by Carmen Caine
The owner of the voice strode into the living room with a purposeful step. I recognized him at once from Lucian’s partially-finished marionette. Dark comb-over. Long, hawk nose. There was a mole on his chin, but it was much smaller in real life than portrayed on his doll counterpart. He wore a wine-colored jacket with brass buttons and a turned-up collar. Combined with black tuxedo trousers and shiny leather shoes, he looked just like a typical movie villain.
Smiling at Lucian, he continued, “And they say you’re not stopping with just the eastern clan. The rumor is you’re reviving the war. That’s why Gloria attacked the villa in Venice—and she nearly got the dolls this time.”
Lucian responded with a smooth smile. “Gloria’s always going after me. That’s nothing new, but really, my blue troll—captured?” His lips quirked with such a fine mixture of contempt and astonishment that I figured the little beast had been found. “Samuel, who gave you such a preposterous idea?” He began to laugh but quickly interrupted himself to ask, “Wait. More importantly—you believed them?” He chuckled again.
Samuel joined in his laughter.
It looked pretty genuine. They were a baffling bunch, these warlocks.
Emilio didn’t find the situation amusing in the slightest. “Lord Rowle,” his deep voice cut through their mirth like a knife. “Show me your wards and we’ll have done.”
From where I stood, I could see Lucian’s fingers curl, ever so slightly. It was a telltale gesture. So, he hadn’t secured his ward, after all. But that little fact didn’t stop him from rounding on the vampire with a scornful brow dripping in disdain. “You know quite well that no seasoned warlock carries his wards on him, Emilio,” he replied. “Nor am I prepared to simply show you my protection. And certainly not for such a story, a story beyond illogical. How could I gain such vast territory without every ward in my possession? Only a fool would fall for such hogwash.”
The vampire took another long pull on his cigar, blowing several more smoke rings as we watched, but his subtle posture betrayed a growing displeasure. It was in the set of his shoulders. The angle of his chin. Finally, he announced, “Then it’s a simple matter. Until I see your wards, Samuel will watch over your collection. I can’t have Gloria succeeding. Not with your most recent addition.”
“Most unwise,” Lucian judged swiftly, anger darkening his handsome face. “Can you risk such a disaster—”
A hard, malicious smile graced Emilio’s lips. “I’m dangerously close to losing my temper, Lord Rowle,” he said softly. “And you know how much I detest being angry.”
But Lucian wasn’t so easily intimidated. “Samuel’s time would be far better spent cleaning that muddle of a building stunt you pulled on Cassidy. It’s all over the internet. Our covers are blown. Wide open. Proof of immortals—proof of vampires. That’s the popular conclusion—”
“What’s done is done,” Emilio answered with an indifferent shrug. Apparently, he considered tossing someone off a rooftop a common everyday occurrence. Maybe it was for him. The leather sofa creaked as he stood up and stretched his neck from side to side. “My decision is made. There’s too much at stake. He must never waken. You know thissss.” He drew the last word out in a long, threatening hiss as he rocked back on his heels.
“Your marionettes are already en route,” Samuel asserted, taking his phone out of his coat pocket and tapping the surface with a long finger. “I gave the order minutes ago and just got confirmation they’re already on the plane.”
The look Lucian sent him struck the warlock into silence. He paled, nervously licking his lips.
One moment, Emilio stood by the sofa. The next, he stood before Lucian, clearly aggravated. “Show me the strength of your wards and then you can have your precious dolls back,” he promised harshly.
His demeanor didn’t daunt Lucian. “If you carry through with this decision, you’ll rue it for eternity, Emilio,” he responded in a soft, threatening tone.
But Emilio was already walking out the door.
I watched with interest. He must never waken. They were obviously talking about Dorian. Were they bringing him here? A flicker of interest crossed my mind. Emilio had been so obsessed with capturing and containing the vampire. It might be that a free Dorian would be a devastating blow. Definitely a revenge-worthy one. But it was easier said than done to break such a curse, I would imagine.
My distraction didn’t pass unnoticed. The hawk-nosed wizard turned a wary gaze on me. “Cassidy, is it?” he asked, his lips curled into an even deeper lecherous sneer than the one depicted on the marionette. “I find myself quite taken with you. Enthralled, perhaps. But just who are you, Cassidy?”
Meeting his gaze squarely, I replied in a brash tone, “I’m Lucian’s spellfinder, One of the Damned.” I followed up with a bored, “And you are?”
The warlock stood there, arrogance personified. He clearly wanted to ask about the Damned but was too proud to admit he didn’t know. After several prolonged sniffs, he turned smartly on his heel and swaggered out the door after Emilio.
“Arrogant cur.” Lucian snorted the moment the door snapped shut behind them. Arching a brow, he examined me with an unfathomable silvery gaze. “Family reunion, eh? How sweet.” His tone was anything but.
“Stranger things have happened,” I clipped my reply. I didn’t owe him an explanation.
“Indeed,” he granted, his inquisitive eyes dropping briefly to the black string tied around my wrist. “And now you’re proud to say you’re my spellfinder?”
“I’m merely a woman of my word, honoring my contract,” I replied with a shrug.
He moved to the kitchen. I followed. He leaned against the countertop and tapped his fingers on the granite, staring at me with a keen interest.
The silenced lengthened, and from the corner of my eye, I caught Ricky tiptoeing across the kitchen floor behind Lucian. But as the little puff of smoke slid into the cupboard above the refrigerator, Lucian slammed both hands palms down onto the countertop, and I lost all interest in Ricky’s doings.
“Honoring the contract means you work for Emilio,” he announced, watching me like a hawk. “You follow his orders. You play his game. You give up on your brand of revenge.”
“Not a problem,” I lied.
His eyes narrowed a little. That was all.
It was my turn to question. “Sounds like you’ve been busy, but you haven’t found your ward yet,” I stated the obvious. “Have any leads?”
A slight grimace settled in the corners of his mouth.
I took that as a no. “Your dolls?” I prodded. “If all your wards fail, do the curses break? Is that what Emilio’s so worried about?” If Dorian was arriving in that collection, a secret part of me hoped his answer would be yes. But upon seeing the closed expression on Lucian’s face, I quickly switched gears. “Just trying to factor Samuel into this equation here,” I offered as a weak diversion. “Saw that partially completed marionette earlier. Are you going to turn him? As your spellfinder, I need to know these things, don’t I?”
Again, Lucian didn’t answer. His face was a mask. Slowly, he lifted his hand and wrapped a strand of my hair around his finger. “This is a different side of you,” he murmured as if merely thinking aloud. “Why the change of heart?”
A change of heart, and then some. With Lucian, I knew the best strategy would be sticking to the truth—as close as possible, anyway. “I need your protection,” I admitted. “Being tossed off a building wakes you up. I can’t take on the Charmed world, Emilio, and the Knight Templars alone.” Not to mention the Nether Reach Keepers and the jaggers. “And more importantly, I can’t run from what I am anymore.”
“I see,” was all he said.
It was hard to tell if he believed me. Or cared, for that matter. Brushing me aside, he opened the cupboard above the sink and took out a large shopping bag and a black candle. I already knew what was in the bag. I could see the long, protruding hawk nose of the marionette I’d seen earlier upstairs. Samuel.
With a wicked gleam in his pale eyes, Lucian plucked the marionette from the bag and suspended it over the black candle. In soft, deep tones, he began to murmur. I didn’t recognize the language. After about thirty seconds, the candle burst into flame, rising to consume the doll with a force that blasted our hair back from our faces, causing it to whip wildly around our faces for several seconds. And then the flames melted back, and as they receded, the marionette began to shrink. By the time the flames had died altogether, disappearing with a gentle poof, the doll was less than three inches tall.
“Delightful,” Lucian announced with a chilling smile. Tucking the miniature marionette into his back pocket, he added, “It’s been a stunning interlude, spellfinder, but now it’s time to get to work.”
I glanced down at the black string tied around my wrist. “Right,” I agreed.
I was more than ready.
Revenge or Folly?
We went to Culpepper’s apartment first, a rundown building in one of New York’s shadier areas. Just that morning, Lucian’s crew had found the Templar and confronted him there. But he’d surprised them. Another spider had crawled out of his nose, and with a superhuman strength, the Knight Templar had broken free to escape out of the window, disappearing without a trace.
“Nothing, not even the slightest hint,” Lucian repeated, finishing the tale as he opened the door and waved for me to precede him. “You first, spellfinder.”
I raised a brow at the yawning darkness framed by the door before me.
Lucian found that terribly amusing. “That’s why you’re here, spellfinder.” He cocked a wickedly humorous brow. “Spellfinders are always first through the door. Find those spells and protect me.”
I really needed to find time to read all the fine print in my spellfinder job description. But I had my own minion to boss around, didn’t I? Jamming my hands into my pockets, I searched for Ricky, with the intent of tossing the little puff of smoke through the door ahead of me. But then I remembered I’d last seen him sneaking into Lucian’s kitchen cupboard. No doubt he’d been on a turmeric raid. I scowled. It was way past time to start Ricky’s obedience training. I wondered if there were group-rate classes or maybe some kind of Imp whisperer out there to help me out.
Marshalling my thoughts, I scowled, closed my eyes, and inhaled deeply.
Various aromas greeted my nostrils, a jumble of unique scents. Mana. There were many spelled objects in there. Strange. I’d thought the Knights Templar were purists.
“Detect anything dangerous?” Lucian’s deep baritone queried.
Dangerous? “No,” I said. The smells were faint. They certainly weren’t dangerous, at least nothing like the scents the spiders had emitted. “Just minor things. Weak, actually.”
“Then proceed,” Lucian ordered with an impatient nod. “Find the spelled objects. If we can determine their purpose, we may identify the caster, and then we’ll be ahead in this game. We’re running out of time here. We’ve got to get my ward back and soon.”
I stood in the doorway, wondering just what would happen should Lucian’s ward not be found. He seemed pretty powerful without it. Was it simply a matter of Dorian breaking free or would all of the marionettes wake? There had to be at least several hundred dolls in that room in Venice. While I might just be up for Dorian on the prowl again, I didn’t want to be running from hundreds of creatures all hell-bent on their own brand of revenge.
“Any day now, spellfinder,” Lucian’s acid tones interrupted my musing. He moved close behind me, his hard muscled chest brushing against my back as he reached inside to flip the light switch on.
We both simply stood there and stared, our mouths dropping open.
Pictures. The walls were covered with them. The apartment was a small studio, and relatively empty, only a threadbare recliner, a plastic lawn chair, and a kitchen table that served as a desk, placed right next to the front door. But it was the walls that captured our attention. Drawings, handwritten notes, and photos were plastered all over. And all devoted to Lucian, Heath, Tabitha, and myself. It was disturbing to see snapshots of me in various poses and venues, pinned there amidst those of the others. There were even a few of Emilio and the hawk-nosed Samuel.
Apparently, the Knights Templar had been surveilling us for weeks.
Half mesmerized and the other half feeling downright violated, I drifted towards a particularly large cluster of photos depicting me in the act of touching numerous victims in Times Square. So, Culpepper knew how I fed. He even knew where I lived. There was a picture of my apartment. It was circled in red and tagged with a purple Post-it note.
Lucian’s cellphone buzzed. Expelling an aggravated huff of breath, he slouched against the door to answer it. I shook my head. Right. I had work to do, too. The soft murmur of the warlock’s voice melted into the background as I forced myself back to the task at hand and, moving away from the pictures, settled down to work.
Filling my lungs with air, I focused on the first thin thread of mana slithering through the air. Like tugging on a rope, the scent pulled me to the source, but before I’d taken more than three steps, Lucian’s scathing baritone intercepted my concentration.
“Only a fool would move my collection,” his voice rose in sharp anger. “You’ve played right into her hands, Emilio. Do you want him loose again? We just cursed him!”
I perked up. Dorian. No harm in gathering intel. Changing directions, I casually wandered towards the closest spelled item in Lucian’s vicinity instead. It turned out to be a toothpick near the sink. As I reluctantly picked it up, the warlock’s voice dropped into a murmur. Straining to hear, I absently rolled the toothpick between my hands. To my surprise, the mana came right off. It was like rubbing the gummy residue of a price sticker off of a gift.
As I absorbed the tiny tendril, I received the distinct impression of eyes. Watchful eyes. I drew back, faintly alarmed.
“He’s by far the most treacherous of them all.” Lucian’s voice rose heatedly, once again. “You know what it took to spell him. And now, you’ve all but set him free.”
Shaking off my strange mana experience, I zoned back into his conversation. Obviously, setting Dorian free would be a great way to give Emilio an apoplectic fit. My first real act of revenge. But I didn’t have a viable way of freeing just him alone. Risking the loss of Lucian’s ward was a self-defeating move in more ways than one, especially since I still needed the warlock’s protection. I sighed. As interesting as the thought had been, clearly, I’d be better off looking for revenge elsewhere. Patience. Revenge was a dish best served cold.
I glanced at Lucian from the corner of my eyes.
Engrossed in his conversation, he’d picked a pencil up from the table and began to twirl it in his fingers. But he was highly observant. He caught me looking at him and abruptly turned his back.
Edgy.
I didn’t care. Focusing on my job once again, I tracked down the next spelled object. A spoon in the sink. Again, the mana brushed off into my hand. Again, I saw eyes. Gray eyes, staring back at me. Cripes. That was disturbing.
Lucian’s conversation had disintegrated into a series of “You’re a fool” and “I’m done with the Marchesi” as I moved about the room. I was aware of his keen eyes following my every move as I located the spelled objects one by one. A cup. A sock. A cough drop. Scissors. A moldy fortune cookie. All of them spelled. I picked up each one, rubbing the mana off before depositing them in a small pile near the sink. Each object was the same, leaving me with the unmistakable visualization of observant, gray eyes. A woman’s eyes.
“Fool!” Lucian’s voice rose in sudden anger. I glanced over as the pencil in his fingers snapped in half. In a flare of temper, he slammed his phone into his pocket and began to swear, violently.
A slight movement on the ceiling above his head snagged my attention. The next moment, a current of air confirmed it. A spider, watching us with its many eyes. The scent of evil. My fangs extended automatically. Apparently, it h
ad just darted out of the woodwork. It caught me looking at it, but before it could skitter away, I drew my smallest knife, flicked my wrist, and let the blade fly.
The next moment, the spider was immobilized.
Lucian didn’t react. He just watched me from under dark lashes as I jumped onto the table next to him and wrenched my blade free from the ceiling. The spider was still alive, but it didn’t look like it would be for long. I watched it wriggle on the tip of my dagger, its legs stretching my way as if trying to cast a spell. Maybe it was. It generated an unusual amount of mana for something so small. Hopping down, I curiously ran my finger over its ensorcelled body.
Just like before, the mana rolled off, and just like before, as I consumed it, I saw the eyes staring at me, but this time, they were real, much stronger, and with it the vague notion of a word in my head, too: Moarte. Whatever language it was, there was no mistaking its meaning. Death.
As the spider shriveled, I repeated the word aloud, “Moarte.”
I glanced up at Lucian. I wasn’t prepared for what I saw in his face.
Shock. Complete. Utter. Shock.
“What is it?” I asked, whipping around on full alert.
Lucian’s hard hands gripped my shoulders, pulling me back to face him. “Just what did you do?” he asked in a strangled voice. He glanced at the pile of items I’d collected near the sink and then back to the spider skewered on my blade. “Just what have you been doing here?”
“Doing?” I frowned. “I’m your spellfinder. I’m finding spelled items and checking them out.” What was the dude’s problem? My frown deepened into a scowl.
“You didn’t just check them out,” Lucian accused hoarsely. “You’re removing the spells. Completely.”
Oh? Was that the mana rolling off thing? I shrugged. “Yeah, well, I have to admit the eyes were a surprise. Gray eyes. A woman’s. She’s spelled the whole place. She’s been watching everything, I guess, but not anymore. The place is cleared …” My voice trailed off as his brows continued to climb into his hairline. Just where was Ricky when I needed him? I felt like strangling the little wretch. I’d obviously blundered again. Licking my lips, I asked, “Aren’t spellfinders supposed to find spells and, uh, remove them?”