Blood Magic by Laken Cane

Chapter Nineteen

I woke up after noon the next day, and the first thing on my mind was the missing spirit jar. Both Remy and Bastien would have had the opportunity, and I was betting neither one of them would admit to it when I asked them.

I wouldn’t be able to accuse Bastien until the sun went down, but I got Remy right away. “Did you take my demon?” I asked, calmly.

He didn’t even hesitate. “Yeah, I’ve got him.”

“Why?”

“Just a little insurance, I guess.”

“You think you can control me by holding the threat of that demon over my head?” I laughed, no longer calm. “You’re an asshole.”

“Never said I wasn’t.”

I didn’t tell him that the longer the demon was trapped in the jar, the weaker he would become. In a few weeks, if Remy took out the stopper and freed him, the demon would be as ineffectual as he should have been from the beginning. He wouldn’t be powerful enough to hurt anyone. Not after being in a spelled spirit jar.

“I don’t plan on using him to control you. I like collecting things that might be of some use to me in the future.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I do that, too. But I wouldn’t steal from you to add to my collection. I admired you, Remy, but you’re just a common thug. Stay away from me.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised. Remy Simon would do whatever it took to see to his own needs. He wasn’t an ethical man and he certainly wasn’t a nice one. He was a killer.

“You’re just like me, Kait.”

“No. I’m not like you. You have no honor.” I disconnected the call, relieved that at least he hadn’t stolen my demon blade—though if he’d known how important it was and that it had belonged to the very demon he now held, chances were he’d have tried. And I would have gone after him for that. I couldn’t be too upset about it. I’d known what Remy Simon was.

It did worry me that he was involved in my case. Which reminded me. I called the number Bastien had given me, and it went straight to voicemail. I left a message without saying too much—after all, I had no idea who would end up with it—and then hung up without much hope that I’d get a return call.

Remy wanted to find the vampires as they slept and burn them all. That would certainly cut out the problem. But I couldn’t do that. I greatly disliked the vampires, true enough, and I was sure they felt the same about wolves, but neither side sneak attacked and killed the other simply because they existed.

Honor.

It also pissed me off that Remy, a human, was fucking with supernaturals. Who the hell did he think he was? I felt the same about supernaturals messing with humans. It just wasn’t right.

I called my mother as I was eating breakfast. “Hey, mom.”

“Hi, honey. Lucy told me you’d be fine, which is why I didn’t come to the city. I knew she wouldn’t lie to me.”

“How are you and your girls?” I asked her. “Everybody good?”

“We are all perfect. You worry about you. And be more careful, Kaity.”

“I will. Bye, Mom.”

“Peace out.”

I shook my head and tossed Ash a bite of bacon. “My mother is one strange lady,” I told the dog, but he didn’t care. He just wanted more bacon. “You want butt scritchings? Yes you do. Yes you do!”

Someone knocked at the door and Ash trotted after me as I went to see who was paying me a visit. Jared, probably, since he hadn’t had a chance to yell at me for last night’s fiasco yet.

But it wasn’t Jared.

Three people stood outside my door—two women and one man, all human, as far as I could tell. They had the look of vampires, but that would have been impossible. It was the middle of the day.

“Kait Silver?” one of the women asked. She was maybe fifty, wearing a suit, had her hair in a tight ponytail, and was a little aggressive as she leaned toward me, getting in my space.

I didn’t back up. “Yes, ma’am. How can I help you?”

“May we come in?”

“That depends. Who are you and what are you selling?”

“We represent the council,” the man said, his voice low. “You called us, Ms. Silver. Let us come inside.” He was slightly balding, with light brown eyes behind gold-rimmed glasses. He was also wearing a suit, and he was also a little aggressive.

The third woman looked similar to the first woman but she was shorter, plumper, and looked a little nicer. Her smile seemed genuine.

I stepped back. “Come in.”

After I showed them to the living room I invited them to sit down and offered them refreshments, which they refused. I had to admit I was curious about their visit and honestly, I was shocked that they’d shown up at all. I hadn’t even expected a call back.

I sat down across from them and Ash plopped down at my feet, chewing one of his toys—not a squeaky one, thank goodness.

They got right to the point. “I’m Mrs. Nash,” the first woman said. “This is Mr. Olson, and this is Ms. Rose.”

Mr. Olson gave me a nod, but Ms. Rose got to her feet and offered me her hand. “Lilah,” she said.

“It’s nice to meet you,” I told her.

“The councils have become aware that the county master is wandering into forbidden territory,” Mrs. Nash said. “And our attempts to bring him back are met with denial.”

“Lies,” Mr. Olson said. “Our attempts are met with lies.”

“What do you want me to do?” I leaned forward. “Give me his daytime resting place and I’ll take his head and make it so he’s no longer a problem for any of us.”

They gaped at me.

“Ms. Silver,” Mr. Olson sputtered. “We neither condone nor sanction the cold-blooded murder of our county masters.”

I wrinkled my nose, confused. “Then why are you here? And before you get too comfy up there on your high horses, let me remind you that Axton is fucking with the humans. Killing them. Causing them to kill each other.” I narrowed my eyes, pissed at them. “And I plan on taking that asshole out, with or without your sanctioning.”

“The councils don’t want to kill him,” Mrs. Nash said. “They want to control him. And they will. But they have a proposal for you—one that does not involve you staking the county master.”

Too bad for them. “Proposal?”

“You are a wolf, but that’s not all you are.”

I recoiled, but only inside where they couldn’t see. I was pretty sure I kept my face blank. I said nothing.

Finally, Lilah spoke. “Kait,” she said, gently, “we understand you are a powerful woman who has a foot in both the nonhumans’ and the humans’ worlds. You are a wolf, but you have connections to the vampires. You have connections to the spirit world, the demons, the shifters, the humans…you are trusted, strong, and you are a truly…good person. You are fair. You are a protector. You defeated an exsoloup—which means that even if you’re not a demon, there’s something inside you that…” She spread her hands. “Well, we don’t quite know. Not yet. But the councils want you.”

My mouth went dry and I reached down to run my fingers over Ash’s body to calm myself. “The vampire council wants me to spy for them?” I asked, finally. I wasn’t sure what the powerful council would do to me for turning them down, but I reckoned I was about to find out.

“Not only the vampire council,” Mrs. Nash said. “All the councils. Vampires, each shifter council—”

“Being the councils’ tattletale,” I interrupted, shaking my head. “That doesn’t sit right with me.”

Mr. Olson sighed. “Not a tattler, Ms. Silver. More of a disciplinarian, really.”

“A tyrant, then,” I said drily. “That’s better.”

They were not amused by my sarcasm. “We need help policing the local nonhuman groups,” Mrs. Nash said, anger in her eyes. “You do this already. Why are you reluctant to do it for us?”

I shrugged. “Maybe because I don’t like authority, and if I worked for the councils, they’d try to tell me how to do what I do. Right?”

They looked at each other.

“We only want to give you the authorization and authority to police the nonhumans in your city,” Lilah said finally. “Exactly the way you do now but without the part where you have to beg for permission to do it.”

It was my turn to sigh. I wanted to tell them I didn’t beg for anything, but I wasn’t entirely sure that was true.

“We would like you on our side,” Mr. Olson said. “The council can’t be everywhere, and as you’ve seen, some of the supernaturals in power take advantage of that fact. Some of the larger territories already have er…agents, if you will, in place. We would simply like to recruit you to be Jakeston’s.”

“Agent Silver,” Lilah coaxed. “Be our enforcer.” She leaned toward me. “We’ll even give you a badge. Hmmm?”

Like I was six years old and they were trying to bribe me with lollipops.

“We want the communities to know we’ve hired you,” Nash told me, after glaring at Lilah. “We will officially back you, and with each council protecting you, you can investigate freely the criminal activity of persons such as our own county master. Neither he nor his people will be able to keep you out of his coven, his clubs…” She almost cracked a smile. “Or even his bedroom.”

So they’d heard about me punching Axton in the face.

I narrowed my eyes. “Axton doesn’t care about his council’s rules. He flaunts his lawlessness, and your council isn’t doing shit to stop him.”

“We only interfere when something critical comes to our attention. Now that it has, the vampire council is investigating the county master’s risky and criminal activity.”

“How did it finally come to their attention?” I asked, curious.

“Because,” Mrs. Nash said, “they were investigating you as a potential agent.”

“You people need to be more active and aware of what’s going on with your own groups,” I said.

Each one of them gave me a pointed look. “Exactly what we’re trying to do, Ms. Silver.”

“But Mr. Axton is not for you to worry over right now,” Olson declared.

“Of course I’ll worry over him,” I snapped.

He held up a long finger. “Tomorrow night, you are invited to appear with the council when Mr. Axton is brought before them. It will erase your doubts and give you confidence in the council. We may move slowly, sometimes, Ms. Silver, but we eventually get there. A car will arrive for you at eleven p.m. and will bring you to us. It will be…fun.” His grin was unpracticed and more of a grimace than a smile, but he was trying.

They stood, as one.

“Think over what we’ve told you.” Olson handed me a card and a tiny leather envelope. “The man whose name is on the card will be your handler from the moment you accept the councils’ proposal for…” He shrugged. “For the rest of your life.”

“And the necklace inside the packet will get you into the council meeting,” Lilah said.

Mrs. Nash surprised me by patting my shoulder. “It is a lot to take in. Think about it, discuss it with whomever you please.”

I stared down at the card, slightly numb. “I’ll have to talk to my alpha,” I murmured.

“Ms. Silver,” she said, smiling slightly, “an alpha cannot have an alpha, now can she?”

I frowned. “What?”

Something quick and furtive flashed through her eyes, and she shrugged. “If you help us police the groups, there is certainly one alpha you will no longer need to fear.”

Fucking Adam Thorne.

It was that fact, more than anything, that might make me say yes to the councils’ offer. What better protection for my mother and me if I was the councils’ wolf?

The three of them trailed out of my house and left me staring after them, baffled and uncertain but with a tiny thrill of excitement curling through my body.

They were offering me power.

And I liked power.