Black Wings, Gray Skies (Black Hat Bureau 4)

Sausage went down the wrong pipe, and I coughed biscuit crumbs into his face. “Eww.”

The only way to dress up grits was to mix in sugar, as the goddess surely intended.

“You asked.” He picked at the lid on his grits. “I learned it from Clay.”

“Clay is a culinary heathen who changes how he eats grits as often as he switches up his hairdo.” I noticed Asa hadn’t begun his meal. “Can you eat if I don’t christen your meal first?”

The weird factor lessened for me if I teased him, like our shared ancestry was a private joke.

“Yes,” he said slowly, toying with his fork, still in its wrapper, “but your proximity dictates my hunger.”

The cure, according to Clay, was to mate Asa. Or mate with Asa? A fine line separated the two, but I had yet to ask for clarification. Willful ignorance? Yes, please.

As much as I wanted my palate back, I couldn’t let taste buds make life choices for me.

“Give me that.” I stole his food, took a dutiful bite of each item, then passed them back. “Dig in.”

The food interested him after that display, but he stole my fork before I could snatch it.

While he shoveled in his meal, I picked at my grits, gave up on them, then checked my phone.

Again.

“The girls are fine.” He held out our fork, laden with sweet creamy grits dense enough to hold their own on the tines. “Aedan would have called if there were any problems.”

“It’s hard leaving them with a relative stranger.” I forced myself to pocket the cell. “A strange relative?”

Aedan, my almost cousin, had little experience blending with humans, let alone under scrutiny from two girls with no filters. As the newest addition to the Hollis Apothecary staff, the better to protect Camber and Arden when I traveled for work, he was clocking eight-hour shifts. Without me there to ensure he wasn’t overwhelmed by stimuli, or his nosy coworkers, his probationary period had escalated into a trial by fire.

Far from ideal conditions for an aquatic daemon.

“Aedan wants this to work.” Asa fed me another bite. “You’re all the family he’s got left.”

“He has siblings.” I pondered whether the grits had been prepared with cream cheese. “But fosterage…”

To keep them safe from discovery by their eldest and uber homicidal sibling, Delma, he had placed his younger brothers and sisters in ironclad fosterages that guaranteed anonymity. Even from him. I had since killed her in a challenge she issued, but what was done was done. Aedan had no recourse. He was alone.

Except for me.

“He can’t take them back.” Asa read my mind. “He won’t see them again until they’re of legal age.”

“Do you think he’ll live in my backyard until then?” I was joking. Mostly. “He seems happy out there.”

Camp Aedan, as Colby and I called it, had been a stopgap measure to help him get his feet under him. He had nothing when he came to us but had since inherited the wealth Delma had spent decades amassing. In his mind, it was blood money, earned with his siblings’ lives, and you couldn’t pay him to spend it.

There was no rush to kick him out of his tent by the creek. It wasn’t like I kept preapproved daemon renters on file, eager to take his place. He wasn’t paying anyway. It wasn’t truly a gift if it came with a price tag.

Aedan felt safe there, sharing land with his new and slightly less murderous relative.

Behind those wards, he was snug as a bug in a rug, and it gave me a rush knowing he trusted me to protect him. Blame it on my white witch roots, the ones that craved a coven, a community. Or blame it on the whisper of conscience growing stronger in my mind every day.

Refuse to allow past missteps to dictate the path of your future.

You don’t owe anyone a smile when life is kicking you in the teeth.

Every day is a new chance, a new choice, a new challenge.

Honestly, it was like a fortune cookie factory of positivity up there these days.