters?”
No way in hell I was answering that question. Already, I felt my resolve weakening. The truth was, on some instinctive, totally bullshit fated-mates level, I craved his nearness. And the fact that my body seemed to relax of its own accord in his presence, like it had been waiting for him all along, just pissed me off.
“If you know I don’t want your help, then why are you here? How are you here?” Then I paused, as it became perfectly clear in a heartbeat. “Wait. Did you use magic to find me?”
“No, I had Poppy do it. She’s way better at locator spells than I am.” He had the decency to look a little sheepish, at least. But then he let out a breath and added, “And I already told you, I saw something bad happening. Fuck, Bryan, I saw you dying . So, yeah, I guess I don’t care if you hate my guts for it. I’m here. And I’m not going anywhere. Not until I know you’re safe.”
I felt my anger evaporate even further, though I tried to cling to it. Without it, I was completely defenseless. And I couldn’t deny the fact that Tobias had shown up and saved my ass in the nick of time.
And what if he had actually seen something terrible happening to me?
Tobias was many things, but I already knew he wasn’t a liar. Which meant he believed what he was telling me.
And… would it really be so bad to let him help me?
But then, in the quiet that stretched between us, with the moonlight glinting off his auburn-brown hair, I heard his heartbeat. And against my will, my gaze zeroed in on his jugular again. His pulse beat in his neck, in time with his heart. And my throat tightened, feeling suddenly like it was on fire. Like I was literally burning with my thirst. With his magic, he might have been able to wipe the floor with me. But other than that, he was extremely mortal.
Fragile. Breakable. And his hot, flowing blood filling my mouth would have been absolutely incredible.
At that thought, my fangs dropped.
Horrified, I turned away from him. I let out a breath that was somewhere between a gasp and a sob. If I could have still blushed, my cheeks would have been on fire.
“Stay away from me, Tobias,” I managed, though my shame and horror was choking me. “I’m warning you.”
Then I used vampire speed to put as much distance between him and myself as possible.
But I still heard him call after me, sounding so lost in the dark, “You know I can’t do that.”