“Stanley is?” Eden cleared her throat as Nancy’s cheery smile turned into a glower. “I mean, sure… he’s, uh, great. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to rain on your parade. I’m just practical about this sort of thing. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
The blonde’s expression softened again. “I know. And I appreciate it. Don’t worry about me, Eden. You’ve always been like an older sister to me.”
“I believe I’m a few years younger than you, actually.”
“It would mean a lot to me if you’d be one of my bridesmaids. Will you do that?”
Eden was at a loss. It felt wrong talking about things like true love, bridal plans, and weddings when she was getting used to dealing with curses, demons, and an unavoidable working relationship with Lucifer himself. “I… I would be happy to be one of your bridesmaids.”
“Thank you so much.” Nancy gave her a tight hug. “Listen, I have to get back to work but we’ll talk soon. What fun!”
Then, with her mood elevated again by good wishes and promises of bridesmaids and impending nuptials, Nancy left them to their coffee and donuts.
If anything, Eden felt a bit queasier now than she did to start with. “I just hope Stanley isn’t using her.”
“When did you become such a Negative Nelly?” Andy said.
“Around the time I was a toddler. And it’s called being a realist, actually.”
“I think it’s wonderful. We could use more good news around here lately.”
“Definitely.” Darrak bit into his donut, then held the other one out to Eden. “Want some?”
Their tryst in the car came back to her with full erotic strength.
Oh, she still wanted some, all right, and she wasn’t talking about donuts. But she’d cooled off from before. Enough to keep her attention fully fixed on the issues at hand.
She gave him a strained smile. “Maybe later.”
Andy grabbed his coat. “I need to head out to meet with a client. Glad you two got here so I wouldn’t have to shut the office down completely.”
“More werewolves?” Darrak asked pointedly.
Andy cringed. “Would you stop with the werewolf stuff, already?”
“It was just a question, not an accusation.”
“Then no. Not werewolves. A human client, believe it or not. Wanted me to investigate a missing sister who ran off with a boyfriend without leaving any forwarding address. I already found her living in Vegas. Quick case, nice and easy.”
“Well, good,” Eden said. “Fine, you go do that. Darrak and I have some business of our own to take care of.”
“Oh yeah? Like what?”
“I’m going to experiment with a little spell removal.”
“Eden, I thought we were going to talk about that first.” There was a warning edge to Darrak’s voice.
She ignored it.
“Well, that’s great. Good luck with that,” Andy said. “But please try not to break anything.”
FOUR
Andy left.
When Eden looked at Darrak she realized he was staring at her sternly with his arms crossed over his chest, his half-eaten donut forgotten.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he asked.
“Just what I told him. Spell removal experimentation.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
She hissed out a breath. “Actually, the more I think about it, I believe it’s the best idea I’ve had in a very long time. You heard Maksim. Me and Selina — our magic is exactly the same.”
“According to him. He could have been lying through his shiny white teeth.”
“You don’t trust him?”
“I can’t think of any real reason to trust him, let alone to put your safety in his hands.”
She shook her head. “I feel it, Darrak. Inside of me. He was telling the truth.”
He paced to the other side of the small office next to the coatrack and then turned back to look at her. “It doesn’t have to be now.”
“Why not?”
“We can get a second opinion.”
“I don’t want to wait that long.”
“You can’t be that focused on sleeping with me again, can you?”
She actually laughed at that. “You think that’s all this is? Just some horny witch who needs to get it on with the closest available demon ASAP?”
“Is it?”
“Oh, yes. You’re just that irresistible that suddenly I can’t control myself. I need you, I want you, I have to have you.”
He mock-glared at her. “Sarcasm is not necessary. I’m very sensitive lately, you know.”
A smile tugged at her lips. “Who says I’m being sarcastic? I do need you. I do want you. And I do have to have you. Desperately.”
He leveled his gaze with hers. “The feeling is entirely mutual, but I’m not sure about this.”
She didn’t want to argue. She didn’t want everything to be a struggle between them. “He seemed to think there was only one other solution if this doesn’t work, Darrak, and I don’t want you to even think about that. Ever. If I can remove the spell, then I might be able to remove the curse. Problem solved.”
He studied her for a moment. “Just because he said it doesn’t make it true.”
Eden wrung her hands. “Don’t you want to be free again? You could have your own body all the time, not just during the day. No more possessing me, no more feeding off my celestial energy. You’d be free to do whatever you want, go wherever you want.”
Darrak was silent for a moment. “What if I don’t want to go anywhere but here?”
Her heart skipped a beat. “Then… well, that would be your choice. But at least you’d have a choice.”
His expression turned thoughtful. “What if this doesn’t work? What if he was wrong and your and Selina’s magical signatures are not identical?”
“Then we’ll figure something else out. But we won’t know unless we try.”
The alternative hung between them like a dark, bottomless pool. She’d resolved herself to having Darrak possess her indefinitely, but according to Maksim, if he was the root cause of her pain, of her erratic black magic, then their days were numbered.
Much like the oncoming bright lights of a truck in the opposite lane, this possibility was too painful to look at directly.
This had to work.
“Come on, Darrak.” She pushed a confident smile onto her face. “This isn’t like you. I’m usually the cautious one, remember? Aren’t you a gambler? Somebody who’s willing to take a chance, roll the dice for a shot at the jackpot?”
His expression didn’t change. “Not at the risk of your immediate safety.”
“Then I guess it’s a good thing this isn’t entirely your decision. Because this is happening. Right now.
“Eden—”
“Shhh. I need to concentrate.” She sat down on the edge of her desk. “You can either help or you can get out of my way. What’ll it be, demon?” She squeezed her eyes shut.
Darrak approached and gently grasped her wrist. She opened her eyes to look at him warily.
“I’ll help,” he said, although he didn’t look happy about it.
“Good. So I’m open to suggestion at the moment. I haven’t exactly done anything like this before.”
His handsome face was now set in grim lines. “Okay, well, look at it this way. The spell Selina cast on me when she summoned me out of Hell should still be on me, kind of like a residue. It will be nearly impossible to detect by your average everyday magical practitioner, but it would have remained on the surface. That’s the sign of a spell. A curse is deeper, like rust. A spell is more like a light coating of paint.”
“Magic for Dummies,” Eden murmured.
“Present company excepted. If you share Selina’s magic, you’ll be able to clearly see the spell, and you may be able to focus on it enough to remove it. But don’t delve too deeply into the black magic for this. It’s not worth it.”
She couldn�
��t disagree with him more. This would be the solid proof of whether her future was bright or dark. It was something she didn’t think would even be possible, so she didn’t want to get her hopes up. But there they were — hopes up high.
“I can’t see anything.” She scanned his body as he took hold of her other wrist as well.
He grinned a little. “Well, no. Not with your eyes open. Human eyes are not the best things with which to see true magic.”
“Then what do I use?”
“Your soul. And you can best access that sight with your eyes closed. Magic 101, Eden. Class is now in session.”
Learn something new every day. “So how do demons and other non-souled entities do magic if they don’t have souls?”
“We don’t do the same sort of magic as witches and wizards. It’s very complicated stuff, trust me.”
“I’ll have to take your word for it.” She exhaled and closed her eyes.
“See past the darkness. I’m touching you, so you should be able to sense me a bit easier on that level. To see me.”
He was right. With enough concentration she did see him. He looked different at that level of perception — not like a human form with two legs, two arms — more like a metaphysical presence, but it was still Darrak. She would recognize him anywhere. He was a warm presence who held her anchored to the real world.
“Do you see me?” he asked.
“Yes.” She saw shapes and colors shifting together and pulling apart, sort of like what it might be like to swim inside a gigantic lava lamp filled with black water.
“And what about the spell?”
She focused harder, and it felt as if she slipped down another level or two — as if she was in a high-rise apartment and the elevator had sunk down a couple of floors in the lava lamp world. Everything deepened and became more dimensional. She felt pressure — a force that pushed against her on all sides. She concentrated on the being that was Darrak. His form contained equal parts of light and dark — two separate pieces butting up against each other every few seconds like bumper cars at an amusement park.
He didn’t feel that light inside of him, she thought, but it was very bright. As bright as the darkness was dark. It was his celestial side, growing brighter every time he absorbed her endless supply of celestial energy. It fed him, kept him from fading away, allowed him to take form when for hundreds of years he’d been stuck bodiless and needed to possess humans. He’d absorbed humanity from those humans, even the nasty ones. He’d developed stronger emotions than what he’d had as an archdemon. He’d developed a sense of right and wrong. It hadn’t been a conscious decision, and perhaps he’d always had that sense, but he’d sided with the darkness before. He hadn’t been able to feel empathy, sympathy, worry, or compassion. Seeing him like this, the proof before her very eyes that he was changed, was a powerful thing to witness and it made her throat thicken with emotion.
He was different now and he’d never go back to how he’d been before, even if he wanted to. What had changed him hadn’t been a spell. It hadn’t been a curse. Those things had propelled him in this direction, but it wasn’t who he was at a core level.
This — darkness and light combined — it was Darrak. And it was there because of her. No demon had ever been infused with celestial energy before. It was like an experiment gone wrong. Or right, depending on how you looked at it.
Eden worried that when Darrak learned of this it would shake his sense of self and his confidence even more than it already had. Darrak liked being a demon. Sure, he’d made his peace with being a demon who had a little humanity to deal with. But being told he was now part angel…
He wouldn’t be happy about that at all.
That was something to worry about another day.
She focused on the task at hand instead. “I can see it — I think I can see it. The spell.”
“What does it look like?” he asked cautiously.
“Like a film — a transparent film that coats your entire being. It shimmers and moves and it… it feels like pure power. Like you’re coated in a perfume of power.”
“Does it have a scent?”
She inhaled. “It smells like… hmm. It smells really good.”
“Sex magic would. It’s the whole reason for it to exist. It’s like pheromones on crack. Probably explains your behavior in the car. I mean, I know I’m hard to resist, but…”
She grimaced. “Let’s not talk about that right now.”
“Good idea. Much too distracting.”
She focused on Darrak’s warm skin against hers. “So what do I do now?”
“This I can’t help you with. But if your magic is identical to Selina’s, that spell you can see belongs to you, too. You might be able to just suck it back up and send it back from whence it came, easy as pie.”
“Easy as pie?”
“Well, probably not as easy as pie. Piece of cake, maybe?”
She exhaled shakily. “I’ll try.”
“Just… try your best not to make it any worse than it already is.”
She stiffened. “Wait a minute, worse? What do you mean?”
“If you make the spell worse, it’s possible I won’t even be able to touch you at all anymore. That’s one of the reasons I’m touching you right now so you can sense if something bad is happening.”
“That really could happen?”
“Sex is the extreme. Touching is the safe end, but it’s still in the same realm. I have agreed not to have sex with you again for your own good, but not touching you at all for an eternity of being bound together like this would be much too cruel. It would mean I could never kiss you again. Hold your hand. Brush against you. Nothing.”
Her breathing sped up. “That would be bad.”
“Glad to see we agree about something.”
“Can we stop this and regroup?”
“No, it’s too late. You’re too deep and you’ve already accessed the spell enough to see it. Keep going, but take as much time as you need.”
She’d dived in headfirst without thinking much about it first. Didn’t sound like her usual self — that had been much more reckless than she normally was.
They couldn’t stop. But she had to be very careful.
Eden concentrated and went deeper still, a few more floors down. She was in this now, for better or for worse. She’d already touched the spell — the gossamer coating that covered his form on this level of consciousness. That was what she focused on.
Go now, she thought. Leave here. I no longer need you. As she thought the command, sending out the magic through what she now knew was her soul, she felt it respond. It was as if the spell had a personality — like a puppy. It recognized her magical signature and wagged its tail. And then it extracted itself from Darrak to return to her and… disappeared.
Hocus-pocus.
She inhaled sharply and tried to stand up from her chair, but her knees buckled. Darrak caught her in his arms.
“Eden…” he said from what sounded like a great distance. “Eden!”
She blinked, her eyelashes fluttering as she opened her eyes and smiled up at him. “I think I did it.”
His expression looked strained, concerned, but hopeful. “You should be teaching Magic 101. I can’t help but be impressed.”
“Maybe Maksim’s advice was too good not to be true.”
“Maybe.” Darrak looked conflicted by this possibility. Part of him, though, looked cautiously optimistic. But then his gaze moved to her chest. It only took her a moment to figure out why.
Her amulet.
Damn.
“It’s darker,” she said. “Isn’t it?”
“Maksim said this wouldn’t use your black magic in a destructive manner.” He swore under his breath. “But he was wrong. It used your magic and your soul at the same time. It was like introducing two horny people on a blind date. They went for each other immediately. It was a direct conduit to your soul for that black magic.”
She glanced down at th
e amulet, taking the cool piece of oval-shaped stone in her hand. It was significantly darker by at least two shades. It was now a medium gray with lines that were the color of charcoal. It was quite pretty, actually, if you didn’t know what it really meant.
Instead of panicking, she felt a strange sense of resolve.
“It was worth it,” she said, mostly to herself. “Besides, I don’t feel any different.”
“Not yet.” He paced back and forth before stopping and looking at her. “You know, there is a way to take it back a few shades before it gets too much darker.”
She shook her head. “No, Darrak.”
“You think I like the idea of it? But if necessary, it’s what you have to do—”
“Stop it.” Her voice cracked on the words.
“Another kiss from Lucifer wouldn’t really be so bad, would it?” His eyes burned bright with immediate jealousy, but a dark smile twisted on his face.
“Keep it up, Darrak, and the next time I see him I might not only kiss him.”
That helped erase the humorless smile completely.
However, she couldn’t exactly argue with his logic. It had already been proven that kissing the Prince of Hell, even a chaste, emotionless kiss, drew the darkness out of her and straight into him. He was the ultimate magnet for evil. But he was a devious, manipulative man. Fallen angel. Demon. Prince. Prisoner. A split-personality Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
All of the above.
She didn’t trust him. That her life was now irrevocably intertwined with his didn’t exactly help her sleep that well at night.
In a way she felt sorry for him, and that didn’t help much either. Lucifer, or Lucas, which was the name she preferred to use for him, felt trapped in Hell. His only desire was to go back to Heaven where he thought he truly belonged, but his darkness was an eternal anchor keeping him stuck in the Netherworld.
Lucas thought he was cursed. Eden couldn’t very well say he was wrong about that.
When the prince chose to come to the human world, he did so with one drawback. Here he was mortal. He still had power, especially over beings like Darrak, whom Lucas had created himself, but his mortal body could be killed. And if so, his essence would be sent back to Hell with no chance to escape again for a very long time.
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