Forgotten Magic by Eden Butler

Author:Eden Butler
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-949090-88-8
Publisher: City Owl Press

Twelve

Death was coming too close to me as of late.

Cancer took my mother before I said goodbye. That death came in the form of a pristine body, laid out with roses and gardenia petals in her hair. She’d looked lovely, peaceful, like some ethereal fay resting in white lace and vintage silk.

The mortals from the mission where she volunteered couldn’t believe she’d been sixty. They’d kept their focus on me and my sister, as if looking at us closely enough would reveal some great secret to the age-defying genetics beyond the ageless melanin my mother had passed down.

But even Mom’s still, cold body, as beautiful as it was, came in the form of custom and preparation. It ended in a marble mausoleum, engraved by my father’s hand, while the mortals slept through the night.

And Freya… Circe. There had been no beauty in her death. There had been no spell fixing her body into anything resembling the witch she’d been in life. Nothing could. It ached to remember her that way.

Death, like the one at my feet, was bloody and vicious and looked damn painful.

I could not pull my attention from the body. There was a great clot of tension in my stomach, one that had been given life the second Bane and I stopped running after a screaming, fearful Joe.

The moment we saw Wyatt’s neck twisted beyond its limits. And the blood, lots of it, pouring from the cut near his neck and rib. That smell—metallic and bitter—filled the night around us, peppering the darkness with a stench that was unmistakable, unforgettable.

The weres around us bellowed, cried with their primal voices begging vengeance. Around us, the other group converged, smaller, true, but on alert. The Biloxi contingent—a group of witches who instantly split around the area mentioning wards and signatures—and Ethan Rivers, Cari’s brother, and Bane’s cousin Malak both came to our sides, their normally smirking grins vacant for once.

At my side, Bane knelt next to his murdered friend, fingers covering his mouth, eyes hard and squinted. There was a heaviness around him, that deep, angry venom the lines loved to stoke pulsing from him, shifting a heated, white energy between his fingers. Him lashing out would not do. Not if we wanted to keep the scene of the crime untainted.

When Bane’s hand closed into a tighter fist, I squatted next to him, not caring that it was probably improper to touch him. Not caring that the others might talk about me offering my boss comfort.

Then, a rustle from behind us, and the rich smell of expensive perfume announced Cari ambling from her potion-influenced sleep as she stopped short, gasping at Wyatt’s body.

“Gods,” she cried, angling around Bane, her arm snaking over his shoulder. “Sweetheart.” There was nothing more she needed to say. It was enough to remind me of my place. Cari leveled a look at me, one not tinted with sorrow and pity over the were’s death. One, in fact, that told me plainly I needed to back away from what was hers.

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