Brighid's Mark Read Online Free

wriggled her fingers at him, lioness eyes glittering. “I’ve cast my enchantments over you.”
    He almost choked. “What?”
    Her laugh was like mulled wine, going right to his blood. “Really, it’s all right now. See?” She pressed her index finger to the middle of his forehead and pushed him back as he struggled to get up. “Now hush and have your whiskey.” She removed her lovely posterior from his sofa and went to the massive oak table dominating the center of his second story study.
    He could see Callie and her crew had wasted no time making themselves at home, up to and including serving him his own liquor. The table was strewn with maps and notes, the paraphernalia of intense research, not to mention what appeared to be an impromptu breakfast involving his good china.
    Part of him wanted them out, out, out as their presence threatened to upset the peace of his sanctuary.
    But then there was Callie, who’d somehow known. His Marks had reacted to her as though she were Loa.
    “Speaking of enchantments.” He managed to get his bare feet to the floor this time. “How did you get me in here?”
    “We brought you in Chase’s van and carried you in when we got here,” Callie answered absently as she turned her attention to her friends’ activities. “Donal got us through the door.”
    Liam believed her. Donal was the small one of the lot. The other one—Chase, he assumed—bore himself like a high school football star turned dedicated soldier and Callie strode about like a valkyrie without the wingspan, all height and muscular curves with a certain wild, windblown aura about her. He patted his pockets. “I still have my keys.”
    “Who needs keys?” Donal smirked, but didn’t look up from the map he was examining. “Try this, Callie.” He leaned across the table to hand her a small black rock dangling from a silver chain. Liam’s ring clinked against the rock.
    No need to ask which of them wasn’t human. At least one of them couldn’t be, to get past the Loa’s wards on his home. Besides, he could detect a certain something surrounding Callie’s smooth movements and autumnal spice.
    Callie shifted the large map toward her, pulling it around like a tablecloth so it overlapped the edge of the table. She braced her right hand on its surface and stretched her long torso across, the strange pendulum dangling from the fingers of her left. Chase and Donal watched with silent intent, eyes riveted to the innocuous little pendant. Liam joined them, the drink in his hand forgotten.
    For a seeming eternity they waited, focused like a pack of cats upon a swaying curtain chord. Callie ignored them. Her eyes drifted closed, head cocked in deep concentration.
    Finally, she pushed herself upright, shaking her head. “Nothing. Either it’s not working or it’s not time yet.” She turned the little rock between her fingers.
    “And Eva?” Donal asked quietly, without hope. Chase merely waited, keeping his silence behind his clenched jaw.
    “Gone. That I felt.” Now she clenched the pendulum until her knuckles turned white. For a worrisome moment, Liam feared for his windows. “What the hell is going on?” she snarled.
      Chase slammed his fist on the table. Even in the heat of his fury, the antique monstrosity barely rattled. “Donal said you can help,” he demanded of Liam. “How?”
    Callie shot her partner a quelling look. “What he means is we’re not familiar with the protocol here. A pissed off Loa is not a helpful one, I’m thinking.”
      “The Baron said it wasn’t him who sent me that dream. He also said the first order of business would be to find out who did.” Liam finished his drink and set his empty glass on a nearby hutch, ice tinkling. He opened one of the doors and extracted a fresh bottle of spiced rum. “This should do it.”
     
     
    The lower Ninth Ward had flooded a seventh and final time in the Christmas Day floods of 2015, which lasted—not at all ironically—forty