by Michele Hauf
Vika dropped the heavy marble pestle in the mortar. “The derelict?”
“Derelict?” A tall man with coal hair and an easy stance walked around beside Libby and crossed his arms. He looked only one step up from derelict, with his black clothing hanging on his broad frame and his jeans hems scraping the hardwood floor. He gave the spell room a once-over, drawing his eyes from the walls of glass-fronted cupboards to the inset halogen lights that fashioned the space into the ultimate clean room for concocting and conjuring. “This is your spell room? It’s very...”
“Clean?” Vika offered hopefully.
“Sterile.”
“Thank you.” Pleased with the comment, she stood and gestured her sister to leave. “It’s okay, Libby. The problem may now be solved.”
Her sister winked and made a kissing gesture behind the man’s back before giggling and dashing off to spend the afternoon trading spells and herbs with the local covens at the weekly bazaar.
“Viktoria St. Charles?” he asked, stepping down into the room. His boots clicked the highly glossed marble floor.
The man inserted a void of darkness into the clean room with his presence. He wore black from head to toe, and the room was white upon gray marble. As much as black was her preferred color scheme, Vika always wore pale colors in this room to honor the pure atmosphere. Today, it was a soft heather, fitted to her body from shoulder to ankle in a corseted maxi dress that flared out from the knee.
“Viktorie,” she corrected. “As in successful. It’s an old Russian name.”
“Oh, yes, Viktorie. I’m sorry.”
“Why are you here, monsieur...?”
“I looked you up on the Council database. I’m Certainly Jones.” He offered his hand to shake, and she did so, quickly, finding his grip sure.
The man recoiled, shaking his hand as if he’d been stung. “What the hell was that?”
She had no idea what he’d felt. Pressing a hand to her throat—ah, yes. “My grandmother’s nail.” She lifted the leather cord she always wore about her neck. A centuries-old nail was twisted about it as a pendant. “It was taken from her grave after she’d been buried by the villagers.”
“Don’t tell me.” He winced as he studied the necklace. “Nails had been pounded around her clothing to keep the witch down so she would not rise from the grave?”
“Actually, this one, and the one my sister wears, were taken from her jaw.” The practice had been a cruel and unusual attribute of the witch-hunt madness of the eighteenth century. “Her magic is contained within this nail. It protects me from dark magic.” She lifted a defiant brow.
“It’s powerful. I felt it.”
“That means you practice dark magic.”
“It does.” At her silence, he added with a splay of his hands, which revealed his left was covered in a tight assortment of black tattoos, “Someone’s got to do it.”
Uh-huh. She’d never had a dark practitioner cross her threshold before, and she wasn’t sure she liked it now. Best to get rid of this one quickly.
“So, Certainly Jones,” she said. “I’ve heard of you. The Council’s resident librarian.”
“Archivist, actually. My job involves much more than cataloging books. And you are a cleaner who is also a witch? This spell room is so...”
“Impressive?”
“Sanitary.” He looked about as if a dark angel lost among the clean and pure. Rubbing a palm up his arm, he gave a noticeable shiver. “Derelict, eh?”
Vika walked along the marble counter, trailing a fingertip along the cool, curved edge. A means of grounding herself, because she suspected the witch was powerful and wielded much darker magic than she could imagine. It hummed from him, and it felt wrong in the air.
It disturbed her, and she wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.
“Derelict? You did present a bedraggled appearance last night. As well as now—”
“And you look like a dream. Green eyes. I was right about that.” A wink surprised her.
“Ahem.” She was not so easy to win over, despite the lucid warmth she felt from his soft stare. “You look as if you’ve seen better days, Monsieur Jones.”
He pushed a hank of hair away from his face. The motion revealed a tattoo on the side of his neck, but she didn’t look too closely. He wasn’t unattractive, Vika decided, just...not neat. Rumpled and scruffy. Her skin prickled to wonder at how ill-kept his home must be if this was the appearance he presented to the world.
“I have seen better days,” he said, followed by a heavy sigh. “And I’m hoping you can return those better days to me. I need your help, Viktorie.”
She tilted up her chin. The call for help always tweaked at the protective bone in her body. She strived to be her best, always, to help others, and to do right by the witch’s rede. But she was having a hard time relaxing around this man. His presence prickled across her bare arms, and it wasn’t an altogether uncomfortable feeling. Persuasive, and yet warning.
She didn’t need the warning; dark magic was something with which she refused to associate.
“I don’t understand how you think I can help you, Monsieur Jones.”
“Please, call me CJ. Last night you did something incredible for me. I’m hoping you’ll be able to do it again.”
“I didn’t do a single thing for you. I saw you. I got in the car and drove off. But I’m still not sure how you saw me. That area was warded to keep bystanders from seeing us while my sister and I cleaned the crime scene.”
“The carrion drew me. Strange, because I’m a vegetarian. But your little ward wasn’t powerful enough to blind me.”
Little ward? Vika stiffened, putting her hands to her hips. He was wearing out a welcome she’d not granted him.
“You sneezed,” he offered.
Vika turned away. That damnable sneeze! It had put her on the soul bringer’s most-wanted list and now brought this practitioner of dark magic into her sacred spell room. She said over her shoulder, “And you’ve come to say gesundheit?”
“How about I offer you a blessed be? Far too late, but well meant, I promise.”
His manner was too kind to fit his appearance. And his presence. She didn’t like how he made her feel unsure in ways that inappropriately warmed her skin. She slid her hands along her hips down to her thighs.
Did she feel attraction for the man? No, impossible. Maybe the tiniest bit of curiosity. The man was just so...there. Never had she felt another person’s energy so strongly. And for as much as it was dark, it also pleaded. Which set up all kinds of warnings in Vika’s wanting heart.
“Now if that’s all you’ve come for, I do need to get back to work. I’ve a spell—”
“I need you to do exactly what you did last night, Mademoiselle St. Charles. Please. You sneezed, and then I felt something move through me.”
Vika gaped. She turned to face him. Had the soul she’d sneezed away passed through this man? To consider it briefly, it may have been possible, since, if the corpse lights could permeate her, then they could certainly enter another.
She stepped closer to him and studied his deep jade eyes for a lie. “Are you sure? You felt it travel through your body?”
He nodded. Not a flinch or a blink. He was being truthful. “What was it that I felt move through me?”
“A soul,” she said softly, and then snapped her mouth shut. She’d said too much. She knew the man not at all. Yet, if she were to find the soul, he was the last person to—not have seen it, but rather, have touched it.
“A soul.” He nodded. “That makes weird sense. It chased the demon right out of me.” He grabbed her shoulders, forcing her to meet his gaze. “Do it again. Please?”
“I, uh...” She wrenched her shoulders free from his possessive grasp and stepped back, stumbling against the stool. Her hand upset a pile of rosemary, and the earthy scent renewed in the air. Rosemary for remembrance and for a clear mind. She was anything but clear at the moment. Clasping the nail at her neck for str
ength, she said, “No. I can’t. It was a fluke. A demon? And as I’ve said, I’m busy. Please, I want you to leave now.”
He approached her, and the dark menace in his eyes grew apparent. Vika would not cry out like a frightened child. She was strong and had stood against many much more frightening than this man.
“I command you out! Xum!” She pronounced the air spell etz-oom.
With a dramatic gesture of her hand, Vika flung air magic at him, and it managed to sway his upper body, but he maintained a firm stance.
The dark witch grinned. “I warded myself before entering your little round house,” he said, rubbing the palm of his tattooed hand. “Not as well as I thought. You shouldn’t have been able to move me.”
“Xum!” She flung more air magic his way, but this time it managed only to swish the hair away from his face. And it revealed the deep violet bruise at the side of his neck opposite the side of the tattoo.
He noticed her hard stare and stroked the bruise with his fingers. “It’s a demon mark,” he said. “Been there for six months. Ever since I returned from Daemonia.”
“You went to...?” She daren’t even whisper the name of the foul destination. To do so felt sacrilegious. The place of all demons was not a place she liked to think about, let alone put into voice.
CJ nodded. “On a quest to find something.”
“Did you find it?” she asked quickly, so unbelieving he had actually survived to return to this realm in one piece.
“I did.”
“And you’re...fine?”
“Fine is a subjective definition. It doesn’t matter, because all my energy has been focused on one thing since my return. Surviving.”
“Surviving what?”
“If I tell you, will you promise to help me?”
Vika had never been intrigued by secrets. Even less so by one involving the place of all demons.
“I promise you nothing,” she said. “Tell me, and then I’ll ask you to leave.”
“You’re the only one who can help me, Viktorie. I’ve not had any luck expelling these demons in six months.”
“Have you spoken to an exorcist?”
“Many. No luck. When I returned from Daemonia, I unknowingly brought along a few passengers. About a dozen, as far as I can determine. These demons are firmly affixed to my soul. Or so I thought until last night, when with a simple sneeze, you did what I haven’t been able to accomplish.”
She did not wield such power. A witch had to study for years, decades, to learn exorcism. “It was a fluke.”
“I’m sure it was. Yet even my brother, TJ, who has mastered persuasive exorcism and releasement, couldn’t get these bastards out of me. And believe me, we’ve tried many times. You know what is tried after all else fails?”
“What?”
“Physical beatings. But the pain demon inside me enjoyed that too much so we ditched that method. Fortunate for my aching ribs.”
The man had subjected himself to beatings in an attempt to clear out his demons? “I can’t help you—”
“Yes, you can! Listen, the demons that cling to my soul take over my body when the light does not hold them back. You expelled a carrion demon last night. The bastard was on a quest for raw meat.”
“The werewolf,” she whispered in disbelief.
She clutched her arms to her chest at the notion this man had been seeking the bloody and scattered remains of what she and her sister had cleaned up.
“Is that what you were cleaning? The demon smelled it. It wasn’t me.”
She shrugged, noncommittally, not knowing the man and not wanting to believe he could have been compelled to such a disaster. What would he have done had he arrived before they’d cleaned up the mess?
He approached, and Vika hustled backward until her spine hit the wall of lighted drawers in which she stored herbs and potions. “Stay back!” She put up her hand, and CJ stopped, his chest against her palm. She could feel his heartbeats against her hand. Frantic. Excited. Nervous.
Desperate.
And beneath the desperation hummed his darkness, like a hive of trapped insects seeking escape.
“Powerful magic,” he said softly of the nail at her neck, yet he didn’t move from her touch.
Instead of pulling away from him, Vika spread her fingers, staring at her hand as her palm took in the beat of his life beneath the wrinkled shirt. What witch purposefully journeyed to Daemonia? Gaining access must have proved a monumental feat. And to have survived?
He must be so powerful.
“Tell me what you went there for.”
“I can’t. It was selfish. Vika, please.”
She met his eyes, her mouth falling open in a startled gasp. She was pretty sure Libby had not called her Vika in front of him. How could he know about that nickname? Only her family and friends called her Vika, a Russian shortening of her name.
Breathing out, she shook her head. “I don’t understand what you think I can do for you. So I sneezed. I shot a soul through you, and it expelled a demon. Do you think I have souls to hand? Do you think it’s a process I can duplicate again?”
“Possibly. How were you drawing the soul into you? Was it from the body you’d just cleaned up?”
“Yes, it was the werewolf’s soul. But I didn’t purposely draw it into me.” She slid to the right to get away from his intense closeness and paced toward the door. A shiver traced her spine. Against better judgment, her innate magic was attracted to the man’s power. “I have a sticky soul. It tends to catch lost souls that linger after death.”
“I’ve never heard of that before. That’s cool. So you’re full of stray souls?”
“No, a soul bringer scrubs them from me every so often.”
She turned and saw he looked over her work and the mortar but kept his fingers interlocked behind his back. It was polite not to touch another witch’s work unless invited to do so. As he leaned over her book of shadows to scan the spell, his hair dusted the paper, and she flinched because it was as if she had felt his hair brush her skin.
“You should increase the belladonna,” he suggested. “It’ll jack up the potency, and you’ll need less lavender. For nocturnals to rest, yes?”
“That’s a wise observation.” She strode to the counter and wrote it down on her notebook. “Thank you. I will try that. You said you practice the dark magics. I can’t imagine a simple sleeping draft would be of interest to you.”
“I’m noctambulatory myself. Though I haven’t utilized any spells against it. I’ve come to terms with the night, and it me. Spellcraft is a particular expertise, both dark and light. Though, since I’ve taken on these demons, my power has decreased measurably. I can barely throw air. It’s pitiful. Please.” His hand clasped over her forearm, a warm touch that belied his bedraggled appearance. “If you can replicate the process, I beg you to try. I can’t go into the dark. I need to stay in the light to keep them at bay. I rarely sleep. I fight them daily. These demons inside me...they’ll kill me.”
It was an awful thing to endure, she felt sure. When even one incorporeal demon occupied a soul, it could overtake the person, drive the person mad or kill him or her. And he said many lived within him?
If the soul had moved through him...
“Are you sure the soul I sneezed at you moved through you? What if it’s still inside you?”
She could get back the missing soul!
“No, I definitely felt an exit.”
“Could have been the demon leaving.”
“No, that followed immediately after I felt the brightness pass through me.”
Ah. The brightness. Yes, that was the indefinable feeling.
“It was...wondrous,” he said softly. “As if a divine presence had, for but a moment, brushed against my soul. Trust me, there’s no way I’m carrying a wolf soul around inside me. Just a lust demon, a war demon, menace and grief, and a few others.”
“I need that soul back,” Vika said.
“Because of the soul
bringer?”
She nodded. “He’s particular about receiving all the souls in his territory.”
“Then let’s make a deal, shall we?” He tilted a hip against the counter and eyed her up and down, for the first time showing some interest in her for more than what she could do for him.
She liked when men looked at her with blatant desire. Made her feel sexy. Never a wrong feeling. But Certainly Jones made her uneasy. It was the darkness surrounding him. Much as she trusted her grandmother’s nail would protect, she didn’t want to step too close to him without a shield ward to protect her own soul. Nor did she trust her impulsive desire to touch his power.
“What did you have in mind?” she asked.
“I must have a connection to the werewolf soul. Maybe?”
“If it’s still in the vicinity of its death, it may be compelled toward you. On the other hand, it may try to reattach itself to me. I was headed there now—”
CJ clasped her hand. “Let me go along with you. If I can help you locate the soul, will you agree to expel another demon from me?”
“But I don’t think I can.”
“It’s the only thing I’ve got going for me right now. You. Please, Vika. Help me.”
She dropped open her mouth because never had she heard such a sincere plea. And while her neat and ordered heart cringed at the idea of letting this unruly, bedraggled mess into her life, the part of her that squealed over creating order and establishing calm wanted to take the man in hand and clean him up, body and soul.
She nodded, and replied without reservation, “It’s a deal.”
“Thank you.”
“But just this once. If we don’t find a soul, I’m not obliged to help you further in any way, shape or form.”
Chapter 3
In all his long life, never once had CJ sat inside a hearse, and he hoped to never repeat the experience when dead because he intended to prolong his life with the classic witch’s immortality ritual—consuming the blood from a beating vampire heart once a century.
Setting the morbid thought aside, he admired the car’s beige leather interior. It was surprisingly clean for an old model. Vika said it was from the seventies. It looked brand-new and smelled like lemons. Certainly was afraid to touch the dashboard for fear of leaving behind the slightest oils from his fingers.
