by Jenn Bennett
“My parents used to speak French when they were arguing or discussing something private.” And by private, that usually meant it involved sex. My parents weren’t shy about their affection for each other. They were always sharing intimate glances, kissing, holding hands. I used to joke that they were like Morticia and Gomez from The Addams Family.
We didn’t speak for several moments, then Lon’s brow furrowed. “Did your parents ever tell you about the albino demon when they were charged with the murders?”
“A little. They’d flown to San Diego to meet with the head of Luxe and a few officers from the orders whose leaders had been murdered. By that point, the media had already latched onto the whole ‘Black Lodge’ angle, and everyone was concerned about the organizations coming under fire, getting a bad rap. My parents went to represent the E∴E∴ and mediate talks. They flew back a day early and told me all hell had broken loose, and that the meeting was a trap—that Luxe was trying to pin the murders on them.”
“And they told you about the albino demon?”
“They said someone had summoned an Æthyric demon for the killings, but they never gave me details. I was too young and they were overprotective. I never knew what the demon looked like until Caliph Superior told me last week.”
“Don’t you think it’s strange that he helped your parents look for this demon for seven years, and he’d forget a detail like that?”
“Maybe my parents were under the same confusion spell that the Tamlins claimed.”
“Definitely a possibility. But your parents saw the demon a month later, when the Luxe leader was attacked in San Diego. That’s what they told you before you faked your deaths.”
“Yes. What are you trying to get at?”
“Well, on one hand, if that mysterious man the Tamlins saw running away from the third scene was the murderer, and he cast confusion spells on everyone at that time … What was to stop him from casting the same spell again on the witnesses of the fourth attack? Maybe that’s why your parents didn’t tell the Caliph about the glass talon detail. Maybe they didn’t remember it.”
“It’s possible. But you said ‘on one hand.’ What’s the other possibility?”
He paused. “How much do you trust Caliph Superior?” We looked at each other. I bit my lip. “He’s my godfather,” I said slowly. “I grew up seeing him almost every day.”
“But?”
“But I hadn’t seen him in seven years until last week. I don’t know. I—”
Lon held his hand up. “I don’t want to jump to conclusions. But maybe it’s good that you can’t contact him right now.”
Crap. Lon was just confirming something that had been eating at me since I’d talked to the Tamlins. I’d known the caliph all my life. He was a good person. A peaceful man. He couldn’t be connected with the murders. Why would he? And what was the motive? He was leader of a prestigious occult order and had everything he wanted—money, power, a loving family. It just didn’t make sense. And yet, something wasn’t quite right.
I let out a slow breath and put my elbow on the table, leaning my head in my hand. “I’ve had this nagging memory of my parents talking to him privately before the fourth murder attempt on the Luxe head. My mom was upset and scared. Something I heard, but I can’t quite … They were all speaking in French—the caliph is fluent. I don’t know. Maybe I just didn’t understand what he was saying. I’ve tried to remember it for years, but I think the trauma of going into hiding blocked some of my memories during that time.”
“If so, that’s understandable. You were just a kid. You don’t go through something like that without a few battle scars. Ever gone to counseling?”
“Um, no.”
He shrugged. “Hypnosis sometimes restores memories.”
“Again, no. I have no guarantee that the person doing the hypnosis wouldn’t turn me into the cops.”
“You trusted me.”
“You drugged me!”
He grinned. “Yeah, I did.”
“Do you know how to hypnotize someone?”
“No, but I have a book of memory spells. Some remove memories, some restore them.”
I sat up straight. “Really? Have you tried any of them?”
“On myself, no. They’re tandem spells. Most memory spells are.”
“Huh? Tandem spells?”
“You have to perform it on someone else. You can’t perform them on yourself—you can’t erase your own memories.”
“I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
He smiled triumphantly. “Interesting … the novice knows something that the master doesn’t.” He hooked his finger around the handles of our cups and gathered the teapot in his other hand. “Bring that book. I think we should take a peek at the memory spells in my library.”
“I need to leave in about forty-five minutes to get to work,” I warned.
“We’re just looking.”
Just looking, but I was very, very curious.
18
I perused the bookshelves behind Lon while he sat with his feet propped up on the desk and thumbed through his tandem memory spells, reading the descriptions aloud to me.
“Memory Erase by Time Period: designate a length of time to eradicate thoughts.”
“Nope.”
“Memory Erase by Subject: designate a subject to remove from subject’s memory.”
“No, but you should keep that one marked. That could come in handy.”
He plopped a blue marker in the crease, then flipped to the next entry. “Complete Memory Erase: wipe out all memories of events, places, names, times. Jesus, that’s dangerous. Remind me to put this book in the locked cabinet. If Jupe got a hold of this … Okay, hold on. Memory Restoring.” He flipped through several pages then started reading to himself in low mumble, taking his feet off the desk.
“What? Did you find one? Memory Restore by Time Period?”
“I found it.”
“So? What’s the spell? Does it need kindled Heka?” I leaned over his shoulder and read. “Memory Restore, otherwise known as ‘The Wheel.’ Push and pull magical energies to ignite slow memory restoration gently. That sounds like an overnight laxative.” I grinned at him.
“Ha, ha,” he said dourly, getting up from his seat to stand.
“Lighten up.” I elbowed him in the shoulder, then continued reading. “ ‘Magick for The Wheel must be charged with fluids from sexual arousal …’ ” My voice tapered off. “Oh.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
I read the rest of the entry to myself. The person doing the tandem spell—that would be Lon—had to receive Heka-rich sexual fluids from the recipient of the spell, me, to jump-start a series of lost memories. A magical sigil and incantation were provided.
It wasn’t the first time I’d run across sex spells: they were just as common as electricity-kindled spells. They just aren’t convenient for your average on-the-go magical needs.
“Do all the memory spells require that?” I asked.
“I don’t think so. I just noticed it on the last couple of retrieval ones.”
“Uh, maybe I could just get myself, you know, privately …?” I suggested. I regretted it immediately, and felt my face flush with warmth. What the hell was I going to do? Ask Lon if he had any porn I could borrow and hole up in his library’s washroom?
“Did you read this part?” He pointed. I read.
The spell instructions claimed that “shared sexual arousal” between the participants was required so that a tight “energy link” is formed. Otherwise, the process would be too jarring and “memory leak, further loss, or permanent damage” could occur.
“Oh, well,” I said, “it was worth a try.”
He looked at me challengingly with his arms crossed over his chest. “Don’t think I can arouse you?” I froze. Maybe he was joking. “Or is it that you’re afraid you can’t arouse me?”
“Uh …” The word arouse coming out of his mouth made my nostrils widen. I took a long step backward.
Must get out of range ASAP.
“Too late,” he said with a dark smile.
I gritted my teeth and made a face. “Goddammit,” I mumbled under my breath.
“It’s not a sex spell that requires … completion,” he said. “We don’t need to have sex, just stimulation.” At that moment, I truthfully wasn’t opposed to either, but I didn’t want him to know that. I stepped back again. “And we just need your fluids, not mine.” He moved forward again, thwarting my attempt at retreat. “It’s up to you.”
“Why is it up to me?”
“Because … your memories, not mine.”
“Oh, that’s right.”
“Your sexual fluids, not mine.”
For the love of God, would he please stop saying that?
“Don’t find me attractive?” he challenged playfully. “Not young and hip enough for you?”
“I … uh …” My heart hammered. “Jupe told me that you thought I was too young for you.”
He stepped forward again, dragging the open book along the edge of the desk. “Hmm … I don’t recall saying that.”
“Memory loss is the first sign of aging.”
“I’m not the one with memory problems, am I?”
I laughed nervously.
“Come here.”
“No.”
“Come here … please?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.
I took a hesitant step toward him.
“Closer.”
Again.
“Closer,” he commanded in a low voice.
Screw it, I thought, and complied, this time boldly positioning myself so close, a piece of paper couldn’t slide between us. I lifted my face toward him, daring. He put two fingers on the side of my chin and gently tilted my face sideways and down to the desk.
“Here’s the spell. It’s in Latin,” he said in an even, professional tone.
I glanced down at the book, eyes scanning over the page but not reading. His hand came into view as he pointed to the incantation words, tapping on the page.
“Yep,” I said, discreetly licking my lips.
“You need to be thinking about that memory you’re missing when I say the spell.”
“All right.”
“As for the mutual arousal, a kiss would be easiest,” he suggested. “Have you ever kissed a demon?”
“Yeah …” A couple, actually. Same as kissing a human, in my experience. Humans dated and married Earthbounds every day, with or without the human half of the pair realizing exactly whom they were dating. As I said before, Human-Earthbound unions produced human children, so unless their demon mate had an exceptional knack that was impossible to ignore, they could live out their entire lives thinking that they were in love with another human. Myself, I dated an Earthbound once; before anything juicy happened between us, I found out that his knack was the ability to seduce. Umm, no thanks. At least the guy had been honest about it. I remembered this, then told Lon the first honest thing that came to mind, “I’ve kissed an Earthbound, but I’ve never kissed a man with a mustache.”
Lon found this extremely amusing, and we both fought back laughter. A quick joy spread over me. It was so pleasant to be enjoying his mood, no grunting or growling or trying to guess what his motives were. And it was exhilarating, being so close to him; my heart kicked wildly inside my chest.
Then he stopped smiling, and his eyes slowly blinked and drooped lower. He gingerly brushed my hair away from my face with the tips of his fingers.
I craned my neck to meet him halfway. Warmth flooded between my thighs before our mouths even made contact.
His lips were much softer than I expected, and he tasted like valrivia smoke. I don’t remember closing my eyes, but I must have. His mustache grazed my skin, but I quickly became accustomed to it; either that, or I was distracted by the way his tongue filled my mouth and rolled with mine in slow waves. Or the way goose bumps rushed over my arms. Or maybe even how warm his skin felt under my fingers as they mysteriously found their way under his T-shirt to trace the line of golden hair that ran down his stomach.
Somewhere in the back of my head I knew we’d long ago accomplished our goal, but I was genuinely surprised when my knees gave out, and a small moan escaped my mouth as I slipped away from him. He made a quick grab and steadied me, hands circling my waist. That had never happened to me before, and I sure as hell didn’t want him to know that, but he probably sensed my surprise so it didn’t really matter.
By that point, I’d forgotten all about the memory spell. He began kissing me again, then forced himself back with a groan and spun me around to face away from him. He pinned me between his chest and the desk, slinging an arm around my shoulders to hold me tight as his erection pressed against my lower back.
He pushed my hair away from my shoulders and settled his chin in the crook of my neck.
“So …” he whispered huskily in my ear, “we’ve discovered that you can arouse me.” He demonstrated this fact by pressing harder against me, just in case I’d forgotten. “However, we don’t know about you. And there is the small matter of Heka.”
His free hand moved to the button of my jeans, which he deftly maneuvered open with a quick flick. My zipper followed. Then his hand slid into my jeans, under my panties, and kept going until his fingers slid unexpectedly and we both breathed in sharply. When he found the right spot, I moaned, and he made a small noise of happy discovery. He flattened two stroking fingers against my sensitive flesh. My hips couldn’t make up their mind whether they wanted to move forward on his fingers or backward to arch against him, so they alternated repetitively between the two.
Then he unexpectedly broke away, deserting his efforts between my legs and withdrawing his hand. I moaned again, this time in disappointment.
He cleared his throat. “All right. Ready?”
“Oh, yes,” I chirped with great enthusiasm, temporarily mistaken about what I was agreeing to. My brain was having trouble adjusting.
His fingers glistened as they swept over the sigil, leaving behind the Heka needed to charge the spell; so much for the pristine edition of his rare grimoire. When he spoke the incantation, his voice cracked, then settled. His Latin was flawless—as good as mine, if not better. I scrambled to focus on the lost memory that I was trying to recapture, and when the last of his Latin tumbled out, I realized why the spell was called The Wheel.
His energy poured into me in a steady torrent. I felt it, recognized it as his. Such a strange feeling, almost as intimate as sex, and something I’d never experienced. It mixed with my Heka, then left me in a rush, just as if I’d pushed it out intentionally. The energy link. That was what the instructions for the spell had meant. Our combined energy moved in a circle, gathering strength and speed as magick circulated between us. His arms wrapped around me, and mine around them, and we held on to each other like we were in the middle of a tornado, trying to ride out the spinning storm.
A flood of jagged, partial memories surfaced and faded, each one vying for attention. Flashes of faces. Fragments of sentences. My old life returning after years of sitting idle under a layer of dust. Streams of hot, silent tears spilled over my cheeks, but I wasn’t sure why.
Then it became painful. Wrenching. The magical wheel was off-track. Colors blurred into blackness and my mind felt as if it were being bulldozed from the inside out. I strained to break away and heard Lon groaning to do the same. Without warning, the spell derailed completely, and the shock of it threw us backward together. The room reappeared in my bleary vision as I slammed against him. We hit the shelves behind us so hard, a row of books flew out and rained down on our heads as we tumbled to the floor.
I gasped for air and struggled to untangle myself from Lon as someone called in the distance. Three loud knocks pounded on the locked library door. Apparently now home from school, Jupe spoke in a muffled voice from the other side.
“Dad? What was that loud noise? Is Cady here? Her rental car is outside.” He pounded on the door again. “Are y
ou guys okay? What just happened?”
I wondered the same thing as I zipped up my jeans with shaking hands.
19
“Well, Mr. Piggy, it looks like I’m going to be your second mommy for a few days.” Kar Yee bent down to open the door to my hedgie’s crate and reached inside to pull him out. The two long locks of hair on either side of her face were a little messy. It was early; she hadn’t tweaked them into points yet.
“You sure you don’t mind?” I asked, plopping down on the white couch in her living room. Everything in her apartment was white, cream, or gold. Not my taste, but her stuff was way nicer and cleaner than mine, so I couldn’t really complain.
She held Mr. Piggy up to her face and inspected him critically, one eye squinting. I was a little worried that he would take a nip at her for doing that, but he behaved. He obviously knew he needed to make a good impression.
“He can stay in his crate while I’m at work. I’ll put up his pen in the kitchen and let him get some exercise while I’m at home.” She tucked him under her arm and lazily plodded over to an armchair. “If he pisses on anything, he’s getting locked up in the bathroom.”
It wasn’t the piss she had to worry about; he was a poop machine, but I didn’t want to remind her about this or she might change her mind. “There’s plenty of dry food in that clear container, and he can go without crickets for a week, so you don’t have to feed him those.”
“Good, because I wouldn’t.”
“But give him a little fruit once a day. I already cut it up into cubes for you.”
“Yes, yes. Quit being a worrywart. He’s a hedgehog, not a baby. I’ll manage.”
I sat cross-legged on the couch but unfolded my legs when she gave me a disapproving look. “My shoes aren’t dirty, you know.”
She clearly disagreed. “So you need a week off from work. Go ahead and tell me what to expect.”
“Huh?”
“The trouble you’re in. Is it boy trouble or family? Or did you steal something?”
I laughed. “No stealing. I guess it’s … family trouble.”
“How can a woman whose parents are dead have so much family trouble?”