Wicked Love Read online

  Copyright © 2019 by Lisa Manifold

  Wicked Love

  Cursed Coven Book 3

  A Midnight Coven Story

  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 author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  The Midnight Coven

  Wicked Love

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Epilogue

  The Cursed Coven

  About the Author

  Also by Lisa Manifold

  Welcome to the magical world of the Midnight Coven. Within the pages of our books, you’ll find vampires and demons, witches and fae, dark magic and happily ever afters. Each Midnight Coven book is a romance novella featuring characters who occasionally cross over from book to book, so we hope you’ll read them all. You just never know when your favorite character might show up again.

  Your initiation begins now…

  Wicked Love

  Has Melasina Cormier met her fiery match in Jasper Thibodeaux?

  Melasina

  I’ve spent my entire life separating myself from the stain of my necromancer mother’s dishonor. Exiled for using the dark arts, she had no choice but to break off all contact and leave the coven. The dreams feel like some kind of haunted karma where I’m cursed to walk a mile in my mother’s shoes. But when I wake up one morning covered in mud and smelling like death warmed-over, it doesn’t take long to figure out that the apple didn’t fall far from the necromancy tree.

  Enter Jasper Thibodeaux, the magical librarian in charge of New Orleans, who thinks all the recent grave robberies are a sign that my mother has returned. He’s hot as hell and makes all my senses tingle. In another life, he’d be perfect. Too bad my secret means there’s no chance for us; he’s the reason my mother’s in exile. It doesn’t matter how close we get. If he learns I’ve inherited her necromancy, he won’t hesitate to show me the same fate.

  When a dark curse threatens everything I’ve worked so hard to protect, I realize I must face who I am. Do I risk a life of exile or deny my truth for the chance of love?

  Chapter One

  Melasina

  I rubbed my face, yelping as my hands ground against my eyes. They were gritty, and it hurt. I kept my eyes shut for a moment, not wanting to open them, not wanting to see. I knew, even before I looked, what I was going to find.

  Dirt.

  Not just dirt, but broken nails, filthy hands, and an odor that could have only come from one place.

  A grave.

  Inhaling deeply, I could smell the particular scent of what my mom used to call eau de cemetery. Grave dirt was sometimes required for spells, and my mom wasn’t afraid to work with it. Not like most of the witches in our coven.

  Which had been her downfall.

  At the moment, I didn’t have time to think about my mom. I needed to focus on my own situation. I opened my eyes to see exactly what I’d expected, although my nails looked worse than anticipated.

  The annual ball was tonight, and this was how my nails looked? I might as well put a sign on myself that said ‘Grave robber extraordinaire’ and be done with it. Turn myself in and get ready to move.

  Shit. I needed a manicure. Like, immediately. I’d been waking up like this on and off for the past three weeks, and about half the time, I had dirt under my nails, and a funky smell all over my hands. I added ‘manicure’ to my mental list of things to get done today.

  None of my dithering addressed the problem—mainly, what was I doing at night that I ended up with hands like this in the morning? Also, where was I going? Because I’d woken up with my shoes still on a couple of times. Finally, why couldn’t I remember?

  All things I had no answer for. I could ask my dad, but after my mom died—well, was exiled and then went away and died—he was pretty much absent, so he had even less idea about me than I did. He certainly wouldn’t know about this. Dad was from a family of witches, just as Mom was. But when Mom was exposed for being a necromancer, when she left New Orleans alone because he wouldn’t leave, wouldn’t do that to himself or me, he closed the door on his witch side.

  I wasn’t sure he’d done either of us a favor.

  He always encouraged me, from a distance, to be part of the covens, to be a witch. I wondered if it wouldn’t have been better for both of us to move away, where no one knew of us. Because there was no way we’d ever be anything other than the Cormiers with a necromancer in the family. At least not for another one hundred years, and even then, it would be passed down as part of the legend of members of our coven. But after fourteen years, this was home. For better or worse.

  And I loved my home. I loved the city, even with the floods, and the messes, and all the tourists. I loved the houses, the feel, the music, the architecture—I loved it all. I wasn’t going anywhere, despite my occasionally daydreaming about going somewhere where no one knew who I was.

  I rolled my eyes at my dithering. None of it solved my problem at this moment. It was merely delaying the inevitable.

  As I turned my hands over, I could see scratches on the palms underneath the dirt. Hurrying from bed, I went to the sink in the bathroom and began scrubbing my hands with the nail brush I’d gotten for just this purpose. The soap stung all the little cuts. I ignored it and scrubbed harder. Once my hands were clean, I took the hottest shower known to man.

  But the smell wouldn’t go away.

  There was nothing I could do about this right now. I got myself together and pretended I hadn’t woken up with dirty hands again. At some point, I was going to need to figure this out, but I didn’t have a clue as to how. I could ask someone to help me find the memories, but that would mean involving another person in this. If I’d been doing something wrong, I didn’t want anyone to know.

  I’d learned the lesson of my mother well.

  Just as I was ready to head out the door to do my grocery shopping before I got to work, I heard yelling from the laundry room out back. I had a tiny courtyard at the back of my cottage, and the little shed in the corner was connected to the house via a breezeway. I didn’t mind the weather, but I hated doing laundry in the rain. You could never tell when it was going to rain in New Orleans. I’d had the breezeway built after I bought the house and got caught toting my clothes inside during a downpour.

  “What the hell,” I muttered. There shouldn’t be anyone in my backyard, much less the laundry room. I raced through the kitchen and breezeway, heart pounding, to find the door to the laundry room unlatched.

  Shit. I didn’t have my baseball bat, or pepper spray—wait. I was a witch. I could justify magic on a non-magic person if they were attacking me. I could also have their memory wiped. OK. I could do this. I took a breath and kicked open the door.

  On my black and white lozenge tiled floor, next to my washing machine, lay two bodies. Obviously long dead, and wow, did they smell.

  “Oh, my Goddess,” I breathed. What in the name of Hecate were bodies doing in my laundry room? Who had put them there?

  A thought struck me. “No,” I whispered. “No, it can’t be.”

  “It’s about time you came out here,” a voice said. “Leaving me out here like this! I deserve better.”

  I spun around, hands out, protective spells at the ready.

&n
bsp; The voice laughed, the ancient cackle of an old, old woman. “That won’t help you a bit, chéri. I am already quite dead.”

  “Who are you?” I asked, trying to keep the panic out of my voice.

  “I am apparently your latest victim. Come now, you must know. I am the best thing around to help you with those poor wretches on the floor.”

  This didn’t make sense. I looked around and saw a box made of what looked like gold and glass sitting on my dryer. Bones were piled up in the box, and on top of them sat a skull, tilted on its side.

  “Very good! You have found me. For the second time,” the skull said.

  “Who are you?” I whispered.

  “You do not know?” There was a silence, and then the skull said, “Very well. If you truly do not know, I am Zelda.”

  I shook my head.

  “Zelda Dupuis.” The skull waited again.

  Oh, mother of all Goddesses and ancestors. I had the reliquary box from Magnolia House. The final resting place of the founder of our coven. What the hell was she doing in my house?

  As I tried to figure that out, I heard the doorbell ring. “Wait here,” I said, whirling around.

  “It’s not as if I can go anywhere!” Zelda shouted as I ran back through the house. I’d never known that our founder’s skull could talk. It never had when we’d been dragged to the house to visit.

  I made it to the living room when the doorbell rang again. I slowed to a walk, wanting to calm myself. Taking a deep breath, I opened the door.

  The handsomest man I’d ever seen stood on my porch. He had dark hair, and dark, knowing eyes. He was tall, with a commanding presence, but not overbearing. This was a man at ease with himself. He held out a hand and smiled, and I felt every nerve in my body tingle.

  “I’m Jasper Thibodeaux. I’m one of the coven librarians, and I need to speak with you about your mother.” His voice was a warm baritone, rich and inviting.

  My mouth fell open, but no words came out. Images of this man with far, far less clothing danced through my brain, making me want… oh, Goddess. I needed to stop this, right now. It had been a while since I’d had a boyfriend, but this was ridiculous.

  “May I come in?” Jasper asked. His eyes met mine, and I wasn’t able to turn away.

  Could he come in? Could he stay forever? “Um, yes. Yes, please come in.” I stepped back from the door.

  “Am I interrupting?”

  “I’m just about to go shopping. I mean, to work. I have to shop sometime today, and I have to work,” I said. Damn it. I hated that I was fumbling.

  “If this is a bad time, I can come back later,” Jasper said.

  “What? Oh, um, no. No, this is fine.”

  From the back, Zelda yelled. Damn her! How could she yell so loudly and clearly? When we studied coven history, there was no mention of a mouthy skull residing at Magnolia House. I’d even seen the reliquary, during a tour during middle school. All witches had to learn the local history. Classes were taught at Magnolia House. Even though my dad put up a wall between himself and the community that had sent my mother away, he didn’t stop me.

  He knew I had a big enough black mark against me as it was.

  Back to Zelda—was she just mouthy now that she was here? What was I going to do with her? And me with a coven librarian in my front room. If I’d had a fan, I’d be fanning myself like mad.

  Jasper looked up. “You have a roommate?”

  “No, a noisy neighbor,” I tried to smile and look casual. “What did you want to talk about?”

  “May we sit down?” Now it was Jasper’s turn to look uncomfortable.

  As we both moved to sit down in the living room, I tried to quell the sinking feeling in my stomach. He wanted to talk about my mother. I’d never get away from my mother’s legacy.

  Never.

  Chapter Two

  Jasper

  Back at the office, this meeting had seemed like it was going to be no big deal.

  Just before I’d left last night, I’d gotten a report. There’d been another grave disturbed last night. What was going on? We took grave robbing seriously here in New Orleans, for many reasons. First among them was that those in the magical world who attempted to use the dead were not people of good intentions. No matter the excuse, or the reason—there were never good reasons for dragging the dead out of their rest.

  But who could it be? We’d exiled anyone who showed any sign of such activity. I’d seen that happen myself. While there was a great deal of flexibility in our magical world, there were some boundaries that could not be crossed. Attempting to use the dead was one of them. Outside of all the reasons using the dead was wrong, it also risked the chance that we’d be discovered. Part of our success as a coven was our ability to blend in and not attract notice.

  The last known necromancer, who was the mother of one our local coven members, was sent away for her poor choices. When I’d read the report after I’d heard about our recent grave robberies, it noted that she had died within a year of her exile. Her daughter and the rest of her family had been model citizens ever since. Probably because they knew that should anything happen, they would be among the first to be questioned.

  The Cormier family was one of the oldest families in both New Orleans and in our coven. They’d been here since the founding of our coven. And despite Sariah Cormier and her banishment, they’d been good citizens in our community.

  I hated having to investigate, but if I didn’t, I’d be derelict in my responsibility. As one of the coven librarians, it was my job to not only keep track of the history and records of our coven, but to make sure that we kept to the rules, to the boundaries. That we kept ourselves discreet. That we didn’t draw attention to ourselves.

  Grave robbing was not discreet in any way.

  Lavinia, my boss, came into my office. We were located in a small estate, by New Orleans standards, near Magnolia House, the coven’s headquarters. We’d found that it was better to have coven leadership and records in two different places. Only the librarians and some of the coven leadership knew our exact location, and we had a lot of wards set over the library.

  “What’s this I hear there has been some disturbance?” she asked, seating herself in a chair in front of my desk.

  “Good news travels fast,” I said. I’d only had the report for five minutes. “There was an opened grave in St. Louis No. 1.” This was the oldest cemetery in the city, and it had some of the best above ground graves. There was an active restoration process ongoing in the cemetery itself, so there was regular activity in the cemetery—but not at night. That’s what locking the gates and only allowing guided tours was supposed to help. To keep the vandals and those would cause mischief out.

  “How was that managed?” Lavinia asked. “They have that cemetery on lockdown.”

  “Well, not entirely,” I said with a grin.

  “Enough,” she rolled her eyes. Sometimes our coven needed to go to one of the crypts at night, and the new rules had made things more difficult. But we’d been able to work around it. “Enough that dragging a body out would be noticed.”

  “Which means,” I said.

  “That it was done by magic,” Lavinia finished.

  “My thoughts exactly,” I said.

  Lavinia shook her head. “I suppose you’d better go and see the Cormiers.”

  “You don’t think they’d actually take the chance, do you?” I asked.

  “No,” Lavinia got up. “Honestly, I don’t. But if you don’t go see them, the rumors will start, and that will make it difficult for us to find out who is really doing this. We need to be able to state they had nothing to do with it.”

  “What?” I asked, laughing a little. “Does that mean you don’t believe the absolute worst of that creepy Cormier family?”

  “No,” Lavinia said. “One person isn’t an entire family. But I know exactly how gossip works. You might as well get over there and see the daughter. What’s her name?”

  “Melasina,�
� I said, checking my notes. “Melasina Cormier.”

  “Any other children?” Lavina’s brows furrowed.

  I shook my head. “No, she is an only child. Dad didn’t remarry. He’s out of the country, by the way. So it’s just her.”

  She sighed. “Well, all right then. Go first thing in the morning.” Lavinia breezed out of the room.

  That was one of the things I liked best about working for the coven library. There were rules, and boundaries, but there was not a great deal of micromanaging. I’d be free to work this as I chose, as long as I kept Lavinia in the loop.

  I looked through my files again. Melasina Cormier was twenty-four, single, lived in the Treme district on Saint Ann, in a small house that had been her family’s home. Her father, after his wife had been exiled, took a job with Tulane University in the history department and ended up traveling. Melasina, who was ten at the time, spent a lot of time with a nanny.

  Had her mother realized that she would be depriving her child of both parents through her actions? Shaking my head, I gathered up my files. It was after five; I’d go and see Melasina Cormier before I came in to work tomorrow morning.

  Because I agreed with my boss. This had nothing to do with the Cormier family. However, checking them off the list would allow us to find the real culprit and deal with them.

  Lavinia popped her head back in. “You’ll need to let Delphine know. She prefers to be kept in the loop.”

  Delphine was the current leader of our coven, and she lived in Magnolia House. She’d been the leader for years. While she looked to be in her forties, she was four times that, if not more. I didn’t know. I didn’t ask her such things. I might get turned into something I wouldn’t like.