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My breath was shaking when I looked up at him.I couldn’t read his expression, but his eyesglowed.His hand lifted, and he ran his fingers down the side of my face, over my hair, fisting it lightly, then released me.

He said nothing, but his chest was heaving and his nostrils were flared as he stared down at me, a rumble rolling from him.

I’d kissed him.I’d kissed Jagger.Just a touch of lips really, but it was the best kiss I’d ever experienced.

I stood back as he swung his leg over his bike.“Take care, Sutton,” he finally said, his deep voice full of grit.

Then he revved his bike and roared off down the street.

As the sound of his engine grew distant, the only way I was able to soothe the feeling of loss inside me was to fist the shirt at my chest and lift it to my nose again.

ChapterOne

Sutton

Laughter echoed through the trees.I hung back, watching from the shadows as coven Ellis filed out of their cemetery.

A pang of pain, followed by a rush of anger filled me as my mother and father, my sister, aunts and uncles and cousins, all together, enjoyed a midnight harvest.Cemeteries were places of great power for a coven.Everything here held magic—the dirt and grass, the gravel on the path, every herb and flower, it was all useful.Magic never left a witch completely, not even when we died.The bones of our ancestors continued to pump magic into the earth, which was why we grew large herb gardens in our cemeteries, so when harvest time came, we were well stocked with powerful ingredients for potions and elixirs.

The clink of the iron gate closing rang out and their chatter slowly faded as they walked away.

Running my fingers down Boo’s back, I left my hiding place behind one of the garden sheds and watched them drive away.Sensing my spiraling emotions, my tiny familiar used the hooks at the ends of his delicate bat wings to climb higher and snuggled under my hair.

“I’m okay, Booboo,” I whispered as I made my way through the headstones and over to the main herb garden.

I had a shift tonight, ambulance duty, and I needed to top off my supplies.We had a small cemetery behind Ashborne house, but it wasn’t as old and nowhere near as powerful.If my family knew I still had access to this place, they would’ve dragged me before the witch’s council and demanded severe punishment.But since my mother had cut me out of their lives like a festering wound, they’d all but forgotten I ever existed.

Apparently, having demon blood tainting the coven was a big no-no.And maybe if I hadn’t transformed into anugly fucking monster, my cousin Bonny’s words, when I used my healing magic, thenmaybe they would have been able to pretend I was normal, said to me by my aunt Julia as my stuff was being tossed out of the house, I would have been here with them tonight.

My father, upon learning I wasn’t biologically his and that his wife had been unfaithful, decided it was too much work to leave her, or even really fight about it, and instead pretended I never existed.He always had been lazy.So yes, they were cold and mean and, more often than not, just awful, but I’d been young, and they were my family.They’d left me alone, unprotected, scared.That rejection, and what came after, had shaped who I’d become.

So, no, I wasn’t with them, and I never would be again.Instead, I skulked around in the shadows and stole what I needed.A literal thief in the night.

I used to pray to the mother every night, begging her to make me like them, to take my demon blood away, but of course the goddess never answered.There was no changing what I was.

I twisted the heavy gold engraved ring on my thumb as I approached my grandmother Bity’s headstone.She’d given it to me before she died, when I’d broken into the house to see her on her deathbed.The spell she’d engraved in it meant I could bypass the Ellis wards and take what I wanted.

Crouching, I ran my hand over the smooth stone.“Hey, Gran.”I pressed my palm to the earth and felt her familiar power vibrating through the ground, and my heart squeezed.“I miss you.”

She’d been the only one in my family to love me as I was.

Shoving down the pain, I quickly grabbed my hand shovel and jar.I filled the container with dirt, then rushed to the herb garden, where I took what I needed, more than I’d usually risk taking, but harvest night was always the best time to come because they never noticed anything missing.

It just really freaking sucked seeing them all together, even if it was only from a distance—and even if they were all awful.

Nope.Shove that down as well.

Quickly packing everything in my bag, I slung it over my shoulder and headed off, pulling my phone out as I walked.I typed a message to Jack, asking him to swing by and pick me up for our shift, then sent a group text to my coven, telling them to let me know if anyone heard from Luke tonight.He hadn’t been home in almost a week, and that wasn’t like him.

I’d been living rough when I’d been introduced to coven Ashborne.Phoebe had offered me a place to stay, and the witches there had welcomed me with open arms.They were all like me, born with mixed blood, and they’d quickly become my family.They were all I needed.

I hit send and my eyes were drawn to the Nightscape message notification that popped up.

My heart did a little leap as I clicked it open.

Jagger had followed me on the app a couple months after he’d left for Hell.I’d been the only person he’d followed then, and I still was.

He didn’t always reply to my messages—okay, I messaged him every day, and he replied like once every couple of weeks, and it wasn’t really a reply, more a request for another picture because hewanted to see for himself that I was okay.That was a lie, though.He’d followed me on Nightscape and had sent me that first message, for one reason only, something that I’d tried to tell myself to forget, that it couldn’t be true, even when everything in me screamed that it was.