Chapter 37

Iwrappedtheshadows around myself and stepped into the otherworld, moving through the amorphous land of ghosts, and dreams, and other things beyond most people"s perceptions. The presence of the Lovell mansion was distinct, even here, the energy of the place leaving a mark that even shifting realities couldn"t entirely erase.

I returned to the material realm as I flowed through the protections around the massive manor house. They still hadn"t put that ward back up to prevent my kind from coming and going. Interesting.

I flowed through the house, but all the powerful auras of the witch and her harem were clustered out back, behind the house. I took in the strange sight before me as I slowly coalesced beside the strange Lovell woman, keeping myself half in this plane and half in the otherworld, making myself hard to spot while I eavesdropped.

"The landscaping of the ancestral home has definitely been improved," a tall, skinny red-headed witch with sharp features and a nasty black aura was commenting. I arched my brows as I watched something move under his skin, his aura looking like a tall, hooded shadow to my othersight. I blinked, focusing on material reality so I wouldn"t make myself sick by trying to look at both planes at the same time.

The Lovell witch—Andy, I believe she said her name was—planted her hands on her hips and glared at the man, while her other devoted servants moved around the overgrown grounds, picking up chunks of masonry, bodies, and bones and placing them into the appropriate piles, like sorting children"s toys. "Improved?" Andy snarled through clenched teeth. "You call this an improvement?" She was adorable.

The redhead waved a hand and half a dozen corpses stood up and shuffled over to lay down on the body pile. "Well, look at the place," he commented lazily. "What kind of earth witch lives in a place where the gardens are nothing but dead weeds and the ground grows nothing but particularly hardy dandelions?"

Andy squatted down and got hold of a large chunk of masonry that clearly belonged to the collapsed crypt that stood under a nearby towering fir tree. I tilted my head to get a better look at her deliciously round ass. It was so nice to have something to look at other than the empty black prison that had been my home for decades. The Lovell before this one had been afraid to call me out to use my powers after I had almost tricked her into suicide during a particularly well-crafted nightmare. After that they just kept me in the book and siphoned off my magic from there.

"Well, excuse me for not living up to your expectations, necromancer," the green haired earth witch snapped at the redhead.

Standing, she heaved the stone chunk up and shuffled it over to the growing pile. It was cute how she sweated and grunted while her gargoyle effortlessly carried over a people-sized hunk of rock under each arm. Why in the two worlds was she even out here, when she had all these servants who were so much stronger? Most witches of her ilk would be inside right now, eating bonbons and planning their next genocide.

She dropped her rock onto the pile and turned, using the hem of her black tank top to wipe her face, oblivious to the way everyone looked at her soft torso, hoping for a glimpse of those generous breasts that were barely contained by the scrap of spandex.

The necromancer smothered a sour look. Not surprising. That lot tended to be no fun at all. "I"m just surprised an earth witch would let the land carry on like this," he said in an even tone, showing no emotion, even with Andy snapping at him and flashing him. He calmly animated a few more corpses and walked them over to the growing pile. Holy hell, that was a lot of dead Lovells. And pieces of dead Lovells.

Andy shrugged. "It just always felt…wrong. I"ve never had any desire to try to grow things here. I prefer my garden back in the non-magic world."

The necromancer crossed his arms over his skinny chest and shook his head at her. "My goddess, you really are that inept, aren"t you?"

She fumed at him, her face red and her green hair sticking up like Medusa"s tails. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

The others didn"t comment. They just kept plodding along at their work, casting the occasional curious glance at the two witches as they argued. I wished I had popcorn. Oh…I hadn"t had popcorn in at least a century—maybe two? It was hard to keep track of time when I was imprisoned. Hard to keep track of my own mind.

"The earth here is tainted, oblivious woman," the necromancer informed her. "It feels "not right" to you because it is not right. It"s been sullied by your damned ancestors for hundreds of years. You need to cleanse the earth and restore balance before you try to grow anything." He snorted. "Might improve the feel of the house as well. Even I can sense the darkness and suffering in this place, and I"m a scary necromancer who eats babies and rapes corpses or whatever the newest story is. You"re a goody-two-shoes earth witch. You should know all this already."

She stared for a moment, at a loss for words. "I just…I assumed it was all in my head. I thought I just hated it here and didn"t want to work with the plants and earth here because of how I felt about my family."

The redhead rolled his eyes, which were mostly black at the moment, with just a thin sliver of violet visible around the iris. "I"m not teaching you magic."

She wrinkled her nose at him. "Good, because I never asked you to."

"Good, because I"m not a fucking earth witch."

"Good."

"Good."

I turned my head back and forth, like watching a tennis match. Then I looked around, wondering if the others found this as amusing as I did.

"Did you want something, or were you just planning to spy on us all day?" A hollow, wispy voice commented from right in front of me.

The witches stopped arguing like toddlers and I sighed, stepping fully into the material realm. "Snitch," I accused the ghost. Then I grinned at him. "But I won"t hold it against you, mate."

The necromancer glanced at me, then back at Andy as if completely unsurprised by my stunning appearance. "Another one of your sex slaves?"

I chuckled, cutting her off before she could reply. "You must be the last poor sot from that grimoire," I said, sketching a proper bow. "I"m Ambrose. And you are?"

He eyed me but didn"t extend a hand. I hadn"t expected him to. Necromancers weren"t big on physical contact. Thank all the unholy powers that be. I dealt in nightmares and even I didn"t want to touch that thing.

"Dyre," he said, voice still cold and emotionless. "And I"m not one of the fuckbuddies, so stop looking at me like that."

My smile deepened, just to be contrary. "I see."

He shook his head and turned away to magic some stray old bones onto the body pile.

"So, you"re back," Andy said, arching her brows at me. "Get tired of terrorizing the neighborhood? Thanks for that, by the way. They complained to the Alliance and sent the magical cops to my door since of course I must be to blame."

I chuckled darkly. "Mmm…their terror was delicious. But I"m well fed now, and I grew bored." I shrugged. "Creatures like me…well, we tend to travel about." A boogeyman never stayed in one place for long. It was a good idea to spread out your feeding if you wanted to keep a low profile. And it wasn"t like most people were just dying to play house with one of my kind. Who wanted to live with a walking nightmare? I had fallen for that trap precisely once in my life. I didn"t plan to be tricked into a magical book again anytime soon, thank you very much.

And yet. Here I was. It"s just curiosity, I told myself. It wasn"t like I had any real reason for returning.

"Besides," I added after too long a pause. "I had to make sure you got rid of that book. I"ll have nightmares until I know it"s destroyed."

She narrowed her eyes at me. "I just bet you will. Considering you"re the one who makes the nightmares."

I lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. "I can worry. That"s close enough, right?"

Andy rolled her eyes, but her insulin pump beeped and she stopped bantering with me to glance at the screen. My feeding had also helped me catch up with the times, so I at least had a general idea of how the technology worked. "I need sugar." Andy glanced at the others. "I"ll make lemonade. Sound good?"

The gargoyle stopped to press a kiss to the top of her rumpled head. "Sounds good, Andy." His yellow eyes met mine, and though he seemed a bit wary, I didn"t sense any overt hostility. "Glad you"re okay."

I pressed a hand over my heart and gave him my best wide-eyed innocent look. As innocent as I could look, what with my red and black eyes and pointed teeth. "You care. About little ol" me?" Even after I had accidentally lashed out at them all with my magic and inflicted unimaginable amounts of terror and mental anguish. It warmed my black little heart.

The massive man readjusted his bat wings and went to lug more chunks of stone out of the yard. But it really was nice of him to say that. It was strange, knowing that I had more in common with these strangers than with anyone in this world. Shared trauma was apparently a pretty strong bond.

The fae woman nodded to me in passing, her wavy golden-brown hair falling around the sharp prongs of her antlers. I wanted to pet her, just to see her bare her little fangs. But I didn"t feel like getting stabbed today. I glanced about. Even the fussy jinn and the ethereal-looking water elemental were out here doing manual labor. The jinn simply dematerialized and reappeared by the piles of refuse with his burdens. The water weaver got distracted by something in the stone they were holding, and the jinn nudged them along. But when the hot little fire elemental went back to his own work, the water weaver"s turquoise eyes followed the necromancer, a deep line appearing between their brows.

Uh-oh, trouble in paradise. It was bad enough knowing people"s worst fears. I wouldn"t want that one"s ability to sense emotions. I shuddered to imagine it. Especially around Mr. Dark and Creepy there.

"It"s not so bad," the water elemental"s melodic voice said, those sparkling eyes now pinned on me. "They"re all beautiful, in their own way."

Did the weaver mean the people, or their emotions? I didn"t want to find out. I arched my brows and backed away slowly. "Sure. I think I"ll just go help with the lemonade." Before they poked around in my head any further than that.

I dematerialized and flowed into the house, coalescing in the kitchen, right behind Andy. Leaning over her shoulder, I whispered, "Can I help?"

She started, then swore, dropping a lemon on the floor to roll away under the table. "What the hell?"

I winked at her and went to retrieve the wayward fruit, handing it back to her with a flourish. "Apologies."

She narrowed her pretty gray eyes at me. It was fascinating to see the Lovell ancestry visible in such a generous, spirited woman. "Somehow," she said dryly. "I get the feeling you"re not really sorry."

I smiled. "Maybe not entirely. Even just a little prank gives off this delicious little jolt of fear sometimes. Like a sip of fizzy soda on a hot day."

Her glare dissolved and she laughed. Real laughter. It was something I didn"t hear enough in my life—now or before. And I rather liked that I was the one who had caused it. Usually all I garnered were screams and tears. So I grabbed up a couple more lemons from the counter and juggled them, pretending to be about to lose control of the fruits a few times just to hear her suck in a breath or chuckle.

"Give me those so I can finish what I was doing," she demanded. But a bit of a smile still lingered at the corner of her lips.

"Truth," I said, handing her the bright yellow fruits so she could slice and squeeze them. "What happened to this place after I left? Necromancer come out of the book swinging?"

She snorted. "You could say that. Although, it still wasn"t as bad as the asshole that trapped us all in our heads and tortured us."

I sighed. "Not my best moment," I admitted. "And I am sorry for that. I was…unsettled. It was a natural defensive reaction."

She arched one eyebrow at me. "You mean you were scared and confused, so you lashed out with your magic like a cornered animal. I get it. Niamh almost shot me in the face with an arrow. Aahil set me on fire. And burned up an entire courtyard. And put slave bindings on me. And still thinks I"m his pet."

Our eyes met and we both started laughing. "Sounds like a fire elemental," I said, leaning back against the counter on my elbows. "But you all seem to get along now?"

She nodded as she stirred up a pitcher of lemon, sugar, and water with a big wooden spoon. "Mostly. It"s…well, it"s really fucking weird, is what it is. I"m not really the kind of person to make friends and start living with a bunch of strangers. Let alone other magic users. But I couldn"t just toss them out on their own. You know how it is. They"ve been trapped in that book for so long that the rest of the world moved on without them. They don"t have anywhere else to go."

I shifted uncomfortably, but she kept talking. "But maybe it"s different for you. You said you like to move around. You must be used to being a free spirit. And you don"t have to deal with these assholes. Let me tell ya. It gets old, real fast."

I took the glass she offered me, sipping at the tart-sweet juice as I scrambled for what to say. "Well," I finally said with a smirk. "I suppose it"s never boring around here. I might stick around for a while. Just to pass the time. For amusement."

Her gray eyes met mine and she gave me a wry look that said she saw right through my bullshit. "Of course. Wouldn"t want you to get bored." She picked up the pitcher and a stack of cups, then leveled a look at me that was devoid of all playfulness. "You"re welcome to stay here as long as you need, like I said before. But if you ever pull that shit you pulled before, I will murder you myself, boogeyman. Got it?"

I gave her a grave look to convey my utter seriousness as I replied. "I"m beginning to see why the others are so eager to fall into your bed. Threaten me again. Please?"

She snorted and walked away with a muttered, "Goddess, not another asshole."

I smiled as I followed after her, still wondering why the hell I was even here, but unable to walk away. "At least I have a sense of humor, dove. Your new pet wouldn"t know how to smile if his life depended on it."