Fire and Bone (Otherborn #1)(35)

“Oh, there you are,” says a sultry voice behind me. The wife. Gods’ bones.

I don’t want to turn around.

The scent of pungent licorice seeps off her skin, reaching for me—the smell of human excitement. I feel her hand press into my back and I try not to cringe visibly as it slides up, cupping my nape.

My muscles tense, and I step away before I turn to face her. “I need to speak with Sage. Where is she?”

The wife—I can’t remember her name—is tall and slender, her hair long and blond, and her features tight with artificial youth. Her breasts appear to be fake, as does her nose, and the pink tracksuit she’s wearing is tight enough to stop blood flow to her brain.

Why would Marius choose her for his new human breeder? Maybe the original version, before the knives and plastics were applied, was more enticing? Aelia is naturally beautiful, and she’s retained a class that her mother appears to lack. This modern woman doesn’t fit with the house’s décor at all—the mosaics that Roman leaders once walked on hanging on Marius’s walls, and the ancient vases that held the sacrificial blood of human kings set on pillars along the hallway. It all makes her seem small and insignificant. Marius hasn’t let go of much since his emigration to the American colonies, but it seems he’s lowered his standards in the department of procreation.

It’s a constant subject of debate why the great goddess Danu created her children and their descendants to be incapable of procreating with one another. A deity or a demi can only have offspring with humans. This was Danu’s fail-safe: all new births are less powerful than those that came before. No soul will ever be more powerful than our great mother goddess.

However, this means Otherborn have to mingle in the human world if they want their lineage to survive. That creates complications, such as human lovers who age when the demis don’t. This usually means the Otherborn parent won’t stick around, and most children are left to figure out their bloodline when a hunter like me comes to fetch them. Some Otherborn, like Marius, keep their breeder close for a time, but that’s rare.

Especially when the breeder is as tiresome as this human is.

“We missed you at dinner, you know,” the wife says, ignoring my question about Sage. Her stiff lips pucker like she’s taking a selfie. “Are you hungry? I could find you something to nibble on.” Her fingers slide suggestively along her clavicle, like she thinks I’m a shade and she’s offering herself up for a taste. I notice several shiny dotted scars on her neck. She tilts her hips and steps toward me. “Whatever you want, I’m happy to help.”

I tell myself she’s Marius’s wife and I should be polite. I should not back away in disgust. “No. No, thank you.” I’m not thankful. I feel a little ill. “I need to speak with the demi, with Sage.”

“The girls went out somewhere,” she says absently. “But I’m here.” She makes that weird pinched-lip face again.

“Wait, what do you mean? Where did they go?” She can’t be serious. Wasn’t Marius just with them before he spoke to me?

“Who knows,” she says with a sigh. “Aelia is exhausting. I can’t keep track of that girl.” She frowns a little. “You’re not feeding off her, are you? That’s against the rules, isn’t it? I’m human, so it’s fine.”

Danu save me. “When did they leave? Did the driver take them?” They couldn’t be too far ahead of me. I was only in the rose garden for a minute or two after Marius left.

“How am I supposed to know?”

I turn and head into the kitchen, making a mental list of items I’ll need for the location spell. Salt, ash, rose oil, and crushed cloves—no, not cloves, it’s cinnamon for a fire-based Otherborn. Cloves are for finding an earth-based Other. I start opening cupboards, looking for salt. I can get rose oil from crushing some of the buds outside in a little olive oil. And cinnamon must be around here somewhere . . .

The wife comes up behind me, peering over my shoulder as I pull a bowl from a shelf. “What in heaven are you doing?”

“Do you know where the cinnamon is?” I ask. It’ll mimic the scent of Sage’s energy.

The woman laughs. “Of course not. This is a kitchen.” She says it like I didn’t know.

I find the spice rack in one of the cupboards and collect what I need. I grab the virgin olive oil beside it, then I go to the sink and run a little water into my bowl before tucking everything under my arm and heading for the back doors.

Unfortunately, the wife follows me. I walk through the yard, along the winding stone pathway, back to the rose garden, where I nestle the bowl in the moss. I set the rest of the ingredients next to it. I rip two handfuls of petals off a bush and place them into the bowl. Once I drizzle olive oil over them, I grab a rock and crush the concoction into the water, and the scent of roses spills out around me.

“What are you doing?” the wife asks, sounding fascinated. I wonder if I should be hiding the spellwork from her. Marius never warned me to be cautious with her, but I should probably be doing this in private. Bloody hell. Too late now.

“I’m cooking,” I say, picking up the salt and pouring it into my palm before sprinkling it over the rose petals. I follow with the cinnamon as I whisper a few words to begin the spell, but they’re in Gaelic so she won’t understand them. “Earth forgets, water’s breath,” I begin, still crushing the roses—my representation of the earth element—into the water. Then I reach down to my boot and pull out my small dagger, prick my finger, and let the blood drip three times into the bowl, continuing, “Blood in part, as tongues of fire, lead me to your beating heart.”