Curse of the Witching Hour Read online

  It felt like an eternity before someone rushed in through the door. A man laid a woman covered in blood on the bed. The injured woman wasn’t Clarissa or his Abigail, and he didn’t know who the man was—other than that he was a Witchkin teacher from the school.

  Lucifer darted out the open door. He sniffed the air for Abigail’s scent. The beautiful garlands of flowers Abigail had helped make were gone. Giant scars marred the earth. The area where the ceremony had taken place was a battleground of blood, feathers, and charred flowers. Magic tingled Lucifer’s nose, making it difficult to make out any one scent.

  He prowled the grounds for a sign of Abigail. He didn’t see Felix or Clarissa. Lucifer meowed, his voice sounding small and pathetic. No one paid him any mind.

  It took hours of searching before he found a hint of Abigail’s green magic laced with blood.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Lost and Found

  In the days that followed the battle, Lucifer was inconsolable. He ran around the school grounds, crazed with frustration, raking his claws against classroom furniture and lashing out when students neared. He didn’t know anyone, nor did he want to. He just wanted Abigail.

  Stuck in the body of a cat, he was unable to ask what had happened. Nor could he find Clarissa. He was too restless to listen to any conversation for long. From the quantity of feathers, he knew the Raven Court had attacked. He wasn’t certain what Elric of the Silver Court had to do with anything, but when there was one Fae, there were always more. They were like cockroaches as far as Lucifer was concerned.

  It was Imani Washington, Clarissa’s student, who found him and tamed him with her touch. She fed him, and she carried him with her everywhere. The familiarity of someone he knew calmed him. He remained hidden in her backpack during the day and cuddled up to her at night. He didn’t know anyone else besides a few of Clarissa’s other students who had stayed with Abigail during the winter break because these orphans had no families of their own. That was the kind of generous thing Abigail would do—invite wayward witches into her home and heart—just like she had with her own adopted children.

  Lucifer liked Imani the most out of Clarissa’s students. She let him come and go as he pleased and was always friendly with him when he came back to her.

  A few days later, Felix returned with Clarissa. Lucifer butted his head up against her leg to get her attention. He wanted her to tell him where Abigail was. She lifted him into her arms and wept. That only worried him further.

  He wouldn’t usually have tolerated this much cuddling from Clarissa, but he needed the comforting as much as she did.

  One of the problems with already having established himself as a nuisance and a cantankerous cat was that Clarissa shut him out of Felix’s private room after that. He had to listen at the door to overhear their conversations and dart into the room when Felix accidentally left the door open.

  He hid under the bed and absorbed as much of their conversation—and sometimes their magic—as he could.

  It was through her arguments with Felix that he understood Abigail was still alive and being held captive by the Raven Court.

  “I need to help her. They might be hurting her,” Clarissa cried.

  Lucifer was surprised how gentle his brother was with Clarissa as he held her and stroked her hair. “I told you she’s safe. She will remain safe until the end of the school year.”

  Lucifer didn’t know much about the school calendar, but it seemed like that would be in the summer. It was already warm outside. They might only have weeks before the Raven Queen would do something bad, though Lucifer wasn’t sure why his brother was so certain she would wait.

  “Maybe,” Clarissa said. “But you’re also a liar.”

  That was true enough. Felix’s words didn’t put Lucifer at ease any more than they reassured Clarissa.

  If Lucifer was going to help Abigail, he couldn’t do it in this useless form. He needed to be a man. If his brother wasn’t going to go to the Raven Court with Clarissa to save Abigail, Lucifer would.

  After he was no longer a cat.

  Lucifer refrained from coughing up hair balls into his brother’s pockets. He showed them he could behave.

  Clarissa and Felix grudgingly allowed him to stay in their private quarters. For the most part, Lucifer stayed away from his brother. He tried to nuzzle up against Clarissa’s ankles so that she would notice him, but she wasn’t like Abigail. He always seemed to be getting in the way of her feet and making her trip. Much of the time she ignored him.

  The only way he was able to fuel his affinity was by hiding under the bed as Felix and Clarissa made love. He wanted to cover his ears and pretend he didn’t know what was happening. He felt like a pervert, trying to use Abigail’s adopted daughter and his own brother for sex magic. It wasn’t like before when they’d accidentally exploded with electrical energy and he’d unwittingly used it to turn human—even if it had only been temporary. Felix was teaching Clarissa to harness her magic, and there was hardly any left for Lucifer to use to break his curse.

  When Clarissa was alone—or when she thought she was alone—he snuck into her classroom as she channeled her Red affinity into magic spells to see Abigail. In her locked art room, away from her husband, she picked up a pencil and began to draw. Lucifer knew this wasn’t an ordinary drawing from the way her pupils shrank and her skin took on an incandescent pink quality. The air around her first smelled like rainbows and dreams but shifted to the perfume of plants he associated with Abigail. There was the fragrance of strawberries, orchids, and oak mingled into a bouquet that danced over his fur.

  He sniffed at the air. There was the taste of Abigail coming from the sketchbook, but not just her earthy fragrance of pitch and springtime. There was blood on blackberry thorns and the danger of nightshade and oleander drifting in the air toward him. Lucifer jumped onto Clarissa’s desk. The sketch she’d made of Abigail was moving, plants shifting like a living cage around her. She was surrounded by grotesque Fae creatures that looked like they’d stepped out of someone’s nightmare. Some were thin and spindly like sickly trees, others knobby with exaggerated features and beady black eyes.

  Several Fae creatures were so beautiful it made Lucifer’s eyes hurt to linger too long on their features. The Raven Queen was one such Fae. Her hair cascaded down her shoulders like rivers made of midnight, blending in with the feathers of her gown. Her eyes were ink black, yet seemed to glow with intensity. On top of her head she wore a crown made of spikey spires that resembled icicles.

  The Raven Queen spoke from the drawing, her voice deep and dark as molasses, filled with bittersweet promises and thinly disguised venom. Lucifer had always thought Vega Bloodmire was a wicked witch. He had despised Baba Nata, the Witch of Nightmares, who had turned him into a cat. He had complained to Abigail that his brother was evil.

  He’d had no idea until this moment what evil felt like as it slithered down his spine in the form of the Raven Queen’s voice.

  “Ma chère, I am concerned about your health,” she said with her French accent.

  Lucifer stared, mesmerized by the power radiating from the queen in dark-bright shadows. Clarissa’s drawing moved like an animation, but all in shades of gray graphite as she shifted the pencil across the page. His gaze fixed on Abigail, his heart clenching at the pained expression on her face as the Raven Queen taunted her and tempted her with delicious foods made in the Faerie Realm.

  They were spread out on the table before Abigail, the aroma so tantalizing he could smell it through the page.

  Lucifer meowed, wanting to warn her not to eat anything. He didn’t want her to be trapped in the Faerie Realm forever. Some foods were safe, but not all, and Abigail wouldn’t know which she could eat.

  The Raven Queen spoke again, reeling Lucifer in with her words. “Odette was the one to suggest it. She truly is brilliant when she chooses to apply her creativity.”

  Odette? Lucifer’s sister? Was she alive? It
could be a different Odette. It was a common enough French name.

  A malicious smile curled the queen’s lips upward. “She told me we would have to butcher a beast you knew in the Morty Realm in order for you to recognize it as safe. Sadly, there were no lambs in your yard. Nor cows or pigs.”

  Dread settled like a lump in Lucifer’s belly. The Fae servants lifted the giant lid from the silver tray. Underneath was a roasted human—the elderly neighbor who lived next to Abigail in the Morty Realm by the looks of it.

  Abigail screamed.

  Lucifer needed to be there for Abigail. He leapt toward the drawing, knocking the pencil from Clarissa’s hand in the process. He tried to throw himself into the page and through the magic of the divination.

  The vision faded. The paper was simply paper, and the drawing remained graphite.

  “Son of a Fae!” Clarissa stood, glaring at him. “Do you realize what you just did? You made me lose my focus. I’m not going to be able to see her with you in here.”

  Lucifer’s head hunched between his shoulders, more like a guilty dog than a cat.

  She pointed to the door at the front of the classroom. “Get out. You just make everything worse.”

  He jumped off the desk and trudged away. The front door of the classroom was locked. He turned toward the open door at the back of the room that led to the dungeon where she roomed with Felix. Lucifer halted when he saw his brother standing in the doorway. Clarissa gasped, apparently noticing him for the first time as well.

  Felix leaned against the frame. “Why are you yelling at that poor cat?”

  Lucifer was surprised his brother was sticking up for him. Maybe Felix hadn’t yet found the last furball Lucifer had coughed up in one of his pockets. Lucifer shrank past Felix, who would no doubt try to again convince Clarissa the merits of waiting until the end of the school year to rescue her mother.

  Lucifer suspected he had another two weeks at least.

  That gave Lucifer time to fuel his affinity. He set out with renewed purpose. During dinner, he allowed teenagers to pet him to fuel his touch affinity, even though he didn’t like people. He would have preferred to rake his claws against their hands instead.

  It was during this time when he passed as a friendly feline that he heard snippets of information.

  “Did you see the airship that nearly crashed into the greenhouses?” one student asked. “I bet they were with the Silver Court. That Fae prince Miss Lawrence was dating must have been jealous of Mr. Thatch.”

  “No way!” another student responded. “I heard Prince Elric is dating Ms. Bloodmire now.”

  No one openly talked about the Raven Court.

  During daylight hours, when the forest was safe, he found another cat to mate with. Imani was always happy to see him and scavenged saucers of milk to feed him, even though Abigail had always said lactose was bad for cats.

  When Lucifer had been human, he’d always prided himself on not using his incubus magic to influence women to sleep with him. He hadn’t used it to make animals of people so that he could fuel his affinity. He hadn’t been desperate at the time either. He hadn’t been at risk of remaining stuck as a cat forever.

  Lucifer threw ethics aside and found teenagers making out and having underage sex to absorb their energy. He let his affinity lead him toward sources of energy that would benefit him most. He stumbled upon a hairy sasquatch and a teacher he was fairly certain had to be a jorogumo from her multiple eyes and legs. The unlikely pair were both into some kinky spider-silk bondage.

  Lucifer got a little too close and somehow ended up getting caught in a giant spiderweb.

  He was lucky no one ate him.

  It took several more days, but Lucifer stored up enough magic that the next time he mated as a cat, he felt pain lance through his limbs, signaling the change.

  He vomited the contents of his dinner and writhed in pain. It was hard to believe changing from a human to a cat and back again had once been easy for him. Of course, that had been when he’d used a spell to change himself—not when he’d been cursed.

  In the privacy of the forest, he turned into a man. He lay in the ferns, exhausted, for hours. Finally, he forced himself to move. He wasn’t going to be able to help anyone—especially Abigail—if he fell asleep. He needed to think like a human and come up with a plan, but he didn’t know how much time he would have. He would need to store magic to ensure he remained a man.

  He supposed he should have felt more shame walking through a school for youths, naked and filthy, in the middle of the night, but no one caught him, and that was the important detail.

  He returned to the dungeon, on his way to Clarissa and Felix’s private quarters, where he would find Clarissa so that he could go with her to free Abigail. He passed through Felix’s classroom, through a museum full of historical torture equipment, and through his brother’s office where he saw the note on Felix’s desk in Clarissa’s handwriting. It explained they had left to go to the Raven Queen’s castle to rescue Abigail.

  Lucifer slammed his fist down on the desk. It wasn’t the end of the school year. The plan had been to wait until all the students had gone home.

  Lucifer was a man, but it was too late. They’d already left without him, and he had no way to get there himself.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Waiting Game

  Lucifer lived like a wild man. He stole food from the kitchen and took refuge in the forest. He attempted to wear his brother’s clothes, but they were too small, and he didn’t like the way human clothes felt. Lucifer hunted like a cat in the forest and shivered at night without his fur to keep him warm.

  At any moment he expected to turn back into a cat. He refrained from using his magic, but he didn’t fuel himself with activities either. It crossed his mind he could use his incubus charms to seduce a student or faculty member, but he rejected the idea. That was not the kind of person he wanted to become. Abigail would lose respect for him if he did.

  He considered asking Imani for help when he spotted her at the unicorn stables, but he considered how improper it might seem for a naked man to come out of the woods and approach her.

  It was several days before Felix returned to school, and when he did, Clarissa wasn’t with him. Nor was Abigail.

  That didn’t bode well.

  Lucifer watched his brother from the shadows, trying to build up the nerve to approach him. Abigail had trusted Felix implicitly. Lucifer couldn’t help wondering how much of that certainty was misguided affection because Felix looked like Lucifer—and Abigail expected him to be the same person. She had believed Felix loved her daughter.

  Yet Clarissa wasn’t with him now. If Felix had truly loved her, he wouldn’t have allowed Clarissa to go to the Raven Queen and be captured. Lucifer felt like he’d failed Abigail all over again. He hadn’t protected her or her charge.

  Lucifer waited until his brother left the courtyard with his raven familiar. He stalked Felix across the darkening school grounds as the sun slipped low on the horizon, keeping well away from Felix. Part of Lucifer wanted to believe he had family he could turn to, but he still couldn’t get over his distrust of Felix after he’d abandoned Lucifer to the devices of their cruel mother all those years ago. Felix had taken their younger sisters when he’d run away from home, but he hadn’t taken Lucifer.

  And now it seemed he had abandoned Clarissa as well. And Abigail.

  Lucifer’s feelings spiked between the desire to pounce on Felix and the urge to weep.

  Felix meandered his way across the school grounds to the greenhouses. Lucifer’s eyes were as attuned to the darkness as they were when he’d been a cat. He stalked after his brother, other cat instincts rising in him. He wanted to claw at something.

  His nostrils were assaulted by a landslide of fragrances, so many plants in the greenhouse nestled in one place. The fresh spicy green of basil and the sweet tingle of lavender tickled his nose. He passed catnip, and even though his
body was human, he wanted to sniff it out and chew on it, to drown out all sorrows.

  Felix stopped when he came upon a lean figure nearly as tall as he was. Her feminine shape was silhouetted by the light of a wand she’d stuck in a potted plant as she plucked leaves from a shrub. She wasn’t using magic, but Lucifer smelled the aroma of starlight and grave dirt lingering in the air near her. No one smelled like that except Vega Bloodmire.

  “I thought I might find you here,” Felix said.

  Vega snorted. “I suppose you divined it with your Celestor powers of prophesy?”

  “No. I saw you walk this way.”

  Vega continued collecting leaves from plants. “What is it you want?”

  Lucifer couldn’t help smiling at her directness. He’d always hated it when she’d been snotty with Abigail, but he didn’t mind her forthright manner with Felix.

  Vega knew about Lucifer’s secret. He wondered whether he should ask for her help. She didn’t grant favors without a price, though. It was difficult to say who was less trustworthy—Felix or Vega.

  Felix coughed. “I came to see how you were faring. I wanted to make sure you were . . . recovering after the incident.”

  Lucifer suspected Felix meant the attack at their wedding, but he wasn’t certain. There was more being said that he couldn’t glean.

  “As you can see, I’m fabulous as always.” She waved a hand at herself. “Are you done pestering me?” Her words came out more terse than usual.

  “Vega, you don’t have to lie to me. I know you aren’t all right. I wanted to see if you need anything.”

  She slammed a plant onto the table. “I don’t need your pity.”

  “I’m not giving you pity. I’m trying to . . . be a friend.” Felix sounded so lost. “We both lost someone we care about recently.”

  Those words crashed down on Lucifer like a landslide. Did that mean Clarissa was dead? If so, Lucifer had truly failed Abigail. She would never forgive him. He raked his hands through his unruly beard, wanting to tear it out.