Page 21 of What The Hex (The Family Spells)
“That’s going to be a feat, considering the bastard demon prince is being married to the spoiled demon princess.” Monster’s long, white hair fluttered in a warm breeze, and in the distance, something screamed its last breath. The vampire blood in my veins could sense death from a mile away.
I shivered.
“How did you get involved in all of this?” Argent asked, still unsatisfied with the level of candidness we were getting from Monster. But what did he expect? The man was literally obsessed with our wife. It was pretty clear what his motives were here.
“The king has ulterior motives that don’t exactly bode well for my future well-being,” Monster said, his voice like a church organ, deep and booming. “I took it upon myself to look into it.”
“So you just waltzed up to the cabal and asked to join?” Grace asked as Monster led the way into the woods, away from the grotesque faces of the jack-o’-lanterns. As we passed by one, I kicked it hard enough to shatter the orange shell to pieces.
Monster finally admitted to setting these jack-o’-lanterns up, lying cock-face that he was. They were here to scry on us, to watch the comings and goings from the portal, and they led straight to a spell circle of his making that honestly might’ve been a nicer surprise than the one Hex’s grandmother had left for us. Monster might not have sent the demons to our house, but his roundabout answer to Graceley’s question was surely just the start of his bullshit.
Some All Hallows’ Eve, huh?
Last Halloween, we’d taken the kids trick-or-treating, put them to bed exhausted and happy, and spent the rest of the evening in a beautiful orgy bathed in bonfire at the coven’s annual get-together (in between battling demons, of course).
There was not going to be an orgy this year, that much I was sure of.
“I know you, Monster,” Graceley continued, and even though I knew she didn’t mean that as a compliment, the comment rubbed me the wrong way. “You’re not telling the truth, or if you are then only part of it.” Grace paused and reached up to adjust her witch hat. I couldn’t even bear to think what would’ve happened if she hadn’t had those charms, if she’d been any less prepared.
My heart without Grace, it just didn’t work right.
“Do you want to stand around and talk about this?” Monster asked, glancing over his shoulder to look at Grace in a way that made my skin prickle. “Or do you want to save your mother?”
Graceley pursed her lips and continued walking, following Monster into the forest for several miles. Everything was silent which scared the shit out of me. No birds (or what passes for them down here anyway), no insects, no rustling foliage from rooting category one demons. I hadn’t heard the war horn for a while, but I knew for a fact that the witch-eaters were still hunting us.
I could still only guess at the time, but I knew just as well as everyone else that it was slipping away, like sand between grasping fingers. With each step we took, I had to wonder if we were making a huge mistake, letting ourselves be led into a trap. The people who’d sent the witch-eaters after us had calculated their plan perfectly. Drop us in Hael, trap us there, and kill us when nobody was looking.
But to my surprise we ended up at the base of a reaping willow tree, one of the only ones we managed to find that wasn’t cut down.
“Do you need any more bark?” Monster asked, peeling a long, thin strip off and holding it out to Grace. The way he smiled at her, well, I wasn’t the only one that was growling. Caine let out a vicious snarl, and I think the only thing that was holding him back was the knowledge that if Grace’s mother died … then she would become the Mother, and we’d essentially lose the life that we had, the one that we loved so much.
“Already have some, thanks,” Argent drawled, crossing his arms over his chest and watching Monster with wary eyes. “I hope you didn’t bring us all the way out here just for that.”
“Hardly.” With a twirl of his finger, Monster activated a giant spell circle around the tree. I could sense the same magical signature as the other one.
“Hex’s grandmother cast this, too?” Grace asked as she looked around, clutching the ivory handle of her broom. To be quite honest, I was hoping she’d shove it up Monster’s ass and be done with the prick.
“She did,” Monster said casually, leaning his back against the tree. He was a gorgeous guy, don’t get me wrong, but that only made things worse. I didn’t want Grace to look at him like that, even if I knew that her reaction was caused by the aphrodisiac and nothing else. The tales I’d heard about this man, it didn’t matter how beautiful he was. He wasn’t just named Monster: he was one. “But I have no problem hijacking the magic of a moderately powered high priestess.”
