Chapter 29. Caitlyn
One minute I was having the quickest, most intense orgasm of my life, the next, the room was plunged into darkness.
Confusion was the only thing that lodged my protest in my throat as Blaise pulled his fingers from me, leaving me abandoned in the middle of the bed, still writhing in a post-orgasm haze.
I had just about managed to steady my breathing when I heard Ambrose, his voice low and unapologetic with rage, say, “Take Caitlyn downstairs,” before I was scooped off the bed and left bobbing unceremoniously against Blaise’s chest.
The moment he burst through the bedroom door, the darkness faded. And it wasn’t until we were already halfway down the stairs—at which point I saw, disbelievingly, the door to Creep’s attic swing open and a winged Ambrose disappear into it—that I realized Blaise was in his shadow form.
Dangerously sharp horns pierced through the crown of his head, coiling backward, glinting in the candlelight. A smaller row of horn-nubs, each increasing in size, ran in a V-shape from the center of his brows into his hairline, meeting his horns.
The fingers pressing me to his body were tipped with long, obsidian talons, which I could only pray to Hecate wouldn’t accidentally pierce my flesh as he jostled me off the final step and rushed into the living room.
“Blaise, what in the seven realms of hell—”
“They’re here,” he said, depositing me on the couch before rushing to the window and glaring out at the field beyond. “They’re here, and we don’t have a plan!”
A moment later, Ambrose appeared in the doorway, and yep—those were wings I’d glimpsed earlier.
They dominated the door frame, blacking out the hallway beyond.
They were monstrous. And beautiful. Their feathers—if you could call them that—somehow looked irresistibly smooth, but razor-sharp, like shards of obsidian rather than anything that could be considered bird-like.
Standing at his feet was Creep, her face still fixed in that cherubic smile that did absolutely nothing to disguise the glint of murderous rage in her eyes.
“Wait,” I said, scrambling to my feet. “Who’s they? I thought it was just Isadora?” I asked Blaise, before turning to Ambrose. “And I thought you overheard her say it would take at least a week?”
“Plan! We need a plan!” Blaise said, bracing himself on either side of the window as if sheer force of will alone might drive the intruders back.
Ambrose moved to the end of the couch, his wings flexing, each feather glinting in the candlelight like a promise of death by a thousand cuts to whoever was approaching.
The shadows in the room practically quivered with rage as he said, “Blaise, you stay here and protect Caitlyn. I’m going to—”
“Everyone just calm the fuck down, stop ignoring me, and stop treating me like I can’t protect myself, okay?” I said—or, more accurately, shouted.
Both of my mates turned to face me, and Creep jutted her chin upward in a mildly admirable show of solidarity.
“Caitlyn, I—” Blaise started.
“Who is approaching the house?” I demanded.
“Isadora and Priscilla.”
Priscilla-fucking-Raisin.
Ugh. I almost wished I had time to film this entire shit-show as proof for the next person who tried to convince me that Priscilla wasn’t the fucking worst.
“Okay. We have to assume that what Jake said about Isadora’s abilities and the conch—”
“Jake?” Blaise interrupted, but quickly quieted when Ambrose shot him a later look.
“—is correct,” I continued. “And that she’s not going to be able to compel any of us for very long. Creep, you need to do everything in your power to keep Isadora from getting that magic seashell anywhere near you, okay?”
Creep snapped me a military salute.
Blaise, seemingly unable to contain himself, said, “How exactly do we intend to survive a siren song? She’d only have to say ‘Ambrose, kill Blaise’ within earshot and then...”
He drew his finger across his throat.
He was right. Even if her song wasn’t that strong, she’d managed to keep Ambrose compelled for over a week. And if she got to either Ambrose or Blaise and told one of them to kill the other—
I shuddered.
I just need a way to dampen her song.
I glanced around the room, briefly wondering if there was anything small, fluffy, and preferably not taxidermy that I could shove into our ears, before rapping my fist against my temple in frustration.
Of course, Caitlyn.
We had two pairs of magical earbuds upstairs literally designed to drown out all magical sound and spellwork, as well as my snoring.
“Creep? Hushbuds, please.”
Creep offered another salute, and both unopened pairs appeared on the coffee table in front of me.
I tossed one to each of my mates. “Stick these in your ears and let’s pray they actually do what they say they’re supposed to.”
“You wear them,” both of my mates said at the same time.
“Nuh-uh,” I said.
Both of them let out synchronized growls of frustration.
“Put them in,” I demanded. Then, realizing we had only seconds before the sirens were on top of us—and that our plan currently amounted to sticking untested magical earbuds in their ears and hoping for the best—I added, “If she gets to either one of you, you could kill me in a heartbeat with your shadows. If she gets to me, sure, I can fire off a hex or two. But I’m an alchemist. Unless I’m standing next to my cauldron with a few hours to spare, I can’t just magic up potioned horrors out of thin air. ”
My mates glanced at each other, then finally seeing sense, unwrapped the boxes and slipped the earbuds into place.
“Can you hear me?” I asked, and both nodded.
Okay, you know they let in ambient noise, don’t panic. You just need to see if they drown out spellwork like they promised. And suddenly my mind purged itself of every magical word I knew to try and test them.
Fuck.
But I’d run out of time, and all I could think was Please, please, please work.
A sing-song voice drifted in from outside. “Come out, come out!”
It was an odd feeling, being under the influence of a siren song. My mind knew that I didn’t want to do what I was being told. But my body didn’t care. It simply sprang into step with the song and went ahead and obeyed.
Worst of all, I could feel the wrongness begin to ebb from my thoughts, as if my mind were being gently persuaded that this was all fine.
My mates, both wearing identical looks of worry on their faces, reluctantly followed me through the house, their shadows spreading thick across the floor, stirring with every step I took.
Were they following because the earbuds didn’t work?
Creep was waiting for us in the hallway, her glass eyes whirring in their sockets as if she were desperately trying to come up with a way to help.
When I crossed the threshold of the front door and stepped onto the porch, the house let out a lamenting creak, the wood beneath my feet almost begging me to turn around and stay inside. But it was no use. My entire body quivered with a phantom itch, a restless, crawling need to go outside.
The moment my Converse sank into the grass beyond the porch, relief flooded my body, the task complete.
An odd sensation followed, as if my mind and body stitched themselves back together again, both parts momentarily stunned, like neither could quite believe I’d just done something without my consent.
Maybe I was only aware because I knew what Isadora was. But even then, I could feel my mind scrambling to rewrite the truth. To insist I hadn’t been violated at all—that I’d stepped outside because I’d meant to.
It sickened me to my very core. Not just for myself, but for my mate—who had endured over a week under her influence, his mind and body splintering with every command, only to knit themselves back together again and convince him to do whatever that vile creature asked of him.
Finally, I lifted my eyes to the pair of witch-sirens ahead of me—just close enough that I could make out the light mottling to Priscilla’s skin.
Priscilla wore her familiar mask of bored disinterest. The phantom of what looked to be an angry bruise lingered on her cheek and left eye, and a small pang of pity curled in my chest. Witches didn’t heal as fast as incubi, but we still healed fast. It must have been a nasty blow to her face to have caused a bruise in the first place, not to mention one so large.
But then she crossed her arms and inspected her fingernails, settling into the Priscilla I knew.
It was almost impossible to reconcile that image with anything other than the bully I’d despised for most of my life.
And I couldn’t help wondering again how she’d managed to convince Creep, Jake, the head of the coven, and possibly even Ambrose if my suspicions were right, that she had some other redeemable side.
Unlike Priscilla, her mother looked confused, lips pulled thin and eyes narrowed as she stared beyond my shoulder.
Her voice was nothing like the lullaby-soft song she’d used to lure me outside when she said, “You’re supposed to be dead.”
Ice flooded my veins as I realized she was talking to Ambrose.
Was that how he’d escaped? Had he faked his own death? He hadn’t wanted to talk about it last night, and now I wished I’d begged him to tell us everything.
Isadora turned to Priscilla, confusion warping her features. “You told me he’d died. Just... faded into the shadows.” Her brows drew tight, as if she knew what she was saying wasn’t quite right, but couldn’t understand why.
But Isadora had to know better. Incubus demons didn’t simply fade into shadows when they died. She’d lived in the coven for eighteen years. Maybe she hadn’t been invited to any funerals, but she had to know they left real bodies behind when it was their time.
And then two truths hit me at once.
Priscilla had compelled her mother to believe that lie.
And she’d done it so my mate could escape.
Ugh. I couldn’t believe I was starting to entertain the possibility that Priscilla-fucking-Raisin might actually be a not-bad person.
Priscilla, still not bothering to look up from her nails, merely shrugged.
“I presumed that when you hadn’t fed him, he’d starved to death.
But if he simply escaped into the night.
..” She flicked an imaginary speck of dust from her fingertip.
“Well, I guess you should’ve kept a tighter leash on him. ”
The slap cracked through the open field like a gunshot.
It took me a second to connect Priscilla crumpled on the ground and Isadora’s raised hand to the sound of a mother striking her daughter hard enough to knock her off her feet.
Static sparked from my palm and raced up my arms as I gathered every scrap of magic I had.
It was the first time I’d ever felt anxious about being born an alchemist witch, because I knew I probably only had one, maybe two decent hexes in me before I’d be reduced to hurling my cauldrons like blunt weapons.
And the fact that I was about to spend all of it defending Priscilla of all people nearly made a hysterical laugh bubble up my throat.
My mates’ shadows swirled around me, clinging to my feet and sliding up the backs of my legs as if they were barely holding themselves back from spearing them straight through Isadora’s chest.
Which would be a terrible idea right now, to kill her without definitive proof that we were acting in self-defense.
Sure, she deserved it. And if we’d been back at my coven, this would’ve been simple: a trial, the head of the coven weighing the evidence, judging our actions with full knowledge of exactly what kind of evil creature Isadora Raisin was.
But we weren’t back at the coven.
I fell under my head of coven’s jurisdiction.
But I wasn’t sure if my mates did yet, having never even set foot there.
And since they’d mostly broken from their clan to live in the mortal realm—and now couldn’t return because of the mating bond with an earthbound supernatural anyway—they were stuck in a legal no-man’s-land.
In the worst-case scenario, they’d be hauled before the Council. And the Council was notoriously unforgiving when they were forced to convene a trial.
All the defense would need was a halfway decent lawyer to argue that it was Isadora’s nature to sing, and that killing her for doing what sirens did was disproportionate.
And just like that, the trial would swing against them.
Short of Isadora making the first move, my mates had to rein in their murderous urges. I pushed that thought down our bond as hard as I could, hoping their sensitivity to emotion would compensate for the lack of a verbal warning.
I felt them shift slightly behind me and prayed to every God and Goddess I knew that they understood.
Priscilla rose gracefully from the ground, as if she’d been knocked down on purpose, and resumed her bored inspection of her fingernails. The only sign she’d been struck at all was the swollen, angry red handprint blooming on her cheek.
Isadora had already lost interest in her daughter. Her gaze slid to me instead.
“Foolish little witch,” she sneered, her voice as sharp as splintered ice. “I remember this house from the coven. That run-down shack isn’t the one I would’ve chosen for myself,” she added, lips curling as the house groaned in anger, “but I suppose it will do... for now.”
My mind whirred, scrambling for a plan. Priscilla—if she really was on our side, which, given how her mother had just treated her, I was starting to believe—needed to be far enough away from Isadora that she wouldn’t be caught in the crosshairs of my hex.
And my mates needed to hold back until Isadora made the first move—something clear enough that either their lives or mine were undeniably in danger, enough to justify unleashing their shadows.
I could just let her have the house. Sit back and watch the absolute carnage Creep would wreak once the conch’s compulsion wore off. And judging by the way the house creaked in fury at being called a shack, yeah, that would be entertaining.
With no better option in sight, the only thing I could do was keep her talking long enough for one of us to come up with a plan.