Half-Blood Curse

2 - Son of the Devil

It turned out that flying was marginally cheaper and exponentially faster, so after Lucas woke up with a migraine from hell and a body that felt like it had been hit by a truck, he booked a flight home. The flight wouldn't leave until that night, though, so he had plenty of time to lay around at the hotel. And he had a phone call to make.

"Lucas? Why are you calling me from Chicago?"

"I was visiting a friend," he said, not bothering to ask her how she knew where he was. Sonia was a wiccan, an oft-scorned subsection of wizards that barely qualified as magic users. Personally, Lucas thought full-fledged wizards underestimated them at their own peril, but he wasn't about to go tell them that.

"In Chicago?" Sonia asked dubiously. She had been his friend in Seattle for seven years, and never once had he mentioned Chicago, and they both knew it.

"Yep." He stuck to the story, since it was kind of true. "Listen, I need you to feed Maestro for me. I won't be back until close to two in the morning, and he's probably hungry."

"Sure, no problem. You know I love that cat."

"Thanks, Sonia, I owe you one."

"Well, now that you mention it..." Her smooth tone turned wheedling, and Lucas knew exactly where this was going.

"I'm not joining your coven."

"I don't know why you're so against it," she grumbled.

Because the longer we are in close quarters together, the less effective my protective charms are, Lucas thought regretfully. If he could, he would join Sonia's coven in a heartbeat. With it would come the chance to become educated, to learn and become part of a group of friendly, welcoming magic users. But his heritage was a secret, and it needed to stay that way, or he'd end up on the wrong end of a lab table. His mother had looked into it after his birth. There had been only one other recorded case of a shifter-wizard hybrid in a thousand years, and they had been studied extensively. To death.

And considering the circumstances of Lucas's conception, he had no doubt his fate would be the same.

There was also the teeny-tiny issue of unregistered magic users being subject to a couple decades in prison. It was a risk just interacting with Sonia's coven, but they were all wiccan-level users, with Danielle being the only enchantress-level member and barely more tolerated in wizard circles. They had no reason to go talk about him to the wizard council. They would be laughed out of the office if they tried.

As a blood mage, Lucas was no better off status wise, and he preferred it that way.

"I just like working alone," Lucas lied through his teeth. "I get too easily distracted as part of a group. Besides, Nate hates me."

"Nate doesn't hate you!" Sonia protested. "He just thinks you'll fall in love with Oskar. He thinks everyone will fall in love with Oskar. Even me, and Oskar is very clearly only into men so I shouldn't even be a threat. You're just handsome and gay, but he'll get over it."

"I'll think about it," Lucas conceded for the hundredth time since he started dealing with Sonia and her coven.

"Sure, that's what you always say." He could almost hear her rolling her eyes. "If you aren't going to join, at least help us with a working, soon. We need an extra person to make up the numbers."

"Of course," Lucas said easily, his shoulders relaxing. He actually loved being part of a group working, but he couldn't exactly blurt that out when he had just said he preferred to work alone. "When?"

He finally decided to roll out of the hotel bed and to the complimentary coffee maker on the kitchenette counter. Turned out, the cheaper hotel was booked solid, and he had ended up at a fairly swanky one. His wallet hadn't liked it, but Lucas had to admit it definitely had its perks.