His face was a contorted mixture of anger and annoyance, but the way the lines collected around his lips made her wonder if he felt something else, something resembling jealousy. A wiggle of excitement rose from her belly at the possibility. “He noticed that my papers didn’t have a notary’s seal. I had to agree to the date or else I wouldn’t have gotten in.”
Jasper nodded and folded his hands together behind his back. “You don’t intend on actually going, do you?”
“I don’t have much, Jasper. The only thing I have is my word. It would be a shame to lose that.”
Jasper stood quietly for a moment. There was no way he was going to talk her out of this. Devon was gorgeous from head to toe. Even the way he smiled screamed sexy. If nothing else, having him at her side would take her mind off the lost books.
She smiled for a second as she noticed the way Jasper’s jeans clung to the arch of his ass. He bent forward and his shirt moved up, exposing the dimples just above his waistband. Excitement sprang up from the depths of her belly and then sank back down to deeper, more forbidden places.
“What exactly are these books you were looking for?”
She looked away from his perfect ass and tried to concentrate on something other than her growing need to feel a man’s touch. “They’re called the Libros Umbrarum. I don’t know much about them other than the name means Books of Shadows in Latin, and the spirits keep pushing me toward them.” She rolled onto her side. “Even Harper’s sister, Jenna, wanted me to have the books. She left them to me in her will. I didn’t even know they existed until she died.”
“Why are the spirits hellbent on getting these books?”
“The spirits keep telling me they are the key to helping them ‘cross over’ and that they will help me gain control over the voices that I hear. I’m low on my supply of the GX 149, plus they are losing their effectiveness. The Libros are my only hope; if I don’t do something I fear I’ll go mad.”
“Harper is close to making more, isn’t she?”
“She was able to make a small batch before the company she used to work for found out she was using company equipment for a personal project on drugs—and to top it off, they somehow found out it was a drug that didn’t pass FDA approval. She was fired. Now she’s a year away from having her new lab up and running. By then I doubt they will have little effect on my control of the voices.”
“I didn’t realize …” Jasper turned. “So what can we do? Where are you planning on searching next?”
Starling sucked in a breath. “I have no idea. They were supposed to be in that bank, but I think the Catharterians beat me there. They must have them. First, they showed up at the airport and now a black feather in a secret bank vault? They’re the only shifters who change into a vulture. They’re the only ones who know about the drugs and would have access or the motivation to access our secrets. With the books in their hands, I won’t be getting them any time soon.”
“How much contact do you have with the spirits? Could they help you find your books?”
“They didn’t even know the Catharterians had the Libros. I would doubt they have any clue where they put my books.”
“But that’s just the spirits you talk to on a regular basis. Do you think it’s possible there are spirits out there you haven’t met who could point us to the Catharterians’ lair?” Jasper’s eyes were bright with excitement, giving him the look of a kid talking about getting a Christmas present. He mustn’t have learned the lesson of hoping for something that just wasn’t going to happen.
“Spirits aren’t easy to work with. They don’t come when you want or need them. They only come to you when they want something. The dead are the worst kind of people.”
Jasper’s laughter echoed through the room.
“It’s amazing what happens to a soul when their actions are no longer dictated by the laws of other people’s judgment.”
“So we can’t go to selfish souls for help, is that what you’re telling me?”
“No,” Starling said, sitting up with excitement at the idea that just hit her. “I can’t control spirits. But there are others who can. Maybe they can help us find the Catharterians.” She slipped her feet into her Converses and made her way to the door. “You coming?”
“I guess we won’t be flying anywhere today.”
“At least not by plane.” Some of her tiredness drained away as she smiled. There was still a glimmer of something that almost resembled hope.
• • •
The psychic’s shop smelled like burnt sandalwood. The lights were low, drawing long shadows across the well-worn wood floor. A set of bells jingled as the door shut behind Jasper.
The store was filled with jars of dried rosebuds, purple thistles, and various collections of green herbs. On the wall across from Starling, shelves held candles, hand-carved boxes, wands, and an assortment of pentagrams. In the corner of the room was a doorway, covered in a purple cloth.
“It doesn’t look like anyone’s here. Let’s go,” he said, stepping back toward the door.
The curtain moved and a middle-aged woman stuck her head out. The woman smiled with her entire face as she glanced at Starling. “Hello, y’all. Welcome to the Goddess Shop. I’ll be right with ya; just fixin’ to finish up a spell. Feel free to take a look around.” She disappeared behind the curtain.
Jasper pointed his thumb toward the door, but Starling shook her head. Maybe it was the rich scent of incense or the energy that buzzed through her, but something about this place felt like home.
She made her way to a collection of stones arranged in a clear glass box and idly ran her finger over a blue stone. It could have been her imagination, but a slight tingle of energy passed from the stone and up her finger. She drew her hand back. “What do you think they use all this stuff for?”
“I would guess witchcraft.”
She glanced back at Jasper, who hadn’t moved from his place by the door. “I know they’re for witchcraft, but how do you think they use them?”
“How do I know? Maybe they throw them at each other.”
There was a laugh from behind the purple curtain. “We ain’t children. We find no need to pitch rocks at one another.” The woman stepped out again. “Though I gotta admit there are more than a few people I’d like to wallop.”
“So what do you use them for?” Starling asked, pointing to the collection of crystals, amethysts, onyx, and assortment of stones.
“Some believe that each stone carries with it a different property. Amethyst, that purple crystal there, is for reflectin’ negative energy.” She glanced over at Jasper. “If you’re always with him, I don’t think it would be such a bad thing to have on hand.” She walked across the room, picked up a little crystal and, walking back, slipped it into Starling’s hand. “On the house.”
“I’m not always negative,” Jasper grumbled. He opened his mouth to say something else but stopped.
“We shall see who you really are, I’m sure.” The woman smiled, the light once again returning to her eyes. “By the way, I’m Jamie Blithe, daughter of the high priestess Tamsin Blithe. You may call me Jamie.”
“Tamsin, as in Ariadne Papadakis’s witch? She’s your mother?” Starling asked, stumbling over her words.
Jamie smiled. “The one and only. As I’ve heard, she has done quite a bit for your kind.”
Starling gripped the amethyst tighter, until the small crystal cut into the flesh of her palm. How did Jamie know? “We owe her so much.”
“Oh no, I think she got her reward when she got to take down that louse of a governor, Stavros.”
“She did so much … I hate to ask you for anything, but …”
“But what?”
“But, I just have so many questions.”
“About being a nymph or about being a medium?” Jamie said, not beating around the bush.
“How did you know?” The blood rushed out of her face.
“I have my witchy ways, darlin’.” Jamie paus
ed. “So what are you needin’ help with?”
Was this woman, this witch, her answer? Could Jamie make the spirits go away and the voices in her head stop? “The spirits … they won’t stop asking me for help. I’ve been taking drugs.” Starling tapped her purse. “But I don’t have much left. I need something—anything—to make the spirits stop.”
“And?” Jamie ran her fingers over the edge of a shelf like she already knew what Starling was going to ask and was trying to avoid the question.
“And, I was thinking that maybe there was something you could do, something you could give me, or a spell that could make the spirits stop.” Starling’s words rushed from her like floodwaters during a storm. “They’re driving me crazy, invading my dreams, taking control of my thoughts, and whispering threats for hours at a time. I can’t take a shower without a spirit threatening me. I can’t have a quiet moment with my family without a spirit telling me what to do. I can’t function, and if I don’t do something soon, they will take everything. They’ve already taken my mother, my friends. I can’t lose my life to this.”
“Now, darlin’, you can’t go on blaming the ghosts for killing your mother. As I heard it, that was those damned old vultures. They love death, those dirty beasts.”
There was a shift, as if suddenly the weight of the world had been lifted off Starling’s shoulders. Jamie knew everything. And she didn’t think she was crazy, or demented, or weird like everyone else.
“Yeah, the vultures were behind it, but if it hadn’t been for me and my ghosts, my mom wouldn’t have gotten wrapped up in the drug business and drawn the attention of the vultures. It’s all my fault,” Starling replied, trying to keep her throat from being crushed by the emotional weight of her words.
“Having a gift is hardly your fault,” Jamie said, as she unscrewed a lid on a jar of herbs and dipped her finger inside. “And that is exactly what you have—a gift. It’s not something that has to be such a burden. Talkin’ to spirits is just something you got to learn how to handle.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to do.”
“Hiding behind medications isn’t learning how to handle your gift. In fact, I would say you are wasting it.” She wiped her herb-covered finger on her dress.
“I …” Starling sucked in a long breath. She never thought of it as wasting her gift. She’d tried to talk to the ghosts. She’d done their bidding and taken down their notes. The only thing that they wanted, the books, she couldn’t give them. “I don’t want this … It’s no gift. It’s a curse.”
“That’s enough,” Jasper said, stepping in between her and Jamie. “You don’t need to come down on her. She doesn’t need this. She’s had enough pain in her life.”
“I’m not trying to cause her pain. In fact, I’m trying to get her to understand what she has is power.”
“Don’t talk like I’m not here.” Starling put her hand on his arm, retaking control of Jasper. “If there’s a way you can help me learn how to deal with this, I’m all ears. I’ll do anything you want me to do. All I want to do is be able to handle these people who invade my mind.”
“Look, darlin’, I’m not a medium. I’m a psychic. There’s nothing I can do other than tell you that you have to believe there’s a reason you have been chosen by the gods. It isn’t always easy having gifts like ours, but you must act with grace, charity, and compassion. If you do this, the gods will favor you. They’ll help you in anything you fix your mind to.”
“I don’t need gods, I need answers. What more can I do? I came all the way down here to help the spirits, and I failed. I tried. Nothing I ever do is good enough. Nothing I do ever helps. I just feel more lost each day.”
“You’re not lost. You are only just starting to find your way.” Jamie paused. “If you fight, you may find what you seek. Don’t give up, darlin’. You will find your way. Even if it’s not the path you had in mind.”
“Let’s go,” Jasper said, taking hold of Starling’s hand.
“What you so desperately seek is not the only answer. It’ll only bring your more of what you dread the most.”
Starling stood there in stunned silence, trying to understand everything the witch was saying. The books couldn’t possibly bring more of what she dreaded; she was already living in the sea of souls—what else was there left to fear?
Jasper squeezed her fingers. “Don’t worry, Starling. We’ll get the books, even if it kills me.”
Chapter Six
“You didn’t need to stand up for me back there. I was fine,” Starling said as she slipped on her red high heels. “I mean, I appreciate you trying to protect me, but Jamie wasn’t trying to scare me. She was just trying to help—even if she was going about it the wrong way.” She stood and walked to the door.
“How do you know?” Jasper couldn’t look away from her toned calves. He’d never noticed how athletic Starling was, but standing there in her red miniskirt and red heels, she was the flame and he the moth.
“Let’s just say I have experience with people …”—she stared at him—“who go about helping in questionable ways.”
“Hey,” he said, trying to notice anything but the way her red dress rose to her mid-thigh, just inches away from flashing the world. He could almost feel the softness of her thighs as he imagined running his hands up her skin, lifting the dress, and taking what his body desired. He shifted in the chair. “You need to change. You can’t see Devon looking like that.”
“Who do you think you are?” she retorted, running her hands down her dress. “I just bought this dress. Just because you pretended, and failed, at being my fiancé doesn’t mean you get to have an opinion on what I wear or who I wear it for.”
Who she wore it for. Maybe that was what really bothered him. He hated that asshat Devon. If Jasper had his way, she would wear that dress only for him.
“I’m going to say it again: I don’t like this. I don’t think you have any business going out with him.”
“You’ve already made that more than clear, but you don’t have a valid argument for why you hate him so much.” She grabbed her purse. “Just because he is interested in me doesn’t mean you should care. I mean, you don’t like me. You left me for the last few months. Now you don’t get to be possessive.”
“I left because I had to.”
Her high heels clicked on the hardwood floor as she walked to the hotel room’s door and opened it. “Well, now I have to go. And who knows? Maybe Devon won’t leave.”
She shut the door. He waited for a minute and followed her out, careful to stay enough distance behind her so that she wouldn’t know he had followed.
Didn’t Starling understand that he cared about her? That he wanted her? But she was someone he could never have.
He stopped in the middle of the lobby as Starling slid into the backseat of the town car where Devon must have been waiting. Her face lit up with a smile as the driver closed the door.
A strange knot formed in his stomach. Her face never lit up like that for him. Maybe she never really cared about him. Hell, if she did there would have been a glimpse of something, some attraction underneath her anger. Yet, there had been nothing, only the annoyance.
He was the real asshat for wanting her.
Jasper waved for a taxi, and getting in, gave the man directions to follow the black town car. The driver answered with a grunt and pulled behind Starling and Devon’s car. He hated this. Why couldn’t they just get along, find the books, and get back to Vegas? Then again, as soon as they returned to Vegas, he would go back to investigating the Catharterians. What a cluster fuck the investigation had become. Over the last few months he’d been working his ass off, trying to hunt down any leads about their identities and their organization. The latest lead he had was a man who claimed to be a vulture-shifter living in the Arizona desert.
As far as he could tell, their population was low, probably no more than fifty in the entire world, but it was hard to pin down an exact estimate. Aside from Dr. Redbird
, the woman who’d killed Starling’s mother, he’d only come across the man in Arizona as a confirmed vulture. Every other lead he’d tracked down was either crazy humans or others who had been mistakenly identified as Catharterians. If he could just get his hands on the man, maybe he could get the answers he needed.
The only thing he knew with any certainty was what Dr. Redbird had told him: that the shifters needed to breed, and in order to breed, they needed Starling and her drugs. They had been more than willing to kill to accomplish their goals. They wouldn’t stop in their pursuit.
Since he had chosen personal security as his career two years ago, he had learned one important lesson: an enemy who possessed secrets was an enemy who was one step away from succeeding. And he couldn’t let them get their hands on Starling.
The car turned to the right and pulled to a stop in front of a piano bar called Banging Keys. Jasper smirked as he imagined banging Devon’s face into a piano’s ivories. The thought was so real it made his fingers twitch. The bar’s brick exterior was worn with age, and its windows lined with velvet curtains that blocked unwelcome passersby from spying on the patrons. Devon had seemed so egocentric that a hole-in-the-wall piano bar was a far cry from the over-the-top haute cuisine restaurant where Jasper had expected him to take Starling.
Her red dress rose dangerously up her thigh as she stepped out of the town car. Devon walked around and waited until she wrapped her arm around his like they were attending some high school prom rather than a night out at some dingy club.
Handing the taxi driver a fifty, Jasper got out. But as he approached the door to the bar, the bouncer stuck out his arm and stopped him. “ID?”
“Really?” Jasper asked, digging in his back pocket for his wallet. It had been years since he’d been carded.
“Really.” The guard crossed his steroid-enhanced arms over his chest, making his man boobs look even more pronounced.
Jasper flashed his driver’s license to the bouncer. The bouncer took a quick look. “You can’t come in.”
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