by Vivi Anna
Quinn leaned forward and put his head in his hands. He had been hoping for another answer. Another way to solve the problem.
“I take it you know where it is?” She eyed him curiously.
He shook his head. “Not where. But I know someone who knows.”
“By the look on your face, I’d say this someone is pretty bad.”
“You could say that.”
She nudged him with her foot. “Well, man up, Quinn. Whatever you have to do, you better do it. This isn’t some small problem. We’re talking end of days stuff, here. If the Cabal finds that chest and uses that book, it won’t matter who this person is, because we’ll all be dead.”
“When I find the chest and the book, what do I do with them?”
“Bring the book to me. I know a place where even demons fear to tread. I can keep it safe there.”
Quinn left Quianna’s office with a deep sinking feeling in his gut. It almost made him sick to think about what he had to do to find the chest. But the powerhouse professor had been right, he had to man up and do what needed to be done. No one else was going to do it. He had been entrusted with the key and he had lost it. It had been his responsibility. Now finding the chest was his as well. He was the only one on Earth who could do it. He just had a pit stop to make first.
The new age store located downtown looked like any other crystal and tarot shop. Mary, the proprietor, doled out spiritual wisdom and metaphysical prophecy to every patron that passed through her doors. But when Quinn walked in, she frowned deeply and shook her head.
“I was having a good day,” she said.
“Hey, Mary, how’s business?”
“On the light side.” She moved her hefty frame around the counter to stand in front of him. The beads on her wrists clicked when she moved. The scent of patchouli and lavender wafted to his nose. “But I take it, since you’re here, that’s going to change.”
“I need some supplies.”
She sighed heavily, as though she was going to deny him, but she swept her arm toward the back curtain. She never said no; she just liked to put on the drama. She knew he was one of her best customers. He and the Crimson Hall Cabal.
“Come on, then.”
Quinn followed her into the back where she kept her stores of “other” types of metaphysical supplies. The type reserved for those who dabbled in the darker side of the magical arts.
“What do you need?”
Quinn examined the shelves of bottles and tins. “Goofer dust, asafoetida, horehound, another blessed chalk stick and some yarrow.”
Mary narrowed her eyes at him. “Who are you calling?”
He shrugged. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The stuff you’re asking for, Quinn, is for calling forth a powerful demon and keeping it in line. Who is it?”
“It doesn’t matter. Do you have the stuff or not?” He pulled out a wad of cash from his pocket.
She nodded and went to the shelves to start pulling down jars. “I have everything you need.” She stacked it all on the table. She sighed. “Between you and the Cabal, I’m surprised demons aren’t running amok on this plane.”
Quinn opened his leather satchel and shoved the ingredients inside. He peeled off money and handed it to her.
Mary slid it into the pocket of her flowered housedress but pinned him with a hard glare. “Be careful, Quinn. You’re playing with fire.”
He nodded. “I know. But it has to be done.” Closing his bag, he hefted it onto his shoulder and left the store, his heart as heavy as the bag he carried.
When he got home, he went straight down to the basement to prepare. Using his new blessed chalk he drew a large pentagram on the cement floor, inscribing it with familiar symbols. Symbols he’d been using his whole life as an exorcist and demon hunter. He left two open triangles in the pentagram. This was where he would put the two sigils that would call the demon he needed. They’d been burned into his memory. But for different reasons.
He chalked them in. Around the pentagram he sifted a thick line of goofer dust. It was a protective circle. The demon couldn’t cross it if Quinn didn’t want it to. And until he got a binding agreement, he didn’t plan on letting the demon go anywhere.
Once that was done, Quinn set everything aside, lit seven white candles and started the ritual.
In Latin, he spoke the words to invoke the spell, then he called the demon using its real name. The one that gave him power over it.
“I call you, Daeva, Seductress of Shadows.”
At first nothing happened, and Quinn wondered if he’d mistakenly written the symbols backward or upside down. But then a slight breeze blew through the basement. None of the windows were open. Then came the smell. The delectable scent of cinnamon. He tried not to inhale it. But it was difficult not to. Cinnamon had always been one of his favorite smells. It made his gut clench with the memories it brought.
Three popping sounds echoed in the room. Like fingers snapping.
Then it appeared.
Dressed in tight black pants, black leather knee-high boots and a sapphire-blue blouse that accentuated full, firm breasts, the demon smiled at him, and he couldn’t suppress the shiver that raced down his back.
“Hello, lover.”
Chapter 5
“You look surprised to see me, Quinn.” Tilting her head, she looked him up and down. “Oh, that’s right. You never did get to see me in my preferred form. You were so quick to get rid of me. Never gave me a chance to introduce myself properly.”
It had been three years since Daeva had seen Quinn Strom. And she had to admit that he looked as dangerous and delicious as ever. His inner darkness called to her like a moth to a flame. But she couldn’t let him see that. She couldn’t let him have the upper hand here. She’d never give it to him again.
“How’s my favorite exorcist?”
“I didn’t call you to have a trite and pointless conversation.”
“No? Too bad. That’s definitely one thing I missed about you.”
She saw him bristle and grinned. Score one for Daeva.
Quinn had always prided himself on his ability to speak on all kinds of subjects. On several occasions, he’d bored her to tears. But she’d listened to him attentively. That was what a person did when they were in love.
Love. Ha. Quinn Strom knew nothing about the emotion. If he had, he’d never have done what he did to her.
But, alas, she obviously was not here to discuss the past. Quinn had something dire to talk to her about, or he would never have called her forth. Never. She knew him well enough to know that he held a grudge the way a miser held money.
“So, to what do I owe this utmost pleasure of seeing your handsome face again?” Although she had her suspicions that it had everything to do with her twelve-hour torture session and Klaven’s questions.
Thankfully, that had ended without Daeva revealing much of anything—nothing important anyway. He’d poked and prodded at her until he’d gotten bored. And her restorative powers made it look like she’d barely been bruised. Although the truth was it had taken a lot out of her and she was feeling its effects.
“I need information.”
“I gathered that. On what?”
“The Chest of Sorrows.”
And there it was. She’d known it deep down, the moment she’d heard that the little goblin Loir had gone topside for a key. Loir had confirmed it herself when she snuck into Daeva’s chambers as she healed from her torture session to warn her. Sorcerers used goblins for some of their work. She assumed it was one of the cabals that had stolen the key from the great Quinn Strom. She was surprised he was still alive.
“What do you want to know that you don’t already?” she asked.
He paced nervously in front of the pentagram. Usually he paced when he wasn’t quite confident in what he was doing or the decisions he was making. “Where is it?”
She laughed. “Are you kidding? Do you really think I’m going to tell you that
?”
“Yes, I do.” He gave her a hard stare.
She’d always loved his gray-green eyes. They were so intense. Always searching for something. At one time, he’d look at her with those eyes and she’d see the desire in them and succumb to it. She’d surrender to him without a second thought.
Now, he looked at her as if she was the worst thing he’d ever seen. She supposed betrayal did that to a person.
“What are you going to do, Quinn, if I don’t tell you?” She arched an eyebrow and ran a finger along her lips. “Torture it out of me?”
“I might.”
“You’re a bastard, true. But I don’t think you have it in you to do that to me.”
“Maybe I’ve changed in the last three years.”
She met his gaze, looking for something of the old Quinn. The man she’d loved, who had loved her. After a few seconds, she wasn’t sure he was still in there. “Oh, I suspect you have. But you still have those interesting morals. Those you will never let go of, I am sure. I fell victim to them, as I recall, once upon a time.”
He sighed and rubbed a hand over his haggard face. It was obvious he hadn’t slept in a while. He looked harder, sadder. As though he held the world on his shoulders. She supposed he did, in a way, considering that he’d been the key keeper and now no doubt felt responsible for finding the chest and keeping it safe.
Quinn had always been a crusader. It was one of the things she’d loved about him. And that had also been the thing that had killed their relationship in the end. His single-minded sense of justice.
He could never see the shades of gray in between those morals of his.
Gray had always been her favorite color.
“I called you, Daeva, thinking there was some sort of good person inside you. A person who would do the right thing.”
She laughed again. “The right thing? Huh. And what exactly is that, Quinn?”
He stared at her and she stared back. It was the showdown they’d never had when she’d possessed the body of the woman he’d fallen in love with. The woman she’d been, mind, body and soul for ten years. Seven years before she’d even met Quinn and fallen for him.
At first when she’d confessed her secret about being a demon, he hadn’t truly believed her. He’d thought she was pulling a really bad prank on him. He’d asked her a lot of questions to prove it. Daeva had told him things only a demon would know, and she’d also told him about burying the Chest of Sorrows over a hundred years ago. It was then that he had truly believed. And it was as if a switch had been flicked on. He’d gone into demon hunter mode.
He’d bound her to a chair, drawn a pentagram around her, sprayed her with holy water and sent her screaming back to hell. How he’d dealt with Rachel’s comatose body, she could only imagine. Maybe the real woman had woken up.
Daeva had never gotten a chance to say goodbye to anything that had mattered to her. The friends she’d made, family members who had loved her like their own, coworkers she’d grown accustomed to. She hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye to the life she’d made. She hadn’t been able to say goodbye to Quinn the way she wanted to.
When he had her tied in that chair, he’d acted as if they hadn’t spent three wonderful years together. That they hadn’t just spent the entire day before in bed, making love and talking about their future. He’d pretended that he hadn’t just told her that he loved her more than anything in the world. She remembered the tears, though, and the way he’d looked at her through them.
He dropped his gaze. “Are you going to tell me or not?”
She tapped a finger against her lips. “Hmm, since you asked so nicely, I think not.”
“I guess I was kidding myself, thinking a demon would even consider doing the right thing.”
“Yeah, maybe you were. You seem to do that a lot.”
He glared at her, then went to the wall, grabbed a folding chair and dragged it out to the middle of the room, in front of the pentagram. He unfolded it and sat. “I can sit here all night.”
She smirked at him, then settled onto the hard cement floor, crossing her legs. “So can I.”
For the next hour, they sat and stared at each other. Daeva broke her gaze once in a while to examine her nails. It seemed to piss Quinn off and that’s why she did it. She really didn’t think that her nails were more important than the situation. She just liked to revel in the way the vein at his right temple would throb.
“What happened to your arm?” she asked.
“What do you care?”
“I don’t. I’m just being polite.”
He held his forearm up and looked at it. “Courtesy of your little goblin friend.”
“Loir did that to you?”
He nodded.
“Well, then, you must’ve deserved it. I’m surprised that she didn’t kill you. She’s usually very bloodthirsty.” Daeva spoke with her tongue in cheek, because Loir was anything but. She was one of the kindest creatures Daeva knew. Unless, of course, she was forced to do something. Then she could be lethal.
“I’m surprised she didn’t, as well. She said you would hate it if she killed me.”
Daeva examined her nails again. “Hmm, she must have been mistaken. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have alluded to such a thing.”
She had though. In her note. She’d simply written, “Don’t kill him.”
Another half hour went by. He was as stubborn as she remembered him to be. Maybe more so. She didn’t remember the stern wrinkles in his brow, the way it was now. That was new. But she had a feeling it had something to do with her. She’d put those lines of pain there.
She sighed. “Are we seriously going to sit here all night?”
“Until you help me, yes.”
“I never said I wouldn’t help you, Quinn, I just can’t tell you where the chest is.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
She shrugged. “Whatever makes you feel better.”
“Well, that’s the only help I need. The location. So if you won’t give it to me, then there’s nothing to talk about.”
She stood and brushed the dirt off her black pants. “Fine. Send me back, then. I have laundry to do.”
He looked at her, and she could see the hesitation on his face. He obviously hadn’t expected her to call his bluff. He should’ve known she would. She possessed all the same personality traits she had when she’d been wearing a human birthday suit. She was basically the same, except for a few physical changes.
Sighing, he shook his head. “What’s it going to take?”
“I’ll help you find the chest, but I want something in return.”
“Of course you do,” he sneered.
“Play nice or you can forget it. And when the Cabal opens the chest and uses the book, and your world goes to shit, don’t complain to me about it.” She pointed a finger at him. “Besides, you know as well as I do that it’s the nature of my...condition to make a bargain.”
“What are your terms?”
“I guide you to where the chest is, you get it, and in return I get to stay topside in a new body forever.”
Quinn stood, his chair overturning from the suddenness of his movement. The banging of metal on cement echoed through the basement. “Absolutely not.”
“Then send me back, because those are my terms and I won’t change them.”
He shook his head. “Nope. That’s too easy.” He turned toward the stairs. “We’ll see how cooperative you are after a few more hours in that pentagram.” He mounted the stairs.
She watched him leave. When he was at the top of the stairs he flicked off the light. The room plunged into darkness. Not a big deal for Daeva, though—she could see in the dark. But it was starting to get drafty. Right now she was almost missing the hot stifling air in hell.
“You’re a jerk, Quinn Strom.”
He slammed the door shut on her words.
Chapter 6
Quinn tried to keep himself busy. Tried to keep his mind occupied. But it was
difficult with a demon in his basement. Especially one that smelled like cinnamon and looked like sex on a stick.
She’d been right, her appearance did startle him. When he’d known her, she’d been a lithe blond with an athletic build and a pert little nose. Her name had been Rachel. The demon who had popped into the pentagram was a curvy redhead with stormy gray eyes. She looked very different from the woman he’d loved, but something about her was still the same. The fluid way she moved, the tilt of her head as she regarded him. If he had passed her on the street, he suspected he would’ve recognized her.
The thought was completely unnerving. He didn’t want to recognize the woman from three years ago in the demon he’d just called. He wanted them to be two distinct entities, but deep down he knew that they weren’t. They were like two sides of one complicated coin. He supposed Daeva had always been a part of Rachel, however much he wanted to deny it.
By the third hour, after straightening up everything the goblin had ruined, Quinn ended up in the kitchen to make dinner. He flung open the refrigerator and started pulling out various ingredients. He grabbed a pot and a pan, and tossed in this and that, frying and boiling, anything to occupy his thoughts. In the end, he had made spaghetti Bolognese. It had been one of Rachel’s favorite meals. And he’d made enough for two.
“Damn it,” he mumbled under his breath.
He stared at the food, unsure of exactly what to do. He could make himself a plate and put the rest in containers for leftovers. Or he could fix another plate and take it down to his captive. Demons didn’t derive any nutrition from food, but he knew they reveled in all mortal pleasures. Like food, and drink, and sex.
Resigned, Quinn grabbed two plates from the cupboard and put spaghetti onto both. Picking up one plate, he got a fork and took it down to the basement.
He flicked on the lights. As if weighted down with leaden feet, he descended the stairs. When he reached the bottom, he saw Daeva sitting cross-legged in the middle of the pentagram with her eyes closed. It looked as if she was meditating.
“Oh, my, is that spaghetti Bolognese I smell?” Her eyelids slowly fluttered open.
