Chapter 65

Julia

“I am getting sick of looking over my shoulder,” I grumbled.

“I don’t blame you, Sass,” Gryph replied from his spot on the sofa in my office.

“Don’t patronize me!” I snapped.

Gryph merely raised an eyebrow at my reaction. He was getting used to my moodiness. The last few days, things had been getting increasingly more stressful for me. None of that was Gryph’s fault. Our relationship was great. We’d settled into a comfortable routine, and the sex was phenomenal. If it weren’t for the sex, my mood would be even worse. No matter how much I enjoyed my time with Gryph, I couldn’t get past how much I missed Oliver. He was my familiar. The bond between us was hard to explain, but it felt unnatural to be away from him.

“It must have been horrible for Beatrice when she lost her familiar,” I uttered.

“I imagine having her own brother hurt her that way made the pain worse,” Gryph added, and there was no missing the anger in his voice. “Despite any issues I had with my brother, I could trust him.”

“I know what you mean,” I agreed with a sigh. “I fought with my sisters all the time when we were growing up, but the meanest thing any of them ever did was cut off a chunk of my hair when I was asleep. Do you have any idea what he did by taking her familiar away from her?”

“I can’t fully understand since I’m not a witch,” he began. “All I can do is guess based on how you’ve been without Oliver around. That’s been pretty bad.”

“Sorry I’ve been so moody,” I said on a sigh.

“It’s more than that,” Gryph began. “With this bond we have, the witch and werewolf thing, I sense your agitation. I never would have guessed how much Oliver soothes you. He seems like a lot of work most days.”

“Most don’t realize that each familiar is a perfect match for their witch,” I began. “There are times when people see a witch with her familiar and think there must have been some mistake, but they balance each other. We’re stronger with our familiars.”

“Why don’t warlocks have them?” Gryph asked. “Or do they? I’ve never seen a warlock with a familiar, so I just assumed they don’t have them.”

“Warlocks don’t have familiars,” I confirmed. “They’ve tried it a few times, but for some reason, they just don’t bond with them. No one really knows why that is.”

“Why doesn’t Beatrice just get another familiar?” he asked.

“It’s not quite that simple,” I explained. “You have to keep in mind that the magic involved is complex. There have been some rare cases where they were able to repeat the magic for a witch after she lost her familiar. It often fails the second time.”

“So, the magic didn’t work the second time for Beatrice,” he deduced.

“More likely, her family never tried to get her a new familiar,” I corrected him.

“Why wouldn’t they at least try if a familiar is that important?” he asked.

“It’s also incredibly expensive,” I explained. “From the little I know about Beatrice and her family, they struggled financially.”

“You went to school with her, right?” he asked.

“Yes, but we didn’t talk much,” I replied.

“Let me guess,” he began. “You ran in different crowds.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I demanded. “Are you insinuating I was stuck up?”

Gryph laughed at the suggestion. “Hardly. I just meant you probably had different interests. I’ll bet you were involved in a lot of activities.”

“I was too busy trying to avoid everyone to get involved,” I admitted. “My ability to sense connections between witches and warlocks has always been strong. What few people realize is that when teens are in love, it’s real. It may not last, and it may be totally different from the type of love they’ll feel as adults, but it’s no less genuine. In witches and warlocks, that love is strong enough to cause their power to connect in some way. It’s not a real bonding, but it’s very intense. I could sense them all around me. It was like walking through a web of hot magic.”

“That sounds pretty damn stressful,” Gryph remarked.

“You have no idea,” I told him. “As if all that wasn’t enough to make high school suck, everyone knows what my family does. Practically every day I had a couple begging me to test their affinity so they could prove their parents wrong. There is a very good reason we don’t do affinity tests on young witches and warlocks. It seems that when they believe they’ll pass, they will. I did my Master’s thesis on magic in adolescence. The focus was on how their belief in the outcome could make it come true.”

“There was really that much information to do an entire thesis?” Gryph asked.

“I could have spent decades doing research,” I said with a shake of my head. “My findings were a little terrifying. If anyone ever wanted to create an army of witches to take over the world, all they’d have to do is recruit teens. While their magic is more volatile and hard to control, we are all at our most powerful between the ages of fifteen and eighteen. That’s when we gain a huge amount of magic, and it’s also when we are so convinced of our own immortality that we have a harder time believing things aren’t possible.”

Gryph chuckled. “So, teen witches and warlocks are the most dangerous creatures in the preternatural community.”

“Not the most dangerous, but they’re up in the top three,” I told him. “Thankfully, they have no idea how powerful they are. After my thesis was reviewed, it was destroyed.”

It took Gryph some time to get his laughter under control before he spoke again. “I guess it’s a good thing your research was destroyed. I’d hate to have teens take over the world.”

“Goddess help us all if that ever happens,” I muttered.

When my phone rang, I grabbed it and let out a frustrated sigh when I saw who was calling. “It’s the police,” I told Gryph, and I didn’t miss his low rumbling growl.

“Hello,” I answered, trying not to sound annoyed. Now that we suspected one of the detectives was Desmond LaCroix, it was hard to be pleasant.

“Good morning, Miss Dupree. This is Detective Mason.” He sounded much more pleasant than normal.

“What can I do for you, detective?” I asked.

“We need to meet with you today,” he stated. “I just wanted to let you know we’ll be at your office in about thirty minutes.”

“I have a client in thirty minutes,” I told him. “Can we meet a little later? I’ll be with this client for about an hour. After that, I have no meetings until five.”

“I’m sure your client will understand that police business comes first,” Detective Mason insisted. “We’ll see you soon.”

Not waiting for a response, he ended the call.

“Stupid jerk,” I muttered before looking up at Gryph. “Our favorite detectives will be here in thirty minutes, so I need to call my client and see if they can come in later.”

“I wish we could figure out which of them is Desmond,” Gryph grumbled. “While you make your call, I’m going to call the preternatural police again and see if I can get your case reassigned.”

I said nothing, knowing it wasn’t going to happen. I simply couldn’t figure out why we were having so much trouble with the police. It wasn’t that I was so innocent I didn’t think there were bad cops, but I knew most shade detectives were good people doing a tough job. I also knew it wasn’t that uncommon for people to request a different detective on a case. What I couldn’t figure out was why they were refusing to assign one on this case. There was definitely more going on behind the scenes than we knew about.