“Really?”
“Yeah. Got the creepy crawlies just touching it. So you know what that means?” I smiled up at him, a devious smile playing across my lips. “Hide-and-Seek?”
Chaz furrowed. “What about the spell?”
I took down two gulps of the hot liquid. The sweet liquid burned down my throat and chased away any of the chill from that slimy book.
“I’m thinking that kind of evil needs to be explored in full sunlight in a protective circle with whatever goody-goody we can throw around it.”
“ ‘Goody-goody.’ Is that a technical term?” His stoic face cracked with just the glimmer of a smile.
“I used it in a sentence. You knew what I meant, so yeah. In Dallas, I officially coin the term ‘goody-goody.’ ”
“As you say, fearless leader.”
I snorted. “Right.”
He set his coffee back on the counter and tapped me on the shoulder. “You’re it.”
I laughed and closed my eyes and began counting. Between his magical GPS and my keen sense of smell, hide-and-seek had become our foreplay. And just like kids whose childhoods were taken from us, we played it like kids, all heart and soul with the world at a safe distance away.
WAKING UP NEXT to Chaz is the best part of any day. His light brown hair shimmers with gold in the morning light like a halo and his lips are all pouty and swollen. He really should be on the cover of magazines. Too bad he wouldn’t do anything that high profile.
I watched him sleep for a long while. It was peaceful. Lately, peaceful hadn’t been in the cards for us. Between the Cause calling and the mutts and the Veil, peaceful had become a pipe dream. But after the story from last night, I was beginning to think that peaceful might be just a stone’s throw and a spell away.
Chaz stirred. His hazel eyes fluttered open and focused on me. “Hey.”
“Morning.”
“What are you doing?”
I smiled. “Just thinking.”
“Guess the gears woke me up.”
He pulled me closer to him, and I rested my head on his chest, listening to the every steady beat of his lion heart through the tank top.
“How long until the phone rings?”
“What?”
“You’ve been home for almost a whole day. When do you think there will be another disaster that can’t be avoided?”
Chaz sat up, destroying my comfort. I flopped over on my back to my pillow as he sat looking down at me. “Like you’re life is all puppies and rainbows.”
“Actually, it is all puppies and rainbows. Well, a girl who smells like rainbows.”
Chaz rested his hand on my stomach. He worked his warm hand under my camisole and traced his finger along the small white scar on my left rib. I watched as his fingers studied the old scar. Even fairy blood hadn’t been able to heal the wound from the heirloom silver dagger completely.
His voice was soft as velvet. “You had to know that this was going to be hard. You had to know that we were not going to be by the book.”
I sighed. “Why can’t I get the fairy tale, without the actual fairies?”
Chaz laughed. “I don’t think that’s in the cards for us, Violet.”
“Well then,” I said as I sat up, bringing us nose to nose. “I demand a different dealer.”
He smiled and kissed me. Despite the morning breath, his kiss was warm and soft like a breeze of summer air with a hint of fresh cut grass and honeysuckle.
Which is exactly how long it lasted before his cell phone went off.
He pulled away and sighed, leaning his head against mine. His hand crept behind him and grabbed the phone from his nightstand.
He slid his head onto my shoulder and pressed the phone to his head. “Yeah.”
I didn’t strain to listen, just held him, taking in the heat of his body against mine so that I would still be able to feel it when he was gone. I didn’t bother to listen to the steady voice on the other end of the phone. All it meant was that he was leaving me again. He was leaving me because some one was hurt or missing or some one needed something to help them on their quest, to solve the riddle of their mystery.
I took in a deep breath of his morning musk and guided my hands around his solid abdomen as he spoke. I was running out of ways to describe just how incredibly perfect he was.
“Yes. Okay. Text me the address.”
He sat up straight and looked at me, still speaking to his boss. “I can be there in five hours.”
He slid the phone from his ear and closed it. “They need me to run something from San Antonio to Houston. Again.”
“San Antonio? That’s only three hours away with the way you drive.”
A Cheshire smile crossed his face. “I know.”
Chaz tackled me back to the mattress and wound his appendages around me like an octopus. “I need a few more hours of sleep. Hide-and-seek is exhausting.”
PANCAKES. COFFEE WITH cinnamon. And he did the dishes afterward. It was the perfect Sunday morning, basking at the altar of my domestic god.
Properly caffeinated, I carefully folded up some clothes and put them in his olive duffle bag.
“What are you going to do today?” he asked as he packed the duffle with a few weapons from the hidden cabinet in the wall of his hallway where he kept the big guns. I’d missed that in my first little visit to his house.
“I’ve got demon lexicon to decipher, so you know, the usual.” I crossed my arms over my chest as I leaned against the wall.
He shook his head and reached out to pull me toward him. “This will get better.”
Feeling his body pressed against mine, his heart beat under my fingertips, I could answer honestly. “It’s not too bad.”
He kissed my forehead. “There’s a key for you on the coffee table.”
I pulled away, my heart in my throat. “What?”
His furrow reappeared. “If you’re staying here today, you’re going to need a key.”
“Oh, right,” I shook my head and my heart returned to its normal location. Right. Nothing romantic about basic home security.
“And I think you should have a key to my place since I’ve got one to yours.”
The heart started racing, and I grew a little giddy. “Isn’t this one of those steps?”
“Oh.” Chaz thought for a moment. “Yeah. I guess. I mean . . . I don’t know . . . I’ve never given anyone the key to my house.”
I sprung from my place next to him and scurried into the living room. The silver key was sitting on the edge of the table, and I had no idea why I didn’t see it when we were tearing through his house the night before.
He was right behind me as I scooped up my key. “So this one right here?”
“That one right there.”
“And can I come over when I want to?”
“When you need to?” he amended.
I nodded as I bit my lower lip.
“And if you want to keep some clothes or something here so you won’t keep stealing my T-shirts, then I guess I can spare a drawer or two.”
I smiled all the way down to my toes. This was normal. This was a step in the right direction where we had just been in a holding pattern for the past three months. This is what relationships were like, right?
Chapter Five
AFTER I SAW him off. After I changed and brushed my teeth. After I went through the rest of the house to see if I could find anything else to throw in the laundry. After I exhausted everything else to do besides look into the book, I finally went to look at the book.
I decided that outside was probably best. I didn’t want to accidentally unleash a demon in Chaz’s house. I didn’t want to give him a reason to take my key away.
The backyard was a forest, a dead, dried-out forest. The grass was knee high and the weeds were taller than that. I think there might have been a swing set in the far corner of the yard but the blue poles were barely visible from underneath the brown vines that had grown up and around it.
He’d been able to m
aintain the yard around my town house with no problem. But when was the last time he’d mowed his own yard?
Worst girlfriend ever.
I pulled two chairs out of the jungle and set it them up in the brightest part of the yard. When I was satisfied that no creepy crawlies of the natural kind would come out of the brush, I went back inside and grabbed a blanket from the linen closet.
Carefully, I picked up the book with the blanket and grabbed a pair of gloves in the foyer. Yes, I was that paranoid.
When I settled in, gloves on and all, I began reading through the lexicon. Locked up behind my borders, I didn’t want any of whatever this thing was getting in.
There was a spell in there for creating earthquakes. The next was creating a wall of fire. The next was how to create a monsoon.
I was sensing a pattern: destruction, destruction, and destruction. But what could I expect from something like this?
I kept flipping. Eventually, I had to set the book on the other chair, the chilling power affecting me more than the winter weather. I wrapped the blanket around my shoulders and only let a hand out of my cotton cocoon.
This was black magic. This is what the Havertys thrived off of. This is what fueled them and kept them on top of everyone else. A good person would have to be in a place beyond desperation to even consider this as an option.
And what was I doing? Wasn’t I desperate to help Tucker? Didn’t I want to help them become the best versions of themselves?
A slip of paper fell out of the book as I turned the next page.
I caught it before the breeze tried to nab it away. God bless those catlike reflexes.
The crisp white notebook paper was a stark contrast to the coffee-stained looking pages of the volume. Simple black script was scrawled across the blue lines. “Fire not knife, the promise of a soul.”
My stomach lurched up into my throat as I looked down at the now-opened page in the book. The mark from Tucker’s chest was burned into the page. “The Demon Lock.”
The trees in Chaz’s back yard seemed to shiver as I spoke the words. I pulled the blanket up a little tighter around my shoulders.
Was this it? Was this the spell that Seth had found to break the mark? I read it again. It didn’t seem right. It wasn’t breaking the mark, it was making the mark.
I held the paper in my fingers and tried to understand how the modifications on the paper could change the original, but I didn’t know enough. Who did I know who knew more about black magic than me?
I DIDN’T WANT TO think about why Cristina knew where Chaz’s house was. I didn’t want to think about what they had done in the bed that we had just slept in. By the look in the psychic’s dark eyes, she didn’t want to think about it either.
When I’d called her, she was more than willing to help. As the Pride’s former psychic, she had tread on the dark side and knew how it worked. But coming here today, I’d bet she was trying to make good on her promise to walk the straight and narrow.
“Cristina,” I greeted as she walked into the house.
“Daughter of Jourdaine.”
The words made my skin prickle. The reverence with which her accent curled the Rs gave the title more power than I cared to admit.
I lead her through the house and out into the backyard. I’d gotten used to the wilderness of his backyard, and I wasn’t about to comment on that, thank you very much.
The high grass caught on Cristina’s long skirts as we made our way to the two chairs. It was good to see that she had not changed since the last time we met, when I tossed her across an antiques store like she was a tissue.
“I was wondering if you would ever call upon my services again.” She sat down in the deck chair and held her purse tightly to her knees.
“I am just glad to see that you are doing well, considering the atmosphere of Dallas lately.”
“You mean the Barons?”
I took my seat and picked up the blanket with the book wrapped in it. Even through the many layers of cotton, I could still feel the chilling ache up my arms.
“Haverty’s seconds are fighting for power, and you could lead Dallas, Daughter of . . .”
“No.” I said.
Cristina’s gaze dropped to the ground like cement had been anchored to it.
“I will not take it.” I licked my lips and looked at her.
Her ruby-red lips were pressed together. “There would be no taking. It is yours. You are what we have been searching for.”
I held my finger up between us and watched her press her ruby-red lips together again, her dark curls falling before her eyes.
“Here’s my logic. Haverty marked his faithful with the Mark of Jovan. I need to know how to break the mark. I break the mark, people can choose for themselves what side they wish to be. If they are dense enough to take my side, we will figure that out when it happens.”
Cristina nodded.
“Okay. First step. I’ve found a book that has a spell in it to create the mark. But I don’t know how magic works. I know how my magic works. I know a little about how Jessa’s magic works.”
“And Wonder boy’s?”
“I try not to think too hard about Chaz’s power.”
Cristina smiled. “You too are good for each other.”
“And how do you know that?”
There was a sparkle in her dark eye. “I know how my magic works.” She smiled. “And you’re in his house wearing his OU shirt.”
I looked down at my T-shirt of choice. “Right. Back to demon markings. I think I understand how to make one, but Seth Garrett figured out a way to undo it.”
Cristina’s eyes widened. “Oh.”
“Yeah.”
Cristina looked at the bundle in my hands. “Is that it?”
I unwrapped the blanket like I was unwrapping a tissue to make sure that a cockroach was dead. I turned the volume around for Cristina to see “The Demon Lock” spell.
Cristina grabbed the book from my lap and pulled it onto her own. I watched as she studied the words and flipped the pages forward and backward and then look at the white notebook page tucked in there as well.
I watched as she licked her finger and reached out to turn the page. I shivered at the thought of tasting evil. “Don’t you feel it?”
Cristina looked up at me. “What?”
“Don’t you feel just the slimy evil of that thing?”
Cristina shook her head. “No.”
My jaw dropped. “Nothing?”
“It’s just a book.”
“No,” I went on. “It’s a slimy book of death and destruction that smells like a racoon died in there.”
Cristina leaned over it and took in a deep breath and my stomach churned. “Nothing.”
She looked up at me with a deep furrow between her brows. Boy, could I make people worry. “I wonder if it’s something to do with how powerful you are.”
I could only shrug.
“This spell is designed to bind someone’s soul to a demon.”
“So Haverty tore a chuck out of their souls to replace it with his own?”
“Not with this spell. This is a binding spell. Haverty took part of their power and replaced it with his own. That is how a pack is made. But this, this isn’t part of the pack process.”
“Then why the mark? It’s just like this one.” I pointed to the pages, not touching the actual papyrus.
Cristina sucked on her lower lip. “What would he do with bound souls?” her voice was low as her dark eyes looked across the backyard and to the swing set.
“Don’t you know?” I offered.
Cristina shook her head. “He never tried to mark me.”
“Why not?”
“Not powerful enough.”
I rested my hand on Cristina’s hand. “It’s not the power. It’s how you use it.”
Cristina’s black eyes met mine. “Says the girl who took down a Primo.”
“Says the girl that wishes everyday that she didn’t have to.”
Cristina took my hand and I felt her cool sweet power lap at my hand. “Which again is why you are the one.”
I shook my head. “Can we stop with the Neo references and figure out how to break this hold over them.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Just tell me how it works.”
Cristina took me through spell craft as one would walked a preschooler through calculus. The power comes from the person. The will comes from the intent of the person. The spell, the knife, the blood, and the fire are just symbols to help the will do what it needs to do.
“They are just magical mnemonics to help the spell caster?”
She nodded. “Think of it like a highway. The road is the magic. Your intent gets you where you are going but is made easier by a car, but is not always necessary.”
“So if I wanted to do a spell to break a lock, all I would need would be the will to break it.”
“And the spell would make it easier.”
I looked back at the directions and the words. “So help me think of another way that doesn’t involve ripping out the bound piece of their souls and burning the flesh off of them.”
“I am not sure, daught—”
I clenched my fists. “Violet. My name is Violet.”
Cristina licked her ruby lips. “I am not sure, Violet. Without something to replace it, the person would be weakened.”
Cristina was silent, which meant that writer Violet took over. If Tucker had a chunk of his soul bonded to a demon, then it had to be with Jovan, the big demon on the other side of the Veil. And if Jovan has access to all those souls, then he could control them, watch them.
It wasn’t unlike how Haverty ran his pack, but how many bites had Jovan taken from how many Wanderers across the world?
This was big.
“How are the mongrels doing without their leader?” Cristina asked softly.
It was just the distraction that I needed to get away from the dark places my mind seemed to naturally go.
“Good. Getting jobs, an apartment. I think they will be okay, once we get rid of this.”
“They were very gentlemanly after that night.”
I looked up from the lexicon between us. When I didn’t hear about the destruction of a high-end antiques showroom on the news in the week after the Showdown, I figured that the mutts had made good on their word. It should have been the first sign underneath the wet, rawhide smell that they were good men needing direction. But I have a tendency to be hard on people, so I’ve been told, and it was hard to get rid of the images of them beating my boyfriend up in a back alley.
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