by Michele Hauf
She closed her eyes, and an inward cringe was her reward. She never should have gone the sneaky route. CJ had not been able to look her in the eye, and his body language had spoken loudly he’d wanted her to stay away from him. She deserved his hate. Well, not his hate. Perhaps mild disgust, distrust surely, but never hate.
How to win him back?
Did she want to win him? After the many times his demons had tormented her, she should have been allowed that moment of defeating one of them, no matter the method to success.
Yes, she wanted her dark, wicked witch. Because in his embrace, she felt right, as if his arms were the only place other than her home she should be.
Yet what had he done? What CJ couldn’t tell her, she wanted to know. She couldn’t avoid thinking about that detail he didn’t want her to have. It was dark and evil, she suspected.
Don’t think about it. Yeah, right. Now the thought would never leave her mind.
If she could get a few more cleanup jobs she could grab a bunch of souls and—well, she didn’t know how to utilize the souls once they’d stuck to hers. CJ had to actually be there, ready to take a soul before it entered hers.
This was a complicated mess. And for sure, he’d never let her attempt the bloodsexmagic on him again. Not that she wanted to. She had had sex with a demon. What was she becoming?
She tilted a look to her sister and found the same bewildered look reflected back at her.
“I know,” Libby said on a sigh. “What are we going to do?”
* * *
The vacuum cleaner rumble set the clouds of crystals to a mad sort of rain dance as CJ moved about the loft, pushing it into long-forgotten corners and collecting his abandoned clothing along the way. He wasn’t sure what had gotten into him, but the place had needed a good going-over.
By afternoon, he’d dusted every surface, organized his spell table and even alphabetized the spell cards and the herbarium. He’d found a missing snakeskin boot and tugged it on to admire it alongside its match. A feather duster had reached only the bottoms of the chandeliers, so he’d performed an air spell to dust the crystals from ceiling beams down to the smallest crystal. When finished, the loft beamed brilliantly.
Too brightly for his taste, but surely this would only aggravate his demons all the more.
Fixing himself a frozen cheese pizza in the microwave, he mused that he’d let his diet slack since his return. Normally, he made everything fresh. He was hungry and hadn’t gone shopping for days. Should probably head out for groceries before the sun set. But his thoughts, now the cleaning had been done, took a sharp turn toward her.
He hadn’t called Vika. Hadn’t dared to go over to her round white house and clatter on the shiny brass knocker. He knew he must be the one to make the first move. And he knew what that move involved.
The truth. The whole truth and all its devious details.
He glanced to the item lying in plain view on his kitchen counter. Plain only to him. The cloaking spell surrounding it was the most powerful magic to his arsenal, and no one, not even the demons within him, could see it sitting there. Vika had stood right beside it more than a few times and hadn’t sensed its presence.
He held his hand over the bone whistle but retracted from picking it up. The truth was going to wrench out his heart and drop it on the floor before Vika’s pretty little feet in a macabre splatter. Witches required a beating heart once a century to maintain their immortality, which must come from a vampire. The source, as the unfortunate vamp was called by witches. Vika would take one look at his dark and disgusting heart and wouldn’t want to sweep it into her bin. She’d run from it, metaphorical as the whole scenario was.
And that kept CJ at home through the evening, safe beneath the prismatic light, sorting through his herbs and tossing out the old stuff in order to avoid the vicious truth.
* * *
Ian Grim stared up at the dusty chandelier laden with black crystals. Why did it compel him so? He’d been sitting here beneath the massive structure for hours, his mind unable to grasp anything but the bedamned light fixture.
It meant something. He just didn’t know what that something was. So much so, he’d been compelled into this ancient mansion, which now served as a museum, and had snuck beyond security into this private bedchamber.
“Certainly Jones,” he muttered. “I will not let you get the better of me this time. I am so close. So close!”
He reached and was able to tap the lowest-hanging crystal. It caught the sunlight and flashed in his eye.
“You are not untouchable. If I have to go through your brother, Thoroughly, I will.”
* * *
Pouring out a measure of safflower petal onto a crisp sheet of parchment, Vika referred to her spellbook for the correct measurement.
She had agreed with Libby for once and hadn’t called CJ this morning. Sometimes the man had to step up and make things right. And wasn’t absence supposed to make the heart grow fonder?
“Not if his heart is angry with what I’ve done.” She sighed, and the exhalation drifted the airy bits of safflower across the white paper and into a random scatter.
Studying the scattered bits, she utilized a form of tasseomancy, tea leaf reading, which was Libby’s forte. Skilled enough, Vika muddled over the flower petals’ design. And what she saw clenched the muscles about her heart and stole her breath.
“Libby!”
Her sister scrambled into the room, a spatula laden with raw cookie dough in hand. “What? Did you burn yourself? I told you waterfiremagic was tricky stuff.”
“It’s not that. What do you read in this?”
Libby carefully approached the counter and looked over the strewn safflower petals. She clasped a fist to her chest. A gob of cookie dough spilled down her befringed apron. “Oh, my goddess. A warlock? What does that mean? Do you think it’s CJ?”
“I don’t know. He would have had to commit a grave crime against the Light to be deemed warlock. Oh, Libby, he’s been keeping something from me. Something dark. He says he can’t tell me about it.” The sisters hugged. “What is CJ involved in?”
Chapter 16
CJ rang the doorbell. It tinkled as if a faery making her appearance in some silver-screen cartoon. Appropriate for this white round house in which lived two gorgeous red-haired witches. Checking the bouquet of yellow roses in hand, he inhaled the crisp fruity scent. They were miniroses, which gave him a smile. He’d never seen the like, and the froth of gay, tiny petals seemed the much-needed prelude for what he had to do today.
After all the rain they’d gotten the past few days, the sun hung high in the sky and the air was humid. No thunderclouds in the forthcoming days, according to his senses or the weatherman on the television who used fancy gadgets to forecast what CJ could do with a little attention to his elbows.
The door opened and Libby’s effusive smile slipped from her face. “Oh. You.”
Feeling the derelict, CJ sucked in a breath. He hadn’t expected this visit to be easy. “Is your sister home?”
Libby stepped aside to allow him to enter.
“Sit there.” She pointed to the white leather couch then stood before him, hands akimbo, looking him over.
The cat jumped onto his lap and curled its tail beneath CJ’s chin. He didn’t think shoving it off would make him look good in the sister’s disapproving eyes.
“Ex-boyfriend, eh? How did he get like this?”
“A warlock did it to him,” Libby said with no humor at all. “You know anything about warlocks, dark witch?”
“I, er...” What was she getting at? “No?”
“Uh-huh.”
Fingers playing with the coiled nail at her throat, she made show of giving him the mongoose eye, and CJ felt the stab at his kidney as if she’d really done it. So the witch wielded psychological magic. Good for her.
“Yes, good for me. And no, I can’t read minds, but your face is a pitiful chalkboard of all your sins. Vika is out in the garden. You si
t tight, and I’ll go find her.”
CJ stood. “If she’s in the garden, I can go out.”
“Not with those pitiful bits of unnaturally dyed flowers, you’re not.”
He looked over the bouquet. Dyed? “I thought your sister would like them.”
Libby rolled her eyes. “Yellow for apology. Oh, you poor misdirected, lovesick fool.” She inclined her head forward. “Are you lovesick?”
He nodded, offering a wincing smile. “I am.”
Libby’s heavy sigh combined mistrust with empathy. “Best to leave you to your own devices then. Through the kitchen and out the double doors. Don’t touch the windows in the doors. I just cleaned them. If I see your fingerprints on the glass, I will hit you with some painful magic right below the belt.”
“All righty, then.”
“Wait.”
He stood frozen, not daring to move.
Libby sidled closer, her eyes glowering over him appraisingly. “Did you bewitch my sister?”
“Purposefully? No, I would never employ such tactics.”
“Yeah, I’m not so sure about that. I can’t figure a reason my sister would fall for a guy like you.”
“She’s fallen for me?”
“Dude, my sister does not sleep with just any man. Especially not someone like...” Another sigh. “You. She’s got to feel something for him, you know?”
“I think I do know that. I didn’t bewitch her, Libby. Promise.”
The tension was thick enough to swim through, and CJ made haste through the kitchen and away from the Window Gestapo, being careful to touch only the silver door handle and not the glass, which gleamed like the crystals suspended from his chandelier collection.
He stepped out into a lush garden that put his pitiful dyed roses to shame. Flipping the bouquet around behind his back, he stepped down the limestone steps in his recently paired boots and took the path beneath a wrought-iron pergola frilled with violet passion flowers. The yellow stamens stuck out their tongues at him as he passed beneath. Foolish witch and his stupid flowers, they whispered on the wind.
He passed by pennisetum, hydrangea, mugwort and various mints. The fragrance intoxicated. He could sit on the stone bench, eyes closed, and name each flower by smell. As part of his magical education, he’d studied botany. A wise witch knew all plants and flora to utilize in his spells.
To his right a red glass witch ball hung suspended above white heliotrope. Hoping to catch some insect souls?
Spreading his free hand over the tops of the snowy queen’s lace growing waist-high along the path, he angled on the cobblestones and spied Vika’s long black skirts. Garnet hair pulled neatly in a long braid gleamed under the sunlight. Always in need of a muss.
Except yesterday. She’d come dressed to seduce. Why hadn’t he picked up on that right away?
Didn’t matter now. Whatever her intentions had been, she had in mind only to help him. He was thankful for that. And he’d gotten over his pouty anger over her not telling him the whole truth before they’d engaged in the spell.
Vika stood, a clasp of silvery seathorn in hand, and smiled softly at him.
That unexpected smile warmed his heart. It had been a day since he’d seen her. It felt like forever.
“Viktorie,” he said, failing at every kind of sweet and meaningful hello he could summon. He kept the miniroses tucked behind his back. “You’re a bright flower among the rest.”
She tilted her head and crossed her arms over her chest. Not about to make this easy, despite the lingering smile. But the seathorn nettles could sting his skin with a simple brush. He imagined she could do the same if he spoke incorrectly.
“I’ve come to apologize. It was awful of me to say those things to you after you had exorcised another demon at the risk to your life. I appreciate what you did for me. I’m sorry.”
Her smile grew as she accepted the apology with a nod. “I’m sorry for being deceptive. That wasn’t me yesterday. And yet, it was.”
“You had to do it on the sly. I wouldn’t have allowed it if I had known.”
“Still, I should have discussed it with you. From now on, no more hiding truths. I promise and vow upon my grandmother’s memory.” She touched the nail at her throat.
“Me, too. Concealing truth is as bad as a lie.”
“If that is so, then what do you have behind your back?”
“Nothing.” He shrugged. “Ah, hell.” He held forth the pitiful offering. “I picked them up in the supermarket on the way here. They are weeds compared with your gorgeous garden. Just thought they’d look pretty in your hair.”
She accepted the flowers and brought them to her nose. Eyes closed and mouth slightly open, she drew in their fragrance, as artificial as it may be. Drawing her nail down the stems, she snapped off the head of one yellow rose and handed it to him.
CJ pressed the stem into the silken depths of her hair. “Another,” he said. She handed him another rose, and he placed it next to the other until all had been crowded into the tightly combed braid. He took out one and crushed it between his forefingers, then rubbed the oil behind her ear and dared to trace it between her breasts. “I anoint you Diva of the Dahlias, and Grand High Priestess of My Heart.”
“I accept your offering, dark one, and promise I will not again use deception to chase out your demons.” Then she cracked a smile and kissed him. “I missed you.”
“I thought you’d hate me.”
“I wasn’t pleased with your reaction, but I can put myself in your position and understand. But one less demon is better than not.”
“For sure. I’m not finished apologizing yet. I need to give you my truth. It can’t be right between us until I do that.”
“What truth?”
“Let’s sit.” He gestured to the bench beneath the stone grotto near a koi pond that wept thick vines frilled with gold and tangerine honeysuckle.
She joined him on the bench and slid her hand into his, which was a good sign. Their combined magics hummed through his veins as if a natural reaction. But now the tough part. The necessary evil.
“Must be dark indeed if you’re so worried about it,” she offered. “I don’t think there’s much more you can say or show me that can be worse than harboring an infestation of demons.”
Yeah? This truth was going to blow that out of the water.
CJ took Vika’s hands in his, so elegant and graceful. She could master all magics with these delicate fingers. Just as he opened his mouth, they heard a scream from inside the house.
“Libby?” Vika dashed down the garden path, her long skirts held near her thighs.
“Saved by the scream,” CJ muttered, and followed her inside.
He’d been close to confession, and now that he’d been granted reprieve, the relief felt immense. Maybe he hadn’t been so ready to reveal his selfish deed after all.
They found Libby kneeling on the gleaming black-and-white-tiled kitchen floor, bent over a sprawled man in dark clothing.
“The soul bringer?” CJ wandered around the man’s long body. “Is he dead?”
“I don’t think so,” Libby said frantically. “He suddenly appeared!”
“He’s not breathing,” Vika noted.
“He never breathes. He doesn’t need to. He’s angelic by origin. Oh, Vika, I was pouring myself a glass of orange juice, and—bam! What do you think happened?”
“Crash landing?” Vika tried. “He isn’t due to scrub me for days.”
“Shake him awake,” CJ directed.
All of a sudden, a flurry of brightness wafted up from the soul bringer’s chest. The corpse lights danced as if dandelion kites on the breeze.
“Souls,” CJ said in wonder.
“Yes.” Vika stood over the soul bringer. “I don’t know why they’re coming out of him, but I’ve got to catch them. Save them for him.”
She held out her arms and lifted her chest to receive the fluttery souls. A few wobbled toward her.
“Vika?” CJ tried
. He shouldn’t, but—there were so many. And how many times would they be granted such opportunity?
“Oh, yes! Xum!” She swept her hand toward him and blasted him with air magic, catching a corpse light in the path.
The force of impact slammed CJ against the wall. He cried out as the brightness moved through him and he felt a demon exit his soul. Chaos, surely. “Another?” she said, and again sent a soul through him.
“Vika, I’m not sure,” Libby started. “Reichardt could be in pain. He won’t come to!”
Vika blasted CJ with two more souls. Protection and another demon were sucked to Daemonia. He grasped for hold against the wall but slipped down, landing on the floor, and his head wobbled forward. “No more,” he muttered. “Enough.” Heaving, he panted at the exertion the exorcism had required.
“Now, to make sure I don’t lose any of them.” Vika moved about the kitchen, pursuing the phosphorescent lights, both the ones straight from Reichardt and those she’d moved through CJ.
Libby pulled up one of Reichardt’s eyelids. “He’s in there. I don’t think he’s dead. This is so weird.”
“I think I have them all,” Vika declared.
CJ observed, because he could not move, so taxed were his muscles. Vika’s skirts swept over his boot-tips, and a trail of tiny yellow roses scattered in her wake as she went to kneel by her sister.
“Let’s get the poor guy off the floor. Carry him into the living room and lay him on the couch. CJ?”
“I’ll be right there.” He pushed to stand but fell forward onto his palms. The muscles in his arms trembled as if he’d been lifting weights for hours. Damn, that had taken a lot out of him. “Give me a minute.”
“We can do this. Libby, take his feet. I’ve got his shoulders.” Together they recited, “Atollo” for lift, and the prone man’s body was made lighter.
The sisters carried the soul bringer through the swinging kitchen doors, while CJ pulled himself up by the counter. A smile overtook him. He’d lost another three demons. Unfortunately, one had been Protection. Despite whatever had happened to the soul bringer, it had been remarkable timing. Still didn’t excuse him from telling Vika his secret.