Enspelled Read online

  “This will kill any werewolf using only a drop.”

  The smell that wafted toward her made her blood run cold. Incendie sûr. It was a black market inflammatory, and like the man said, a drop of it burned everything within three feet of where it touched. For the warlocks to have access to this meant an alliance with the Fey—or at least a powerful faery contact.

  They were in chains, and she was certain Cael was, too, given he was unmated and uncontrollable during his change.

  If the incendie sûr touched them, they would die—it would burn them alive, leaving nothing but ashes behind.

  Nothing rose from the ashes of werewolves—she might receive the death Radburn wanted for her after all.

  The voices came closer, and shadows preceded the two warlocks before they rounded the corner to enter her hall. The shadows weren’t moving but faced one another, one man gesturing wildly at his companion.

  And she couldn’t move. She was bound to Sebastian. She struggled as hard as she dared to, afraid the warlocks would hear the dull jingling of her iron chains. Nothing gave, except for the skin around her ankle. It healed almost instantly, much quicker than it would have when she was a witch.

  Now…she didn’t know what she was.

  But she couldn’t contemplate that right now. She had to find a way to get her and Sebastian to safety until the sun came up.

  Gris-Gris!

  Her mental shout reached out with everything inside her, including whatever had changed in the past hour. There was undoubtedly witch’s magic within her, spreading thin in the hope of contacting the conduit.

  It felt like the most comfortable, worn-in jeans: perfect, as if it belonged with her.

  What? The cat appeared beside her, looking disgruntled. The cat had a female body, yet the voice was strangely, distinctively male.

  In her panic, she swallowed her surprise that Gris-Gris was somehow communicating with her now.

  Where have you been? she asked. There are warlocks in the house, and they’re coming for us with incendie sûr. You’ve got to free us.

  The conduit’s eyes went wide. She sniffed the air and hissed low. We can’t free you. Sebastian said to make chains that wouldn’t budge until morning. Even if we could set you loose, there’s no stopping incendie sûr. This time, Briony heard the gentle voice of a woman.

  Can you make the potion disappear, or send that and the warlocks away?

  Gris-Gris lowered her head. More than one voice spoke, layering upon one another with mirroring levels of regret mingling in their words. If anyone else had it, we could send it all somewhere else. But these are warlocks with their own conduits, talismans that combine to have more power than us. If we reveal ourselves, they could permanently exterminate us.

  Briony stilled, all of her tentative plans washing away. Gris-Gris was their only chance—she had no way of communicating with Aiyanna. She didn’t even know if the shapeshifter was in the firehouse to start with, but she wasn’t about to put the woman up against incendie sûr even if she was.

  If we’re exterminated, we’ll be gone forever, as if we never existed, a child said, fear causing his voice to crack.

  It was a heartbreaking statement. This child—and everyone in this conduit—was dead, and had been kept from their rightful afterlives.

  She couldn’t risk their very existence.

  Her heart sank. If Aiyanna is here, get her and Cael out. Go with them; if Sebastian and I are stuck, we’re stuck.

  Gris-Gris cocked her head to the side as if she heard something. Without a word, the conduit vanished along with most of Briony’s hope to survive the night.

  Wake up, she implored Sebastian desperately. He was better at formulating plans than her, knew this home better than she did. Maybe he had a trick up his sleeve that she knew nothing about.

  But he won’t get that chance. The warlocks were moving again, into their corridor, and she knew the moment they saw her. One smiled, while the other grimaced, like they were feral dogs rather than werewolves.

  The smiling warlock clutched a jug of incendie sûr, which he held up in a salute.

  Neither of them were Radburn. They looked young, and could have passed for two wealthy fraternity men. Both dressed similarly to Sebastian, in neatly pressed pants and button-down shirts with a small crawfish embroidered by their hearts.

  Yet from the cold glee she saw in the man holding the potion that could burn her alive, she knew with certainty at least one of them was a murderer.

  Baring her teeth, she walked toward them as far as the chains would allow her. No matter what, she’d keep herself between them and Sebastian.

  It’s exactly what he would do for her.

  The warlock with the jug thrust it forward, and she couldn’t help but cringe. If one drop hit her, the flames would cover over half of her body until there was nothing left to burn.

  He laughed maniacally. It was that laugh that almost snuffed out her last vestige of hope.

  She and Sebastian were going to die in one of the most painful, horrific ways she could imagine.

  As the warlocks advanced upon them, moments away from dousing them in incendie sûr, all she could think about were the creatures they would leave behind, creatures who had no idea what the warlocks had in store for them.

  If she died, her vision would come true with only one change: she and Sebastian will already be dead.

  Her mind raced, trying to come up with something, anything to save them.

  Is there a way to stop the genocide from happening?

  Chapter 16

  “YOU sent me to help them at the ball, but you won’t let me save them now?”

  As usual, Katarina imagined herself throwing her body into impossibly complicated flips and turns for Christabel, who did not understand the concept of reason.

  She still didn’t understand whether the faery was the warlocks’ ally or the werewolves’. The woman made no sense.

  The first thing she’d done after she took Katarina to Canada was prepare her for the Bachelor’s Ball, where she’d been tasked to protect the weres from the sirens’ spell.

  Then Christabel turned around and sold the warlocks incendie sûr on the night of the full moon. Eliot, the top warlock fledgling in her cohort, had been one of the two men who bought the potion.

  From the giddily excited smile stretched across his face, Katarina didn’t doubt those werewolves she’d worked so hard to help were nothing but ash now.

  Damn you, Christabel.

  Because of one crazy-ass faery, all the creatures in the world would die. Katarina should have been surprised when Emmanuel told her, but she hadn’t been. She’d known something was brewing at the castle; she simply hadn’t been powerful enough to rank the knowledge.

  Now that she knew, she was glad she was out of the float. There was no way she’d survive such an attack. It was the warlocks’ way—they would send out their weaker men and women to injure the enemies as much as possible. It was only at the last possible moment when they put their big guns at risk.

  For a long time, Katarina hadn’t thought she’d live out the year. Now she knew she wouldn’t have if not for Christabel…if the faery or her scary kelpie friend didn’t decide to kill her.

  Even as insane as Christabel was, the longer Katarina spent with her the more she wondered why she’d stayed with the float for so long. Sure, she hadn’t had anywhere else to go and they offered her a roof and food.

  Maybe someone else would have helped her, a person or group who didn’t have murderous intentions toward anyone.

  Though Christabel was an improvement, she could check no boxes that implied any sort of innocence. She was just twisted enough for warlocks to appreciate her, to confide in her.

  Emmanuel was no better.

  And Katarina still couldn’t decide if the warlocks made a mistake in trusting Christabel. She sure as hell didn’t trust her.

  “Oh, they won’t need saving.” C
hristabel sashayed over to her glass bar to grab her tablet, exchanging a smirk with Emmanuel. He held a glass of amber liquid in his hand, which he swirled silently, his almost black eyes glittering.

  Christabel was a striking woman. She wore six-inch stilettos and a black pantsuit to match the black Tom Ford sunglasses she’d perched on top of her head like a headband.

  Katarina only knew the brand of the sunglasses because Christabel liked to play the song “Tom Ford” at top volume to cover a man’s screams, which surfaced loudly at least once or twice a day. Katarina was too smart to ask about him, but guessed he was the werewolf who’d falsely mated with her.

  She didn’t envy him.

  After a few taps on the Christabel’s tablet, the most handsome man Katarina had ever seen appeared a few feet away from them, his figure dark against the waning light of the afternoon.

  His frown took nothing away from the incredible bone structure of his face or the full lines of his mouth. His narrowed green eyes, however, did intimidate Katarina.

  Not that she’d ever let him know that.

  “Who are you, and how did you find my FaceMe account? It’s set to private for a reason.” A lock of sand-brown hair fell over his forehead and into his eyes. He shook his head, impatiently sending his hair flying back into place.

  When Christabel raised her eyebrows in Katarina’s direction, she realized her mouth was hanging open. A deep blush bloomed at her chest and rose, completing her humiliation.

  The man didn’t so much as glance in her direction; his focus was on both Christabel and Emmanuel.

  Katarina wanted to shout at him.

  “The question isn’t how I contacted you, but how I came to know about you. The rest was easy—do you really trust human-derived technologies anyway?” Christabel scoffed, tapping her long, blood-red nails on the counter.

  He shrugged, a motion Katarina knew to be deceptive. There was nothing relaxed about this man, something she was certain Christabel picked up on too.

  “Okay, then how’d you hear about me?” he asked.

  Christabel smiled. “I have a…history with your brother’s mate, Sophia.”

  The man popped his jaw before speaking through gritted teeth. “You’re the one who burned Sophia.” He cursed. “I should’ve known from your account name, Geraldine.”

  Recognizing his reference to one of her favorite Coleridge poems, Katarina released a laugh. Christabel and Geraldine were the two main characters in the poem, the former an innocent while the latter was deceitful.

  Whoever named Christabel obviously had no abilities in foresight, which was typical for the Fey.

  Not all ancients were wise.

  “And who are you?” The man—a werewolf, if he was Heath’s brother—turned on Emmanuel and then Katarina, his eyes flashing amber.

  Emmanuel saluted him with his drink. “I’m merely a kelpie who’s indebted to your brother’s pack.”

  That seemed a good enough answer for the man, whose shoulders lost a fraction of their tension.

  Katarina lifted her chin. “I don’t know who you are or why you’re here, so I see no reason to give you my name.”

  Christabel huffed impatiently. “Vale, Katarina.” She gestured to them limply, rolling her eyes. “Werewolf, wannabe warlock. Am I missing anything?”

  At Christabel’s introduction, Vale sent Katarina the type of scathing look reserved for humans who kick dogs or, well, witches who choose to become warlocks.

  She almost couldn’t blame him. You don’t know me, she wanted to scream.

  “The moon will be up in less than half an hour here and, trust me, you don’t want me around when that happens. You have three minutes to tell me why my brother’s pack is in trouble like you said in your message.”

  Christabel told him about the warlocks’ plan to burn down the firehouse once the moon rose, only she included one detail she hadn’t given Katarina.

  “Oh, and the incendie sûr isn’t real, it only smells damned convincing.” As she spoke, Christabel’s teeth appeared particularly sharp. “The problem is, once those men discover that they don’t really have incendie sûr they’ll report me to the float, and I can’t have that yet.

  “I need you to kill them, get the werewolves out of the firehouse and burn it down. The warlocks will think their men and the weres went down in the flames.”

  Claws grew from Vale’s fingertips, which he held away from both Christabel and Katarina. Despite his current stance, she felt certain he’d love nothing more than to do both of them bodily harm.

  “I know why he’s helping Heath’s pack,” he growled, nodding to Emmanuel. “What do you have to gain?”

  Christabel’s expression darkened, her bared teeth turning from white to a shining silver for a split second. “They’re going to systematically kill every faery alive, and the only creatures with the balls to fight them are that pack. I’d have even Sophia’s back if it means we bring down this float.”

  Taking a deep breath, Vale nodded jerkily, his severe frown deepening. “The flaw in your plan is the timing. I’m an unmated werewolf, just like the members of that pack who’ll be forcibly restrained. How do you think I’ll be able to kill the warlocks, set the weres free and start a fire?”

  Christabel lifted a long finger and pointed to Katarina. “Use her; Emmanuel’s going to stay put for the time being.”

  “What?” Her word came out as a squeak. At this point, there was no way Katarina wasn’t bright red. Christabel expected her to roam a firehouse with a wild, turned werewolf, free more wild, turned werewolves, and take out two of the most powerful warlocks in the southeastern United States?

  She pondered if it would hurt worse to hurl herself out of Christabel’s window. The faery lived in a penthouse flat on the thirty-somethingth story—surely that height could kill her relatively painlessly, right?

  As she moved toward the window, Vale appeared directly in front of her. “I might accidentally kill you,” he murmured before roughly grabbing her hand and whisking them into some kind of attic.

  From the chill, a respite from Halifax’s relentless cold, she knew she was back in New Orleans. A small, circular window revealed the setting sun. In mere minutes, Vale would no longer be an unfairly handsome man but a terrifying wolf who’d try his best to rip out her throat.

  Lovely.

  Katarina subconsciously brought a hand to her neck. “Is there anything I can do to tempt you not to hurt me?”

  Having been raised in the Louisiana Foster Care system among clueless humans who thought she had a medley of mental illnesses, she was still catching up in her knowledge of creatures and their facets. What she’d been taught was through the warlocks, knowledge she now knew had been carefully chosen before being given to her.

  There was still so much she didn’t know but should, something she knew Christabel had begun to notice the more she spoke with her.

  Vale brought his eyebrows together and pulled his shirt over his head, exposing an impossibly broad chest that tapered down to washboard abs. Katarina swallowed. She’d never seen anything sexier in her short life.

  And this man hates me. Fantastic.

  He thrust the shirt at her. “Put it on. It holds my scent, which may cause me to hesitate before I attack you.”

  She pulled the garment on over her skintight, long sleeve shirt. It hung down to mid-thigh, but it would serve its purpose: it smelled like spicy, haven’t-showered-in-twelve-hours man.

  If she was honest with herself, she’d never smelled such a scent before—she’d never been close enough to a man. Her instincts told her this was what they were meant to smell like.

  With effort, she wrenched her thoughts away from her attraction to a werewolf, who likely would prefer her dead, and focused on the situation at hand. I’m going to have to handle a large number of werewolves without hurting them, kill two warlocks, and then burn down a historical landmark.

  Swell.

&
nbsp; Her life had turned into the story “The Lady, or the Tiger?” only she knew there wouldn’t be a handsome man waiting for her when she walked into this gauntlet. Her story would’ve been titled, “The Monster, or the Scarier Monster?”

  Curious about which monster she should label Vale as, she glanced up at him. He was watching her through slitted eyes.

  “Good luck, warlock.”

  He hurled the words at her like a curse. A minute later he changed into his wolf form, a process Katarina expected to have been more painful. When his body morphed, shrinking in some places and growing in others, his expression was neutral, his eyes closed until all of his parts were in place, covered by claws or gray and white fur.

  “All right, wolfie, let’s forget how much you don’t like me and eat the other warlocks, okay?”

  Vale shot her a bored glance, his eyes now fully amber. He sniffed the air and moved away like she didn’t interest him in the slightest.

  Following at a distance she hoped wouldn’t irk him—she didn’t think witches could be bitten and turned, and she really didn’t want to find out—she watched as he stalked from the room, apparently conscious enough to know how to turn the doorknob with his massive paw.

  It was when he sank low and growled, the sound so feral it made her every hair stand on end, that she understood where this wolf’s mind was. He wasn’t exploring.

  He was hunting.

  She only hoped he remembered who he was hunting. From what she’d witnessed at the ball, the werewolves had plenty of non-were friends who might be in this house, friends who weren’t currently covered in Vale’s scent.

  Please be off at a shapeshifter/human holiday party. She recalled the beautiful shapeshifter and sickly-looking human she’d met.

  From the feeling she’d gotten from that human, she was probably already dead.

  Vale took off without warning, bounding down a winding hall to break through the door leading into a bedroom.

  More wolves were inside, one that looked shockingly like Vale curled up behind a smaller, auburn-colored wolf.