“Sage?” she questioned no one but the owl. “Sage!” That made sense; they literally looked like green tongues. A rush of satisfaction coursed through her.
The next word she was unfamiliar with. It didn’t help that some of it had smudged. Curse the twelfth-century witch peasants and their grimy, grubby hands. She tried to sound it out. “Seith cusan...g...wyn...y bleidd.”
Seven kisses of the white wolf? It had to be white.Gwynwas her sister’s name, which meant white, holy, blessed. Even though she was literally none of those things, she was anincarnation of the devil herself, beating unsuspecting students with a lacrosse stick.
It had to be some sort of ingredient. She racked her brain, shuffling through her mental catalog of ritual herbs. Wolfsbane was purple, so that was out. Wolf’s milk was a yellow flower on the outside, but it had white sap-like stuff inside, hence the “Milk” part. Luckily, the translation was not literal, and she did not need to go harass a pregnant wolf. An unbidden thought crashed through her mind of that damn website where the main character had milked a wolf shifter. Goddess, how far she had fallen. Wolf’s milk—the plant kind—was endemic to the island, and she could easily find it in the forest.
It seemed like a standard ritual, bar a few ingredients. Until one unriddled word stopped her.Gweli.Blood.
Blood magic was forbidden.
The only thing she hadn’t tried was forbidden magic, something that would get her expelled, anyway.
However, desperate times called for desperate measures, and she was one desperate bitch.
Three
Felix
Present Day
What the fuck.
It took a minute to orient himself. Darkness surrounded him. Had he gone blind? Had he had a stroke? Grogginess weighed down his limbs as if he had just woken up from a nap that had gone too long. He took a step, and it felt like wading through mud, even though nothing physical blocked his path. If this had anything to do with Ciro and one of his stupid pranks, he was not in the mood.
What the fuck.
He waited a few moments for the joke to drop, but it didn’t come. There was only a void of nothingness, nothing to see, nothing to touch, an immaterial existence. Everywhere he turned, there was darkness, and just his luck, somehow this plane of existence had weather. Small drops of water fell at first, dusting the floor, but before long, a heavy downpour unleashed itself upon him.
Drops battered his clothes. Hedespisedgetting wet.
One moment, he was drinking in his courtyard in London, delightfully warm and with a sense of peace for the first time in months. It was his only day off from hunting witches, and here he was, getting ripped across the fabric of space and time, clothes soaked, hair clinging to his skull, and no recollection of where he actually was. Goose bumps skittered across him, the cold seeping into his bones.Fantastic.
He took a step forward, the sound echoing through the empty space.
A sound sliced through the rain, and a whooshing noise raced past his ears. It was loud enough that he instinctively covered them. The noise built and built until he felt the pressure compound enough that it might crack his skull. His body knew before his mind did and primed itself to fight; the hairs on his arm raised as if there was danger. His claws lengthened, and shadows wrapped their way up his arm, imbuing it with power. He had to be careful not to imbue too much, otherwise the monster in him would be let out of its cage far too early. He liked to be in full control for his fun first.
The darkness rippled, the danger revealing itself. There was only one creature that could perform a summoning ritual.
“Witch,” he hissed.
Of fucking course it was a witch. The intricate symbols now forming on the floor a few feet away solidified it; the world flooded with a bloody hue. The symbols danced around her as if they themselves were worshipping the very ground the witch walked on.Disgusting. A woman materialized in the middle, wearing a red academy uniform of some sort. A student. How the hell had a student summoned him? If she weren’t a witch, she would have been pretty. Long hair, freckled pale skin, and deep blue eyes. He would have been enamored.Exceptshewasa witch, and now he had to murder her. Such a waste. She looked around as if she were lost, stumbling through the darkness likeshe didn’t know how she got here. He didn’t believe in the innocent act for a second. He snarled at himself mostly, hating that somehow he was stuck in here with a witch. She flinched at the sound.
“Cerituen?” she called out to her false goddess, voice quivering.
He said nothing. Maybe if she thought nothing was there, she would drop the spell. Whatever the spell was. They were excellent actors, witches. This one in particular was a cunning little one. Her body seemed genuinely scared, her pulse was fluttering like a hummingbird, her long limbs shaking. She wouldn’t have summoned him by accident. He took another step toward her, now standing directly in front of her.
Part of him wanted to play with her. Witches made for excellent prey. The other, more rational part of him would like to get the fuck out of here and go back to drowning himself in a bottle of whiskey, on a rare sunny day in London. He was sunbathing, despite the air’s coolness. He had a whole weekend planned, too. And now, instead of getting vitamin D, he was getting fucked by this ritual.
The other part of him wanted to slit her throat on sight. An ingrained habit. But first, he wanted to know what she wanted, and how the fuck she had summoned him here. Still, she couldn’t see him.
She took one hesitant step toward him as if drawn by some invisible force. They were almost touching, his skin crawling and reaching for hers at the same time. He didn’t think he had ever been this close to a witch without being covered in her blood. Luckily, he never had to play nice with the witches like some shifters did; he was simply contracted to end them if they stepped out of line, which they often did. Why the humans let them cross in the first place was beyond him. If it were up to him, they would stay near their ley lines and never leave.
“What do you want, witch?” he asked.
He tried to make his voice sound as godly as possible. Maybe she would think she was having some sort of religious vision.
Her head swiveled, eyes wide, looking around like a mouse who had caught the scent of a cat.
