Heirloom Magic: Every Witch Way (6 page)

“You should grab a
shower and get yourself cleaned up. I’d be willing to bet you’ll be back to
your old self by the time you’re done,” Jasper said when Harper looked deep in
thought.

Harper was left in
the bathroom looking at herself in the mirror. She could feel her skin tingling
and the redness was already starting to fade. It was tempting to sit and watch
the transformation, but she was too covered in goop to see much of anything.
She shook her head and turned on the shower full blast—waiting until most of
the pinkness had left her skin before braving the hot spray. So far being a
witch sucked, and she was feeling pretty homesick for Chicago.

The air was thick
with steam when she emerged, and Harper held her breath as she wiped her hand
across the fogged up bathroom mirror. Her jaw fell slack, she looked amazing!
Her skin was clear, spotless of any burns, and her hair looked the same as it
always had, long and thick and dark, falling well past her shoulder. Harper let
out a sigh of relief and sagged against the sink as tears pricked at her green
eyes. She knew she’d lucked out tonight. She was definitely in the vampire’s
debt.

Jasper watched her
emerge from the bathroom wrapped up in a towel and stop when she saw him
sitting on the couch. She blushed, and Jasper was amused by how prim and proper
she was. Liz had been hell on wheels. Her granddaughter just didn’t seem to be
made of the same sturdy stuff. Jasper frowned, that didn’t bode well for him.

“I didn’t bring
any clothes in with me,” she mumbled, awkwardly motioning to her towel clad
body. “The clothes I was wearing were pretty much wrecked.” She sighed,
thinking about how she hadn’t brought that many clothes with her at all. “I
think I’ll…”

“Don’t say burn
them!” Jasper said, faking a gasp of horror, and Harper shot him an annoyed
look. He might’ve just saved her from looking like a fool for months on end,
but it was obvious he wasn’t going to let her forget it anytime soon.

“Of course not!”
Harper snapped, “I was going to say throw them in the garbage.” Jasper gave her
a wink, and she turned away with a huff of annoyance and went upstairs to
change.

She settled on a
boring pair of sweat pants and a plain white t-shirt, just in case she
accidentally started anymore fires. She was passing her gran’s room when she
paused and stared at the door. It had been left open a crack and she felt a
draw, pulling her from somewhere behind her belly button. Her hand hovered on
the door knob and she thought about just shutting the door and calling it a
night, but for some reason, she couldn’t. Harper took a step into the bedroom,
her eyes coming to rest on a worn old trunk at the end of the bed. Something
inside was calling her name.

Harper tip-toed
closer, feeling like a little kid who was sneaking into her gran’s room to
steal candy off the dresser. The trunk was old looking, made of thick and
sturdy wood with leather hinges that looked like they’d suffered a bit of
mildew in the past. Harper tried to pull the lid up, but it wouldn’t budge. She
brought her hand closer to examine the lock, tracing it with her finger, and a
golden light shot out of the moonstone ring, forming the shape of a golden key,
and inserted itself, as solid as smoke, into the keyhole. Harper heard a click
and blinked in surprise, startled.

She stared at the
trunk, not sure she even wanted to see what was inside, not after the ring had
scared the bejesus out of her. The call was very loud though, like a tugging
insistence, and finally curiosity got the better of her. She opened the trunk
and winced when the lid let out a major creak. The inside of the trunk looked
like an episode of
Hoarders
. Harper plucked out a ceremonial looking
dagger and shivered. Who knew what her gran had done with the thing? She
gingerly replaced it, not liking the way the rubies on the handle fired to life
when her ring came near them. Harper pulled out a photo album and slowly
flipped through the time-faded pages, finding pictures of her gran as a young
girl, and then an older young woman, and her grandfather as well, whom she’d
never met. She saw pictures of her dad when he was a little boy, and her gran
standing next to a man wearing clothing from a different era. She had to look
twice, but it was definitely Jasper. They were both smiling and looked happy,
and it made Harper frown. There was so much she didn’t know about her gran.

Harper picked up a
pretty looking purple and pink crystal that began to heat up in her hand the
second she touched it, and she dropped it wearily, wiping her hands on her pant
leg. She tucked the photo album underneath her arm and got to her feet. She
shouldn’t be messing with this stuff, and after setting the kitchen on fire,
she didn’t want to get burned twice—literally.

Harper was shutting
the lid when a small book that looked like a journal caught her eye. It was
sitting on top of a manila file folder and, against her better judgement,
Harper scooped them both up before trudging back downstairs to the kitchen
table, ignoring Jasper, who had his eyes glued to the TV in the living room.

The folder drew
her interest first. She flipped it open and winced, covering her eyes to block
out the blood-soaked pile of flesh that had been immortalized by a large 8x12
glossy photograph. Harper took a steadying breath and slowly opened her eyes to
look again. The picture was still there, and it was as gory as she’d thought.
She looked down at the woman who had been photographed on a damp sidewalk. Her
clothing suggested that this had happened sometime in the past, and her throat
was torn out.

Harper gulped, her
hand making its way to her own throat as she flipped the page. More gore met
her every time she flipped the page, this time it was a man, lying prone on the
grass, his throat ripped out the same as all the others.

Harper flipped the
page again and again, and it was all just more of the same. Fifteen victims in
all. The last victim didn’t have their throat ripped out, but they were dead
and they had twin puncture marks on their shoulder. Harper gulped, turned the
page, and stopped short when she saw a picture of Jasper staring back at her.
She had to swallow a scream as she read the report underneath.

Jasper Deluca.

Aliases- Unknown.

Riley, Alabama
Slayer: Located. Twenty-seven victims in all attributed.

Species:
Vampire.

Punishment:
Death.

Harper felt her
head spin in fear as she scrambled to her feet and started to run up the
stairs. She stopped and ran back to the fridge, certain she had seen garlic in
there. She grabbed a bag of garlic that was starting to sprout and took off for
the stairs.

Jasper looked up
as she ran by “Aren’t you going to make popcorn?” he asked, frowning when she
didn’t answer. He listened to the sound of furniture being dragged around
upstairs and shook his head. “Witches be crazy,” he muttered as he went back to
his show, intent on finding out who would be crowned the next champion chef. He
couldn’t eat conventional food, but it still intrigued him.

Harper pulled the
garlic from the bag with shaking fingers and formed a line across the threshold
of the door. Her eyes landed on the cross, hanging on the wall, that her gran
used to bring out every Easter. Harper clutched the cross to her chest as she
shut the door, dragging the heavy dresser in front before setting another piece
of garlic on the window sill and one underneath her pillow. She could learn to
accept the existence of vampires, but to live with one who was obviously some
sort of psychotic killer—it was too much. She stared at her ring, twisting it
with worry as she wondered if it could really protect her. She grabbed her
phone, not willing to take the chance, and blinked when she realized that the
battery was dead.

“Damn it,” she
cursed as she sat down on the bed, shaking and trying to breathe calmly. She
didn’t know if Jasper could hear her heartbeat from downstairs, and she didn’t
want to entice him to come up here and rip it out. She wanted to call Mallory
to come save her, or even Mr. Bell, but she’d left her cord downstairs. “Stupid,”
Harper muttered.

She thought about
taking her cross and some garlic downstairs to get it, but her legs shook and
she kept seeing those pictures in her mind’s eye. It would be dawn in a few
hours and vampires had to sleep, right? She would be safer up here until then.
She sat on the bed and kept guard, but as nothing happened, she began to slowly
drift off to sleep. It would be sunrise soon, she assured herself, and even
though she had recently learned that vampires could go out in the sun, provided
they wear dark sunglasses—Jasper had to sleep sometime—at least she hoped. She
would make her escape in the morning, go back to Chicago, and never look back.

Chapter Six

Harper woke from a dream where her gran had been teaching her to spin
magic, and she was magnificent at casting spells. She blinked and smiled as she
sat up. The sun was streaming into the room and, for a minute, Harper actually
managed to forget everything else.

A dark shape
sitting hunched over in a chair beside her bed made Harper’s gaze fly to Jasper,
who was staring at her intently. Everything flooded back. He was a killer.
Harper let out a loud scream, her fingers felt around the bed until she located
the small head of garlic, and she launched it at his head as hard as she could.

Jasper caught the
garlic with a sigh and stood up. “Garlic doesn’t affect vampires. That is just
an urban legend,” he tsk’d like he was disappointed in her. “Really, I did tell
you not to believe everything you read.” Harper found the cross and held it up
towards him.

“Get back,” she
hissed, getting slowly to her feet as she used the cross to keep the vampire at
bay.

“I know you found
the file,” he said, getting right to the point as he spread his hands up in
surrender, and Harper felt her stomach drop down to her toes. It had been
stupid of her to leave it out in the open. Now he probably had to kill her to
keep her silent. She gulped.

“I take it you
didn’t get any further than the page with my rap sheet?” he asked drolly, and
Harper shook her head.

“I saw enough,” she
told him. Her eyes narrowed as she watched him to make sure he wasn’t going to
make any sudden moves.

“I really wish you
had,” Jasper said, holding the file up to her. “The next page would have
cleared my name.”

Harper smirked at
the vampire. “I bet.”

Jasper sighed and
held up the file, flipping to the proper page.

“I was framed for
most of those murders—it was a rabid wolf that was really the culprit.” He held
up the page, and Harper squinted at the small words, refusing to get too close
or take her eyes off Jasper.

“What do you mean
most of the murders?” she asked suspiciously, not missing his odd phrasing.
Jasper tossed the folder on her bedside table and sighed as he threw himself
down into the chair.

“I was briefly
under the thrall of my sire, and she forced me to do things…” He looked
regretful, but Harper wasn’t sure if she believed him or not. “The last one on
the page.” He pulled out the picture of a beautiful woman with a large chunk of
wood protruding from her chest. “This one was me. I killed her,” he said, far
too casually for Harper’s liking. “Her name was Angelique, and she was a
terrible person and an even worse vampire. I did the world a favor.”

Harper snatched
the paper from his hand and quickly examined it. “Oh,” she muttered as she
handed it back.

“I’m actually a
little bit offended that you automatically thought the worst of me,” he told
her, and Harper shrugged helplessly.

“You’re a
vampire.”

“Liz was part of
the paranormal council at the time of the trial. I was convicted with very little
evidence. She didn’t feel right about it. They wanted to stake me right away,
but she convinced them to imprison me until she could gather more evidence—thank
God. They would only accept on the condition that she became my guardian. She
was very powerful,” he stopped and nodded towards the ring.

“I was a bit of a
wild card back then, false imprisonment and all that… So she had to take some
extreme measures—they have proved difficult to reverse.” He shook his head a
tad bitterly before moving with lightning speed. Harper gasped when he was
suddenly behind her with his arms wrapped around her like steel bands. She
tried to wiggle and press the cross to his skin, but he held her immobile very
easily.

She froze when his
teeth touched against the rapidly beating pulse in her neck. “I have told you
before that I won’t hurt you. I wish you would start to believe me and stop
with these childish games,” he breathed as he pulled away and spun her to face
him. He yanked the cross from her hand as he did so, and tucked it away into
the pocket of his jeans.

“I’ll see you
downstairs. How about I make you some breakfast?” He bent down to pick up a
stray head of garlic that was rolling around the floor. “Do you like garlic
with your eggs?” he asked, waggling his eyebrows at her before shutting the
door lightly behind him.

Harper stared
after him with her mouth slightly agape. It was obvious that the cross had not
done a thing to keep her safe from him. She sat down on the bed and examined
the folder for the second time. It seemed like he’d been telling the truth. It
had been a rogue wolf that had killed all those victims. She read a report on
Jasper’s maker Angelique, and her eyebrows rose. She had been one evil vamp.
She actually felt bad for Jasper. She could no longer judge him—she probably
would have killed the woman herself!

The penmanship in
the file was very obviously her gran’s unique, loopy chicken scratch, no one
else would be able to mimic it. Harper smiled as she traced one of her
elaborate W’s. Finally, she stood with a sigh and followed her nose downstairs.
Jasper hadn’t been joking, the enticing scent of garlicy eggs was drifting up
towards her, making her stomach grumble loudly.

Harper walked into
the kitchen to find the table set for two with orange juice, eggs, bacon, and
hash browns. “This looks amazing,” Harper said honestly as she sat down.

Jasper
acknowledged her with a grunt from the toaster, where he was busy buttering a
mountain of toast. He walked over and set the plate in front of her with a
flourish

“Voila. Dig in,” he
told her as he took a seat across from her. Harper took a sip of her orange
juice and smiled.

“It’s really
good.”

Jasper nodded.
“Thanks. I hand squeezed them myself—it’s a mixture of navel and blood oranges.
Harper spit her drink back into her glass and stared suspiciously.

“Blood?” she asked,
and he shook his head.

“Blood oranges,
they’re a real thing—Google it.”

Harper didn’t
taste anything other than the pure, citrusy sweetness, so she took another
small sip to placate him before setting it down. “Sorry, it’s hard to trust,” she
told him sincerely, and he shrugged, looking down at his own plate.

“To trust a
vampire?” he clarified, and Harper shook her head.

“Anyone.”

“Did you have any
plans today?” he asked, switching the subject. Harper took a bite of her
garlicy egg and closed her eyes for a moment to savor it. Last night, when
she’d thought Jasper was some sort of killing machine, her plans today had been
to run away back to Chicago as fast as she could. She opened her eyes and
looked into the vampire’s own vividly blue irises. They reminded her of deep
water and were probably just as easy to get lost in. She shrugged. Today she
had no idea what she was going to do.

“I thought, if you
wanted to, I could help you with your magic?” Jasper suggested, and Harper
froze with her fork halfway to her mouth.

“You know magic?” she
asked, not meaning to sound as incredulous as it probably came out.

Jasper shook his
head. “I do not have magic, no, but I watched your gran for years. I know a
thing or two.” Harper thought it over and then nodded. It wasn’t like she had
anyone else lining up to help.

“That would be
amazing.” She gave him a small smile, hoping it conveyed how grateful she
really was. “Thank you.”

Jasper shrugged.
“I’ll just put some of these leftovers in the fridge, and we can get started.
Harper looked down at his plate in surprise. He hadn’t touched a thing.

“Aren’t you going
to eat?” she asked, eying the enormous amount of food that remained untouched.
Jasper shook his head.

“Vampires can’t
digest solids—thank God for whiskey.” Harper didn’t laugh at his joke though.

“Why did you go to
all this trouble then?” she asked, motioning to the food. “Why did you dish up
a plate?” Jasper shrugged under her scrutiny.

“Maybe it’s weird,
but it’s something Liz and I used to do. We would sit down every morning and
have breakfast. She liked the companionship.” Harper felt a welling of
gratitude for the vampire across the table from her.

“That was very
kind,” she told him, meaning it from the bottom of my heart.

“Well, when
someone holds your fate in the palm of their hand, you learn to play ball,”
Jasper said with a shrug, and Harper frowned. His mask was back on, and for the
life of her she didn’t know why he pretended to be so cold. It was obvious he
had cared for her gran.

Harper froze with
her glass of orange juice halfway to her lips as an uncomfortable thought
pushed into her brain. Her gran was her gran, but she hadn’t always been. She
couldn’t have been older than thirty when Jasper was released into her care.
“You and my gran…” Harper started to say and then blushed. She was dying of
curiosity, but it wasn’t right to ask. Jasper cocked an eyebrow at her and she
looked down at her plate. “Never mind,” she mumbled as she grabbed her plate
and took it to the sink. She heard Jasper chuckle and winced.

“You want to ask
if we were ever intimate,” he guessed. “If we ever hooked up, as the young kids
are saying these days.” Harper frowned at his air quotes. She didn’t think the
young kids were even using that phrase anymore.

“It’s really none
of my business,” she hastily reassured as she turned her back on him and
started scraping her plate into the garbage.

“It is none of
your business,” he affirmed, “But I can tell that you’re dying to know, so I
will answer.” Harper braced herself to hear some pretty disturbing things about
her gran. She was sure Jasper wasn’t the type to scrimp on the details. “Never,”
he surprised her by saying, and Harper spun around to face him.

“Really?” she asked,
not sure why she even cared…or felt such relief.

Jasper’s face was
deadly serious. “We never so much as kissed. She was a good looking woman back
in the day, don’t get me wrong, but she loved your grandfather deeply, and she
never got over his death.”

Harper blinked as
tears pricked her eyes. She couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to
love that deeply. At this point in her life, she couldn’t even fathom it.

“I never met him,”
she told him unnecessarily. Of course he would already know that, he had been
living here since before she was even born. “He sounded nice though. Gran
always talked about him.”

Jasper nodded.

Harper thought
about it for a minute and frowned. “I don’t get it. If Gran was such a powerful
witch, why couldn’t she save him when he ran his car off the road the night of
the blizzard?”

Jasper gaped at
her, and Harper suddenly had a bad feeling that everything she knew was some
big elaborate cover story.

“Harper. Your grandfather
wasn’t killed in a car accident,” Jasper said suddenly after a moment of
awkward silence. “It is ludicrous that something so human would harm him.”
Harper blinked.

“What was it
really?” she asked woodenly, and he sighed.

“Damn Liz for
leaving me to answer all these questions,” he muttered, though he didn’t really
seem angry about it, just weary of the task at hand.

“Your grandfather
was killed by a powerful demon.” Harper’s mouth hung open. Demons were real? Of
course it made sense that they would be real if vampires and werewolves were a
thing, but demons… just seemed so much more terrifying!

“So hell is a real
place?” she managed to squeak out.

Jasper nodded, “Of
course.”

“Oh my Go…” Harper
slapped a hand over her mouth before she could finish that sentence. “Then…”
She pointed up above their heads. “That’s real too?” she asked in a whispered
hush, and Jasper nodded.

“Heaven and Hell,
yep.”

Harper’s mind was
racing. She wasn’t sure what was crazier news, the confirmed existence of
Heaven and Hell, or the fact that her grandfather had been killed by a demon!

“How did he die?” she
asked finally, and Jasper shrugged.

“Liz never told me
the details.” Harper sighed in frustration.

“He was a pretty
powerful upper demon though, so whoever took him out must have been off the
charts.”

Harper stared at
the vampire in shock, not understanding what he meant at first. “My grandfather
wasn’t a demon.” She denied at last, when she finally found her voice.

Jasper nodded his
head, “he was.”

Harper struggled
to make herself breathe. “But how? I mean, what… but then I’d be…?” She trailed
off, unable to say the words.

“You are a quarter
demon,” Jasper confirmed, and Harper felt nauseous.

“What does that
even mean?” she asked weakly as she gripped her stomach, her breakfast suddenly
feeling like a gut full of rocks.

“Demon blood is
very powerful magic. Witches that can get their hands on the stuff use it as a
conduit for magic, to amplify their spells. It is part of the reason your magic
is all over the place. It’s very powerful, and that makes it harder to learn
and control. Not very many witches can claim demonic blood. It is a very rare
mix.” Harper’s heart sank at the news. She didn’t want to hear that she was
some sort of freakish hybrid—being a witch was already too much to take in.