Page 16 of Incubus with Benefits
“And be the third wheel squeaking around you and Marcus? No thanks. I’m okay where I am.”
“Just targeting your wards is terrifying,” Penny said. “That’s a message. They’re still looking for you.”
“That’s what I thought too, and Julian agreed,” I said. “And it gets worse. When we got to Julian’s place, the cops were already there. Waiting.”
Penny gasped. “What? Why?”
“Apparently, someone reported me missing after last night,” I said, fingers tightening around my mug. “And since the last two women who’ve gone missing disappeared after leaving Delerium, they immediately assumed it was Julian.”
Gigi’s mouth dropped open. “You’re right, they did go missing after Delerium. Okay, so that does look a bit sus, I don’t get any bad vibes off Julian. Unless you count being a total manwhore as bad vibes. But he’s not the type to kidnap women.”
“And Prax says he’s a stickler for consent,” Penny said. “There are incubi who are total assholes, but he’s not one of them.”
“I don’t think the cops care. At least not the ones who came. The officer was so sure it had to be him. Like being an incubus automatically made him a kidnapper.”
“Ugh. I hate that type. Too bad it wasn’t Officer Hayes or Cooley,” Penny muttered. “Those two are cool.”
Officer Cooley, or Hazel to her friends, was part of a cracking trio that included herself, a cocky but powerful wizard named Seth, and a demon named Liam. Liam was living proof that judging someone just because they had horns was ridiculous. He was genuinely kind. One of the nicest guys you’d ever meet, as long as you didn’t mess with the people he loved. Even golden retrievers had bite.
“Yeah,” I said. “These guys? Not cool. And I was already fried. I’d lost my job, got hit by that mystery spell, passed out in public, dealt with a break-in, and now I was supposed to play nice with judgmental cops? I didn’t want to deal with it.” And here camethe kicker. I braced for their response as I said, “I might’ve used my talent to convince them to leave.”
“Oh, your charm!” Gigi exclaimed. “I’ve always said you should use it more.”
“Yeah,” Penny agreed. “Screw what your parents thought. Did it work?”
I shrugged. “Kind of. It’s weak. But it got them to back off at least. But I don’t think I can keep them away for long.”
“So what now?” Penny asked, her brows furrowed in concern.
“Now?” I blew out a breath. “I’m going to try to figure out this mystery full-time while I search for a job part-time. We need to know who’s behind the missing witches. Because if I don’t, I think I’m going to be next.”
And after me? Who else? My friends? Other witches? Whatever was happening, I had to get to the bottom of it.
“Yes! That’s a great idea. We’ll all help,” Penny said enthusiastically. ”Have a plan yet?”
I grinned. I could always count on my besties. Our coven might be small and unofficial, and technically just a listing on a forum buried between moon phase memes and potion recipes, but it was real. Real enough to hold me up when everything else felt like it was falling apart.
By the time I ended the video call about half an hour later, we each had a job to do.
Gigi was going to talk to Hazel the next time she and her partner Mike stopped by her coffee shop, which was often. Nothing like a cuppa to get words flowing.
Penny’s job was to scour theLet’s Talk About HexandCharm & Chatterforums, combing through threads and rumors to see what witches were saying about the disappearances.
And me? I was going back to Delerium. Not for drinks or dancing, but for answers.
I needed to talk to the staff, the regulars, the ones who lingered in corners and watched everything. They might not be responsible, but they were close enough to the chaos to know something. And if they did, I was going to find out.
That meant I was going to need to use my little magic talent again. The one I’d spent most of my life pretending didn’t exist.
I regretted not honing it, not even a little. As a kid, Mom banned me from using it after I convinced her to let me eat cookies for breakfast three days in a row. She didn’t know how to handle a magically persuasive toddler, so she shut it down. Hard.
Plus, the prevailing belief back then was that magical talents were inferior to the ability to cast spells. She forced me to focus on casting only.
By the time I was a teenager, and we realized that suppressing a magical gift also stunted all magical growth, it was too late. My potential had been wasted. I’d never be the witch I was meant to be.
I didn’t even have to say “I told you so.” Mom was already drowning in guilt. But that didn’t undo the years of shame I’d built around my talent. I’d come to associate it with manipulation, with cheating, with doing something I wasn’t supposed to do. And that kind of baggage clung like bean farts in a sealed room.
The only reason I’d used it today was because I’d been at my wits’ end, and I just needed those cops to leave us alone.
