Gray Witch (Black Hat Bureau, #5)

by Hailey Edwards

“You don’t know what you’re missing.” “You don’t know what you’re eating.” “Mmm.” He ate another one. “Zesty with a hint of what the hell did I just put in my mouth.”

A soft breath parted his lips, telling me no one had ever stood up to this bully for him. Their loss. He was mine now, and I wouldn’t let anyone hurt him. Especially not his dillweed of a father.

“Heads don’t pike themselves.”

“Sorry FIL was an assclown.” Clay pinched my cheek. “And that he wants to raid your ovaries.” “Pinch my cheek again,” I growled at him, “and see what happens.” “Which cheeks would those be?” He pitched his voice low to match Stavros’s. “Wanna polish my scepter? Ride my throne? Lick my crown?” He doubled over laughing until he wheezed. “The last one’s a keeper.” “How about I erase your shem then donate your body to Mrs. Gleason to use as a scarecrow?”

My inner black witch hissed in my mind that I was weak, pathetic, unworthy of respect or love. The rest of me, well, it tended to agree. But to keep him, it was willing to throat punch my doubts.

we don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day.” I sighed over Clay’s sharply indrawn breath. “What? We wait until the day after then stock up on cheap chocolate and cute plushies. We’re not total heathens.”

Thanks, fascination, for hitting me with a holiday tailored to emotional paranoia.

“You’re good at the parenting thing.” “Yes, well, I was lucky.” A hoarse note crept into my voice. “I had a fairy golem father to teach me.”

There was no we in stretch marks, labor, or postpartum weight loss.

The last mutter I caught was gold lamé, and that was traumatic enough for me to ignore the rest.

Be that as it may, the person I wanted to become felt that family, blood or chosen, wouldn’t set a price on their help when it was needed the most.

“It’s not too late to run.” I locked my arms around his calf. “I would hold on, so it would be awkward, but you could try, and I would fully support that.” Then I sat on his foot, wrapping my legs around his ankles. “The thing is, I love you. So, it’s kind of your fault we’re in this situation. I want the best for you, and I’m not sure that’s me, but I’m also pretty sure I would viciously murder anyone who tried to take you, so…” “It’s my fault that your affection manifests as veiled murder threats?” “What veil?” I grew my fingertips into talons I raked down his bare chest. “There was no veil.”

“Any variation that involves you, me, and wiggling is okay in my book.”

not only were feelings dumb. They were downright lethal.

“Are you going to spend the whole trip scowling at your boobs, Dollface?” A moth-sized cackle reached me as Clay’s fan club of one encouraged his bad behavior.

“That’s what Asa and I were doing earlier.” Skate, skate, skate. “I needed a second set of hands.” “From what I’ve seen, that’s the last thing either of you need. You’re already like octopuses. Octopi? Whatever.” He flicked my earlobe. “Eight-armed grope machines that leave suction cup marks all over each other.”

Even if they were fit, even if they were yoga enthusiasts, the wear and tear on a human was evident when they pitted themselves against creatures who lived the next best thing to forever.

“I’m still evil.” “Evil as a marshmallow,” Colby mumbled under her breath, squeaking when I approached the SUV. “Take it back.” I jabbed a finger in her face to hide my real target. “I demand an apology.”

“My heart is stone.” I growled. “Granite even.” “Maybe until you met Asa,” she cooed. “Now it’s all ooey-gooey.”

I might look like a pink-cheeked college kid with her whole life ahead of her, but I was a cranky old witch who appreciated purchasing items I could reach out and touch. Before long, I would be shouting get off my lawn to neighborhood kids.

An ice cream parlor still in the process of opening beckoned him with promises of its classic flavors made fresh daily. This wasn’t the first time we had eaten ice cream for lunch. With the right toppings, you could almost hit all the major food groups. The gummy version of them anyway.

“Before Asa, I wasn’t exactly in touch with my feelings.” “That’s not true. You beat them into submission on the regular.” He was quick to defend me. “Locked ’em in chokeholds then slit their throats after they passed out. All very humane.”

“True friends are rarer than boyfriends.” “But not rarer than mates.”

“Just so you know,” I demurred, “if we have kids, and you hire a nanny, I will end you.”

“Vampires are more undead than unalive.”

“If a baby gazelle is sharing a pen with a hungry lion,” I drawled, “do you think it will notice?”

“Hold out your hands, pointer fingers extended.” “This sounds like the start of a fart joke or one kinky evening.”

“Why are you like this?” I jabbed his cheek. “What’s wrong with you?” “I’m sexually frustrated, emotionally stunted, and also hilarious beyond all reason.”

The thing about trauma? It lurked in the recesses of your brain, let you hope you had finally, finally won. Then it pounced, digging in its claws and reminding you of each and every scar you did your best to hide.

How was the flesh digested if the Boos weren’t revenant-like? And if they weren’t undead, did it mean that ghosts poop?

“Clay would find it amusing my father has a crush on you.” “Yes, well, Clay finds it amusing to make his belly button talk too.”

Sleep. Eat. Brain tomorrow. That might have been the most beautiful thing anyone had ever said to me.

my wife had an affair with a fish farmer. I’m vegan, so the betrayal was twice as painful.”

“He was eviscerated.” He dragged his feet over to a tarp and peeled it down. “Probably the most exciting thing to ever happen to him.” Yeah, I was sure the victim’s last thoughts walked that exact line. Woo-hoo! Brutally murdered, what a way to go. This is the best. The absolute best. Oh, hey. I pooped myself.

What was wrong with people that they filmed a murder rather than helped the victim?

Clothes did not make the daemon. The daemon made the clothes.

Put a book in my hands, and my brain left on a mini-vacation to another world and left this one behind. I loved that about reading, but it wasn’t something you could multitask with movie watching or casework.

“Is it wrong to feel murder-y when I think about her hearing how you sound when you come?”

“Every girl dreams of being the monster under the bed.” “I would prefer to be the monster in your bed.” “You’re not a monster. You’re too cuddly for that.”

No child should grow up believing they were unlovable, that parts of them ought to remain hidden. They shouldn’t doubt their acceptance by their peers or conceal who they are to fit their parents’—or anyone else’s—idea of who they ought to be.

“Children raised in split households often wonder what if. They daydream about what it would be like if their parents reconciled or to have one home they all shared.”

“Don’t conform,” she advised me. “Smash through his preconceptions. Show him who you really are, what you really want, how life with you will really be. If he sticks around, and I have no doubt he will, then you’ll have the best of both worlds. Someone who loves you for yourself and is willing to build the best possible version of the future for the both of you.”

“Lady, I’m a black witch. I’ve done the worst things you can imagine and then some. Usually, I was smiling while I did them. Laughing even. But to bind the daemon to the fae as one personality would be to strip away the facets of the man I fell in love with, and I would rather slice you in half than tear him down the middle.”

“I wanted to know you could love all of him, every part, before I gave my blessing. Mating is forever, you understand. I had to know he was as loved as he deserves to be.”

Asa was all about seizing the moments given to us between cases, and I was ready to grab one now. Sadly, not the one in his pants.

“What is it with your family?” “You’ll have to be more specific, I’m afraid.”

No one in their right mind kept an alpha waiting when he was willing to extend a hand—or a nose—to aid in an ongoing investigation.

Alphas were all about appearance. They had to be. Otherwise, the pack they so lovingly tended would rise up, rip out their throat, and crown a stronger king, or queen, to rule them.

“Don’t let Meg get to you. She had everyone calling me Dirty Santa for six years after an unfortunate Christmas incident involving a Santa suit, the stripper playlist for my mate’s pole dancing classes, and a bottle of hot sauce.”

“Fuck,” I exhaled, reeling in that breach. “I miss that word.” “You can whisper it in my ear whenever you feel the urge.”