Page 80 of Reckless Witch

Fucking Fae. They’re too damn smart.

“Draw up the agreement,” I say. “Keep it simple. You three don’t own me.”

His low laugh drifts to me in the shadows. “There’s never been the slightest confusion on who owns who, love.”

Without another word, he leaves me wondering if he has a brain tumor or something. The guy is off his gourd.

Chapter Thirty-Three

BLADE

Reckless Witches

It is strange how one forgets pain. It’s been forty years since we lost Ciarah. Her near-death two days ago frightened me. Somehow, finding her room empty frightened me even more.

I draw in a deep breath of the cold winter night air and slow my walk across campus as I pull my cellphone from my back pocket. One tap unlocks the screen, a second strikes the number two. Ethan’s name appears on the screen and I press the phone to my ear.

He answers before the second ring and demands, “Have you found her?”

“She returned to her room,” I reply.

“It’s time we tell her the truth.”

“What?” I blurt, then smile at two passing male students. I wait until I’m out of earshot then say, “You’ve gone mad, Ethan.”

“No,” his reply is calm. “She’s different this time.”

“Did you expect her to stay the same?”

“You know what I mean.”

I do, and it frightens me. “She always dies young.” Pain flashes through me as I voice that truth and it takes all my willpower not to return to her room and make love to her until she swears not to leave again. I halt. Might that work? I picture her dark hair fanned out around her face, dark eyes locked with mine as I drive into her so deep I touch her soul.

Several beats of silence pass as I walk. Then Ethan says, “I’m afraid, too.”

I jar from the image, my cock so hard I have to grit my teeth. A moment passes before I can say, “We’re always afraid.”

“She barely knows us,” I say. “There’s not a chance in hell she’ll believe that we’ve known her for centuries. She hates Raith, and you’ve managed to piss her off by marking her with your sigil. As her jailer, I’m now on her shit list. We’re the last people she’ll believe are centuries-long lovers.”

“If we tell her, she might remember something that will help us understand why we need each other,” he says.

“Or we might lose her.”

He gives a low, joyless laugh. “It won’t be the first time.”

“We need to figure out who sent the Thol’guk to her grandmother’s house to kill her. That means the attack on her in your class was the second attempt on her life. Maybe the attacker isn’t a student. The magic that called forth the creature couldn’t have been more than minutes old when she arrived.”

“Someone followed her there?” he asks.

“Has to be.”

“We didn’t even know she’d left,” he says. “Who’s watching her? Someone was there with her. Any idea who?”

“Not a clue. Rebecca is back. I’m going to take the spear to her. Maybe she can glean something about the magic used on it. I couldn’t find any connection between the magic at Miriam’s house and the spear. The magic used to call forth the Thol’guk was less sophisticated. But then, I’m not the expert. Rebecca is.”

“It’s not terribly hard to call forth a lower demon,” Ethan says. “Assign a permanent guard on Leilah’s room.”

The urgency in his voice is a sure indication that his armor is surfacing.