The digital lock was hardly a challenge for her magic. She opened the container and found only a document covered in a plastic sleeve. It was similar to the one the Witch Council gave her, but this one looked authentic, and had a great deal more information about the wand. After reading the sheet she sat stunned, her heart pounding at her throat and wrists. Fear settled with the weight of a crystal ball somewhere between her stomach and her heart. The thing was far more dangerous than she’d ever suspected, and she’d suspected plenty.
Where was the wand? Obviously somewhere else in the house, because it wasn’t with the document. Wherever it was, it needed to be destroyed. She climbed the stairs to the bedrooms. Two workers came out of the main bathroom balancing a large sheet of broken glass that had been the shower door between them.
They both came to a halt and stared at her.
They’d already seen her. It was too late for her to do a cloaking spell. She’d just have to play it out. “Hi. I’m just leaving a gift for Professor Bakus.” She lifted the box.
“He isn’t here. I think he went to the library.”
“I’ll just leave it in his bedroom.”
One of the guys grinned, a knowing light in his eye that irritated her. “Sure.” They continued down the stairs with the broken sheet of glass.
She wandered around two of the bedrooms with no reaction. When she reached the third bedroom, the only one with room-darkening shutters, the symbols on the box went wild. She slipped inside and closed the door.
The room smelled like Chris. The faint fragrance of citrus and soap lingered in the air. It was a masculine room, with dark walnut furnishings and navy blue curtains with taupe-colored valances matching the comforter and bedding. Clear glass lamps graced the tables flanking the bed on each side, and a beautifully textured grasscloth covered the wall behind the headboard.
The room suited Chris, the lack of clutter reminding her of the recent loss of all his belongings. A sudden rush of regret nearly sent her back out the door.
She’d signed a contract with the Council promising to return the wand. She had to do this.
But to betray his trust was killing her. If she did this, they could never exchange woo-woo again. He’d never forgive her. Tears threatened, and an ache swamped her.
She stood for a long moment in the center of the space, fighting her conscience and her emotions.
She had a reputation to protect. She always found the missing person, object, document, book. Whatever she searched for. She never failed. Even if it hurt. She had a business to protect. She had employees who depended on her. Depended on the living they made working for her.
All those arguments were legitimate. But it didn’t ease the ache.
She sighed and straightened her shoulders and moved slowly around the perimeter of the room. She opened each drawer, wondering what could be holding the wand back if it were here. Maybe it wasn’t and she could forget all this. She might even relish being wrong about him having the wand.
A strange tapping sound came from somewhere close to the bed, and she approached the area cautiously. Any time magic was involved, anything could happen. A piece of the grasscloth close to the corner of the room seemed to have something beneath it that caused a faint protrusion, like the head of an eraser was pressing out from beneath it.
She set the box on the bed and stretched out a hand, palm up. A razor appeared in her grasp. She carefully made a small slit in the expensive wall covering. A sharp piece of wood corkscrewed from a hole drilled into the wall, at first slowly, then with greater and greater speed. With a sudden shudder, it slid free of its hiding space and shot, arrow-fast, past her head.
Goddess! That was close! So close she’d felt the air disturbed by its passage brush her cheek.
She turned to find the box sitting quietly on the bed. The symbols were finally stationary. She raised the lid and found the wand nestled in the interior.
She was doing the right thing. With it gone, the Vampire Council couldn’t stake or burn Chris for stealing it. There would be no evidence he’d ever had it.
She shook her head, knowing she was trying to find a way to rationalize her behavior and make what she was doing right. They were both stuck in untenable situations. But his life was more important than this wand. Couldn’t he see that?
She picked up the box on the bed, tucked it under her arm. Her cell phone vibrated in her pocket and she tugged it free. At the sight of Chris’s number she debated whether or not to answer it. This might be the last time they spoke. She couldn’t bring herself to ignore the call.
“I’m in need of a healer. Can you meet me at the house?”
She looked around the room and her skin burned with guilt. Fear zoomed right past the emotion, setting her heart to flying and making her breathing erratic. “What’s happened?”
“The Council sent Shifters to bring me in for a meeting. We had a slight confrontation. I have a couple of small pieces of shrapnel lodged in my shoulder and can’t get them out. If I don’t remove them quickly, my body will heal around them.
“I’ll be h-there waiting for you.”
CHAPTER 10
CHRIS PULLED THE car into the garage and turned off the engine. His shoulder and arm still burned from the injury, and he reached across to open the door with his left hand. It swung open before he could touch the handle.
Zaira looked pale, and her hazel eyes widened with concern as she took in his bloody clothing.
“Some of it isn’t mine.” He didn’t know if that sounded reassuring or not. “Enough of it is that it might hurt you, so don’t touch me.” Damn, the toxicity of his blood made things difficult.
She backed away, allowing him to exit the car. He unbuttoned his shirt and peeled the bloody sleeve away from his shoulder, wadding the ruined garment into a ball and tossing it in a large trashcan next to his worktable.
Taking off his T-shirt took less finesse. He just ripped it free and tossed it in the can, too.
Zaira approached him. She waved away the blood on his pants and shoes, lifting it in the air and tossing it in with the ruined shirts. She turned her attention to the open holes in his shoulder.
“It’s buckshot from a shotgun blast.”
She held her hand over his shoulder about two inches from the injury and closed her eyes.
Without the adrenaline racing through his system to numb the process, pulling the bits of metal from his body hurt more than they had going in. He gritted his teeth and tried to remind himself to breathe, though it wasn’t a natural thing anymore. Because the wounds had partially healed, some of them were already covered over. Blood poured down his arm as the buckshot popped free of his skin. A piece of blue metal a little bigger than his thumb came out as well. The injuries closed and were gone in seconds.
Zaira swayed and put a hand on the worktable to steady herself.
Chris caught her with his good arm.
“It’ll pass in a minute.” Her skin was white, and she sucked in a cleansing breath.
“I’m sorry, Zaira. I didn’t realize…”
“There’s always a price to pay. It’s the way of it.” She banished the blood on his arm to the trashcan, then ran a soothing hand over his shoulder. “How does it feel?”
“Fine, better.” He rotated it to prove it. He drew her close to hold her. She smelled like magic and cinnamon, the scent of her blood just beneath the surface. The sound of her heart beat loud in his ears. It seemed to thrum beneath his skin, against the bones of his face. He wanted, needed to take her into him. Needed to be inside her. The idea aroused him to the point of pain.
He nuzzled her ear, then her neck.
* * *
ZAIRA RAKED HER fingers through his hair. Power poured off him. She could feel his hunger, and her heart raced to meet it.
Once he found out what she’d done, she’d never know what it was to be held and kissed by him again. Never know what they could share. Unless she gave into this now.
She turned her head to kiss him a
nd nicked the tip of her tongue on his fang. Chris groaned and kissed her, sucking on the tip and drawing it into his mouth. The cut was inconsequential amidst the sensations he inspired in the intimate areas of her body. Her breasts felt hot and full, and her hoohaw was doing a tingly shiver of excitement, silently squealing touch me, fill me.
He broke the kiss, and she realized the cut was healed.
“Are the repairmen still inside?” he asked.
“Yes.” She snapped her fingers and they were suddenly in Chris’s bedroom, the door closed.
“Handy trick, that.” His eyes were glowing silver, but he’d retracted his fangs. “I have a few tricks of my own.” She suddenly found herself lying in the center of the bed, her clothes gone. All she’d felt was a brush of air against her skin. He was completely nude in the blink of an eye. Wide-shouldered and slender-hipped, he glided to the bed on long legs as well developed as the rest of him. His stomach rippled with muscles as he stretched out beside her. His banana had expanded and lengthened.
His power brushed against her, and the fine hairs on her arms lifted toward him. It was like a caress rushing over her skin without his even having to touch her. When he kissed her, she shut off the voice in her head screeching this was a mistake. Because she wanted and cared about this vampire. When he found out what she had done, he was going to be furious, but until then, they were in sync with each other.
She allowed her power to flow to him and slid her arms around him, holding him close. She opened the empathic line between them and felt his passion blend with hers, felt the emotion behind it and her eyes glazed with tears. She was more than a hundred years old, and had never experienced such emotion from a lover.
He was a master at making love. She hadn’t expected his tenderness, his care. Every caress, every kiss, built her need. She tried to build his in return. When he finally took her she cried out in pleasure.
In the throes of her orgasm, he struck and drank from her. Another wave of pleasure rolled over her, more intense than before, and triggered his release.
They both lay still, their bodies remaining linked.
“Do you sleep?” she asked as her hands ran up and down his back.
“I sleep like the dead about three hours a night.”
“Don’t tease about that.” He was more alive than most of the warlocks she’d met. Most of the humans as well.
His gray gaze grew thoughtful.
“You could have been killed today.” She cupped his face then smoothed back the ridiculously sexy curls from his temple.
“Not likely, but possibly.”
“Over what?”
“Over a group of vampires who are still living in the dark ages and who refuse to adapt enough to pick up a phone. That’s why I was injured. But it would have taken more than a bit of metal to kill me.”
She shook her head and twined her arms about his neck. “Are you going to pick up a phone and call them?”
“I would if they had a cell phone or land line. If they want to talk, they’re going to have to come to the house and knock on the door or ring the doorbell, just like every other civilized species on the planet.”
“Was that the message you sent back to them?”
“Yes.”
“And what are you going to do when they show up at your door asking if you’ve stolen what they were looking for?”
Her cell phone rang and they looked at each other. She levitated it from the floor to her hand and brushed her thumb over the screen to answer the call.
Calamity sounded breathless. “Glendora Ghostly, the assistant to the Baba Yaga, is here for an update.”
Shit! She looked up into Chris’s eyes and bit her lip. “I’ll be right there.” She closed out the call. “I have to go.”
“Are you sure?”
He kissed her, and for a moment, with his lips and tongue coaxing hers into playful, sensual action, she forgot about everything but how it felt to have him moving inside her. She groaned. “I don’t want to, but this is an extremely important and difficult client, and I have to meet with her.”
He sighed. “Will you come back after the meeting?”
“I don’t know. That depends on what happens during and after the meeting.” She wasn’t lying about that. “But I’ll call you either way.” She was going to hear a great deal from him as soon as he discovered the wand was gone. He’d put two and two together pretty quickly. Guilt twisted her stomach like a pretzel.
“Okay.” He eased away from her, his reluctance obvious, and rolled aside to allow her to get up.
Still keyed into his emotions, she felt his disappointment.
She took her time getting dressed, enjoying the way his eyes followed her as she put on her bra and panties. By the time she stepped into her skirt and blouse she was enjoying the view of his response to the reverse striptease.
She paused to lean over him, cupped his cheek, and kissed him. Her composure wavered, and she blinked against the sting of tears and quickly turned away.”
“I’ll call you.” She didn’t give him time to respond before she teleported out.
CHAPTER 11
CHRISTOPHE STRETCHED AND lay back against the pillows, reliving every moment of their lovemaking. Making love with Zaira was as hot as he had imagined it. And she had allowed him to drink from her.
The weakness he’d experienced beforehand had passed. He felt strong and himself. But there was something missing besides his clothes. Something niggled on the edge of his consciousness. He was lying naked on the bed. With repairmen working in the house. He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed and it struck him.
The constant humming he’d been trying to block out for the past two days had gone silent.
He rushed to the corner of the room and touched the grasscloth. He felt the hole he’d drilled, and his finger parted the wall covering too easily. Someone had cut it. The empty hole stared back at him.
Fuck! Someone had taken the wand. He dressed in a nanosecond and raced down the hall to where the repairmen were still beating and banging.
He popped into the room and stood at the door, observing for a moment as they manhandled a heavy sheet of glass back into place to block off the shower and act as the door. He waited impatiently until they stabilized it before asking, “Did anyone come by today while I was gone?”
He suspected whom, but it still stung to hear one man say. “That pretty redhead who’s been around for the last few days. She brought you something and left it in your room.”
“Thanks.”
He paced back and forth in the hall as anger climbed into his throat and attempted to strangle him. She had made love with him, and the entire time she was covering up that she had stolen the wand. She’d betrayed him!
How the hell had she found it?
What about the phone call and her immediate response? What if she was returning the wand to the Council right now?
He rushed down the stairs and out the front door.
* * *
THANK THE GODDESS she had teleported the wand to her house just in case the witch was able to read the magic signature of the device. She used the bathroom in her office to clean up and brush her hair and then called Cerbie to her from his room here at the office, grateful that their psychic connection allowed her to do so.
“I need you to be a distraction, Cerbie. I don’t want her to know anything about the wand.”
He cocked his head ears up. “You found it?”
“Yeah.”
“You aren’t going to give it to her?”
“No.”
His ears wiggled in surprise.
“It’s too dangerous, Cerbie.”
“Duh. It’s probably not the only dangerous thing they have in their arsenal. It just surfaced while you’re involved with someone it could hurt.”
“Not just hurt, Cerbie. End. It could wipe vampire kind out. As drunk as Seymour was, he understood what was happening. The others are trying to take over while Baba
Yaga is gone. We have to hold the fort until she gets back.”
“So you trust her to oversee things once she’s back?”
“I haven’t made up my mind, but I know I don’t trust the witches who are at the helm right now with something that could possibly sway the balance between one species and another. If we allow that to happen, we’ll be no better than the humans who are killing off one species after another without conscience.”
“Okay. Let’s do this thing.”
She picked up the file and left her office to march down the hall to the conference room. She held the door open for Cerbie to follow her into the room. Once again the smell of magic followed the woman. What was she up to? “Hello, Ms. Ghostly.”
Glendora rose from her seat, her posture perfect for showing off her figure. “Tell me there is good news.”
Zaira pulled out a chair from the table but didn’t sit down. She arranged her features “I do have some news for you. I was able to track down Seymour Hurst. He is diligently drumming up attendance for the WaVeS ball, just as he should be. I’m convinced he has nothing to do with the disappearance of the wand. I’m also monitoring several burglaries of other magical artifacts that have taken place in the area.” Which was true. “They may be connected to the disappearance of the wand.”
“I don’t need maybes, Ms. O’Shea. I need the wand.”
“It’s more difficult than you realize to trace something when it isn’t being used. It leaves no signature until it is. No one has put the article on any of the black market sites to sell, which would have been helpful, because then I’d be able to trace the transaction. Whoever has it is keeping it to themselves.”
Cerbie went around the table and barked at the witch, his stub of a tail wiggling like mad.
“What does he want?”
“He is greeting you and wants a pat on the head.”
He sat down and grinned, showing off his teeth. Glendora shot him a wary look. “He looks like he might bite me.”
“Cerbie has a soft spot for the ladies. He would never bite you.”
He rolled over and presented his belly to be rubbed.
Magic and Mayhem: Have Wand, Will Travel (Kindle Worlds Novella) Page 8
