A new house.
A new life.
A new relationship.
It won’t stop people from trying to kill me. It won’t make the angels forget that a forbidden Nephilim baby was allowed to live. And it certainly won’t make demons lose interest in either my demise or my rise to power in the depths of Hell. Yet for some reason, I see us getting into that house—my dream house—and everything being perfect.
“You can chop the onion,” I tell him. “It makes my eyes water.”
“I remember.” He kisses my neck and I go over to the stove, cutting up the chicken breast into small pieces. I’m making Chinese food tonight, and I got a bottle of saké to go along with it.
Lucas chops up the onions with vampire speed, and isn’t bothered by them at all. He puts them in the pan for me and then sticks the cutting board and knife in the sink. I go about making my teriyaki chicken, spilling it all over the stove. Oh well. There’s already a mess from the fried rice.
The doorbell rings right as I flick off the burner. Binx shadows through the kitchen, opening the door for me and letting Kristy in.
“It smells good in here,” she says, coming into the kitchen.
“Thanks. Hopefully it tastes good too. I greatly underestimated how labor-intensive this all was,” I laugh.
Lucas, who’s standing at the sink washing dishes, turns to say hi to Kristy.
“It’s still weird to see you in the daylight,” she admits. “Cool, but weird.”
“It still feels a little weird to be in the daylight,” Lucas admits. “Over sixteen hundred years of darkness makes me realize how much I missed the sun. I’ll never take watching the sunset for granted ever again.”
I stir the chicken, fluff the fried rice, and check on the egg rolls in the oven. Everything is done and I’m excited to dig into my fried rice. Tabatha and Evander arrive as I’m setting the table, and Tabatha comes in and wraps me in a hug.
“The last time I saw you, you were dying,” she says as she squeezes me. At the Covenstead, we maintain a professional relationship. She was my headmistress at the Academy and is now the High Priestess of the coven. But she’s also like my mother, and Evander is more of a brother than Scott ever was.
He takes his turn hugging me next, lifting me off the ground.
“You look good, sister,” he tells me. “You’d never know you were moments away from death only a week ago.”
“Right?” I laugh and shake my head. “I feel fine. Well, except for this.” I’m wearing a t-shirt-style black dress, and I roll up the sleeve to show them the scab on my shoulder. I’ve been rubbing healing balm on it, and it’s helping a lot to speed up the healing process.
“Demons?” Evander asks.
“Witch hunters,” I say and Tabatha gasps. “Have you heard of the Order of the Mystic Realm?”
Evander’s brown eyes go wide. “They attacked you? Are you sure?” He grabs my arm and pulls me close, inspecting the wound.
“We’re sure.” Lucas comes into the foyer holding one of the arrows.
Evander takes the arrow from him and holds it out in front of him. “Decalro,” he says and waves his hand over it. Whatever symbol Miranda needed an infrared light to see glows before us. It’s an eye inside a triangle, with the letters OMR written in a tiny scripted font at the bottom of the triangle.
“Seven hells,” Evander murmurs and looks at his mother. “I didn’t know the Order was still around, let alone still organized.”
“The Grand Coven will need to be informed right away.” Tabatha takes the arrow and runs her finger over the silver tip. “It’s been blessed, as if that will have a greater effect on us.” There was once a belief that all witches and warlocks got their powers from the Devil himself—from my uncle—but we now know that isn’t true.
I swallow a lump in my throat thinking about it. Satan-worshiping was made illegal years ago, as it’s a dangerous practice. Once we realized we’re born with our powers and they’re not given to us by the Devil, there was a separation from black magic and the way we practice today.
That realization made the Devil angry, as he lost thousands of worshipers. I think of the man from my dreams, the man who can’t really be dear old Uncle Lucy.
The man in my dreams is handsome, classy even. He’s alluring in a completely nonsexual way since we’re related, but it’s more like I want to sit by a fire, sip tea, and listen to him tell me stories.
He doesn’t seem like the horned king of demons we’ve been warned about, though I suppose that’s all part of the Devil’s game, right? Appear in a way that isn’t threatening to me, make me trust him and then pull the rug out from under my feet.
Tabatha gives the arrow back to Lucas. “Callie, my darling girl, you need to know something about the Order.”
“They’re hired assassins,” I say.
“Yes.” Tabatha looks startled. “How do you know that?”
“I might have asked another hunter,” I confess. I don’t want any secrets between us. My life is complicated enough as it is.
“Easton,” Evander guesses. He saw him not all that long ago when we were fighting the demons feeding off the Ley line.
“Yeah. I thought one of his hillbilly hunting buddies was behind it, so I asked him, hoping to get a name. But it wasn’t anyone he knew, and his sister knew to look for the Order’s symbol.”
“You went to a hunter’s house?” Tabatha’s brows go up.
“He came to Lucas’s house, actually.” I don’t want to tell them that I trust Easton, because I don’t. Yet I know he won’t kill me. I suppose you assume most people aren’t going to plunge a silver dagger through your heart, yet that doesn’t mean you exactly consider then friends.
Still, Easton, Miranda and I have history, and I’ve saved his ass more than enough to make him owe me.
“That’s how I know about the Order. He seemed just as startled as you. He told me that the hunters he runs with don’t even associate with the Order. He called them ruthless. Coming from a hunter who dated me only to get close so he could kill me, that’s, uh, a little concerning.”
“I won’t let anyone hurt you,” Lucas promises, fangs coming down. “If I had been there when they attacked you, there’d be nothing left.”
“Where were you when you were attacked?” Tabatha asks.
“I was leaving my sister’s house in Chicago. They had to have seen me go in, and as soon as I opened the door to leave, they shot at me. I just barely got a shield up in time.”
“The day we were all there together?” Kristy asks and I nod. “And you’re just now telling me about this? Cal, that was days ago!”
“You should have come to me straight away,” Tabatha agrees. “The coven would have offered immediate protection.”
“I’m safe here.” I wave my hand out at the house. “I…I just needed a few days to decompress,” I say and know how stupid that sounds. “A lot has happened, which is why I invited you all here.”
The porch creaks and a second later, someone knocks on the door. It’s the twins, and Kristy ducks past us to answer it.
Evander suddenly grabs my hand, looking at the ring on my finger. “A lot has happened.”
Tabatha looks even more shocked then when I told her witch hunters were after me.
“We want to get married,” I say and look up at Lucas. He steps closer and puts his arm around my waist. “And I know how complicated it is…how all of this is.”
“Causing drama again, dearest Callie?” Naomi steps into the house and crosses her arms. Her long red hair is up in a princess pun on the top of her head, and her blue dress matches her eyes perfectly.
“It’s kind of my thing,” I say with a half shrug.
Naomi smiles and leans against the wall. Nicole scoops up Freya, baby talking to her and telling her how she wishes her familiar would take the form or a cat instead of a raven, which is traditional in their family.
“Let’s eat,” I say and turn, going into the kitchen. The air is a bit tense
as we all fill our plates and go into the dining room. Lucas sits next to me with nothing in front of him, of course.
“Next time I have a dinner party, I’ll bleed into a cup for you or something,” I say as I pour soy sauce on my rice.
“Gross, Cal.” Nicole makes a face.
“I prefer to drink from the source anyway,” Lucas says casually, and looks at me hungrily. “You know that.”
Heat rushes to my cheeks and I smile, turning back to my food. A minute or two of silence follows and I can feel the tension growing.
“Why are we here?” Naomi blurts, saying what everyone is thinking. “Did demons escape from Hell again? Is another blood horseman on the loose? Is the world ending? And why is there a bloody arrow on your kitchen table?”
I take one last bite of fried rice, which is just as good if not better than the takeout I ordered in Chicago not that long ago. I wash it down with a big mouthful of saké and then take a deep breath.
“There’s a bloody arrow on my kitchen table because someone hired witch hunters to try and kill me. I’m pretty sure it’s my asshole not-actually-related-to-me brother, Scott, and I have another hunter looking into it for me. I invited you here originally to tell you that I met one of my cousins from my dad’s side.”