“Jade does this to you?” Menace was dripping from his every word.
Adair rolled her eyes, “Yeah. Look, we’re off the point. What would Zale gain by hexing Talley? And why do the inbred Devil’s agree with him?”
“We’re still working on that.”
“The Devil’s Den part, right? Because up until five minutes ago you assumed the curse on Talley went down the way it was supposed to.”
“The curse was not even a part of this, not really. It was more about who was raised and why. Not how they died.”
“Who the fuck is leading all of you?”
Scorpio lifted a brow.
“Death is personal. It is the most personal act any soul goes through—there is power within the act alone. How they died, when they died, who killed them—each and every aspect has to be accounted for.”
“How do you mean?”
“Balance. The entire universe is a balance. Karmic law.”
When he didn’t say anything for the longest moment she pushed him. “What? This can not be the first time you’ve heard this reason.”
“Judge…”
“What about him?”
Scorpio hung his head. He was there the night Judge lost his family, he was right on his heels—they were both seconds too late to save them all. Scorpio could still see Judge holding his baby sister’s body, him crying as he did so, the rage boiling off of him. “Nobody got why hell was coming down on him all at once…maybe your balance theory plays into it.” Scorpio grimaced, understanding that the balance of karma had brought Adair back to Judge because otherwise, he’d never survive this face off with Chalice—well, he would, but the person he is, the one who is honored wouldn’t. He’d be a man with no woman or vengeance to live for any longer. Cold and lethal.
The dynamics of it all, karma’s master plan, was still lost on Scorpio, though.
“What are you talking about? Me?” What the hell did I do to this guy?
Grief filled his fiery gaze. “The man who slaughtered his family is thought to be one of the ones that raised Talley, who raised all the other dead.”
Meaning the insurmountable rage Judge had for Chalice had all but doubled now—for Chalice had not only killed his family, but also brought heartache to the only woman he’d bothered to love over his long life.
Adair felt sick to her gut. “Killed his family?” Suddenly the grief she had carried for days intensified to a suffocating level, downright painful.
Her memory was flickering. She didn’t see any gruesome murders, but she heard Judge’s voice, a soft, pained whisper telling her about the most excruciating day of his life. She felt his arms clench around her as he spoke, she felt the pain as if it were her who had lost it all—who was too late.
The grief took her forward into her thoughts to when she did own the emotion as if it were her own. She was getting flashes of Talley and Finley days before they’d died. She remembered Talley trashing the apartment; she remembered the smell of evil lingering on him.
She knew then she was right, Zale didn’t intend for Talley to be controlled the way the Sons assumed—his intent was much darker, so dark that just then Adair couldn’t bring herself to think of it.
Scorpio slanted his head to the side. “You’re remembering.”
Adair slightly widened her eyes in shock. If anything, she had always been guarded with her reactions, not offering even the slightest expression. At the Boneyard her trait had done her little to no good. No matter how placid her expression was, whomever she was with usually gauged her thoughts easily.
“How do all of you read me so well?”
It was a legitimate question. She knew growing up that more times than not she confused both Talley and Finley. Rarely did they understand where she was coming from, and when she went through her rebel teen years it would take them weeks, sometimes months to figure out what she was up to.
Not to mention she’d seen Rush on the regular for the past five years, and he never seemed to gauge what she was enduring. Now everyone seemed to get her.
Scorpio slowly licked his bottom lip. “I taste you.”
How deeply he spoke each word, how his emerald eyes drifted over her caused Adair’s gut to coil. She quickly pushed the yearning she felt away, reminding her body of the pain it always felt now when she was with a man. Even though she knew it was guilt causing her to put the brakes on the vibe flowing through the room. She’d never admit it to herself, not in the state of mind she was in, but no matter how darkly she thought of Judge she still felt pulled to him, still wanted him as desperately as the air she was taking in.
Little Dove…
“You what?” she managed to say as she stuffed the thoughts of Judge down.
“Taste,” he said, leaning forward a bit. “The vamp in me, it doesn’t feed on blood, it feeds on the essence of life, energy—vim. When I feed I see what caused the energy in the first place.”
“Would that not make you a seer?”
He lifted one shoulder. “Not all vamps can do so, most ‘round here do, though.”
“Around here? You mean there is some massive first generation population that no one knows about?”
“I don’t know if I would call it massive, but yes there are many layers to this world, and the realms of the unknown.”
“So you…taste…my energy, that’s what feeds you?”
“One of the things, yes.”
Adair leaned back in her seat, her gaze dipped to his chest. “I thought that tat was a symbol of what you were.” She had to admit silently to herself she was relived she had called her sixth sense wrong. She didn’t have time to save anyone beyond her own family—and something told her going anywhere near Scorpio, spending lengths of time alone with him would be dangerous, the good kind of dangerous that would get a girl in trouble and leave her with a world of guilt.
“It is.”
Adair arched a brow, losing the strength to even try and understand this world she was in.
“Most of us are more than one element of what is largely called myth. Some of us, hundreds of years into this way of life, are still discovering all the hidden parts that brought us back.”
“Brought you back…from the dead.”
She didn’t want to know this truth, not because it was unnatural, but because it broke the basic laws of nature and surely corrupted the almighty balance life depended on, but because it meant these people could have saved her family and didn’t. It pushed them all the further from the trust Adair could not openly give, not with the great unknown weighing heavily on her shoulders.
“Right,” Scorpio said as his tongue grazed his bottom lip once more. He didn’t care for the fear he sensed from her then; the taste was bitter. “It takes energy to come back, a lot of it, to fight the pull of death, and the energy comes from every realm. It’s a mixed bag of unknown, and within it many elements can lurk.” He shifted his lean. “More times than not there is a dominant trait. Fire is mine, princess.”
“You’re a Phoenix,” she said serenely.
Scorpio furrowed his brow, wondering why she was so calm all of the sudden, how the fear had faded almost instantly. “Among other things,” he admitted.
So much for calling my sixth sense wrong, “I’m supposed to save you,” Adair said, letting her gaze dip to his chest then rise to meet his.
“I’m fine,” he assured.
“You’re in danger.” The madam of death is coming for you, she thought achingly.
“Do what?”
It was well known among witches that spirits listen, they feel the urge to guide when they can, and they guide from what they hear in the echo of death—the whispers of the future.
She assumed the haunt in the house was telling her she had a chance to help Scorpio. The call was something that should be dealt with. Adair would now have to not only struggle to undo one curse but clearly two.
“I need to help you. I need to know what’s wrong.”
With a disbelievin
g smile he spoke. “Nothin’ wrong with me, princess. I don’t know how else to assure you of it.”
Adair grimaced remembering her vision: a flaming bird in chains, being pulled down.
She met his confused gaze. “I didn’t skim the Phoenix part in the book Reveca gave me—it was the only one I bothered to read word for word. You are death.”
He leaned back, holding his pensive stare on her. “We are the ones she barely saved, the ones she had to fight the hardest for.”
“She?” Adair asked, hoping she had heard him wrong when he was on the phone before.
“Reveca.”
“She saved you,” Adair repeated as her eyes welled with tears she refused to let fall.
In the next beat of her heart, Scorpio had left his seat and was at her side as if he had always been there. He pulled her against him, moved his hand across her back. He couldn’t stomach the taste of her grief any longer, not when it intensified with every random thought she had—it was his nature to appease it, to help her rise from the ashes of her life.
Adair exhaled slowly. “She wants you back.”
“Who?”
“The one Reveca clearly stole you from…I’m sorry.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, Adair.”
She nearly laughed at the insanity of it all. “Which part?”
“I was stolen from a passing, not from someone.”
“You said Reveca barely saved you—who do you think she was fighting?”
“Death.” He moved his hand down the side of her face taking the tears that did fall with him.
“Well, death is a woman, then. A downright lusty one.”
Scorpio lifted his brow, an act that clearly said ‘tell me more.’
“I don’t know,” she breathed out.
“You know something.”
Adair glanced away. “I don’t know anything anymore.” She didn’t care to tell him that when she had this vision—she was never afraid. She felt at peace with the madam of death, somewhat comforted by her presence. Yet, deep down, she wasn’t at ease with what death wanted to take. Now, knowing what she did, that indeed Scorpio and all those Reveca brought back were stolen from where the natural law said they should be, she didn’t know what to think.
“You said so yourself, Adair. There is balance in everything—there has to be a reason you’re having this vision when your mind is clearly focused on another point.”
“Was I helping you with something like this before? Some past you were coming to peace with? Would there be a reason I was looking into solving any issue you had?”
“No.” He cussed and reached for his phone. “You need your fucking memory back.”
“Oh, so now that I’ve confessed I’ve had visions of something that might concern someone beyond Talley you care a little more?”
“No, princess. If I know one thing it’s that seers are rarely wrong when they do decide to voice what they’ve seen—and I am by far not the only flaming bird in this outfit.”
Adair’s entire body tensed. “Judge.” She was certain when she eavesdropped on Scorpio and his phone call earlier that he didn’t say Judge had the flame within him, but that didn’t mean Scorpio misspoke then—or she heard wrong. Her emotions were, are, a bit out of whack.
Defensiveness came to her just then. She knew the madam of death had always carried the emotion of jealously and now she assumed she knew why—she was after her man…wait, not mine, hell no.
“No,” Scorpio said, knowing then for sure that whether she admitted it or not, there was raw emotion she felt for Judge. The fact that she felt it blindly, behind all the anger she carried, burned his soul—it told him they were meant to be together, no matter how fucked their path was.
“Who?”
He didn’t answer her, when Adair looked up she found him staring at the empty doorway that led to the kitchen. “What?”
Scorpio didn’t see a damn thing, but he sensed it. He was sure he smelled a woman’s perfume, sure he could hear breathing, hear a heartbeat, feel the heat of the phantom’s flesh.
He stood, putting himself between Adair and the nothing he was sensing.
“You’re scaring me.”
All at once, the sensation that had every single one of Scorpio’s immortal senses on high alert vanished.
He turned to look down at her. “Nothing, now.”
“Was it—was it Talley?”
“I seriously doubt it.”
Adair raised her brow to question him but he was still glancing to where he had sensed someone before.
Mystic rose from her deep sleep. The pup hesitated then moved closer to Adair.
“Now you have my dog up in arms.” She reached to pet Mystic. The fact that she let her, that Mystic wasn’t tense or shaking told Adair all was well just then. “Who else is a flaming bird? I need a list. I want to know what everyone is—even if they slightly suspect they have that within them I need to know.” She looked up at Scorpio. “Even though I’m sure it’s you and you’re just not admitting it.”
He furrowed his brow to question her.
“It’s personal to me. This vision, how clear it is, the emotion with it—I don’t feel like an observer—it’s…intimate, a rare connection.” She looked away, not liking how her words sounded and hoping he didn’t read too deeply into them. All she meant was she knew she should give a damn about what this vision was saying—her caring would be the catalyst for the threat’s undoing.
“I told you I’m fine, princess.”
“Then name them, the flaming birds that broke free from the chains of death—who answered when Reveca Beauregard called their name.”
Before he said a word Adair felt Mystic tense and looked down right as she began to growl.
Adair looked over her shoulder just in time to see Jade appear behind the couch. She winked once and Adair collapsed, fell into a deep sleep.
“What the fuck did you do?” Scorpio raged as he watched Jade stare intently at Adair, in a way that told him whatever spell she was laying down was still in progress.
A thought from him birthed a wall of flames blocking her. At the very same time Dagen appeared, he had Adair’s limp body in his protective arms.
“Day late and a dollar short,” Scorpio seethed.
“Who me?” Dagen said with grin. “Na, I was just letting the boss take the lead.”
The rage in Scorpio’s eyes intensified as he assumed Dagen meant he was working with Jade, someone Adair had just told him had put her through hell over and over.
Dagen ticked his head to the flames, behind them Scorpio saw Jade gasping for breath. Just behind her was none other than King himself. His focus was rapt, as if he were reading Jade’s evil intent right from her mind.
All at once Jade collapsed, trembled then passed out.
“What the fuck!” Scorpio bellowed as he dropped the wall of fire. “What the hell was she doing?”
King slowly looked from her body to Dagen, to where Adair was lying then to Scorpio. “According to her—protecting.”
Dagen arched a brow as he held Adair closer against him.
“From what? Me? What the fuck ever,” Scorpio raged on.
King bit his lip before he spoke. “She didn’t want her to know what all of us are.”
“Well, she’s a little late for the party.”
“Right.”
“Did you stop it? Tell me the girl’s mind is not even more fucked now.”
“I corrected it.”
“Meaning?”
King nodded for Dagen to vanish with Adair before he bothered to answer. “Jade meant to block what each Son at the Boneyard was—my spell told Adair who every soul was that Reveca has brought back.”
“All? We don’t even know that—are you trying to torture her mind—what the fuck, man?”
“No,” King said calmly. “It was my only choice…if this witch had her way Adair would have never believed we are what we say we are. Ever.”
Scorpio
furrowed his brow—he had no fucking clue what King was. As far as he knew no one did.
“This is Jade,” King said. “She was here because her grimoire was stolen, and she tracked it here.”
“I ain’t got no spell book.”
“Neither did Adair, which means we have another witch lurking about the Boneyard. I’m sure Reveca would want us to find them, ensure they’re ready to be spoken to by the time she returns.”
Scorpio reached for his phone to call his boys.
The last fucking thing anyone needed was an unauthorized witch on the property.
Someone was about to die.
Chapter Two
Reveca hated Jade Carrey—no, hate was an understatement. She downright loathed her, and always had. Her reason? Hard to say. Reveca settled on the notion it was because she was a turncoat— or rather loyal to no one—yet the excuse was weak. In all truth Reveca hated anything and anyone who she couldn’t understand to at least one degree, which wasn’t many.
Jade Carrey was, without a doubt, a witch, but she was not from the Dominarum coven—no one knew what coven she was from, how old she was, or exactly how prevailing her powers were. No one was even sure if she was mortal or not. Not even Saige, or the other originals in the Dominarum coven.
Reveca had known her for nearly eighty years, so either Jade was a pro at illusion spells, ones which could make her look remarkably younger than she was, or the immortal answer had been readily given. At best the willowy five nine blonde looked to be in her mid thirties.
Jade was a soothsayer, in the worst kind of way. Basically she was mad, mad as a hatter—so mad that it would take years of knowing her to see it. To most she seemed smug, self-centered, quiet—all traits Reveca presumed to be true as well at first. But, Jade saw more and knew more, and like any classic soothsayer she rarely offered up advice to divert conflict. She was more of a collision kind of girl.
Seers like Adair and Judge, they’d tell you what they saw the moment they understood it to be true. The issue with Jade was that she’s brilliant, understood what she saw almost instantly and would never say a damn word.
In the past, Evanthe had told Reveca, “Jade’s way clearly states she is loyal to the fates.”