Gray Court (Black Hat Bureau Book 7), page 1
GRAY COURT
HAILEY EDWARDS
Copyright © 2023 Black Dog Books, LLC
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Edited by Sasha Knight
Copy Edited by Kimberly Cannon
Proofread by Lillie's Literary Services
Cover by Damonza
Illustration by NextJenCo
CONTENTS
Gray Court
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Join the Team
About the Author
Also by Hailey Edwards
GRAY COURT
Black Hat Bureau, Book 7
After wiping out an entire black witch coven on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain, Rue can no longer afford to have a laissez-faire attitude toward the Maudit Grimoire. Its black magic is infecting her, and it’s leaking into her familiar bond with Colby, poisoning the loinnir with its thirst for violence.
A trip to the fae realm ought to be just the ticket, but any hope for a quick fix dies when a message arrives from High Priestess Naeema. Her daughter has gone missing, and she tasks Rue with finding her in exchange for her help. With the grimoire sinking its hooks in deeper, can Rue afford to put off disposing of the cunning book yet again? The price of saving Naeema’s daughter might cost Rue her own.
CHAPTER ONE
“I can’t decide how to fill the eggs.”
Lashes matted together with sleep, I groaned and rolled onto my stomach, mashing my face into my pillow. No. That was the whole problem. It wasn’t my pillow. It was a new pillow. A fluffy pillow. Stuffed with a hypoallergenic down alternative, whatever that meant.
Its plush extravagance left me aching for the lumpy pancake I had been sleeping on for years, but that pillow—my pillow—was at home. A home that might as well have been on another planet compared to the farm and the tiny house where Asa and I now lived as a result of my falling out with Camber and Arden. The same tiny house that had suffered a seasonally challenged golem incursion before dawn.
“I bought six dozen multicolor plastic eggs, one dozen plastic gold eggs, and one giant grand prize egg.”
Groping for Asa’s ridiculously soft pillow, I snatched it and covered my head, sandwiching my ears between two luxurious golem-muffling layers.
“The colored ones are easy.” He ignored my attempts to ignore him. “I put gift cards for local restaurants in those.”
The mattress dipped when he invited himself to sit beside me, and I rolled toward him, wrapping myself in the comforter like a breakfast burrito.
Mmm.
Smoked beef brisket, molten cheese, fried potatoes, scrambled eggs, with tomatillo sauce on a homemade tortilla. Throw in a few green chilies, and you had perfection.
Now that would have gotten me out of bed with a smile on my face.
“The gold ones are giving me fits.” He shifted his weight closer. “What’s better than the gift of food?”
The gift of sleep.
“Go away.” I snuggled down until the covers brushed my nose. “The sun isn’t up yet.”
“You mean that great burning ball of hydrogen and helium that has no respect for the melting point of wig adhesive? That was up hours ago.” He turned smug. “So was Ace.”
That cracked my eyelids open, as he knew it would. I squinted at the khaki sunhat he sported to protect his bare scalp from sunburn. A wig would have helped with that, but no. Clay’s paranoia over bleaching his babies meant he preferred to go au naturel on the farm.
“I had blackout shutters installed on all the windows.” He leaned over and mashed buttons on a digital display Colby had explained away as the brains of the operation. Thermostat. Fuse box. Solar panels. Voice commands for lights and music trained to respond to Asa and not me after she caught me barking orders into thin air with increasingly violent tones one too many times. “Let there be light.”
Wide slats within the double-pane windows fanned out like blinds then cranked up into a decorative recess, allowing for golden sunlight to bathe my unimpressed face.
“Ugh.” I kept burrowing until the fabric covered my head, but it was too thin to do much good. “Argh.”
“I believe the word you’re looking for is arrr.” He yanked, exposing my tender eyeballs again. “As in arrr, maties.”
“The word I’m looking for can’t be said in polite company.”
“We have company?” He glanced left to right, up and down, front to back. “I don’t see anyone.”
“Well, at least you know I didn’t mean you.” I gave up on rest and shoved upright, settling into a dejected slump against the padded headboard. “St. Patrick’s Day is…” I could not math this early. “Let’s say a week away.” Easter jumped around, which made tallying days even harder. “That means your eggstravaganza is…” I tried picturing a calendar in my head with no luck, “…a month out?”
“Eggstravaganza is now mine.” He dictated a note to his smartwatch. “I’ve co-opted it. Thank you.”
“Religious reasons aside—” I folded my legs under me, resisting the temptation to stretch them out then slide slowly, slowly down until I was right back where I started from. “Actually, no. That’s it.” I wiped the corners of my eyes. “That’s why the centuria doesn’t hunt eggs. Not their circus, not their monkeys.”
A bunny delivering chocolates to fake grass nests made about as much sense, theologically, as Santa shimmying down chimneys to leave gifts under artificial trees.
Good thing I didn’t have to understand where the symbology went wrong to appreciate the commercialized versions of holidays.
“But egg hunts are fun.” He made bunny ears behind his head. “The centuria needs more joy in their lives.”
“You’re building them a water park.” I never wanted to see those bills. “That’s all anyone needs.”
“You hunt eggs with Colby.”
“I didn’t know what to do with a kid when she first came to live with me, so yes. I celebrated every holiday to make sure she didn’t miss out on one that might have been important to her or her family.”
The way Colby coped with her transformation into a moth was to pretend she had always had wings, that it had always been only the two of us, that she had sprung into existence the night she died at the hands of a serial killer who would have consumed her soul had she not chosen me as the lesser evil.
Those earliest bumbling attempts I made to ensure her happiness saddled us with a yoke of family traditions no self-respecting black witch would be caught dead honoring.
Good thing I was embracing my gray areas these days.
“She conned you into celebrating big gift holidays.” Clay laughed proudly. “You realize that, don’t you?”
“All the excess holiday cheer in our lives? She’s not responsible. I am.” I swung my legs over the edge of the mattress, unable to sit still while reliving those dark days. “I was terrified I would kill her with neglect. She was afraid I would cave to the temptation of consuming her magic.” I rose and crossed to the nearest window. “We tiptoed around each other, barely spoke. It was miserable and awkward. Ugly sweaters, anatomically incorrect hearts, and gelatinous cranberry cylinders helped us bond when we had nothing else in common.”
“Normally, I would advise the way to anyone’s heart is through their stomach, but you can only dress up sugar water and pollen in so many ways.”
“Agave nectar, evaporated cane juice, malt syrup, coconut sugar.” That was just her liquid diet. “The list only gets worse from there.”
Exotic pollen granules alone threatened to bankrupt me until Colby decided she preferred to eat local.
Having been born a fae child, she’d had to figure out her new dietary preferences as a moth.
Having been raised a black witch, I had to figure out how to break my chain of addiction to be present in her life. And, you know, not eat her.
Holidays were as good a way as any to bridge the gap between our past and ever-evolving present selves.
“Has Colby ever had competition for her egg hunt?”
“No.” Through the window, I located Asa in dark wash jeans, a new wardrobe staple. His messy man bun begged me to pull the elastic free then comb out the tangles with my fingers. “There was no one else.”
As the person who hid the eggs, I would have ended the hunt in minutes if I joined in.
“Think how much fun she’ll have this year.” He came up behind me. “She’ll massacre the centuria.”
“Then choose your grand prize appropriately,” I advised him. “Let’s keep it tangible, okay?”
Now that I paid her a salary, she had chests full of pixelated gold coins in her various Mystic Realms lairs. And armor, and potions, and weapons, and rideable creatures of various mythological origins.
Pretty much everything a girl could want on her quest to vanquish the orc scourge on land and sea.
“That I can do.”
Knowing Clay, tangible meant tech, but I wanted her to spend quality time with her online friends too. It was good for her to bond with kids her own emotional age. Their playdates and sleepovers might occur within the digital landscape of their favorite game, but she didn’t stick out among gamers. Most of them lived too far away to ever visit one another IRL, so they were content with being virtual besties.
Mornings like this one, where Clay stabbed me in the eye with the sun to wake me, I wouldn’t mind being able to turn off a monitor to banish him while I slept in.
There were definite perks to having friends you could unplug for a few hours when you wanted alone time.
“Hmm.” His voice went soft in thought. “I wonder if Mr. Squiggles would like an egg in his tank.”
“Sure.” I had no idea how jellyfish felt about plastic eggs, but they did float. “I bet he would love it.”
Maybe it would remind him of the friends he left behind in Lake Pontchartrain.
“I agree.” He grinned. “I have one almost his exact same color.”
Things on the other side of the window got interesting, and I forgot all about the jellyfish.
“What is he doing?” I pressed my nose to the cool glass. “Why is he half naked?”
“Ace?” Clay peered over my shoulder. “He was sparring earlier.”
Sweat. Bare skin. Violence.
Three of my favorite looks on him.
Peeling away from the view, I scowled back at my so-called bestie. “You woke me up for your eggsistential crisis, but not that?”
“Co-opting.” He murmured a reminder of the word to his watch. “That is also now mine.”
To get his attention, I thumped his ear, and my hand came back smelling like his sunscreen.
“Everyone is afraid of your temper after you almost killed Moran for giving him a boo-boo.” He tweaked my nose as payback. “You’ve been banned from spectating until after you mate him.”
“It was only the one time.” I rubbed my nose, guaranteeing I would smell coconut all day. “I apologized to Moran.”
“I notice you didn’t promise to try harder to behave yourself.”
“I can’t imagine ever letting someone take a swing at him without retribution.”
Fascination took the blame now, sure, but I worried I was just as much at fault for my protective streak.
“Hmm.” He scratched his jaw. “We assumed this too would pass.”
“Yes, well, you know what they say about when you assume.”
It makes an ass out of u and me.
Eager to close the distance between me and Asa, specifically my tongue and his salty-sweet throat, I shoved Clay out the door and pulled on jeans and a tee. I skipped shoes, which sucked for my tender feet, but bare was best. With fresh dirt pressed between my toes, the earth would familiarize itself with my power signature quicker. Thanks to the sharp stones, I fed the land a few drops of blood every day as I walked it from corner to corner, laying a path that would become permanent wards over time.
The whole process felt like starting over from scratch. Home was right there, but I was stuck over here. Here wasn’t a bad place to be, but it wasn’t home. Home was a small white house on a hill with a stream behind it and friends living down the road.
Except, my memory helpfully supplied, Camber and Arden weren’t my friends anymore.
One had yet to realize it, thanks to her choice to relinquish her memories, but the other…
Arden would never forget or forgive what I had done. Her decision to retain her memories guaranteed she would remember enough for the both of them.
Once I secured my new wand—fine, so it was a footlong round dowel stolen from Clay’s crafting stash—I strapped on my kit of magical accoutrements. The pang of absence from my first wand left me heartsore and unmotivated to source wood for a new one.
Most wands required an emotional link to allow them to channel power.
For white witches, it was a familial element. For black witches, it was a link to an important death.
Mine, snipped off the magnolia tree that leaned over Mom’s symbolic grave, had covered both bases.
But now, with her spirit wandering with Dad, her burial site felt emptier than ever.
Granted, a dowel wasn’t an ideal conductor, but the link to Clay was enough to make it work.
Balanced on the top step leading down into our small communal yard, I paused to let my eyes adjust to the piercing sunlight.
Before I could blink, a white blur smacked me in the face, knocking me into the siding, and my skull cracked against the door. “Oomph.”
“I win.” Colby slapped my cheeks with excited wingbeats. “You’re the slowest daemon on the planet.”
Careful not to hurt her, I peeled her off and cuddled her to my chest. “I don’t have brain damage, thanks for asking.”
“Sorry,” she panted, voice high and reedy. “I had to win, and you got in the way.”
That was Clay logic if I ever heard it. Their unholy alliance continued to be the best and worst idea ever.
With her tucked in close, I shoved off the door with my shoulders. “Who are you tormenting today?”
“Pegleg.”
Given the Mystic Seas obsession sweeping the farm, I couldn’t begin to guess who had earned that nickname. “Who?”
“Me.” A boy with stone-gray skin and silver-white hair trotted the final distance while Colby basked in her win. “I’m Peleg, milady.” He waited for me to descend the stairs then took my hand, bowed over it, and kissed my knuckles. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“And you.” I refused to melt inside at his adorableness. “You must be new to the centuria.”
“No, milady.” A pale blush whitened his cheeks. “I’ve come to visit my mother.”
“Ah.” I hadn’t realized security was allowing new faces on the property. “Who might that be?”
“Primipilus Moran.”
A bolt of understanding struck me, and Clay’s sudden obsession with his Eggstravaganza made a whole lot more sense.
This wasn’t about the daemons. Okay, not only about them. This was about Moran. And impressing her kid. The way to a single mom’s heart wasn’t through her stomach, but through her child.
“Your mother is a fierce warrior.” I itched to ruffle the hair around his tiny horns, imagining this must be how Asa looked while his were growing in. “I bet you’re one too.”
“I am too young for battle,” he lamented, “but I will prove myself to Mother one day.”
“I hope you’re a better fighter than you are a runner,” Colby sassed him. “I beat you four times.”
“You have wings, Lady Moth.” He offered her a shy smile. “How can I ever hope to catch you?”
“Practice,” she laughed, and zoomed off to race him back to their starting point.
With a polite bow to me, Peleg loped after her, a slender tail tufted in white swishing behind him.
“Good morning.” Asa kissed my nape, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. “I see you’ve met our guest.”
The trauma of that interaction had dulled my senses if I hadn’t noticed how the heat amplified the rich green apple and warm cherry tobacco scent of his skin sooner.
“That boy…” I gawked after them. “He was flirting with Colby.”
“Why do you think I stayed to supervise?” His laughter puffed against my neck. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“The flirting?” I began mentally drafting an if you hurt her, I will [fill in the blank] speech. “I haven’t decided yet.”
