CHAPTER 1
Blood pooled around the head, oozing from the single bullet hole pierced right in the middle of the man’s forehead. His eyes were wide and staring at the ceiling, his face pale with loss of blood. The air smelled of a mix of blood, concrete, and rotten eggs with a faint underlying scent of candy canes.
And something else lingered in the air, something almost beneath the threshold of my awareness. Something old and dark and deadly.
The dark energy and the wild magic of the fae.
Judging by the waxy, gray color of his skin, the blue on the tips of his fingers, and the pale lips, the body was still in the “fresh stage” and hadn’t begun the second stage of decomposition, which put his death around the six to twelve-hour mark.
Faeries were one of the other half-breed races that could conjure magic, apart from the elves and us witches. Though their magic was powerful and complex, it was wilder, more feral than ours, and closer to a demon’s magic if I had to make a comparison. And by the stirring of the energy still lingering in the air, this dead fae had a crapload of it.
With his limp brown hair going gray in uneven patches and his eyes touched with crow’s feet at the corners, I pegged the male faerie to be in his late fifties. But I could be off. Faeries didn’t age like the rest of us half-breeds. Lucky bastards. They tended to preserve better, their lives extending at least fifty years beyond that of a witch. Totally unfair.
Faeries weren’t my favorite half-breed race. I liked them as much as I liked a mosquito. But I did like the pointed ears. I always thought I’d look awesome with a pair of cute, pointy ears.
Pointy ear cuteness aside, clearly this was an execution. The faerie never stood a chance.
I moved around the body, but I couldn’t see any signs of a struggle. No defense wounds, no bruises on his skin. His hands were smooth and clean, like the hands of a banker or someone who handled paper and pushed the keys of a computer most of their lives while sitting in important chairs in important board meetings. His nails were short, neat, and clean. These were not the callused hands of a warrior fae.
Blood spatter stained the front of his gray robe in dark maroon blots. The spray pattern marked the source of the blood as coming only from the gunshot in his forehead, which killed him instantly. But this was no ordinary faerie. This faerie sat on the Gray Council, our paranormal government.
And I stood inside one of their many secret vaults.
“Who shot the faerie?” sang a voice in the tune of the Bob Marley song, “I Shot the Sheriff.”
I turned toward the sound of the singing.
Faris bobbed his shoulders to the beat in his head and sang on. “But they didn’t shoot the deputy.”
I rolled my eyes. Mid-demons. Can’t live with them. Can’t kill them.
Faris, a mid-demon from the Netherworld, was now my newest witch familiar. It was the only way we could keep him on this side of the world so he’d be safe—and alive. If Faris returned to his homeland, his entrails would be pulled out from his nose and mouth, as he’d so eloquently put it.
Tall and fit, he had a pleasant face and striking dark eyes framed with thick lashes over an olive complexion. Tonight, he wore his usual black shirt and matching black pants, finishing the look with some expensive-looking black shoes that I could practically see my reflection in.
Faris had a flare for the dramatic. Always had, even from the very first day I’d summoned him in his triangle. Instead of being pissed at me, like any normal demon would have been when trapped in a summoning triangle, Faris, well, he was thrilled. He even clapped his hands and bowed in a way of greeting. Yes, Faris was an odd one.
And true to his mid-demon nature, he enjoyed the company of human females, gin, selling souls, and of course, his time here on this side of the planes. Even more so, ever since I’d reunited him with his great-great-granddaughter Cassandra, something was visibly different in him. It seemed like a deep wound had been lifted and healed, as though he had a second chance at life to make past wrongs right again. It suited him, but it also made him insufferably annoying. And then some.
A month had gone by since Vossler and his mages had poisoned and killed some half-breeds and tried to pin it on the witches. I’d killed him, but his actions had left a mark. The paranormal community’s wound was still deep and fresh, and I knew it would take time to heal for the races to trust each other again.
It gave me pause at seeing the dead faerie. At first, I wondered if this could be retaliation from the witches. Maybe the animosity had risen again. But one look at the hole in the faerie’s head told me this was something different entirely.
“Does the pointy-eared bastard have a name?” questioned Faris next to me. The scent of his cologne—a mix of musk and lavender—was a welcomed distraction amid the stench of blood. “Can I call him Spock?”
“No.”
“No, he doesn’t have a name? Or no, I can’t call him Spock?”
“No.”
Faris made a discontented noise in his throat. “Space, the final frontier,” he began as he moved around the body. “To explore strange new worlds, to seek out new lifeforms and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.”
Damn he was annoying tonight. “Don’t start, Faris,” I grumbled. I looked over his shoulder to see the two Council officers parked outside the vault’s steel door, watching us with identical frowns like they thought we were going to steal something. I pegged them as a male vampire and a male werewolf by the smell of old blood and wet dog.
The officers were dressed in gray uniforms that screamed Star Trek officers, hence Faris’s sudden love for all things Trekkie.
These gray bastards weren’t your normal, everyday officers or agents. They were known as GHOSTS: Gray Council Higher Officers Supernatural Tactical Security. A mouthful, yes. They were more like the Gray Council’s paranormal police squad. GHOSTS were made up of every half-breed race. The Gray Council didn’t discriminate when it came to choosing new officers. Their motto was “The crueler the better.” They were brutal, and it was their mandate to enforce our laws. Being part of the GHOSTS meant you were just a few steps down from being up on the Council and wrapped in a heavy gray robe. It made them feel superior to everyone else, not to mention violent and nasty.
They loved to boss me around, and I just loved to tell them off. Judging by how they were giving Faris and me hard stares, I’d say that opportunity was fast approaching.
I glanced around the vault. We stood in a ten-by-ten concrete box with shelves running along three walls. They were all crowded with boxes, glass jars with questionable body parts, containers with a vast array of magical ingredients, crystal balls, tarot cards, enchanted pendants, collections of every sized wand, sculptures of various naked pagan and Christian gods, long gleaming swords and bejeweled daggers, two taxidermy imp demons (truly appalling), several bleached bones and werewolf skulls, and countless musty old books, journals, and scrolls. I even spotted a few laptops and a box full of USB flash drives.
Some of the old books with the label-less spines piqued my interest but not enough to venture into a little thieving. Besides, I was here on Court business, not pleasure.
“His name is—was Sarek,” I told Faris, after a moment. “He was an appointed member of the Gray Council.”