by Anna Abner
“Holden.” Rebecca pressed both hands to the other man’s chest. “Ease up. He came here willingly.” Gesturing toward Derek, she said, “Let’s go into the diner and sit and talk.”
“I can’t.” Thankfully, they both moved far enough away that he could make a run for it. He was shorter and smaller than Holden and squeezed around him. “I have to find Jessa.” He jogged out the back door. Holden chased him, but Derek ran faster.
At the next street corner, he flagged a taxi, hopped in, and gave the cabbie Jessa’s address.
* * *
Jolie popped into a sparse, monochromatic apartment. Into the bedroom, actually, because that’s where Cole Burkov happened to be at that exact moment. When she focused on a person, she traveled right to them. That was the cool part. The awful part was Cole wasn’t alone in his bedroom, and Jolie witnessed him and his girlfriend Talia tangled upon his bed in a highly compromising position.
Fighting her gag reflex, Jolie closed her eyes and focused on the only other necromancer she knew. David Wilkes.
She appeared in his kitchen. He wasn’t alone, either, but at least he wasn’t naked. She’d interrupted a sweet family moment between him, Daniela Ferraro, and a messy-haired little boy.
Great.
She didn’t know what was worse, seeing Cole and Talia in bed or witnessing this vision of perfect domesticity.
But there was no nudity, so she hung around.
On her knees in the living room, Daniela was sorting the contents of an emergency 72-hour kit. “We need more batteries,” she said. “Just in case.”
“Did you pack his favorite markers for the car ride?” David called back. “It’s a long drive to Raleigh.”
“I did. But, hopefully,” Daniela said, “the storm will head out to sea and we won’t have to evacuate at all.”
“Hopefully.”
“Hey,” greeted an unfriendly male voice.
Jolie spun on a teenaged boy—a dead teenaged boy—staring at her.
“Hi,” she said, frowning. “Who are you?”
He faked horror. “Who am I? I’m Tony. Who are you? These are my humans. Go find your own.”
“Hello,” David called to Jolie from the stove, interrupting the boy’s inquisition. “I saw you at Sparky’s earlier, didn’t I?”
“I’m Jolie.” She scrunched her nose at Tony before approaching David. The good-looking necromancer was stirring some kind of chicken and veggie mix on the stovetop.
“You’re Rebecca’s spirit companion?” David asked.
Well, that had been the plan. Except Rebecca wasn’t interested in casting magic. Therefore, she had no use for a spirit companion.
“No,” Jolie said. “I’m not. I’m still trying to find a caster who needs me.” What a pathetic creature she had become.
“Stay for a while.” David served dinner on two nice china plates and one plastic dish with a cartoon bear printed on it. “You’re always welcome.”
Tony appeared over David’s shoulder, making a throat-cutting gesture at Jolie.
“Who’s always welcome?” Daniela asked as she closed the lid on her kit and got the little boy off the computer.
“Jolie,” David explained. “She was at the coven meeting at Sparky’s.” He smiled kindly at Jolie. “She’s a sweet looking young woman in her twenties.”
“Twenty-one,” she clarified.
“Then of course she’s welcome,” Daniela said. “Just don’t tell each other cool secrets and stuff right in front of me, kay?”
David leaned nearer for a tender kiss. “Never.”
Jolie ducked away, uncomfortable with such an intimate moment, and came face to face with Tony. He made angry and furious expressions until she turned her back on him.
Maybe this place wasn’t for her, either.
But she didn’t have anywhere else to go. It hurt too much to wander Jessa’s apartment, invisible and suffering Esmeralda’s chatter. So, despite Tony’s aggression, Jolie stayed the rest of the night.
* * *
Though Derek’s memory was patchy, at best, he remembered exactly which apartment in the sprawling complex was Jessa’s. He paid the taxi driver, carried his overnight bag, and rushed across a square of grass before climbing cold concrete stairs to the second-floor apartment marked number forty-two. He knocked once, got no immediate response, and all that adrenalin and panic swelled.
“Jessa!” He dropped his luggage and pounded upon the door. It was after six a.m. If he remembered correctly, she didn’t sleep late.
Still no answer.
He pictured her hurt, in pain, tortured by the cabal.
He stepped back, sucked in a deep breath, and charged, but the door swung open at the last second and Derek slammed into a very startled Jessa. His momentum carried him straight through her, knocking them both off balance. The moment he realized they were going down, he wrapped his arms around her and twisted, taking the brunt of the fall on his shoulder.
They tumbled to the floor.
“Jessa?” He lifted onto his elbows enough to see into her face in the hazy morning light. His eyes met hers, and a whoosh passed through him. Memories, emotions, and desires he’d thought lost forever re-surfaced with a jolt.
He groaned. “I remember,” he marveled. “I remember kissing.”
Before his logical mind could catch up to his more carnal instincts, his lips met hers, and it wasn’t strange or rough. Oh, no. It was like tasting the sweetest piece of fruit, like waking slowly from a good dream. He moaned again, nibbling at her lower lip and then taking refuge at the corner of her mouth.
Her entire body softened in response to him, and he cupped her face tenderly. Her warm little fingers made furrows in the hair at the back of his skull. When her plump lips parted and her tongue licked at the seam of his lips he nearly blacked out from the exquisite pleasure.
“She’s gonna die…I don’t know what to do. What am I supposed to do?” The ghostly voice rambled through Derek’s consciousness, but he didn’t pay it much attention. He saw the female spirit—an attractive young woman in a full body wetsuit and the same blonde hair as Jessa—blinking erratically near the ceiling, but he’d been haunted by so many spirits in the past four months he didn’t react anymore.
“Get off her!” This second voice though was very human and much harder to ignore.
At the interruption, Jessa jerked her head to the right, breaking their kiss.
“Derek, get off me,” she said under her breath. And then louder, “This is Derek, Esmeralda. He’s, uh, an old friend.”
Derek rose to his feet and then pulled Jessa up beside him.
He glanced at the ghost first and made fleeting eye contact. Though she saw him, she didn’t seem to care.
“What am I supposed to do?” she groaned heavenward, floating from one corner of the room to the other. “I don’t know how to fix this.”
But Derek had been a necromancer his entire life and was well aware staring too long at ghosts made the living uncomfortable. So, he nodded at Esmeralda. In return, she gave him an evil-eyed stare.
“Do you need help?” she asked Jessa.
Derek flicked his gaze toward Jessa, and the sight of her—all of her—was a punch to the solar plexus. For a long few seconds he couldn’t make air move through his lungs.
Aside from a pretty skirt and blouse, Jessa also sported floating neon spell marks and the inky black shadow of a demon over her shoulder.
Jessa was under a summoning spell. She would raise the second pillar.
“Oh, no.” The shaking started up again.
Derek looked over his shoulder, expecting the Dark Caster to be standing there smirking in triumph.
“No, we’re cool,” Jessa told her roommate.
The dark-haired Esmeralda padded down the hallway. A door closed behind her.
“This is so bad,” the spirit wailed. “Romeo needs to leave. We’ve got real problems.”
“I’m here to help,” he snapped. Was she another
spirit sent by the Dark Caster to torment him? Because Jessa wasn’t a necromancer. She couldn’t see spirits. The only reason to explain the ghost’s presence was she was there to make his life harder.
“You can see me?” The spirit ceased crying.
“I can see you.”
“I’m Jolie McAvoy.”
“Derek Walker,” he returned.
“I’ve heard of you.”
Jessa laid a warm, living hand against his unshaven cheek and turned his face to her. “Are you okay?”
No. His touch would taint her. He jerked out of reach, needing space and oxygen for a moment to clear his head. He couldn’t think straight.
He shouldn’t have kissed her.
“You don’t look any better,” Jessa observed, an undercurrent of pain in her tone. “I thought you’d be better by now.”
“I told you,” he said, the words sticky and ponderous, “to go to Holden.” He would’ve helped her with the summoning spell. He had experience with them. “Why didn’t you?”
She must have read the hurt and confusion in his expression because she recoiled. “Why would I?”
“Did you talk to Paul today?” he asked.
“Why?”
“He’s trying to hurt you.” In fact, there wasn’t time to explain. Not when the cabal could be on their way to collect him. Derek hurried down the hall and through her open bedroom door. “We have to leave.”
“Why?” she repeated, but louder.
Jessa’s room was a wreck—shoes on the dresser, random sheets of paper all over the floor, expensive electronics piled willy-nilly in the closet—but he found clean clothes and threw them into a gym bag by the handfuls.
“Stop!” Jessa tried to wrestle her belongings from his hands, but he evaded her and added a couple pairs of shoes to his cache. “I’m not going anywhere until you start making sense.”
“It won’t make sense.” Magic never did to the uninitiated. Best to get her somewhere safe and deal with explanations later.
Jolie’s spirit appeared over the bed. “Can you help my sister?”
“Maybe.”
What if I can’t?
He couldn’t rationalize it, but his chest hurt in a new and surprisingly painful way. It was more than simple fear of Paul. Caring about Jessa made the anxiety worse. He couldn’t handle it if something happened to her.
“That’s not good enough,” Jolie shouted. “Jessa’s in danger. If you can’t help her, who can?”
The floorboards under his feet vibrated.
“I’m taking her to someone who can help,” he grumbled, avoiding Jessa’s increasingly violent attempts to retrieve her clothing. He ducked a slap and went into the bathroom, dumping toiletries into the bag.
“Who are you talking to?” Jessa demanded. “Put my stuff down. Just stop. You’re scaring me.”
Esmeralda shouted through the walls, “Is everything okay, Jessa?”
The last thing Derek wanted to do was scare Jessa. He knew real panic and he wouldn’t inflict it on her for anything in the world. So, he paused in his packing to try to alleviate her fears.
“Holden can help,” he said.
She reached for the bag in one final attempt to rip it away from him, but he moved out of reach.
“Help what?” she exclaimed. “I’m not going anywhere with you, Derek, until you talk to me.”
“Kidnap her,” Jolie yelled. “Throw her over your shoulder. If you can help her, then do it.”
“I don’t want to scare her,” he said to the spirit.
“Scare who?” Jessa asked. “You know what?” She threw up her hands. “Forget it. I don’t care. I’m calling Paul. You’re his problem now.” She dug a cell phone from a computer bag on the floor.
The spirit was right. This wasn’t going to be easy.
He took the phone from her and stashed it in his pocket. She squealed in outrage.
“Jessa, you have to come with me,” he said, defending his head from a barrage of wild blows. “If you don’t, I will make you.”
“Derek, you’re freaking me out,” she screamed in between slaps to his arms and head.
And he despised himself for scaring her, but he just couldn’t think of any other way.
“I’m sorry, Jessa.” He forced her over his left shoulder. Quickly, he grabbed her bag.
She fought, clawing at his back and arms. “Derek, what the hell?”
“Put her down!” Her roommate re-appeared. Then, sensing his motives, Esmeralda hurried into the kitchen. He assumed she was going for a phone, but she reappeared in the archway brandishing a serrated steak knife. “Right now!”
Ignoring her, Derek carried Jessa toward the front door.
“You’re not taking her, you sick bastard.”
He heard the rapid footfalls marking Esmeralda’s approach and turned to deflect her knife, but he was clumsy carrying both the bag and a squirming Jessa. Derek glanced down at the handle of a knife jutting from his belly.
Open-mouthed, Esmeralda stumbled away as blood bloomed red. “Don’t take my friend. Please, just go and leave us alone.”
Derek swiped car keys off an end table and then eased down the stairs with infinite care, even as Jessa struggled like a pissed off panther, because every breath was a new slice from the knife. Warm blood slid under his clothes, tickling down his thigh.
“I’m calling the police!” the roommate screamed after him.
Which meant he had a few minutes to get Jessa to Holden so he could break the summoning spell before police and detectives were circling their location.
He wrestled Jessa into the front seat of her car, tossed the bags after her, and only then did he remove the knife and drop it onto the pavement at his feet.
“What are you doing?” Jessa shrieked, going for the door.
Derek was a millisecond faster and hit the child lock button, and then he got in and started the engine.
There was no way he could explain—yet—what was happening to her, so he didn’t waste time or breath trying to. He rolled her car out of the parking lot and made a careful left onto North Marine Blvd. He was five minutes from Sparky’s.
“Are you listening to me?” Jessa demanded. “You’re sick,” she decided. “You got worse.” She made a dive for the keys in the ignition, the car swerved, but he righted it in time.
And then Jessa stopped fighting. “You’re bleeding. Why are you bleeding?”
“Your roommate,” he grumbled, turning into Sparky’s parking lot. Too fast. The car bottomed out in the driveway, and the jerking motion tore Derek’s wound. Blood flowed faster.
He parked, ignoring the pain and the accompanying dizziness.
“Esmeralda did that? Oh, no. I didn’t think she’d ever go through with it.”
“I’m fine.” He climbed out of the car, giving her a wide berth. “Come with me.” In case he didn’t look very trustworthy, bleeding and rumpled, he added, “I don’t want to hurt you.” He swallowed, trying to dislodge the words. “I want to help you.”
She snorted in disbelief, but then her eyes fell upon his oozing wound. He concealed it with his left hand, but warm blood pulsed against his palm.
“Where are we?” She curled against the passenger door.
“A diner.” He really needed her to follow him willingly because he was feeling lightheaded, and he didn’t think he could tussle with her again. “My friend owns it. Wait. Rebecca,” he said, remembering the one person who might convince Jessa to get out of the car. “Rebecca works here. Come inside. I’ll tell you everything.”
Jolie appeared on the sidewalk to the sound of sirens crying in the distance. “Police are on their way.”
“Jessa?” he pleaded, stepping further from the car.
“You need an ambulance,” she said, climbing over the console.
“I’m fine,” he lied, gesturing for her to walk ahead of him.
The front door opened, and Holden poked his head out. “What the hell happened?” He jogged over
and grabbed for Derek.
A flash of memory. A cramped closet stinking of smoke and sweat. Magic crackling like firecrackers. A demon on the loose.
He flinched away, stumbling over a curb and nearly toppling onto the pavement. He kept his feet under him, but blood pulsed from his wound.
“Holy shit. She’s under a summoning spell. She’s the second pillar?” Holden asked in awe, staring at Jessa. “That’s why you were searching for her? Why didn’t you just say so?”
Derek shrugged drunkenly.
“A what?” Jessa asked.
Holden acted as if he hadn’t heard her. “I prayed I’d never see another one of these as long as I lived.”
“She’s not safe out here,” Derek reminded him. The Dark Caster had eyes everywhere.
“Go through the back,” Holden said. “I’ll clear out the dining room. I don’t want my customers seeing you like this.”
Holden hurried Jessa inside the diner’s barrier spell. Derek shuffled around to the back. Behind him, bells tinkled and car engines started up. The customers must be leaving. Sure enough, by the time Derek made it into Sparky’s kitchen there were only two people inside. Holden and Jessa.
The demon over her shoulder cackled.
Chapter Six
The moment Holden put his arm around Jessa, she felt such a sense of relief a tiny whimper squeaked from the back of her throat. Holden Clark wasn’t insane, she was sure of it. If Rebecca Powell had agreed to marry him, he couldn’t be anything less than upstanding and logical. As he guided her through the front door of Sparky’s burgers and malts, she leaned into his solid strength and tried to shake off the aftereffects of being carried out of her home against her will.
It wasn’t Derek’s fault. Not really. He’d sustained a serious brain injury less than six months ago. He couldn’t help the symptoms obviously still plaguing him. Because of that, she cut him some slack. If he were in his right mind, he never would have broken down her door, surprised her with a kiss, and then dragged her out of her home. The Derek she knew was too well groomed and spoiled to trouble himself with whether one girl over another wished to spend time with him. Besides, carrying Jessa would have wrinkled his clothes.
