Bone Magic (Winter Wayne Book 3) Read online

  Table of Contents

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  BONE MAGIC

  WINTER WAYNE, Book 3

  D.N. HOXA

  Copyright © 2018 by D.N. Hoxa

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material or artwork herein is prohibited.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Also by D.N. Hoxa

  ———————————

  Morta Fox Trilogy

  Heartbeat

  Reclaimed

  Unchanged

  Starlight Saga

  Assassin

  Villain

  Sinner

  Savior

  Chronicles of the Demon Hunter

  A Soul's Worth

  Book Two (Coming Soon)

  Book Three (Coming Soon)

  Water Wielders

  Trapped

  Book Two (Coming Soon)

  Book Three (Coming Soon)

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty one

  Twenty two

  Twenty three

  Twenty four

  Twenty five

  Twenty six

  Twenty seven

  Twenty eight

  Twenty nine

  Thirty

  Thirty one

  Thirty two

  Thirty three

  Thirty four

  One

  The cherry tree behind me made for the perfect shade against the scorching noon sun. June had been hotter than usual this year, or maybe I just wasn’t used to standing under an open sky for hours at a time. While my aunt Amelia made us some iced coffee, I stayed in the garden, thankful that I was already done with magic for the day. Now that it was summer and the Bone families in Bloomsburg didn’t hate each other, Amelia had put the covers of her garden away to let her plants bathe in real sunlight.

  While I sat cross-legged on the ground, I practiced my beads and the muscles of my left hand. Ever since that witch Jane Dunham had broken every bone in my arm with her dark Hedge magic five months ago, my beads hadn’t been the same, probably because my fingers had yet to heal completely. I conjured a healing spell on myself every two days and drank Amelia’s disgusting tea every week, and it still hurt like hell—especially when it rained. It made me feel old and I hated Jane Dunham even more for it.

  I sent the beads forward and ignored the pain in my fingers as I moved them fast. Practice had helped me much more than any spell or tea, so I’d made it a mission to train at least two hours every single day. While I was there in the garden and Amelia couldn’t see me, I flew the beads close to the ground and close to the stems of her plants. I wanted to see how fast they could go without hitting even a single leaf or glass blade on their way. Keeping up with their speed and direction at the same time sounds easier than it was, only because my fingers hurt so much, but I was doing it. The beads made it all the way to the middle of the garden and then returned to hover around my fingers. Those small victories made it worth every ounce of pain I felt.

  Grinning at myself, I sent them forward again, this time to the other side of the garden. That’s until they hit something hard—and broke it.

  Panic rang in my ears as I hurried to the plants to see the damage. A flower with a very thick stem and with gorgeous dark purple petals was on the ground, broken in half. Fear made my stomach turn. It was like being face-to-face with ECU soldiers, only in this situation, I couldn’t even fight for my life. Amelia was going to have my head.

  Shit, shit, shit. What do I do?

  I grabbed the flower with shaking hands and tried to put it in its place. These were all magical plants, so maybe they’d reattach all by themselves? Yeah, right.

  “Come on, come on, come on,” I begged it, but when I moved my hand just a bit, the stem was still very much broken. Not only that, but the rich color of the petals had already started to fade. I was dead. Yep, I was very much dead.

  “You are so dead.”

  I jumped to my feet, hiding the broken flower behind me. Sweat covered my forehead, and when I saw Eli Bender in front of me, I almost cried in joy. It wasn’t my aunt.

  “I didn’t…” I started to say, but my voice trailed off. I had no idea how much he’d seen, but the grin on his face said a lot.

  “You killed her flower. You’re deader than a bloodsucker,” Bender said, chuckling like this was so damn funny.

  My ears were on fire. “Shut up! I can fix it.” What had my aunt said? Fairies are natural botanists? I was a fairy, wasn’t I? I could reattach the damn stem, and nobody would suspect a thing.

  I dropped to my knees again, and I called on my magic. Bright, orange and wild, it filled me from head to toe as if it had been waiting a lifetime to be used, when I’d used it just an hour ago.

  “You can’t undo damage like this, Wayne,” Bender said as he squatted next to me and watched me send waves of magic to the flower.

  “Sure I can. I’ve got magic, remember?” He’d seen it all too clearly the night we’d fought against the six Hedge witches and their army of vampires. I’d preferred he hadn’t, but without my magic, we would have both ended up dead.

  Besides, I trusted Eli Bender. He was a good witch. He had to be, or I was screwed.

  “Even your magic can’t bring dead things back to life,” Bender said, and the tips of my fingers went numb when my brain realized: you know what? That guy is right.

  “She’s going to kill me,” I whispered, shaking my head. That garden was my aunt’s life, even though she was a Bone witch—not a drop of Green magic in her.

  “And I’ll be here to witness it, unfortunately,” Bender said.

  I didn’t even have it in me to shout at him. Instead, I fell on my ass on the concrete of the pathway, extra careful where I put my legs. If I broke another one of her plants, I could run away to another planet, and Amelia would still find me.

  “It was an accident.” It really was. My beads had done it, not me. Except she’d specifically told me a few days ago to not train my beads in her garden. Ah, hell.

  “She’s not going to fall for it,” Bender said. “Unless I tell her that I did it.”

  That put a bright smile
on my face and filled my chest with hope. “You’d do that for me?” Holy spell, I was saved. Amelia would be mad at Bender, probably kick him out of her house, but who cared? They weren’t family, and eventually, she would have to get over it. With me, I’d never see the end of it.

  “Of course I would, Wayne! Come on.”

  He narrowed his brows like I’d insulted him. I was going to hug the heck out of him until he couldn’t breathe, but then he spoke again.

  “In return for a favor, of course.”

  With a roll of my eyes, I stood up and went back to the cherry tree. The sun was killing my eyes.

  Bender followed me. In the past few months, we’d grown really close. I wouldn’t call us best friends, but we were good friends, at least. We saw each other at least once a week, and almost every time I came to visit Amelia on Sundays, he made sure I went back to my office drunk as hell. In the few bars Bloomsburg had, they all knew Bender, and though it was still very hard for people to hold back insults whenever they spotted me, they managed to keep their mouths shut because of him. It’s why I preferred to get drunk there instead of in Manhattan.

  “I’m not coming to work with you, Bender,” I said for what must have been the fiftieth time.

  After that awful night in Staten Island and the fight against the Hedge witches, the coven got back together, just like they said they would. It took them months before the Bone families even began to address the leaders properly, and it was going to take twice as long for them to get back the respect. But a lot of families who had moved out of Bloomsburg before were now returning. There was somebody walking down the street at every hour of the day. Even the air smelled different.

  In the new system, both the leaders and the ECU had officially appointed Bender and two other guys as Officers of the coven’s internal affairs. The ECU only agreed to it because they got to put one of their own in the team of three, and Bender agreed because how else were Bone witches going to be forced to keep order? The name of the ECU bred fear whether we liked it or not. It was up to Bender and his team to turn that fear into respect.

  “I honestly don’t get it,” he said, shaking his head as he sat beside me. “You’d have it all, Wayne. Unlimited cases, no research limits—everything the ECU has over Bones at the tips of your fingers. Why the hell would you even think twice about it?”

  The first time he asked me to join his team, I’m not going to lie, I thought about it. I thought about it long and hard before turning him down.

  Not that I didn’t like to work with Bender, because I did. And not because I didn’t want to work for my own people—no matter that I grew up away from them—but because Bloomsburg wasn’t my place. It wasn’t home. The second reason was that the Bone coven already had Bender. A lot of other paranormals needed someone like me in Manhattan. And I’ll be honest, I didn’t think I’d ever be able to work under anyone’s orders again, even if it was Bender we were talking about. Or work with colleagues. I still looked like a fairy, and that was never going to change. It was going to take a long time for people to stop judging me, and I didn’t want that kind of shit interfering with my work. I didn’t need more complications.

  No, I was better off working on my own. In the past five months, I’d had three cases! You’d argue with me that that’s nothing compared to what I needed to make a living, but it was so much better than before. And who was to say that it wouldn’t get even better in the months to come?

  “You don’t have to get it. I’m perfectly fine right where I am,” I said to Bender. I’d told him that before. I appreciated my freedom. I enjoyed it, too. I’d help him with every single case he had—off the record—but that was all I was willing to offer.

  “You’re going to regret it someday, you know? But when you do, lucky for you, I’ll still be here.” Bender actually sounded hopeful. I only smiled because I highly doubted it. “But that’s not the favor I want.”

  “It isn’t?” Suddenly curious as a little cat, I analyzed his face. Like he said, he had it all now that he had the coven behind him, together with the ECU. In the cases he’d had in the past few months, he hadn’t needed my help at all. Resources, backup, intel, weapons—it was all a phone call away.

  “No. What I’m going to ask from you is a bit more…complicated.”

  He sure as hell had all of my attention now. I dragged my ass sideways until I was face-to-face with him. “Go ahead.” Maybe it was a case. I’d finished my last one over three weeks ago, and I was already restless.

  “You do remember my sister Caroline,” Bender said. The smile had wiped off his face completely.

  Of course I remembered his sister Caroline. She was the wife of Joseph Davis, one of the Bone coven leaders. She was also the mother of Jessica Davis, one of the four Bone witches who were kidnapped and killed by Hedges over ten years ago.

  “And you remember Jessica,” Bender whispered. Shivers washed down my back. I’d seen her pictures, both when she was alive and after she died. Her face was forever imprinted in my memories.

  “Of course,” I said reluctantly. The pain in his eyes was crystal clear every time he spoke about her.

  “Well, Jessica’s little sister is fifteen years old. Her name is Evelyn, and she’s a very smart young lady.” Little by little, Bender’s lips stretched into a smile again. He looked away from me for a second, shaking his head. It was obvious to see how proud he was of his niece.

  “I didn’t know she had a sister,” I said because I couldn’t bring myself to speak Jessica’s name out loud in front of him.

  “They also have a little brother. Cody’s only eight. Caroline had him after…” After Jessica died. “Anyway, she didn’t want to leave Evelyn all alone, and it’s the first and last time in my life that I agreed with her, I think.”

  “She did the right thing.” Ask me what it’s like to be an only child. It sucked, and no matter how many times I said it, it would never express how I really felt about it properly. I’d have loved a brother or a sister, someone who’d always have my back no matter what. I’d have never asked for more.

  “Evelyn’s kind of going through a hard time ever since the Hedges,” Bender continued. “She’s changed, and not only the way kids change through puberty. She’s become smarter, yes, but also wilder. A true rebel. It’s like, ever since she found out who killed her sister, she no longer can control her anger.”

  “Can’t say I blame her.” It sounded like a conversation to be had in a bar somewhere with a drink in our hands, but I still let him get where he wanted to get.

  “My sister can’t handle her. Joseph can’t even speak to her. They want to send her away to a boarding school for troubled witches in Washington,” Bender mumbled.

  “There’s a boarding school for troubled witches in Washington?” It was the first time I was hearing about it.

  “There is, but you know nothing about it. Inside coven information. Nobody ever knows when children attend the school—except for the family and the leaders.”

  That sounded awfully suspicious. “Why?”

  But Bender shook his head. “That’s not the point. The point is that I don’t want to let her go there. She belongs in Bloomsburg.” He then bit his lower lip and looked down at his hands again. “Joseph and Caroline will consider keeping her closer if she agrees to speak to them.”

  “So make her.”

  Bender flinched. “If it were that easy, I’d have done it a long time ago. But I did get her to agree to talk to them—in return for something.”

  “So do it! Why are you here talking to me about it? Just go and do it.” It sounded pretty simple to me.

  He met my eyes and half smiled—but it was an uncomfortable smile. “The something she wants is to come work with you.”

  I laughed with all my heart. No way I could help it. This guy! He was the funniest witch on the planet sometimes. “You sure know how to cheer me up.”

  Just when I thought he’d start laughing, too, he pressed his lips together tightly
, then said, “I’m not kidding, Wayne.”

  The laughter died on my lips and left a pretty big lump in my throat. “Absolutely not.” I couldn’t say it enough, and no just didn’t seem to cut it.

  “Listen to me, Wayne. That’s the only way I’ll get her to talk to her parents. It’s the only way they’ll allow her to stay.”

  I jumped to my feet. “First of all, I live and work in Manhattan. Second of all, I work alone! And third, she’s fifteen, Bender! For God’s sake, she’s just a kid. You know what kind of people we deal with, and you think it’s a good idea to let her work with me?” He must have lost his fucking mind.

  “She’ll come to Manhattan every morning, then come back here at night. You won’t have to worry about a thing. And she’s not going to work with you! She’ll be your apprentice. You’ll teach her a few things, get her to see why this life isn’t good for her. It’s going to take less than a month to open her eyes and get her back to the way she was.”

  Bender followed me as I paced around Amelia’s garden, the blood in my veins cold as ice. He couldn’t be serious. A kid! What the hell was I supposed to do with a kid?!

  “Did you not hear me? I deal with criminals, Bender. With evil sons of bitches who don’t give a shit about someone’s age. Are you really sure you want to put your niece in front of that kind of a danger?”

  Bender turned his head towards the street behind us. It was like a slap to my face.

  “Oh, I get it.” I nodded, smiling at myself. “You want to bring her to me because you don’t think I’m going to get any cases any time soon. And even if I do, they won’t be dangerous.”

  I hated to admit it, but he could be right. The last three cases had been a fucking joke. A client sent me looking for his missing son, then found him hiding at his friend’s place, doing drugs and drinking booze all day long. Another wanted me to find a necklace that her mother had left her. She was sure the maid had taken it from her house. A finding spell later, I found it at a human jeweler. Turned out her husband had stolen it and sold it for poker money. And the last client, the most interesting case I’d had so far, wanted me to find a chest full of gold his great-grandfather had hidden somewhere, because the man had wanted to make sure that whoever found all of his fortune would be worthy of it. Neither my client’s father nor his grandfather before that had been able to find it. I was—in four days.