Chapter Two

SPARKS GEMMELL PICKED up a bottle of wine from the end of the counter and twisted the magnum one way and then the other, trying desperately to find something that would be the perfect accompaniment for his rendezvous dinner. He stared at the label hoping an image, spur, or trigger would tell him this bottle was the best possible choice.

“All you had to do was ask for help rather than manhandling every damn bottle.”

Sparks jumped at the sound of another’s voice. He almost dropped the wine he held.

Spinning on his heels, Sparks found himself staring at the top of a shaggy head of hair. Naggen, the owner of Spirited, stood directly behind him. He never respected personal space, a characteristic typical for the Clurichaun. Sparks took a step away, which allowed him to take in the shop owner. His frizzy black beard neared the centre of his chest, but he kept the facial hair meticulously well-tailored. Sparks couldn’t help but notice his reddish nose, which told of Naggen’s nightly indulgence of the store’s contents. If someone would ever corner him, though, he’d have told you the vibrant red veins were rosacea, inherited from his mother’s side of the family. Naggen, or Naggy, as his more regular patrons called him, smirked at Sparks, noting the blue bolts of electricity still erupting and travelling up the witch’s arm.

“You take too much delight in scaring the shit out of me.” Sparks placed the bottle he held back on the shelf, then rubbed his bare arms, trying to disperse his wayward magic.

“True, but I enjoy the light show. It entertains me.”

“You can be horrible, you know that, right?”

“I do. Again, it’s amusing. Now, stop picking up everything in sight. You’re ruining my displays. What exactly are you looking for?” Naggy didn’t win the height prize. Sparks had referred to him on more than one occasion as an alcoholic pocket bear, which wasn’t too far from the truth. Clurichauns were related to leprechauns—distant cousins of some sort—and the man loved to play pranks on those he considered friends.

“I’m going over to Dev and Tully’s tonight for dinner. I haven’t seen them in forever—you know, since the incident?” Sparks spoke the last few words in a hushed whisper. There were others in the store, although none of them were paying him or Naggy any attention.

“Everyone has been talking about that although you still haven’t given me the deets. I also know the Guardians haven’t met for a while, and at first, I expected to see the wraiths and demons emerge, you know, without the Night Grove’s witches protecting the ley lines and all, but I haven’t seen a thing.” Naggy shrugged. “Makes me wonder what the hell they’ve been doing for the last hundred years. Here, you might want this.” Naggy turned, scanned the shelf in front of him, crouched down, his knee joints popping as he did, and pulled out a bottle of merlot from the shelf nearest the floor. He blew the dust off the glass and stood. He handed the bottle to Sparks. “This is from a special winery, run by our kind. See the triangle on the bottle?” Naggy pointed to an embossed diamond at the juncture of the neck and the body. “The blank spot is an augmentation receptacle. You put any witch rune in there with the right focused intention and whoever drinks the wine will be spelled.”

“Who says I wanted to spell them? They’re friends! I wanted a nice bottle of wine to take over for dinner. Jeez, Naggy, what gives? Enchanting my buddies? That’s a little dubious.”

“Oh, please, don’t lecture me.” Naggy waved a gnarled, fat finger in Sparks’s general direction. “I can smell the desperation on you from here.”

Sparks could count on one hand the number of folks who were either full fae or admitted to having fae in their bloodline. Witch families tended not to talk about the hybrid children in their family trees, but almost every family had some relative who had participated in questionable romances.

Naggy was full fae. And the fae had the ability to read a room and sense the emotions of those around them.

“What do you mean, desperation?” Sparks’s cheeks flushed hot. Of course, Naggy’s summation described his emotional needs accurately—desperate for the coven to start up again. He couldn’t wait to get over to Dev and Tully’s place and subtly suggest as much. But after cleaning up two dead bodies and taking their coven’s high priest to the hospital with near mortal wounds, there hadn’t been any meaningful contact from his blood brothers. Awkward and random texts didn’t count. Sparks needed the contact, the face to face visits, the group spellworking. He longed for the deeper connection to the Shadow Realm the coven provided. A sense of community which had been yanked away from him after the incident.

Naggy had hit the proverbial nail on the head on his current emotional state.

“Just spell the bottle for unity. That’s what you want, right? For your witch boys to get together again? Tell me—I’ve heard rumours—is it true you do all your coven gatherings naked?” Naggy leered at Sparks with a lewd grin plastered on his face.

“Oh my Gods, Naggy, you’re incorrigible. No. I mean…just…how much for the bottle?” The heat from Sparks’s face raced to the top of his scalp. He would have sworn his hair had been lit on fire.

“Fifty-six dollars, eighty-nine cents.”

“What?” Sparks’s jaw dropped.

“I told you the wine comes from a special winery.”

“You’re the worst.” Sparks handed over three twenties, snatched the bottle, stuffed his purchase into his backpack, and walked out of the store. As he glanced back, Naggy, already ringing up another customer, peeked at Sparks, smiled, and winked.

 

THE WINE SAT on Sparks’s busy and cluttered counter. Unattended mail, this morning’s breakfast dishes, and jars filled with questionable witchy contents left little room for the prized purchase for tonight’s dinner. He leaned against the other side of his galley-style kitchen, eyeing the bottle and focusing on the diamond augmenter area.

“I shouldn’t do this,” he mumbled, shaking his head. “Nope, it’s wrong.”

His long, dirty-blond hair—the envy of everyone—waved in time with his head motions.

Sparks pushed off the counter and left the kitchen while pulling off his tank top. He pitched the sweaty garment into his room as he passed, then stopped and stripped off his shorts. He didn’t wear underwear. The shorts ended up in a pile on the floor near his tank top.

He took a few more steps down the hall, flicked on the bathroom light as he entered the small room, grabbed the towel hanging from a hook on the back of the door, and threw it near the base of the shower. He opened the shower stall and turned the faucet toward the H so the water would be scalding hot for a nice, long wash.

Sparks intended on getting properly attired for this evening. Hopefully, the guys would notice he had put some effort into their dinner meeting.

As steam billowed out of the shower stall and fogged up the bathroom, Sparks turned the exhaust fan on, then stared at the droplet-laden mirror—which wasn’t reflecting anything from all the steam—and drew a simple rune on the flat surface.

Laguz.

It looked like an upside-down L.

Sparks stood a few steps away and studied the symbol. Laguz meant a number of things, but imagination, psychic powers, and dreams were the more standard intentions used with the rune.

But the rune also stood for unity. The collective memory of a group of people. Like a coven.

Sparks mashed his lips together and furrowed his brow. With a swipe of his hand, he obliterated the steam on the mirror and the symbol along with it.

He jerked open the shower stall door and stepped in.

Hot water scalded his freckled shoulders, burning away some anxiety. He inhaled the clouds of steam, trying to de-stress.

With closed eyes, Sparks remained motionless, allowing the water to cascade over him, and waited for the heat to melt away his worry.

The white noise of droplets splashing up against the walls of the enclosure, the drips falling from collected water on the shower rack, and the gurgle of liquid swirling down the drain made the world stop, if only briefly…

Sparks yanked the shower door open and bolted, naked and dripping wet, down the hall, into the kitchen. He snapped up the bottle and drew Laguz in the augmentation receptacle. Pulling forth his natural element, thinking about the last thunderstorm he had stood out in, getting soaked while watching the lightning bolts streak across the sky—which always triggered his abilities—he uttered the word as the symbol glowed silver.

“Laguz.” Sparks spoke with confidence and a stiff set spine and squared off shoulders. Bolts of electricity erupted and travelled from the base of his neck, across his shoulders, and danced down his arm and through his fingers until the current lit up the rune. Electricity hummed as arcs of jagged, forked energy encircled the bottle.

The wine bottle tilted slightly, wobbled back and forth, and finally righted itself.

Sparks squinted as the bottle settled, ignoring the dripping water from his body which had created a fair-sized puddle on the linoleum.

The wine had been magicked. No taking the spell back now.

 

AN HOUR LATER, he stood outside a monstrous old house located in the heart of the Old Strathcona neighbourhood, close to the University of Alberta. Everyone in the magical community called the sprawling mansion “old Uncle Bart’s house.” Sparks had met the man several times. Uncle Bart, a sweetheart of a gentleman, always came to the party with loads of stories. Tully’s family held a prestigious position in the community and were something of an institution in Edmonton. Most of the male witches from his lineage had, at one point or another, been part of the most well-known, all-male coven in the city.

The Guardians of the Night Grove had been responsible for ensuring the magical energy within Edmonton and the surrounding vicinity was regulated in order to prevent the darker elements within the Shadow Realm from gaining too much power. Since the infamous night a few months ago, with the Night Grove’s current high priest hospitalized and presumably dead within a year from a werewolf infection, Sparks assumed the coven had been dissolved. There had been no continuance, no calls, and no plans for succession. Nothing.

No high priest to lead them.

No knights being promoted to fill the spaces Eddie and Gus had held. Sparks’s memory of shovelling up Eddie’s intestines had not been a pleasant one. The grating sound of the shovel’s blade against the concrete basement floor and the wet slush of the organs as they slipped into the garden tool had haunted his dreams ever since.

Despite the horror he’d dealt with, he would have done anything for Dev and Tully. Most people would have agreed Sparks had fulfilled any obligation potentially owing to the two men.

But after becoming Dev Khandelwal’s blood brother during his initiation into the Shadow Realm, a bond formed. A tie that went so deep the physical distance between himself and his Shadow Brother caused sleepless nights, aimless wanderings, and wayward magic. The lack of grounding Sparks normally gained from a simple meditation, along with the other symptoms were all telltale signs he needed connection. He missed his people. The camaraderie of the coven had always made him feel safe, connected with a sense of belonging. The last couple of months he’d spent most of his spare time alone.

And Sparks hated being alone.

But Dev exuded a mysterious special magical energy. Sparks had sensed a deeper attachment to the man in his bones. Dev had a bigger role to play in his life. The vibrating excitement, like a cellist plucking a bass string, ran through his bones, prompting Sparks to step up during Dev’s initiation into the Realm. They were tied together, linked, but Sparks struggled to define why. Then disaster had happened, and he hadn’t had any time to figure out what made Dev so special.

Then there was the bear of a man, Tully. Before Dev had shown up, he and Tully had been assigned homework and spell craft tasks from their ex-high priest. Sparks recalled only the best of memories. Tully made him laugh, and together, anything Sparks and Tully set out to do never weighed on them like a chore. They were so in sync other coven members commented on the uncanny way their work melded so well. Even their magic weaved together albeit in an unconventional pairing; metal and lightning—truly an odd couple.

The coven had been home. But Tully and Dev had made an indelible impression on Sparks. Like a tattoo, his relationship with them had created a deep, enduring mark that anticipated years of witch holidays, coven meetings, and spellworking spent together. But after that night—the incident—there had been nothing.

Byron had gone and messed up everything.

Sparks yearned for their continued work within the supernatural community.

So he had taken the task upon himself and called Dev and his musclebound redheaded boyfriend, and fellow brother, Tully, and asked if they would be up for a dinner. Sparks needed to start up the coven again.

Maybe not the Guardians, but something. Anything. Something to fill the magical hole left in his heart. He clutched the bespelled bottle of wine, still uncertain if enchanting the wine had been the right thing to do. His knuckles were white, and his palms were sweaty.

Sparks had hoped the guys would meet him for a coffee or drinks.

He had literally jumped with nervous excitement when both of them had enthusiastically agreed to meet and, in fact, offered to cook, inviting Sparks over to their home for dinner.

He rang the doorbell, again, and chewed on his bottom lip while his hands—and everything else—continued to perspire. He had also bought a monstrous bouquet of late-season flowers. Massive white spider asters were clumped together with vibrant yellow calla lilies, all punctuated by shocking red sprays of celosia. The flowers had cost him a pretty penny, but he wanted to make a good impression. He glanced down at the bottle.

He shouldn’t have spelled the wine. Should he take it upstairs?

Or should he leave the damn thing in the empty baskets the boys left on the porch? Spelling your friends—such a no-no. Maybe the basket would de-spell the wine? The wicker containers were a common feature outside witch homes. Custom dictated anyone who entered the threshold should leave their troubles and worries in the offered receptacle. The wind would blow all the troubles away.

Maybe between the wind and the basket, the spell would be blown away.

Sparks hoisted the bottle up so he could look at it. Maybe the spell wasn’t so bad.

Besides, he’d spared no expense on this purchase to make a good impression. He wanted to convince the guys that starting up a coven was the right thing to do.

Grasping the wine tighter, Sparks flipped his wrist to look at the time. He had arrived a tad early. Despite his premature appearance at the boys’ front door, the wait for someone to answer seemed long, like he’d been standing on the stoop for an hour.

Maybe they don’t want to see me.

The heat was unusual for the end of August. Rivulets of sweat ran down his spine despite the loose-fitting linen shirt he wore. Even with a few buttons opened in the front, the lack of an evening breeze made the air close and his skin sticky. He’d even put his hair up and used his favourite hair fork engraved with runes. A solitary amethyst had been embedded into the wood at the bend of the tool—his birthstone—but with the sheer volume of hair Sparks had grown out over many years, the late summer heat still clung to him like a desperate lover.

Maybe it’s nerves too.

The time he’d spent on the front porch of the rambling old mansion winnowed away his confidence.

With knots of disappointment in his gut, having rung the bell twice, Sparks turned away from the front door. Bursts of static electricity danced across his skin—something that happened when his emotions ran high.

Complicated emotions.

Disappointment, need, emptiness, longing to—

“Sparks?” Lost in his own negativity, Sparks hadn’t noticed the door open. He spun toward the voice, coming face to face with Tully and his beaming ear-to-ear grin. His mop of wavy red hair had recently been trimmed, but his beard had grown out. A tight white tee stretched across his chest, displaying his enormous stature, and a robin’s-egg-blue pair of shorts spoke of the August temperatures. “We thought we heard something down here, but I probably forgot to mention the doorbell doesn’t work.”

Instant relief.

“No, well, if you did, I didn’t remember. Ha!” He grinned awkwardly.

“It’s been forever. Come on upstairs. Dev is setting the table.” Tully threw his arm around Sparks’s shoulder and led him inside, which was a bit of a feat as the entrance and foyer were close quarters. Tully never took into account another person’s space, much like Naggy, but the moment Tully’s bearish arm wrapped around Sparks, all his twisted emotions smoothed out, righting his head.

“It’s been too long, Tully. I miss everyone.”

“Yeah. I know. Us too. Come on. Are those for us?” Tully pointed to the flowers and wine Sparks still had in a death grip.

“I wanted to show you how much I appreciate the invitation.”

“These are beautiful! Dev’s gonna love them.”

They ascended to the second-floor apartment. Sparks had been here before, and knew the territory, but hadn’t visited since Dev and Tully had become an item. From the moment Sparks had met Dev and seen him interact with Tully, he conjectured the two would end up together. Through their sporadic electronic communication, he had found out the two had moved in.

Tully swung open the front door to the apartment. “Look who’s here!” Tully’s grin continued. Sparks had rarely seen him without a smile. The man epitomized optimism.

“Sparks!” Dev, wearing tight beige shorts and an equally snug-fitting maroon tank top, dropped the cutlery he held to set the table and grabbed Sparks by the shoulders, then pulled him in close, and embraced him tightly.

Sparks sighed as he sank into the gesture.

“Look what he brought.” Tully held up the massive bouquet.

“Wow, those are gorgeous. You didn’t have to go to the trouble.”

“I wanted to. I’ve missed you guys so bad.”

“These need to go in water. This heat has been unbearable.” Dev released his bear hug on Sparks, walked over to the row of kitchen cabinets, pulled open a cupboard, and fished out a vase large enough to accommodate the flower stems. Tully handed him the bouquet. Dev spent the next few minutes removing the floral paper and arranging the blooms so the gift appeared as amazing and impressive as Sparks had intended.

“I brought wine too. But now that I’m here, and it’s so damn hot, I don’t think red wine fits the bill for an overheated August night. Cold beer would have been better.” Sparks’s cheeks reddened while thinking about his beverage selection—and what he’d done to it—as he pulled out a stool from the kitchen island and had a seat.

“Nonsense.” Tully accepted the bottle and turned the wine, studying the label. “Oh, nice choice. Dev, isn’t this the same wine we had at that river restaurant—what was it called—Riverside Bistro? You know, the one we went to on our three-month anniversary dinner?”

“You guys are not seriously doing the monthly anniversaries, are you?” Sparks chided them.

“Damn right we are,” Dev replied, setting the flower vase on the table, but off centred so when the three sat down for supper, the flowers would be a centrepiece and not an obstacle.

“Good for you.” Sparks chuckled.

“Well, our first week together was traumatic, and I promised Dev I would make it up to him. I wanted to show him that being a witch and part of the Shadow Realm wasn’t all blood, death, and destruction.” Tully stared at Sparks with a bit of a goofy face, which made him laugh. Sparks appreciated the effort of trying to make light of the night where Byron had almost died trying to save his werewolf-infected lover, Addas. They’d lost Gus and Eddie.

Sparks’s nightmares had subsided to one or two a week after being called in to clean up the mess.

“And we owe you an apology, and something cold to drink. We are definitely drinking the wine with dinner. What would you like? A beer, a spritzer, or I think we have some chilled Perrier.” Tully placed the spelled wine on the table.

“A beer would be great. And an apology for what?”

“Really?” Dev shot Sparks a side-eye glance over his shoulder while opening the fridge and pulling out a cold bottle of brew. He popped the cap and set the beer down in front of his guest. “We were part of a night of carnage that we called you in to help out with, and it’s been almost four months since, and we haven’t got together until now? That’s what the apology is for.”

Sparks waved his hand, dismissing Dev, and took a long swig from the bottle. The chilled hoppy beverage numbed his throat. It had a deep grainy taste to it with just the right amount of sweetness.

“No, seriously, Dev is right. We’ve been awful, and when you called, Dev and I immediately wanted to have you over. It’s been—”

“I get it. You don’t have to apologize. After scrubbing up as much blood and guts as I did, I expected you to take some time to recover. But truthfully, I’ve been terribly out of sorts. My whole life revolved around the coven. I had placed a lot of loyalty in Byron, like many of the others had. I just…I’m…” Sparks put his head in his hands. “I’m struggling without everyone. My abilities are a mess. Working in a hospital when your electrokinesis is being wonky is not a good thing. I’ve had a few near misses with people seeing things they shouldn’t. Not to mention a few close calls with patients’ heart monitors and the dialysis machines. I’m an incoming hurricane capable of erupting into a wild electrical storm at a moment’s notice.”

Tully grabbed a seat next to Sparks and put his arm around his shoulder, again. Sparks leaned into it. He needed the comfort. He needed his brothers.

Dev quit fussing with the dinner they’d prepared and leaned in close to Sparks and his boyfriend. “I forgot you worked in the hospital. Have you seen him?”

Sparks nodded and grimaced.

“Damn, I don’t know what I would do if I saw him. I’m still upset with how everything went down.”

Sparks let out a huge breath. “He looks like he’s hurting though. Physically for sure. Those were werewolf wounds. I’ve seen them before.” Sparks shuddered but noticed the side-eye glance between Dev and Tully—as if they were having a private conversation between them. “But his face is drawn. I think he’s emotionally a wreck too. I can only assume Byron had some kind of participation in that night’s events when Eddie and Gus were mauled. And I’m gonna assume Addas was the culprit—I mean, come on, we all knew, right?”

Dev and Tully were quiet.

The timer went off on the oven.

Sparks had literally been saved by a bell.

“Come on, let’s eat.” Dev changed the topic.

The three sat around a magnificently decorated table, dominated by Sparks’s floral contribution. Dinner went smoothly as the topic of conversation revolved around how their magical lives weren’t the same without the group of guys. Mabon, the next holiday in the yearly cycle, wasn’t for another month. The celebration of the harvest might be the perfect opportunity to invite some of the guys over and perhaps rekindle some semblance of what they had created within the Guardians of the Night Grove.

Tully popped the cork on the wine and poured everyone a glass. The platters of food Dev and Tully had prepared were passed around. Sparks ended up with a monstrous plateful of smoky BBQ chicken, grilled asparagus drizzled in garlic butter and lime juice, a fresh-from-the-garden spring salad, and a homemade dinner roll. Not to mention a generous helping of potato salad. Sparks squirted some mustard on it. The tangy yellow sauce added an extra punch which pushed the summertime picnic favourite into being one of Sparks’s preferred salads.

When everyone was ready to tuck into their dinner, Tully raised his glass.

“A toast. To brothers. Let it not be this long again before sharing our homes with each other.”

“Cheers!” Sparks said. The three raised their glasses, filled with the spelled wine, and clinked the vessels together.

As the edges of the glasses connected, jolts of energy blossomed from the contact and travelled through to each of the men’s hands, gently biting them with a static shock.

Tully laughed. “You are out of sorts, aren’t you?”

Dev’s mouth twitched up in a silly half grin.

Sparks tensed, reliving his guilt and horror knowing the spelled wine was about to set in. He bit his bottom lip then mumbled, “Sorry.”

“Nonsense. I totally get it.” Tully took a sip from his glass, closed his eyes, and let out a hum of appreciation. “Damn, that is good.”

 

AS SPARKS ATE the last bite of the frozen berry dessert Tully had made, he rubbed his belly, leaned back in his chair, and stared at his hosts.

“So, whaddya think? Should we? I mean, rustling together a ceremony so quickly is tough. You can’t do Mabon on the spur of the moment. We’d have to see if the others would be interested and plan out an appropriate ritual together.”

“True, although I’d expect they’d jump at the chance.”

“Well, I know Wiatt would be in, I’ve talked to him on and off.” Wiatt was Sparks’s necromancer brother. “He’s been hiding out in his basement, playing with his dead things. Honestly, he needs human interaction. And I’m not being mean, even he’ll tell you the same thing. So, I know that’s at least one more.”

“I say we invite everyone. After all, the old guard from the Guardians are either dead, missing, or convalescing in the hospital. I think it would be good to bring the boys back together again.” Tully cocked his head as he stared at Dev. “But you don’t have the history of the coven brotherhood like Sparks and I did with everyone else. What do you think?” He leaned across the table and grabbed his lover’s hand, gently squeezing it. “I know how you feel.”

Dev rolled his eyes. “I suppose you’re right. I only had a night with everyone. It would be good to see them again.” He glanced at Sparks. “He keeps regaling me with stories, but I’d kind of like to get to know all the guys.”

“Well, I think we’re safe inviting them. I can’t possibly fathom any of the others having involvement in Byron’s scheme—except for Eddie and Gus. They were his right-hand men and well, those are all empty positions now.” Tully spooned in the last bite of his dessert after he’d spoken. Sparks squinted, confused about a mention of a “scheme,” but let the words go.

“Where would we celebrate? It’s far too small here for all the guys,” Dev said.

“Why not at the coven house? All the supplies are there.” Sparks canted his head to one side.

“I don’t know.” Dev scrunched his eyebrows together. “I mean, that’s his house.”

“Technically, it’s the Guardians of the Night Grove’s. Byron and Addas got to live there. All the books, robes, and witchy stuff belongs to the coven, not Byron.”

“Wouldn’t waltzing into their house be trespassing? Would kind of feel like it. Besides, the energy of the whole place…” Dev frowned, clearly not happy about this decision.

“Trespassing? Not at all. Sparks and I are both coven brothers. Coven property is communal, making the space and all the resources just as much ours as his. But I completely agree about the vibe.”

“You know, if you want, I’ll ask Byron since you’re worried about using the house.” Sparks offered, although as soon as he spoke, he immediately regretted it.

A palpable tension filled the space between Tully, Dev, and Sparks.

“You know what, screw him. He fooled us and used us. He tricked everyone into drinking dead fae. I say we use the space and anything else we need and bring the guys together. The coven doesn’t belong to Byron. We are as much part of that house as he is.” Tully raised his wineglass and bobbed his head once, reaffirming his statement.

“Hold up. Drink what now?” Sparks wasn’t about to let the last statement go without an explanation. He glared at Tully.

“Oh shit. Yeah…I guess there’s a few things you don’t know.” Tully grimaced as he looked at Dev. “This is another reason why we owe you an apology. We discovered some stuff…things Byron had done, and we should have told you and everyone else. Remember the bubbly green juice Byron used to pull out on special occasions, and after we all drank some of it, we were all, like, super-witchy? That fluid came from the spinal column of fae. Byron captured them and used them in experiments to try and fix Addas.”

“Shut. The. Fuck. Up. Fix Addas, you mean…trying to undo the werewolf infection?” Sparks’s mind flipped, doing mental leaps trying to piece everything together. The guys had never told him the whole story.

“Yeah. So, again, sorry. We should have told you all this a long time ago. Everything happened so fast, and afterward I didn’t want to revisit any of it.” Dev glanced at his empty dinner plate. “Which wasn’t fair to you.”

“No, I get it. After cleaning up that mess? Dev, I didn’t know exactly what had happened but judging from the gore—well, clearly the night had been a rough one. I hoped you guys would eventually tell me. But we’re bonded brothers—I would do anything for either of you. No questions asked. But you gotta tell me now. What the hell happened?” Sparks honestly didn’t hold a single judgement against his witch brothers. Sometimes they got called in to do things ordinary humans would never face. The Shadow Realm could be glorious, but it could be ferocious.

“So, long story, short version? I think we all knew Addas had been bitten by a werewolf. No adult male grows six inches taller in the course of a year unless…” As Tully uttered the confession, Sparks nodded his agreement and rolled his eyes. Addas’s infection was the worst-kept coven secret, despite Byron trying to hide it. “Dev and his bestie, Cam, used the summoning board the coven had created—remember those? They used Desires, and the ritual catapulted Dev toward the Shadow Realm. He was bound to get here, but the use of the board quickened the pace. Unfortunately, Cam ended up on the wrong side of his wishes.”

“That was the board we fused a Djinn into, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, that one.”

“Someone made a wish…didn’t they?” Sparks frowned. “I knew those boards were a bad idea. The whole idea—binding a creature to the board. Sketchy shit.”

“Yup. Both Dev and Cam made wishes. But Cam got the short end. He turned into fae. Byron captured him and used Cam’s newly formed body in experiments and extracted his spinal fluid—apparently fae juice has properties—and we’ve all drunk a little of Cam. Which means we all have fae in us.” Tully half grinned, again, trying to make light of the situation.

“Oh my Gods, and once touched by the fae…” Sparks started.

“You’re never quite the same ever again.” Tully completed the thought. “So, we’re witch-fae. Addas imbibed the goo, too, so with the infection—”

“Holy shit. He’s witch-werewolf-fae!” Sparks sat there shocked at all this new information. “Do you think he survived his transformation?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me if he did, but we have no proof either way. Just a set of paw prints leading away from the house. I mean, who knows?” Dev raised both eyebrows and twisted in his chair, obviously uncomfortable. “I can’t begin to tell you how many times we both said, ‘We need to call the guys.’ But how do you even start that conversation?”

“Wow.” Sparks took the last sip of his wine. “Well now, that puts a whole new spin on Byron. I mean, who would torture other living creatures?” He glanced at Tully. “I don’t know. Maybe we shouldn’t use the Night Grove’s witch things. Now the thought of anything from that night seems tainted.”

“True. There’s some bad mojo. Maybe we should leave it all behind.” Tully’s continual optimism waned as the statement sat heavy on the table before them, a rare instance where Sparks witnessed Tully in such a state. “But there are things at the coven house that would be useful, and a few items there are mine…or belong to my family.”

“We should get them,” Sparks replied with a devilish grin.

“Sorta feels like stealing, no?” Dev pinched his eyebrows together.

“Hardly stealing if it’s ours.” Tully grabbed his boyfriend’s hand. “It would only take a few minutes. Sparks and I could go, gather the things that belong to us, and I can think of a couple of other items the guys might want. Then I think we call it quits on the Night Grove.”

“Should we strike up our own coven?” Sparks cocked an eyebrow and sat up straight, filled with excitement.

“Oh, I do like that.” With his other hand, Tully placed a bearish mitt on Sparks’s shoulder. “And you never got the chance to be inducted into the coven either. Whaddya say, Dev? Our own all-boys group?” He squeezed Dev’s hand.

The conversation made Sparks’s heart happy.

“I think we need to declare a new high priest.” Tully let go of Dev but locked his gaze on him as he emptied his wineglass in one gulp. He picked up the bottle and poured what remained into everyone’s glass. “Whaddya say, boys? Time to reunite the guys but under a whole new coven?”

Sparks tried his hardest to suppress his giddiness. His hopes had manifested themselves. Damn Naggy and his special bottle of wine. Who would have guessed the evening would have worked out so brilliantly.