Secrets & Dark Magic

  Secrets and Dark Magic

  Guardian of Mates Agency

  Chloe Vincent

  Secrets and Dark Magic

  Copyright © 2019

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. For permission requests, email Info@thereaderclub.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events, businesses, companies, institutions, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  Prologue

  1. Penny

  2. Cole

  3. Penny

  4. Delilah

  5. Cole

  6. Delilah

  7. Penny

  8. Cole

  9. Delilah

  10. Cole

  11. Delilah

  12. Penny

  13. Delilah

  14. Cole

  15. Penny

  16. Cole

  17. Delilah

  18. Penny

  19. Cole

  Epilogue

  More Paranormal Book Action!

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Department of Soul Matery

  Angelic Dimension

  Delilah flicked a chunk of black goo out of her jet black hair, sighed heavily, and stepped into the elevator just in time to get squished against the opposite wall by an eight-foot-tall vampire who had to duck his head to fit inside.

  Delilah tossed the vampire a nod. He made her a little nervous. She was just coming back from a particularly ugly brawl with vampires back on earth. Not all vampires were bad, certainly. If this guy was here, he wasn’t any danger anymore. Still, she squinted at him, looking for signs of potential malevolence. The vampire licked his fangs; his wrinkled forehead turning down further when he saw her stare.

  “Problem?” The vampire said.

  “No, man.” Delilah smiled tightly. She straightened her leather jacket. “You an agent?”

  He sighed, rolling his eyes. He looked like she felt, coming back from a long hard day.

  “Five hundred years on this beat,” the vampire said.

  “Oh, geez,” Delilah said, shaking her head. “They haven’t redeemed you yet?”

  “No way. It’s gonna be another few millennia before I ascend. Took a lot of souls. ‘Lot of corruption, ya’ know? You?”

  “I’ve been on assignment with Redemption and De-Corruption,” Delilah said, scratching her head. She winced and glanced at her hand, now covered in more goo. She grunted and wiped it on her tight black trousers. The vampire gang she’d been charged to stop from starting had started and then tried to create a monster out of dead souls. They’d succeeded. Apparently blowing one of those up with a hex got very gooey. “But the last few missions haven’t gone so well. So they sent me here.”

  “That’s too bad,” the vamp said, shaking his head. “Redemption happens a lot faster working that beat.” The elevator dinged for the three-hundredth floor and he tossed her a little wave with a long-fingered hand ending in curved gray nails. “Well, good luck!”

  “Yeah, back atcha’!” Delilah called after him.

  At the six-hundredth floor, Delilah stepped out of the elevator into a stark white room about the size of a football field. In the middle was a shiny black cube of a desk. A panther lay on top of it, snoozing. Delilah’s boots echoed on the white marble floor as she strode all the way over to the desk.

  The panther stayed asleep.

  “Hey?” Delilah clapped her hands. Maybe a panther receptionist was supposed to be intimidating but Delilah was not easily intimidated. “Hey? Hello!”

  The panther woke up with a jerk and glared at her.

  “I have a meeting with the Council...” Delilah ventured. “Apparently?”

  The panther shifted into a human woman in a black skirt suit who sat up and pushed a button on the desk while casting Delilah a withering stare as if she’d done something wrong. A door appeared out of thin air and the woman nodded at it.

  “Go right in,” she said flatly.

  “Thanks a bunch.” Delilah gave her a sardonic little salute and went through the door, finding herself in a very normal looking conference room where two women in white robes sat at a glass-topped desk next to a man in a white suit. Contemporary music was playing from somewhere and she grimaced.

  “Delilah,” the redheaded woman in the white robe said. “Have a seat.”

  “I’ll stand if it’s okay,” she said. She patted the pocket of her jacket where a half-pack of smokes was stashed. “Can I smoke?”

  “No!” the man said brightly. He smiled without guile as if that was the answer she’d been looking for. He had silver hair and he wore black-rimmed glasses. Delilah decided she hated him.

  The Council of Three oversaw all life on earth. Their regular office was at the Angelic Agency Headquarters which Delilah had never been to and hoped she never would go. But with a start, she realized the door might have taken her there. How did interdimensional conference rooms work anyway? She asked herself.

  “We’ll get to the point,” the blonde said. Delilah had met that one before. Her name was Akloy. She was a very tall, very thin woman. She’d brought Delilah on at the Department of Redemption, smiling and welcoming her and assuring her that if she did a good job, her life on earth would be accounted for and she could ascend to the next life.

  Akloy wasn’t smiling now.

  A file appeared on the table and Akloy opened it. “Your last mission was to find a group of young men who were considering becoming malevolent vampires and set them on the right path-”

  “Yeah, I know what the mission was-”

  “Instead, the boys got bit, sucked a whole lot of blood, created a very large soul monster in the middle of East London which was then taken down by the Wizarding Sect of Britain. It’s only thanks to them that more damage wasn’t done. It was a spectacular failure-”

  “Okay, okay. But they could still end up being good guys!” Delilah argued.

  “Your mission before that was to stop a lion shifter from murdering the rest of his pack and push him to instead use his powers for good and we know how well that went.”

  Delilah sighed again and rubbed her temples.

  “We’re reassigning you,” the redhead said. Delilah had heard her name was Dix. “You’re on the soulmate beat. Your purpose now is to match souls on earth. Help them find love with each other. These are souls who are destined to bring about good on earth together. You’ll both be getting them together and making the world a better place. Accomplishing these missions successfully will bring you closer to your own redemption and thus ascension to the next plane of existence.”

  “I’m a matchmaker?” Delilah snapped. “Seriously?”

  The silver-haired man cleared his throat. “This was actually my idea. I’m Gavrill, by the way. Very nice to meet you. I’ve looked at your file. You spent your life recruiting and luring other humans into a criminal paranormal underbelly. Many lost their souls, turned to the side of evil, were enslaved or met with any number of bad endings.”

  “Yeah okay, I know I wasn’t great-”

  “Anyway,” he went on. “The reason I’m putting you on the soulmate beat is for your own good, Delilah. Think of yourself as a Guardian of Mates. I believe that by bringing people together in love, people already intending to do good, you’l
l understand your own redemption better. Redemption requires a connection to humanity. So far...that is not something you possess.”

  “Wow.” She blinked at him and stifled an urge to laugh. “You must have watched a lot Oprah back on earth, eh?”

  The Council of Three glanced at each other and Delilah didn’t miss their long-suffering expression.

  “Fine, fine,” she said, waving her hand. “Got it. Matchmaker. Sounds great. What’s my first mission?”

  Gavrill grinned so big it was a little startling and another file appeared. He opened it and slid two photographs across the table.

  “Penny Sax!” Gavrill declared, pointing to a photo of a pretty young woman with long brown hair and hazel eyes. “She’s a restaurant hostess in Brooklyn, New York. What she’s just now figuring out is that her younger brother, Henry, has joined a dangerous cult of other young people who practice dark magic. They want to destroy the human race. Or at least, we’re pretty sure they do. The Oracle has been getting fritzy lately but no worries, that usually clears up after a couple millennia.” Gavrill pointed to the other photo, this one of a roguishly handsome man wearing wire-rim glasses and a tweed jacket. “And that is Professor J. Cole Montgomery of Bellington University in upstate New York. He’s also a bear shifter.”

  Gavrill clapped his hands together and sat back in his seat as if that explained everything.

  “That’s all the info I get?” Delilah said. “Some chick in Brooklyn is supposed to hook up with a bear shifter academic from upstate and, oh, there’s a cult?”

  “Yes…” Gavrill nodded. “Now you’ll also have some guidance and magical abilities to help them. Just remember not to reveal yourself. You can intervene but only incidentally. Nudge them along, as it were. They must come together organically.”

  “And stop the evil cult from destroying humanity.”

  “Yes, exactly.”

  “Ah.”

  Dix leaned forward and said, “To get the ball rolling, we’ll give you your first in. You’re going to go to Penny Sax’s house where she lives with her brother and push her in the right direction. You’ll be posing as an electric meter reader. Now, push gently. Remember, you’re acting as an angelic agent-”

  “I’m no angel,” Delilah grumbled.

  “Yes, we’re well aware of that,” Akloy muttered.

  “Fine, then. Peachy. When do I start?”

  All at once everything disappeared around Delilah and in a blur of colors whipping around her, she found herself standing on a tree-lined sidewalk in front of a row of brownstone walk-ups.

  “Geez.” Delilah popped her color against the chill of New York in autumn. “Warn a girl, why don’t you? Okay, great. Wonderful. Matchmake the stupid bear shifter. But first… shawarma.”

  Turning on her heel, she walked away from the small brownstone building with the little plaque on the door that read “Sax” and headed towards the food cart on the corner selling pitas full of meat.

  Penny

  At a quarter after five Penny Sax trudged up the steps to the front door of the little brownstone walk-up in a line of little brownstone stoops on Sullivan Street. The place was inherited from their parents who had inherited it from her paternal grandfather, now long dead and likely turning in his grave at the thought of what Brooklyn was now, compared to what Brooklyn had been in his day.

  Penny threw open the glass-paned front door and kicked off her shoes inside. Her younger brother, Henry, would not be home yet which was a blessed relief. Henry had been getting weird lately, ever since he’d started hanging out with those guys he’d met at some magic club. They didn’t call it a magic club. He’d referred to it as a “paranormal appreciators’ meet-up.” Whatever. Those guys creeped her out. They all had the same blank-eyed stare and sallow complexion and came off like high school kids whose goth phase had raged out of control.

  Penny hung her jacket on the coat rack by the door and called out to her cat, Jenkins, who came trotting into the living room, fluffy orange tail flicking.

  “Hello, Jenkins, baby!” Penny cooed. “Treats?”

  When she had taken the job at Quelle Surprise she had hoped for big tips and, being a hostess, not too much work. Instead, the restaurant had become one of the hottest spots in Brooklyn. It was unexpectedly stressful as angry hipsters vied for tables. Despite this, the breakfast and lunch shift didn’t pay as well as the dinner shift. She considered that a gross injustice yet couldn’t seem to get in for the dinner shift. She was starting to hate her job. But she didn’t have any new ideas either.

  Now though, Penny smiled to herself as she dropped some cat treats into Jenkins’ dish. She unbuttoned her white dress shirt, eager to take off her bra and kick off the patent leather Oxfords she wore every day. Work was over and now the fun could begin with her brother out of the house for a while. In her room, Penny changed into sweats and set out her watercolors and easel by the big window that looked out on the street. She liked the feel of painting by a window, even if she wasn’t painting anything outside of it, having no interest in the city as a subject for her own art. She opened her laptop and put on a science podcast to have on in the background as she brought up the picture of an evergreen she’d picked out for reference and went to work. A watercolor evergreen first, and then she’d try an oil and then ink. Then she’d work on her tablet and try several digital trees, obviously. She’d been told to focus on one medium at a time. But Penny didn’t listen to what she was told very often. She preferred to get obsessed with one subject and skip around. She’d been stuck in trees for about a month now and before that, it had been wildflowers.

  Penny kept herself happily occupied, painting while listening to the podcast and occasionally texting back and forth with some friends as Jenkins ambled around the room. She jumped when she heard the front door slam. It was probably unhealthy that she felt a kind of hard tension in her gut whenever her brother came home, but she’d become used to it by now. It wasn’t so much his treatment of her that frightened her though, it was something else, some unnameable creepiness about him that made her keep her distance. They’d never been particularly close. He also had hateful opinions at times and had acted weirdly indifferent when their parents had died. All that together had never exactly enamored him to her. Now her paintbrush jerked on the watercolor paper as his footsteps stomped through the living room.

  “Shoot,” she muttered. She’d thought he’d be out longer.

  She heard not just Henry’s voice but several other voices. Whatever this “paranormal appreciators’ meet-up” thing was, it consisted only of young men which, to Penny’s mind, made it inherently suspect. She’d intended to make herself some dinner and her stomach rumbled in protest but now she didn’t want to go out to the living room, not if they were going to be out there talking about curses and dark magic and the “scourge of the modern” witch. Henry’s friends always scowled at her when they saw her as if angry at her just for existing.

  She’d wait this out. Hopefully, they wouldn’t be around long.

  An hour later, she couldn’t stand it anymore. She needed food. She’d just be quiet. She crept out of her room, padding down the hall over to the kitchen in her socks, hoping she wouldn’t be noticed and biting her lip as the floor creaked beneath her. She’d made herself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, grabbing a Coke Zero from the fridge. She thought she was in the clear when her brother’s abrupt voice thundered from the living room.

  “HEY, SIS!”

  Penny winced and set her plate down on the counter, suspecting that revealing food would prompt a request for her to make them something. She padded over to the open doorway between the kitchen and the living room and poked her head in.

  “Yeah?”

  Her brother and two of his friends were crowded on the couch, another sprawled in the orange velvet easy chair and several others sitting cross-legged on the floor. A few of them were staring at laptops, eyes glazed over as they typed furiously. All of them wore matching black tuni
cs and black skinny jeans. All of them had equally pasty faced with close-cropped hair. If she didn’t know her own brother she would’ve gotten them all mixed up. They looked nearly identical but for some differences in hair color. She was surprised they hadn’t all dyed their hair black yet.

  Henry twisted around on the couch and looked back at her. His eyes sunken, his skin a little grayish. She wondered if he was on some hard drugs now. Only he wasn’t acting high lately so much as plain freaking weird. He cast her a dead-eyed stare.

  “Sis,” Henry said flatly. “When the reckoning comes...will you be with us? Or will you follow the mindless horde unto their own destruction?”

  Penny squinted at her brother, waiting for him to crack a smile or start laughing obnoxiously and reveal that it was obviously a joke question. That was his kind of M.O. Obviously, they weren’t that weird. He’d tease her for thinking so. But instead, he just kept staring at her.

  Penny said, “Um…”

  “She’s in the horde, man,” one of the others said. “She will not be salvaged.”

  Penny got a sick feeling in her stomach that felt something like fear, and not the normal type of mild fear she was used to when it came to Henry being creepy. He’d always been interested in occult stuff and Penny had never thought there was anything wrong with it. She’d had plenty of friends who were lovely and kind and interested in occult stuff. But things had clearly taken a turn. She missed the more innocent gothic friends Henry had used to hang out with. They had always been nicer than Henry himself. They weren’t like these guys.