A Ferry of Bones & Gold (Soulbound Book 1), page 11
Being an independent-ranked werecreature was fucking terrible.
Jono squeezed his eyes shut for a second, rubbing at his mouth. “You promised me—”
He broke off, unwilling to voice the one desire he’d been wishing for since waking up in hospital in London on the operating table, veins on fire, screaming as his body twisted itself into something new.
He wanted a family. A home.
Pack.
“I know what I promised you,” Marek said quietly. “I wish I could say this whole mess is your answer, but the mage isn’t a werecreature.”
“Neither are you, mate.”
“Yeah, but you trust me. I wouldn’t trust a mage working for the SOA if my life depended on it.”
Jono rolled his eyes. “It does, remember?”
Marek made an annoyed sound. “He’s an asshole.”
“True, but the bloke does have a nice arse.”
“Did you fuck him?” he heard Emma yell in the background, easily picking out her voice with his preternaturally enhanced hearing.
“I got his scent, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Marek let out a surprised squawk before there was a scuffle and Emma’s voice came more clearly through the mobile. “Really, Jono? Really?”
Jono shrugged, even though she couldn’t see it. “Would’ve done it anyway before I even knew he was a mage.”
“Ugh,” she groaned. “No picking up customers. That’s a rule.”
“That’s your rule, love. Not mine.”
They both knew it was a rule in name only. Emma would never tell him what to do, and hadn’t over the course of his employment at the bar as their manager. She and her pack almost felt like his own some days, except they weren’t.
They couldn’t be.
That didn’t stop her from being his friend.
“Come have breakfast with us. Leon is making chilaquiles.”
Jono’s stomach growled at the thought of food, especially if Leon was cooking. “I should stay.”
“If he leaves you high and dry, I’ll kick his ass for you.”
“I can do my own arse kicking, Em.”
“Let her have some fun,” Leon yelled in the background.
Jono chuckled. “I’ll bring the bail money.”
“Marek has it covered,” Emma retorted. “Perks of being best friends with a billionaire.”
She failed to acknowledge the fact that both she and Leon were multimillionaires now that PreterWorld was a publicly traded company. They might not live like they were filthy rich, but they had money. They owned a floor in Marek’s building though, and Jono liked spending time there with the lot of them.
“Are you reopening the bar tonight? Need me on shift to manage?” Jono asked.
“Depends if we can get it cleansed in time. The PCB finished processing the scene sometime early this morning, and we have access again. Casale assigned Marek a sorcerer for protection. We’re gonna swing by Tempest after breakfast and check out the damage, see if the kid can do anything about it.”
“Is he really a kid?”
“Baby sorcerer, and he’s Casale’s son.”
Jono winced. “Bloody hell.”
“Yeah. We’ll keep an eye on him. Wouldn’t be good for any of us if Tyler died.”
“Too right.” Jono fought back a yawn. “I’m going to get some coffee. I’ll ring you later.”
“You better.”
Emma hung up and Jono tucked his mobile into his back pocket before heading inside the Starbucks. He didn’t know how long Patrick’s meeting would take, but if he didn’t get more caffeine in him, Jono wouldn’t be fit for human or preternatural company.
Jono sat at one of the tables near the window to keep an eye on the street for Patrick’s car once he had his coffee. In the craziness of last night and the annoyed mood Patrick had woken up in, neither had remembered to exchange numbers. So Jono drank his coffee slowly and kept his attention on the street. He was almost finished with his Venti coffee when he saw the black car from earlier pull up to the curb.
Downing the dregs of his drink, Jono tossed it in the bin on his way out. He pulled open the car door and climbed inside, nose twitching at the smell of smoke and nicotine, and an underlying electric burn reminiscent of the sort that sometimes emanated from Marek. He wondered about that, especially in the absence of Patrick’s own bitter scent.
“Thought you weren’t supposed to smoke in here? Meeting go that poorly?” Jono asked.
“It went” was Patrick’s short reply as he pulled into the street.
Jono eyed him over the rims of his sunglasses. “I can see that.”
Patrick’s mouth curled in a scowl, and Jono’s attention lingered on his plush lips. He wouldn’t mind seeing them wrapped around his cock. As fun as last night was, it had ended too soon for Jono’s liking.
Patrick gunned it across the intersection on a yellow light. “Can you get me into Tempest?”
“I have keys,” Jono said slowly. “Why?”
“I need to see the crime scene.”
“Police already finished their cleanup.”
“I’m not the police. Can you get me in or not?”
“Yeah, Pat. I can let you in.”
“Good. Means I don’t have to pick the lock.”
Jono lifted his hips enough to pull his mobile free of his pocket and tapped in his passcode. He went into his text messages and pulled up Marek’s name, typing out a message.
Heading to Tempest with Patrick.
The response from Marek was immediate. Mr. Hot Ass better not make a mess like last night.
Jono snorted quietly and would’ve responded except he got a notification in the status bar of another message. He tapped back into the queue and accessed the group chat between himself, Emma, Leon, Marek, and Sage.
Estelle and Youssef called. They want to see the bar, so we’re meeting them there, Emma had texted.
When? Jono texted back.
Thirty minutes.
“Shit,” he muttered.
“What now?” Patrick asked.
“The god pack alphas are coming by.”
“To the bar?”
“Yeah.”
“When?”
Jono checked the time. “Close to half past.”
Patrick made an aggrieved sound in the back of his throat and proceeded to drive like a Formula One driver all the way to the bar. By the time he parked in Marek’s reserved spot outside Tempest, Jono had to pry his hand off the dash.
“You drive like a bloody maniac,” Jono told him.
Patrick yanked the keys out of the ignition and got out. “Let’s go.”
Jono climbed out of the car and led the way to the front door. The bar’s name was spelled out in a wooden sign across the front façade, the letters purposefully aged. Tempest was named after Emma’s pack, a point of pride with them. Marek had bankrolled its opening some years back, but Emma and Leon owned the place despite also working for PreterWorld. The only time Marek had made a hiring decision was when it came to Jono. Neither Emma nor Leon had protested Marek offering Jono the bar manager position three years ago.
Jono unlocked the front door, letting them both into the bar. Overriding the usual lingering smell of alcohol and sweat was a sulfuric smell that Jono could almost taste in the back of his throat. It made his nose twitch. Aside from that smell, the bar was a mess, both from the attack and the police presence afterwards.
“You mind if I get things cleaned up a bit?” Jono asked.
Patrick waved him off. “It’s fine.”
Jono nodded and walked to the rear of the bar where the cleaning supply closet was located near the bathroom. He picked up a couple of rags and a spray bottle of cleaner from a metal shelf and began the process of wiping down tables and the bar counter. Jono kept one eye on Patrick, watching as he slowly paced around the site where the demon’s ashes had been scattered.
When Patrick called up a mageglobe, the hairs on the back of Jono’s neck stood on end. That bitter scent he’d smelled last night hit Jono’s nose, the taste of it blooming across his tongue for a split second.
Magic, Jono thought, even if it didn’t smell like any magic he was used to.
He paused in his cleaning to watch Patrick work, having only seen a mage cast magic a handful of times before. No words were spoken, no circles drawn, no artifacts used—just pure stubbornness and the raw power of a soul fueled by magic bending power to his will.
Jono honestly couldn’t look away.
The fiery mageglobe cast pale, blue-tinted light across Patrick’s face as it hovered near his shoulder. The color wasn’t as deep as Jono was used to seeing in magic, and he wondered about that. Patrick caught the mageglobe in his fingers and tossed it to the floor where the soultaker had died. Magic crawled over the floor to recreate the outline where ash had settled last night. Patrick seemed to stare through it all, through Jono, at things only he could see.
“What are you looking for?” Jono asked.
“Answers.”
When nothing else came out of his mouth, Jono got busy setting the bar to rights again. Patrick did his thing, whatever it was, while Jono did his job. He was halfway finished cleaning up the work areas behind the bar when his preternaturally enhanced hearing caught the sound of familiar voices out on the street. He’d been keeping an ear open for when the others would arrive, so he set the dirty glass he was holding into the wash bin.
“Marek and the others are here,” Jono said.
Patrick, who’d mostly been ignoring him, snapped his head around. “Marek is here? That fucking idiot was supposed to stay home behind the barrier ward I built him.”
He looked pissed, like the scraggly wet kitten Jono had found one time huddled in a stairwell in the block he’d grown up in. Jono didn’t think soothing Patrick was an option the way he had with the kitten and a saucer of milk, but he still tried.
“You want a pint?” Jono asked, gesturing at the array of beers on tap.
“Only if I can throw it at Marek’s head.”
There went that idea.
Patrick passed his hand through the air, and the magic he’d been controlling disappeared as if it had never been. Jono stepped out from behind the bar right as someone unlocked the front door and pushed it open.
Marek came inside first, holding open the door for everyone else. Jono’s eyes tracked over the small group, jumping from Emma, Leon, and Tyler to the god pack alphas and their dire. Jono forced back the scowl he badly wanted to greet them with. Ever since arriving in the United States, he’d been at odds with the New York City god pack for more reasons than just their purposeful refusal to let him join their pack.
Nicholas Kavanaugh stepped aside, ceding space to his alphas. The god pack’s dire, essentially a rank held by a loyal pack member who enforced their alphas’ orders, was a traditional role usually filled by arseholes in Jono’s experience. The look Nicholas gave him was filled with contempt, but Jono let it slide off like water, turning his attention to the god pack alphas.
Estelle Walker was thirty-five years old and was a born god pack werewolf. Her bright amber wolf eyes were set in a heart-shaped face, wavy brown hair skimmed her shoulders, and her lean body moved with a lithe grace that wasn’t human. Youssef Khan was her forty-year-old husband of five years, though the pair of them had been together for several years before that. Jono rather thought it was due to power maneuvering—they’d fought to take over the god pack six years ago in a challenge and were successful—but the pair had affection for each other.
Caring for each other didn’t mean they cared about the packs under their guardianship. Jono didn’t like the hard line they’d set down for pack tithes, nor how high they’d raised those tithes to begin with at the start of their rule. That sort of financial abuse had ensured most packs didn’t try to fight back, though they’d had little luck with the Tempest pack. Emma, backed by Marek’s billions, her own wealth, and Sage’s legal expertise, had carved out a spot of quiet, stubborn rebellion the god pack couldn’t outright counter for fear of bringing the federal government down on them.
Marek’s position as a seer gave Emma leverage no one else had, and she used it ruthlessly to care for those she could within the werecreature community. Jono had always admired her for that, even as he chaffed at his own restrictions beneath the pack agreement that enabled him to remain in New York City.
Jono made his way to Patrick’s side as the god pack alphas approached, refusing to show his throat in the traditional act of greeting and deference. His refusal was noted, as always.
“I understand you’re taking liberties with a rank you don’t have,” Estelle told him in an icy voice.
Jono met her antagonistic attitude with a hard smile, feeling the heavy shift of his teeth along his gums as they sharpened. “I was a witness, and Marek needed pack support.”
“You should have called us.”
“Wasn’t my decision.”
“Casale knows you aren’t one of ours. He exceeded his authority.”
“I’m sorry, do you have a badge?” Patrick asked, sounding annoyed. “Because Casale didn’t exceed anything, and this problem doesn’t concern you.”
“The PCB knows to call us as representatives for those who are pack to ensure their anonymity. Your boss isn’t doing his job,” Youssef retorted.
Patrick pulled his badge out of his back pocket and flipped it open. “I’m not with the PCB.”
Estelle and Youssef went still in the way only preternatural creatures could. Jono watched their bright amber eyes lock on to the identification and he could practically see the moment they realized they weren’t dealing with the NYPD.
Patrick snapped the thin leather wallet closed and tucked it back into his pocket. “You can make demands all you want, but your supposed authority doesn’t exist with me or the SOA. This case isn’t your business, so back the fuck off.”
Youssef shook off his surprise, eyes narrowing. “We weren’t informed the SOA had taken over the case.”
“What part of not your business did you not understand?”
“It’s our business when it involves werecreatures under our protection.”
Patrick jerked his thumb in Jono’s direction. “From what I understand, Jono doesn’t have a pack and he isn’t part of yours. Which means he’s not your concern, the same way Marek isn’t because of his status. They’re the only two I’m dealing with as witnesses right now, so your argument is still a bunch of bullshit.”
Youssef took a step forward but was restrained from going further than that by Estelle’s hand on his arm. She studied Patrick for a few seconds before shifting her attention to Jono.
“You do not speak for us or for the packs in our territory,” she said coolly.
“I know,” Jono said, trying to keep the frustration out of his voice.
“Nicholas will stay with the Tempest pack to act as liaison with the authorities during this case. You are to refrain from communicating with any pack involved in the attack that happened last night, Jono.”
“It’s like you’re deaf, when I know you’ve got preternatural hearing. You aren’t calling the shots, Estelle. Which means the god pack isn’t going to embed anyone with any pack, least of all the one Marek belongs to,” Patrick said.
“You can’t—”
Patrick cut her off, eyes locked on her face. “Federal law trumps your pack laws in a situation like this. If I hear of you trying to interfere again, you can expect a knock on your door from the SOA.”
Jono could have warned Patrick that Estelle and Youssef didn’t like being told what to do. Their rank meant everything to them, and having it taken away by an SOA special agent wasn’t going to douse their temper any.
When Youssef pulled free of Estelle and took a threatening step forward, Patrick flexed his fingers and conjured up a mageglobe that stopped Youssef in his tracks. The fiery blue magic spun in his hand, a threatening gesture the god pack couldn’t ignore.
“This conversation is over,” Patrick said in a low, hard voice.
Jono couldn’t smell Patrick’s emotional state, couldn’t get a read on the other man, but the scent of his magic was still just as bitter as before. Jono had spent half his life navigating the world with enhanced senses, but he didn’t need them in this moment. He didn’t doubt for a second that, if Youssef took one more step, Patrick would take him down hard.
“We’d like to be contacted in the event you need to speak with anyone who is pack,” Estelle said after a tense moment of silence.
“You aren’t being read into the case.” Patrick pointed at the exit. “Door’s that way. Get the fuck out.”
It was a dismissal they had no choice but to obey. Jono watched as Youssef spun on his heel and stalked out of the bar, Estelle and Nicholas right behind him. The door slammed shut with a loud bang that made Jono wince.
Patrick made a fist, snuffing out his magic before he turned to glare at Marek. “You’re supposed to be home behind the barrier ward I built you.”
“I have a minder,” Marek retorted, gesturing at the sorcerer. “Tyler Casale here is my own personal guard, courtesy of the Crescent Coven.”
“Hi,” Tyler said, lifting one hand in a wave.
“Casale,” Patrick echoed. “Any relation to the chief of the PCB?”
“He’s my dad.”
Patrick pinched the bridge of his nose, aggravation in every line of his body. Jono knew he was staring but didn’t care. Patrick intrigued him the way few people did these days.
“Marek, if you get eaten by a soultaker, your patrons better not blame me,” Patrick said.
“I’ll be fine,” Marek protested.
Patrick shook his head and waved a hand at Jono. “Let’s go.”
“Where are we going?” Jono wanted to know.
“Back to the PCB. Marek? Go home.”
“We’re cleansing the bar first,” Marek replied, a hint of defiance in his voice.
Patrick just shook his head at that answer, already halfway to the door. Jono looked over his shoulder as he hurried after Patrick. “Be safe.”
