Page 1115 of One More Kiss
Or I was rationalizing because I was talking to a cat in my attic with a man trapped in a damn mirror.
“Okey-dokey. What else did I inherit on top of a war, a talking feline who barfs in people’s shoes, and a likely swan dive into mental illness? The plague? A Hellmouth?”
“Powers, you idiot,” Jeff countered. “You are a female of the St. James line, which means you are a member of the arcane world.”
“The what?” I muttered, swaying a little. Maybe it was the booze, or maybe not.
The man from the mirror piped up, his Southern drawl doing very weird things to me—and this day topped out my Weird-Shit-O-Meter. “You’d better sit down before you fall down. We don’t want you hurting yourself—especially not right now.”
Shakily, I walked farther into the room and plopped my ass on the hard floor right in front of his mirror.
“Figures she listens to you,” Jeff grumbled. “You’d better not be using your mojo on her.”
Mirror Man shot a scathing glance at Jeff, his dark eyes tinging with red. “I would do no such thing, you furry little beast. Plus, you know damn well it wouldn’t work. Ghouls can’t trance witches. Even cloaked ones.”
From this exchange, I gleaned a few things. One: I was not sober enough for this. Two: I was out of wine. And three: Mirror Man thought I was a witch.
Out of the three, the witch thing actually made the most sense as fragments of my father’s conversations with Mercy started clicking into place like puzzle pieces.
You can’t take her.
She won’t be one of you.
I forbid you to teach her.
She won’t step one toe in that damn town.
I won’t let you make her a freak like you.
“Witches?” I breathed, the question just slipping out.
Mirror Man pried his sharp gaze from Jeff to inspect me. “Yes. Witches. The St. James line is one of the strongest covens in the country. Or at least they were before I got put in this mirror. Your coven has a deep base in Tennessee, Georgia, Virginia, and Texas. But from what Jeff has told me, that was almost sixty years ago.”
“Times have changed.” Jeff interjected. “We aren’t as strong as we used to be.”
“We?” I asked. “Who is ‘we’?” And sixty years ago? I thought the question but didn’t ask it aloud.
Jeff gave me a kitty huff. “Jeffery St. James, at your service. St. James males don’t have any power of their own. Male children of a St. James woman will always be a null. We are what they call uninherits. Like your father. However, if we wish to obtain power, we can become familiars. In my youth, I chose this path—to serve other St. James witches in exchange for a long life and a modicum of power. Being naked twenty-four seven is just a bonus.”
Jeff used to be human?My brain felt like it was about to explode.
“You vomited in my shoes, you prick,” I accused, my speech slurring just a little now that my wine was gone.
Mirror Man snorted when Jeff gave me an utterly unrepentant stare. “My job is to keep you alive, cousin. If you die, the deed to this house goes to an uninherit. Meaning that all the magic of this house dies with you. Meaning, if I need to stop you from doing something supremely stupid, I will use whatever tools are at my disposal to prevent you from keeling over.”
“And what, pray tell, did puking in my shoes accomplish?”
Jeff huffed before plopping his kitty ass on the floor. “If you recall, you were about to march over to Beatrice’s house and, in your words, ‘give her a piece of your mind.’ Beatrice is a sorceress with more power than you or I could ever dream of having. She would blow you out of your shoes, and then we’d both be fucked. I… diverted your attention.”
Diverted my attention? I’d had to throw those shoes out.
But then I remembered my last conversation with Beatrice just this afternoon and felt a little green. “What does Beatrice really want? Because if she is actually obsessed with The Beginner’s Guide to Landscape Architecture, I’ll eat my hat.”
I didn’t even have a hat, but I’d eat one.
“I have a few guesses,” Mirror Man said. “One: she’s looking for Mercy’s grimoire. Mercy was one of the most powerful witches on the Eastern seaboard. Her grimoire would have every spell, every incantation, everything she’s accomplished in the last two hundred years. Or two: she’s in good with my asshole family and wants to finish the job they started sixty years ago.”
My brows pulled tight in confusion. No part of that made a lick of sense. Mercy was two hundred years old? What happened sixty years ago? And moreover, what… My thoughts trailed off to nothing as Mirror Man lifted his chin to point to a faded pink line that went from ear to ear.
