Wicked Omen (The Royals: Warlock Court Book 1), page 13
“You don’t see the way that boy looks at you.” We stopped just outside of Whitmore House.
“How exactly does he look at me?” He was so wrong. I knew how Beckett looked at me. Like I was a pain in the ass, a job to handle, another thing on his plate to deal with and nothing more.
“Like you are a sexy little puzzle he can’t figure out.” He grabbed my hand and spun me around.
I giggled. “You’re just trying to distract me from the disastrous day I’ve had.”
“Astrid!” Beckett snapped from a few feet away.
“Speak of the devil.” I turned to face him as he came up to us.
He nodded at Leo. “What’s up, man?”
Leo shifted from one foot to the other. “Nothing much.”
Beckett narrowed his eyes at me. “What’s this I hear about a killer plant?”
“Oh, um, that.” Heat flooded my cheeks and I bit my lip.
“And a room full of high cats?” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Are you trying to draw more attention to us? You have to try and control yourself.”
Though his words were calm, my annoyance rose up. I narrowed my eyes at him. “Do you think I like not controlling myself?”
“No, all I’m saying is you could make more of an effort.”
“More of an effort? You know what—”
“Um, I’m gonna leave you guys to this.” Leo turned on his heels and practically ran for the front door of his house. He glanced over his shoulder at me one time before disappearing behind the door.
“Ugh.” I threw my hands up and turned away from Beckett. I wasn’t having this conversation, not after the day I had. He was right, I did get an entire classroom full of cats high, and I did get Kitty eaten by a plant. I also got covered in digestive plant entrails and was still sore from the sorting from the night before. I was tired, embarrassed, and frustrated. I needed a friend not a lecture on all the things I already knew I did wrong. I marched down the path, fighting the tears that pricked the back of my eyes. It was one of the things I hated. Whenever I got so angry I couldn’t take it, my eyes started to water.
“Astrid, we need to talk about this.” He followed behind me.
I followed the path as it curved around the bend toward the council house. “No, we really don’t.”
I practically ran past Lockwood house. When I got to the front steps of council house, I took them two at a time. I shoved the door open and Beckett followed behind me.
He grabbed my arm and pulled me back around to face him. “Talk to me.”
“I don’t want to talk to you right now! I know what I did wrong. I was there.” I pulled my arm free from him.
Maze and Logan meandered out from the kitchen.
Logan leaned up against the doorframe with his arms crossed over his chest. “What’s going on in here?”
My anger ebbed and I grew suddenly calm. I curled my hands into fists. “I swear to God, Logan, if you try that mood control crap on me right now, I will get you eaten by a plant and I will not cut you out of it.”
Maze shoved a spoonful of vanilla ice cream into his mouth and laughed. “Man, she’s got you pegged.”
Logan straightened his jacket then ran his hand through his short hair. “Okay, I was just trying to help.”
“Stop helping.” I hiked my backpack up on my shoulder.
Beckett put his hands on his hips. “Look, Astrid, I think it’s time to find your grimoire.”
Logan and Maze both froze on the spot.
Just then Cross walked in and looked over his shoulder at my frozen audience. “What’d I miss?”
“Tell me something, Beckett. Is this book for my benefit or is for your grand mission?” I threw my arms up, making a circle motion. He hesitated before he answered. I turned around and marched up the stairs. “Yeah, okay, bye.”
“Astrid, wait.” He followed behind me, but I was already down the hall.
I ran into my room and slammed the door behind me. This was all too much. I’d been kidnapped, thrown into a new school, and given powers they expected me to control right away. I was tortured through the sorting. I was happy to be in this world, but he had motives for having me here. Motives that involved his own selfish reasons. At every turn, he pushed and maneuvered me to what he needed me to do.
I dropped my bag on the ground. “Don’t follow me!”
He knocked lightly on the door. “We are going to talk about this.”
I held my hand out and for the first time my magic did exactly what I wanted it to do. A thick deadbolt popped into place on my door. “Go away.”
“You do realize I can open this if I wanted to.” He was so calm, so condescending.
Such an ass.
“You won’t if you know what’s good for you.” I paced back and forth in my room. From the bed to the bathroom and back again.
“Fine, but this isn’t over.”
It’s so over. I grabbed up my bag and dumped it onto the bed. I didn’t need him or the stupid book he was talking about. I crawled onto my bed and opened up my book from class. I sucked in a deep breath. I can do this. I can do this. I was going to summon the freaking cat if it killed me. I pointed to the spell and read it out loud, line by line.
“Through space and time, I summon you to become mine. Black as night with the gift of feline sight. Fury and frenzy travel the divide, come to me now and appear at my side.”
Black smoke swirled at the foot of my bed. I scooted over to look at the floor, fully expecting a little black cat just like all the other students had summoned during class. That is not a cat! I scrambled back from the bottom of the bed. “Oh shit.”
The little creature popped its head up and over the mattress. One huge eye in the middle of its head stared at me. It had oversized ears that stuck up from the sides of its head into points. Black shaggy fur covered its body from head to toe. It reached its tiny hand out and placed it on the edge of my bed.
I screamed and stood on the bed and flattened myself to the wall. “Why do you have three fingers?”
The little monster held its hand up and examined it with that one huge eye. “Why do you have five?” It backed away and slammed into the bathroom door.
“Oh my God, it talks!”
“It talks! It talks!” It threw its arms up and started running around in circles, smacking into everything in my room. It knocked into the desk and chair, forcing my books to fall to the ground. Then it ran straight into my bathroom and slammed the door then opened it. “It talks!” Slam. “It talks!” Open. “It talks!”
I jumped off and ran to the door before someone heard the commotion. I held my hand out, trying to calm the creature down. “Okay, wait, stop.”
It hesitated with the door wide-open. Then blinked that one big eye at me. I sucked in a deep breath. “I’m Astrid.” It tilted its head to the side, studying me. I tried not to squirm. “What’s your name?”
“Demon.” It patted its chest.
I dropped my head into my hands. “Please let that be your name and not what you are.”
He bounced up and down. “Me demon.”
“Astrid! Is everything all right?” Beckett called through the door.
“I’m fine!” I called back. I had to get rid of this thing ASAP. I scrambled to the window and flung it wide-open. I whispered down to it, “Quick, out the window.”
It swung its fuzzy body back and forth. “No, you summon demon. Demon must stay with the Astrid.”
“It didn’t sound like everything is okay in there.” He knocked again. “Come on, let me in.”
I paced and whispered, “You were supposed to be a cat not a demon.”
“Meow meow creature?” Its arms hung limply at its side. For a demon it was pretty freaking cute. But I could not keep it. No one had a demon for a pet.
“Yes, meow meow creature.” I glanced at the door and practiced the words I was going to have to say to him. “Beckett, I summoned a demon. You can undo it, right?”
“Did you say something? I can’t hear you through the door.”
“Nothing, just a sec. I’m, um . . . I’m . . . naked?” I smacked myself in the forehead.
“Naked?” His voice rose with interest.
The demon turned away, grabbed my only copy of Broken Witch off my desk, and shoved it into its mouth. I jumped forward and grabbed the other end of the book. “No, bad demon. I was just getting to the good part!”
I yanked on it, but it was too late. It swallowed the thing down and I fell back onto my hands. Its stomach rumbled and gurgled then it burped a fireball that nearly singed my eyebrows off. “Some cat you are.”
“Astrid, is something burning?” Beckett banged on the door. “I know you’re mad at me, but I’m coming in there in ten seconds if you don’t open this door.”
“Ugh,” I muttered to myself. “I’ll show them I’ll summon a cat. But noooooo, a freaking fire-breathing demon. Who ate my favorite book! What am I gonna do?”
“Cat? I can do cat.” The little demon reached into its mouth and yanked the book back out. He handed it to me. It was soggy and covered in drool. The pages stuck together in a damp mess.
“Ugh! She just walked into the school in nothing but a tank top. Damn it!”
“I swear, my drool dries nice.” It smiled at me, flashing its little pointed razor teeth.
I dropped it onto the ground where it sat at my feet, a sad ball of pages that I used to love. The demon began to quake from head to toe and it made a high-pitched keen like it was being deflated. Its arms and legs shot inward and it fell to the ground in a ball of fur.
Blue magic seeped under my door and up toward the locks. I watched as the demon rolled across the floor and under the bed. Beckett shoved the door wide-open and stood in the doorway. His blond hair fell into his wide eyes as he looked around the room. “What happened?”
“Oh, nothing.” The bed quaked.
“Why does it smell like fire in here?” He stepped into the room and looked out the window. “Are you okay?”
My face was covered in sweat, I was breathing hard, and my hands were shaking. “Fine, just, um, practicing my magic.”
The bed shook once more, and Beckett narrowed his eyes at it. “Do you have something under the bed?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“You’re a terrible liar.” He dropped down to the ground.
“Beckett, don’t, I-I . . .”
He reached under the bed and pulled something out.
I shifted from one foot to the other. “I can explain.”
When he rose to his feet, he held a perfect, silky, shining black cat. “Looks like you’ve got a friend.”
A fire-breathing demon friend. “Just studying for summoning class.”
I walked over and grabbed the demon cat from Beckett’s hands. I never held a demon before and I never in a million years expected for one to be so soft and fluffy. Yet here I was taking my cat demon away from Beckett.
He handed him over. “You might want to work on it a bit more. He’s only got one eye.”
I held him up to my face. His right eye was wide-open, but his left was sealed shut like he was winking at me. “Oh, I kind of like him like that.”
Catdemon purred in my arms and curled into my chest. There’s a freaking demon on my boobs! I plastered a smile on my face.
Beckett reached out and rubbed the cat’s head. “Kind of weird.”
The demon hissed at him and Beckett snapped his hand back. “Are you gonna keep it? Because you know you can if you want.”
“Um, I don’t really know how to send it back to where it came from, so yeah, I think I’ll keep it.” First thing on the list, figure out how to send demon back to hell.
“What are you gonna name it?”
I held the Catdemon up to my face and examined its one eye. “He seems like an Odin to me.”
“A one-eyed cat named Odin. I like it.” He chuckled and turned for the door.
“Um, Beckett, about the book.”
He shook his head. “I know you think I have some kind of motive for getting it, and you’re right. I do. But the thing is that if you find this grimoire it’ll teach you how to use your powers to their full extent. It can only help you. And yeah, it’d prove to everyone you’re a Lockwood. But I feel it in my bones that you are. I just—”
“I’ll do it.” I could not be summoning any more demons. There were only so many books I was willing to sacrifice to Catdemons.
Chapter 17
Beckett
Cross, Logan, Maze, and I stood in the foyer, waiting for Astrid to come down from her room. Logan stood with his hands behind his back, a smug smile plastered on his face and his short hair standing on edge. “I knew she’d come around.”
“Did you?” Maze tilted his head to the side and narrowed his eyes at Logan.
Cross opened his jacket and checked the daggers in the holsters at his hips. Then he closed it up and pulled the sword from the sheath on his back. He turned the blade over in his hand then slid it back into place. Then he bent down low and hiked up the leg of his leather pants, revealing the hilt of another blade. When he straightened, he tossed his jet-black hair out of his eyes. “What?”
“You got enough artillery there?” As warlocks we all carried our fair share of weapons, but Cross was always weighed down more than the rest of us. I patted the small of my back where I kept my own dagger. My magic was always my first choice of weapon though.
“We’re leaving the school and last time we did that, a bunch of warlocks from the resistance attacked us. I’m just gonna be ready for anything.” He threw his shoulders back.
“I’ve been questioning that.” I glanced around at the others.
“Questioning what?” Logan crossed his arms.
I shrugged. “How did they know she’d be there? I mean, we were out in the middle of nowhere on a beach. I shot a glare at Maze. “You should’ve seen that one coming.”
“Again, this isn’t Burger King, son, you don’t get shit your way when it comes to psychic visions.” He shoved his hands in the pockets of his trench coat and leaned back against the wall.
Logan looked up the stairs. “Do you think she knows where it is?”
Just then Astrid appeared at the top of the steps and began walking down. “No, she has no idea where it is.”
That one-eyed cat followed her down the stairs like a dog would. When she stopped and completed our little circle, the cat sat down next to her. She waved her hand at it. “Not on the floor.”
The cat left her side and jumped up on the back of one of the couches. She looked at the rest of us. I raised my eyebrow at her. She straightened her shoulders. “What?”
“Nothing.” I tried not to stare at her. Everything about Astrid called to me. The way she took up the whole room when she entered it and didn’t even know it. The stubborn way she called me an ass and didn’t apologize for it made me laugh. She needed to think I was an ass. The only way I was going to come through for Zinnia was if I kept my eye on the prize, and Astrid was not it. No matter how cute she looked in her ripped up tights, short skirt, leather jacket, and combat boots.
I clapped my hands together and rubbed them back and forth, tying to fight my need to stand even a foot closer to her. “Now if we’re going to find this book, we have to start at the beginning.”
They all nodded. I turned to Astrid, and I didn’t want to voice any of her private family life with the others. We all had our own drama, me included. That didn’t mean the others had to know about hers. “Did your mother leave you anything?”
Her eyes darted around the room, but she straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin. “Um, my father keeps a box of her jewelry for me. For when I turn eighteen. But that’s about it.”
“We all know right before the Lockwood line was, well, murdered Gregor Lockwood had possession of the family grimoire. The assumption is that he hid it.”
“How would we even know where to start?” Logan shook his head. “Seems unlikely that we would even find something like that just in a floorboard somewhere.”
“I thought so too, until I found this.” I walked over to the small table in the foyer and pulled the scroll I’d been studying for days out of it. I unfurled it and held it up for all of them to see.
Astrid reached out and gently ran her hand over the sprawling script. “He wrote this?”
I nodded at her. I couldn’t imagine what it must be like to learn about a whole other side of a family you didn’t know about. Then to be looking at something your great-great-grandfather wrote would be unreal. I hand it over to her.
Astrid held it out in front of her and read the letters. “Death beckons me in my last hours. The Lockwood line is no more and soon I shall join my brethren. My secrets shall accompany me in a grave of my own making. Hidden among the world, my name shall be no more but that of another.”
I pointed to the line. “I think he’s referring to his child here, though all of the warlocks believed he didn’t have one. He’s saying it took another’s name to remain hidden.”
Astrid continued on. “A single token of love and faith, I endow with the power to harness that which is rightfully yours to take. Unearth the unending snake and in this trip, you will find your destined fate. My fairest wishes and may this bring you home to the place I have always called my own. Be strong and bold. With sorrow, Gregor Lockwood.”
Astrid dropped the scroll and glanced at the rest of us. “He knew he was going to die and he wrote this.”
Logan grabbed the paper from her hands. “Where did you find this?”
I didn’t know why, but I wanted to yank the paper from his hands and give it back to her. It was part of her family, a piece she never had and never knew. I shrugged and walked over to him. “Let’s just say the Dustwick family kept everything hidden away.”
In truth my family kept books, scrolls, and documents leading all the way back to I didn’t even know how long. But when I found the hidden door in my father’s office when I was a boy, I knew exactly where to look when Maze told me he felt a Lockwood heir. I took it from Logan and handed it back to Astrid. “You should keep it. We don’t need it anymore.”
