Accepting His Mate by Tamsin Ley

Author:Tamsin Ley
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781950027460
Publisher: Twin Leaf Press

Chapter Five

The witch sat ensconced in the corner near the DJ station, her spell of shadows making her all but invisible as the police cleared the bar. She didn’t need to see the body in the alley to know who it was. The shifter’s death was her fault, just like all the previous deaths. Why did she keep trusting that things would turn out different? Her previous coven leader had been right—she was in over her head and every time she tried something new, she seemed to sink even deeper. This entire project had gone spectacularly wrong from the moment she’d sent her familiar to investigate a reported hellmouth in Arizona.

Uncertain what to do next, she stared into a half-empty beer bottle someone had left behind. She could summon the agathion using any common glass vessel, and a part of her took satisfaction in seeing him inside the swill left behind by some drunk. Unlike their full-blooded djinn cousins who came to Earth to prey on hapless human souls, an agathion could not come all the way through to manifest a physical form and was generally considered harmless.

Except this one.

Right now, the tiny form of the man inside the bottle gripped her familiar in one hand, stroking the auburn fur between the ferret’s eyes. Or should she say eye? The monster had plucked one of Hamilton’s orbs from its socket the first time the witch had dared refuse one of his demands. Her familiar was trapped because of her, and she’d do whatever it took to free him.

She prayed the monster wouldn’t punish Hamilton because of tonight’s disaster. Her hex had barely lasted a few hours this time. Keeping her voice low, she gritted between her teeth, “You promised you’d keep this host alive.”

“My dear, you worry too much.” Violet sheet lightning feathered the agathion’s skin. “This has been a most splendid evening. Far better than I expected.”

Sickness at his cavalier attitude mixed with guilty relief that perhaps the agathion was finally satisfied. “Does that mean you’ll let Hamilton go?”

He tilted his head. “Silly thing.” His glowing eyes felt as if they might laser cut his way out of the bottle. “We’re not finished. I need you to track down a newborn shifter.”

Her blood turned to ice. Hexing adults was distasteful enough, but an infant? Out of the question. “I draw the line at babies, you monster.”

She made eye contact with Hamilton and swallowed past the lump in her throat. The mental thread she and her familiar usually shared had been disrupted by the agathion’s magic, but she knew Hamilton would support her in this decision, even if it meant his death.

The agathion laughed, his voice crackling to match the storm on his face. “Not a child, a newly transformed shifter. The one I made in the alley. She will be my key.”

The witch glared into the bottle. The agathion wanted to inhabit a human much the way a shifter’s animal did, which would let him walk free like other djinn.

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