The Entity Within e-2

by Cat Devon

  “He’s just a human,” Damon said. “Or are you claiming otherwise?”

  “Is he a witch hunter?” Zoe said.

  Tristin shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m just saying it’s possible…”

  Damon moved close to stare directly into Tristin’s eyes. “You’re just saying that you will forget this conversation and this visit to Chicago. You won’t have any further contact with Dr. Powers or any of his followers. You will also forget that I am a vampire and that Zoe and her grandmother are witches. You will forget your belief in paranormal activity and decide to join the Peace Corps and help others instead.”

  Zoe was surprised that Damon added that last command. Surprised and pleased.

  “No witches? No vampires?”

  Zoe wasn’t sure if Tristin was making statements or forming questions.

  “No witches and no vampires,” Damon said forcefully. “They don’t exist. Understand?”

  Tristin nodded.

  “Okay, you and Bob are going to get in a cab, go back to the airport, and fly back to Boston.”

  Again, Tristin nodded.

  “Stay there.”

  Zoe eyed Tristin suspiciously. She wasn’t sure if he was faking it or not. She waved her hand in front of his eyes to see if he’d blink, but he retained the same glassy-eyed expression of someone in a trance.

  Damon strolled over to the couch and focused his attention on Bob. “You will return to Boston and tell Dr. Powers that Zoe and her grandmother are no longer in Chicago. You were unable to serve the legal document to anyone and you will return it to Dr. Powers.” Damon took the paper from Zoe and slapped it into Bob’s hands. “Understand?”

  Bob nodded.

  “Good. Now come join Tristin in the cab heading to the airport.” Damon led both men outside, where a cab magically was waiting.

  “How did you do that?” Zoe asked when Damon returned to her side.

  “I compelled them.”

  “No, I meant the cab. It was there without you even calling for one.”

  “The cabdriver is a vamp from Vamptown. He’ll make sure they leave.”

  “He’s not going to kill them, is he?” Zoe asked.

  “Why do you care?”

  “Because I don’t want their blood on my hands,” Zoe said.

  “You live in Vamptown. You’re going to get blood on your hands at some point,” Damon said.

  “That’s not true,” Daniella said as she walked in the front door, which was still open. “I don’t have blood on my hands. Well, cupcake-icing blood but not the real stuff.”

  “That was before demons moved in,” he said.

  As if on cue, the organ music opening for Phantom of the Opera rose from the floor vents.

  “Wow.” Daniella was impressed. “Bruce told me about hearing the music but it doesn’t come through our vents at the cupcake shop. I listen to Adele while I’m baking. I like Florence and the Machine, too.”

  “What are you doing? Making your requests? This isn’t a radio station. Those are demons down there,” Damon said.

  “I know that.”

  “They can suck out a witch’s brains. You don’t want to know what they can do to humans,” he told Daniella.

  “I’m a druid hybrid,” she reminded him.

  “Which makes it worse for you,” Damon said.

  “Stop trying to scare her,” Zoe said, putting a protective arm around Daniella. “She can do bad things to vampires when she’s mad. I want to hear more about that, by the way.”

  “It won’t help you against demons,” Damon said. “And hybrids aren’t immune. They get the punishment of both a human and a witch. Your beating heart would be yanked out of your chest and then your brains sucked out.”

  “They’re bad. They’re evil. They’re dangerous. We get it,” Zoe said. “Sometimes people use humor as a coping mechanism.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “People?”

  “Hybrids and witches,” she said. “To quote one of my favorite TV shows, ‘Do not belittle my coping mechanisms.’”

  “Castle, right?” Daniella said. “I love that show, too. I’ve been a Nathan Fillion fan since he was in Firefly. Did you ever see that series?”

  Zoe shook her head.

  “I have it on DVD,” Daniella said.

  “In case you’re interested, I just had Neville destroy your ex-fiancé’s laptop and any other devices he might have, including thumb drives, so he can’t fall back on that to regain his memory,” Damon told Zoe. “But don’t let me interrupt your girl talk.”

  “Ignore him,” Zoe said.

  “I stopped by because Nick is meeting me here for dinner. He’s bringing corned beef and cabbage from an Irish pub in an hour or so for St. Patrick’s Day. While we wait, I thought you might need some help restoring order to your work space, Zoe. I heard via the grapevine that Damon made a bit of a mess of it,” Daniella said.

  “Zoe is a witch. She can fix it with the blink of an eye,” Damon said.

  “I’m trying not to use magic,” Zoe curtly reminded him.

  “Yeah, how is that working out for you?” he drawled.

  He was trying to get to her. And he was succeeding. “Daniella and I will be upstairs,” Zoe told him.

  “It would be a good idea to put a protection spell on her,” Damon said. “I told you that demons are not kind to hybrids.”

  Zoe was aggravated that she hadn’t thought of that herself. There was also the fact that here she was, forced to use magic again.

  “Is it okay with you that I cast the spell?” she asked Daniella.

  Daniella nodded.

  The Phantom music stopped as Zoe quickly cast the spell then shot Damon an irritated look. “Happy now?”

  He just gave her one of his sexy smirks that made her lust after his lips … and the rest of his body.

  She refused to stomp up the stairs as a sign of her anger, but boy she was sure tempted. Remembering how her anger had resulted in her levitating in her workroom, Zoe put a lid on it and focused on the space before her.

  “Gram could have gotten things back in order with a spell but I vowed not to use magic when I moved here and it seems like that’s all I’ve been doing. Which is why it’s important that I restore order to things myself, without magic,” she told Daniella.

  “What made you vow not to use magic, if you don’t mind me asking? Were you afraid someone would find out you’re a witch?” Daniella said.

  “My mother died two years ago after using black magic in a spell. After her death, I vowed not to use spells again.”

  “I’m so sorry for your loss.” Daniella hugged her. “I know what it’s like to lose your mother. Mine died when I was sixteen but I still miss her.”

  “Was she a hybrid, too?”

  “No, she was human. I was adopted. But that didn’t make her any less my mom.”

  “Of course not.”

  “She was very smart. Had a lot of common sense, you know?”

  Zoe nodded.

  “What was your mom like?” Daniella asked.

  “People say we looked alike. She was very smart, too. A big history fan. But then the demon that possessed your employee claimed that my mother sent him to hell. The demon, not your employee,” Zoe said. “I’m just having a really hard time with all of this.”

  “I wanted to thank you again for coming so fast to deal with that situation.”

  “I don’t know how well I dealt with it.”

  “I do,” Daniella said. “You were great.”

  “You weren’t in the room.”

  “Damon texted Nick that you did great.”

  “He did?”

  “You sound surprised.”

  “I am,” Zoe admitted. “Damon isn’t exactly generous with positive feedback. Is that a vamp thing?”

  “It’s more a Damon thing,” Daniella said. “Nick wasn’t great at it in the beginning, but Damon is worse than Nick ever was.”

  “You remember that cameras are watching ou
r every move in here and listening to our every word, right?” Zoe said.

  Daniella nodded, indicating she got Zoe’s unspoken request that they change the subject. “Where do all these soaps go?”

  “On the shelves here.”

  “What made you want to become a soap maker?”

  “I’ve always loved aromatherapy.”

  “Me, too. There’s nothing like the smell of baking cupcakes. Or lemon frosting.” Daniella paused to sniff one of the wrapped soaps in her hand. “Mmmm, lemon.”

  “You can have that one if you’d like. I have a matching body cream.” Zoe opened the elegant jar and held it up for Daniella to smell. “I only use pure botanicals. Fruit and vegetable oils. And no magic.”

  “These smell divine. I love the way you’ve cleverly wrapped each soap in muslin. I can’t get over how many different varieties you have here. Orange and vanilla. Cucumber and melon. Mountain spruce. Sunshine. Revive.”

  “Along with Sunshine, Revive is one of my most popular scents in the soap line. It helps restore energy with a combination of grapefruit, lime, and lemon as well as a hint of cucumber.”

  “Revive sounds like the perfect name for it. I like the name of your brand, Bella Luna, too. That’s Italian for ‘beautiful moon,’ right?”

  “Yes.”

  Daniella looked around and shook her head. “So Damon made this mess when he was searching your place yesterday?”

  “Yes.”

  “You should have had him clean it up. He can move at vamp hyper speed, you know.”

  “I know. I saw him do just that today when he scooped me up and took me to the funeral home.”

  “It was for a good cause. Phil is a really good guy,” Daniella said. She grabbed another handful of soaps from the floor. “I notice you’ve got labels on the shelves all ready for the soap scents.”

  “My gram did that when she used a spell to set everything in here up for me. She was trying to save me work.”

  “I also notice the soaps are in alphabetical order.”

  “Yeah, I keep the bottles of essential oils in alphabetical order, too. Blame it on my library degree,” Zoe said.

  “You’re an ex-librarian?”

  “A former librarian, yes.”

  “When I was in middle school, I used to think that would be my dream job. Sitting around and reading books all day.”

  “I don’t know of any librarian who gets to do that,” Zoe said. “It’s a tough job. Especially now with people questioning the need to even have a public library when they can use the Internet. American libraries are having a rough time in these economic times. Cities are cutting back hours and staff.”

  “Is that what happened to you?”

  “No. That’s a long story.”

  “One I hope you’ll tell me sometime when we’re not under observation,” Daniella said.

  Zoe smiled. “Deal.”

  “Notice I did not ask you about the ex-fiancé of yours that Damon mentioned downstairs.”

  “I appreciate that,” Zoe said.

  “You can tell me about him some other time, too.” Daniella paused to look around the room. “This is a beautiful space. You know, legend has it that this house was built to copy the layout of Al Capone’s house.”

  “He lived here?”

  “No, but one of the members of his gang owned this house and the one next door. Or that’s what I heard growing up. You know about the tunnels, right?”

  “That’s where the demons are.”

  “Correct. The tunnels were originally built during the Prohibition era to move bootleg liquor from place to place. They were updated with better lighting thanks to the Vamptown Council.”

  “Have you ever been down there?”

  “Yes.” Daniella’s normally cheerful voice changed, turning quiet. “I was abducted by the head of a rival group of vampires and held captive down there.”

  “I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”

  “It only lasted an hour or two but it seemed like forever.”

  “Did Nick come rescue you?” Zoe asked.

  “Actually, I kind of rescued myself, but I don’t want to go into it. I’d rather talk about St. Patrick’s Day.”

  “It’s a big day in Boston,” Zoe said.

  “In Chicago, too. They even dye the Chicago River green,” Daniella said. “And the spring equinox is soon. Isn’t that important for witches?”

  “It’s not as important as the solstices, and even then the importance depends on your coven. I haven’t celebrated it since my mother’s death.” Zoe paused as an ancient belief came to mind. The equinox represented equal hours of light and dark. A science teacher in high school had informed her that there was actually still a difference of a few minutes, but in a witch’s perspective the vernal equinox—also known as the spring equinox—represented the advent of light starting to overcome darkness. Her witch’s intuition told her that the date was an important one for obtaining the Book of Darkness. Her train of thought was interrupted by Daniella.

  “You said the demon at our funeral home blamed your mom for him being in hell?”

  “Yes, but he refused to give me any details.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “I don’t know what to believe.”

  “I know what’s that like,” Daniella said sympathetically. “When Nick told me he was a vampire, I refused to believe it at first. I thought I’d hit my head and was in a coma or something. At least you knew Nick and Damon were vampires when you first met them. As for your mom, well, from what you’ve told me about her, I don’t see how she would send anyone to hell unless they deserved to go there. The most likely thing is that the demon lied. They’re not exactly known for doing good deeds.”

  “I know. It’s just that hearing stuff about my mom—”

  “Brings the pain of her loss back,” Daniella said.

  Zoe nodded, blinking back tears. “Sorry to be a wimp.”

  “You are not a wimp.” Daniella gave her another hug. “And neither am I.”

  “No way. You are a kick-butt druid hybrid who can protect herself from evil vampires. I wish I could do that with these demons.”

  “That’s Damon’s job,” Daniella told her. “As for me being a kick-butt druid, I’m really just a cupcake maker living with a vampire in an apartment above my cupcake shop. Maybe it seems normal to me now because I grew up living above the funeral home,” Daniella said.

  “Was that strange? Living above the funeral home, I mean.”

  “Not really, no.”

  “I don’t think I could handle that.”

  “Why?”

  “I have a thing about funeral homes.”

  “What kind of thing?”

  “An avoidance thing,” Zoe said.

  “It’s not a fave hangout for most people.”

  “Unless they are vampires.”

  “Even then,” Daniella said.

  “Damon doesn’t like me asking questions about the funeral home.”

  “I can understand that. But what do you have against funeral homes?”

  “I guess it goes back to my dad’s funeral. He died in a fire when I was a little girl.” Zoe remembered the whispers about the family curse, that no man would be good enough for an Adams woman. “I thought funeral homes crushed you into little pieces. He was cremated. My mom spread his ashes from a sailboat in his favorite cove off the coast per his wishes. But at the funeral there was this urn that someone had put my father in, like an evil genie locking him in there. I’m sorry, but funeral homes kind of freak me out.”

  “I understand,” Daniella said. “We don’t have to talk.” Reaching for a pad of paper she wrote What’s with you and Damon? I sense sparks there.

  Nothing going on, Zoe wrote.

  Do you want there to be?

  No way.

  Because you’re a witch?

  Because he’s impossible.

  Impossible but hot.

  So?

  So aren’t u
tempted? Don’t lie.

  Bella jumped onto the worktable. “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing,” Zoe said, turning the pad of paper over so Bella couldn’t read it. “I was just telling Daniella how aromatherapy centers on the way natural fragrances affect our thoughts and feelings. Lavender is well known as a calming scent. That’s why it was often used in sachets or small pillows to help people sleep.”

  Bella yawned. “Bo-ring.”

  “It looks like we’ve taken care of most of the mess,” Zoe said.

  “It does look much better than it did before,” Daniella agreed. While they’d been talking, they’d managed to restore order to the workroom.

  Zoe and Bella accompanied Daniella downstairs. “Thanks again for everything,” Zoe said.

  “There may be just enough time before Nick comes for me to run back to the shop to pick up dessert. I forgot to bring it.” Daniella opened the front door. “Oh look, it’s Mrs. Seely’s Chihuahuas Princess and Coco. She’s dressed them up with Irish bowler hats and green bow ties for St. Patrick’s Day. Aren’t they cute? I wonder what they’re doing on your front porch, though.”

  “Demons!” Bella hissed and tore upstairs as if the beasts of hell were after her.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Demons?” Daniella repeated, nervously looking up and down the block. “Where?”

  Growling ferociously considering their size, the two leprechaun wannabe dogs raced inside and took off after Bella up the stairs.

  “Come back here!” Zoe cried, rushing upstairs after them.

  She entered her workroom to find Bella on the worktable. The feline was arching her back and hissing. She looked like a porcupine with her fur standing on end while the dogs scrambled below, jumping up and trying to get at her.

  “Bad dogs,” Zoe said.

  “Demons!” Bella hissed again.

  The two dogs turned in unison to face Zoe. They bared their teeth, and their eyes took on an evil glow. “We are the Hounds of Hell.”

  After the day Zoe had had, there was no way she was backing down from this standoff. She recognized the voice coming from the little dog. “Guy, is that you? Are you possessing Chihuahuas now?”

  “I told you this wouldn’t work,” another voice said through the other dog.

  “Who is that?” Zoe asked.