Demon Born Magic (Ella Grey Series Book 3) Read online

  My ire flared. “So, what, you think I should be flattered?”

  “No, that’s not what I’m saying. She just really, really values what you have to offer. I mean, she wanted you bad.” She paused for a moment with her lips pressed together. “If she hadn’t roped you into the coven, she would have coerced you into doing something else for her. Maybe something that would have been much worse. At least this way you get the benefits of the coven.”

  I felt my face twist into disbelief, and I barely held myself back from demanding how she could be so unsympathetic. More than once, I’d thought she’d understood my stance against Lynnette and even agreed with it but just didn’t want to speak out against the coven leader. Apparently, I’d overestimated Jen.

  I blew out a slow breath, trying to calm down. Jennifer wasn’t truly the one I was pissed at, and picking a fight with her wasn’t in my best interest.

  “While you’re stuck with us, you can at least let me try to do something to help you. Or is that too much togetherness for you?” she asked with a wry arch of one brow.

  “No, please.” I inclined my head and made an open-palmed motion for her to continue.

  She brought up one knee and leveraged her hand on it, pushing herself up to her feet. “It’ll take me just a minute to get set up.”

  I watched as she gathered a few items from around the room: a round glass tray, a tall pewter candlestick into which she fitted a white candle, and some other smaller things, which she set on the floor in front of me. When she had what she needed, she sat down again and arranged everything. The candle went in the middle of the tray with four crystals spaced around it. From a small ceramic bowl, she took pinches of dried herbs and then sprinkled them around the other items.

  She rose again and turned off the overhead light, and I felt the electric breeze of magic prickle across my skin as she drew power. She quickly moved around me in a clockwise circle, chanting under her breath as magenta magic streamed from her finger and formed a circle on the floor. The third time around, the circle expanded to form a half-dome over me, Jen, and the ceremonial items.

  It was a relief to be able to sense and see magic, even if it was someone else’s. When I’d first awakened with the charmed rings on my fingers, I was so numb from the magical trauma I couldn’t sense any magic at all, and it had nearly sent me into full-fledged panic.

  When she sat down again, I caught the glow of power in her irises—a curious quirk of a vampire-witch, as I’d never seen another crafter’s eyes illuminate this way.

  The temperature in the room began to fall. She reached for a small box of matches and struck one. The acrid sulfurous smell of a burning match head wafted between us as she lit the candle.

  As I watched her eyes lose focus while she sank deeper into the trance, I thought about the irony of a vampire witch being able to draw the ethereal magic of mages—power considered to be celestial and superior to the more common elemental magics. And yet somehow, when she was drawing her unique mix of power, the chill of the grave filled the room. Before when she’d read my reaper soul in the scrying mirror, she’d warned me beforehand of the cold of her grave magic, as she’d called it. It was a curious, contradictory phenomenon—an undead witch pulling heavenly power to connect with the world of the dead.

  “Gaze into the flame. Let it fill up your awareness completely,” she intoned. Her voice had taken on a strange timbre. It was pitched lower and reverberated as if there were two Jens speaking in unison.

  I fixed my eyes on the small flicker of fire atop the candle and slowed my breathing. The room was growing colder, but the deeper I moved into a meditative state, the less it seemed to bother me.

  Jen was speaking at a near-whisper, inviting the reaper into our circle.

  “We do not know the name to call you, but we do know you,” she said. “We ask you to grace us with your presence and to speak through your host.”

  Host? That must be me. I had my doubts that this would work because the charmed rings had essentially cut me off from the reaper. I couldn’t sense its presence, and it couldn’t influence me.

  “Are you with us?” she asked. Her gaze sharpened and flitted around the room, as if looking for something in the air.

  My lower jaw dropped, opening my mouth as if someone had grasped my chin and yanked it downward. My heart skipped a beat as a moaning sound emitted from my throat. The candle flame swelled and began to flicker like mad.

  “I am here.”

  Each syllable was like the low strike of a giant gong. The words came from my mouth, but my lips didn’t move to form them. The voice welled up through me, as if using me as a ventriloquist dummy.

  My eyes widened as I stared at Jen across the flame.

  “We thank you for joining us,” she said, as if this were the most mundane thing in the world. Her voice still held an almost-echo. “If you’re willing, we have questions for you.”

  “I am willing.” My teeth vibrated with the low force of the words coming from the reaper. My jaw was forcefully propped open. I couldn’t have pulled my top and bottom teeth together if someone put a Strike Team blaster to my temple and demanded it.

  “What do we call you?” Jen asked.

  “Xaphan.”

  My heart thumped. My reaper had a name.

  “How can we release you from your host Ella Grey so that she may survive and you may return to your own realm?”

  “I will not allow myself to be extinguished.”

  “Are you saying that separating you from your host would kill you?”

  “I will not allow myself to be extinguished.”

  Gee, helpful.

  Jen inclined her head in a little nod of concession. “We understand. You must protect yourself. Is there something you desire that we could offer in return for you allowing the preservation of your host’s soul and her survival?”

  I didn’t have much hope of that, even if by some slim chance Xaphan was agreeable. Rogan had said he had no choice when it came to the consumption of his human’s soul. He didn’t want to take over a human body, but he’d been unable to stop what happened.

  “I will not allow myself to be extinguished.”

  Seriously? Come on, we got that the first time.

  There was a pop of pressure against my eardrums, and the candle extinguished and plunged the room into darkness except for Jen’s eyes and the faint trace of the magic circle she’d cast around us.

  I snapped my jaw closed, and realizing the reaper was no longer using my throat as its personal PA system, I reached up to press at my strained jaw muscles.

  Jen huffed a sigh, clearly exasperated, and the pink glow faded from her irises. “Uncooperative little prick,” she muttered.

  I snorted a laugh.

  “But at least we were able to contact him. If we could do it once, we can do it again,” she said. She stood and walked around me to open the circle and then flipped on the lights.

  I knew she was trying to give me some hope, but I didn’t have the patience to sit through a dozen séances trying to coax information from a reaper who obviously wasn’t too excited about helping us out. There had to be a faster way.

  I pushed slowly to my feet and pulled my hands down my face as she put her things away.

  She caught sight of my expression and paused. “Hey, chin up. We’ll figure out something.”

  I made an apathetic sound.

  “I’ll see you at Lynnette’s tonight, right?” She forced a cheery smile.

  My apathy transformed into an undisguised groan. Could this day get any more awesome? “Ugh, I forgot about the coven meeting. Yeah, I guess I’ll be there.”

  She walked me to the door, and I trudged out to my pickup. Just as I reached for the rust-dotted metal handle, my phone gave a jangle that pulled me from my thoughts of the coven. A glance at the caller ID indicated it was a call from the Demon Patrol station. Maybe Damien had lost his phone or something.

  “Hello?” I answered.

  “O
fficer Grey,” came my sergeant’s southern drawl. “This is Sergeant Devereux.”

  Every part of my body seized a little at the sound of his voice. I was pretty sure he wasn’t calling to see if he could bring me chicken soup while I was on medical leave. In fact, Sergeant Devereux rarely spoke to me unless it was to deliver bad news.

  “Did something happen to Damien?”

  “I’m sure Officer Stein is fine. I need you to come to the station. Report to my office by eleven.”

  “Today?” I asked, confused.

  “Yes, Officer. Today.”

  He hung up.

  I stared at my phone for a moment and then dialed Damien as I got into my pickup and started the engine. I was about a half hour away from the station downtown, and it was already ten fifteen. Devereux hadn’t given me much of a cushion.

  I let it ring, but Damien didn’t pick up. I disconnected before his voicemail greeting started to play and tried again. Still no answer.

  My reaper was an obstinate crank, my partner wasn’t answering, and my boss was demanding that I appear in his office within the hour. An already so-so day was clearly about to take an even shittier turn.

  Chapter 3

  THE STATION WAS fairly quiet, with most of the Demon Patrol officers out on their beats and the Strike Team personnel either gone on assignments or keeping to their own wing of the facility.

  The familiar smell of the place—a mix of stale coffee, sweat, and the sulfurous brimstone of the demon traps—was like coming home. I’d gone straight into the Demon Patrol Academy after high school, and this was the only place of work I’d known since. But today the station didn’t feel homey. I was torn between the urge to drag my feet in a vain attempt to avoid whatever awaited me in Devereux’s office and the urge to hurry and just get it over with.

  The first thing I noticed when I stood in the open doorway of my sergeant’s cramped little space was that he wasn’t alone. A short-haired woman dressed in slacks, a black turtleneck sweater, and gray pumps sat across from him. It took me a second to place her, and when I did, my stomach dipped. She was high up in Human Resources. A visit from HR never boded well.

  “Officer Grey, come in and close the door,” Devereux said, flipping his fingers in a little beckoning motion. He pointed at the foldout chair that had obviously been brought in just for me. “Take a seat.”

  A muscle in my cheek twitched as I looked back and forth between the two of them. The woman gave me a brief, tight stretch of her lips that didn’t quite qualify as a smile and then peered at me with a practiced expression of neutrality, which did nothing to put me at ease.

  “If this is about my leave, I’d be happy to return to work,” I said. I looked at the woman. “Trust me, I’d much rather be working. And my magic really wouldn’t be an issue. My partner Damien has enough supernatural power for the both of us.”

  She and Devereux glanced at each other, and then she turned back to me. “As accounts of the recent events have come in, concerns within the organization have arisen.”

  I stared at her, trying to discern what she was referring to. “You mean the battle with the Baelmen?”

  She folded her hands on the tablet that lay across her thighs. “Yes.”

  My brows lowered in the start of a frown. “What concerns?”

  “Your role in the matter, and the power you used against the creatures.”

  I set my jaw, steeling myself. “You’re going to need to elaborate if you want me to understand what you’re saying.”

  “The magic you used was an unknown type of power, and you used enormous uncontrolled amounts of it,” she said in a lecturing tone that made me clench my teeth. “To be blunt, saying that you wielded it would be generous. It was clear that you were not in control of the magic you were using. And in fact, it nearly killed you.”

  My face twitched. “How do you know any of this?”

  Sure, there had been a bazillion people around for the Baelman battle, but I’d somehow thought that from my spot in Lynnette’s back yard I’d been hidden. Or maybe that in the chaos my strange magic might have gone undetected.

  “I can’t discuss those details with you. But multiple agencies were on scene, utilizing many different monitoring technologies,” she said, as if that should have been obvious.

  She glanced down pointedly at the rings on my index fingers. Then her eyes skirted over to my sergeant. He seemed to take that as a signal that she was tagging out of the conversation.

  “We can’t have out-of-control crafters on the Patrol. It’s as simple as that,” Devereux said. “And currently you’re completely cut off from your magic, which makes you ineligible for service.”

  “It’s temporary,” I said. “I’m not going to be cut off forever. In fact, I’ve already found someone who believes she has a fix.”

  He looked back at the HR lady, whose name I still couldn’t remember.

  “We’re letting you go, Ms. Grey,” she said.

  I stared at her, certain I must have heard wrong. “Excuse me?”

  “We regret that we have to let you go,” she repeated. “Your severance includes a month’s salary plus payout of any sick days and vacation you’ve accrued.”

  Heat prickled up my neck and face and over my scalp. “You’re firing me?”

  She powered on her tablet and began reading from it.

  “Your termination is effective today. Before you leave the station you are required to turn in all service items and uniforms that have been assigned to you, including one service belt, a stun gun . . .” She continued listing things.

  My gaze swung to Devereux, and I must have looked murderous because he shifted back in his chair.

  “So you’re firing me from Patrol for having too much power? Or because I’m cut off from my magic?” I demanded.

  He opened his mouth to respond, but she cut in. “Don’t answer that, Sergeant.”

  Then she went back to reading from her stupid script.

  Ignoring her, I stood and unhooked my whip from my service belt and then unlatched the belt from my waist. I dropped it on Devereux’s desk, and the belt flopped open like a big fish, splaying across the papers, tablets, and other things scattered across the surface. He scrambled to catch his pen cup before it toppled over the edge.

  “I’ll send my uniforms,” I spat.

  I wheeled around on my heel, yanked the door open, and stalked down the hallway and out to the parking lot, gripping my coiled whip so tightly my arm shook.

  When I got in my truck, I slammed the door shut hard enough to leave my ears ringing. My chest heaved as I sat there staring through the windshield at nothing, so incensed I was nearly blinded by it.

  Vengeful thoughts streamed through my mind. I imagined stomping back in there and punching Devereux in the face. Grabbing the HR lady’s tablet and smashing it. Threatening to sue for wrongful termination.

  My entire body thrummed with anger. Where did the department get off treating me this way after years of service? I’d died for this job. And this was the appreciation I got? In the end I was just an inconvenience because of the power I’d drawn to protect Deb and the others.

  Discarded, cut loose because of the in-between magic. Because I’d channeled too much of it. I let out a bitter croak of a laugh. Me, whose magical aptitude barely registered on the scale, fired because my power made them uneasy.

  I had no education. No other experience. At that moment I didn’t even have any magic.

  What the hell was I going to do now?

  I didn’t know how long I sat there with my fists wrapped around the steering wheel, steeped in my indignant, angry inner monologue, but when motion in the corner of my eye drew my attention, I snapped out of my thoughts to find Damien standing next to the truck.

  I lowered the window.

  He stood with his hands braced on the roof of the truck and peered down at me.

  “I heard,” he said, his sky-blue eyes intent and sincere.

  I slouched and loo
ked straight ahead so I wouldn’t have to see the sympathy on his face.

  “This place always was a fricking bee hive of gossip,” I said sourly.

  A little ache of loss seeped through my anger, and it just pissed me off more. Demon Patrol was what I did. Frying minor demons wasn’t glamorous, but it was satisfying work, and I loved walking my beat. Even when I had to kick through half a foot of slush piled on the sidewalks or when the sun beat down on a hundred-degree day. I couldn’t imagine ever chaining myself to a desk or staring at a computer all day. I couldn’t picture myself doing anything else at all.

  “Hey, at least you’ve got the coven for support.” He managed to say it with no irony.

  I tilted my head back and let out a sharp peal of laughter. “Gee, thanks for the reminder.”

  “It’ll be okay, Ella. You’ll land on your feet. Maybe this is even a good thing.”

  I let my hands slide to my lap. “This is all I know how to do.”

  “That may have been the case a couple of years ago, but you’re not the same person you were then. Literally, you’re not the same. It might be hard to see it right now, but I think the universe is telling you it’s time to level up. You don’t need Demon Patrol anymore.”

  A lump formed in my throat, and for a moment, I couldn’t respond. I didn’t quite believe that I didn’t need Demon Patrol, but it helped a lot to hear him say it.

  We hadn’t talked about attempting to increase my magical aptitude in a while, but I got the sense that was one of the things he might be insinuating. And speaking of not needing Demon Patrol, if anyone was too powerful for this job, it was Damien. He wouldn’t get fired, though. His control of his magic was near perfection. The department didn’t have to worry about Damien Stein becoming a loose cannon.

  “You’d better get back to your beat,” I said, glancing in the rearview mirror. “I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

  He scoffed. “Devereux can kiss my ass,” he said loudly.

  He almost pulled off the bravado, and I managed a snicker.