Raven Song: Shifters Bewitched #4 Read online

  The whole thing faded in and out for me, as if I were in a dream. But it was only my emotions, making it hard for me to concentrate.

  “I do,” the king said at last, gazing into my eyes.

  “I do,” I answered, as he slid a slender band of gold around my finger.

  “You may kiss the bride,” both officiants said at once.

  And on both sides of the veil, a cheer went up.

  But the happy sounds faded from my ears the moment Éan’s lips touched mine.

  We might live together forever, and kiss a hundred thousand times. But this magic would never fade. It was more than who we were. It was love and acceptance twining around us, making us whole, saving two worlds.

  “I love you, a rún,” Éan whispered as he pulled away to gaze into my eyes.

  “I love you too,” I told him. “Forever and ever.”

  ***

  Thanks for reading Raven Song!

  Are you ready for more steamy Fae action?

  How about a series where a brotherhood of Fae Kings and their bonded mates have to protect a small mortal town from a gang of monsters that have escaped from the realm of Faerie?

  Then keep reading for a sample of King of Midnight, or grab your copy now:

  King of Midnight:

  His darkness fills her world, but only her song can fill his heart…

  https://www.tashablack.com/kingofmidnight.html

  King of Midnight (Sample)

  1

  Sara

  Sara Mason pushed open the big chestnut door with what she hoped was a showman-like flourish.

  It squeaked indignantly, but swung inward to reveal a sweeping entry hall with a curved staircase. The ceiling soared upward, perfectly showing off the enormous crystal chandelier. An intricately carved and imposing grandfather clock overlooked the whole scene like a silent sentry.

  The effect was impressive.

  It would have been more impressive if the movement of the door hadn’t sent a collection of dry leaves dancing across the black and white marble tiles.

  “Someone must have left the balcony door open again,” she said to her clients. “That latch is a little tricky.”

  She strode in, flicked the switch for the Waterford chandelier, and spun back to the couple, hoping they would be able to see past the current state of the house and appreciate the amazing architectural features of the old mansion.

  “Gross,” the wife remarked. “What’s that smell?”

  “The property has been closed up for a while,” Sara explained. “The greater Philadelphia area has a high-water table, so it’s common for homes this age to be damp if they aren’t lived in.”

  “Mold,” the husband said wisely, tapping the side of his nose. “Deadly black mold.”

  Deadly black mold was extremely unlikely in a house this drafty. The drafty original windows provided too much unintentional ventilation for the place to ever really be sealed up.

  But she could already tell her clients weren’t interested enough to care about a detail like that. Sara restrained the desire to sigh as she moved toward the next room.

  “I’m going to pop around and get some lights on for you. Look around a bit. I’ll circle back to see if you have any questions.”

  It was probably a wasted effort to turn on all the lights when these two would want to leave without seeing the whole thing.

  She had known when they asked her to set up the showing that it was the wrong property. Al and Amy Martin were great buyers, but they weren’t the fixer-upper types. They had surely been attracted to the old place by the call of the rock bottom price point and the immense square footage.

  And Sara had been eager to show it to them - to anyone.

  A developer was poking around, threatening to do something with the whole stretch of land. This lot, sans the house, was supposedly the crown jewel of his plan. The walled garden outside would certainly be leveled to make space for parking.

  The idea seemed awful to her. But she could hardly blame the trust that owned the house if they accepted an offer from the developer. The property had been vacant since Sara was a little girl.

  There had been offers after the for sale sign finally went up a few years ago.

  But something always went wrong.

  The first interested buyer had lost his job before the offer was finalized. The second was in a car accident. And the third simply chickened out, forfeiting her deposit.

  Around Rosethorn Valley, the rumors about the old house ranged from creepily campy to downright terrifying. The local kids tended to avoid the whole area. Some of the agents in Sara’s office even refused to show the property altogether.

  She flicked on lights in the conservatory, which overlooked the garden and the koi pond, then made her way through the enormous dining room.

  The Martins were following close behind her. They were moving too fast to be seriously considering the house.

  “Wow, they sure left a lot of old furniture,” Amy said, looking at the massive wood dining table.

  Sara loved the table’s heft and clawed feet. She had never seen anything like it.

  An ancient painting of a man with dark hair and pale grey eyes wearing a stiff collar loomed over the scene from the wall at the table’s head, as if he were waiting for servants to bring his meal.

  “My cousin can get us a dumpster at cost,” Al said proudly.

  Sara almost swore the man in the painting winced at the words - probably a reflection of how she was feeling inside at the thought of throwing away all the wonderful pieces in the house.

  “Some of these items may have historical value,” Sara pointed out.

  Al grunted noncommittally and kept walking.

  Sara made a mental note to get in touch with the Rosethorn Valley Historical Society. Her friend, Tabitha, was a co-curator there. Surely the society would take an interest in the furnishings. Hopefully, they could get the worthwhile pieces out before the house was torn down.

  She approached the mantel of the fireplace and picked up a ceramic bud vase that held a single dried bloom. The pottery was cool and the weight of it was satisfying in her hand.

  Al and Amy had begun arguing in the kitchen about whether or not they could remove a wall. Sara decided to give them some space.

  Movement outside the window caught her attention. A small, brown bird was making a home in the ivy that climbed the side of the house.

  The window looked out over the rose garden, which was dormant now. Soon the buds would appear, tipped in red.

  Sara hummed the silly song she used to sing to those roses when she snuck up here as a child.

  Blooms bursting into color

  Leaves so green exploding from their stems

  Footsteps told her the Martins were finished arguing. It was time to put the vase down and get to work.

  Before she could, there was a surprising crack, like a gunshot.

  She looked down at her hand. The vase had broken into several pieces.

  Her mouth dropped open and she let go of the shards.

  They hit the stone hearth and shattered into smaller fragments.

  She instinctively knelt to retrieve the pieces. But as soon as she reached out for them, a sharp edge pierced her left index finger.

  She hissed in a breath as she stood.

  “What was that?” Amy asked on her way back through the dining room.

  “Oh, I just knocked over a bud vase,” Sara managed. “Nothing to worry about.”

  She straightened, clutching her hurt hand, but not before a single drop of blood fell to the hearth to join the broken pieces of pottery and dried petals.

  “Need any help?” Al asked.

  “No, thanks,” Sara replied. “I’ll be right with you.”

  Amy nodded and headed out toward the conservatory and Al followed.

  Sara made a mental note to mention the broken vase to the listing agent. Hopefully, it wasn’t valuable.

  She was more puzzled over exactly h
ow it had broken. She’d been holding it so gently.

  Sara grabbed a tissue from her purse and pressed it to her finger. When she pulled it away it was clean. She didn’t seem to be bleeding anymore.

  She stuck the tissue back in her purse and grabbed her phone to check the time. If she could spare a few minutes before their next showing, maybe she could look for a broom and dustpan here to clean up.

  “What’s that?” Amy called from the conservatory.

  Sara hurried in to find her client pointing to a massive, sheet-covered object.

  “Oh, that’s the piano,” Sara said with a smile. She knew Amy was hoping for a house with room for a piano. “Hang on, I’ll show you.”

  She put her phone on the window sill and lifted the edge of the sheet, revealing a glimpse of what it covered. The piano was made of a beautiful tiger striped wood, unlike any other Sara had ever seen.

  She remembered gazing in the window at the piano from the garden as a child and seeing her own reflection staring back from the enormous floor to ceiling mirror in the gilded frame that graced the inside wall of the conservatory.

  She pulled gently, but the sheet seemed to be caught on something, so she gave it a good tug.

  It came loose suddenly, releasing a cloud of dust.

  Amy immediately began sneezing and coughing.

  “She’s having an allergy attack,” Al said. “We need to get her out of here.”

  Amy covered her mouth with her hand and nodded.

  “Go ahead,” Sara said. “I’ll be right behind you.”

  Al ushered a red-faced Amy toward the front door as Sara hurriedly turned off the lights.

  By the time she passed the grandfather clock in the front hall her clients were outside.

  Sara stepped out onto the front porch and locked up, feeling the same strange sense of sadness she always did when she closed the keys back up in the lockbox.

  This house was a landmark. Its gardens had been a playground for her as a child. It was sad to think that all of it might soon be gone.

  By the time she joined Al and Amy back at her little Saab in the driveway, Amy’s face was looking normal again and the coughing and sneezing had stopped.

  “Are you okay?” Sara asked her.

  “Yeah, it was the weirdest thing,” Amy said. “As soon as I came outside, I felt better.”

  “Black mold,” Al said, nodding to himself sagely. “It’s a sure sign.”

  It wasn’t. But Sara wasn’t about to tell them that.

  They all got in and she started the car, trying to remember which house they were seeing next.

  Music drifted to her from somewhere - the exact song she had been humming, accompanied by bells and drums, as if it were coming from just outside the car.

  She turned to look but there was nothing there - only the circular drive and the hulk of the house, looming over them.

  “Oh, great song,” Al said, reaching between the front seats to turn up the radio.

  The song coming from the car’s speakers was a sixties folk-rock classic. There were no bells or drums.

  Sara shook her head, hoping she wasn’t actually going crazy.

  There was no time to go off the rails. She had another half a dozen houses to show to Al and Amy in the next four hours. The Martins were determined to lock in their mortgage interest rate, which meant she would probably be writing an offer with them tonight.

  She took a deep breath to clear her head and pulled out of the long drive, leaving the old house, and hopefully the odd feelings, in the rearview mirror.

  2

  Dorian

  Dorian sat on his throne and gazed out over the ballroom.

  The sun was setting, casting long shadows across the black and white marble tiles.

  Each day he watched the sun’s journey across the checkerboard floor. He knew its path so well he was sure he could paint it from memory, a fiery red at dawn, cool blue shadows at dusk.

  Soon, the party would begin, and the ballroom floor would be covered in dancers, their frenzied movements bringing the space to life just as they had every night for a thousand years.

  The palace of the King of Darkness was never at a loss for a party.

  All the rooms in Dorian’s mansion seemed to lead to this one. No nook or cranny in the world could hide his subjects when it was time to dance.

  He sighed and gazed out the window onto the rose garden, as he’d done so many times.

  To his surprise, soft music greeted him.

  He spun around, but there was no one there.

  His subjects were all asleep as usual, in anticipation of tonight’s revelry. Only the king was unable to rest.

  He listened again, but the melody had gone silent.

  Too bad. It had warmed his heart and made him somehow homesick, as if he were being called back across the years to something soft and sweet. Something small, and young…

  Ah, yes. The child.

  But she hadn’t appeared in the garden in…weeks? Years?

  He realized he was no longer aware of the passage of time in the mortal world. It didn’t matter. He would never set foot there again. His sentence had been clear on that.

  He closed his eyes and pictured the child, all chubby cheeks and long dark hair. How she had loved his rose garden. She sang to the blooms with all the passion of a budding bard.

  But the garden was empty now. For all he knew the mortal child was a grandmother, or long dead.

  The sound of a small crash in the dining hall snapped him out of his reverie.

  He leapt off his throne and strode across the floor to investigate.

  At first glance, the room appeared unchanged. The massive wooden table stood motionless at the center of the room, awaiting a feast that would never come.

  He was about to return to his throne when he spotted the broken vase on the hearth.

  Heart pounding, he moved closer to be sure.

  Yes, the thing was in shards, surrounded by withered petals and a drop of scarlet blood, like the scene of a marvelous, miniature murder.

  Nothing like this had ever happened before.

  He felt a cruel smile pull his lips upward.

  A snatch of music, a broken vase.

  This was something glorious.

  This was something exciting.

  This was something… new.

  3

  Sara

  At the end of her day, Sara smiled and walked Al and Amy out the front door of Tarker’s Hollow Realty Group.

  “Sara, we can’t thank you enough, truly,” Amy said. “You knew we’d fall in love with Rabbit Lane, but you showed us everything else on our list anyway.”

  “And she didn’t even say I told you so,” Al teased, giving her a warm smile and a wink.

  “I hope it all works out,” Sara said, unable to help smiling back. “It feels like such a good fit.”

  “We’ll keep our phones handy,” Amy said. “Just in case of good news.”

  They left smiling and even waved to her from their car before pulling out onto Park Avenue.

  In moments like this, Sara really did love her job.

  The Martins had chosen to put in an offer on a sturdy and charming Arts & Crafts cottage in Rosethorn Valley, not too far from the old mansion where they’d started their day. It was just the right kind of house for the downsizing former hippies - close to the Art Center and the Quaker retreat.

  With any luck, Sara would be attending a home inspection with them a few days from now.

  She realized she’d better set a reminder in her phone to connect the Martins with some local inspection companies so they could call ahead to see about holding a spot.

  She grabbed her bag and rummaged around in it for her phone but came up empty-handed.

  No…

  She popped out to check her car, but the charger was empty.

  She sighed and headed back into the office. Had she left it on a desk? She had been using the office computer and the land line while they w
ere writing up the offer. She couldn’t remember having her phone in there at all today.

  It was fine. She would just perform a quick find-my-phone from her laptop. Hopefully, the thing was somewhere in the building.

  But when she told it to play a sound, there was no ping that she could hear.

  She checked the laptop screen again. The blip that appeared on the map wasn’t in Tarker’s Hollow at all.

  It was back in Rosethorn Valley, but not on Rabbit Lane.

  It was at the top of the ridge, in the big mansion.

  Sara ran a hand through her hair and sighed.

  It was late, well after eleven. And as much as she loved the old place, there was something creepy about the idea of going back there alone in the middle of the night - particularly when she didn’t have her phone.

  But she had an offer submitted. If the other agent called late tonight or early tomorrow, she needed to be available.

  And if someone else showed the house before she made it back there, they might take the phone.

  She grabbed her things and hastily locked up the office.

  Park Avenue was dark, the pale circles from the streetlamps the only breaks in the velvet darkness.

  She started her car and couldn’t help but think of the music she thought she’d heard earlier.

  “You’re going crazy from too much work,” she said aloud, wondering if talking to herself was just more damning evidence.

  Things always got like this in early summer. Real estate was hectic in the first half of the year. By June, she was always exhausted and prone to misplacing things, and staying up a little too late watching TV and eating ice cream straight out of the container to de-stress.

  “Here we go,” she told herself, the tree canopy of Tarker’s Hollow parting as she crossed the bridge over the creek.

  It was a mild night - at least there was that. Her trek took her past tree-lined streets and then deep into the hilly wooded town of Rosethorn Valley.