This time Jonah wasn’t the one she was pissed at.
“But,” she spat through tight lips, “she fucking hasn’t, has she? Kept them safe.”
Shiloh wiped away the drawing with the side of his hand. “We know she’s taken out at least one of our hexes.”
“How can you be sure?”
Witch grimaced, her mouth pinched together. This time it was Shiloh who had to pick up the slack in the conversation.
“Because our mother died,” he said, his voice flat.
Jonah hesitated for a second as he sifted through the available responses. His upbringing hadn’t exactly put him on the same page as most when it came to things like death and bereavement.
“Well, fuck,” he said. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
Witch’s face folded in on itself, suddenly unlovely and elastic as the grief twisted it up like a fist. She scrubbed the grief away unceremoniously on the back of her hand as she swallowed hard.
“Go fuck yourself,” she said as she schooled her face back into a scowl. “We don’t need your pity.”
“We need to know what Slater’s game is,” Shiloh said. “She’s gone on a ‘retreat,’ and she’s not taking any calls. If we ask too many questions and she works out we know what she’s done—”
“She throws your stuff out in the sun,” Jonah said. “Or sells it to the highest bidder.”
Shiloh nodded
“We go in and grab her,” Witch said, “every other player in town thinks it’s a power play, and the shit hits the fan.”
It would be war. The good daylight folk of Jerusalem would probably never know that, but plenty of them would still suffer for it. Magic always had a cost, and sometimes it wasn’t the person who laid it that paid it.
Jonah leaned his weight on his elbows and drained the last of the beer.
“I really need to get the lay of the landbeforeI run my mouth,” he said, mostly to himself.
There hadn’t been time—Jonah could feel the pressure in the back of his head rise with every tick of the clock toward dusk—but still. He’d strutted in like the cock of the hex-walk and expected the universe to kick the world into line. Except he’d ghosted the unnatural world a year ago, and it had finally decided it wasn’t in the mood to do him any favors.
“Yeah,” Shiloh said as he turned his bottle upside down to drain the last drops of beer onto the floor. Once it was empty, he smashed it on the table. Splinters and chunks of thick green glass scattered over the surface. “You have no idea how over your head you are.”
The hair on the back of Jonah’s neck stood on end uneasily. Before he could act on the sudden unease, Shiloh lunged over the table and grabbed his wrist. Blunt, scarred fingers dug down around the joint, and Shiloh flattened Jonah’s hand down onto the table.
“What the fuck—” Jonah spat as he tried to pull back. It didn’t work. Shiloh just pressed harder, and the glass dug into Jonah’s palm and fingertips. The pain was sharp at first and then stung as the booze got into the cuts. Blood smeared over the table as Shiloh held his other hand to his sister. She tugged the end of the makeshift bandage loose and unraveled it. A chill ran down Jonah’s back, and his mouth went dry. “Don’t, Shiloh.”
Shiloh grinned at him, a hard, sharp-edged grimace. “I like the way you say my name.”
He clenched his free hand into a fist to open up the wound gouged into the pad under his thumb. Blood oozed out sluggishly, muddy red against his skin. Then he yanked Jonah half across the table and forced their hands together, fingers interlaced so tightly that bones creaked.
The hex kindled between them, a cold burn that spread up Jonah’s arm. He could take it. Shiloh had cast on the fly, on instinct and raw power. Until he pinned it down, all he had was magic with no direction or leash.
All he had to do was say the word. The words, rather. He could disperse the spell, redirect it, heal himself, cast madness into Shiloh’s mismatched eyes… or fill his balls and cock with want.
Blood magic wasn’t good for love spells, but raw lust was much more on brand.
Jonah hesitated. Maybe it was because he didn’t want to give in to temptation, to break his streak before it reached a year. He thought he might just have been dazzled by the wealth of temptation on offer.
“Nose to the ground,” Shiloh said, his rough voice close to a growl. “God made you man and me a hound.”
Too late. The hex seized on the shape it had been given and hooked down into Jonah’s bones. Sweat broke on him, chill and salty, as it wrapped around him like a net. He could taste his own sour breath as panic welled up inside him at being trapped, the claustrophobia that was theotherreason he never closed his curtains noisy against the inside of his skull.
Fuck.Fuck.
