Dark Harvest Magic (Ella Grey Series Book 2) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Dark Harvest Magic

  Copyright

  Books by Jayne Faith

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Dark Harvest Magic

  ELLA GREY BOOK TWO

  JAYNE FAITH

  Copyright

  Dark Harvest Magic

  Copyright © 2016 by Jayne Faith

  All rights reserved as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to a real person, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the authors.

  Dark harvest magic / a novel by Jayne Faith

  Ebook Edition ISBN: 978-0-9970260-7-8

  Edited by: Mary Novak

  Proofread by: Tia Silverthorne Bach of Indie Books Gone Wild

  Cover by: Deranged Doctor Designs

  Published in the United States of America

  Books by Jayne Faith

  Sapient Salvation Series

  The Selection

  The Awakening

  The Divining

  The Claiming

  Ella Grey Series

  Stone Cold Magic

  Dark Harvest Magic

  Demon Born Magic

  Love Across Stars Novels

  The Seas of Time

  The Laws of Attraction

  For Charlie,

  whose love is better than magic

  Chapter 1

  THE PULSE OF the reaper’s presence tapped against the inside of my forehead as I smashed sauce-smeared paper plates into my nearly overflowing kitchen trash can. I was in the middle of a pizza-and-movie night, a little informal reunion for several of us who’d banded together to free a demon-possessed young man who’d become trapped inside a gargoyle.

  Usually I’d have to be bribed with something damned good to host any sort of gathering, but I’d given in when my best friend Deb told me Roxanne missed all of us. She was the young girl whose brother we’d saved. I realized that deep in my crusty, solitude-loving heart I missed Roxanne, too.

  I’d done my best to try to make it a nice night for her, but all day I’d been hyper-aware of the shadows swirling around the edges of my vision. It was probably my imagination, but at times I could almost swear I felt a chilly swirl behind my breastbone. Right in the spot where I imagined the reaper soul was curled up all cozy and munching on my own soul like it was a glazed donut with sprinkles.

  My Demon Patrol partner Damien, Deb, and Roxanne were the only ones still left out in the living room. Witchy Lynnette Leblanc and supernatural rights activist Rafael St. James had both only made brief appearances before sailing off to Thursday night destinations unknown.

  The doorbell chimed. I straightened and shoved the trash can back under the sink, and tucked my hair behind my ears. Blowing out a slow breath on the way to the front door, I relaxed my face into the semblance of an easy smile despite the tightness in my chest.

  Johnny Beemer stood on the front porch holding the handle of a black, hard-sided case in one hand, a bunch of white daisies in the other, and a warm spark in his dark brown eyes.

  I swung the door open and felt my lips widen at the now-familiar sight of his leather jacket, tousled chestnut hair, and expressive mouth quirked in a half-grin.

  “Hey, sugar.” He leaned in to kiss the soft spot under my cheekbone, sending a pleasant web of tingles stirring through me.

  “Come on in. So, you always bring your scanner when you call on a lady?” I was going for a lighthearted tone, but it came out tighter than I’d hoped. I was glad to see him, but preoccupied by the changes I sensed within.

  He grinned anyway, seeming to understand I was trying to be jokey, but a flicker in his eyes said he picked up on the strain in my voice. “Only when I really, really like her.”

  I managed a little laugh.

  Though he had no magic ability, Johnny worked as a supernatural P.I., and he’d developed all sorts of instruments that could detect different types of magical phenomena. The scanner in his little black suitcase would tell me how much more of my soul the reaper had devoured.

  “Johnny!” Roxanne jumped up from where she’d been tucked between Deb and my dog on the sofa. She half-skipped, half-ran across the room but stopped short, suddenly a little shy. Johnny passed the flowers and case to me with a wink and then engulfed the girl in a hug.

  Loki, a big hellhound-labradoodle that had followed me home the night I’d met Roxanne, hopped to the floor. With his tail waving enthusiastically, he loped over to Johnny and circled him, nudging his thigh. Johnny fished a dog treat out of the pocket of his jeans and, in a habit he and Loki had established over the past few weeks, waited for the dog to sit. Then Johnny lobbed the treat up in the air, and Loki followed the arc of it with his eyes and caught it with a chomp of his jaws.

  While Johnny said his hellos to Damien and Deb, I went to the kitchen with the flowers, filled a pint glass with water, sawed a few inches off the stems with a bread knife, and plunked them into the makeshift vase.

  “. . . been a fluctuation in the Boise Rip,” Johnny was saying when I returned to the living room. I felt his eyes following me as I went to place the flowers on the table near the door. “The past day or so, the energy surrounding it has started to swell and recede in a rhythm, like a tide.”

  I sat down next to Johnny, close enough for my shoulder to press against his arm, and curled my legs up. He shifted back slightly so he could slide his arm behind me. It rested along the back of the sofa, just close enough for me to feel the warmth of his skin across my shoulder blades.

  “Energy around the Rip?” Deb asked, tilting her head.

  Damien’s eyes lit with interest, and he leaned in as if to be sure to catch whatever Johnny said next.

  “The interdimensional rips emanate their own power,” Johnny said. “That’s one of the reasons access to the major rips is restricted.”

  The local Rip was a permanent tear between dimensions, a doorway that allowed hellspawn to invade our world. My job on Demon Patrol consisted of trapping and killing the minor demons that came through smaller spontaneous interdimensional burps that occurred randomly. Minor demons didn’t have enough demonic energy to possess a person, but they were nasty pests that would attack small pets and scratch the hell out of you with the claws that tipped their bat-like wings and talons, if given the chance. Minor demons were mostly just a nuisance. It was the arch-demons that really caused trouble. They were much larger and more powerful hellspawn, capable of possessing humans. If the possession could be reversed in time through exorcism, separating the demon from the human before the creatu
re drove the person to kill, the possessed could usually fully recover. But if a person took another life while possessed, the fusion was permanent.

  Damien was almost literally on the edge of his seat. As a life-long student of supernatural phenomena and a high-level magic user, he lived for this stuff. “And this fluctuation is new?”

  Johnny nodded slowly. “As far as I can gather.”

  “I wonder what’s causing it.” Damien’s eyes flicked toward his Demon Patrol backpack, which sat on the floor against the ottoman just out of his reach.

  I’d bet anything his fingers were itching to dig out his ever-present notebook so he could scribble down things to look up later. Not that Damien would scribble. His handwriting was so legible and consistent it was practically its own font.

  Roxanne looked up from her phone. “Maybe it’s ‘cause of Halloween. I’m dressing up as Supergirl. Hey, can we start the movie now?”

  “Actually, there could be something to that,” Damien muttered to himself, giving in to his urge and reaching for his pack.

  While Damien bent over his laptop, the glow of the screen revealing his squint-eyed focus, the rest of us settled in to watch the latest superhero flick.

  I kept thinking of what Johnny had said about the Rip fluctuation. Rhythmic, he’d called it.

  I’d asked him to bring his scanner so he could check how much of my human essence was still left. A few months back I’d briefly died after a call on the job went awry, and when I came to on a gurney that was queued for the morgue, things had been, well, strange ever since. The soul of a reaper had hitched a ride with me back to the living. Johnny had been doing measurements every two or three days, and over the past several weeks the reaper soul that had tethered itself to me had seemed to slow its consumption of my soul. But when I’d woken this morning, something had felt different. At first I’d thought it was due to a particularly vivid vision of my missing brother Evan, but the unsettled feeling had stayed with me. A new sensation had taken root deep in my gut, too, coming and going in waves like a stomach cramp. Vague hunger was the only way I could think to describe it, but nothing I ate seemed to satisfy it. My eyes felt twitchy and strained, too. I didn’t have proof that any of this was related to the reaper, but I felt sure it was, and I was equally certain it wasn’t good.

  By the time the credits rolled, Roxanne was half-slumped against the back of the sofa and over Loki’s rump, asleep. Deb touched her shoulder, gently waking her. When I turned on the lamp next to the sofa, Damien looked up, blinking as if he’d forgotten we were all here.

  Deb stood and made a beeline to the bathroom that neither of the men seemed to catch, but I glimpsed the green-around-the-gills look of her face as she passed. I eyed the closed bathroom door, trying to gauge how sick she might be. Sometimes the morning sickness only made her queasy and retchy rather than all-out pukey.

  I stood, stretching. “Hey Damien, would you mind doing Deb a favor and dropping Roxanne at home?” I tipped my head toward the bathroom and gave him a pointed look.

  “Ah . . . oh, sure,” he said, catching on.

  He packed up his things and Roxanne bade us all a droopy-lidded goodbye.

  I went to tap on the bathroom door with one knuckle. “You still alive in there?” I called softly.

  “Yeah,” came Deb’s hoarse voice. “Just need a few minutes to collect myself.”

  “No rush, holler if you need anything.” I quickly stepped away, relieved to avoid hearing any barf noises. I felt bad for Deb, but in my opinion sympathy puking went beyond the requirements of friendship.

  I turned to find that Johnny had his black case open. I eyed the souped-up tablet inside as he pulled it from its bed of molded foam.

  He glanced up at me. “Ready?”

  “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

  Johnny held the tablet up by one of its handles—a modification he’d added—and used his other hand to swipe through the instrument’s controls. He aimed the device’s camera at me, tapped the screen, and then gave me a nod.

  I sank onto the sofa, watching his face as he examined the readouts on the device. His brows drew low with the concentration that came across his face whenever he used one of his supernatural detection instruments. But when his eyes flicked up to mine, I knew the news wasn’t good. He came to sit beside me and propped the edge of the tablet on his jean-clad thighs.

  I stared at the image on the left of the screen. It was a multi-colored blob roughly in the shape of a standing person—me—with a rainbow of colors radiating out from the center of its chest, marked by a dark purplish circle the color of a fresh bruise.

  “It’s eaten more of my soul, hasn’t it?” I asked.

  Johnny drew a solemn breath in through his nose. “It looks like it.”

  “How much?”

  He scrolled down the columns of numbers on the right. “Another seven percent.”

  My stomach dropped like I’d just stepped onto a fast-moving elevator. “I’m barely three-quarters human now?”

  Flipping his finger over the edge of the device to darken the screen, he shifted to face me, and his expression tightened to worried sympathy.

  “You’re still you, Ella. You’re still walking, breathing, talking, and thinking under your own power. But now would be a good time to get something in place to halt the reaper’s progress.” He gave me a pointed look. “Or you could just let Lynnette exorcise it.”

  Deb’s friend Jennifer Kane was trying to figure out a magical solution that would preserve what was left of my soul. So far, she’d come up empty. Jennifer and Deb—and Johnny, apparently—wanted me to get the reaper soul exorcised, if that was even possible, but I wasn’t willing to do it. Not yet. The reaper gave me visions of my brother, the only clues I’d had that he was alive since he’d disappeared five years ago. I knew I was taking a terrible risk, but I couldn’t give up the one link I had to Evan.

  “No exorcisms.” I felt my forehead furrow. “I’ll get in touch with Jennifer tomorrow.”

  His jaw muscles pulsed a couple of times, as if working to contain something else he wanted to say.

  I didn’t like the way he was looking at me. All that focused worry made me twitchy.

  “Maybe you should call her now,” he finally said in a carefully measured voice.

  “Nah. If she thought she had a cure, she would have contacted me.” I pushed to my feet and shot him a wry smile. “Besides, if the reaper kills me overnight, a call to her now probably wouldn’t have made a difference anyway. But maybe you should stay and make sure it’s a damn good night, just in case.”

  I said it partly to cut the tension but also because I really did want him to stay.

  He chuckled, and some of the seriousness in his eyes began to dissolve in the heat that stoked in his gaze. He leaned in so his lips brushed my ear as he spoke. “I’ll give you a night you won’t forget.”

  A warm shiver spilled down my neck and spine, but just then the bathroom door flew open. Deb lurched out with her phone pressed to her ear and a look of sharp concern in her blue eyes.

  “Have you called the police?” she said into the phone.

  I broke away from Johnny, honing in on Deb.

  “Okay, yeah, I’m coming now,” Deb said. Her gaze finally focused on me. “I’m at Ella’s. She’s coming too.”

  She lowered her arm slowly.

  “What, what?” I asked, impatiently waving my hands.

  “Jennifer’s house was trashed.” Deb’s voice was tight, and she sounded a little out of breath.

  “Is she okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah, she wasn’t home when it happened. She’s upset, though. She doesn’t understand how someone could’ve passed through the wards around her house without her noticing. And the person took something from her altar room. Ella, her scrying mirror is gone.” Deb said the last part with emphasis and then paused as if expecting a reaction.

  “Oh . . . okay?”

  “It’s the mirror she used during her s
ession with you. If someone knows what it is and how to use it, they can basically see everything that happened when she helped you identify the reaper soul.”

  My brows pulled lower as my frown deepened. I shook my head. “Well, that would suck, but mostly just in the sense of invading my privacy. Other than that, I don’t really see the danger.”

  She sighed, and I could tell she was stressed and struggling to be patient with me. “You’re a necromancer, Ella. Anyone who knows enough to access what the mirror holds will recognize that. There are only a few of you in the world, and there are a lot of people who would love to have that talent at their disposal. Plus, the fact that you can wield magic and you have two souls, one of which is a reaper’s, probably makes you completely unique. In the supernatural community, rare talents and configurations like yours are incredibly valuable. There are plenty of people and organizations that make a point to recruit rare talent. Sometimes by force.”

  My breath stilled as I took in what she was saying.

  Yeah, I’d recognized that since my untimely demise and return to life I’d gained the ability to see through the eyes of demons and was just learning to manipulate them with necromancy. Necromancers could drive demons and other death-touched beings, including vampires and zombies, by penetrating their minds and taking command of them. But I couldn’t do a whole lot with the skill yet. I’d only barely begun to try it out. I sure as hell didn’t think of myself as someone to be categorized along with Phillip Zarella, the notorious psychopath and one of the most powerful necromancers in the world. But Phillip didn’t have any magical ability, and I was betting that most other necromancers didn’t either. I was unskilled, but Deb was probably right about my unique configuration.

  I tried to process what she was implying, clearing my voice to stall for a second. “Okay. Well. I hadn’t thought of it that way.” I glanced at Johnny. “We can both come. Johnny can do some scans, maybe help her figure out what went wrong with her wards.”