Black Arts, White Craft (Black Hat Bureau 2)

“I have a question for you.” I couldn’t peel my gaze from my bloody fingertip. “It’s about Dad.”

“I didn’t know him as well as your mother, but I’ll answer as best I can.”

“I heard a rumor my paternal grandmother was a daemon.”

“Heard a rumor, huh?” She took a long drag. “That dirt clod finally told you, didn’t he?”

“Meg.”

“I heard the whispers, of course, we all did.” She pursed her lips. “Your father was exceptional. You can’t begin to imagine the power at his command. I’ve never seen anything like it. But it was a dark power fed by dark deeds.” She tapped her cigarette. “How your sweet, joyful mother found anything to love in that miasma of death, I will never know, but she was like that.” She shrugged a frail shoulder. “And, I confess, he was made better by her. He tried. For her sake. He became…not a bad sort, but not her equal.”

Given the great divide between us, I felt comfortable confessing, “I have a daemon…acquaintance.”

A lascivious spark lit her clever eyes. “Ah.”

“I seem to be experiencing some daemonlike reactions to him.”

“Like ripping his clothes off and licking him head to toe? Remember the horns, dear, they’re sensitive.”

Sex with the daemon half of Asa, I could safely say, had never crossed my mind. Horns on Asa, though…

“Um, not quite.” I fought not to squirm at the mental picture. “More like an emotional attachment.”

“Feelings.” Her glee dimmed as she took another drag. “Not my forte.”

Lifting my hand, I shook my wrist to show off my bracelet. “We’re sort of…fascinated…with each other?”

How I made it sound like a question when I had agreed to it not once but twice, I had no idea.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.” She coughed until her eyes watered. “Who is he?”

“His name is—”

“No, no, no.” She waved the cloud of smoke away. “Who are his people? What is his father’s name?”

For a beat, I debated faking interdimensional interference to get off the hook. “Orion Pollux Stavros?”

“Vonda, you would have loved this,” she called, as if my mother could hear her. “You’ve been claimed by a prince of Hael. One of the high princes, no less. They’re the only ones who do the hair thing. They are a peculiar caste and very particular about their hair, which I’m sure you’ve noticed if you’re wearing that. I can’t believe it. I just can’t.” Her bark of laughter stretched into a long howl of mirth. “It’s too delicious.”

Cheeks burning from her raucous amusement, I dipped a finger in the water. “You’re not helping…”

The ripples broke up her features, and she used the time while they settled to rein herself in.

Leaning forward, she flicked ash off the tip of her cigarette. “Have you test-driven him yet?”

“No.”

“You aren’t serious.” Deep wrinkles did little to hide her disappointment. “You’re not still a virgin.”

“No.” A hard edge honed my voice. “I had sex at thirteen to protect myself.”

That encounter had been one part advance planning to one part magical high from my first kill.

The guy was harmless enough, and human to ensure he was clueless as well. I scouted him out weeks earlier. A male witch would have run screaming from the proposition, aware of what I was sacrificing. A human, though? At fifteen, he didn’t much care that I was younger. Only that I would take off my pants.

A snarl vibrated through our connection that I felt in my bones as she cursed the director’s existence.

Black witches weren’t any more or less powerful for being virgins in their day-to-day spellwork, but their willing sacrifice of that last barrier of innocence was a potent boost to any major working. Both men and women saved it for a once-in-a-lifetime spell they otherwise couldn’t have cast on their own.