The Sharpest Rose: Garden of Chaos, #1

By Veronica Bonn

The thorns are sharp on this rose...

Rose Gordon and her sisters run an underground PI Agency; underground in the eyes of humans, well-known for other paranormals like themselves. Her witch sisters bring them in alive, while Rose leaves them for dead. Blessed with inexplicably strong powers, everyone thinks Rose is the quickest at magic. What nobody knows is that she is the last living sorceress. And it's a secret she'll do anything to protect.

When the elusive vampire Tallwood family hires Rose to take out one of their own, she is too intrigued to say no. However, just as she is about to finish the job, the Tallwood heir Daniel intercepts and discovers her true nature.

Now as Rose scrambles to get her secret back under wraps and keep her family safe, she finds she can't get Daniel out of her head or life. And the more she tries to bury her secret and keep him away, the more she becomes ensnared in the Tallwoods' schemes…

 

THE SHARPEST ROSE is book one in the Garden of Chaos series. Perfect for fans of Kelley Armstrong, Kim Harrison, Rachel Vincent, and more, this urban fantasy is a must read!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kissmann Books
• Release date: Jan 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9781777930530

Book preview

The Sharpest Rose

Garden of Chaos Book One

Veronica Bonn

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Kissmann Books

Copyright © 2022 by Veronica Bonn

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.

Book Cover by www.hannah-sternjakob-design.com

Editing by Editing Fox

ISBN-13 (print): 978-1-7779305-2-3

ISBN-13 (eBook): 978-1-7779305-3-0

For all the strong, bad-ass women out there

Contents

Preface

1. One

2. Two

3. Three

4. Four

5. Five

6. Six

7. Seven

8. Eight

9. Nine

10. Ten

11. Eleven

12. Twelve

13. Thirteen

14. Fourteen

15. Fifteen

16. Sixteen

17. Seventeen

18. Eighteen

19. Nineteen

20. Twenty

21. Twenty-One

22. Twenty-Two

23. Twenty-Three

24. Twenty-Four

25. Twenty-Five

26. Twenty-Six

27. Twenty-Seven

28. Twenty-Eight

29. Twenty-Nine

30. Thirty

31. Thirty-One

32. Thirty-Two

33. Thirty-Three

34. Thirty-Four

35. Thirty-Five

36. Thirty-Six

37. Thirty-Seven

38. Thirty-Eight

39. Thirty-Nine

40. Forty

41. Forty-One

42. Forty-Two

43. Forty-Three

44. Forty-Four

45. Forty-Five

46. Forty-Six

47. Forty-Seven

Also By

About Author

Sneak Peek: The Sweetest Lily

"He who dares not grasp the thorn

Should never crave the rose."

— Anne Brontë

one

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Iducked as another grenade sailed through the air. Grenade. The guy was throwing homemade  grenades  at me. It was no wonder Scott passed this assignment onto me. The police wouldn’t have been able to handle a grenade-throwing enchanter.   

The grenade went off with a blast, and dust and debris fluttered around me. The explosion was small, but powerful.   

Rose? Are you ok? my sister whispered. I tried not to sigh in frustration. She didn’t need to whisper. The communication amulets around our necks were only audible to each other. Only I could hear her, not the target I was stalking inside the building.

She’s not answering, and I just heard another blast, Dahlia whispered again, the amulet glowing green with each word she spoke. She was outside the building on the phone with Azalea, who was parked four blocks down and two blocks over in the car. I didn’t have a third amulet on me, otherwise I’d have charmed one for her too. This job was handed to me last minute. 

I’m fine, Dahlia, I whispered. I whispered because he could hear me, just as I could hear him breathing and coming closer. By the way he shuffled his feet, it sounded like he had been a little too close to his last explosion.     

The explosions weren’t big enough to take down the building. They weren’t even big enough to knock over the stack of steel crates I hid behind. They would, however, take off one of my limbs if I wasn’t careful. And as someone who used magic, I would need my hands.    

The grenades were not only meant to injure me physically, but magically as well. By the look of the glimmering green powder that came down with the debris from the explosions, they were meant to stun my use of magic. It would have worked on any normal witch—which was why I told Dahlia to stay outside—but they wouldn’t work on me. 

You’re not the smartest enchanter, are you? I asked my target. As I moved out from behind one stack of crates and slipped behind another, I threw the sound of my voice in the opposite direction. The target’s shadow moved down away from me and towards my voice, fooled by my trick. 

You design grenades to stun witches and enchanters. And then you stand too close when you throw your last one. Not only did you injure your leg, but now your own minor magical abilities are stunned as well. I watched as his shadow stopped and he spun around, my voice now coming from behind him.    

Shit, does that mean our amulets don’t work? Dahlia asked. She was still whispering.

We’re fine Dahl, I didn’t get hit with the dust, I lied. I did get hit with the dust, and like the enchanter’s I was targeting, the charms I brought with me should have stopped working. Our amulets, however, were powered by my raw magic alone. Unlike witches and enchanters, I didn’t need charms and spells to do magic. But the target didn’t know that. Dahlia didn’t know that. Nobody knew.

Both Dahlia and the target stayed quiet. It was too quiet, the silence making me uneasy.

I peered from around the stack of crates. The warehouse was not the biggest I had chased a target into before, maybe four thousand square feet. I didn’t pay much attention to any of the building’s details, my focus on the mission: take out the target.

His shadow disappeared. Shit. Stacks of crates, some steel, most wood, stood in neat long rows on either side of the main walkway. There was only one door in. That was one detail that I always paid attention to. Dahlia had the door covered. There was a tiny window on the ceiling, covered in grime. The building was a fire hazard, really. Three single lamps hung from the ceiling, one by the door, one by the back, and one in the middle. The lamps were bright, thankfully, otherwise I’d have to light a ball of fire and give away my position. I slowly stepped out from

behind the crate.

Rose? It’s been too quiet, Dahlia whispered. I froze as something moved to my left. Though he couldn’t hear Dahlia, the light from the amulet as she spoke gave away my position. The target came out from behind the crates as I backed down the aisle.

You’re wrong, he wheezed. His voice shook slightly, but he stood firm, despite the raw, singed skin showing through his right pant leg. That wasn’t my last grenade.

Too slow, I dove to my right as he threw the explosive. It went off too close to my head for comfort. My cheek burned, and the green powder exploded into my eyes. They began to itch and water uncontrollably.

I didn’t mean to cry out, but I did. Eyes were my weakness. They grossed me out and I couldn’t handle touching even my own. Thankfully, I could put on makeup with magic and didn’t need contact lenses.

Rose! Dahlia shouted. The door squealed open as she burst in. Ignoring my squeamish trepidation, I furiously wiped at my eyes to see what was going on. Light shone from the left where Dahlia entered the building, the door left wide open as her outline filled the frame. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the target still standing in the middle aisle and he raised his hand in the air.

Dahlia! Hit the floor! I shouted. Practically blind, I ran, hands outstretched with lightning on my fingertips and tackled the target to the ground as he shot at my sister. My baby sister.

There was a reason I preferred to work alone. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy working with my sisters—we ran the agency together. Partners were a liability, but after what happened to Ivy, Dad enforced a buddy system tenfold.

The bullet zinged off the wall. Dahlia didn’t cry out in pain, so I took that as a good sign. I felt the target twitch under my fingertips as the lightning hit him, and we landed in a tumble. He tried to kick at me, but after being jolted with electricity, his aim was off. I pinned him underneath me, his attempt barely scuffing my stomach.

Dahlia ran towards us, her footsteps echoing down the aisle as her sneakers slapped the hard floor.

Here, she said and passed me a bottle of water.

Watch him, I instructed, not that she needed to be told. As frustrated as I was when working with a partner, and as protective as I could

be of my baby sister, Dahlia took on dozens of runs on her own and was capable of anything.

As I poured the water into my hands, most of it landed on the floor. After a moment of squeamish hesitation, I brought my cupped hands up to my eyes and blinked into the water to wash the powder out. Through blurry but clearing vision, I looked back up at Dahlia. She had wrestled the gun from the target and pointed at his head. It looked awkward, big and clunky in her hands. When you had magic, you didn’t have a need for guns. They were a barbaric human defense.

You alright? Dahlia asked as she kept her eyes on the target. I didn’t answer as I held out my hand and she gave me the gun. The bullets clinked as I emptied the chamber, the small chimes of them hitting the floor bringing a sense of finality to the situation. Then I tossed the empty gun back

at the enchanter.

He gave me a confused look. Then the fear set in as Dahlia turned and walked back to the exit door.

Wait, I—

I barely mumbled a spell, for appearances really, as fire spilled from my fingertips and engulfed him. The enchanter screamed out in pain and fell to the ground. I stepped over him as he rolled back and forth to extinguish the flames, but it would be of no use to him. Once I reached the door and shut it behind me, I locked it as the building slowly went up in flames. He was trapped inside, unable to open the door as the spell held it shut. The sound of his screams was muffled, his charred face marred in fear as looked out the window of the locked door and pounded on it for us to turn back.

Az, bring the car around, Dahlia said into the phone. Within a minute, our sister wheeled around the corner, and as we climbed into the car, the building burned in the rear-view mirror.

two

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D ad, relax, I said for what was probably the hundredth time in the past five minutes. Leaning back in my chair, I stretched my legs out onto my desk and tilted my head towards the window. The sky was gray, but the sun tried to peek through the afternoon clouds. At least it wasn’t raining.

Rose, he had grenades! You could have been killed. And what is worse is that you brought Dahlia with you, he all but shouted. I sighed and took a drag from my homemade cigarette. I had kicked nicotine three years ago, but the habit of taking a drag was harder to break. It calmed me. The witchy-herbs that made up the cigarette didn’t have the poisoning affects the nicotine did, though I’m sure they still weren’t the best for my lungs. Old habits died hard.

Hey, you were the one who enforced the buddy system on us, I countered. If I could, I would always work alone. It was rare that I ever needed backup when doing a run, though yesterday in the warehouse it proved useful.

Yes, and the point of the buddy system is that you are always with each other. It’s not to have your sister stand outside of the building while you go after the guy yourself, he scolded. What if someone had been with him and hurt Dahlia? You need to be able to see each other at all times.

Dad, that’s not always possible, I snapped. My temper was like eggshells when I spoke with my father. You know that. We can’t tailor each run to fit your buddy system requirements. We have jobs to do.

Don’t take that tone with me, Rose. You need to stick together so that you can protect each other’s backs, he snapped back.

Yeah? W— I stopped myself. Well, it certainly protected Ivy. But I would never say that to my father. I didn’t even want to think it to myself, but there it was. And by the way my father’s breathing calmed over the line, I could tell that he was thinking the same thing.

Ten months ago, my younger sister Ivy was killed on a run. And her twin, Lily, was there and saw the whole thing. The twins always worked together, regardless of if the mission needed two people. Ivy had always been my first choice for backup if needed. 

The guy had gotten away. Lily had been on the other end of the alley when it happened. And the worst part was that she didn’t know what the guy looked like. They had never received a name for the target, didn’t even know what kind of paranormal he was. Only Ivy had seen the picture and the location, and later when Lily went to find the file, it was gone.

Is Lily at the office? my dad asked me quietly. I exhaled loudly as he broke the silence. As much as he frustrated me, I hated it when tension grew between us. He was the only parent I had left. Too many people I loved had been taken away from me.

No, I lied. She must be at home.

She wasn’t. Dad ordered her to take an indefinite leave of work, but she was in her office next to mine. We had all taken time off after Ivy’s death. Lily took it the hardest, naturally. And so, regardless that he didn’t work at nor owned our business, our father had demanded that she take a leave from work. He wanted it to be permanent. She wanted to find Ivy’s killer. They had agreed that she would take a year off. He tried to distance her from what happened and find something safer for her to do. While he was proud of us, Dad never completely became comfortable with our line of work.

But Lily came into the office almost every day. She didn’t want to be left alone in the apartment that she and Ivy had shared. She wanted to surround herself with the sisters she had left, and since the remaining four of us worked together, what better place to do that than at the office.

I tried her at home, but she didn’t pick up, Dad said. Lily was the only person I knew who still had a landline.

She must be out. Try her cell, though you know it’s always on silent, I said.

Dad sighed. I’ll try her later. Put me through to Dahlia. I have to yell at her too.

I chuckled and transferred the call to Dahlia’s line. Swinging my legs off the desk, I stood, stretched my back, and took one long last drag of my cigarette before putting it out in the ashtray I kept by the open window.

I walked out of my office and down the hall. Our headquarters were small, but sufficient for our needs. There were eight offices, two on one side of the hall, four on the other, and two more at the end. They were all on the smaller side, but efficient. We had a teeny-tiny break room and a cramped boardroom. Only six of us worked in the office—seven when Ivy was still alive. All of us were family; me, my three remaining sisters, and our two cousins.

As I walked past Lily’s office, I peered in. Blinds drawn mostly shut, she sat in the dark, hunched over her desk. Her dark hair was uncharacteristically up in a messy bun on top of her head, and the fact that she was in her sweatpants was a sign that she wasn’t officially at work. She scribbled furiously on the sheet of paper in front of her and muttered to herself.

Dad’s going to call you later. Prep a story of where you were today, I said. Lily sighed as she looked up at me and pushed her glasses up her slender nose. She didn’t really need to wear them; her prescription was so small. But Ivy hadn’t needed to wear glasses, so by wearing hers, Lily looked a little less like her deceased near-identical sister.

Lily crumpled up the piece of paper she had been writing on and threw it into the corner where the recycling bin overflowed with identical paper balls. It pained me to see her like this. She tried so hard to remember anything about the guy who killed Ivy.

Thanks for the warning, she said as she pulled out another piece of paper.

I walked into the break room. It had a sink, three cupboards, a baby fridge under one counter, and a table for one. Maybe two, if nobody else had to get into the fridge. There was barely any counter space beside the sink because of the coffee maker. I pulled a mug out of the cupboard and poured myself a cup; I liked it black.

Rose?

Penny, our receptionist and cousin, poked her head into the room. She was human. Only about five percent of humans in the entire world knew that there were paranormal beings among them. And since our numbers were so few and their numbers were so big, we liked to keep it that way. Most people feared what they could not explain, and since witches, vampires, and werewolves came out of monster and horror stories, exposing ourselves wasn’t wise.

Penny’s mother was one exception. Once my uncle told her that he was a wizard, she just politely accepted it and they lived happily ever after. Aunt Marie just happened to be Mom’s best friend too, so she wasn’t at all afraid of paranormals once the beans spilled that she had been playing with one since she was a toddler.

You weren’t picking up your phone. Scott is here to see you, Penny said. She was born completely human, whereas her older sister Paisley was an enchanter. Enchanters were the lowest on the magic scale. Somewhere along an enchanter’s family tree, some witch or wizard mated with a human. They couldn’t perform magic from their fingertips, but they could make and use charms, such as amulets and potions. Sorcerers were the most powerful, but they faced genocide. At least in North America, though there were rumours about a family of sorcerers on the east coast. And possibly a few powerful families alive in Europe, but as far as anyone else knew, there were no more sorcerers or sorceresses. That just left witches, and then enchanters on the magic scale of paranormals.

Ugh, alright. Just give me a minute to get back to my desk. Send him in five minutes, I sighed. She nodded and went back to the reception desk. I closed my eyes for a minute and took a sip of my coffee, savouring the moment. Dahlia groaned at something Dad was saying on the phone from her office. 

I chuckled to myself as I walked back to my office. Lily still scribbled away in hers, the door closed this time, but the blinds open to see in. The office across from hers had been Ivy’s, always dark and empty now.

I barely sat down when Scott knocked on my doorframe.

Hi Scott. Come in. 

Hey Rose. How did it go yesterday? Scott asked. He ran a hand through his brown hair as he sat down in the chair in the corner. I didn’t do the whole chair-across-the-desk thing. My desk was pushed up against the wall and my chair was usually in the middle of the room, as I liked to stretch my legs. I was on the taller side, with a relatively small workplace. Plus, I didn’t want clients to think they were invited into my office. The more uncomfortable they were, the quicker they’d get to the point and get out.

Scott eyed my cheek from where the bomb had been thrown. Yesterday it had been horribly red, but when I woke up this morning, it was a soft pink. The skin was scratched slightly, and up close, there was still soot from the explosive.

It went fine, I said. Target is dead. I thought you said it would be a challenge.

Homemade grenades aren’t challenging enough for you now? Scott asked. I raised my eyebrow at him.

You knew about the bombs but didn’t tell us? I asked.

I bumped into Dahlia in the hall. She told me. If the force knew the guy had bombs, I never would have been able to pass it off to you. It would have gone federal, he explained. I would have warned you if I knew he had bombs.

Scott was an enchanter on the human police force. He was just one of many paranormals who worked closely with humans daily. Many of us tended to work in solitary positions where contact with humans was minimal. Others worked mainly in paranormal circles and communities, underground jobs that the human government didn’t officially know about. Our business was a lot like that. On the surface, it looked like any other business that nobody except its clients knew what it did. RAILD & Associates is what the sign read on our door and on the directory in the building’s lobby, four floors down. RAILD stood for our names in birth order—Rose, Azalea, Ivy, Lily, Dahlia. It was meant to be a temporary name as we tried to come up with something better, but as we got more cases and less free time, the name stuck.               

Scott’s unit comprised mostly of enchanters, some witches, and even a werewolf. There were a few humans too, who had either married paranormals or been exposed to them before. But since they worked under the jurisdiction of the human government, almost all their situations that dealt with a paranormal as a criminal were handed over to us. We were an unofficial-official group of witches that wrangled in paranormals messing with humans—and other paranormals—that the police couldn’t file under their system. Unofficial in the human world, official and well known to the paranormals in our community. Well known to the crowd who needed our business. Private investigators, I guess, but I never liked the label.           

It was set up brilliantly, or so was my opinion. Scott’s chief was a paranormal, and his supervisor was a paranormal, and so on. They had a whole budget set aside for when they needed to use us. Scott usually faxed over copies of the files on the criminals we needed to get, and when their file accidentally went missing on that person, they would take care of it in a way that the big authorities would never question. It was scary knowing what the government could hide and how well. 

So, did you just come by here to see how we were doing or? I asked. ‘Cause you know the job was successful.

Before he could answer, the speaker on my work phone beeped loudly. I pressed down on the receiver and leaned over the desk.

Yes? I asked.

R-Rose? There’s a-a client here to see you, stuttered Penny nervously. I didn’t have any scheduled clients for today. It was rare that I scheduled to see people in person. Scott was the only one who came by regularly, and even then, it was really to see Azalea. He had an obvious crush on her, and she did not reciprocate the feelings. Azalea was the only one of us sisters that