Verity Strange Read online

  Verity Strange

  Legal Magick 3

  Alisa Woods

  Check out all of Alisa’s bestselling Paranormal Romance...

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  READING ORDER

  Dot Com Wolves

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  Claiming Mia (Book 1)

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  Saving Arianna (Book 2)

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  A Christmas Wish (Book 3)

  Riverwise Private Security

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  Jaxson (Book 1)

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  Jace (Book 2)

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  Jared (Book 3)

  Wilding Pack Wolves

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  Wild Game (Book 1)

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  Wild Love (Book 2)

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  Wild Heat (Book 3)

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  Wild One (Book 4)

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  Wild Fire (Book 5)

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  Wild Magic (Book 6)

  Fallen Immortals

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  Kiss of a Dragon (Book 1)

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  Heart of a Dragon (Book 2)

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  Fire of a Dragon (Book 3)

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  Chosen by a Dragon (Book 4)

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  Seduced by a Dragon (Book 5)

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  Touched by a Dragon (Book 6)

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  Loved by a Dragon (Book 7)

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  Marked by a Dragon (Book 8)

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  Claimed by a Dragon (Book 9)

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  Of Bards and Witches: Leonidas’s Story (Book 10)

  Fallen Angels

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  Tajael (Book 1)

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  Oriel (Book 2)

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  Asa (Book 3)

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  Razael (Book 4)

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  Micah (Book 5)

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  Tempted: Tajael’s Story (Book 6)

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  Kiss of an Angel: A Christmas Story (Book 7)

  Legal Magick

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  Ever Strange (Book 1)

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  Mercy Strange (Book 2)

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  Verity Strange (Book 3)

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  Verity Strange (Legal Magick 3)

  Copyright © 2019 by Alisa Woods

  August 2019 Edition

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author. For information visit: Alisa Woods

  Cover by BZN Studio

  Verity Strange (Legal Magick 3)

  A madman. A sex cult. And world-changing genetic magick.

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  VERITY STRANGE—Hedge Witch, Youngest Daughter of the Strange Family

  Seeing the future isn’t all it’s cracked up to be—especially when you can’t change it. Even more so when your Talent nearly kills you. I’ve searched the world for a guru—a magickal monk—who could help me tame my divination powers, but most were frauds or worse. Being young and female is precarious when you’re consorting with powerful adepts. But then I met Eliphas Storm, and everything changed...

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  WYLDE BANE—FBI Analyst, Cult Expert

  Eliphas Storm is like any other cult leader. Never mind that he’s gathered millions of followers to his sex-magick-enhancing temples. Never mind that he’s likely the madman behind these Talent-destroying drugs. He’s all about the power to control people—people like the beautiful and naive Verity Strange—and I’m determined to take him down. I grew up in a cult, and I know just how much he could damage a woman like her. But going undercover with an uncooperative asset is a good way to get me killed. And stepping back into the world I left is dangerous in a whole different way...

  * * *

  Wylde is intent on bringing down a charismatic cult leader. Verity is bent on proving his innocence and seducing her way into his inner circle. Together, they have to stop whoever is making the Talent-destroying drugs threatening Chicago’s magickal populace.

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  Verity Strange is the third book in a new paranormal romantic suspense series from bestselling romance author Alisa Woods. The first three books in the series (Ever Strange, Mercy Strange, Verity Strange) follow the three Strange sisters, each powerful witches in an influential magickal family embroiled in a mysterious plot to change everything about the magickal world. Part urban fantasy, Legal Magick takes place in an alternate Chicago where High Magick returned in 1859 and is now integral in every aspect of the legal—and illegal—world. Each book is a standalone romance.

  Chapter One

  “A new day is dawning for magick!”

  The proclamation sent a shiver down Verity’s back. Eliphas Storm—famous monk, fantastically powerful adept, and potentially her personal savior—stood with his arms outstretched as if to embrace the multitudes who had gathered to hear him speak. He’d erected a pavilion—a temple—on a wide expanse of grass in the middle of Chicago’s Butler Field downtown, and its shiny silver dome glinted the promise of that magickal new world.

  Verity should be there—she should be standing next to Eliphas. By now, she should be part of his inner circle, not watching him on television while she hid in her apartment. But no. Eliphas would want nothing to do with her now, not after what happened at the conference. Her sister Mercy had made sure of that.

  “Six days ago,” Eliphas intoned, his bald head catching a stray sunbeam just like the temple, “the International Gen-Magick Conference ironically fulfilled the prophesy I’ve been heralding all these years. The day has arrived when magick is no longer a cruel lottery, locked up and determined by your biology, your Talents buried in your genetic code. I’ve long said the day would come when all Talents would be available to those who believed. Those whose faith could reach into the fields of chaos magick that surround us and gain every one of us the magickal abilities we deserved. The ones you were always meant to have.”

  The shiver crawled back up Verity’s spine and lifted the hairs at the base of her neck. It was true. All of it. She’d sensed this world-changing future six months ago when she’d first met Eliphas on a rocky mountainside in Tibet. He’d stood then, as now, barefoot and broad-shouldered, his open shirt revealing a muscular chest. His force-of-nature sexuality felt like a hot breath on her skin. But it wasn’t his raw, animal magnetism that drew her in—it was the vortex of chaos magick potential that swirled around him. It was a telegraph from the future that said he would be at the center of something big. She’d spent years searching the globe for a true monk, one who could pierce the veil and help her harness this terrible power she possessed, but every prophet had been a false one. All long on promises and withered in magick.

  But not Eliphas.

  His future would change the world. Her world, specifically. Their fates were entangled like lovers, frantic and hot, no telling where one ended and the other began. She could feel it… as electric and strong as any premonition she’d ever sensed. And a feeling like that always came true.

  Always.

  But somehow, everything had gone wrong. She wiped angrily at the desperate tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. The radical events of the conference—Tobin Raine announcing his gen-magick could erase Talents; the attendees losing their abilities, and then Eliphas bringing their powers back—had changed everything. Now they
were in the middle of what she called an event—a swirl of time when her powers of divination were weakened as if a Bermuda Triangle had settled around her and spun her magickal compass. She could hardly tell if they were at the beginning, middle, or end of this massive storm of change Eliphas was bringing. All she knew was that he was at the center of it. And he was the only one powerful enough to tame her Talent.

  “This is a new day not just for the strong in Talent, but for the weak as well,” Eliphas was saying. “And for the simples who’ve been denied any magick at all by cruel biology. For anyone who’s felt they’ve never truly come into their powers. This is your time, my friends. Come. The Temple of Resurrection is now open with three days of consecration to make it holy. Come see what possibilities await you.”

  Three days. She had three days to figure out how to make this right. How to get Eliphas to take her back and bring her into his most private realm—

  Her door chimed.

  She squinted in the direction of the front of her apartment. It couldn’t be Eliphas, and there was literally no one else she wanted to see. Verity flicked off the screen and lightly padded across the thick carpet of her great room. The tiles of the entryway were cold on her bare feet, and she was only sloppily dressed—just a shawl thrown over her t-shirt, no bra, and a sweeping skirt she’d slept in.

  She sniffed back the last of the tears before she opened the door.

  Mercy.

  “Just give me a chance to explain—” her sister started. “Wait, are you crying?”

  “Why would I be crying?” Verity snapped. “Just because my sister betrayed me, lied to me, and accused the man I… the man that I…” How could she possibly explain what Eliphas meant to her? “You accused a man I highly respect of murder!” Her sister just stood haplessly in the doorway, her makeup surprisingly dialed down and her clothes less hostile than normal. It took Verity a moment to realize Mercy was holding… “Why did you bring Ever’s cat?” She didn’t understand why her sister was here at all—there was no way to undo the betrayal—but the presence of their older sister’s small, black cat was simply baffling.

  Mercy awkwardly lifted Salem toward her, like she was a furry peace offering. “She’s sick. Ever says you’re the only one who might be able to figure out why.”

  The cat growled, low and menacing, flicking a glare back at Mercy, whose purple-shadowed eyes went a little wider. Her sister fumbled to keep hold, but Salem launched herself out of Mercy’s arms and landed with a half sprawl on the floor. Then she hissed at Verity and stalked off, head and tail held high.

  Verity arched an eyebrow, struck speechless because the whole thing was ridiculous. She knew, of course, that Ever had managed to trap the spirit of a 17th-century witch named Madeline Bequillart in her hapless pet, and that Salem was perpetually displeased about this, but Verity didn’t see why Mercy would bring a sick cat to her—she was a hedge witch, not a veterinarian.

  Salem froze at the corner of the entranceway and crouched—then she dashed into the great room of the apartment, out of view. Verity pursed her lips, remembering the sheer curtains and their thick, dangling silk cords.

  She turned back to Mercy, who was still hovering on the threshold of the door, clearly not sure if she should come in. And she should squirm, given what she’d done.

  Verity crossed her arms. “I don’t see why—”

  “You were so good with animals,” Mercy said in a hurry. The awkward expression on her face just grew more contorted, like she was trying to fit into a pair of shoes two sizes too small. “When you were younger, remember? We thought, given your gifts, that maybe Salem would listen to you…” She stalled out like that was as far as she’d gotten with this ruse, whatever it was.

  Verity unlocked her arms and gestured at Mercy with both hands. “You’re the one with healing Talent.” But she grudgingly recognized this for the true peace offering it was. Mercy was brilliant—a med-magick, genetics-researching genius—and she’d always looked down her nose at Verity’s talk of spirits and the realm beyond, where science couldn’t reach. And yet here her scientist sister was, dredging up the days when they were kids, and Verity had been the resident animal whisperer. She hadn’t communed with an animal spirit in forever—her focus was on the human realm, with animals on a completely different frequency—but Verity could hear the mea culpa in her sister’s actions. And the long-withheld acknowledgment that Verity might have a real Talent, not just magickal wishful thinking. “I’ll see what Salem has to say.”

  Relief relaxed the awkward on her sister’s face. Verity gestured her inside then turned away to rein in the cascade of emotions still flooding her brain. All the meditation in the world couldn’t keep her from getting stirred up by what her big sisters thought—probably because she loved them too much. And strong emotions had a danger all their own, especially for her. It was best to keep them locked up safe… or stay a few thousand miles away from the source. This was something Verity had learned the hard way.

  She went looking for the cat.

  The black fur-beast hadn’t invaded the sprawling white couches or climbed the white-gauze curtains. And she hadn’t burrowed into the cream-colored fur rug by the fireplace, either. Verity thought the cat might have scurried off to the bedroom, but then she spied her yellow eyes staring balefully from her perch on high—she’d found a grand spot in the gnarled branches of an ancient alder tree Verity had rescued from destruction and brought back from Ireland. The tree, when living, possessed flowering spikes that were both male and female on a single branch, and it literally bled when you cut it. The ancient Druids believed it held mystical powers, linked in legend to oracles and resurrection. Verity could feel the tingle of chaos magick all around it, even now, long after its life had drained away and its dead branches now sprawled only across Verity’s walls and ceiling.

  She smirked. “I see Salem’s found her throne.” Verity strode across the carpet and peered up at the cat. “You sense the wood’s powers, don’t you, Familiar? Does it call to your spirit? Or do you wish to scratch a door to pass from one realm to the other?”

  The cat yawned and somehow rolled her eyes. Verity didn’t think cats could do that. Then she noticed the tufts of off-white fur between Salem’s toes—which didn’t quite seem to belong on the midnight-colored cat. “What’s this?” She reached for a paw, but Salem rumbled a low growl while flexing tiny claw-blades.

  Verity plucked her hand back, scowled instead, then flicked a look at her fireplace rug. It was shredded at one corner. “Great.”

  Mercy had crept into the room but was hanging back with a pinched look. “What’s she saying?”

  Verity sighed. “Probably making some excuse for clawing the yak throw rug I got in Tibet.” She swung a glare to Salem. “It was a gift, you know. From a brilliant and powerful monk.”

  Salem’s yawn had extra obnoxious yowl in it this time. Verity hadn’t communed with this particular cat before, but she knew its history. Her sister Ever’s erratic magick had accidentally summoned a 17th-century witch into her cat’s body. Any attempt to slay the beast or otherwise liberate her soul would likely release that same, possibly deadly, surge of chaos magick. Madame—or possibly Mademoiselle—Madeline Bequillart was legendarily none too pleased about the arrangement. Her sister Ever could hear the cat’s thoughts since the enchantment had forged a psychic connection between them, but Verity was a hedge witch—her heightened sensitivity to the swirling fields of chaos magick gave her a special conduit to many things, including the energy of the dead. That disturbed the fields, sometimes dramatically—although Salem wasn’t so much dead as temporarily pulled from the past to rent space in a cat’s body.

  When Verity was young, she’d had a hard time with time. The future and the past both pulsed signals into the present—it seemed arbitrary which moment you would call now and which was before and later. By the time she was seven, she’d figured out how to stay present to make the world make sense—just like you could tune into a
single conversation at a loud and raucous party. It was an exercise of will, as were all magickal powers—Verity simply had to learn that control much sooner than most, given her sensitivities were so much greater. Which wasn’t the kind of thing most people wanted to hear. It also unnerved them when she felt the future before it arrived. She quickly figured out how to keep that knowledge quiet, so as not to disturb everyone around her.