Portia laughed in his head. “Sometimes even people like us need help with details. Is your new sweetie as technophobic as you are?”
“Laptop?” he asked. “Or was it smashed up with the rest of your room?”
“The laptop’s in pieces, but I had my phone on me last night.” He gave Paul—and by extension Portia—the email address.
“I’ll get that right out,” Portia sent. “Good thing he actually lives in this century, or we’d be in trouble. I’m not about to fax a major spell to the front desk.”
Paul chuckled despite the gravity of the situation, and then he was completely alone in his head.
Chapter Eleven
“So how are we going to find the critter anyway?” Tag’s voice was deliberately careless, part of his effort to remain calm. Still, he couldn’t seem to stop touching Paul in little ways, his foxside finding comfort in contact and bodily warmth. Right now, he was standing behind Paul, rubbing his shoulders, which might or might not have soothed Paul but definitely soothed Tag with its slow, deep rhythm. “Cruise the casinos until someone with a freaky aura offers us a threesome? That could just be a freak.”
“I should be able to tell the difference. Then again, Dr. Cavello should have too. This thing’s good at what it does.”
He couldn’t see Paul’s face, but he could imagine the wry smile that didn’t quite reach Paul’s worried eyes. The poor man had looked calm and relaxed for all of three-point-two minutes after making love, but between the need to confront the incubus and the emotional turmoil of realizing there might be something going on between them other than phenomenal sex, he’d smelled of tension ever since.
Tag did too, but it wasn’t bad enough yet that a human would notice it. Paul, on the other hand, was sweating acridly despite air-conditioning set cool enough to keep a hot-running dual chilly in the heat of Las Vegas autumn. It wouldn’t take a dual’s sharp nose to pick it up. He needed to take a shower before they went stalking.
Tag would be glad to help scrub his back and any other parts that might need attention. He was scared spitless, but sex—any kind of physical contact, really—always helped with that.
Paul took a deep breath that shuddered through his whole body, reminding Tag how Paul’s climax had also shuddered through his whole body. He shifted in his chair so he could meet Tag’s eyes. “No. We’re not going cruising. We’re not going to pretend to be ignorant tourists. We are going to challenge this thing by its true name to come play with us—and then we’ll kick its ass back to hell, or wherever it actually belongs.”
“Will that work? Do you know the critter’s true name?” Tag had a hard time saying the word demon. As a dual, he was scary to some normies, but demons were about ten orders of weird beyond anything he’d ever experienced.
Might as well get used to it, though. If he stuck with Paul Donovan like he had every intention of doing, weird was going to become a much larger part of his daily diet.
“No. But thanks to my sister’s phenomenal research skills and my family’s alarming library, we know enough to make it think we know.” Paul laughed then, and the laugh tasted like steak and whiskey and sent a joyful, sensual shiver through Tag’s body. “Still, I wouldn’t feel so confident about trying to bluff an incubus if you weren’t with me.”
Tag felt the grin spread over his face, slow and sweet as tupelo honey, sharp as a blade. He knew what he looked like, because he saw it mirrored in Paul’s astonished eyes: a fox gleefully considering the best approach to a well-guarded chicken house. “I’m on it, darlin’. Bluffin’ is what foxes do best.”
“I’ve always heard duals don’t lie.”
“I didn’t say lie. I said bluff. There’s not much point in duals tellin’ outright lies to our own kind, because we can smell the stress it causes. We never get good at making up complete lies. But there are a thousand ways to slant the truth, especially if someone deserves to be tricked.”
Or if they needed to believe something desperately, even if it was a slanted not-quite-truth. If he was being completely honest, Tag would have to admit he wasn’t sure he could outbluff a shape-shifting demon smart enough to trick Uncle Randolph and two of his gambler friends, not to mention a witch who was also an engineer. He thought he could do it. But Paul, for some reason, was sure he could—and under the circumstances, Tag wasn’t going to say anything that might weaken Paul’s confidence. Tag didn’t know much about how magic actually worked, but he bet it helped if the person doing the magic was sure of a good outcome.
The fact Tag was lying a little to himself to boost his own confidence? Ancient Trickster secret.
Paul was willing to bet most Las Vegas hotels didn’t boast a private conference room already set with wards, a protective circle and everything else needed for the working of ritual magic.
Tag shivered when he walked into the small, dark-paneled room, and although Paul’s focus was already on the magic to be done, the ritual of calling for the incubus, he felt the shiver as if it was his own. He was already that closely entwined with Tag. Never mind that all logic said they shouldn’t be right for each other long-term; his subconscious and his magic didn’t seem to care.
“This room feels alien,” Tag whispered. “Like it’s a piece of somewhere else plunked down here. Not bad but out of place.”
Paul turned then, stared at Tag as a wave of astonishment broke over him. Duals couldn’t do magic—among mortals, the ability went with human genes—and were rarely aware of it on a conscious level. But apparently Tag was. One more reason he was the perfect partner for a witch, able to sense energies but unable to accidentally muck them up as a witch with a different flavor of magic might. “You’re right. This room is a conduit to the fae plane. I think if we didn’t need it to be here, and Mr. Aisling didn’t wish it to be here, it wouldn’t be. But how did you know that?”
Tag shrugged. “It’s obvious. It smells like green spring by the ocean and it’s fall in the desert. That could be expensive ambience, but it’s not. And that’s just the start of it. I feel it on my skin, taste it. It’s like bein’ somewhere haunted. You might not see the ghost, but you know it’s there. Duh.” Then he paused. “I guess that’s not true for everyone.”
Lord and Lady, Paul loved the cadences of Tag’s voice, the entrancing mixture of education and folksy diction. A spell in itself. He shook himself and jarred loose an answer to the question. “No, it’s not. Most humans and I think nearly all duals would notice only that this room isn’t as air-conditioned as the rest of the building. And while I find it hard to imagine, growing up as I did, most sentients aren’t aware of ghosts except on a subconscious level. You’re sensitive to magic. That’s…unusual for a dual.”
He stopped himself before he could say “a sign.”
But it might be a sign nevertheless.
“It’s not human magic,” he went on, more to himself than to Tag, “but maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe the incubus won’t notice it because it’s unfamiliar.”
Or maybe it wouldn’t affect the demon at all, leaving them with fewer tools at their disposal than they anticipated.
Paul shook off the thought. Negativity could literally be deadly in a situation like this, working unfamiliar magic against a strange foe. He and Tag needed to be positive. Lucky for them both, exuberant, positive energy seemed to be part of Tag’s nature. He seemed scared—who wouldn’t be, under the circumstances?—but the tension in his muscular body had at least as much to do with excitement, the predator’s thrill of the hunt.
The red magic from the wild sex they’d shared earlier—the lovemaking, though it was a word Paul didn’t normally use, at least not when it was referring to his own life—still buzzed through Paul’s body. It twined with Paul’s other magics, waking and fueling them. But he felt unbalanced. Trying to fight an incubus when his red magic was stronger than his other powers might work, or it might just feed the creature he was trying to banish. Portia hadn’t been able to find a definitive answer for that, b
ut through her, he’d learned that sorcerer’s magic was the ideal weapon against incubi. Unfortunately, they had no sorcerers handy, and red magic, lusty and rooted in the natural desire of all beings to mate, and of all sentients to love and be loved, was the antithesis of detached, word-and-will-oriented sorcery. He needed his other powers but even though the red magic had triggered them awake, they were dim, foggy.
The familiar powers of earth, air, water and living things he could tap in Oregon were far away, and the analogous powers felt far away here in the heart of a city forced to bloom in the desert. “It’s dead here,” he muttered. “No life, just concrete and steel and plastic.”
“Thought so too, when I first arrived. But it’s not dead, just dry and citified.” Tag took his hand. “You’re telepathic, right? I’ve heard duals are hard for humans to read because we think differently than humans do. But you’re not like most humans. You get nature, feel it in your body the way we do. I think you’ll understand enough.”
Tag pulled him in for a quick, thorough kiss that lit both red magic and simple desire. “Come on in, Paul,” he whispered, his bourbon-and-smoke voice inviting so much more. “Experience Las Vegas the way I do.”
Paul wasn’t used to stepping into anyone’s head but his twin’s—and he tried to avoid doing the whole Vulcan mind-meld thing with Portia when it wasn’t absolutely necessary. Among witches, high levels of telepathy were considered more a disability than a gift, and while his was nowhere near as strong as Portia’s, he still kept it locked down most of the time, especially around normies, who leaked thoughts and emotions without realizing it.
And his witch-sight was too damn strong. Even when he wasn’t trying to use it, he still saw auras and essences as clearly as he did the solid objects everyone could see. The idea of probing with it, in this city of fools…
But Tag was with him. Tag said he saw more to Las Vegas than he did, and everyone knew duals didn’t lie.
Paul opened his mind and his witch-sight to the man in his arms and the city around them.
Life. Las Vegas was full of foolishness and a sad, desperate greed for material gain and a kind of packaged fun that Paul, with his witch upbringing and his inclination to seriousness, didn’t understand. But as easily as he could dismiss so much of Las Vegas as false, Tag, with his keen dual senses, perceived things differently. And the witch-sight, fully engaged now and irresistible, seductive, showed him more.
Disjointed sensory images: hawks circling above the Strip, stars only a dual could perceive against the brilliant lights of the city, the smells of crowded humans, ugly in the aggregate but each one individual, full of life, telling its own unique story. The desert outside the city was full of life in its own right, though it was an austere sort of life, different from the lushness he was used to at home or in Ireland, or that Tag knew from the mountains of Tennessee. Living energy flowed everywhere, whether it was people enjoying touristy pleasures—the pleasures might be phony on some level, but the enjoyment of getting away and doing something new and different was real—or the two housekeepers making out in the supply closet on the next floor below them, or the Las Vegas residents going about their daily lives, far from the Strip. The plants in the city’s various gardens and the water flowing underground had their own energies. Even house pets and performing animals contributed. Tag’s wordside wasn’t consciously aware of most of it, but his fox perceived the web of energy and life on a level beyond words, and, linked to the fox’s keener senses, Paul’s witch-sight became something greater.
He swayed. The world dimmed except for the magical energies that linked everything, absolutely everything, even the dead trees used for furniture, even the unimaginably ancient life that had become oil and since then, plastic.
He’d heard about this, heard that the right lover could bring this dizzying clarity, but he’d never known anyone who’d actually experienced it, even those happily married to the witch of their dreams.
He woke on the floor of the fae circle, vision blurred by the swirling colors of witch-sight, power thrumming in his veins. Tag knelt next to him, holding him, his gorgeous face fraught with concern. “What the hell…”
“Power surge,” Paul croaked. “It’s good, or it will be once my eyes focus and my nerve endings stop jangling. Thank you. You helped me find the power.” He drew Tag down to him and into a deep kiss, passionate for its own sake, not intended to lead further but to hint at some of what was in his heart.
This wasn’t the time to let his emotions, his half-formed longings and wishes and dreams and fears about a possible future with Tag, run away with him.
His emotions didn’t know that, though.
Reluctantly, he disentangled his limbs from Tag’s, forced himself to his knees and from there to his feet.
“Unfortunately, we can’t fight an incubus by smooching.” He straightened his shirt nervously.
Tag, still on the floor and looking remarkably decorative there, raised one eyebrow. “Are you sure about that? Seems to me like it might be the perfect weapon.”
Chapter Twelve
At first Paul laughed, though even to his own ears the laugh had a strained bravado that belonged in an action movie just before the main characters went off to do something potentially suicidal. He figured Tag must be in a state similar to his, adrenaline and unfamiliar emotions clouding his brain and making him punchy.
Then the words sank in. “Tag, that’s genius! You’re a genius!” He clapped Tag on the shoulder, then pulled him to his feet and into a rough hug. “Love might just work against them. Incubi find their best prey among the lonely, the disconnected. Although your uncle…”
Tag shrugged. “Uncle Randolph loved his wives and husbands, but he couldn’t settle down and live with them, and they got sick of traveling. That’s hard for a fox. We need to touch, need to cuddle, need to have people we love close enough we can smell them. I’m sure he got lonely.”
Sharp pain flooded Paul. He’d vowed not to think about the future, at least not until they’d taken care of the incubus, but Tag’s words were a keen reminder of why Tag might be right for him, but he wasn’t right for Tag. In the long run, Tag’s fox nature would find monogamy too repressive, too solitary.
And then Tag smiled a sad smile. “Of course, we all thought he was a nutcase. He pretended to be a loner gambler out of a cowboy movie, not a fox with a loving family who gambled because it was more fun than playing the stock market. He could have come home more often. Could have taken someone with him when he traveled, a lover or a friend or relative to keep him out of trouble. My sister or I would have been glad to go to poker tournaments with him just for the hell of it. But he kept forgetting he was a fox, not a lone wolf—and in the end, it made him easy prey.”
“Sad.” But inside, Paul couldn’t help feeling a surge of hope and joy. Maybe a fox didn’t necessarily need multiple partners, just plenty of companionship. Donovan’s Cove could certainly offer plenty of interesting company—too much, sometimes. At least thirty people lived there year-round, plus whichever Irish cousins were on extended visits, and random stray witches and other Differents passing through the area who preferred the comfortable, shielded estate to the difficulties of blending in among normies.
“Yeah. We foxes are clever and wily, but not all of us are smart about what really matters.” Tag sighed. Then his face brightened, as if he’d forced his mind to a different track. “We can’t change what happened to him. We can make sure it doesn’t happen to the next dork who’s wandering through Las Vegas lonely and horny.”
Paul mentally girded his loins, wondering for the first time how one actually did that and if the process would be different for a red witch preparing to take on an incubus/succubus/sex-eating-demon-thing. “Let’s roll.”
Paul reinforced the existing circle carefully, weaving it as strongly as he could. After all, the demon had proven fae wards didn’t stop it, though chances were it had been invited every time into the rooms where it fed and killed
.
Reinforcing the circle took longer than the actual ritual would. Summoning demons was surprisingly easy, not that anyone with any sense made a habit of it. Getting rid of them again was another story. Paul had the right spell, though, and Tag by his side, and a gut feeling that he and Tag were protected from the demon’s worst powers by the connection between them.
The normy world would say it was too soon to call that connection love. Maybe that was true, in the deep, full sense of love that grew from knowing each other inside and out, the flaws as well as the virtues complementing each other. But as a red witch, Paul knew this was real, knew this wasn’t just lust and infatuation, but the first intimations of something rich and full, permanent.
In a ritual circle, he wasn’t even going to consider the possibility that all the beautiful potential might crash on the rocks of monogamy.
He positioned Tag by his left side, closer to his heart, within easy reach if he needed to protect the shifter, or touch him to boost his own powers. They were both naked. Out of the corner of his eye, Paul saw that Tag was limp, shriveled from nerves. He, on the other hand, was hard enough now he could use his cock as a wand.
Which wasn’t a bad idea, now that he thought about it.
He grasped his straining dick as he chanted the Latin words of the summoning spell.
To his witch-sight, the room shifted colors to a wicked red, the color of sex and blood, like his own magic but somehow darker.
At his side, Tag gasped. Apparently, the change was obvious to a dual’s senses as well, though whether Tag perceived it through sight or smell or something more subtle, he couldn’t say.
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