Page 41 of What The Hex (The Family Spells)
Soulmates.
I ignored the pang in my chest, a familiar hurt that had been bleeding uncontrollably for nearly fourteen years. For a while there, Graceley believed I was her soulmate.
Not anymore.
Never again.
I gritted my teeth and tried not to hate the men—the fae prince, in particular—who were surrounding her. Even that idiot Hex Sorciere looked to be fitting in quite well. By the time this war—the one I was trying so damn hard to prevent—was over, he’d be just another member of the Family Spells.
Lucky bastard.
Grace’s vibrant red-orange hair was swirling around her pretty face, stirred by the magic she was conjuring with her now-complete soul-circle. Since we’d first met, it had been her wish to complete her circle and become High Priestess of Coven Apothecary.
It gave me some comfort that she’d managed to achieve her dreams.
It tore me apart that I was most certainly not one of them.
For years, she’d been imbibing a forget-for-now potion, this toxic little tonic that worked to push memories to the back of one’s psyche. Out of sight, out of mind. Quite literally.
Graceley began a chant that the men took up on the second go-over, their voices thick with power. I could feel it rotating amongst them and—though I wasn’t a witch in the least—through me as well. I squeezed my hands on her shoulders just a bit harder, digging my fingertips in to keep our connection from breaking.
Fortunately for all of us, Grace showed up in Hael when I most needed her to. She needed me, as well. She just didn’t know it yet.
Without my presence, this spell wouldn’t have worked at all.
“Demon,” the Maiden hissed out, moving close to me. I’d used an inordinate amount of power deflecting the Coven Wyrmwood Crone’s hex, but I had enough reserve left in me to finish this spell up. That, and make certain that I didn’t end up dead or sent back to Hael.
“Your High Priestess made a bargain with me. Is it your intention to break it?” I inquired, as politely as possible. As a demon, it wasn’t always the easiest feat in the world to speak to a witch from Coven Apothecary without spitting.
Grace was my sole exception.
“Oh, but I didn’t make any such bargain,” the Maiden continued, drawing power slowly through the floor of the old house. It lurched and creaked in protest, as if it could sense what the girl was doing and didn’t much appreciate it. Every candle in the room save the ones inside the spell circle winked out in an instant, casting the room and its inhabitants into shadows.
As a demon, I had no problem seeing as if it were clear as day. The Maiden, on the other hand, had to blink her way through the cobwebs of darkness.
“You dare attempt a spell on me when the fate of your Mother lies in the balance?” I continued, wondering how far this headstrong idiot was truly going to push things. She was putting herself in dangerous territory with the coven, the Crone, and most especially Graceley and her mom—if the latter lived through this, that is.
Casting another spell while one of this caliber was already being worked? Foolish.
This girl didn’t deserve the position she held.
“Oh, I’ll wait until it’s finished,” she said, and then several things happened at once.
Grace’s eyes rolled back into her head, and she collapsed against me. Caine followed, Spectre, Hex. Argent was the last to go, blinking determinedly before he, too, succumbed to the use of power and slumped to his side. I felt an immediate tug from the darkness, my magic draining out of me and into Graceley. I allowed her as much as I could before laying her down gently and tearing my hands away from her shoulders; I couldn’t allow this spell to have all of my power, not when I had other tasks to accomplish.
Grace’s mother—an ornery woman named Abigail Spells—sucked in a sharp breath and began to scream. The feel of the rot leaving her flesh was likely to be as painful, if not more so, than the onset of it.
The small spell circle I’d traced onto my right palm with a fingernail from my opposite hand was dripping blood. I activated it and turned, slamming the bloody circle against the Maiden’s head and knocking her clear of the door.
Both Grace’s father and that other woman—vaguely, I remembered her name was Calla—turned against me, thinking I had something in mind other than what it was I was doing. No point in explaining it to them though.
They were witches. More so, they were Coven Apothecary witches which meant they dealt with low-level demons on a regular basis. Were they aware of how racist it was to compare different species of demon? As if I were the same sort as the spider-like creatures who’d dropped pumpkins on Grace’s house.
