How (Not) to Soothe a Siren (Cindy Eller Book 9) (16 page)

Even now I could feel the coil of cool-almost-icy Magical potential hovering over me. I knew what would happen if I let it go.

I shivered.

I
hated
my Magic.

And what my parents had just told me made it all too clear what was wrong with me and my Magic.

Death.

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Please continue on for an excerpt of
Karma Steele (Witches of Karma book 8)

by

Hope Welsh

Chapter One

Steele

E
ven now, after what had happened with my father and brother in October, I was still reeling. What was I supposed to do now?

My brother Ian was either dead—or imprisoned inside his own mind by my father’s spell. Of course, part of me prayed that he was very much alive…but the thought of being locked inside his mind and unable to communicate would be my worst nightmare. I’d rather be dead.

Amethyst and I were almost friends…Shawn was a different matter. He wasn’t as forgiving as his fiancé. Of course, I’d held the woman he loved at gunpoint for hours so I understood all too well. If the roles had been reversed, I can’t say that I would not have retaliated.

It seemed strange, too, that my other sister, Amber, was marrying her mortal cop—and adopted my father’s last set of triplets. I’d even considered fighting for custody myself—but what could I have offered the babies?  I was single, and certainly had no desire to become involved with anyone. As if my life wasn’t already complicated enough as it was.

Still, I knew that I could at least be there for my newest siblings. But, all that aside, the biggest issue was that we had to find our father and try to find out how to free my brother—if he was still alive.

How could any father do the things my father had done? Not only to Amethyst, Amber, and Topaz—who’d thankfully been hidden from him for years—but from the sons he’d been with for years.

In all those years, my two brothers and I’d known he was a hard man. We knew that he was determined and set in his ways. We had
not
known that he was also a sadistic killer with no compunction at all about destroying lives—and killing the mothers of his children.

How could we stop him? None of us had the first clue as to how to fight him. But just maybe the six of us could? Make that the
five
of us, since…God, even thinking about it was enough to make me physically ill.

The ringing phone drew me out of my musings. Absently, I picked it up. “Hello?”

“Hey,” Flint drawled. “Just checking in. Have you heard from him?”

This had become a daily ritual. Why Flint thought that our father would contact me was beyond me. I wasn’t any more likely to hear from him than Flint was. “No,” I snapped. “Don’t you think I’d have called if he had contacted me?”

I heard Flint’s deep sigh. “Sorry, Steele. I just feel so damn useless. We have to stop him. We have to save Ian.”

“If he’s even alive,” I said. I knew that Flint didn’t want even to entertain the possibility that he was dead—but we had to. We had to get prepared for the worst.

“If he’s alive,” he said with his voice low and bitter.

“We’re going to have to kill him. You know that,” I said.

“Our so-called father? Not a problem for me,” Flint said now, his tone as hard as could be. “We should have seen this coming. We should have done something.”

He was only voicing my own thoughts. How did one reconcile themselves with the knowledge that their own parent was pure evil? I sure didn’t know. Hell, we’d all need therapy before this was over, I thought bitterly. “We couldn’t have stopped him, Flint. Don’t put this on yourself—or on me.
We
are not evil. We are nothing like him. Somehow, that has to make a difference.”

“I doubt that the ladies will feel the same,” he said darkly. “We have sisters.”

I frowned. “I’m well aware of that fact, Flint. Remember?”

“I know you are,” he began, “but have you spoken to any of them since…”

No, I hadn’t. I hadn’t called to check on the new triplets. I hadn’t called Amethyst, and I had never even met Topaz.  “No,” I admitted with a grimace. “I don’t think I’m on the top of their list of favorites.”

“Steele, they don’t hold grudges. You need to be in touch with them. We both do. The only way we can stop our father and save Ian is to work together.”

“Have you spoken to Amber? Has Ian tried to contact her?” I asked.

“No. But then, Amber is pretty busy with three babies, I’d imagined. I hear that she and that cop of hers are getting married.”

“Yeah, I guess,” I said. “Do you think we should have taken the babies?”

There was a long pause before Flint answered. “I wanted to,” Flint replied. “But they need stability. They needed a mother. Amber will be a good mother.”

I could hear the pain in his voice. I’d known that he’d been seriously attached to our stepmother. “I suppose.”

“Hell, Steele, she’s as related as we are, remember?”

That was it. I was still coming to grips with the fact that we shared our batshit crazy father with at least six other witches. “Yeah.” I sighed.  “We need to come up with a plan,” I said as I walked across the room to fix a drink. Scotch. Straight. I gulped it down in one swallow. No matter it wasn’t even ten in the morning yet. The liquor burned as it went down my throat.

“We do, yes—but together. All of us need to work together if we have any hope of stopping him,” Flint said quietly.

That was the rub. We’d have to stop him—and likely the only way would be to kill him. If that was even possible with all the powers at his disposal—with Flint and I having access basically to none. “Can you do it, Flint? Can
we
do it? Can we kill our father?”

Flint’s voice was hard when he replied. “After all he’s done? I’ll have no problem at all, Steele. That might have been the man that donated the sperm—but he was certainly no father.”

Hell, he had a point.

Karma Steele (Witches of Karma Book 8)
is available now on Amazon.

This series contains stories by Elizabeth Reeves, Hope Welsh, and Lanie Jordan. It’s an ongoing series.