by Jory Strong
The vice cop laughed. “I should have figured it out when he declined all other offers. He’s been fighting the good fight to stay single but he’s going down, same as all the other cops in Homicide.”
She hoped so. Oh how she hoped so.
Warmth flooded her chest. Her gaze returned to Matthew and she couldn’t help answering his smile with one of her own.
“I see you two have already met,” Dylan said as he sat to her left, an underlying growl in his voice that strengthened the hope she’d felt even before Matthew’s comment.
“Yes. Matthew just finished telling me a little bit about what’s happened to Philip.”
She saw the flex of muscle in Dylan’s jaw at hearing her refer to the other men by their first names. And though she didn’t want him to be jealous, she was honest enough with herself to acknowledge that it pleased her to discover the possessive way he’d claimed her extended outside the bedroom.
“Can you disrupt the hex if there is one?” Matthew asked, drawing her attention back to him.
“It would help if I had the doll.”
He grimaced, and though they were the only three customers in the coffee shop, he looked around before pushing the folded sweatshirt he’d placed on the table toward her. Color stained his face. “I thought you might.” He shot a glance at Dylan. “Don’t ask.”
Seraphine opened the sweatshirt to reveal the doll. She heard Dylan’s breath catch and a muttered, “Son of a bitch.”
It was no crude doll, and by his reaction, Seraphine thought the likeness to Philip Freeman must be very close. She lifted the doll, glad it was contained in an evidence bag.
“Anything?” Matthew asked.
“It’s not actually a voodoo doll though it serves the same purpose. See the sigils, the symbols?”
Matthew leaned in for a closer look while Dylan leaned back, putting more distance between him and the supernatural. She didn’t let it discourage her.
He was here. He’d confided in her about being cut by Lucifer’s Blade. He wore the charm she’d activated and strengthened.
“The symbols focus a spell, a curse directed at your friend.”
Matthew’s expression hardened. “It’s live?”
“Yes.” Her gift allowed her to know it, and know more as well. “Whoever made this doll isn’t yet powerful. It might have taken months before Philip showed signs of being affected, and then it would be like a slow illness.”
“A lot of bad things could happen to a street dealer by then,” Matthew said.
“Yes, so a safeguard was built into the spell, possibly to serve as a reputation builder though I can’t be certain of it. If the person who commissioned the doll died, it would boost the strength of the curse significantly.”
“Explaining why Freeman dropped into a coma when Booker was murdered.”
“Yes.”
“Can you break the spell?”
“Yes.”
Matthew’s phone vibrated on the table. He glanced at it, expression saying it was a call he should take. Instead he asked, “What do you need?”
She looked at Dylan. His arms were across his chest, his body telegraphing resistance and denial. She noticed the absence of the ring then, as though in taking it off, he could pretend the connection between them didn’t exist.
Pain slashed through her. She countered it.
He’s here, and this is a chance for him to be part of what I do. To see me. To accept that this is who I am too.
“Go ahead and take the call,” she told Matthew. “If it means you need to leave, Dylan can help me gather what I need.” And when they were done, they’d part company, unless he indicated a desire to be with her.
A nod and Matthew lifted the phone to his ear, stood at hearing what the caller had to say. “I’m at Broad and Ashford, heading your way.”
When the call ended he said, “This is coming out of my own pocket. Just let me know what I owe you.”
She shook her head. “There’s no charge for this.”
His expression hardened. “Could you find whoever made the doll?”
“Not easily.” She reached out and laid her hand against his. “Don’t judge the maker guilty without a trial. We don’t know what they were told about Philip.”
He came around the table, leaned down and hugged her. “How long?”
“If I get the things I need, I’ll do the ceremony at dawn.”
“And before Freeman is okay?”
“If the curse is the reason he’s comatose, sometime before the following dawn.”
“Thanks,” he said, giving her a second tight hug before leaving.
“Does he have a girlfriend?” she asked as she watched Matthew get into his car.
Son of a bitch! “A different one every night,” Dylan said, biting off the question that would normally have followed, Why, do you want to audition, and substituting a different one. “Where to?” And he fucking couldn’t believe he was involving himself in this.
She turned green eyes on him and he only barely restrained himself from grabbing fistfuls of silky red hair and jerking her lips to his. Jesus, his dick should be shriveled instead of pumped up and ready to go.
Keep your hands to yourself. Keep this professional. He’d managed to walk away from her once today, intending to stay that way—and look what had happened when he couldn’t.
Who the fuck was the blond? Only he didn’t ask. He repeated himself. “Where to? You said you needed things, what are they?”
“Hair from Philip and from Melvin Booker.”
“I can get it for you.”
“I need to collect it myself.”
She touched his arm, sending fire straight to his dick. “I asked about Mettes having a girlfriend because it struck me Aislinn might know someone who’d be perfect for him.”
He resisted glancing down at the emerald-green stone in her bracelet. “Let’s go. Hospital first.”
So he could square things up in his head. Because yeah, he wanted to know he’d done everything he could for Freeman, even if this was all some kind of mental placebo effect.
He’d heard the way she carefully avoided making any promises to Mettes. But she hadn’t taken his money, she hadn’t made herself a heroine, hadn’t even vilified whoever made the doll. She’d stepped up immediately to help a cop she didn’t know because it was the right thing to do.
He steered her toward his car, trying not to think too hard about the warmth soaking into his palm where it rested at the base of her spine. Or how he was already violating the no-touching rule.
Steps away from the vehicle he remembered the ring on the passenger-side floor, and fuck, he didn’t want her to see that. He took his hand off her, careful not to catch her expression when he said, “I’ll follow you to the hospital.”
Chickenshit. Yeah. It’s called self-preservation.
It’s called doing the right thing. For him. For her.
He got in his car. “Dodged a bullet there,” he said, thinking about what it would have been like, to smell her perfume every time he needed to drive somewhere.
At the hospital, his badge got them in after visiting hours. He recognized Kuklin, the uniformed cop posted there for Freeman, and corralled him, giving him a line about Seraphine being important to Freeman and maybe being able to reach him, draw him out of the coma.
Husky murmurs came from the bedside as he blocked Kuklin from seeing Seraphine take the hair. He didn’t know what she was saying to Freeman, but he thought having her at his bedside would be enough to make him fight to get back to her. And Jesus, this might be total bullshit, but was it hurting anybody?
It was kind of like the stuff Aislinn sold.
You love the woman, you accept what comes along with her.
And the reverse? Is that how it was for his mother? You love the man and you accept the hell he puts you through until you can’t anymore.
Yeah, well, that particular cycle was going to end with him.
Thankfully Book
er was still in the morgue and not at a funeral home or in the ground. He forced himself to watch as Seraphine removed a small pair of scissors from her purse, whispered something before snipping a lock of hair and placing it in a baggie.
“Thanks for doing this,” he said, the words coming straight from his heart and Jesus, he wanted to say them with her in his arms, his nose buried in her glorious hair and his lips against her neck.
She glanced up, her gaze colliding with his and heating up the airspace between them. Invite me back to your place, his cock begged.
When she didn’t, he made sure she got to her car safely. He watched her drive away then headed home, refusing to acknowledge the ring on the passenger-side floor and doing his best not to think about the blond he’d seen her with.
Chapter Eleven
Exhaustion slammed into Dylan as he entered his apartment. He didn’t bother trying to determine just how much sleep he’d gotten in the last seventy-two hours.
He glanced at the recliner, his favorite piece of furniture. Crash there for a while? Or on the couch?
His thoughts moved to the trashed mattress, to Old Tomas, dead next to a stinking Dumpster. Fear crawled through him. Dread. Anger at Seraphine for being more than a witch playing a con, at himself for knowing he was like his old man and still not being able to keep away from her.
He grabbed some blankets from the closet and went into the bathroom. It was the only place other than the kitchen without carpeting.
For a long moment he contemplated making his bed in the tub. Fuck. He didn’t want to live like this. He made his bed on the floor.
Despite the exhaustion, sleep was a long time coming. His cock ignored his edict not to think about Seraphine. His heart throbbed with cold ache, exposing the hope he hadn’t allowed himself to consciously hold.
He wanted what he had glimpsed at Seraphine’s house. He wanted the future where the two of them were part of the change taking place in the lives of the other detectives. Trace, Miguel and Conner, Storm—hell, even Brady—leaving the fun of single for the excitement and challenge of committed. He wanted to remain on the inside of a tight-knit group instead of becoming the only man standing, the one on the outside, forever looking in.
Deal with it.You’ll only tear Seraphine apart the same way you did Heather, the same way your old man did your mother.
Only he couldn’t see Seraphine standing for the shit his mother had. She’d probably turn me into a frog.
Grim humor that didn’t prevent the hot scrape of raw emotion from raking through his chest and gut as he thought about her going home and having the blond waiting there for her, the two of them fucking against the door. On the kitchen table. In bed.
He was probably some professor, given the long hair. Probably a friend of Storm’s husband, somebody who though the witchcraft was fascinating.
Dylan couldn’t hold the images of her being with someone else, not when the memory of being sheathed in her hot, tight channel was so fresh. Not when he could remember in exquisite detail the feel of her lips and hands on him, the smooth press of her skin to his.
Why the fuck not? he asked himself, capturing his cock, working it, trying to find relief and justifying it by telling himself this would help him sleep.
But even after he’d coated his chest in a hot rush of semen then taken a shower before once again stretching out on the bathroom floor, his mind fought his body, afraid to slide into helplessness and create an opportunity for the whispers and screams to take over.
They came anyway, as they had the night before. In a nightmare he struggled to rise from but couldn’t.
His heart thundered, frantically beating inside his head only to slowly fade, draining away through his wrists. Panic freed him again. He jerked awake, thoughts going to the strawberry-blonde he’d stood over, understanding colliding with denial and winning this time.
He’d felt her death. Just as he’d felt this one and knew there’d be another body to stand over.
He sat in darkness, the screams and whispers loud again. Insidious.
Raw terror swept through him at what they might lead him to do. He lifted his hand, felt it shake. A cold knot formed in his chest at wondering if he’d get to the point where he didn’t trust himself to touch his gun for fear of eating one of his own bullets.
He didn’t need to feel blood streaming across his palm and dripping onto the floor to know what he’d find when he turned on the light. He got to his feet. Flipped on the switch.
Another murder scene greeted him. The blanket was soaked. What it hadn’t absorbed was pooled on either side of where he’d lain, like small lakes of red surrounded by creamy ceramic sands.
There was enough of it he should feel dizzy, lightheaded. He didn’t. But this time he wasn’t shocked by the discovery.
He took the charm off its necklace, pressed it to the cut across his palm. The screams subsided to tolerable. He laughed at that description, and the sound was scary in itself.
The whispers eased a little bit. Not enough for him to be on the job and functioning the way he needed to be.
Sweat coated his skin as he gathered the blankets. He tossed them into the washer, saw to the task of cleaning the bathroom floor, delaying the inevitable until he no longer could.
He called Trace. “We need to find the witch—warlock—whoever’s got the fucking blade and stop them. There’s been another sacrifice.”
“Then there’s going to be a body dump. The patrol units are watching for one.”
They both knew it could happen anywhere, anytime, and completely out of their jurisdiction.
“Seraphine have any suggestions?”
“I don’t know.”
Trace gave an exaggerated sigh. “You’re not with her?”
“No.”
“We need more, Dylan.”
When he didn’t jump on the excuse to see her, Trace said, “Fine. I’ll give her a call in a few hours. It’ll hold until then.”
And perversely, he countered, “I’ll do it.”
Hours ticked by at a slow crawl as he tried to fill them with mindless TV, refusing to show up at her doorstep and discover the blond in her bed. Or get sucked into the ceremony she’d told Mettes she’d perform at dawn.
Morning light came as he got in his car, catching on the green stone in his ring and he couldn’t leave it on the floor. He shoved it in his pocket with all the other junk he kept there, only to catch himself fingering it through the fabric of his trousers. Son of a bitch.
Gritting his teeth, he refused, refused to put it back on. Accepting certain truths when it came to Lucifer’s Blade, even accepting that for some couples—namely Trace and Aislinn—heartstones might indicate a perfect match, didn’t have anything to do with him and Seraphine.
His dick begged to differ, swelling with further denial of his claim when he turned onto her street just as she left her house—alone. Christ, she was beautiful. He wanted her and it wasn’t all about sex or getting answers.
His heart sped up. And if it felt like the ring was burning through his pocket, that was pure bullshit, nothing more than the spread of heat from having all his blood rush to his cock.
She was heading to her car, left in the alleyway leading to a stand-alone garage at the back of the house. He didn’t speed up to intercept her.
She was probably going to work. Just as well. It would be better to talk there than risk going inside.
The insidious whispers made it a lie.
His fingers were white on the steering wheel by the time they reached a parking garage on campus.
He hesitated before entering it after her, decided that showing up now or in her office five minutes from now wasn’t going to make much difference to his pride.
The spaces on the third level were all marked reserved. She pulled into a slot toward the end, close to a stairwell.
He claimed a spot at the front to buy some time before contact, figuring odds were good he’d be gone before some professor showe
d up and called security to have him towed.
Seraphine got out of her car.
He did the same.
She glanced in his direction and smiled.
Desire burned a path between the two of them and it was more than just lust.
He wanted her. Jesus he wanted her.
Instead of heading toward the back stairwell, she came toward him. Longing swelled in his chest and cock, a chaotic mix he fought to ignore, a clamoring that overrode the whispers.
Cop instinct jerked his attention away from her just as a man emerged from the stairwell wearing a ski mask. He was followed by a second one, both of them rushing toward Seraphine.
Dylan had his 9mm liberated without it being a conscious thought. “Police! Stop!”
The guy closest to Seraphine swung his arm up.
Dylan saw the gun and reacted with two rapid-fire bursts, going for center mass and dropping the assailant before shifting his aim to the other man.
He was trying to grab Seraphine and force her toward her car.
She flipped him.
But even as Dylan rushed forward, the second assailant scrambled to his feet and fled into the stairwell.
“Kick the gun away,” Dylan said as he raced passed Seraphine, calling for backup as he rushed down the stairs in pursuit.
His gut said they wouldn’t catch the runner. Sweatshirt and jeans. Pull off the mask and slow to a walk, it would be too easy to merge into the college population or escape the campus altogether.
By the time he got to the base of the garage, he saw students in the distance, too many to question and he refused to get too far away from Seraphine. He left the stairwell, slipped into the parking area and knelt, looking for someone crouched, using a car for cover.
Nothing. No one.
He cleared the space, sirens telling him backup was close.
He returned to Seraphine. Damn if she didn’t look kickass and in control, like she could take on any challenge and overcome it.
He paused long enough to check the assailant he’d shot for a pulse then pulled her into a hug. Slammed his mouth on hers.
Jesus. He’d nearly lost her.
Her trembling matched his.