Gabriel slammed the laptop shut. “Is there something I can do for you, Aiden? Or has my brother finally tired of your sunny disposition and endless witticisms and sent you to pester me instead?”
“Your bother adores both my disposition and my wit, and so do you.” Undaunted by Gabriel’s scowl, Aiden took the chair across from him and propped his feet up on the corner of the desk.
Gabriel tried to hold on to his irritation, but it quickly faded. While he wouldn’t say he adored the man, Dorian’s best mate had been part of their lives for centuries, long before they were all turned into vampires. Aiden was a brother to them all—in more ways than their actual brother Malcolm had been.
Guilt and sadness crept into his chest. Another shot of bourbon chased it away.
“Tell me more about your sudden infatuation with this witch,” Aiden said. “Seems like a bad idea, mate. For her, I mean.”
“Piss. Off.”
“Hit a nerve, have I?”
“I thought you were staying in Ravenswood all week with your new little co-ed.”
“Sasha is spending some much-needed quality time with her sister tonight. Which is lucky for you, because you need an intervention.” Aiden glanced at the laptop again and laughed. “Infatuation is unbecoming for a royal vampire, Gabriel. Especially a broody, melodramatic one like yourself.”
“Says the vampire infatuated with a teenager.”
“She’s nearly twenty.”
“And you’re that times a dozen.”
“Aged like a fine bourbon. Bourbon? Yes, I’d love some, thank you.” Aiden rose from the chair and retrieved a glass from the cabinet behind the desk, then poured himself a healthy glass from Gabriel’s bottle.
“Remind me again why the fuck you’ve broken into my penthouse? Was it just to insult me and steal my alcohol?”
“We are here,” Aiden said, holding up his glass in cheers, “to give you the report from Ravenswood and guilt you into being more involved in your brother’s plans for the Council.”
“We?” Gabriel turned toward the entrance, where Isabelle Armitage had just entered.
“Sorry I’m late,” she said. “I got caught in midtown traffic.”
“You’re just in time, Isabelle.” Aiden passed the witch his glass of bourbon, then poured himself another.
Gabriel sighed. Isabelle had more than proven her loyalty and would soon make her bond to the Redthorne family official, but after two-and-a-half centuries of learning things the hard way, Gabriel would need more than loyalty and a formalized bond to feel at ease around a witch.
“Dorian is the diplomat of the family,” Gabriel said now, channeling as much of the king’s diplomacy as he could muster. “Lethimunite the bickering supernatural rabble. I’m useless at politicking.”
“Agreed,” Aiden said. “Your strengths lie in lurking and skulking. Oh, and apparently spying on unsuspecting witches.”
“She’s hardly unsuspecting, Aiden. She—”
“Cole and his wolves found another nest of grays upstate,” Isabelle said, heading off the looming argument. “He and Dorian believe there are still more nests in the area.”
Cole was another old friend of Dorian’s—wolf shifter, artist, and until just a few weeks ago, a total recluse. Thanks to the grays encroaching on his territory upstate, he’d come out of hiding and joined the fight.
Just in time, too.
“Did they execute them?” Gabriel asked.
“Some,” she said, sipping her bourbon. “But a handful wore the amulets. They were able to overcome the attacks and escape. The wolves are still searching the woods.”
Disgust churned in his gut at the mention of the amulets, the resurrection magic Jacinda had devised. It was illegal demonic spellcraft—a combination of advanced magics that prevented the gray’s body from turning to ash by prolonging the moment of death, then reanimated the corpse with demonic energy.
He flipped open the laptop again. Jacinda had moved to the kitchen, where she’d just set a pot of something on the stovetop. A dark-gray sweatshirt hung nearly to her knees, and she’d pulled the hood up over her messy hair, a few curls spilling around her face. It made her look young and sweet and naive, a vision nearly impossible to reconcile with the truth.
Jacinda Colburn was neither sweet nor naive. She was a dark witch who’d tapped into the powers of hell and wrought the vilest, blackest magics. A witch who’d worked for his enemies and helped poison his brother. A witch who’d brought pain and death to the ones he loved.
