It’s just…practical, I thought. This is what his magic does. It doesn’t mean anything.
And yet, when his hand moved to my breast, I was too frozen to shove him away.
Frozen?
More like starved and eager, but I didn’t want to acknowledge that.
Then I heard the front door bang open and Jake and Jasper both yelled, “Helena? Helena, where are you?”
Chapter Six
Helena
Bevan brought these two to help me!?
I was forced to acknowledge the practicality of it. They must have still been in town after checking out the house. It wasn’t like I wanted him to go running to my parents in New York. That would have been absolutely horrible. And we couldn’t just call 9-1-1.
Still. This was humiliating.
“Don’t laugh,” I said. “The floor literally just caved in on me.”
“Where does it hurt?” Jasper asked.
Jake, meanwhile, was laughing a little. “The floor caved in? Really?”
“I mean, look at the ceiling!” I said.
“We’ve seen a lot of houses,” Jake said. “This one really is a pile of shit.”
A canister of flour flew off the counter and went splat all over the floor.
“Oh, and there’s a poltergeist too,” Jasper said, raising his eyebrows, but he quickly turned his attention back to me. “Is it your leg?”
Adding to my embarrassment was the fact that the incubus had healed my broken leg, so now I was merely bruised. It still hurt, but hardly seemed worthy of calling help, so I had to pretend. “It’s sprained, maybe,” I said.
Jasper draped a hand over my ankle. Then he shifted his touch up a little.
“You know how to heal?” I asked.
He looked slightly embarrassed, although his skin, which could have easily been sunburnt from working on landscaping and siding, instead had a perfect light tan, and he didn’t blush. “I mean, only a little. On the job type stuff.”
According to the strict and old-fashioned rules of witch and warlock education, girls heal and boys shoot fire. And Jasper wasn’t even a warlock, so anything he knew would have been learned on his own. They didn’t let wolves into magic school.
It seemed impossible that in the 21st century, warlocks still have to look embarrassed about being able to do the most basic healing skills, but the magical world was so small that the magical councils had an iron grip on society, and everyone followed along no matter how stupid it seemed.
“I like a guy who isn’t afraid to have a softer side, you know.” I patted his head. “Good boy.”
He waved my hand off and gave me a mischievous little smile. “Well, sometimes I like girls with tool belts.”
“Are you two flirting?” Jake snapped. “Come on, we have our own shit to do.”
“I’m definitely not flirting, just thanking your nicer twin for helping me out in a pinch. Believe me, I have more interesting men in my life already.” Actually, I just had a sexy ghost and a politician I had managed to get rid of—but they didn’t need to know that.
Since I had actually healed myself before they showed up, but I didn’t want them to think I had called them here under false pretenses, complimenting Jasper was still my best choice. “I do feel a lot better,” I said, flexing my ankle. “I really do appreciate it. Now, feel free to get back to the shit you have to do, and I’ll get on with my work. Now that I’ve established where the holes in the floor are located, it’s all up from here.”
Jake crossed his very muscular arms—I tried not to look at them with a mixture of envy based on my own girly arms and basic lust—and tilted his head a little. “You sound confident…”
“I am definitely confident,” I said. “I got the house, and it’s still a great house. You can fix rotten floorboards, but you can’t replicate 19th century magical wallpaper.”
“This is a lot to handle,” Jake said. “Even for us. Seeing it now…”
“Thank you for the opinion. If you want, why don’t you just fill it out on a card and drop it in the mail slot on your way out.” I grabbed an old broom from the wall and started sweeping up all the floor crud.
“Helena…who is going to help you fix up this place?”
“That’s for me to know and you to not know.” I was sweeping a bit angrily now. Like I didn’t already know that my love for the house would not repair its many expensive, glaring problems.
Jasper looked at Jake. I assumed they spoke in psychic twin language, because then they nodded.
“How about this?” Jake said. “We already drove all the way up here to get this house. We’ve got all of our tools. We walk through the place and just bang out a few of the really hard labor jobs for you.”
“What do I owe you for that?”
“A date with Jasper.”
“Fuck no!” Jasper sputtered. “I mean—I’m sorry—that wasn’t what I—“
Jake started laughing, a low, confident laugh that seemed to start in his gut and rumble up through his thick chest before escaping. “I’ve had enough of it!” he said. “You like her; just stop pretending already. Helena, while I might prefer a more traditional, feminine kind of girl myself—“
“Oh, that’s charming,” I said sarcastically.
“My brother likes ‘em tough. You said you wished she would wear more jeans so you could check out her butt—“
Jasper growled at Jake and made a move as if to punch him, which Jake blocked, and then they were wrestling and grabbing at each other’s shirts. I took a step back, holding up my hands.
“Calm down,” I said. “I’m never dating a wolf because of this sort of thing! You’re acting like kindergarteners!”
Jasper immediately backed off and avoided my eyes. I still managed to notice how gorgeously amber his eyes were, and the chiseled jaw under a layer of sexy scruff. Jasper was a tiny bit smaller and softer than Jake—but only a tiny bit.
“I am so pissed off at him, that’s all,” Jasper said. “I don’t want to trade a date for work. That’s cheap.”
“I agree.”
“It’s just a date, for crying out loud,” Jake said. “Go bowling or some wholesome shit. You need help and I’m trying to come up with some excuse to help you because I am pitying you so deeply and I don’t want you to ruin this house you insisted on buying!”
Jasper threw up a hand. “I’d rather just do it for the good karma. Let’s do a walkthrough and see what we can help Hel with quickly.”
Chapter Seven
Jasper
I was going to kill my brother.
Kill. Him.
Twinicide. He deserved nothing less for revealing my crush like we were in grade school.
Was Helena hot? Sure.
Was she good at house flipping? Well, she definitely paid too much and I was sure an elegantly built girl like her couldn’t possibly be able to get all the work done as efficiently as we could.
But was it impressive she was out here trying? Definitely. She genuinely enjoyed the work, that I could tell. In fact, she would probably make more money if she didn’t get so emotionally invested in the houses, but having been a restoration enthusiast since Jake and I used to help our dad do work around our hometown, how could I not find that charming either?
Was she trouble on two lean legs? Abso-fucking-lutely.
We were werewolves, and so basically considered the barbarians of the magical community, and anyone who saw my family at our annual barbecue would know it was an accurate assessment. Helena, on the other hand, was wizarding royalty. Her mother was a Habsburg, as in the European ruling family. Her father was of a famous vampire hunting dynasty. Her cousin was on the warlock council. Her sisters were marrying into other famous families or joining illustrious witch guilds. Her parents owned two mansions, one on the Hudson and the other in Palm Beach, where she had grown up when she wasn’t at an upscale boarding school.
None of this impressed me; actually I found it pretentious and annoying, and it w
as a testament to how impressed we were (Jake too, I know, he just wouldn’t admit it) with Helena herself that we didn’t actively try to run her off. No wolf gave a shit about wizarding royalty. They had spent plenty of time trying to wipe us off the face of the earth.
She was trying her best to run away from all of that. That was one reason I liked her, the other being how tight her ass was in jeans. I mean, I’m not a beast for nothing. I was not going to date her, though. If word of that got back to her parents I wouldn’t be surprised if an assassin was hired shortly afterward.
“So…the parlor needs tons of help,” Helena was saying. “And then the dining room—“
“You’re knocking down this wall, I assume?” Jake slapped the wall between the kitchen and dining room.
She stopped cold, her feet marching together as her mouth fell open. “Knock down the wall!? But it has the original magical paintings on it! No way!”
“You’ve got to open up this kitchen somehow,” Jake said.
“No, I don’t.”
“Do you want to own this house forever?”
“No, but—I didn’t ask for your opinion on walls,” she said. “When I flip a house, I maintain the historical integrity, and I would never in a thousand years tear down a be-spelled wall painting.”
I was waiting for her to pull out the, You’re wolves, what do you know about wizard history? To her credit, she didn’t go that far.
“But you still would have this whole entire wall,” Jake said, spreading his arms wide across the other wall. The paintings spanned the entire room, with detailed hand-painted berries and game animals. “This is the best part, with the deer and pheasants. You keep that, and then you open up this kitchen so you have a great living space.”
“If that wall isn’t structural,” Helena said. “I don’t have the money for that.”
“You should look into it. That’s my advice.”
“I don’t want your advice.”
“Well, we could help you strip down the parlor. That won’t take long.”
“That’s easy stuff,” Helena said. “I could rip up carpet in my sleep.”
While they were arguing, I noticed an odd smell that seemed to be emanating from the floor. I was sure it wasn’t there when we walked in. Then I started to smell it just a little. Now it was getting undeniably stronger. “Hey, Jake…”
“What?” he snapped back, as I interrupted them talking about the tuck-pointing needed on the bricks.
“You smell that?”
And then, the wisp of thick, sulfurous smoke curled upward out of the floorboards. Jake grabbed one of the dining room chairs and swung at it.
“No, don’t—“ Helena said, belatedly.
The smoke burst into a hundred tiny man-size creatures the size of large roaches and all of them immediately started scattering in every direction.
“Ohhh shit.” Helena whipped out a wand and started zapping as many of them as she could reach, while I tried to stomp on them, but they didn’t have any substance.
“What are these diabolical things?” Jake growled as one ran over his foot. “I can feel them but I can’ttouch them!”
“They’re paper imps!” Helena said. She kept blasting them as they were crawling up the walls. “They hate salt. See if there’s salt in the kitchen and then—meet me in the library!” She dashed off. Her hair was in a ponytail today and I got a nice swish of blonde hair and citrus shampoo before she ran for the stairs.
“How many of these houses have we done by now? And I have never heard of paper imps,” Jake said, giving me a skeptical look.
“Me neither,” I agreed.
“Yeah, because you guys don’t pay money for the good magical houses!” Helena screamed. “You’re too busy thinking about open floor plans!”
Jake sighed and started moseying into the kitchen without much urgency. “She’s a strange girl, that’s for sure.”
“We need to help her,” I said, as I noticed a few of the creepy things climbing into the cabinets. I opened one. The imps were shadowy figures, slightly translucent and dark like shadows, and they were shaped like two-inch high people, but they didn’t really have faces or anything. They were just shapes. However, they apparently had teeth because they were nibbling on boxes of cereal as well as a container of Morton salt. I grabbed the salt, popped open the lid, and sprinkled some on them. They melted on contact with a tiny Wicked Witch of the West cry.
Jake held out his hands and I poured a pile of salt in them. We rarely needed to actually give each other directions when something needed doing.
We went up the stairs scattering salt on every imp we saw and found Helena in a library upstairs frantically zapping the imps as they nibbled on papers all over the desk and the books on the shelves. She was breathing heavily as she whirled one way and then the other trying to get the most aggressive ones before they did any damage.
“I’ve got the desk!” I said. “Jake, you get that wall!”
Helena could now focus on the longest stretch of shelves and she didn’t have to whirl around anymore, which was too bad, because again—she had sexy hair and it wasn’t in braids today, and also some very springy breasts.
This task took a while, since there were hundreds of the little bastards, but she finally collapsed onto the edge of the desk, wand hand slumping between her legs. “Phew…”
“You’ve encountered those before!?” I asked.
“Yeah…”
“Where do they come from?”
“The magical plane,” she said. “Sinistral, to be specific. They protect—“ She cut off.
“They protect what?” Jake said. “Treasure?”
“No!”
“You were going to say something,” I said.
She huffed. “They protect privacy. Paperwork and stuff. The guy who lived here was a dark warlock, and we don’t need pesky little demons around. It’s just some mischief, like a booby trap. They probably didn’t like you talking about tearing down that wall and that activated the swarm.”
I raised an eyebrow at her. Paperwork, huh? And what was a witches’ most treasured possession? A grimoire. That stuff could sell for major money on the magical auction circuit, especially if it had new spells.
As Helena left the room, waving us out with her, Jake exchanged a look with me. Is Helena sensing out some really strong magic in the houses she buys? Maybe she’s dealing that on the side. Now that would explain the price tag.
Judging by how quickly she took care of the imps, and how she knew what they were right away, I was getting the feeling that she was a better witch than Kiersten, and obviously, we didn’t have those skills at all.
Jake assessed the caved in floor. “Let’s fix that right now,” he said.
“We’re going to need more materials,” I said.
“Well, we can start, anyway.”
“So—you really don’t mind doing this?” Helena asked. “I will absolutely pay you. We’ll just keep it professional. I’m going to go work on the parlor.” She seemed a little prickly now. I think it really bothered her that she couldn’t do everything singlehandedly. It was hard not to think that she’d make an excellent partner.
Or maybe she was just prickly because she was offended that Jake told her I liked her…which brought me back to how I would definitely kill him tonight.
Chapter Eight
Helena
By the end of my first day working on Lockwood House, I was completely exhausted, but that was all in a day’s work. A little less usual was hearing the Sullivans upstairs, murmuring to each other while blasting that dude rock music that every construction crew I’d ever hired seemed to listen to. Why do I get the feeling they were just talking about me and trying to cover it up…
But, they got the job done. The section of rotting wood was torn up and they were hitting a home improvement store in town tomorrow before coming back. They left warning tape in the doorway just to be cute, like I would fall through the same hole twice. This was d
efinitely beyond what I was capable of.
I poured myself a very full glass of white wine and a microwave chicken parmesan I warmed with a spell, which meant it was charred on the edges and cold in the middle. Oh well. Pretty soon I would have that kitchen shining, but right now it was covered in debris that fell from the room above.
The parlor was all stripped down and the hardwood flooring underneath the carpet would be gorgeous after refinishing, just like the rest of the house. “So much better without the moss green shag,” I murmured. “The drugs of the 1970s must’ve been something else to think that was a good idea.”
“True,” said a low, sexy voice behind me.
I did a weird shudder that was a combination of being surprised out of my skin but trying not to spill the wine. “Can…you not scare me like that?” I glanced behind me, knowing it was going to be the incubus again, and also realizing that he was really going to be some trouble for me.
“I apologize. I noticed you were alone again. And it seemed tragic to eat alone. Especially if that is what you’re eating.” He looked at the square-shaped piece of chicken, the red sauce, the glob of cheese, and the watery side broccoli.
“I’ve been working hard all day,” I said, abandoning my plans to go poke around the library. “I just need calories and some sleep.”
“I’m surprised you weren’t snooping around, looking for secrets.”
“Are there some, then?” I asked.
“I can’t tell you.”
I laughed. But he looked at me with total seriousness.
He also looked at me with a level of sexiness that could have destroyed lesser women. It was hard not to be intimidated. I didn’t meet very many incubi. I knew he was a ghost and he could only take on a solid form for a short time, and thank god he was a ghost, but…
Certain parts of him looked extremely solid.
“Hoo boy,” I whispered to myself. “Look, we need to talk.”
Demons in the Bedroom (Paranormal House Flippers Book 1) Page 4
