Hope's Wish Read online

  With another deep breath, James concentrated on Nim. Pictured the petite woman with her purple buzz-cut pixie hair, multiple piercings up the length of her right ear, her intricate tattoo of a phoenix rising up her left thigh, and her striking blue eyes.

  Focused on her existence.

  And clicked his fingers.

  Nothing.

  “What the…” he muttered, frowning.

  All he had to do to project an echo of himself to someone was think about them, and voila, he was there. Well… half there, half where he was.

  It was instant and accurate.

  Normally.

  “Where the hell are you, Nim?”

  He intensified the image of her in his mind.

  Nothing. It was as if she didn’t exist.

  She did, of course. He’d watched her eat a bowl of noodles less than twenty-four hours ago. Nim was ferocious and snarky and full of bite and sunshine. She was one of his favorite humans, even if she did have a thing for turning his tea to coffee whenever he beat her in the weekly office betting pool on how many times Christen would swear at the staffroom microwave.

  “Alright, Nimeu,” he muttered, closing his eyes as he rolled his head and shook out his shoulders. “Show yourself.”

  Nope. Nothing.

  “Well, this is farking inconvenient.” Shaking his head, he drew a slow breath, formed an image of Kitt in his head, and clicked his fingers.

  And projected his image into Kitt’s kitchen.

  The dawn sun streamed through the large window running the length of the room, casting the wolf shifter—wearing only sweatpants, and pouring himself a coffee—in a golden hue.

  “Morning, Rover,” James said, throwing Kitt a smile. “Wanna play fetch?”

  “Shit!” Kitt dropped his coffee, caught the mug by its handle just before it hit the floor, and then glared at James. “Hastin, you smoky son of a…” Straightening, he flicked spilled coffee from his hand, swiped it dry on his sweatpants, and glared harder at James. “What the hell are you doing in my kitchen?”

  “I need to talk to Nim, but I can’t locate her.”

  “She’s on assignment.” Kitt poured more coffee into his still-dripping mug, rested his butt against the kitchen counter, and crossed his ankles. “Unreachable. Even to you.”

  James let out a ragged sigh. “Kade’s orders?”

  “Kade’s orders.” Kitt took a sip before smacking his lips together in melodramatic appreciation. “He suspected you’d try to shirk your duties looking after Ms. Hope. Or ask someone to come lend a hand. Or to run interference.”

  “Sneaky bastard.”

  Kitt snorted. “I was there when you first laid eyes on her in Kade’s office, Jimmy Boy. I’ve never seen a man want to both run in the opposite direction quick smart and throw himself at a woman there and then. It was very entertaining.”

  “I’m glad my conundrum amuses you, Rover.” James raked a hand through his hair. “But I’ve got a legit situation, and I need help.”

  Kitt’s eyebrows lifted. “Sorry, did the genie just admit to needing help?”

  “The genie did. The genie is, possibly, in a shite-load of trouble.”

  Kitt frowned. “Shit, you’re not kidding, are you?”

  James sighed. “I wish I was, for once.”

  “What’s going on? What can I do to help?”

  James studied Kitt. He’d never told anyone why he was trapped in the human realm. No one knew, not even Kade or Feathers—and the vamp and the angel had unique ways of knowing almost everything.

  “James.” Kitt placed his coffee mug on the counter, crossed his arms over his chest, and met his wary stare. “Let me fucking help you. What’s going on?”

  Swallowing, James clawed at his scalp again. “Shite.”

  “Talk to me, James.” Worry etched Kitt’s face. “Please.”

  Letting out a raw breath, James dipped his head in a nod. “Okay. So this is it—fourteen-hundred years ago, I was summoned to mankind’s realm by a sorcerer in what’s now known as Wiltshire.”

  “Wiltshire? In the UK?”

  “Yeah, where Stonehenge is.” James snorted. “It looked very different back then, trust me. He summoned me in a ritual involving a sacrificial goat and some other messed-up shit—which is the traditional way a djinn is brought to this realm—and requested I stop his village from dying of a sickness he himself inadvertently created. I did. Took me a while, cost him a lot in wishes, but I did. And I fell in love with his daughter at the same time.”

  “Whoa.”

  “Whoa. Yeah, that’s about right. I didn’t mean to, but Rose… She was so kind, so funny, so gentle and fierce and… and…” Her smile filled his head. His heart beat faster. For a split second, Kitt’s kitchen blurred, grew faint, fainter, replaced with a sweeping grassy field and thatch-roofed huts, and the silhouette of a woman watching the morning sun peek over the distant horizon.

  Rose…

  “Rose,” he whispered.

  “What happened to her?”

  Kitt’s low voice rumbled through the soft cree of crickets, and James blinked, the wolf-shifter’s kitchen surrounding him once more.

  Rose…

  Heart tearing, he let out a shaky breath. “When Syrin learned his daughter was in love with me as well, he cast a spell to erase my existence. But it backfired… and killed Rose instead.”

  “Shit.”

  “And in doing so—”

  “What the hell?” Tahlee’s cry filled the room. “James?”

  Shite!

  He spun around, stare clashing with hers.

  “R—Tahlee? Shite, I didn’t lock the door? I thought I’d… You weren’t meant to see—”

  “Crap,” Kitt growled.

  Tahlee staggered back a step, eyes enormous. “Why… What? Oh my God, James, I can see through you! Why can I see through you? Oh my God, what the fuck is going on?”

  * * * *

  Something wasn’t right.

  Philips ran his index finger through the bowl, forming a line in the warm red liquid pooling shallowly at the bottom.

  No. Not right at all.

  The blood slicked the ceramic surface, interrupted by the path made by his finger, retreating from his flesh.

  He narrowed his eyes, his heart thumping. This was not good.

  Something was wrong.

  The spell was a simple one, designed to locate a missing person. Sure, it required blood, but blood magic rarely caused him grief.

  Except this time…

  Lifting his arm above the bowl, he fisted his hand and, with his other index finger, stretched the cut he’d made in his wrist, opening it wider.

  He murmured the incantation again, voice low, stare locked on the fresh blood dripping from the raw wound as he concentrated his thoughts on the woman from the Getty.

  As he chanted the incantation under his breath, the ancient words thrumming through his body, he repeated her name in his head.

  Tahlee Hope.

  His blood bubbled and sizzled as it hit the base of the bowl, agitated.

  He frowned, even as he narrowed his focus harder on the elusive bitch. Incantation complete—for the second time—he lowered his hand and traced his finger through the new blood mingling with the old.

  Again, the warm liquid parted with his finger’s path.

  “Fuck.”

  Wherever Tahlee Hope was, she was protected by some serious magic.

  “Fuck!” he shouted, flinging the bowl off the table and across the room with a swipe of his hand. Blood splashed onto his face and, wincing, he smeared it over his lips and neck.

  This was his third attempt to locate her since she’d disappeared from the West LA Community Police Station.

  The first attempt—using the blood of the imbecilic grunt who’d failed to grab her when she’d first left the cops—had failed spectacularly. It had been a long time since Philips saw a corpse turn inside out during a spell. The deceased grunt had done just that, spraying
guts and blood and ichor around Philips’s private office halfway through what should have been a simple invocation.

  He should have known finding her wasn’t going to be a simple task the second he’d learned her existence was somehow concealed.

  The question was, by whom?

  Whatever the tall man in the dark suit had done to the detective who’d taken her statement, the cop was incapable of revealing his name or who he worked for.

  The only thing Philips could get out of him was the woman’s name: Tahlee Hope. And even that had been like pulling teeth from a live bull.

  Philips, however, had pulled many teeth from living beings, both literally and metaphorically. Extracting the name of the woman who’d overheard his conversation in the men’s toilet had raised a sweat, but he’d finally gotten it.

  The cop might not remember the name of his friends or family for a while—or indeed, his own name—but that was no matter. No one could link Philips to him. The cop had simply decided to go for coffee at two in the morning and had come back… damaged.

  Glaring at the blood-spattered table, Philips straightened to his feet and crossed his office to the bar.

  It should have been easier than this. Searching her hotel room had revealed nothing. Once he had the woman’s name, he should have been able to locate her.

  “So who the fuck is hiding her?”

  He didn’t know.

  In all his years, this was the first time he’d encountered other magic he couldn’t defeat.

  Throughout his childhood and teenage years, he’d encountered no magic at all. Certainly those sluts during his senior year in high school, the ones who’d bragged about being witches, hadn’t actually been practitioners.

  He’d shown them what it meant to truly wield magic, one night when he’d lured them to his parents’ home.

  They’d arrived, dressed in cliched skanky Goth attire, eyeliner so dark it was a wonder their lids hadn’t stuck together when they blinked, weighed down by chains and studs and their own delusions that they were powerful witches. And they’d laughed at him when he’d said he was a wizard.

  They’d quickly stopped laughing—and started screaming and groveling, submitting to everything he wanted to do to them. They’d never said a word about it to anyone after he was finished.

  He’d shown them.

  Of course, he’d since learned he wasn’t a wizard. He hadn’t learned anything about the craft; it had been born to him. He was a sorcerer. Born with powers beyond his understanding as a child, beyond his imagination as an adult.

  Powers that allowed him to punish and destroy and torture those he deemed against him. Powers that allowed him to massage the lives of those beneficial to him.

  Powers that allowed him to shape, manipulate, control and enslave.

  Powers that allowed him to get everything he wanted.

  Except it seemed those powers couldn’t fucking find Tahlee fucking Hope’s location, no matter how much he wanted it.

  Snatching up the bottle of whiskey, he splashed some into a glass.

  Where the fuck was she?

  He’d had to resort to Google to learn she was a journalist from the UK. The moment he’d read that word, journalist, his skin had crawled.

  A scourge, a muckraker. What the fuck had she been doing in the men’s toilet at the Getty?

  It was only an itch in his gut that had made him look back at the door in time to see someone leave the restroom. A short female in jeans.

  He’d been waylaid by Rourke before he could follow her out of the museum, and he’d quickly thrown a hooking spell onto her soul. The spell faded within the hour, but it was long enough for him to learn she’d left the museum and headed straight for the West LA Community Police Station.

  And then his incompetent grunt had lost her completely, and he’d had to step in himself. He didn’t mind getting his hands dirty, but he already had one bitch to deal with, and the last thing he needed was a journalist hearing something she shouldn’t.

  Fuck.

  Was she investigating Rourke? He’d spent many years manipulating Maximillian Rourke’s life, massaging his path. Had dedicated untold hours making sure the businessman ended up exactly where Philips wanted him to end up—and he was not going to allow all that time and energy to be undone by a nosy limey bitch.

  Was she here in the US because of Rourke? Or for other reasons? Were those other reasons why he couldn’t locate her now?

  Was something happening he hadn’t foreseen? Did he have a rival? Was someone else pulling strings he’d thought only he controlled?

  “Fuck!” The glass of whisky shattered as he threw it against the wall. He did not like this. He controlled everything he wanted, not some unseen… what? Mage? Witch? Wizard?

  Sorcerer?

  Surely not. He would have detected someone of that status, that power.

  Are you sure? You’ve killed more than one over the years. Perhaps this one is hiding?

  “Fuck!” He smashed his fists onto the bar.

  Three attempts at locating Tahlee Hope. Three failures. He’d never failed to locate someone using his own blood. Never.

  Which meant whoever was protecting her was powerful. Powerful enough to suppress their identity from the detective’s memory; powerful enough to conceal Tahlee Hope’s presence from him.

  Powerful magic.

  When he found the practitioner, he would slit their throat, drain them of their blood, and absorb their magic and life force, as he had every practitioner of magic he’d ever encountered.

  Once that was done, he’d strip everything from Tahlee Hope’s mind. Reduce her to a human vegetable.

  And then, he’d rip out her tongue and toss her to the sharks.

  Whoever was protecting her might be hiding her life force, but when he was finished, her life—and the lives of those foolishly protecting her—would be null and void. Erased.

  Unmade.

  All he had to do was find her.

  Drawing a deep breath, he crossed back to his desk, selected one of the numerous burner phones, and called a number plucked from the detective’s mind.

  “Taylor residence,” a timid female voice said through the connection.

  “Mrs. Taylor?” He poured a world of compassion and sympathy and kindness into his voice. “This is Doctor… Quincy. I apologize for calling so early but I’ve just seen the ER reports from your husband’s tests.”

  “Oh my God,” Mrs. Taylor blubbered. “I don’t understand what’s happening to him! Since he was released from the ER, he keeps forgetting things. Is it a stroke?”

  Philips ground his teeth and forced out a calming sound. “I think I know what to do. I know it’s a rather unusual request, but I’m hoping you can bring him to me? At my private residence? There’s something I need to check out.”

  “Really? You’d… you’d do… Oh, thank you, Doctor!” More blubbering and tears from the detective’s wife. “Thank you! Yes. I’ll bring him straight away. Just let me get a pen to write your address. Oh, thank you, thank you.”

  Philips smiled, swirling his finger through the blood splatters on his desk. “You’re more than welcome, Mrs. Taylor. You’re more than welcome.”

  Chapter 4

  She ran.

  Bolted through the safe house. Straight for the front door.

  James… James had been…

  Transparent!

  “Tahlee!” he shouted behind her.

  … cast a spell to erase my existence…

  The words she’d overheard him say in the cinema room screamed through her head.

  … killed Rose instead…

  Transparent.

  Cast a spell.

  Killed.

  Oh God!

  She ran faster—and slammed into a hard, warm body.

  “Hope.” Strong fingers curled around her upper arms. “Stop.”

  She screamed. Gibbered up at him. How the fuck had he gotten in front of her?

  “Hope.” His
grip on her arms tightened. “Honey, please.”

  She smashed her knee into his groin, thrashed out of his hold as he doubled over, shoved him aside, and started running again.

  “Stay away from me!” she yelled over her shoulder.

  Transparent. He’d been transparent. She’d been able to see through him.

  See through—

  “Hope.”

  He appeared in front of her again.

  She hit the brakes, fell on her arse, scrambled to her feet and ran in the opposite direction.

  Oh God, what the flipping hell was going on?

  Maybe she was dreaming?

  “Tahlee.” He materialized out of nowhere, directly in her path.

  “Stop that!” she screamed, flailing backward and landing on her arse again.

  She half spun, half clambered to her feet and ran for the door once more.

  Dream. Gotta be a dream. James can’t—

  He appeared out of thin air in front of her. “Please, let me—”

  She dropped her shoulder, drove it into his side, and continued running. Thank you, five years of private-girls-school rugby.

  The front door loomed before her. Teasing her.

  So close. Closer.

  And then James appeared again. One second not there, the next there.

  There.

  Stumbling to a halt, head roaring, heart racing, she bent over and pressed her hands to her knees, staring at him as she sucked in a shaky breath. “I don’t… What are you?”

  He let out an equally shaky laugh, palms facing her. “It’s better if you just keep thinking of me as James.”

  “What are you?” she screamed, stamping her foot.

  “Hope—”

  “No!” She stabbed a finger at him. “You don’t get to do that! We lived together. We had sex every night. I fucking fell in love with you! You don’t get to tell me—after I see you standing there transparent—to just think of you as James. What. Are. You?”

  Closing his eyes, he dropped his head and rubbed at the back of his neck.

  “And don’t you dare think you can sheepish-grin your way out of this,” she snarled. Prickling heat burned away the suffocating ice of her fear. Her blood roared in her ears. “That’s not going to work this time.”