Page 1116 of One More Kiss

It appeared as if his throat had been cut. How someone could survive that was a mystery… as was how in the blue fuck my great aunt shoved him inside a mirror to heal from what looked like a damn near beheading.

“My twin, Axel, and I used to be princes. Our father was the ghoul king of Texas and a couple of Southwestern states. One day, he decided he didn’t want heirs anymore, so he tried to have my brother and I killed. I made sure Axel got out, but…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “When Mercy found me, I was damn near true dead. She did the only thing she could at the time—she put me in this mirror to heal. If Beatrice is in league with my family, she means to kill me. For real this time.”

Unbidden, I shook my head hard enough to make the room spin. None of this made any sense.

None. Of. It.

“No. I’m crazy. I’ve read one too many books and finally fell off the deep end. There is no such thing as ghouls or sorceresses, and unless we stepped into a ’90s sitcom, there is no such thing as talking cats!”

Jeff took that moment to jump onto my lap, his kitty body heavier than he looked. His golden eyes flashed, and I stopped my rant. “Don’t believe me? Fine. Why don’t you look at your hand then?”

My drunk brain took a few seconds to remember the deep gash in my palm. A gash that I most definitely did not treat or even so much as get a Band-Aid for. A gash that was nowhere to be found, despite the remnants of blood crusting the delicate skin of my knuckles and in the crevasses of my cuticles.

“You aren’t dreaming. You aren’t crazy. And if you wouldn’t mind pulling your head out of your ass, we have a war to prevent.”

Jeff’s words had a sobering effect better than any cup of coffee in the world, and that worried me most of all.

In a war filled with magical people, what was a magicless woman like me going to do?

I was about to find out.