Page 37 of What The Hex (The Family Spells)
We were good this way, me and Spec.
Pretty sure he’d learned his lessons about getting too hotheaded when he found himself embroiled in vampire politics, stuck so deep that he almost didn’t make it out at all. The Bloods—the name the vampires gave to themselves—had permission to behead Spectre and bury him in two separate graves if he were ever to lose my favor.
And what happened to a vampire that was buried in two graves, a head in one, and a body in another? They couldn’t rise as one of the undead. Instead, they’d be cursed to roam the earth as a ghost until their corpse was so decayed that rebirth as an undead vamp was no longer a possibility.
That wasn’t why we were together though.
Not even close.
“Make the tea with the reaping willow bark,” I murmured, pulling back just enough so that I could look up into his lavender eyes. His brow was pinched with worry, but I didn’t think his expression had anything to do with the spell. When it came to magic, Spectre was confident in himself, in us, in me, particularly.
“I’ll do that,” he assured me, and then he was moving over to the kettle in the corner of the room, snapping his fingers to warm the coals and setting out five cups … hesitating over a sixth. He glanced back in my direction, and I turned my eyes up to Monster’s.
“I don’t need any tea, Everen Sinnes,” Monster said, inclining his head in a half-bow, shock-white hair sliding over his muscular shoulders in a silken wave. I wet my lips at the sight, digging my nails even harder into my palms.
Soon as I woke up from this spell, I was brewing myself a tonic to fight off the effects of Monster’s aphrodisiac; I couldn’t live for the next year with this guy walking around on earth and not do something to combat it.
That particular spell would require slug slime which just … ew. I couldn’t even deal with the thought just now. Who the fuck wants to suck down coffee tainted with slug slime? I almost gagged thinking about it.
So much for my pumpkin spiced lattes, am I right? Oh, oh, oh, or a peppermint mocha … They’d be available at most coffee places starting tomorrow, seeing as Halloween would be over. This meant, in certain semi-deranged circles, that it was Christmas.
I hadn’t decided which camp exactly, I was in, but I knew one damn thing.
Slug slime, that’s what I’d be drinking for breakfast every other day for a week. Sounds about right. Busy mother of four. Business owner. Luxurious sexual goddess to … three or four or however many men.
Pregnant.
Part of me was thrilled at the idea of having Hex’s baby. He was our final soulmate, our missing piece, the answer to our equation. The soul-circle would be complete if Hex stayed. I would be complete if Hex stayed. And having his baby would mean I had at least one kid from each man that I loved—
Er, that was bound to me with the red thread of fate.
On the other hand, Hex Sorciere was at best, a stranger. At worst, he was an asshole who traded dick spells for my mother’s life. I shouldn’t like him.
But I did anyway.
“Everen Sinnes … Always my lover?” Hex translated, several beats too late. “The fuck?” His gaze snapped over to Monster in a new and different way. Frankly, he looked like he was about to shit his pants. “Who is this guy? Do you have another husband?” he inquired, choking on the words. “How many dicks does one girl need?”
“I’ll have you know that there are plenty of witches out there with far more husbands than me,” I ground out at him, my teeth clenched so tight I thought I might break my own jaw. “For your information, Hex Sorciere, I once knew someone who had nine husbands and—”
“Nine?” Hex said in a strangled voice, putting one tattooed hand to his throat. “Can she still walk? Do her legs often work? Is there even a way to use nine dicks at once …” I ignored him, moving over to the bookshelf against the far wall as Monster studied Hex with an impossible gaze. Impossible to read. Impossible to love. Impossible to hate.
Yanking a heavy tome off the shelf, I turned and shoved it into Hex’s chest. The sight of that hideous red and gold robe on his body—the sign of a demon groom—bothered me more than I wanted to admit. I turned that emotion toward anger.
“Open this up to the last page. There’s a diagram there. You need to follow it exactly as you draw the spell circle. Do you understand me? No deviations, no modifications, no—”
“I might not know the difference between pansy and rose petals, but I can follow simple instructions without an explanation; I’m not an idiot, Graceley.” Hex slammed the tome down on the table beside Monster and flipped it open.
