A Demon’s Book Of Shadows (Witches & Demons #1)

31. Lucy

31

Lucy

As soon as the first rays of sunlight branched through my window, the dreams I’d experienced were brewing through me like a storm. I didn’t remember being brought back to my room. I’d dreamed of so many places, I couldn’t keep count. I’d been carried by a warm humid wind back toward the mountains, caught in the rain shadow where the sky met the earth.

Someone else had been in my dream—shadows. Their long, branching fingers reached over mountaintops from a world beyond. What they were searching for, I didn’t know. But I felt their emptiness—their longing. They were searching for something invisible beneath the earth.

The fingers reached for moments when the first frost occurred. When the soil turned over as ice crystals formed and melted. As the fingers reached, their touch withered fallen leaves and brought new life to the landscape.

Those moments captured my magical surges. They also opened old wounds. I was left gasping for answers about what happened to my father .

I sat up in my bed and draped my legs over the side. Propping my elbows onto my knees, I leaned over, trying to nurse the throbbing headache as I remembered the details from my dream. A woman stood by the water. Her words were like silk, washing over me, “ I wish for you to give a message to my son .”

Then, Amon appeared, concealed by a thousand ebony monsters.

My phone buzzed. Mom had texted me, again. I thumbed over her frantic messages asking where I was.

So had Grace.

Did the beans work?

I set my phone down. Something wasn’t right. Melrose had been in my sister’s house, thumbing through her collection of books. I’d seen magical symbols glinting in her eyes, the same symbols I’d seen from Amon’s tattoos.

Then, Melrose had shared with me something very intriguing. She didn’t remember how she died, or while she had been alive, what she had been seeking inside the shadow archives. All she could remember was that Amon’s father had locked her spirit into the grimoire.

The magical symbols, were they a language ?

Could I read it as Amon had suggested?

A roll of parchment sat on the edge of my bed. I ran my hand over the parchment, unrolling until an image appeared. It was a picture of the tree of shadows.

“Lucy? ”

I jumped at Amon’s voice. It was weaker than normal. “Where are you?”

“I’m trapped.”

“Where?”

“Down here.”

A splotch of black ink moved across the parchment, where it took the form of a feather.

“You can’t be serious right now,” I stammered.

The feather hovered about the parchment, mixing with the ink as other symbols appeared. “I’m as serious as the shadow spell you are holding.”

My fingers grip the parchment. “You painted a spell?”

“I had to if I was to save you from Melrose.” The feather turned into a serpent, a star, then a patch of mushrooms. “And right now, Melrose has me where she wants me.”

“Trapped in your artwork?”

The feather bristled. “I inherited my mother’s magical shadow painting talents when she passed away. It is both a gift, and a curse. Because this talent was once owned by a witch, only another witch can pull me out of here.”

My hands shook, making the parchment tremble. “How?” I stammered as I tried to understand what was exactly going on.

“Lucy, you need to listen to me closely,” Amon said. “You only have so much time before—”

Something moved in the room that was too big to be a hedgehog.

My body was forced backward, slamming against the wall. Coiling bands of ebony serpents came billowing out of the floorboards .

“ Finally. . . ” a sinister voice echoed in my head.

“ No, she’s mine ,” another one growled.

My wrists were bound by thick black bands, forcing me against the wall.

“Hey back the fuck off!” I yelled.

“ Oh, she’s a feisty one ,” one of them whispered behind me. “ Let’s see just how feisty you are when we play .”

Try as I might, I couldn't free myself from the restraints these shadows put on me. “Who are you?”

A hand caressed my hips, sliding down my ass. “ Amon has been doing his best to hide us, ” another replied. The voices were thick and gravely.

No, these things, they couldn’t be part of Amon. There was a softness to him these entities did not possess.

Were these the shadows Melrose tried to warn me about?

“What do you want?” I demanded.

“ The question is, what do you want, Lucy Crow ?” A finger traced over my cheek. A shiver rippled up my spine as the hands began to venture lower. “ What does a witch who refuses to practice magic want from shadows like us ?”

“I didn’t know you even existed until now,” I shot back. “But if you must know, I want every witch, demon, and wendigo to leave my library alone!”

A growling chorus of laughter followed. “ Witches have long known about demonic shadows. The Bone Threader is a greedy demon. He has already tasted your magic. He will not stop devouring what is most important to you until he has consumed it .” My head snapped back to the wall as the bands tightened. “ We must know. What did that witch say about us when she took you to the Summoning ?”

My throat constricted as a hand caressed my jugular. “She said Amon had another part of himself that I shouldn’t trust.”

Fingers traced down my neck, a thumb stroking a line across my clavicle. “ Do you believe her ?”

I stared into the ebony mass coalescing before me, wondering if Amon could hear this conversation I was having with his inner demons. Part of me wanted to fight. Another side of me wanted to close my eyes and fall into this devious part of him. The desire here was so thick, it threatened to suffocate me.

This darker side of Amon knew something about Melrose’s death.

I turned my cheek away from the hand as fingers traced up toward my lips. “I want you to tell me what you remember of Melrose’s death. I want you to pull Amon out of that painting and tell him what you have been keeping from him.”

The hand became many, each with fingers tracing cold lines over my flesh. “ What is in it for us ?”

My fingers burned. “I will give you more than just a taste of my magic.”

The hands caressing my throat pulled away. “ If we do, you must agree that we will be included, all of us .”

I stared at the dominant form of the shadows, his eyes lurking inside of the ebony mass. I might as well be making a deal with the devil. “Deal. All of you, no less. ”

A growling laugh rumbled like thunder as the coiling blackness released me.

Slowly, the voices faded away, until Amon coalesced before me. His hair fell into his eyes as a crooked smile spread across his face. “Thank darkness that you are okay,” he said, his voice barely a whisper. “I was worried sick about you.” His hands worked through my hair, fingers gripping the back of my skull as his eyes found mine. “I knew you had talent, but I have never seen a witch convince my shadows to do what you just did. How did you convince them to let me out?”

“I told them that they needed to stop keeping secrets from you around Melrose’s death.”

His eyes met mine, onyx fire in them. “I think I’m the one who needs to stop keeping secrets.”

His lips crashed against mine as he started kissing me. As his tongue and mouth traced a scorching line down my throat, something else was communicated with me. I knew that he’d been withholding. Not because he didn’t feel something, but because he was afraid of what the hidden parts of himself might do to me.

I was fairly certain that Amon’s shadows and I shared the same fears. Fears of being forgotten. Ignored. The fear of secrets we kept hidden.

When he pulled away, I shuddered. His kiss left me breathless. “Amon, I’m not afraid of you, or your shadows. I’d spent enough time running away from my own magic to know that I haven’t been doing myself any favors, especially when it comes to relationships. ”

The mess with Jason blurred through me. Memories of blaming myself, all because I couldn’t read him. That’s where my magic stemmed from. To share. To make sense of. To understand. Those talents didn’t come only from books in my library, or grimoires.

He traced his finger over my throat. “Did my shadows do this to you?”

I shivered in the huskiness of his voice. “They restrained me.”

His brow slashed. “Where else did they touch you?”

Heat branched through my legs. I couldn’t stop fantasizing about how badly I wish they had kept going. I shook my head. What was wrong with me?

“Show me, now,” he commanded as his hands continued to inspect my arms.

“There might be something on my back,” I said, turning away from him.

He lifted my shirt. Callused fingers grazed over my skin, raising gooseflesh. He traced over my shoulders, and each of my ribs, great gentleness in his caress.

“A demon’s shadows can be dangerous,” he whispered. “A witch should never turn her back to them.”

My fingers were vibrating with magic I still didn’t understand. What if I wasn’t reading it correctly? If I turned away from it now, would I ever be able to face the hidden parts of myself?

I grabbed his hand, threading my fingers through his. “How dangerous?”