62 Jasper
JASPER
Standing in the shadows of the alley between Salt & Sage and Heirloom Café, I watch Birdie and Frankie drive by in the Jeep, headed for the ferry.
I fucking hate this. I should be going with them.
We were supposed to have seven more days to plan this all out.
Seven days to find the bodies, dig them up, and secure the grimoires before we staged our attack on Ludmilla.
But now Howe is about to call the Raven Hill Group and beg for help. And Birdie’s right, if Ludmilla knows the only thing standing between her and what she wants is some stupid radar machine, she’ll have ten delivered to my island by tomorrow.
We need this to happen. Tonight. I have to trust Birdie and Frankie to get it done.
Meanwhile, I have my own job to do. This blood bank attack plan is fucking complicated.
Not only do we need to break into the bank and destroy Ludmilla’s cache of blood, but we also need to get caught doing it.
Dáinn has been very clear on that point.
He wants Ludmilla to send her cronies to try and stop us. And he wants us to kill them all.
Last night, he finally explained why. He wants the bodies.
The wards around Raven Watch are too powerful to breach with any witchcraft.
But hidden inside one of the mage’s renders?
We could all walk right through the front doors.
That’s Dáinn’s plan to take down Ludmilla.
We Trojan Horse our way inside the manor wearing the skins of her own coven.
Once inside, we have to play our parts convincingly enough to not derail the blood moon rite.
Dáinn described the ritual in detail last night.
My stomach twists in knots just thinking about it.
At sunset on the night of the third quarter moon, the Latchko Coven assembles in the north tower.
Dáinn described in detail the design of the sunburst mosaic tiles framing the middle of the floor.
A sacrificial basin. Ludmilla chains her chosen witch to the floor and calls forth Dáinn.
The sacrifice is drenched in Ludmilla’s blood, anointed as the offering. Then their name is given.
And Dáinn devours.
I grimace, tucking my phone in my pocket. Thousands. I did the math last night. I didn’t want to, but my mind went there. One hundred and seventy-two years of forced bondage . . . twelve sacrifices a year . . . that’s over two thousand witches killed by Ludmilla, drained by Dáinn.
And that’s not even counting how many souls she’s had him claim outside of the ritual.
She has to be stopped.
I rub at my chest, feeling the odd ache of the empty space near my third rib.
A piece of me is missing now, lost irrevocably to the wraith.
It’s an odd twist in the magic, almost as if Birdie is a ward against Dáinn’s unchecked hunger.
If he devours a soul not freely offered, she can stop him, and he’s forced to give it all back.
But when a soul is offered freely? Granted to the wraith as a gift?
Well, then he gets to keep what is taken.
Free will is the key. Consent. Mutual agreement.
I have only myself to blame for what happened last night.
I offered myself to the wraith. Gods help me, I was curious.
I wanted to feel it again. Feel him. Feel his power.
I can’t explain what’s happening between us.
Wraiths don’t have mates? Fine. Witches don’t either.
Hortie can take all her talk of swans in tea leaves and shove it.
So, we’re not mates . . . but we’re not nothing either. There is something between us. Something in him calls to me, lures me in. The truth is, I like him. He’s honorable and kind. He’s hard-working. He may be a soul-sucking wraith, but there is more humanity to him than most humans I meet.
I want to be with him and Birdie . . . be where they are. For some, home is a place. It’s how I feel about Burr Island. I am rooted to this land. But home can be a person too. Coven is home for me. Birdie feels like home.
And Dáinn . . .
“Fuck.” I groan aloud, trying to untangle the knots in my stomach. Dáinn is a soul-sucking wraith who wants to eat me. He’s all but said he doesn’t know if he can resist. If I keep him close in the way we both want, there will come a day when he breaks. A man can only starve himself for so long.
We can’t keep Birdie chained between us forever. It’s not fair to her. She has to be able to live her life. But I can’t live with Dáinn as my shadow knowing each moment might be my last. It would suffocate me, wear me thin. And seeing me suffer would torture Dáinn.
I have to find a way to fix this. For all three of us, I have to find a way to ward off Dáinn without Birdie’s help.
“Great,” I mutter. “Add it to the fucking list.”
“Add what to the list?”
I stiffen, the flutter in my chest announcing the wraith’s arrival.
He steps out the side door of Salt & Sage in his render.
I want to kill the mage for making him look so unobtainably hot.
His hair is still up in that stupid manbun.
A single curled strand hangs loose, framing his face.
He changed out of my clothes, thank fuck.
But his shirt today is, if possible, even sluttier than the last one.
The black fabric is thin as tissue paper, clinging to his rounded chest and arms. The scoop at the neck is even wider too, showing off more of his clavicle.
He winces up at the sun peeking over the top of the alley and takes a pair of dark sunglasses from his pocket, slipping them on his face. “Sorry I’m late.”
“Did you talk to Baz about the renders?”
He sighs. “I did.”
My stomach drops. “He won’t help?”
“He said he doesn’t want to hear the request from me.”
I stiffen, glaring at him. “He wants me to ask? Does he expect me to fucking grovel? Crawl on my knees and beg?”
Dáinn smiles faintly. “Actually, I think he wants your respect. He’ll never admit it, but I think he wants you to see him as a worthy partner in this.”
“Worthy partner? I don’t have the upper hand here, Dáinn. I’m the one who needs him. There is no high fucking horse. No ego.”
“There is always ego between witches and mages,” he replies gently. “You see him as necessary evil. You don’t trust him, but you need him. I think he’d like you to try and see him as just necessary.”
“He realizes that I’m doing all of this to break your bond to Ludmilla, right? This is for you, Dáinn. Not me. Hell, it’ll probably get me fucking killed.”
“Don’t say that,” he murmurs.
“Well, it’s true.”
“Sweet witch, I can’t bear it.”
Sighing, I let out a breath. “Fuck. We can’t argue about this now. Birdie is heading off island with Frankie to pick up the GPR at the university. Our timeline is condensing here fast. Howe is possibly reaching out to Ludmilla even as we speak.”
He pushes off the brick wall, body tense. “Why? What happened?”
“He’s just done playing superman,” I reply. “He’s gonna go crawling to Ludmilla for help. We need to dig up the bodies, Dáinn. Tonight. Whatever is buried with them, we need to get it as far as possible from Ludmilla’s greedy hands.”
“And Birdie is safe?”
I nod. “Yeah, she’s with Frankie.”
His eyes narrow behind his glasses. “And you trust the witch?”
“With my life,” I growl. “Frankie is more than coven. She’s family, my sister by bond if not by blood.”
He nods. “So, we dig. Tonight. How goes the spell for banishing spirits? Could you tweak it to work for the ravens?”
I groan, shaking my head. “I don’t know. It’s complicated. Reinventing spells has never been my strongest suit. It’s all intuition and vibes.”
“Well, you have to try,” he urges. “We need the skies blind to our digging—”
“I know,” I say over him. “Let’s just—Fuck, can we just do one thing at a time? We need the keycard to access the blood bank, right? We can’t trip off any internal alarms.”
“I know,” he echoes.
“We want to get caught by witches, not cops.”
He places a firm hand on my shoulder. “Jasper, I know,” he says again. “It’s my plan, remember?”
Groaning, I check my watch. “Right. We need to do this before we lose our window.”
Nodding, he fades into the void, disappearing in a swirl of shadows. “Ready,” he hisses in my ear. I can tell by the voice he’s slipped his ring off within the void. His wraith voice is lower and raspier than the voice of his render.
Turning on my heel, I lead the way down the alley and out to sunny Main Street.
This was a stroke of luck. We were looking for the easiest way into Saint Gennaro’s. Break-ins are always messy. Too much can go wrong, even for witches. Like I said, we don’t want to go attracting the attention of security or cops. I don’t kill human innocents.
A walk-in would be cleanest. But in order to walk right in the front doors of a restricted medical facility, we need authorized access.
Frankie did a little internet sleuthing and found out that one of the Saint Gennaro’s technicians is on the island at this very moment, just a few doors down, celebrating her mother’s retirement party.
“We stick to the plan,” I say as I walk, keeping my voice low. “I’ll cause a diversion while you steal the keycard from Penny Culpepper’s purse.”
“I don’t know what she looks like,” he hisses in my ear.
“I’ll show you.”
We make our way down the street to La Rose Café, a little French bistro. The shop front is painted pink, with a blue striped awning over the large front window. A pair of bistro tables sit on the sidewalk, empty at the moment. A sign on the front door reads, “CLOSED FOR PRIVATE EVENT.”
A party is visible inside, enjoying brunch.
The room is crowded with people. I may be invisible with this pendant on, but I’m not incorporeal.
If I go in there trying to squeeze behind chairs, people are bound to notice.
I’d be like an invisible bull in the damn tea shop.
Dáinn is far sneakier. Between the two of us, stealing this keycard will be child’s play.
Slipping my phone from my pocket, I pull up the screenshot Frankie sent of Penny Culpepper, Medical Technologist. She’s a pretty blonde, mid-forties. “Do you see her?”
I wait, knowing Dáinn is peeking over my shoulder. Meanwhile, I peer through the glass, searching for our prey.
“Back left,” he hisses. “Red dress.”
I follow Dáinn’s direction, spying Penny at the end of the table, laughing and sipping a mimosa. Smiling, I slip my phone back in my pocket. “Get in position. I’ll make this quick. Meet me back at the shop when you’re done.”
He gently ruffles my hair as he drifts away.
If only all our problems could be solved as easily as we’re about to handle this heist. Sinking into the warm embrace of my earth magic, I let it fill me. Lifting my hands, it heats in my palms, the feeling light and playful, like a swirl of autumn leaves caught in a breeze.
There are three vases of flowers stationed down the long dining table.
I focus my attention on the one closest to Penny.
Directing the flow of my magic, I sense each leaf and stem of the flowers in that vase—spiky cornflowers, yellow zinnias, tall sprigs of pink delphinium.
With a sharp push of my magic, the flowers leap, toppling the vase.
All down the table, the party guests shriek and push back in their chairs as water from the vase pools over the tablecloth.
A pair of waiters rush over to right the vase and gather the scattered stems. Smiling, I watch the chaos.
Poor Penny leaps up from her chair, her lap splashed with water.
In all the chaos, she won’t notice if a pair of skeletal hands rifle through her purse.
My job here is done. Trusting in Dáinn to do the rest, I turn on my heel and start walking back to Salt & Sage.
By the time I duck down the alley, the sneaky asshole is back in his rendered form, leaning against the wall by my shop door, arms folded over his broad chest, sunglasses perched atop his head.
“Did you get it?” I call.
Reaching into the pocket of his formfitting jeans, he slips a white keycard between his all-too-human fingers and holds it up. “Did you doubt me?”
“Not for a second.”
He holds the keycard out to me. No games. No ultimatums. He’s just offering it to me.
Feeling daring, I step in and take the keycard. I also take a kiss. Just one. Just a quick press of our lips. As soon as they touch, I’m pulling away, tucking the card in the pocket of my jeans with a muttered “Thanks.”
The wraith blinks at me, eyes wide. I think I just broke his brain. Have I really been that much of an asshole to him? Maybe I’m only worth kissing when he’s trying to drain me dry?
Smiling to myself, I do it again, just because I can. Because I’m still alive and this wraith is kind and he’s helping me. I don’t know if I can keep him. Perhaps this pull we feel is too great. It will kill me and destroy him.
But for now, I want this. I want the taste of whiskey and marshmallows on my tongue. I want him under my hands. Remembering the way he looked last night, on his knees, lapping up my cum, I growl low, squeezing my hand at his throat.
He whimpers so beautifully, his strong chest pressing against me. The moment he lifts a hand to touch me, I break the kiss and step away. He stays there, leaned against the wall of my shop in his stupid, slutty shirt. “What are you doing?” he asks, eyes wide.
I dare to shrug. “Just then? I was kissing you. Why, is that a problem?”
He’s looking at me like I just asked him to solve an impossible math equation. “No, but—why were you kissing me?”
Sighing, I reach out and cup his cheek, brushing my thumb over his parted lips. “Because life is short, Dáinn. And I get the feeling you haven’t been kissed enough. We should change that, don’t you think? Before it’s too late.”