Page 4 of Witch Unexpected
A Jasper repellent.
The amulet, forged by the powerful Grimswood Coven up north, was a protection ward. It kept Jasper from being sexually intimate with me. It disrupted the bond between us, so he couldn’t feed off my energy and use it to manifest.
I’d been worried about that. Worried that if he didn’t get what he needed from me, he might hurt other people, but Elijah assured me that while bound to me, Jasper could only siphon a minuscule amount of energy from others. Only enough to manifest for short periods. His power would be muted too.
But the flipside was, so would mine.
I was a novelty. Some would say an abomination. Heck, evenIdidn’t fully understand what I was. I wasn’t born; I was created by Fee.
They called my kind tulpas—beings created with the force of another person’s will. Except regular tulpas remained trapped in their creator’s subconscious mind. I was different because Fee was different. Powerful. And through her, I’d taken on a life of my own. I had power of my own, the ability to shift from place to place, the ability to harness what witches called miasma without the need to be linked to a coven like other witches.
I was an anomaly no one understood, and the amulet was fucking with my abilities. I would have shifted from the restaurant to my house, but I couldn’t make long journeys using my teleportation power without being drained. Even short trips took the wind out of my sails.
“Just take it off, Cora.” Jasper’s voice was a whisper in the darkness.
Seriously? “Piss off, Jasper.”
“Take it off…”
“Never.”
I pulled the covers over my head and closed my eyes, ignoring the desperate pound of my heart and the zing in my blood.
“Never say never, Cora,” he whispered. “Tomorrow is another day.”
I felt him leave and relaxed into the mattress.
I needed sleep.
A warm fuzzy feeling trickled through my veins; the delicious lethargy that came just before sleep tugged me under.
My phone buzzed loudly on the bedside table, jarring me awake. I could ignore it, slip back under and into dreams, but the guttering needed cleaning, and I was running low on funds.
Fee had insisted on buying me this house, but I insisted on paying for its upkeep.
Dreams would have to wait. I groaned and made a grab for the phone.
There was only one person who ever called me at this unsocial hour—because this was when the monsters came out to play.
This was prime time.
I answered on the eighth buzz. “Hello, Ursula, what you got for me?”
Chapter Two
Ursula, my Magiguard boss, was waiting for me outside Lumiers, the only coffee shop in Necro City that catered solely to outliers.
Supernatural beings, like shifters, fae, witches, warlocks, and everyone in between, came here for coffee and cake, and Leana, the fae owner, catered to them all. There was only one rule—no fuckery—and she made doubly sure of it by placing wards all over the building. Outlier abilities were muted inside the building, and anyone attempting to engage in a rumble got knocked on their ass.
Stood to reason it was a popular hangout for those looking for a little downtime or for rival factions wanting to powwow. There was only one breed of creature you wouldn’t find here, and that was humans. Lumiers had a lookaway spell on it that kept them at bay.
Humans, in general, were oblivious to the outlier world. Well, aside from being aware of ghosts and the existence of Reapers. The rest was kept under wraps by the likes of the Magiguard, who made sure the veil between the outlier world and the human world was kept intact. And for the last few months, I’d helped them do just that.
It was the middle of November, and we were headed into winter. There was a bite in the air, and Ursula was dressed to ward off the chill in boots, a calf-length jacket, and a woolly hat that sat snug on her head.
She raised a hand in greeting as I crossed the road to reach her.
“Thanks for coming,” she said.
