That was nice.
But once it was done, it was done and the spell roared to life, casting the glittering shapes of silver and black runes on the ceiling and walls.
As per the instructions, I collected up the black earth that Vexer had risked his neck for and anointed all five points of both gods’ stars. I tried not to pay attention to the dead blonde girl that was lying in the middle of it all, her still form dressed in the purple, red, and white robes that the queen favored. She was curled on her side around Professor Cross.
Without having to ask, Jasinda passed over a glass bottle filled with a tincture she’d made from the herbs and ever-dark flowers. I swigged a small amount of it and tried not to throw up everywhere. It tasted a thousand times worse than those purple salads Jasinda had ordered the last three days in a row.
“Sprinkle over target,” I said aloud, repeating the instructions so everyone could hear them. If there was a wrong way to interpret that, I had no idea. So I took the mixture and shook it over both the professor’s ghost and the dead body.
Lastly, I took the mineral water and anointed my wrists, ankles, and face before kneeling down on the top point of Hellim’s star and chanting again. The gods were bickering inside of me, much like they had before, but this time … Haversey fled before it escalated any further and I was overwhelmed with the darkness of Hellim’s magic.
Before I could quite figure out what was going on, Trubble trotted into the center of the double circles, climbing right over the corpse and sitting inside of Professor Cross.
I wrinkled up my brow … just before magic exploded outward in a violent wave and sent me flying back into Vexer and crashing into the wall.
Coughing past the dust and debris, I sat up and blinked through the haze at the cat-sized fox, the ghost, and the corpse. Nothing looked different, but Haversey’s holy hallelujah, I felt it in my chest, that spot where the god Hellim had taken up residence … was being occupied by something else.
“What the fuck did you just do?!” I shouted, surging out of Vex’s arms and to my feet. A single … white? … feather drifted off. I caught it in my palm and just stared at it.
“Well, that was an unexpected side effect,” Trubble said, yawning and stretching as he trotted over to sit at my feet. “I suppose since the spell was shadow based, and your wings were black from Hellim’s gift, the Haversey magic had to go somewhere.”
“The … what?!” I asked, curling my wings around my body and gaping in abject shock.
My ebony feathers … were now as white as my hair. Hellim’s physical blessing was now erased, and Haversey’s favor—pure white wings—were there in its place. I wouldn’t have been less shocked if the resurrection spell had actually worked.
“Matz, let’s move the body back to the coffin,” Jas said, taking control of a situation that was quickly becoming anything but.
“The spell backfired … and gave you white wings?” Eli was asking as I stood there glaring at Trubble and trembling. Magic surged through me, hot and violent and dark; it was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. I felt, for the first time ever, that I was more shadow whisperer than spirit whisper. It was disconcerting enough to make me stumble. Okay, so I was clumsy as flub so maybe it was a little of that, too, but if Vex hadn’t caught me, I’d have fallen to my knees.
“It’s more than that,” Professor Cross was saying, pushing his glasses up with a middle finger and rising up from the center of the circle. His tattoos shifted across his muscles, almost like they were straining to get out of him and into me.
“You didn’t?” Dyre was asking, staring at his brother with wide eyes, his spirit form flickering between a glaring blue-white color and an almost invisible outline. “Trubble!”
“You gave me a problem and I presented a solution,” the fox said, using his tail to poke at the silver ash on the floor. It was as he did that when I noticed that two of the runes had been altered just slightly. One had a loop atop a vertical line that was now incomplete, and the other, previously shaped like a capital ‘R’ now looked more like a ‘K’.
I’d been duped … again.
“What. Did. You. Do?!” I snarled, grabbing the fox by the scruff before he could even think to get out of the way of my rage. I was tired of spirits and shadows using me for free room and board. If they wanted something from me, why not just ask?
“An unbound shadow quickly goes to Hell in Hellim’s handbasket, am I right?” Trubble asked with a smirk. A smirk. He dared smirk at me?! “I needed to bind myself to an appropriate target and—”
“You could have asked!” I roared, shadow magic swirling around inside my chest. I could feel my connection to the little shadow creature, this binding fist squeezing tight on the very fabric of my soul. “All you had to do was ask.”
My right hand was holding the fox aloft, and I used my left to clutch the pair of necklaces around my throat.
“Oh? Well, it’s a bit late for that now, isn’t it?” Trubble asked … just before magic exploded out from my necklaces and I found myself no longer holding onto a furry scruff, but looking up into the face of an extremely handsome man.
My fingers were curled around the nape of his neck, my breasts pressed against his bare midsection, his naked bits pressed up against mine.
“What the—” I won’t repeat the words that Air said because, you know, they were vulgar enough that I’d probably lose feathers by proxy. That, and he’d added a few choice exclamations in like zooterkins, whatever the flub that meant.
Ah, and also, I was pressing front to front with a naked dude who used to be a fox.
“Mm,” Trubble said, putting his hands on my hips and grinning with two sharp little canines. He teased a fluffy tail down the length of one arm and leaned toward me, dark purple hair flopping into his face. “This, this is even more unexpected.” He reached out and teased the edge of one of my wings, drawing attention to the fact that they were now black again. “And this I very much like.”
He leaned in to kiss me as I shoved back and went to punch him in the face.
Vexer, though, he beat me to it.
“You’re worrying over nothing!” I told Dyre as he paced in front of me and tapped the sheathed tip of his katana along the floor as he went. “Stop being such a virgin and calm down for a minute.”
“You,” he ground out, getting in my face. We were the same height, so his nose brushed against mine as I gave him the most infuriating smirk I could manage. Being in this form was exhilarating. I was used to getting one day a year—my birthday, actually … our birthday—to experience the pleasures of the flesh. To fuck. I had no idea how long this was going to last, but I’d be damned if I missed out on getting laid while I had a big, thick cock to use. Of course, I had a cock in fox form, too, but what was I going to use it for? There weren’t exactly a plethora of lady shadow foxes for me to have sex with.
No, my fox self was as much a virgin as my sexless brother.
“You, what?” I asked as he gritted his teeth and looked like he wanted to use Masayoshi—his sword—to cup my beautiful head off. And it was quite the glorious head. I flicked my bronze eyes over to the mirror and flashed myself a very pretty grin. Women couldn’t resist me in this form. I had no problem finding six, seven, ten women to fuck in a single day. And I had the stamina to keep up. “You can’t just say you all threatening like, and not follow through with it.”