by Abigail Owen
Seating herself without waiting for him, when he didn’t bother to join her, she slipped her shoes onto her feet, smoothed her cream-colored skirt over her thighs, then crossed her ankles and settled her hands primly in her lap, fingers laced in a subtle steepling.
Based on the way his gaze flicked to the movement followed by a tightening of his lips, he got the message. She was in charge here.
“So…you need my help?” She couldn’t help saying it one more time.
“I knew this was a bad idea,” he muttered.
“It wasn’t mine.”
“Gods above, will you please listen?” Alasdair snapped.
Whoa. Delilah stilled, taking a closer look.
On the outside he appeared his usual impeccable self. Conservative black custom suit tailored to perfection to his broad shoulders, trim hips, and powerful legs. Jet black hair cropped short, though slightly longer on top, swept to the side, not a follicle out of place. Cleanly shaven jaw which, already sharply angled, appeared closer to the set of granite today.
A tell. She doubted many ever got to see the man this riled.
When she sat quietly and waited, Alasdair’s eyes narrowed as though he didn’t quite trust her. In a casual move at odds with the tension riding his body, he slipped his hands into his pockets and stared at her with bright blue eyes.
Delilah mentally sorted through a list of her recent clients in her head, along with a quick rehash of her last few encounters with this man. What in heaven’s name had brought him to her in such a state?
Granted, kicking him out of the dance club in Miami where she’d been helping a particularly troubled mermaid, she might’ve gone a teensy bit overboard making her point. No doubt he hadn’t appreciated finding himself teleported to Siberia.
That had been over a week ago.
Thank the powers that Alasdair didn’t know why she’d done that. He’d touched her arm. A casual move, only her body had lit up like fireworks at the New Year. From that one tiny, ridiculous contact. Sending him away had been an act of sheer desperation.
The most frustrating part was, she couldn’t See him. See his future or how it impacted hers. See where this troubling wanting when it came to him was going to end. Her most secret and precious gift, her ability as a Seer, allowed her to help her clients in ways no one else ever could.
But Alasdair Blakely was a blank. A black hole of nothing. That never happened except around vampires and ghosts, because, technically, they were dead. He wasn’t one of those.
Meanwhile, he stood statue-still, continuing to stare at her.
Delilah sighed. “Alasdair. I can’t do anything if you don’t tell me why you’ve come—”
“I have a demon problem.” He practically bit off each word.
Every ounce of levity left her body in a whoosh. She tried not to show by even a whisper of a twitch how that statement hit her. No, no, no. Not demons.
“What kind of demon problem?” she asked slowly, proud that her voice didn’t give away the sudden tightening in her chest, as though a yeti’s pet elephant sat on top of her, cutting off her air.
“Multiple reports, twenty in the last week, of rage and unleashed magic resulting in injuries,” he said. “No deaths so far, but it’s only a matter of time.”
Interesting. “How do you know for sure what you’re dealing with?” Please don’t be demons. Anything but those. “It could be any number of—”
“My assistant, Agnes, has been possessed. Definitely demon. I’ve…had a run-in with a demon before.”
Well…fuck.
Alasdair slid into the chair opposite her. Even projecting his usual imperturbable disposition, tension was coming off him in tangible waves. She was surprised the man wasn’t vibrating with it or manifesting magic to bleed it off. Not that she’d blame him.
Demons. It would have to be those, wouldn’t it?
Delilah resisted the urge to uncross and recross her legs under the intentness of his gaze. “I’m sorry, but I don’t deal with demons. Hard rule.”
His thick brows snapped down over his eyes in an impressive scowl. “You don’t deal—” He bit off the words. “What you mean is you don’t help witches.”
She pressed her lips together over defensive words that wanted to tumble out, limiting herself to a narrowing of her eyes. Ever off-balance around him in the most frustrating ways. Anyone else, and she wouldn’t give two figs for ruffling feathers. She’d never experienced any desire to explain her actions or defend herself before. Why now? And why to him? “You know that’s not true, or I wouldn’t have helped Rowan Masters.”
The red-haired witch, now married to Greyson Masters, Alasdair’s lead witch-hunter enforcing the Syndicate’s laws. Rowan was as powerful as they came. Excepting, perhaps, the man sitting in front of her right now. However, that previous situation had had nothing to do with demons. Or…not directly at least.
Alasdair’s lip curled. Hell, even the man’s sneer was controlled. But then he gave his head a shake, and a glimpse of vulnerability took her righteous anger away in an instant. “You’re right…”
Not exactly an apology, but more than he’d given her in the past.
He shot to his feet. “So why won’t you take me…us…on as a client?”
Interesting slip, and the gods knew she wished she could help them. Maybe a little spell wouldn’t hurt. One to locate—
The second even a whisper of a thought of getting involved surfaced, a tightening sensation, as though metal cuffs around her wrists were clamping down hard, told her she was treading on dangerous ground. If she took it further, her skin would start to visibly chafe and then blister. Good thing her long-sleeved blouse of green chiffon covered the spots.
The same magic that shackled her wouldn’t allow her to speak of it, either, so she couldn’t even explain.
“I just…” She allowed herself the small act of blowing out a long breath. “I can’t.”
“Fuck.” The quietly spat word, even as he held perfectly still saying it, sent a flinch through her.
His desperation was tangible, thick in the air. She regretted teasing him earlier now, because demons were as serious as it got.
“I may know someone else who can help.” Though…because that person could help, didn’t mean she would. The tightness cinched harder around Delilah’s wrists, and she had to school her features not to show the pain, nearly glancing down to see if the skin around her wrists was turning red yet.
“Someone who can help?” He repeated her words in a tone that said he still couldn’t believe she was turning him down.
Sorry, she mentally apologized. Anything else, and I would have stepped in.
Delilah offered him a shrug, for once not meaning to antagonize him, though the way his brows snapped together, she had. She rose to her feet to cross the room. Bringing up her computer, she pretended to hunt for information she already had memorized. Then wrote down an address on a slip of paper.
She straightened to find he’d moved on silent feet to stand across the desk from her. Resisting the need to take a step back, away from all that enticing, leashed energy, she held it out to him. “You’ll find this…woman…is an expert on what you’re dealing with. She may be of assistance.”
He didn’t take it. Just stared at her hard, accusation in the darkening blue of his eyes, turning them almost navy. If she didn’t know him better, she’d say he was taking this personally. As though she’d wronged him somehow.
“I’m sorry I can’t do more.” Delilah bit the inside of her cheek. Dammit. Rule #1 in her business was no demons. Rule #2 was never apologize. Besides, she was trying here, dammit.
He shook his head, expression confounded. “I expected more from you,” he said softly.
She swallowed.
“My people are in danger. You, the woman who helps everyone with a seemingly
unending list of issues, won’t help?” A bitter sort of disappointment filled his eyes, a direct hit to her heart, which usually she did a better job protecting.
Delilah locked her lips against another apology and shook the paper. “A smart man would take this.”
A cauldron of emotion swirled and bubbled in his eyes. The disappointment definitely hit hardest. With another shake of his head, he snatched the paper from her hand and stalked to the door.
“I’ll be sure to pass on this experience to anyone interested in your future services,” he tossed over his shoulder. Then he was gone, leaving the door open between her office and Naiobe’s.
As soon as the telltale thunk of the outer door closing reached her, Delilah waved a hand and her own door slammed shut so hard papers on her desk fluttered to the ground. She sank into her chair and held up her wrists. Sure enough, angry red welts appeared where the magical shackles bound her.
“Fuck,” she breathed.
Because she would have done a hell of a lot more than hand him an address. If she could.
With a shaking hand, she picked up her cell phone and dialed. A sultry voice on the other end answered. “Hello?”
“Mom? A man will be coming to visit you any second. Please do what you can for him.”
Chapter Two
Alasdair prided himself on his ability to read a person, but Delilah—and he still didn’t know her last name—baffled the fuck out of him.
He didn’t like it.
Especially when he’d allowed himself to fantasize about wrapping his fist in that long, dark hair and plumbing those lush lips with demanding kisses as he thrust into her sweet body. She smelled of cherry blossoms. He’d finally pinpointed the subtle floral note in her office the first time he’d “dropped by” for a surprise visit.
That time—which had involved her calling him a control freak and him calling her a rabble-rouser—had gone way better than this one. The woman could make a glacier lose its cool.
And yet his mind insisted on overriding his common sense and providing fantasies of a time and place where they were on the same side.
A weakness, he could see now.
He’d seen the types of clients she handled. Her involvement with Rowan and Greyson had given him the impression Delilah had a guardian angel complex. Someone who liked to use whatever gifts she had in her possession to help the underdogs and lost causes.
After that incident, he’d investigated her. Money and power didn’t seem to be a motivation beyond building her business. No one seemed to know what powers Delilah possessed herself, but she had an impressive network of contractors and supernaturally gifted people who owed her favors. Likely even more impressive than what he’d been able to unearth.
She used that network to fix supernatural problems for paranormal creatures of all types, creeds, and spectrums. Anything from matchmaking, to job placement, to healings, to personal investigations, to relocations and creating alternate identities, and more. There didn’t seem to be any problem she couldn’t handle. Except, apparently, mass exorcisms.
Why? Because she couldn’t stand him? Was she that petty?
Alasdair wouldn’t have thought so. Perhaps he’d allowed a slowly growing regard for what she did combine with a festering need to claim her luscious body blind him to who she was as a person. He’d thought, beneath all that defiance, that she had a heart and a conscience.
Clearly he’d got that wrong.
The thought soured in his head, like even thinking the words introduced poison into his thoughts. But damned if he should be giving her any leeway here. He’d been prepared to pay, as much as it took. Prepared to grovel even. Not having answers himself stuck in his craw. While he prided himself on refusing to give in to the illusion of being all powerful, it still rankled. Magic, even for one as formidable as he, wasn’t going to fix a demon problem when the multitude he suspected were coming were involved.
Hold them off, at best.
Channeling his frustration with Delilah and the entire situation, Alasdair pulled it into the whispered spell that teleported him directly outside a home in…he glanced around his surroundings with a frown. In the middle of New York City? Upper West Side if he wasn’t mistaken. His gaze skated up the front of the white limestone-sided house with impressive relief work carved into the facade. Five stories. Not an apartment.
The doorbell was answered by the epitome of a stiff butler who left him standing in the foyer, which might be the most marbled room Alasdair had ever encountered. The floors, stairs, and even walls were decorated in a white swirling marble with a star pattern in black and gold on the floor and small onyx squares spreading out from there.
He’d been born to wealth and privilege, used to the upper echelons of wiccan society, even after his parents’ deaths, but this was a bit much. The only things not marble in the space were the shiny black iron balustrades of an epic curving staircase and the matching scrolling iron grills over each of the downstairs windows and the front door.
Not a single Christmas decoration in sight. Not that all beings celebrated, but it was a small clue into who or what Delilah had sent him to. Meanwhile, magical energy pulsed from those grills, skating across his skin, almost undetectable. Wards?
Who the hell had Delilah sent him to?
“Mr. Blakesley?” He turned from his impatient perusal of the room to find a woman descending the curving staircase. Possibly the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in real life, other than Delilah who, unfortunately for him, topped his list. He couldn’t put his finger on what made this woman beautiful, though.
Any single feature was lovely, proportioned, balanced, but not extraordinary, though when they were combined… Perhaps the impression had more to do with the aura of supreme confidence that radiated from her.
Eccentric, too. She wore a black bodysuit paired with a caftan that flowed behind her, brightly colored enough for a circus tent, and had her raven black hair piled in an intricate updo that reminded him of paintings of French royalty in the ostentatious days of Marie Antoinette. Only he got the impression that this woman, who at first glance might appear thirty years old at most, laid claim to an older soul than that. Centuries lurked in her dark eyes. A knowing that immediately set him on the defensive.
“How did you know my name?” he asked, even as he politely grasped her daintily extended hand.
“Delilah called ahead.” The woman didn’t release his hand. Instead, stepping in to him, she covered their clasped hands with her other one and stared deeply into his eyes. Like she was reading his essence.
“I see,” Alasdair said, forcing himself to stand still and endure her inspection. At least Delilah had bothered to do that much. “She failed to provide your name.”
Lips that reminded him of…someone else, though he couldn’t think who…tipped in amusement. “The silly girl.”
Not how he would describe Delilah.
“My name is Semhazah. You may call me Hazah.”
Why did her full name sound familiar? Something he’d heard before, or perhaps read? He mentally shook that off. How long before they could get to the point?
“So…you have a demon problem?” Hazah asked.
He held in the spurt of surprise that flickered through him and peered closer. Had Delilah sent him to a mind reader? How would that help? Only dark eyes returned his gaze with utter innocence and even a sort of amused tolerance that had him clenching his teeth. He needed all the help he could get. At least she didn’t waste his time with idle chatter, jumping straight in.
“Yes,” he bit out.
“Tell me about it.”
Quickly he detailed the growing number of incidents and his dealing with Agnes’s new situation, which was his proof positive of demons. Hazah, still not releasing his hand, nodded along.
“That is concerning,” she murmured when he finished.
Alasdair smoothed out the scowl that wanted to furrow his brow. This was like dealing with Delilah. “Concerning is putting it mildly.”
She gave a noncommittal hum.
Am I missing something?
The last time demon possessions occurred in these numbers ended up in a trail of events that escalated in horror at the turn of the first millennium. It had taken the combined powers of his people, along with demigods, and even a battalion of angels to eradicate them. Why was he the only one taking this seriously?
“Can you help?” he demanded.
If not, he needed to call the Syndicate together. Now. That was where he should be.
Rather than answer, Hazah lifted one beringed hand, a multitude of tinkling bracelets at her wrist, and waved it in front of his face, as though scanning him with her palm. Then she studied him with narrowed eyes. “Fascinating.”
What was she doing now? Spock imitations? “What’s fasci—”
She grabbed his hand and flipped it palm up, studying it closely. “Oh my. Yes. I see now.”
He jerked out of her touch. “Can you help?” he repeated the question, trying not to yell.
Hazah pursed her lips. “I’m afraid Delilah is the only one who can help you with this.”
“She refused,” he snapped.
“Is that what happened?” Her tone of voice indicated she didn’t entirely believe him. As though he’d be here if it weren’t true.
“Yes.” Dammit. “I just came from there.”
Hazah merely shrugged, almost appearing bored. “I guess I’ll have to send you right back.”
Before he knew what she was about, she whispered a series of words that sounded ominously like a magical spell, but in a dialect he only vaguely recognized. Then she pushed a single, manicured finger into his chest, directly over his heart.
The strangest sensation, like she’d tied a string to that beating organ and yanked hard on the other end, pulled at him, and suddenly he wasn’t standing in the gilded marble foyer in her home, but in the office he’d stalked out of not even fifteen minutes ago.