Betrayal Read online

  Betrayal

  Jennifer Blackstream

  Skeleton Key Publishing

  Contents

  Copyright

  Don’t Forget!

  Summary

  Also by Jennifer Blackstream

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Next Book

  From the Author

  Did you find a typo?

  Ahoy, ebook pirates!

  BETRAYAL

  A Blood Trails Novel, Book 7

  USA Today Bestselling Author

  JENNIFER BLACKSTREAM

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  Betrayal

  ©Copyright Jennifer Blackstream 2019, Skeleton Key Publishing

  Edited by 720 Editing

  Cover Art by Covers by Juan © Copyright 2019

  * * *

  This is a work fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form without the written permission of the author. You may not circulate this book in any format. Thank you for respecting the hard work of all people involved with the creation of this ebook.

  Temptation, Blood Trails #0.5

  A dinner party ended with a dead body.

  A young officer recognizes the foul stench of demon at the crime scene.

  It’s time to call for backup.

  Not a cop.

  A witch.

  Tap or click HERE and tell me where to send your free ebook. Quick! There's a murder to solve...

  I love hearing from readers, and I respond to all messages. You can reply to a newsletter, you can message me on Facebook, or you can email me at [email protected].

  I will always respond, because you’re the ones that make these books possible.

  With much love,

  Jennifer Blackstream

  P.S. Your coffee is sitting somewhere getting cold.

  No one sees betrayal coming. No one. Experience another story of deception, theft, and murder from USA Today bestselling author Jennifer Blackstream.

  Shade’s Unseelie master has a new case for her. Someone is stealing Unseelie artifacts, piecing together the tools to perform a lost ritual. Shade must recover the artifacts and return them to their rightful owners—

  But only after the thief has finished the spell.

  Shade’s contract is clear, but her conscience isn’t. The ritual is dangerous, and if she lets the thief succeed, their blood will be on her hands. To make matters worse, this case is full of familiar faces. Faces that still haunt her nightmares.

  Every revelation raises the stakes, and soon Shade finds her professional life becoming a lot more personal, and the path ahead less and less clear. When Shade finds the thief, she’ll have a choice to make. And there’s no guarantee that the friends she begins with will still be by her side when it’s all over…

  ALSO BY JENNIFER BLACKSTREAM

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  Urban Fantasy

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  Blood Trails Series

  Temptation (prequel, mailing list exclusive)

  Deadline

  Monster

  Taken

  Corruption

  Mercenary

  Caged

  Betrayal

  Thrall

  * * *

  Paranormal Romance

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  Blood Prince Series

  What Big Teeth You Have (bonus short story, mailing list exclusive)

  Before Midnight

  One Bite

  Golden Stair

  Divine Scales

  Beautiful Salvation

  Bonus Novel: The Pirate’s Witch

  * * *

  Blood Realm Series:

  All for a Rose

  Blue Voodoo

  The Archer

  Bear With Me

  Stolen Wish

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  Short stories are not listed here, but can be found on my website here.

  "Not necessity, not desire - no, the love of power is the demon of men. Let them have everything - health, food, a place to live, entertainment - they are and remain unhappy and low-spirited: for the demon waits and waits and will be satisfied.”

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Chapter 1

  “Just eat the strawberry already!”

  Peasblossom’s high-pitched voice drilled into my ears like acupuncture needles aimed straight for my ear drums. If my head didn’t feel full of cotton, it would have hurt worse. As it was, the sound was muddled, as if she were shouting underwater. That was probably a bad sign.

  I rolled my head to the side, the cool kitchen counter pressing against my cheek. Early morning sunlight peeked through the curtains, just enough to paint the room in gauzy gold light. Morning already. No sleep for me.

  Again.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  My voice sounded far away. Peasblossom scowled and stomped over the counter. For a six-inch pixie, my familiar could make a lot of noise when she stomped. Or maybe that was just because my ear was pressed to the counter.

  Something cold and wet hit me in the nose, and my eyes shot open in time to see a large red strawberry pressed to my face.

  “Eat. The. Stupid. Berry!” Peasblossom growled.

  “Not. Hungry.”

  “Shade.”

  It was Andy’s voice this time. I frowned and rolled my head to the other side, ignoring the discomfort of steamrolling my nose against the counter. My back wasn’t happy either, and my spine ached from being bent over for too long. I squinted in the direction of Andy’s voice, trying to parse out his form through the fall of my dark hair that now covered my face.

  The FBI agent took a step closer, only the sound of his shoes on the hardwood floor alerting me to the movement. “The strawberry is enchanted, remember? To help replace a good night’s sleep?”

  Oh. I’d forgotten I’d taken to keeping spelled berries in the fridge. Mother Hazel wouldn’t like it. Not just because it was “lazy witching,” but because no one should abuse themselves to the point of needing a steady stream of magic berries to function through a lack of sleep. I scowled.

  I sighed and rolled over my face again, groping for the berry with a right hand that had fallen asleep at some point. Probably to mock me.

  “Scath is still having the nightmares, huh?”

  It took two tries to get the strawberry into my mouth. I didn’t know if it would have been easier without Peasblossom’s “help,” but I was pretty sure it wouldn’t have come so close to being shoved up my nose without her.

  “Obviously,” I muttered.

  I chewed the berry, grunting as the magic seeped into my body, waking up my tired muscles and firing up my brain cells. I blinked and sat up, stretching and twisting in my seat on one of the bar stools at the island counter in m
y kitchen. My back screamed in protest and I winced.

  “Did you try talking to her again?” Andy asked.

  I propped my head up on my hands, elbows on the counter. “I tried. As soon as I mention the nightmares, she leaves. Just flashes back into her feline beast form and takes off. Whatever is upsetting her, Scath doesn’t want to talk about it.”

  Andy crossed the room to the fridge. As usual, he was dressed in a dark blue suit and white shirt, not a wrinkle to be found. He opened the fridge and retrieved a can of Coke, then pivoted to set it in front of me. “Has she talked about anything?”

  “No. She stays in beast form for the most part. Just sits there staring at me.” I resisted the urge to grab the can. It was too early for soda. “And let me just say, it was strange enough before when she’d curl up on the foot of my bed to sleep—back when I thought she was a cat sith. Now that I know she has a human form…” I rubbed my eyes. “Then of course she has the nightmares, and shifts to human form, so I wake up with a naked, screaming woman tangled in my sheets.”

  “Looks like you have another chance,” Andy said under his breath.

  I turned in time to see the sidhe woman in question walk out of my bedroom. As was her new routine, she’d had the nightmare, I’d tried to talk to her about it, then she’d run out. I didn’t know how she’d ended up back in my bedroom, but her means of travel was pretty low on my list of questions.

  Definitely farther down than “Are you planning to kill me?”

  Scath was naked, as she always was in human form. My standing offer of clothing had not as yet caught her interest. I couldn’t blame her since she wasn’t going to stay in that form long anyway, and putting clothes on just to take them off after ten minutes hardly seemed worth it. If there was one thing I knew for certain about the sidhe, it was that she preferred her feline form.

  “How are you?” I asked.

  Cold green eyes met mine. “Fine.”

  Scath’s voice held the usual rasp that followed her shift from beast form. The sound reminded me of a rusty sword, suffering from disuse, but still dangerous. She’d taken human form several times over the last few weeks since I’d discovered she had that ability. I had the bitter thought that if she’d talk to me more, maybe give me some clue to why she’d attached herself to me, then maybe she wouldn’t sound like she’d been gargling broken glass.

  I slid off the stool and approached her, trying my best to look harmless. Something that was usually easy for me, since I was only five-foot-three and usually dressed in colorful leggings and a black cotton shirt.

  “The nightmares,” I began gently. “I just wanted—”

  “Why do you fear him?”

  I blinked in confusion, then tensed as Scath stalked across the room and scooped Majesty off the floor.

  Behind me, Andy tensed too, his hand falling to his gun.

  “You know that won’t do you any good, so don’t bother,” I reminded him, my voice tight. I cleared my throat. “Please be careful with him.”

  Scath let the kitten squirm in her arms before he crawled onto her shoulder to sit like a ball of black-striped grey fluff, his white face deceptively innocent. His tail lashed side to side, bright blue eyes focused intently on me. He wasn’t glowing, and he didn’t have the look of a creature about to unleash an unpredictable burst of magic that may result in death and destruction.

  But that was meager comfort when you knew he could. At any time. With no warning.

  “Either you’re being deliberately obtuse, or you have a wretchedly poor memory.” I rubbed my hands on my legging-covered thighs, trying to ease the tingle of defensive magic that wouldn’t do me any good. “Have you forgotten the rhinoceros?”

  “No. But I also haven’t forgotten the lightning that saved your life. He did that too.” She reached up with one hand to scratch the kitten behind his left ear. “He would help you more if you would let him accompany you.”

  Majesty leapt off her shoulder. I jerked my arm up, magic ready. Andy’s arm tightened as he resisted the urge to draw his gun. The kitten landed silently on the floor, then made a beeline toward the growing patch of sunlight in front of my apartment’s large windows. Scath snorted and shook her head at both of us.

  I forced myself to look out the window, to concentrate on Cleveland’s skyline and the soft glow of August morning sunlight. It wasn’t very helpful. Looking at the city just made me think of my real home back in Dresden, the tiny village tucked into a bend in the Muskingum River. I remembered a simpler time. Before I’d worked for Cleveland’s vampiric criminal mastermind. Before I’d signed a contract of indentured servitude with a leannan sidhe. Before another Unseelie sidhe had taken to following me everywhere, and now, apparently enjoyed judging my attempts to protect myself.

  I tried to take a deep breath to center myself, then wrinkled my nose as I realized my mistake. The entire apartment smelled like the fey master who rented it for me, who insisted I stay here. Expensive cologne that teased the senses, so light you could never be completely certain it was cologne and not the natural intoxicating scent of the man himself.

  A tiny hand pressed against my neck. Peasblossom gave me a reassuring pat, and I turned to see her wink a pink multi-faceted eye at me. I forced my arm down and looked at Scath. “He seems perfectly capable of showing up when it pleases him,” I said, gesturing toward Majesty with my chin. “And I can hardly take him with me on cases when I have no idea when he’ll…go off.”

  “He’s not in control of his own magic,” Scath insisted. “For every time he shows up, there’s a handful of times he’s tried and failed.”

  I froze. “You mean…he’s been trying to stay with me all the time?”

  Scath rolled her eyes. “Yes.”

  I shared a look with Andy, and for the first time in too long, we shared a moment of perfect understanding. Perfect, horrified understanding.

  “I don’t like it!” Peasblossom announced, stomping her foot on my shoulder. “I don’t like him. He’s a nasty beastie who wants me for a chew toy.” She crossed her arms. “And I’m much more helpful to Shade than he could ever be.”

  “Do you know who did that to him?” Andy spoke up, addressing Scath as he jabbed a thumb in Majesty’s general direction. “The knot of magic in his lifeforce?”

  Scath didn’t answer. And she didn’t look at Andy. As a general rule, she didn’t seem interested in communicating with anyone but me. And most of the time, she seemed to resent that as well.

  “Can you communicate with Majesty?” I asked.

  “No. He doesn’t talk.”

  I didn’t know if she was being sarcastic and referring to his literal lack of speech, or if that answer had been genuine, and Majesty lacked the communication abilities a normal kitten would have. My experience with her frustrating refusal over the past few weeks to give me anything resembling a straight answer discouraged me from asking for more detail.

  “You said he’d be more helpful if I’d keep him with me,” I said finally. “Do you have reason to believe he’ll help me?”

  “Yes.”

  She didn’t elaborate. I clenched my teeth, then forced my jaw to relax. “You understand the risk. You said his magic is chaotic. Would you agree that he might also make things worse?”

  “Yes.”

  Again, no helpful elaboration.

  “But you think he’ll help me more often than hurt me?”

  Scath shrugged.

  My eye twitched. I took a slow breath through my nose, then let it out just as slowly. “If you know anything about him, if you care for him at all, then you have to know he’s suffering. Whatever spell is inside him, turning him into a ball of chaos magic, it’s going to kill him eventually. Can you at least tell me who did that to him? Or how to help him?”

  Scath hesitated. I held my breath. Was this it? Would she finally listen? Finally give me a scrap of the information I’d been begging her for since I found out she had a human form? For three weeks, she’d been stubbo
rnly silent, giving me one word answers, staying in beast form more often than not. Refusing to go away, but giving me no explanation for why.

  “The magic won’t kill him,” she said finally.

  I held very still, afraid to break the spell of cooperation. “Do you know who did this to him? Who put that magic inside him?” All his original owner Mrs. Harvesty had been able to tell me was that the spell had been cast by a sorceress she found in Akron.

  “Yes.”

  Andy tensed, but he seemed to share my fear of interrupting this new flow of information, and remained silent.

  “Is this person my friend or my enemy?”

  “Either. Or both. She’s not one to limit her options.”

  I held my breath. “Who is she?” I asked.

  Scath met my eyes, the intensity in her stare a heavy weight holding me in place, as if she were wary of my reaction, afraid I might run away. “Dubheasa.”

  “Dubheasa?” I echoed the name, but I couldn’t place it. It sounded familiar. Not in a good way, but in a—