The Bone Coven Chronicles: The Complete Series Page 25

  But this time, his words grated my nerves. He knew I didn’t want to use my shadow magic. I’d been more than clear on numerous occasions, and yet he still persisted.

  “Stop trying to push me toward using my black magic, Dorian,” I said, flicking back open the lock. “How many more times do I have to tell you I’m not going to do that again?”

  His dark eyes sparked with anger and irritation. “When I took you on as my partner, I was under the impression you were at least going to try to work on controlling your magic.”

  “And I have been working on it.” I balled my hands into fists and fought the urge to jump out of the car. “It’s in control, isn’t it?”

  “It’s in control because you never fucking touch it.” He clenched his jaw and glanced away. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m not trying to push you into anything, but it’s been three months, Zoe. Isn’t it about time? There’s so much more we could do. So many more people we could help. If you’d just try. How can you ever be a full Enforcer if you rely on bone spells, magic that isn’t even yours to command?”

  “That’s what you don’t understand. It will never be time.” Tears pricked my eyes as I turned away, my heart banging out a frantic beat. My shadow magic had made me kill someone. It had tempted me to hurt Dorian. I could never touch it again. If I did, there was no telling what it would make me do next.

  Without another word, I threw open the door and put my boots on the hard pavement. As much as I hated to walk away from Dorian in the middle of a fight, I couldn’t have this conversation right now. Not when the guilt of Vincent’s death was almost enough to drag me under.

  “Zoe,” he said, leaning across the seat when I hopped out of the car. “Come on. Get back in here and come train with me. You know down deep inside I’m right about this.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, Dorian.” And with that, I walked away.

  Chapter 5

  “What are you doing here?” I asked through the rolled down window when Laura pulled her car up to the curb outside of my apartment building the next morning. It was a typical winter day in Boston, dark clouds rolling across a cobalt sky. There wasn’t even the hint of a sun to speak of, which meant Dorian didn’t need to hide inside to save his skin. “Where’s Dorian?” My eyes caught on the passenger in the backseat, and I almost tipped sideways from the shock of it all. “And what the hell is Anastasia doing in your car?”

  Laura kept her gaze rooted on the road in front of her. “Just get in. I’ll explain everything on the way.”

  With a shrug of my shoulders, I jumped inside, joining what was officially the most awkward car ride of my life. Anastasia sat in the back, whistling an eerie little tune almost too low to hear under the roar of the engine. Laura’s cheeks were flushed, and her blonde-and-pink streaked hair was curled around her shoulders. She rarely bothered to do anything other than put it in a bun or wear it straight, so the fact she’d made an effort was impossible to miss.

  Several blocks later, Laura pulled to the curb, and Anastasia hopped out of the car. “Thanks for the lift. See you later.”

  The car door slammed, and I immediately turned to Laura, my eyebrows raised up to my hair line. “What the hell was that?”

  “I have a secret.” Laura nibbled on her bottom lip and avoided my gaze. “Do you promise not to freak out?”

  “I’m not sure. I just shared a car ride with the vampire who drank your blood. If she went after you again, I might very well lose my shit.”

  Laura took a deep breath and drummed her fingers against the steering wheel. “She apologized for that. The thing is, she’s actually kind of fun to hang out with.”

  “Hang out with.” All I could do was repeat the words, hoping that would somehow force everything to make sense.

  “I know, I know.” She held up her hands and finally met my eyes. “It sounds insane, and I know there’s no way you could understand. But I’ve felt so drawn to blood since getting my mark that it’s making me go a little crazy. I needed someone to talk to about it. Anastasia, as vampy as she can be, gets it.”

  “Laura,” I said softly, a shock of pain going through my gut. “You know you can always talk to me about anything? Even if you don’t think I’d understand. You don’t need to reach out to a vampire. Not when you have me.”

  But what stung the most was that I did understand. I knew what it was like to be drawn to something, to feel sucked toward the one thing you wished you weren’t. But Laura wouldn’t know that. I hadn’t had the courage to come clean about my shadow powers. So, she’d felt as if she needed to turn to someone else. A fucking vampire of all people.

  “I know,” she said with a sad smile. “And I’m so lucky to have you. But I need someone who understands what I’m going through, too. And Anastasia does.”

  It was hard to argue with that, as much as I wanted to.

  “Alright, well. As long as she doesn’t try eating you again, I’m cool with it. But if she so much as blinks at you funny, I swear to god I will beat her vampire ass.”

  Laura cracked a smile. “I wouldn’t expect anything else. And speaking of beating asses, what’s going on with you and Dorian? He called me this morning and said we’ll be meeting him at the blood mage’s apartment. Thought that was a little strange seeing as you’ve been practically glued together for months.”

  “I don’t know. He always comes and picks me up, and he usually brings me a coffee.”

  “I don’t want to pry into this whole partner thing you two have going on,” Laura said as she shifted the gear into drive and pulled out into the morning traffic, “but did you do something to piss him off? He sounded really fucking grumpy. Like, he took his normal seven out of ten grumpy up to a nine.”

  So, he still hadn’t gotten over our little tiff from the night before. After it had happened, a part of me had wanted to turn around and apologize right away. But then I remembered the way he’d spoken about my powers. He’d taken me on as a trainee, not because he believed in me as a person, but because he wanted me to use my shadow magic, regardless of how dangerous it was.

  “Let’s just say that we disagree on some of my training,” I said after a long moment. “He wants me to do something I’m not comfortable with because he thinks it’ll help him catch more bad guys.”

  “Will it?” she asked, glancing at me as she shifted gears. “Catch more bad guys?”

  “Probably,” I said with a frown. “But that’s not the point. The problem is that he wants me to do something that I don’t want to, and now he’s pissed off that I refused. He practically said he had assumed I’d be more useful when he took me on as his trainee. Instead, I’m a big fat disappointment.”

  “Ouch.” She fell silent for a moment as she drove us through the streets. After several turns, she finally spoke up over the roar of the engine. “So, what is it he wants you to do? I mean, it can’t be that horrible, can it? He may be a grumpy vampire, but he’s always done the right thing as far as I can tell.”

  My heart squeezed tight. This was the moment I’d been waiting for. Despite the big day ahead of us, despite the fact that I was terrified of losing my only friend, I’d been telling myself over and over that the right moment needed to come first. And here we were. She’d just told me yet another secret about herself, one that must have been hard to share. If I didn’t tell her now, how would I ever find a way to fess up to the truth?

  After a moment, I took a deep breath. “There’s something I need to tell you, but I want you to promise me that you won’t freak out.”

  “Okay,” she said slowly. “But prefacing it like that kind of does the opposite, Zoe. What the hell is going on?”

  I waited until she pulled her car to a stop in front of the blood mage’s apartment building, parked, and cut the engine. Slowly, she turned to face me, apprehension coating her face.

  My face went hot, and my blood ran cold, two sensations that were completely at odds with each other, but it was how I’d felt about my shadow magic from day
one. Half amazed, half terrified. And mostly scared as hell of what people would think. Shadow mages dealt in dark magic, the kind that rotted souls. The kind of magic that could twist a mage’s head and make them kill. Because that was what it had done with me.

  “What is it, Zoe?” she asked in a whisper. “You’re scaring me.”

  “I’ve been lying to you,” I said in a tight voice. “And I am so, so sorry. I’m not a member of the Bone Coven. Not really. My true mark is hidden underneath an illusion that a fae cast for me. The truth is, I have shadow magic running through my veins. I’m so sorry I never told you.”

  Laura blinked at me, her mouth open in shock. Slowly, she reached out and pushed down the top of my shirt to reveal the mark on my collarbone. My skin held the illusion of a bone mark, but the shadow lay hidden underneath. She stared hard at the tattoo before her eyes flipped up to meet mine. “Your mark. That’s why it’s so faint.”

  I nodded. “Please don’t hate me.”

  “Oh, Zoe.” With a heavy sigh, she dropped my shirt and pressed her hands against the steering wheel. She shook her head, shoulders slumping with every breath she took. “I could never hate you. I always wondered what was up with your powers, but I didn’t want to ask. I wish you would have told me. You know I love you more than anyone else in the world.”

  Pain flickered through my heart. “I was scared you wouldn’t want to have anything to do with me anymore. That magic is dangerous. Shadow mages are banished, exiled. They’ve even been executed in the past. I didn’t want to lose you. Hell, I don’t want to lose you now, either, but I just can’t keep it hidden anymore.”

  “You can’t lose me, Zoe.” She grabbed my hand and pulled me into a hug, whispering into my hair. “Shadow magic might be dangerous, but you’re not. I trust you with my life and always have.”

  Relief poured through me at her words, along with a heavy dose of guilt. I should have told her earlier. I should have stopped lying months ago. But fear does funny things to people, and even I’m not immune to that.

  She pulled back and searched my eyes. “Besides, it’s not like you’re actually using it, are you?”

  “Of course not,” I said. “If it was up to Dorian, I would be, but I’m not.”

  Realization dawned in her eyes. “So, that’s the thing he wants you to do. Well, he’ll just have to get over it. You can’t delve into dark magic. It could destroy you. If he brings it up again, I’ve got your back.”

  Laura and I sat there for the next half hour talking through my powers and exactly what had happened when I’d killed Vincent. It felt good to get it out, almost like a purge of pent-up thoughts and feelings that had almost boiled over into a bloody mess. A happy, content feeling began to build in my chest. Relief. Freedom. Hope. That is, until Dorian Kostas knocked on the car window and scowled.

  “What the hell are you two doing?” he snapped when I rolled down the window. “I’ve been waiting in the lobby for the past half hour. I assumed I’d see you pull up front when you got here but only now realized why I hadn’t. You were sitting out here in your fucking car.”

  “Laura and I were just having a chat,” I said, glancing at her with a smile. “Decided it was about damn time to tell her about my powers.”

  “Great. The one time you decide to listen to me, you do so in the middle of an investigation.” He scowled and yanked the door open. “You’ll have to continue your little bonding session some other time. We have a death to solve, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  “I think the scale has finally hit ten, Laura,” I said as I climbed out of the car.

  She stifled a laugh as she followed. “No joke.”

  Dorian narrowed his eyes, but he didn’t comment. And I decided not to prod him even more. The truth was, his grumpiness had really simmered down over the past few months we’d been working together. We’d actually started to get along, cracking jokes and forming an easy comfortable companionship. There’d still been a charged tension hanging in the air, but that was only because I couldn’t forget the intimate moments we’d shared before we became official partners.

  And nothing like that had happened since.

  Though I had, at times, wondered what it would be like…

  The three of us entered the building and climbed the stairs to the top floor where Sylvia Anderson had lived. The door was cracked, like someone had rushed to leave at a moment’s notice, forgetting to lock it behind them when they did. Dorian pushed it open, and a loud creak echoed down the hallway.

  “Clear,” Dorian said, striding into the small and quiet space. Laura and I followed close behind.

  Sylvia had lived in a small studio apartment shaped like an L, a single bed squashed into the shorter section. A small kitchenette hung to the right, next to a door leading into a bathroom. In the center of the room, she’d placed a couch and a television. Everything was clean. Everything was tidy. Nothing to suggest any violence.

  I moved into the bathroom and noted the open makeup containers and the brushes left sitting on the edge of the sink. “She was definitely getting dolled up for a night out. Think she was meeting someone?”

  Laura popped her head into the bathroom. “You mean, like a date?”

  “Would you go to this much effort to go have a drink by yourself?” I asked, waving at the dozen or so makeup cases.

  “There’s a couple of dresses laid out on her bed, and an open jewellery box,” Dorian called from across the apartment. Laura and I trailed over to his side where he stood gazing down at the little black dresses, the rings and necklaces, and the shoes Sylvia must have been considering for her evening. Something about seeing all of her belongings spread out like this sent a jolt of pain through my heart. This girl was just like any other girl, getting ready for a fun night out in Boston. And she’d ended up dead in an alley behind Blue Moon Tavern instead.

  “Shit,” I said, turning away as the tears pricked my eyes. “This is rough.”

  A cool breeze caressed my skin, and I turned toward the sensation, finding a curtain fluttering across a window. An open window. Frowning, I took a closer look, gasping when I noticed five deep grooves etched into the wood.

  “Guys,” I said, holding up a hand to motion my partners closer. “You might want to see this.”

  Dorian strode up behind me and looked over my shoulder. I was intimately aware of how close he was, the musky scent of him filling my nose. His face still held the same scowl it had before, but a spark of appreciation lit his eyes as he let out a low whistle. “Good find.”

  Warmth coated my stomach.

  “What is that?” Laura asked, scooting in closer.

  “Claw marks,” Dorian said. “Ones that look pretty similar to the ones on her neck.”

  Laura shivered as she reached out to trace her fingertip along the ridges. “So, whatever killed Sylvia Anderson was here in her apartment, too. But what was it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But it looks like it climbed through her window.”

  “In that case, maybe Sylvia Anderson didn’t end up going out,” Laura said. “Maybe whatever killed her got to her here first.”

  Chapter 6

  After taking another sweep through the studio, we went door-to-door in Sylvia’s building and interviewed any and all potential witnesses. Unfortunately for us, we came up pretty empty. Sylvia Anderson was a quiet neighbor who mostly kept to herself. No one had heard or seen anything strange the night of the murder or in the weeks leading up to it. Despite our best efforts, our only lead was the claw marks on the window, and even that didn’t really help us much.

  As we left the apartment, Dorian grabbed my arm and pulled me to the side before I could get into Laura’s car. “Can I talk to you?”

  “I don’t know.” I tried to jerk my arm out of his grasp, but he didn’t budge an inch. One thing I’d learned about Dorian Kostas? He was strong as hell, even for a vampire. Not merely with his physical strength but with his mental as well. He was more stubborn than I was,
and that was saying something. He’d been who he was for decades, and he was stuck in his ways because of it. “Are you going to try to force me to use my shadow magic or something? Because I haven’t changed my mind. I’m not going to do it.”

  “I was going to tell you how glad I am that you told Laura the truth, but now you have me rethinking my plan to say anything nice.” He scowled and let go of my arm like it was a burning match. “Honestly, Zoe. Why do you have to turn everything into a fight?”

  “Me?” I raised my eyebrows. “You’re the one pushing things.”

  “I’m only pushing because you’re trying to bury your head in the sand.” His gaze pierced mine, and his eyes burned deep into my soul as the bond between us pulled tight. “Ignoring who you are isn’t the solution.”

  “Might not be the right solution for you, but it’s the one for me.” With my jaw clenched, I turned away. As much as I wanted to stand there and stare into his eyes forever, I couldn’t. Not when he wanted me to lose myself in powers I never wanted to touch again. “Now, can I go?”

  “Fine.” He held up his hands and stepped back. “Go with Laura. But I expect you to come to our training session tonight after you get off work. We need to put this argument behind us and make some headway on this case.”

  I nodded, even though I wasn’t sure we would be able to get past this, not when neither one of us would ever back down.

  Blue Moon Tavern was dead. Word had spread through the community—both supernatural and university—about the dead body in the alley, and the phone had been ringing off the hook ever since. It felt like all of Boston wanted to know if it was true, despite the police reports that said otherwise. No one wanted to actually step foot in the place to see for themselves. Except for Anastasia, of course. She sat there on the bar stool, sipping a rum and coke, the only customer in the whole damn place.

  “Where the hell is everyone?” I asked.