Black Arts, White Craft by Hailey Edwards

8

Midnight came between blinks. One minute, I was asking myself if a polar bear shifter and a seal shifter were a great idea. The next, I jolted awake with the scent of pipe tobacco and green apples in my nose.

“Um,” a small voice said from the doorway. “It wasn’t locked…”

A groan poured out of me as I attempted to roll toward Colby, only to fall off the bed with a solid thump.

“Ouch.”

As I lay there, adrenaline dumping into my veins, my hip smarting, I grasped the situation.

I had fallen asleep on top of Asa. Like I starfished over the man. But he hadn’t budged from his side of the bed. Which told me it was my fault.

“Rue.”Asa slid onto the floor next to me. “Are you all right?”

No.

I was trying very hard to die so he would forget I spent the day clinging to him like his favorite boxers. Surely my memorial would distract him from what a weirdo he had climbed into bed with this morning.

Tilting my head back to see Colby, who was smothering a laugh, I asked, “Give us a minute?”

“Sure.” She sped off, snickering on the way. “Hey, Clay, guess what?”

What she said next, I chose to ignore in favor of the gorgeous man leaning over me. “So…”

“So,” he agreed, his fingers tracing my cheekbones. “You’re a cuddler.”

“I guess?” I leaned into his touch. “I’ve never slept with a man.” I blushed. Hard. “Like sleep-slept.”

“I know what you mean.” He cracked a smile. “I’ve never sleep-slept with a woman either.”

“Really?” I wedged my elbows under me to leverage myself upright, putting me nose to nose with Asa. “You’re the love ’em and leave ’em type?”

He hummed low in his throat, which was not an answer, but I forgot that as his warm breath hit my face.

“Which type are you?”

Mind blank, I couldn’t see past the heat simmering in his eyes. “What were my choices again?”

“Colby said you…” Clay skidded to a stop behind me. “Well, this is awkward.”

“To be continued,” I told Asa, resting my forehead against his until my pulse returned to normal.

“I can go,” Clay offered, “if you two need another minute.”

“That would be nice.” I couldn’t fight the pull to stay here, with Asa. “As you can see, I’m fine.”

“She made it sound like you broke every bone in your body.”

“And you believed her,” I asked dryly, “that a tumble off a mattress would snap me like a twig?”

Tonight’s wig, one with tight black curls that hugged his scalp, didn’t budge as he shook his head.

“Ace didn’t return to his room last night, so I worried.” He folded his arms over his chest. “Sue me.”

“I would win.” I breathed in Asa one last time. “The law would be on my side.”

“We have a wendigo to hunt if you two are done staring meaningfully into one another’s eyes.”

“We’re not.” I rubbed my nose against Asa’s just to annoy Clay. “We’ll press pause, though.”

Asa rose to his feet and offered me a hand up then left to dress without another word.

The yarn bowl, he left on the nightstand on his side of the bed, like a promise. Not that he had a side on my bed, but he had spent the night in the same room, on the same mattress, as me. And I was assigning way too much significance into a single night of shared hobbies between insomniacs. This was no different than baking with Clay.

Except Clay had never made me a hair bracelet from his wigs.

He had baked me cupcakes, though. Tons of them, over the years. And cookies, cakes, candies…

Give it up, Rue. You can’t rationalize this away. You agreed. Not once, but twice. Now deal with it.

Emotions were hard, dang it, and I didn’t know what to do with mine. There were so many these days, a smorgasbord of them. Sure, I’d designed a pattern of behavior to mold myself into a better person. Yeah, I was proud when I hit all the right notes. But this was different. Totally unscripted. Made up on the fly.

That felt dangerous, reckless, foolish. I never should have said yes to him the second time. But it also felt good. I didn’t know what to do with him, but I wanted to figure it out.

The wanting frightened me. I wasn’t the type to hang my hope on another person. It was too dangerous.

“You don’t look so hot.” Clay pressed the inside of his wrist to my forehead. “Do you have a fever?”

“I don’t get sick.” I swatted his hand. “I’m freaking out a little.”

“You spent the night with Ace.” He studied me. “You okay after that?”

“We didn’t do anything,” I rushed out in a single breath.

“Yeah.” A grin overtook his face. “I know.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” I squinted at him. “How do you know?”

There had been no time for the guys to talk behind my back, not that either would do that.

“The higher the daemon’s caste, the weirder their customs.” He laughed at my scowl. “Think on that.”

As Meg had warned me, Asa was particular about his hair, but what other idiosyncrasies awaited me?

Pivoting on his heel, Clay aimed for the hall, humming a jaunty tune that made his smile stretch wider.

Meanwhile, I was left to picture that mortifying scene in historical films where a king deflowers his new wife in front of thirty advisors to ensure the marriage was consummated, and that she was a virgin.

“What is that supposed to mean?” I anchored my hands on my hips. “Clay, get your butt back in here.”

Clay did not, in fact, get his butt back in there. He went to the kitchen and started the coffee.

Growling low in my throat, I got dressed, handled hygiene, which caused me to cringe after it hit me that I had been all up in Asa’s face with morning breath. Night breath? Whatever it was, it wasn’t ideal. There was no undoing it, though. He might as well learn early I wasn’t princess material before this got serious.

No, no, no.

That made it—us—sound like a foregone conclusion.

More like if, big if, we got serious.

With more force than necessary, I strapped on my kit, pocketed my wand, and prowled to the kitchen.

Colby sat on Clay’s head, bouncing on his springy curls, with her blanket draped around her shoulders.

Now that I thought about it, she had been wearing it when she woke us up earlier.

I wasn’t the only one who noticed, based on the pleased crook of Asa’s lips as he watched her antics.

“What’s the plan?” I helped myself to a cup of coffee. Black. “Do you want to retrace our route?”

The first sip burnt my tongue, but I got it down then passed the mug to Asa, who didn’t miss a beat.

There had been a definite wendigo presence in the area, but the bobcat carcass’s state of decomp dated the latest activity weeks earlier. Cooler mountain air, and the shelter of the cave, made it difficult to tell.

I figured the black witch we were hunting had killed the wendigo not long after it brought down the cat.

“Thank you,” he murmured, sipping after me without a hint of discomfort at the temperature. “Here.”

A muffin sat on his palm, a bite missing on one side, a dare bright in his eyes.

As I plucked the offering from his hand, a silly thrill shot through me.

“What did I tell you?” Clay leaned in close. “Spit muffins.”

Not even that gross oversimplification stopped me from taking a larger bite out of the one Asa left me.

The peridot of Asa’s eyes deepened as he watched me until Clay coughed into his fist.

“There’s a child present,” he reminded us, nudging Colby back to the loft. “Keep it rated PG.”

“PG-13,” she yelled down as she settled in for her next battle. “I’m old enough for kissing.”

Unable to hold Asa’s stare a moment longer, I broke away and called out to her, “Stay inside, and keep your phone close.”

“Will do.” An evil cackle drifted down to us as she addressed her team. “I see the raid was successful.”

“That kid.” Clay shook his head as he led the way out the door. “She’s something else.”

“Bloodthirsty and vengeful,” I agreed. “She also holds grudges about expansion packs.”

A neat furrow creased Asa’s brow, but he didn’t contribute. He was plenty computer literate, but not so much on the gamer side of the spectrum. I couldn’t blame him. I didn’t know much. I picked up the lingo for the sole purpose of communicating with Colby, and I still didn’t understand half of what she told me.

“Tonight, we head west,” Clay answered my earlier question. “We’re walking about a mile parallel to the path from last night.”

“Any major campsites in the area?” I fell in step behind him. “Any word on the cleanup?”

“The cleanup is in the books, and the team is standing by in town in case we need them again before it’s over.” He checked the compass on his phone app. “There are no campsites, but there’s a scenic overlook folks gawk at when passing through.”

“A patient hunter could make that work for him,” Asa said, his breath tickling my ear.

“Nah.” I smiled at him over my shoulder. “Too messy.”

“Nothing is too messy for a wendigo,” he pointed out. “You saw that camp.”

A cramp hit my stomach at the reminder when death, even traumatic death, never used to bother me.

“They would have to hide in the brush under the overlook then snatch people who came to the rail. That’s the easy part.” They were ambush hunters. “But what about the victims’ cars? Would a wendigo know what a car was? Or that it had to be disposed of? The trick would only work a few times if they let empty cars pile up on the side of the road. They could roll them off the mountain, but that would be loud. It would also draw human attention no wendigo would want so near its hunting grounds.”

“You’ve put a lot of thought,” Clay said, “into wendigos attacking tourists on scenic overlooks.”

“Not really.” I shifted my attention toward him. “I’ve just seen a lot of cheesy horror movies.”

Genre standards let you puzzle out how any given plot would twist long before the movie got there.

“Since when do you watch those?” He checked our coordinates. “Colby’s too young, right?”

“Camber and Arden.” I blew out a breath. “Teens these days love their gore.”

Granted, I loved gore when I was a teen too, but the blood I spilled hadn’t been corn syrup and red dye.

A high-pitched buzzing noise whizzed past my ear, and I swatted at it. “Stupid mosquitos.”

A wide palm hit the small of my back and knocked me to the ground as more pests dive-bombed me.

“Not bug,” the daemon rumbled from behind me, having claimed Asa’s skin. “Bullet.”

“A bullet?” I reached down to retrieve my wand. “Clay, you hear that?”

“Yeah.” He crouched, hand on my shoulder. “Stay down, Rue.”

“I’m not going to eat dirt while you two square off against whoever’s out there.”

An oily sensation spilled across my skin, a greasy film that coated the air I breathed, sticking in my lungs.

“Black witch,” the daemon told me, confirming what I sensed as the presence of dark arts. “Bullet hurt.”

“What?” I whipped my head toward him to find dark blood trickling down his torso. “You’ve been shot?”

A low voice rustled through the leaves overhead, carried to us by magic. “Give me the book.”

“Book?” Bile splashed the back of my throat as my mind turned toward the grimoire. “The only book I’ve got with me has a library stamp on the inside flap. I would show you, but I don’t have it on me.” I was an old pro at lying with truth. “Also? I’m not going down the mountain without it. You’ll have to fight for it.”

Ms. Agnes, our librarian and book club organizer, would ban me for life if I didn’t return it on time.

Sure, I could buy my own copies, but where was the fun in that? I needed that bond of community, as all witches did. Plus, I got a cheap thrill when I beat the other women to the sign-up sheet for new releases.

Top of the list, baby.

“Give me the book,” she demanded, her voice cold and stark, “and I’ll let you live.”

“You’ll have to be a smidge less vague.” I pushed up, but the daemon kept me pinned. “How about you put away the gun, and we’ll talk like civilized witches?”

What kind of sad excuse for a witch shot people? With bullets? In a gun? It was so…mundane.

How embarrassing would it be to die that way? No self-respecting para would put it on their headstone.

“How about I kill you,” she countered, “then help myself to the book after your wards die with you?”

This witch had been to the cabin, scoping it out, scoping us out, far too close to Colby for my comfort.

“No,” the daemon roared, straightening to his full height, making himself an easy target. “No hurt Rue.”

“Get back down here.” I grabbed his ankle, but he slipped through my fingers. “Asa.”