Bait N' Witch (Brimstone Inc. #3) - Abigail Owen Page 0,29

loud first.”

But she was becoming an obsession, an addiction. As though he needed her close, needed to hear her voice and know what she was thinking. Get her advice. Let her share the burdens. Have her make him smile. He’d forgotten what laughter in his house was like.

She’s made it clear. She’s just your nanny.

But she was starting to feel like…more. Normally, he’d suspect magical coercion, but the chemistry between them was not remotely forced. Witches had tried to spell him before, compel his affection or even just sex. A subtle difference existed between his body willfully engaging and not—a twitch to his muscles that felt off when not of his own volition. That sensation didn’t appear with Rowan. If anything, every part of him strained to be closer even as his logical mind pulled away.

Greyson shifted in his seat as his body responded to his mental image of her, stubborn chin tilted, red curls in wild disarray, gray eyes issuing both warning and appeal. That husky voice calling him Grey. No one had ever shortened his name like that, and he had to admit he liked it on her lips.

His daughters, in their trance, had said her name, said she was connected. To what? To him? To them? To something else? The curiosity might just kill him before he found out. Because if it was to…

Fuck. He was losing it.

Rowan McAuliffe, in a few short weeks, had managed to capture his attention as no other woman ever had. The problem was, she had his attention as a man, but also as a father…and as a witch hunter. None of those aspects seemed compatible with the others.

But too many doubts about her plagued him.

He couldn’t ignore her wishes to remain employer and employee only. But what he really couldn’t ignore were her powers. Seemingly innocuous. When he’d come up from behind her in the woods, though, she’d ignited energy in her hands without a word uttered, a difficult task for many mages. What really caught his attention, though, was how she’d reabsorbed the energy when he’d revealed his identity. Greyson didn’t know a single witch or warlock with that ability. Energy, once directed into a spell, had to be released.

Which begged the question, why was she working as a nanny? A witch with that skill alone would be useful to the Syndicate.

A tap on his tablet brought up her paperwork, which he’d pulled early this morning before teleporting to this meeting. He’d reviewed it, of course, when Delilah had sent over Rowan’s info as a potential nanny. Nothing then had caught his attention, and nothing now did, either.

He scanned the facts sheet: Rowan Deirdre McAuliffe. Twenty-seven. Born to a low-level witch and warlock with limited magic who died in a car accident when Rowan was eight. Adopted by a witch named Tanya McAuliffe and raised in Dunbar, on the west coast of Scotland, relatively close to Edinburgh, the coven of which she’d been a member since moving to the area. After a series of unimpressive scores in her witchcraft studies, the Edinburgh Coven determined Rowan to be a witch of minimal skill, and she’d worked a series of relatively low-magic jobs since. The latest being as a nanny.

A perfectly normal background, which had the hunter in him concerned. Given the skill she showed in the forest, her history came across as too bland, off in some way. He just couldn’t put a finger on what, exactly. Rowan McAuliffe didn’t add up.

“Greyson?”

He lifted his gaze from his phone to find Alasdair staring at him, thick black eyebrows raised in question. Apparently, he’d missed a question directed his way.

Greyson placed his phone facedown on the table. “Sorry. Reviewing some new info. What was the question?”

“We’ve all read your report. Any updates?”

He didn’t need to check the paperwork. “Marius finally found the witch selling illegal potions to humans in New Orleans. She fought back.”

“Dead?”

“Yes.”

“Well, shit, Greyson. We didn’t need yet another example of the Syndicate coming down hard on one of our own.”

Alasdair didn’t have to point out the warlock Greyson had killed. They were all thinking it. “I know.”

That only got a scowl from the man in charge. “Is this going to be a problem with the Voodoo practitioners down there?”

“Marius has already approached the high priestess. Doesn’t look like it.”

“Right. Keep us informed. We can’t have another incident with them. What else? How is the hunt for the witch involved with that werewolf going?”

Lips tight, Grey leaned forward in his seat.