Chapter 24
Jon
Sinking into the comfort of cooking could only do so much. After having my fill and leaving the rest of the food up for grabs in the kitchen, I hoped I could steal the privacy I needed.
There was no telling when I’d have another opportunity like this. Probably never.
Far from the guest hall that Delilah had dropped us in, I found my way to the third floor in search of anything that could be of use to me.
Even if the spectral plane was out of bounds, some small part of me hoped I had wielded enough magic to be granted a little intuition in the waking world.
I needed something to try. Something real.
Tentatively, I pushed on one of the doors and flipped the light switch.
A study opened before me: not the vast library I expected but lined with books nonetheless.
I strolled past a workbench crowded with jars and bottles, focusing on the nearest shelf.
Frowning at the spines, I found they weren’t titled—nothing to mark the difference between casual magic and how to prepare human sacrifices. Figures.
Just as I was reaching for a book, someone cleared their throat in the doorway and made me flinch.
“You have no reason to steal,” Delilah said, smoothing her hair in a way that made me suspect she had padded silently down the hall in her cat form.
In any case, she didn’t appear to be limping anymore as she slowly came inside.
“I’ll uphold my end of the bargain—one spell, as promised.
And if that man truly is Sylvia’s father, I suppose there’s even more guarantee that it will work as you want it to. ”
I started to respond, then stopped short. “Wait, how the hell did you know that we—”
“Sylvia told me about your very romantic endeavor. Insane, some might call it, but that’s beside the point. Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me. Who am I to judge?” Delilah tilted her head thoughtfully. “Although, if we’re successful in making her human, it won’t be a secret very long.”
I exhaled sharply through my nose, pushing a hand back through my hair.
If we had a proper gemstone, I thought. We could put that to the test.
“I’m not worried that you’ll go back on your word,” I said. “I’m not looking for that. It’s something else. For myself.”
“A hunter who wants to dabble in dark magic,” she surmised after searching me. “Given your choice of romantic partner, I suppose that isn’t too outlandish.”
Every instinct told me to hate her, to distrust her. But who else could I share this with? Cliff would have an aneurysm if I mentioned I was even considering it.
“For years, I used to see it all as black and white. But now…” I trailed off, eyeing her not with disgust but with envy.
“I wanted to know that I can still protect Sylvia even when I’m stripped of weapons.
The things we’ve been coming up against these past months…
Something’s changing. The world is different.
I feel so helpless until I have a gun in my hands, and even then—” I almost wished Delilah would interrupt, but she patiently watched with an unreadable expression.
“If I always had something to protect us, I wouldn’t have to feel that way again. ”
I fully expected her to kick me out of the room, maybe even out of the house.
But she sighed. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised at this point. Seeing as you’ve chosen a life that creates a close proximity with magic, perhaps it was inevitable that you’d want to wield it eventually.” She gave me a far too knowing look, then gave a slow nod. “Maybe you just can’t help it.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’ve had a theory for the past couple of days—but well, I didn’t have time to test it, did I?”
She strode past me, eyeing the bottles and jars on her workbench.
Like the books, none of the glassware was labeled, but as she pulled a shallow wooden dish in front of her, she seemed to know precisely what each container held.
She gathered nearly a dozen ingredients in quick succession and added them to the dish—dried fronds and petals, powders, and splashes of oils.
“There.” She turned to me with a small folding knife in hand. “I’ll need a few drops of your blood to be sure.”
“You need what?” I took a healthy step back, automatically reaching for my hip to find a weapon that wasn’t there.
Delilah rolled her eyes. “I’m not binding your soul to mine or anything. Think of this like a determination of how well you’d take to magic.” She held the blade’s handle out to me. “Here. If you can’t handle a few drops, you’re not going to make it very far to begin with.”
Reluctantly, I accepted the weapon and stood beside her. The odd ingredients in the wooden dish didn’t stir, looking more like something that had been scraped from the gutter after a storm.
With a sharp exhale, I pricked my finger and allowed Delilah to guide my hand over the dish.
Three drops of my blood fell into her concoction—and the effect was immediate.
A small crackle shivered through the oils and leaves, followed by a thin plume of dark blue smoke that rose like incense.
I had no clue what to make of it, but Delilah observed the display pensively, nodding like this was to be expected.
“You, like many unsuspecting people, have veiled blood,” she announced.
I frowned. “What does that mean?”
“Magical bloodlines have thinned over many generations. It’s not uncommon at all for people to have ancestors who dabbled in sorcery and bound magic to their blood.
Most people go through life without ever knowing it, but there are always signs when you know where to look.
” She met my stunned expression with a small smile.
“For example: getting away with rampant pickpocketing at a high-class event like the Crimson Gala.”
Stammering, I shook my head. “That’s… I mean, I’ve done that since I was a kid. It’s not like I started tonight.”
“Did you ever get caught, even once?”
My hesitation was all the answer she needed.
“There’s skill involved, yes, but plenty of luck, too,” she said. “The same kind of quiet power that keeps you alive in the astral realm when it should have killed you months ago. Don’t get me wrong—damage was caused. But not nearly the amount that there should have been.”
My heart was racing now, and I wanted to believe that each pulse carried perfectly ordinary blood. “Sylv would have sensed if I was magic, wouldn’t she?”
“Not something like this—something so faint and nearly dormant. If you had tapped into it with intention, maybe. There’s no way around this. Somewhere distant in your ancestry, there was magic.”
Steadying my breath, I looked down at my azabache bracelet. “My mom practiced some Espiritismo. Could that…”
Delilah’s sharp eyes looked from me to the blood dish. “I’ve known some espiritas. Your mother must have practiced gently. This is…different.”
My dad, then.
I shut that door before I could begin to consider what was behind it. “Wherever it came from,” I said slowly, “that means I should be able to teach myself to properly wield magic, right?”
“Perhaps. But you realize there’s sacrifice involved, don’t you?”
“You seem to be doing pretty well for yourself despite that.”
She smiled wryly. “What you see before you is the result of nearly a century of suffering. Witchcraft isn’t like fairy magic.
Don’t be such an idiot to make that mistake.
Fairies are born with their affinity. There’s almost an innocence to it.
But witches and warlocks seize what suits them most.” She spread her hands, gesturing around her.
“You could say I specialize in transformation and protection because it is what I wanted—what I demanded. A way to escape when needed, and places where I could be safe. But even the most well-meaning magic in human hands is a distortion of nature. Can you stomach that?”
Silence settled between us as I pondered it.
“I’ve had so much taken from me,” I said quietly, my mind still racing with what Delilah had revealed to me.
“Maybe, for once, I can do the taking. I never expected to find someone like Sylvia, but I did. And every day, I feel closer to losing her. Every time we make it through, the hope for us becomes harder to shake. But one day it’s going to be too much, and hope isn’t going to be enough.
I want to make sure that doesn’t happen. I can’t survive losing her.”
Delilah’s gaze, usually bright and steely as cut ice, softened. I felt a wall coming down between us, and got the sense that it was a rare occurrence on her end.
“I understand,” she said, leaning against the bookshelf.
“I’ve lived for almost a century, and most of those decades were filled with wicked, hateful men.
I’ve seen empires rise and fall, this relentless cycle over and over.
Then one day, this ridiculous con artist with a damn fairy staggered into my life.
” She paused, smile widening as she relived the memory.
“I feel like I’ve waited oceans of time for Lee, when I thought all good men were a fable.
I would do unforgivable things to save his life. ”
The sudden darkness in the stare that pinned me, and I knew that look because I saw it in the mirror every damn day. Morality became a luxury when your loved one was in danger.
Delilah glanced at the shelf I’d been reaching for and made a derisive noise. “Well, those ones won’t help you unless you’re looking to make charm-infused soaps.”
She strode to a six-tiered shelf across the room and lifted on her tiptoes to gather several from the uppermost shelf.
“You want power, yes?” She pressed two leather-bound tomes into my arms.
I hesitated, cheeks flushing with shame just for speaking it aloud with a witch, of all people. A woman who’d spent a century up to her neck in blood sacrifices. I glanced over my shoulder at the door, ensuring we were alone.