Page 16 of An Oath at Midnight

“You’re leaving again.” My stomach tightened into a painful knot.

“One night. I’ll be back sooner, if I can.”

“Right.” I jerked back the covers and shoved my feet in my boots. “Cool.” Deja vu hit. I was living my own personal Groundhog Day. I said my lines, then he said his. Nothing changed.

He grabbed my hand when I tried to walk past. “Mags…”

I looked up at him. “What? What could you possibly say that will make this okay?”

His hand around mine tightened, and he tugged me closer before his other arm hooked around my waist and held me tight, so tight I struggled to breathe. “I’m sorry,” he said roughly.

Tears sprang to my eyes, but I fought them back and pushed away from him. “Yep, you’ve said that already, I don’t know, like three thousand times.” I stared up at him, waiting, hoping he’d say something more. He didn’t. I shook my head and walked past him. “See you later, I guess.”

Then I strode out of the tree house.

* * *

“Come on, maybe it’ll be fun.” I grabbed Jasmine’s hand and pulled her along after me.

“I don’t feel like going to a party,” she grumbled, while several butterflies fluttered around her head. Like Rose, who didn’t have just one familiar but instead countless—in Rose’s case, bats, she could call and control—Jazzy had butterflies.

I wasn’t sure how it worked, and she hadn’t elaborated yet. We didn’t like to push because Jasmine wasn’t one to share unless she needed to. She liked to sort through things on her own first. She’d had a lot to sort through lately, not only with her sister gone so often but with learning to deal with her gift. She was a medium, like Zinnia, and could communicate with the dead, something that had once terrified her. Else and Mom were trying to help her, but it was tough.

“Willow said we all have to be here. It’ll take your mind off everything.” Jasmine was nineteen and our cousin. She was living with us while Zinnia, her older sister, was living in Limbo—with Death, as his consort. It was all pretty complicated and fucked up, but Zinnia had no other choice. She had, however, negotiated the terms of her time there. She stayed with Death every other month until Jasmine turned twenty-one, after that she would have to stay there permanently.

Well, that wasn’t fucking happening. We had two years to figure something out, and we wouldn’t rest until we’d found a way to get her out of the bargain. Zinnia wasn’t as hopeful as us, and she didn’t talk about her time there when she came home. This was her month to be away, and Jasmine desperately needed a distraction, and I did as well.

We got out of the car and strode toward the clubhouse. There was a huge garage to the right of it, and both had the Devil Dogs logo painted on the side of the building.

The clubhouse was in Linville, a thirty-minute drive from Roxburgh, and the hellhounds who lived there looked and acted like a human motorcycle club, for the sake of the humans in this town. They lived all together in the den they’d dug out below the main building, and Willow lived here with Warrick, her mate and alpha of the hounds.

Jazzy and I walked in and were hit by a wall of sound and pure undiluted testosterone. The latter so thick you almost needed a shovel to get through it. Leather, motor oil, bulging muscle, and lots of hair. The hounds were huge, all close to seven feet, and had lived the majority of their extremely long lives in Hell.

Tonight, they were partying. Mom and Arthur had just walked in ahead of us, and everyone else was already here.

I turned to Jazzy. She looked cute in shorts and a baggy, black T-shirt. She was no stranger to the hounds and hung here with Willow a lot. She also liked to draw, and Roman, the hounds’ tattoo artist, had gotten her to work with him a few times. Jazzy had asked for payment in ink, and now her arms and hands were decorated with a bunch of small tattoos. Flora and fauna, animals and insects. They were pretty and delicate and suited her. “Let’s go get a drink.”

Jasmine nodded, but she was still taking in the room with wide eyes, and I knew the moment she spotted Ren because she froze. Ren was a fox shifter, and Willow’s familiar. He was the same age as Bram, twenty-two and model handsome. Add in the scars he’d collected over the last couple of years living in the wild, demon-infested woods…well, he was a lot rougher around the edges than he used to be. He had females throwing themselves at him left and right.

Ren had embraced partying and lots of sex as his coping mechanism, after all he’d been through. It was concerning, but at least he was back with us.

“Jazzy?” My cousin had a mega crush on him, and right now there was a female, a wolf shifter from Draven’s pack, running her fingers through Ren’s auburn hair with one hand, while the other slid across his stomach.

“I’m not really in the mood for this,” Jazz said, though I had to read her lips over the loud music.

Willow strode over with a huge smile on her face, but her eyes gentled as they slid to Jasmine and who she was watching. “Come and hang with me and Warrick.”

Jazzy sucked in a breath and dragged her gaze from Ren, who was now making out with the wolf, and she smiled, though it was more a baring of teeth. “Yeah, I’m just…I need a Coke.” She strode off across the room, toward the bar.

Willow looked over at Ren and worry shifted across her features before she turned back to me. “Try to have fun, okay?” Then she followed Jasmine.

The hounds could get wild, but this was a bit more relaxed than some of their parties, despite the making-out sessions here and there. I spotted the birthday hound and strode over.

“Hey, Lothar. Happy birthday.”

He glanced down at me and gave me a chin lift.

“So how old are you?” I asked.