Black Magic Bayou (12 page)

As if he’d read my mind, he said, “Let’s discuss price, shall we?”

I knew this was coming but bristled all the same. “Isn’t keeping the demon reward enough?”

Cain snickered. “You mean after I do all the work and help save your friends, letting me keep the monster should be my just deserts? No, no. You’re smarter than that, little one.” He clucked his tongue.

Considering I was both an Alpha werewolf and a princess, I wasn’t too thrilled with the way he was talking to me. But this was Cain, and whatever Cain wanted he got. That included being as dismissive of me as he pleased in any given moment. Because he was right, I needed him.

Still, it would be nice if he could at least
pretend
he respected me.

“Fine,” I sulked. “What do you want?”

“You owe me for two favors, now, thanks to the incident this summer.”

Yeah, I know, dude. “Okay.”

Wilder was watching Cain with hawklike ferocity, but said nothing. I suspected all it would take was one wrong word and he’d jump across the limo to throttle the older man. I hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Wilder might be stronger and might appear to have the upper hand in a fight, but something told me Cain wouldn’t go down easy.

I wasn’t sure which of them would win in a physical brawl, and that made me extra uneasy about being in such close proximity to the man some called The Collector.

Taking his nickname into account, and knowing what he wanted us to do tonight, I had to seriously wonder what was in this famous collection of his. All I knew was what he’d asked me to get for him years ago when I first needed his help—the skull of someone who died on a very specific date. But what else was in there? If a live demon was on his wish list, I had to assume it was a wildly varied collection to say the least.

The driver evidently knew where we were going because he navigated the streets at an easy crawl without any instruction from Cain.

The big man got down to business. “For failing to deliver on your promise of Timothy Deerling’s life, I would like…” His voice drifted, and he glanced up at the ceiling, drumming his fingers thoughtfully against his lower lip. Wilder growled lightly, unable to keep his annoyance restrained any longer. I guess my bodyguard wasn’t a big fan of people who played stupid games.

Me either.

If this was just the first of two requests, it would be morning before we got around to hearing what the second one was. I understood the appeal of a little drama, but this was silly.

Yet I didn’t scream
Spit it out
at him, so I guess I wasn’t out of patience yet.

Cain, who ignored Wilder’s growl but had obviously heard it because of the small smirk he offered in return, finally said, “I’ll make that one easy. It’s been awhile. I’m not quite as annoyed by the loss anymore. If you bring me a ceremonial knife crafted by that wily great-grandmother of yours, we’ll consider ourselves even.”

I stared at him, unblinking. It took every ounce of my willpower not to show any kind of reaction to the request.

That was the
easy
task? Get the fuck out of here.

I swallowed the groan threatening to come out and gave a tight nod instead. “Once our business is done, I’ll get you what you want.”

How, I wasn’t sure. Those knives took
Memere
years to craft perfectly, and they were only for very specific ritual use. I’d lived with her for four years and in that time she’d only made three. One was a gift to me on my sixteenth birthday—the age of adulthood for witches—and there was no goddamned way I was giving it to Cain, no matter what else the costs were. That knife had been imbued with magic specifically for me and as such was an extension of my spirit. If I were to just hand it over to someone else, they could theoretically wield its magic against me.

I didn’t like making Harry Potter references about real-world magic, but that knife would totally be a Horcrux for me if such a thing existed.

The old lady would hate the idea of making a knife for someone like Cain, but I bet I could talk her into it eventually. It would just take a little time.

Something I didn’t have an overabundance of right this second.

“Good, good.” Cain patted his knees once and glanced out the window, checking our slow progress through the crowded French Quarter.

Dusk had started to creep in, and with the coming night, more and more tourists were out in the streets. In a few blocks we would be outside the main drag, and things would become easier. It’s funny how much difference a mile could make when it came to the feel of a city. How one space could be cluttered and commercial, yet a few minutes driving might bring you somewhere so empty and desolate you might as well be in a ghost town.

Of course, New Orleans was a literal ghost town sometimes.

“What about this job?” I didn’t want to draw this out any longer.

Wilder, without my realizing it, had shifted closer to me, and I only noticed the change when his thigh bumped against my leg. His proximity and my new awareness of it sent a thrill through me. My whole body glowed with fizzy warmth, and I positively ached to put my hands on him.

Instead I let myself have one touch. I moved my hands to my knees, mirroring him, and grazed his pinky with mine.

Just that one touch made him freeze and a glorious shudder climbed up my arm. His breath hitched so minutely I knew I was the only one to hear it, and that one quiet privacy when we were not alone was its own strange kind of intimacy. Good Lord I wanted to climb all over him.

I should get a new bodyguard.

A really ugly one.

Cain cleared his throat, and my cheeks flushed with heat.

Oops.

“I already know what I want you to bring me for this job.”

That sent a different kind of tremor through me, and not a pleasant one. All the warmth I’d gained from Wilder leached out of me and was replaced with a cold dread. Whatever he was about to ask for, I wasn’t going to like it.

Not that I particularly enjoyed any of the things he’d requested in the past. Graverobber wasn’t a line item I’d wanted on my resume.

“Ah, we’re here,” he announced, leaving me in suspense for whatever it was he was going to ask for.

The limo had stopped in front of an old antebellum mansion, which was hard to make out with the growing dark and the car’s tinted window. Cain opened the back door and climbed out, then made a big show of holding it open for me and ushering me through as if I were stepping onto an invisible red carpet.

Outside it was easier to see the distinctive features of the house. All Garden District homes were unique creatures, with no two being exactly the same.

This one was tall, and narrower than some of its more sprawling neighbors. A wrought-iron gate surrounded the large yard with its perfectly manicured lawn and hedges. In addition to the usual magnolia trees I noticed some atypical flora. Elderflower. Devil’s shoestring. Jasmine. Lavender. All things that to the naked eye were just pretty, but to someone in the know they looked like an apothecary in the making.

This was a witch’s garden.

The house itself was red brick with iron scrollwork balconies wrapping around the upper and lower floors. There was a turret on the right-hand side, and all the lights were on within, glowing warm and welcoming. Without curtains to obstruct my view I could see inside and admired the walls packed with heavily burdened bookshelves, dried herbs hanging from a doorjamb.

I felt comforted, and also uneasy, which was a strange balance.

I wanted to go in, but I also didn’t inherently trust any witch Cain would bring me to. I was only just realizing how off-putting it was that Cain
knew
about my great-grandmother. Which meant, by extension, he knew more about what I really was than I’d originally believed.

That got filed away in my
shit to worry about later
list.

A list that kept getting longer and longer as the day went on.

Curiosity gnawed at me, and I moved towards the gate, like the house itself was pulling me in. I was the moth to its flame, the fish to its lure. There was something inside those doors waiting for me, and I desperately wanted to find out what it was.

When I glanced at Cain, he was giving me a knowing smile.

He knew what this house would do to me.

In that moment I hated him so ferociously my wolf wanted to rip out his throat.

There’s something violating about a person being able to see your true self when you don’t offer it to them. It was one thing for Wilder to understand me, and I believed he did. It was quite another for Cain to be able to peel back my layers as effortlessly as the sun unfurled the petals of a rose.

I took a step out of his reach, letting Wilder exit the limo behind me. My focus shifted from Cain back to the house, and once again the urge to go inside built up until it became an ache.

“What is this?” I asked.

“If we’re going to catch a demon, we need help. Are
you
going to trap it?”

My nose wrinkled, and I glared at him. Sure, I’d never caught a demon before. And if Secret’s story about how hard it had been for her to kill one was any indication, I probably wasn’t strong enough to get that monster out of the house.

But it would have been nice if he didn’t point out my inadequacy in front of other members of my pack.

To be fair, though, my shortcomings in this situation had nothing to do with being a werewolf and everything to do with my training as a witch.

I was good. A natural witch was a rarity, and a natural witch who had trained under someone as powerful as the great
La Sorcière
was a force to be reckoned with. But I was also young and untested, and I didn’t practice as much as I ought to. Like being a violin prodigy who only played once a week, my powers were not up to snuff for something like demon-catching, and I should probably swallow my pride and admit that.

“No. If I could catch it, we wouldn’t be here.”

“Right,” Cain said. “And no need to feel ashamed, Miss McQueen. I can’t catch it either.”

“But whoever lives here can?” I stared up at the mansion, picturing someone like
Grandmere
McQueen living there. My grandmother was the kind of woman most people imagined when they thought of a modern witch. She had long salt-and-pepper hair always tied back in a braid, and spent her days puttering around in the garden with her dirt-stained overalls, big sunhat, and bare feet. She looked like the kind of woman who would own a natural wellness store and smell like patchouli—though she didn’t.

Grandmere
smelled of rain-moistened soil and fresh herbs.

She smelled of light magic, of healing spells and protection charms.

Memere
smelled of swamp. Darkness and danger, and all the secrets people wanted to keep dead and buried. She smelled like peril.

I wondered what kind of witch would be behind those doors, and though I was imagining someone like
Grandmere
, my gut told me we were going to find a lesser version of
La Sorcière
.

Cain clapped a big hand on my shoulder and gave it an almost friendly squeeze.

“I think this is exactly where we need to be. And I’m rarely wrong about this sort of thing, you know?”

I did know.

Wilder had remained silent the whole time, but I could feel his gaze boring into me, and his disapproval of this whole arrangement was obvious without him having to say a word.

He had the pack mentality most wolves did. We should solve our problems on our own, and any outside influence would merely create more difficulty.

I had to say, in this instance I didn’t think he was wrong. But I also knew perfectly well I didn’t have a big enough umbrella to protect me from this shitstorm.

“Let’s talk to her I guess. What’s the harm in talking?”

Cain chuckled softly and opened the gate for us, then trailed behind as we approached the front porch. The steps creaked and popped as we ascended, the way all old houses seemed to. An antebellum alarm system.

It worked, because I’d barely gotten my hand on the old lion-head knocker when the black-painted front door opened.

My words of greeting got stuck halfway out my mouth. “Hel-urp.”

The witch in the doorway, haloed by the warm yellow glow from the lamps inside, was not like either of my maternal-grandmother figures.

For starters, he wasn’t a woman.

And he wasn’t old.

And he also wasn’t wearing a shirt.

I swallowed the poor attempt at words I’d been making, and it felt like a golf ball going down my throat.

The witch was about six feet tall, broad-chested with a narrow waist. He was Latino, and had a deep olive complexion and a rich tan on top of that making his skin a dark almost-copper shade. His thick black hair was shaved above his ears on both sides, revealing neat rows of runic tattoos that looked hand drawn. A single curl—damp, maybe from a recent shower—hung over his forehead and in front of his intense brown eyes.

Eyes that had never moved from me the entire time I stood in front of him.

He tilted his head, plainly aware I was appraising him, and said nothing. His whole expression was telling me,
Drink it in
. There was an air of confidence and certainty about him that should have been obnoxious, but was fascinating instead.

Fascinating.

“Hello,” he said finally.

I didn’t trust my words, so I nodded a greeting instead. The man’s gaze moved from me to Wilder, then landed on Cain, and his black brows came together.

“Cain.” He jerked his chin in something like a greeting. “To what do I owe this dubious pleasure?”

He had the kind of voice that rumbled with bass. It reverberated deep in my stomach, the same way it felt to hear a lion roar.

Who
was
this guy?

“Aren’t you going to invite us in, Santiago?”

The witch took a looooong time thinking about his response before he stepped out of the doorway and walked into the house without waiting to see if we’d follow.

He had even more tattoos than I initially saw. Symbols of various magical wards and protections, things I’d only glimpsed at in books. They covered his chest and back, and he had an incantation that wrapped all the way down his left arm from shoulder to wrist.