Blaise rested a finger against his chin, considering. “Okay,” he said slowly. “So, what does all of that have to do with this Priscilla you mentioned? Is shenotpart of your coven, then?”
“Well, our coven has always been known for being a mixed group. And occasionally, we’d get a nomad witch asking to join. The last time it happened was almost thirty years ago. A heavily pregnant witch who more or less demanded to be taken in. She was... not a nice person,” I added, unable to keep the distaste from my voice. “But Lily Cole—our head of coven—didn’t have the heart to turn her away. Not with a baby on the way. So she stayed and she had her baby, Priscilla.”
Blaise was listening intently now.
“But Priscilla’s mom—and later Priscilla herself—never really melded with the coven’s magic,” I continued. “They could live with us, sure, but the magic never accepted them. It never gave them even a drop of the coven’s shared magic. So they never bonded with a sentient house, and they were never granted a fated incubus mate.”
I hesitated, then added, “They were very much out for themselves. Especially Priscilla’s mom. She wanted what the coven wouldn’t give her. She tried to seduce mated incubi. Tried to steal sentient houses. Eventually, she crossed enough lines that she was exiled.”
Blaise grimaced. “And Priscilla?”
“The thing is,” I said, lowering my voice—hoping Creep, president of the Priscilla Raisin fan club, was too busy evicting spiders to eavesdrop—“the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.”
His gaze stayed fixed on mine.
“Priscilla was a bully at school. Not the petty, mean-girl kind, but the sort who’d decapitate your favorite toy if you didn’t hand it over. The kind who believed the world owed her everything. She’s just as covetous as her mother. And lately... she’s had her sights set on my business.” I hesitated, then finished quietly, “And my house.”
Blaise’s expression darkened. “She’s trying to steal Creep from you?”
“I guess Priscilla sees it as an easy meal ticket,” I said. “Steal my recipes, make money off someone else’s life’s work. Live in my house that for some reason loves her. She’s been relentless. And I figured that for this final stretch, I wasn’t taking any chances. That’s why I’ve temporarily moved away from the coven—and why I hired you, just in case she managed to find me.” I huffed softly. “Which, given Creep’s inexplicable fondness for her, wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest. I half expect Creep to have left a breadcrumb trail of spiders and knives for Priscilla to follow all the way here.”
Blaise leaned back, one finger crooked thoughtfully against his chin. “She doesn’t sound particularly pleasant.” He chewed his bottom lip, then glanced back at me. “Are youabsolutelycertain she’s never been accepted into the coven’s magic?”
My lips pressed together. Why was he pushing this?
A little coolly, I replied, “She definitely hasn’t. Why?”
Blaise hesitated, worrying his lip again before finally saying, “Well... Ambrose isn’t the only unmated incubus our age. There’s Devlin, too.”
Chapter 11. Blaise
Caitlyn pressed a slender finger, tipped with chipped forest-green nail varnish, to her bottom lip. “Unless Priscilla is about to get a personality transplant, I don’t really know how we’ve ended up with one witch and two incubi.”
My mind whirred, offering explanations one after another—each more unsettling than the last.
Maybe one of them was never meant to have a mate at all. The thought hollowed my chest. It would devastate Devlin. And while Ambrose had never spoken openly about longing for a mate, I knew he wouldn’t want to walk this world alone.
Or maybe this Priscilla would somehow do something miraculous at the last possible moment and worm her way into the coven magic and be accepted despite everything Caitlyn had said.
And then my mind slid toward a darker possibility.
Maybe one of my friends was never meant to survive long enough to meet their mate at all.
My expression must have betrayed me, because Caitlyn’s voice softened. “It’s probably nothing, Blaise. Maybe there’s a witch out there born in the same Samhain cycle as us—someone fated to join our coven who just... hasn’t found her way here yet?”
“Hm,” was all I managed.
“Maybe if we figure out who’s likely to end up with Jen,” Caitlyn continued gently, “we can work out who’s left. Tell me what Ambrose is like.”
She asked it so innocently, unaware of how neatly she was tearing my heart in two.
My fated mate. The witch I was meant to build a life with. The witch who was adorable, and clever, and funny—someone Ialready knew I could fall in love with far too easily—asking me to describe the man who had already claimed a piece of my heart.
Ambrose doesn’t want you.
He hadn’t wanted to talk when I finally broached the subject of that night, of that look that told me he might want more. He’d pulled away. He didn’t want me—and I needed to let him go. I needed to open my heart to the witch standing in front of me, with her doe eyes and feral hair, the one who’d made my heart stutter and my stomach flip the moment I saw her.
So why had Ambrose held my hand like he couldn’t bear the idea of her taking me from him?
