Page 40 of The Bone Witch
“I’m sorry to hear about Ruby. She was greatly respected and will be eternally missed,” Marx offers, and the reminder of her loss makes my throat grow tighter with emotion. Marx releases his grip, his fingers running a line down the inside of my forearm as he steps back. Then just before he pulls his hand away, he flips my palm up and runs his gaze over my wrist.
He does it quickly, smoothly, probably hoping his touch alone serves as enough of a distraction that I won’t think twice about what he just did. But Rogan’s vow mark sits crimson against my skin, and suspicion swells in my gut.
How did he know to look for that?
“What are you doing?” I ask evenly as he casually steps back, an attractive and friendly smile on his face. It’s probably meant to disarm me, but all it does is serve to make me even more uneasy.
Marx’s brow dips in confusion, but his eyes don’t radiate the same emotion. “Getting acquainted with the newest Bone Witch of the revered Osseous line. Why?” he queries innocently.
Rogan moves his weight from one foot to the other, and my eyes narrow.
“What am I missing here?” I press.
“What do you mean?” Rogan counters.
“Don’t answer my question with a question, what’s going on?”
“Lennox—”
“Don’t Lennox me, Rogan. This place is like that bunker the government built inside a mountain in Colorado,” I point out, gesturing to the house behind me. “I swear on my ancestors I will walk right in there and make this bitchimpenetrableif you don’t tell me what you two are up to. And don’t even think of insulting me by saying nothing. Something else is going on here, I feel it in my fucking bones,” I snarl at the two shady witches.
They both just stare at me, silently, and I can feel my rancor rising. I spin on my heel, but Rogan reaches out and catches my arm. With a flick of my wrist, there’s a bone spike centimeters away from his throat. He bats it away like the threat means nothing, and it makes me want to scream in frustration. I can’t really do any serious damage to him without risking it affectingourmagic.
“Ooh, this is fun,” Marx quips as Rogan and I stare at each other, fuming.
“Three months ago, your grandmother warned the Order that someone wanted to restore the fragmented branches of magic back to one.” Rogan stares, his eyes burrowing into mine. “She didn’t know more than that, said it came to her in a dream. She tried to dig into who and why, but she told us no matter what she did, she was blocked, that she couldn’t see more than the warning itself.”
“We, of course, took note of the cautionary message, but with no one else in the community reporting a similar vision, and with Ruby unable to dig any deeper, it was filed away and forgotten,” Marx adds.
“And then witches started disappearing,” Rogan states quietly.
I pull my arm from his grip and step back, needing distance between us as I reel from what they’re saying. “How do you know all of this?”
“I didn’t at first, not until Elon disappeared. I hit a dead end and called Marx, hoping he could help, and that’s when he told me about your grandmother and her warning.”
“Guess who was tasked with filing the report,” Marx states, pointing a thumb at himself.
Anger and bewilderment nest behind my sternum, and I try to piece together why Rogan didn’t tell me all of this from the beginning. “So what does all of this have to do with me?”
“I went to see your grandmother, hoping somehow she could shed some light on this. I thought if Elon’s disappearance had to do with her warning, maybe now she might be able to pick up on something. Hopefully give us a lead, but when I got there, I found you.”
His green eyes shoot to Marx for a millisecond before coming back to me, and my hackles go up in warning.
“When I realized that Ruby was gone, it dawned on me that maybe the reason she couldn’t see, read, or sense who might be behind her warning was because the culprit was close to her. So I—”
“You thought I was behind this?” I interrupt, gesturing to his brother’s safe haven behind me. “And what, making me your familiar…”
“Was an insurance policy,” Rogan finishes. “If you were behind it, I could put you in check. If not, no harm done.”
“No. Fucking. Harm. Done?” I seethe.
“I didn’t know you were going to tether us,” he defends, and rage overcomes me.
“Are you insinuating that this is my fault?” I shriek, and I feel the land beneath my feet and the house behind me quake slightly with my fury.
“Whoa, just calm down,” Marx inserts.
“Shove calm up your ass, Siren,” I fling back, and his answering chuckle pisses me off even more.
