“Like that, huh?”

My pulse quickened. Here goes nothing. “He asked me to marry him.”

Mal tensed. “Oh. Right.” His tone was flat.

“I said no.”

Mal’s body relaxed, but then he made a sound of exasperation. “No, Fee. You can’t do that because of me.”

Mal and his acute perception. “I know. I want to marry him, Mal, but I also want to marry you.” I rolled to face him. “Malachi, will you marry me?” My voice trembled, and I pressed my lips together, studying the series of expressions that passed over his beautiful face, and a knot formed in my belly.

“Ever since you told me the truth about what happened to Gailan, I’ve felt different. The need to feed on sex has gone. I wasn’t sure at first, I wanted to wait a little longer before telling you just in case it was wishful thinking, but I think…I think you were right. I was driving the curse, and now…”

The knot in my stomach unraveled. “You’ve let go of the guilt.”

He smiled wryly. “I want to live, Fee. I want to fucking live.” His emerald eyes darkened, drawing me in, and then he closed them and touched his forehead to mine. “And in answer to your question. Yes, Fee. Yes, I’ll marry you.”

This time there was no stopping the stupid tears.

And yes, there was a ton of other shit to worry about, and there was no way I was doing this until Conah was better and back on his feet—it would be too insensitive to flaunt my joy when he’d lost so much—but a girl could dream, and a girl could totally look at wedding catalogs.

I needed to tell Cora.

I needed to share this news with my best friend.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Cora

“I can’t believe we’re actually doing this,” Vi says from her position crouched behind an old Renault car.

The sun’s not long set, and this side of Necro City is pretty quiet. The building across the street looks innocuous enough—a herbal remedy store—but it’s more than that. It’s the front to the Masterton Coven vault. This is where all the forbidden shit that’s supposed to be destroyed is kept. The books, the artifacts, and the ancient scrolls that could cause some pretty devastating consequences.

And I’m about to break into this vault and make a copy of a forbidden ancient spell to summon a celestial.

I don’t think I’ve ever been this excited. “I can’t believe your coven keeps all this dangerous stuff.”

Annoyance flashes across her face. “Yes, well, it’s lucky for you that we do.”

“Point.”

She sighs. “Look, there could come a time that one of these artifacts could be used to protect our world. We can’t be short-sighted.”

It could also be used to end the world, but hey, who was I to judge, I was asking her to help me steal one of said artifacts. Strong-arming would probably be the right word, but fuck it, when you have the ammunition, you use it, right? I might have Fee’s magic, share her blood and wicked sense of humor, but luckily for me, I don’t have her conscience. I have no problem making people feel guilty about shit they’ve done in the past to make them do shit for me in the future.

Vi is helping me under the weight of her humungous guilt, and I’m totally fine with that.

I need that spell for Fee and for Uriel.

I’d have jumped into the building from the Masterton Coven mansion, but the wards around the place mask the vault’s location to scrying, and Vi is certain that will mess with my jump ability, but this close up, with the building in my sights, I can totally get inside.

However, getting inside is the easy part. “Okay, run me through the layout again.”

“The vault is at basement level. You need to get downstairs. There’s a door in the storeroom. When you open it, it’ll look like a small storage closet, but that’s an illusion. You need to go inside and move the mop and bucket in the corner. A set of steps will appear in the floor, and that’s the route to the basement.”

“Got it. The vault is down there, and once I see it, I can jump inside.”

“Yes, but you’ll only have a few minutes before the wards recognize you as unauthorized. They’re supposed to go off if the vault door is tampered with. Because you’re jumping in, you’ll buy yourself a few minutes. But make no mistake, it’ll only be a handful of minutes before you’re detected. Nettie is totally anal about the vault, and she keeps an indexed binder with photos of everything. All you need to do is look up the Arcana celestia and snap a pic of it on your phone.”

“Got it.” A thought occurs to me. “How do you know all this stuff?”

She makes a sound of annoyance. “Nettie and I used to be close. She allowed me into the vault one time.”

Good enough for me.

I make to duck out from behind the car. I mean, I have no idea why we’re hiding, to be honest. There are no CCTV cameras on the store, and it’s dead out here; it just felt like the right thing to do at the time.

Vi grabs my arm. “If you’re caught, then I didn’t have anything to do with this. I’ll deny it, Cora. I want to help you guys, I owe Fee big-time, but I can’t risk being exiled from my coven.”

“I know.”

She nods, her expression shrouded with doubt. But me, I’m feeling lucky.

I drop her a wink and then make the jump into the building.

It smells of disinfectant and pine furniture polish inside. I don’t stop to check out the surroundings but head straight to the back and into the storeroom. I locate the door to the fake storage closet, find the mop and the stairs, and then I’m standing outside the vault door.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but it’s not this old, ratty-looking wooden door with a latch handle. I’m almost tempted to try it but hold back. Touching it could set off the ward alarms. I need to jump into the room beyond.

I make the shift and materialize in a small room painted magnolia and lined with neat box shelving.

The clock is ticking, but there’s no need to scan the shelves to find the ring binder. It’s stationed on a pedestal like an offering. It takes less than ten seconds to find the page I want and another five to take a ton of pictures with my cheap phone. A symbol catches my eye as I’m about to close the binder. A muting ward to quell all magic. Interesting. I snap a picture of the page, then slam the folder closed.

Done.

I make the jump out of the vault.

And…

What the fuck?

I’m still in the vault.

Shit.

I try and jump again. Nothing. And one more time. Nothing.

Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck. Obviously, Nettie forgot to mention this nifty feature to her vault. Maybe the old-fashioned way, then? I grab the door handle and tug, but nothing happens.

Alarms are probably blaring somewhere, and any minute now, magiguard will be swarming to this location, and I’ll be caught.

Urgh. I know what to do, and I hate that I’m about to do it.

“Jasper, I need you.”

He appears in front of me immediately, arms crossed over his chest, a smirk on his lips. “Yes?”

I know that smug look, anticipated it. Our last conversation had ended with me telling him to go fuck himself. He’d fucked me instead, and then I’d told him he was a waste of ether and needed by no one, least of all me, and now…

I grit my teeth. “I need you to get me out of here.”

“You do?” He walks around me, mouth turned down slightly. “I thought you didn’t need me for anything.” He taps his chin. “In fact, I distinctly remember you telling me that no one anywhere in the whole universe would need me for anything, that I was a…How did you put it—waste of ether.”

I want to tell him where to shove his attitude, but I do need the bastard. “I was wrong.”

“Wrong. I like that. Say it again.” He stops right in front of me, so close that I can smell the mint on his breath. “Tell me you need me, Cora.”

Fucking weirdo and his games. “Fine. I need you. Please get me out of here.” I wait for him to offer me the deal, to ask for more time in my bed. He’s already in my bed two nights a week, his hands all over me, his mouth all over me. I can’t help but crave him, and I hate it.

I hate him.

I wait for him to ask, but he doesn’t. Instead, he grabs my upper arms and pulls me into icy darkness.

We emerge outside under the awning of a bookstore. I can see the Renault, and Vi is gone.

Jasper pulls me back into the shadows, his chest pressed to my back, his lips caressing my ear. “You need me, Cora. Whether you like it or not. You’re mine, whether you want me or not. Stop fighting me.”

My heart thunders like a herd of mustangs as I watch magiguard enter the herbal shop. I wouldn’t have made it out without him. I do need him, and I hate that fact.

As soon as the thought crosses my mind, the grip of his fingers melts away, and he’s gone.

I clutch my phone tight and make the jump to the Masterton mansion. I have a spell to deliver.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Fee

I found Cora in the kitchen shoveling cereal into her mouth. She looked up as I entered and gave me a thumbs up before draining her bowl of milk and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

“I was worried about you.” I grabbed a bowl and filled it with cereal. “When did you get back?”

“Dunno. I came to your room, and you were asleep.” She smirked up at me. “Did you know you drool?”

“I do not.”

“Yep, you do, but don’t worry, I bet the guys think it’s cute.”

I made a meh face. “It’s probably why Azazel asked me to marry him last night.”

“What?” Cora scanned my face, looking for signs that I was joking, and when she found none, she sat back in her seat. “You better fill me in right now.”

“Not much to tell. He asked, I said no—”

“What? Are you insane?”

I held up my hand. “I said no at first. I was worried about Mal.” I filled her in on the conversation and then the subsequent conversation with Mal and my proposal to him and his admission that he believed the curse was over.