Moving around his desk he crossed the room towards the two of them, and extended his hand to Dinah. “It is nice to meet you, Dinah. Please come in, both of you, and tell me how I may help you.”
There was a relieved look on both of their faces, and one of happy validation upon Erin’s.
“Thank you so much, sir,” Dinah whispered, though relieved, still contrite.
“Please, call me Lazarus.”
Christis Christie lives on the east coast of Canada, in Nova Scotia. She gets most excited about diving into a new fantasy world while writing, but also loves a good supernatural plot. Tiss, as she is affectionately called by her friends, enjoys being creative in any way she can, so if she’s not writing then she’s crocheting or she’s embroidering. Her favorite animal is the sloth, and her favorite retellings are anything Beauty and the Beast related.
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Great-aunt Cecilia had been dead for nearly two weeks. Apparently she’d lost a battle with some illness I’d never heard of before. As she had no children of her own and had never married, in all her wisdom she’d decided to leave everything to me. Why? Heaven only knew.
And according to Mom, Aunt Cecilia wasn’t going to Heaven.
There wasn’t much love between Aunt Cecilia and the rest of the family, which was why I stood in her living room with my six-year-old sister, Isabelle, instead of anyone else. I’d been the curious one about Aunt Cecilia’s dark magic, and she knew it. Leaving everything to me was a good way to make sure it passed through my hands. It didn’t hurt that my parents were both dead and I was a college Junior taking online classes. I could pretty much do as I pleased...as long as it didn’t bring harm to Izzy.
Blowing strands of hair out of my face, I sighed as I stared around after my quick tour of the house. There was no distinct foyer. The house opened directly into the living room, with the kitchen and dining room beyond that. Everything my eyes took in was covered in random stuff: boxes, books, knickknacks, and dust. Lots and lots of dust.
I groaned. This was going to take forever. Most of it was bound for the town’s dump, and whatever was left would go to me to take home or be donated. However, I had to go through all of it to decide which pile it belonged in. Hopefully there weren’t roaches and spiders to deal with as well. Just the thought had my skin tingling.
“Okay, Izzy, you’re over here today.” I set down Izzy’s bag of goodies to the left of the door in about the only area that wasn’t consumed by Aunt Cecilia’s hoarding. “Remember, don’t touch anything.”
“I know, Meeps,” Izzy stated with a hint of aggravation at the constant reminder while using her nickname for me. No one knew why she called me that when my name was Destiny, but she’d started using the nickname the second she could speak and it had stuck.
Without knowing where to start, I crossed the room to a bookcase. Books were my thing, especially when they were books on magic, which these were. Aunt Cecilia had everything, and my sour mood at the job ahead turned to curious investigation. My eyes scanned over the book titles, and a few interested me enough to take them off the shelf and stack them in a pile to read through tonight at the hotel. One in particular caught my eye, and it was my top choice for tonight.
I moved away from the bookshelf to grab an empty box I’d brought and loaded it with more books. Four boxes later, they were stacked in my “keep” pile. There was no way I’d junk or give away books. It was everything else that I wasn’t sure about.
Some items were obviously trash, so those were placed into heavy duty garbage bags. Other boxes were filled with items used for casting spells, and I kept those. Spells and potions which used hard to acquire items weren’t my strong suit, but I didn’t want to throw away perfectly good ingredients in case I ever changed my mind or needed them.
Staring around the room, the thought smacked me in the face that perhaps I was a hoarder like Aunt Cecilia. I shook the thought off as soon as it arrived. I was keeping items I could use, not all this garbage, like a lamp older than me with a torn shade, or an old-style cassette player that likely didn’t even work anymore.
The day was long and tedious when I had to sort through junk, which was mostly the right side of the living room. However, some boxes and shelves were fun and held exotic items. When lunchtime came and went, I passed Izzy a jam sandwich and ate one as well. Since I wasn’t sure how clean or filthy the house would be before arriving, I’d erred on the side of caution and brought our food and made hotel reservations. Looking at the house now, I was glad I’d decided that.
The sun was setting and my stomach was rumbling by the time I called an end to the day. Not only was I hungry, even with the snacks I’d brought, but my body was sore and my muscles throbbing from crouching, getting up and down, and bending over boxes, as well as lifting them to the different piles. Thus far, I was right: there were far more boxes and bags to throw away than anything else.
“Ready to go to the hotel?” I asked Izzy, who’d been cleaning up her mess of books and toys for the last few minutes.
“Yup,” she stated, striding out the open front door ahead of me while I locked it behind us. “Can we have hamburgers for dinner?”
“Yes, ma’am.” I led the way to the truck, which had belonged to my dad before he died, and opened the back cab door behind the passenger seat for her.
After buckling in the little girl, who looked just like me when I was her age with long, sandy blonde hair and bright green eyes, we headed in the direction of town. We made our stop at the one drive-thru restaurant in town and checked into the hotel. It was a small town, so the hotel wasn’t part of a large chain, but a locally owned place where the doors open to the outside. Those types always gave me the creeps, but since it was the only one in town, and the next city was twenty minutes in either direction, I sucked it up and checked us in.
While the outside appeared, even in the dark, like it needed a new paint job and the parking lot was chipping away in spots, the inside was far different. I prepared myself for a grungy, smokey scent when I opened the door, but instead, it smelled cleaner than any hotel room I’d ever stayed in. The two queen bed covers appeared new and there wasn’t a stain on them. They even smelled fresh and clean. The bathroom was sparkling, allowing me to breathe a sigh of relief.
With Izzy settled at the table in the corner to eat her burger, I carried in our luggage and the small box of books I’d brought back to look at and joined her. The meal was okay, and I forced myself to chew my food and squelch the need to swallow it whole to race to those books. Thankfully she and I both loved books, even at her age, so after dinner, I took one bed and she took the other, scattering books around us.
I started with a book on potions, hoping it might spark something within me to care about that part of magic. It didn’t, but I gave it an honest try. The next was a spell book that I’d never studied, for good reason. These spells were dark and dangerous. It wasn’t like I was a full-time witch like Mom had been, and the witches and warlocks of the rest of the coven. I practiced magic, but I was likely one of the few witches who didn’t like wand waving and all that. I liked the simple spells where I just had to speak a spell for it to work.
Apparently that was why Aunt Cecilia had liked dark magic. It didn’t require wands, but it did sometimes need random objects. Those weren’t too hard to come by in Aunt Cecilia’s house. Plus, wands were so hard to conceal.
The third book, which was the one I’d wanted to pick up first but hadn’t wanted to seem too eager, even for me, was a book on demons. However, I was pulled from the book by the loudest six-year-old yawn I’d heard in a long time. Izzy was half sprawled across the bed, her eyelids heavy.
“Okay, Bug, it’s pajama time,” I announced, rel
uctantly setting the book aside.
With some whining that she was too tired to move, Izzy slid off the bed and followed me to the countertop outside the bathroom where I’d placed her bag. Overall she was a good girl, and I was happy for that. It wasn’t easy for either of us right now, but she was a champ. We’d lost Mom and Dad almost a year ago, and thankfully they’d had me listed as Izzy’s guardian should something happen to them. Both sets of my grandparents had fought that directive in court, but had lost. Again, I was grateful. Izzy needed me and I needed Izzy, even if life was completely different from everything I’d planned. I wouldn’t give her up for any of my old plans.
Teeth brushed and dressed in her jammies, I tucked Izzy into bed after reading her one of the books I’d packed specifically for bedtime.
“Meeps, how long are we going to be here?” Izzy asked as I flicked off the overhead light, the tiny lamp beside my bed the only light to read by now.
I shrugged and kissed her forehead. “I don’t know, Izzy. I’m going to try to hurry so we can go home sooner.”
“I don’t want to go home,” Izzy argued, startling me into turning back to her when I was going to crawl under the covers of my bed.
“Why not?”
“Because it makes me sad. Aunt Cecilia’s house is cool.”
“You’ve only seen a few rooms,” I argued, sliding under the covers. “How do you know it’s cool?”
“Because it’s not home,” she murmured, squeezing my heart. “Can we move here?”
I’d been trying to talk to her about her feelings since our parents died, but she hadn’t said much. Relief swamped me that we were finally getting somewhere. If she kept opening up, maybe I’d be able to avoid the talk of “counseling” that the coven always threw at me. It was one of my grandparents’ biggest weapons that they used to threaten me with how they’d take Izzy away from me and show I wasn’t competent.
I bit my lower lip. “Umm, let’s think on that, okay? We’ll explore more of the house tomorrow together and see what we decide. Is that all right?”
“Okay. Goodnight, Meeps. I love you.” Izzy rolled over, squeezing her pillow.
“Goodnight, Izzy.”
While she fell asleep, I leaned back against the headboard and thought about what she’d said. Since I was finishing college online and also working full-time from home, we could move if we wanted. Aunt Cecilia’s house was smaller than the one Mom and Dad had left us, which was fine since it was just the two of us, and it was out of the city. There was a lot of work that needed to go into it first, mostly clearing it out and then cleaning it. The carpets might actually need to be replaced, as well as the threadbare furniture in the living room. I’d taken a short tour upstairs, but I hadn’t paid too close attention to what I’d seen. There was so much stuff it was hard to see any of it.
Once Izzy’s breathing slowed, I picked up the book on demons and prepared myself to strum through it. The thought of them had always fascinated me. Now was no different.
My first stop was the table of contents. Eyes wide, I skimmed over it, entranced by the ideas I’d never considered, such as more than one type of demon, how to summon them, and uses for demons. There was also a chapter for ways to help your demon blend in with society, and what to do to locate a missing demon, and another on how to send it back to its dimension.
Too curious, I skipped ahead to the demon summoning section, skimming through summoning spells, all in Latin. As a witch, I’d been taught the old language since childhood since most spells used Latin, although the more modern witches were finding ways to intermingle modern words with the Latin.
The dust that had covered the bookshelf and the top of this book was enough to tell me it was an old text, likely one of the first editions, and was printed shortly after the invention of the printing press. However, the information was far older. To preserve it, the witches would’ve printed this over using handwritten books.
I ran fingers across the yellowed paper, in awe of the text sitting in my lap. The spells ran through my mind, one after another, as I flipped from one page to the next. All they had listed at the top was the name of the type of demon, but since I’d skipped that section, I had no idea what most of them meant.
One particular spell caught my attention, and without bothering to look at the demon’s name, I mumbled the spell from my mouth. It wasn’t like it would summon a demon. Those spells were complex, most needing a summoning circle and some of the oddities I’d found at Aunt Cecilia’s house. However, the spell left a tingle on my tongue that wasn’t altogether unpleasant.
Shaking my head, I blinked my hazy eyes and set the book on the nightstand between me and Izzy. I’d have to wake up early for another peek. There was no way I could keep my eyes open much longer as my vision was blurring with exhaustion.
I slid the rest of the way under the covers after turning my light off. The bed was surprisingly comfortable, far more comfortable than my bed back home, which desperately needed a new mattress. This one was like sleeping on a cloud.
Only partially aware of what was happening around me, I felt the bed dip behind me. Izzy had to be climbing in with me again. It wasn’t the first time she’d done it since our parents were killed. It was quite common. Hopefully she stayed on her side tonight and didn’t steal the covers.
The heat behind me threatened to hold me in sleep’s spell, but the hand splayed across my bare stomach said otherwise. My body stiffened. That hand was far too large to be Izzy’s, and there was too much heat behind me to be from her tiny form.
Opening my eyes slowly, my gaze landed on Izzy in the other bed, the morning sunlight seeping through the curtains outlining her form and her splay of blonde hair on her pillow. Heart racing, I pushed away, trying to distance myself from the stranger at my back, but his hand held me firmly in place. It was definitely a man as he released a low growl behind me as I tried to pry his large hand from my skin.
“What are you doing?” a deep, gravelly male voice asked, his words slurring from just waking up himself.
What was I doing? Me? What was he doing?
“Who are you?” My voice quivered, and it was a wonder he could hear it at all.
“I’m Cass. Now, lay still. It’s barely dawn.”
Had I fallen asleep and woken up in some alternate reality where I somehow had a boyfriend or husband? That was the only explanation I had for Cass’s calm ease around me, and for his hand lingering against my stomach, his fingers twitching against my skin. Anything else was impossible.
Rubbing a temple, I fought the panic raging inside of me, threatening to overcome my body and mind. I trembled under Cass’s hold and swallowed hard to keep bile down. He didn’t appear eager to harm me, and certainly if he’d done more than lay a hand on my stomach I would’ve woken, right?
“Let me up, please,” I begged, and with a groan, Cass released me, but didn’t move beyond removing his hand from my waist.
The second I was free, I bolted upright and out of the bed, hands balled into fists at eye level, to face the man. His dark eyes scanned my body from top to mid-thigh where the bed hid the rest of me, and back up again. Appreciation sparkled in those inky depths, and I fought a shiver.
It wasn’t just a shiver from the way he eyed me. Cass couldn’t have been any older than me, not quite mid-twenties, but his hair was stark white, cut short and spiking in every direction on his head from sleep. His skin was nearly as white as his hair, but it had a bluish hue to it that was almost alien, and the muscles pulling taut beneath that skin were the largest I’d ever seen in person. While it was appealing in a masculine way, it was also terrifying to think of what he could do to me with little effort.
If that wasn’t bad enough, his short hair revealed sharp-tipped ears, like a mythical elf, but this was no elf. A glint of sunlight through the curtain landed on his face, and before he could move his eyes out of its beam, I gained a clearer view. No, his eyes weren’t dark, they were black. Well, except for the whites a
round them. The iris and pupil had bled together forming an inky orb to clash with his eye’s whites.
Then he grinned, one side of his mouth lifting in an arrogant smirk, showing off short fangs instead of incisors. The only thought running through my head was vampire, and I choked on my breath. If he was a vampire, then how was I even still alive? Vamps didn’t crawl into witches’ beds and spend the night. They killed on sight.
“Uh, who are you, really? Or maybe a better question is, what are you?”
Cass cocked an eyebrow at me, his grin not wavering. “I told you, I am Cass. I’m a Matrada, a Mate demon.”
“You’re a what?” I screeched, too loud, and my voice caused Izzy to stir. Slapping a hand over my mouth, I stared at the man before me. “What do you mean, ‘Mate demon’?”
He tipped his head at me. “You summoned me. How do you not know? It couldn’t have been an accident.”
The events of last night hit me like a freight train and I had to sit on the edge of the bed or fall over when my legs gave out. It put me closer to Cass, but if he really was a demon, nowhere in this room was far enough away from him. Ignoring the demon, I snatched the book from the nightstand and used the light beyond the curtains to see as I flipped through the pages.
First, I located the spell I’d murmured. Sure enough, at the top of the page was the title “Matrada”. I’d inadvertently summoned a demon with little more than a whispered spell. How was that possible? There was no summoning circle, no added items, nothing. I’d been tucked into bed ready for sleep.
Now that I couldn’t argue with Cass about me summoning him, and I’d confirmed he was correct, I flipped to the front of the book where the types of demons were listed and sparse information was reported about them. Sparse because some only had their name and nothing about them. A few noted never to summon these demons. Boy, was I glad I hadn’t stumbled across their spells. Then again, I hadn’t found Matrada demons yet. I crossed mental fingers that his description didn’t read the same as those.
Something in the Shadows Page 12
