“What was that?” Vika asked, giving him a stunned once-over.

“It was an awful, botched attempt. A horrible kiss, as far as kisses go. Sorry.”

“Never apologize for a kiss.” She clutched the front of his shirt, pulling him down to her mouth, and kissed him.

More intrigued than startled—although he was still kicking himself for such an awkward first contact—Certainly stepped in closer and slipped an arm around her slender back. All he’d needed was a test kiss, and an acceptance from her. He relaxed now, and Vika’s mouth melded against his. Of course, he should expect nothing less than perfect from her. Perfect looks, perfect life, perfect kiss. And suddenly he wanted to mar that perfection, to imprint his own rough and messy darkness.

About the Author

MICHELE HAUF has been writing romance, action-adventure and fantasy stories for more than twenty years. Her first published novel was Dark Rapture. France, musketeers, vampires and faeries populate her stories. And if she followed the adage “write what you know,” all her stories would have snow in them. Fortunately, she steps beyond her comfort zone and writes about countries she has never visited and of creatures she has never seen.

Michele can be found on Facebook and Twitter and at michelehauf.com. You can also write to Michele at PO Box 23, Anoka, MN 55303, USA.

This Wicked Magic
Michele Hauf

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Believe in something. It doesn’t matter what that something is, so long as you never stop believing in the magic of love.

Chapter 1

Paris

There are things he had done. Bad things. Dangerous things. Wicked things. He’d made mistakes. Broken rules. He regretted.

And he did not regret.

Everything he had ever done had been to expand his knowledge. Learning was never a bad thing. Most of the time. Sometimes a man needed to sacrifice for the greater good. Or that was how he’d talked himself into his latest disastrous adventure.

Now Certainly Jones desired peace. It was not to be his.

Hands shoved in his jeans pockets and senses alert to the warm summer air and gasoline fumes rising from the tarmac, he hustled toward the glow of a streetlight a hundred yards down from the Lizard Lounge.

The faery club had been inordinately bright—which was why he’d chosen to go there after sundown. He never went out after the world had grown dark, but after months of solitude he’d craved a night away from home. The Lizard Lounge was mind-numbingly weird. He could deal with all paranormal breeds and their ways and manners—but faeries? There were some things a witch who had been practicing the dark arts for well over a century and a half should not see. Situations, illicit couplings and magics in which even he daren’t dabble.

Gut muscles clenching, Certainly felt the familiar warning twinge of an internal takeover. Of late, his body was not his to command.

He increased the pace of his footsteps through the dark alley. Fifty strides ahead beckoned the streetlight. His fingers curled against his abs and he bit his lip.

“Stay back,” he hissed. The passengers inhabiting his body—his very soul—rippled within his being.

Spellcraft had proved ineffectual to prevent an imminent intrusion. Directing his instincts inward, Certainly attempted to, at the least, identify the imposing entity. It gnawed at his insides and clawed to get out. As his mouth began to water, he pinpointed that it craved a dark, seeping, metallic thing. It wanted … carrion.

“Hell. Not good.”

With a rallying dash, he landed in the safe glow and hooked his arm about the black metal pole, swinging halfway about and chuckling in triumph. He’d won. For now. Yet he stood a stranded sailor adrift in a dark sea, and navigating the infested waters always proved perilous.

The next streetlight punctuating this moonless night wasn’t for another long block. He stood on a back street, well off the main avenue. He should have gone the other direction, toward the Seine, where the night was always bright with tourists and passing cars. But the thing inside him had been persistent, pushing him this way the moment he’d exited the safety of the Lizard Lounge’s peculiar brightness.

The demon inside smelled something Certainly wasn’t able to pick out of the atmosphere now that he had a grasp on his own senses, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to if his instincts were correct regarding the carrion demon.

Pushing his fingers through his long dark hair, he pulled at the strands, wincing. It wanted control, and the light made it stomp its hooves and bleat to rattle Certainly’s bones. Venturing out after sunset had been foolish. Yet he’d needed the escape from the solitude of his loft.

He wasn’t sure how much longer he could endure this torture before he gave in and surrendered. Walked away from the light and into the darkness. Once there, the darkness would swallow him whole. He would never make it back to the surface sane. As it was, he treaded the line that tipped over to insanity. But he wouldn’t go down that way, would not let the dark passengers he carried inside take him or claim his soul.

He’d stolen from Daemonia, and so yes, this was his deserving punishment. But he’d find escape to the surface. He always did.

Thinking he could hail a cab and request that the driver keep the interior light on—a feeble and temporary mend to his curse—Certainly scanned down the lonely street, paralleled by brick walk-ups and here and there a limestone three-story, which hailed from medieval times. The street was cobbled, remnants of centuries past when kings and musketeers once paraded before the peasants and Revolutionaries swung sticks instead of swords and lapped up the blood from severed heads. Not so metaphorically, either.

He’d missed that tumultuous time and had instead grown up during Paris’s Bohemian phase in the late nineteenth century, la Belle époque. A hippie at heart, there were days he pined for the halcyon days of artistry, freedom, absinthe, ether and living from sofa to sofa, wherever his body may fall.

The thought of his wilder youth made him smirk and release the pole. He stepped out onto the street, his well-worn leather boots clicking the cobblestones, and scanned left then right. Cabs generally tracked the main avenues.

The darkness had grown to an inky maw separating him from the brightness of the Lizard Lounge’s neon sign and his glowing outpost. Putting up his left hand, he spread his tattooed fingers wide. The entire hand was gloved with spellcraft tattoos used for a multitude of magics. He focused on the electrical connection his body had to the world and tried to see a map of all the streetlights as if a hologram in the air before him. Faint lines formed but quickly puffed away. His demonic passengers weakened his magic. With a huff, he gave up the read and dropped his hand to his side.

Across the narrow street and down the alley, he sighted a vehicle with its headlights on, facing an alcove he couldn’t see from his point of view. The long white car was a dash away through darkness, but it was the only action he suspected he’d see on this street for a while. And without firm control of a tracking spell, he would be left to walk home blindly. Perhaps he could hitch a ride?

The carrion demon again scented its target, and Certainly felt his body sway and stumble. Away from the light.

If only he’d mastered the art of fire magic, he could draw up a fireball to lead his way home. Fire was about the only elemental magic witches avoided, for it could bring their deaths. Though some witches had mastered it. CJ hadn’t time for it over the decades when he’d been gorging his knowledge on all other magics.

“Hitchhiking it is,” he muttered, and made a daring dash for the deceptive safety of the car’s headlights.

“Yuck. A werewolf,” Libby said.

Viktorie St. Charles walked around her sister Libertie, who stood posed, hands on hips, body encased in a white Tyvek cleaning suit, before tonight’s job. Her sister’s toe tapped the asphalt in time to the tunes blasting through her ever-present earbuds.

Vika tugged a white mesh cap over her hair, tucking up some stray red strands. With a step, her Tyvek-covered flat shoes squished in a pile of werewolf guts.

No one had ever said financial stability was glamorous.

“Twenty minutes,” Vika stated, inspecting the slick mess oozing about her foot. Lemon and myrrh would take out the smell and the blood. “You pick up the chunks. I’ll start spraying down the brick.”

Giving her the thumbs-up signal, Libby wielded the black zip-up morgue bag with her pink latex-gloved hands and bent over the task. “This guy is still in solid form in places.”

“The silver must have worked quickly. Usually what happens in werewolves if it doesn’t have time to course completely through the blood.”

Vika aimed a handheld spray canister filled with vinegar, water and rosemary, bespelled to remove all trace of DNA, at the brick wall behind the parking lot for a down-on-its-luck bistro. She worked efficiently from top to bottom, directing the stream toward a center point that collected all the refuse for easier cleanup with the portable wet vac that waited in the back of their work vehicle.

They worked in tandem, having done this for years, both sisters knowing the job well. Cleaning was to Vika as music was to Libby.

Years previously, a date with a sexy werewolf had ended in him getting staked with a chunk of silver by a vampire rival. Vika hadn’t been attached to the big lug—first date, don’t you know—but she had liked him and had been hoping for a one-night stand, with him in were form, not werewolf, that is. She did not do fur during sex. The vampire had chuckled and offered to fulfill her desires, until she’d kicked him in the ‘nads. Didn’t matter what sort of paranormal breed you were. A kick to the gonads would take down any man for a few minutes.

As the vampire had hobbled away, Vika stood amid the scattered bits of werewolf and the idea of leaving behind such a mess had been reprehensible. She’d managed to get the biggest pieces into a nearby garbage can, and with a run to a nearby supermarket, had purchased some bleach and rubber gloves. The werewolf had deserved a decent burial. It had been the best she could offer at the time.

Needless to say, she’d been spied by a Council member while tidying up the crime scene, and the next thing she knew, she was being encouraged to become a cleaner.

Her sister Libertie, as good-natured as they came, had joined in only because she always tagged along on Vika’s coattails. She had never had the adventurous spirit of their sister, Eternitie, who was off in the wilds of some African nation at the moment. Libby and Vika were homebodies, and they liked that just fine.

When the area was clean, Vika pulled off her pink rubber gloves and looked over the wet asphalt and brick sparkling in the harsh shine from the car headlights. The warding spell they always initially cast around the crime scene kept passersby from witnessing what they were doing, so she worried little about being seen. She inhaled the lemon scent, smiling. Always felt good to accomplish a necessary task.

Libby packed up the cleaning supplies and bent near the rear tire of the hearse they’d had a mechanic modify as a cleaning vehicle.

“Found something!” Libby dangled the hairy chunk to show Vika. “An ear. Give the tarmac a blast of purifying magic over by the tire, and I think we’re good to rock and roll.”

“Great.”

Vika packed away the wet vac and then grabbed an amulet fashioned from bloodstone and strung on a silk cord from an assortment they kept in a purple tackle box. Just as she was about to speak the purifying spell, her nose tickled—and something brushed her soul.

Noticing her sister’s distraction, Libby asked, “One hanging around?”

Vika nodded but found the tickle in her nose would not dissipate. A sneeze strained at her sinuses, entirely unrelated to the wandering soul she felt nudging against her soul.

“Who’s that?”

Vika divided her attention between fighting the sneeze and eyeing the dark figure her sister pointed to. He ran up along the hearse toward them. A man with long, messy hair blacker than coal waved his hands at them. One of the hands was blackened with a glove or … maybe it was tattoos? And his eyes …

Vika squinted. Were they red?

He winced and bent at the waist, appearing to fight some inner struggle.

“He can see us?” Libby asked, gaping at the realization. She tugged out her earbuds. “I haven’t taken down the ward yet.”

The soul brushing up against Vika’s soul began to attach itself. A bright glow entered her chest—and she sneezed so forcefully her head bobbed forward and she staggered side to side. She caught herself against Libby’s arm.

“Blessed be,” Libby said. “That one was a doozy.”

“Oh, no.” Vika slapped a palm to her chest. “It’s gone. I sneezed it right out of me!”

Certainly felt the force of the woman’s sneeze enter his core. It was the weirdest thing. One minute he had been racing toward the twosome, fighting against the carrion demon to maintain control of his being, yet baffled at what the two women dressed head to toe in white clean suits were doing in the alleyway with scrub brushes, and then she sneezed, and it was as if the sneeze moved through him. Permeated his clothing and flesh and sparkled its way through his innards.

Yes, sparkled.

Bright and immense, it was as if some divine force had entered him. And he felt the effect immediately. Because the carrion-sniffing demon urging him toward the rangy scent of dead flesh had given an inner howl—something he’d felt clawing at his insides instead of actually hearing—and then it was gone.

Certainly slapped a hand to his gut. He knew without doubt the demon had been expelled.

By a sneeze?

He shook his head and brushed long strands of hair from his face. Crouched against the brick wall and safely ensconced within the headlight glow, he looked up to see the front doors of the hearse slam shut. The vehicle backed up.

“No!” He ran after the departing vehicle. “Stop. I need you!”

The hearse turned onto a main road near a video store that glared with a multitude of neon lights, and the driver stepped on it, peeling away into the night. Certainly was able to catch only the tiny logo on the back door of the white hearse, a pentacle overlaid with what looked like a vacuum cleaner and the words Jiffy Clean.

A patron from the video store walked out, and, staggering, CJ bumped into him. The man cursed him in French and shoved him aside. CJ stepped out onto the street, following the retreating red taillights.

“You are all right, monsieur?” the man who had cursed him called, though he was still walking away down the sidewalk.

Certainly nodded and gestured with a wave that he was indeed better than all right. But now he had to find that hearse and the woman who had sneezed at him. She’d worn white from head to toe, so he had no idea what she actually looked like. Her eyes had been green though; he’d seen as much in the glow of the headlights.

“That woman.” He slapped a hand over his pounding heart. “She exorcized one of my demons.”

Chapter 2

“Vika, what’s wrong?” Libby sorted their cleaning gear in the supply room, placing their hazmat suits in the work sink designated for cleaning away the debris. The pink fringes dancing about her sleeves dusted the air. “I don’t think the guy saw anything. We had the whole area cleaned and everything packed up by the time he wandered onto the scene.”

Vika glided through the kitchen and pushed through the French doors leading into the living room. A spiraling stairway curled up to the second floor, matching the curved architecture of the house.

Intent on slipping out of her clingy work pants, Vika called down the stairway, “I know that, Libby. I’m just— He saw through the wards. And did you see the way he looked at me?”

“How could I?” Libby soared up the stairs behind her. “All that long black hair was hanging in his face. Poor guy must have been a derelict looking for a handout. Oh, snap, I should have given him the change in my pocket. Karma is so going to bite me for that one.’’

Vika rolled her eyes at her sister’s worry. Witches and karma? Libby had a broad definition of the practice of witchcraft. On the other hand, it didn’t matter what a person called the union with the universe that enhanced their life’s path, so long as they respected its awesome power.

Unzipping her pants and tugging off the thin T-shirt in preparation to slip into a nice, hot shower, Vika paused near the open bedroom doorway. A clatter downstairs alerted her. It was a familiar sort of mild booming clatter she and her sister knew well. It announced his arrival.

Eyes widening, Libby pressed her fingers to her lips. “He’s here already?” She patted her hands over her purple skirt and ran toward her bedroom. “He always just appears! Why can he never announce himself or make an appointment? At least then I’d have a chance to comb my hair and freshen up my lipstick.”

“I’ll walk down slowly,” Vika called.

Tugging her shirt on and zipping her pants along the hip, she padded the high-glossed hardwood floor in the hallway. Thanks to lemon oil, it gleamed. Fresh, clean things made her feel good about herself. Peaceful.

The chandelier lighting the circular living room below glowed softly, yet it also blocked the view of their visitor. It had been over a week, so Vika expected him. Though never actually knowing the exact day or moment he would arrive, she did appreciate what he did for her.

She slid a hand along the white marble railing she kept polished to a shine. The house had been designed by Alphonse Fouquet in the nineteenth century and had been in the St. Charles family since. It was designed with eight walls in a round shape. Half the walls faced the four points of the compass, and the other half faced representative elements. The dwelling was very receptive to the angelic, which was a good thing, as far as their visitor was concerned.

Libby zoomed by her, taking the stairs as if in a track race, click-click-clicking in the high heels she’d slapped on. Without welcoming the visitor, her sister dashed into the kitchen. Vika smirked to know what she was up to.

“Reichardt,” Vika called in greeting to the stoic man attired in his usual black.

He stood beneath the chandelier, hands crossed solemnly before him. Broad and bold, he looked a misplaced warrior from a previous millennium who should be wielding an ax or some form of roughly forged iron weapon. He wore a goatee this evening, and the thick jot of blackness on his chin gave Vika a smile. The man had never a care for his appearance, though he was always neat, which appealed to her cleanliness fetish, so a little style was certainly a surprise.

“Looking rather chic this evening,” she commented.

Before she could ask after his new fashion statement, Libby breezed into the room and stopped beside her in a fury of fringe. Her sister, giddy with anticipation, held out a plate of chocolate chip cookies she’d baked earlier this evening before they’d gotten the cleaning call.

“Cookie?” she offered sweetly.

The soul bringer glanced at the plate as if Libby held forth a stew of rusty nuts, bolts and chirping crickets, and he wasn’t certain if one should eat it or build something with it.

Reichardt adjusted his attention toward Vika. “Take off your clothes.”

Sensing Libby’s pout, Vika tugged her shirt over her head again. “The cookies are excellent.”

“I grate chocolate into the mix,” Libby said proudly. “It makes them super chocolaty.”

Dropping her pants about her feet, Vika was thankful she’d worn a bra and panties today. Often, she forwent undergarments, preferring the sensual feel of fabric sliding against her skin. But when on a job, she wore as many layers as possible. Seemed to keep the unclean away for reasons she knew were superficial yet clung to anyway.

“Step back, please,” Reichardt said to Libby, ignoring the proffered treats.

Her sister dutifully complied, though Vika could sense Libby’s dismay at not being able to pawn off a cookie on the man.

Reichardt was a psychopomp, a soul bringer whose only job was to deliver the souls of the recently departed to Above or Beneath. The soul bringer put out his hands before him, palms flat, and drew them over Vika’s body, without touching. He utilized a form of catoptromancy—his silvered eyes were the mirrors—that would draw the wandering souls out of her body. He would pass over her many times, each time drawing up warmth to her skin and then pulling up a tickle as each soul left hers in a sparkle of phosphorescent light and attached to him.

Corpse lights, they were called in that moment of release from a body when they gleamed giddily. Yet they were lost and wandering souls not moved on to either Above or Beneath, usually due to a violent death—and an absent soul bringer.

Vika had a sticky soul, and when out on a cleaning job, she tended to pick up the wandering souls. It wasn’t purposeful; they attached to her for reasons of which she could never be sure. It was a condition she’d become aware of only since taking on the cleaning jobs.

She had developed an agreement with Reichardt years ago. Once a week he scrubbed her of the souls because they did belong to him, and he could not abide losing one. Which served her well because the idea of walking around with dozens of souls clinging to hers was weird. They didn’t hurt her and she didn’t notice their presence, save when they entered her soul or left it.

Feeling one last tickle, Vika let out a sigh as Reichardt stepped away from her. The man nodded, his eyes now closed, as he consumed the souls through his skin.

Vika winked at Libby, who winked back.

The man opened his kaleidoscope eyes, and the blade-sharp look he thrust at Vika made her gasp and press a hand over her lacy black bra.

“One’s missing,” he said in his deep, monotone voice that rattled in Vika’s rib cage.

“Missing? But—”

Oh, hell. The sneeze. She’d actually sneezed out the soul that had attempted to attach to her. How that was possible, she had no idea, but she innately knew that is what had happened earlier.

“I didn’t do it purposefully,” she offered. “It just—You see, I sneezed.”

“I need that soul.”

Vika felt Libby’s arm brush aside hers, joining her ranks in support, the plate of cookies still held in feeble offering.

“You will return it to me by next week’s scrubbing or …” Reichardt paused, bowing and shaking his head as if to lament her stupidity.

Or he’ll kill me? she thought dreadfully, fully expecting such an announcement from so ominous a being.

“I will take your soul in exchange,” he finally announced. With the speed of a homeless thief, the soul bringer nabbed a cookie from Libby’s plate and disappeared.

Libby squealed. “He took a cookie!”

Vika could but shake her head and grab a cookie from the plate herself. But she didn’t take a bite. Instead, she stared at the lumpy brown morsel as if it were her soul, all flattened, cooked and … not in her body.

Bending, she tugged up her pants. “Libby, how am I going to get that soul back? I don’t know where it is. It’s probably floating all over Paris by now. And he’ll know. Reichardt will know exactly which one it is if it isn’t in me next time he visits.” She took a bite of cookie. “Oh, great goddess, this is good.”

“I know, right? It’s the best batch I’ve made so far. I’m thinking of entering this recipe in the annual Witches Bazaar SpellCast and Cook-Off. Vika, don’t worry, we’ll figure it out. We’ve got a whole week. We need to return to the scene of the crime. I’m sure the soul is floating about in the vicinity.”

“Maybe.” She tugged on her shirt. At her ankles, a black cat with a white-striped tail snuggled against her leg and meowed. “Not now, Salamander. I need to think.”

Which meant …

“You want me to get out your cleaning bucket?” Libby asked.

“Please.”

While Libby retrieved Vika’s cleaning supplies, Vika bent and slipped the slender cat into her embrace. Sal nuzzled against her chin, rubbing his soft cheek against her. He’d always been a faithful guy, even when he’d once been human.

“I wonder about that man.” Vika’s thoughts raced through the night’s events as she absently stroked Sal’s back. “The derelict. I sneezed directly at him. Could he …?”

The archives in the basement of the Council’s Paris base were vast, stretching half a mile in labyrinthine twists and turns similar to the catacombs that surely hugged up against the subterranean walls. The occasional skull even appeared embedded in the walls, of which some had been left in their natural limestone state.

CJ felt at peace here beneath the fluorescent lights he’d had specially installed a few months ago after his return from Daemonia. If it hadn’t been for his twin brother, TJ, he may still be wandering the bleak and torturous landscape of the place of all demons. The lights had been a necessity and, he admitted, were out of place in the ancient archives normally lit with soft lighting to protect some of the older books, parchments and manuscripts that lay scattered everywhere.

There were stacks of grimoires—books of shadows—and ancient texts CJ had marked on his mental list to get scanned for easy reference, but he estimated such an arduous process would take decades. He had the time but not the patience or the technical know-how. An assistant was necessary, but a call for job applicants was out of the question. Assistant to the Keeper of All Things Paranormal wasn’t exactly a position one could interview for. He had the notion he’d know the perfect assistant when he met him or her.

The Council was an organized body of various paranormal breeds that kept watch over the paranormal nations but notoriously tried to never act in a violent manner to stop wars between nations or petty crimes among the breeds. They suggested, smoothed over and made nice—or so that was their claim.

They’d done plenty to interfere over the centuries, but CJ couldn’t think of a time when the interference hadn’t been necessary.

Now he searched the computer archives of known paranormals on a shiny silver Mac computer. Before entering the archives he always warded himself against electricity so his magic would not react and burn out the wiring or the fancy new computers. This database had only recently been computerized thanks to Cinder, the former fire demon—now vampire—who did security and IT work for the Council all across Europe.

CJ scanned through a list of cleaners the Council employed nationwide. None displayed the pentacle with the vacuum cleaner symbol. Jiffy Clean? He suspected it a joke on the cleaner’s part. The white hearse had been a kick, as well.

“Two women,” he muttered as his eyes scrolled down the list. “In Paris.”

Most cleaners worked a specific city or country. Paris was large enough and hosted a massive population of paranormals, so it listed half a dozen cleaners—but only one under a woman’s name.

“Viktorie St. Charles,” he said. “In the fourth arrondissement.” One of the oldest parts of Paris in the old Marais neighborhood, laid out in the shadow of the former Bastille. “Hmm, not far from where the vampire, Domingos LaRoque, lives. Quiet neighborhood. Gotcha.”

“Hey, CJ!”

Think of the devil, and one of his former minions walks through the door. Cinder strolled in, his height forcing him to bend to pass through the doorway built at the turn of the eighteenth century. He also had to turn slightly to manage his broad shoulders. The dark-haired man patted the top of the computer. “How’s the system working?”

“Very well. I appreciate all the work you’ve done. Makes it easy to find things around here, at least the few lists and files I’ve been able to enter in the database.”

“Great. You need an assistant.”

“The right one will walk through that door someday.”

“Uh-huh. Don’t hold your breath, buddy. How about you? You look …” The former angel, who had long ago been forcibly transformed to demon, and who then centuries later became mortal, and who was now only recently vampire, gave him a discerning once-over. “Not terrible.”

CJ smirked. He looked like hell and hadn’t been right for months, since his return from that damnable place, Daemonia.

“You have a talent for compliments. I’m learning to control … things.”

He’d told Cinder about the demonic passengers that occupied his soul, yet despite having worked at the gates to Beneath for millennia, the guy hadn’t a clue how to get the damned things out of him.

“I think I found the one person who might be able to help me. Viktoria St. Charles,” CJ said.

“I think you mean Viktorie. Or Vika, as her friends call her,” Cinder said, pronouncing it Vee-ka. “It’s a Russian name. She’s the pretty little witch who lives in the round house.”

“Round house?”

“That’s what some call it. I think it’s actually a hexagram. It was designed by a witch to perfectly align with the planets, stars, the moon and whatever else you witches worry about. I’ve been told it’s a cool place to see. Probably comparable to the spectacle you live in.”

“My flat is not a spectacle. It’s a means to survive.” A horrible, mind-eating, depressing means to survival. But his current mode of decorating style was the one bit of luck CJ had discovered to keep back his nasty passengers.

“So you’ve told me. Still seeking prismatic light?”

“Always.”

“What’s got you looking up the St. Charles witch? Or I should say witches. They are three sisters, but I think only two live in the round house. Gad, I hate calling it the round house. A hexagram is so not round.”

Cinder was some kind of numbers whiz, due to the fact he was originally the angel who created that sort of stuff—the whole mathematics shebang.

“If she is the woman I ran into last night,” CJ said, “then she was able to exorcise one of my demons.”

“Just like that? Without a hello, how do you do?”

“It was an auspicious sneeze, actually. And no, no introductions. In fact, she fled the scene soon after the accidental exorcism.” CJ rubbed a hand along his jaw. “She’s a cleaner, eh?”

“Yes. Nasty job.” Cinder gave a dramatic shudder. “Especially for two pretty women.”

“Speaking of pretty women.” CJ closed out the program and leaned back on the creaky office chair. “How’s the little woman?”

“You mean my tiny vixen?” The vampire grinned a mile wide, revealing the points of his fangs.

“That good, huh?”

Cinder nodded. “Love is the coolest thing, CJ. You should give it a try sometime.”

“So I’ve been told by my best friend, Lucian.”

“Bellisario? I haven’t seen that vamp in a while. And what about your brother? Didn’t TJ and his little kitty cat just get married?”

“Yep, and expecting a litter, I’ve been told.”

“A litter?”

TJ’s wife was a cat shifter, and CJ liked to tease his brother he was going to have a litter instead of a baby, which was unfeasible but still fun to joke about. “You know, she’s a cat.”

“I don’t think it works that way, man.”

“Just kidding. No one ever seems to get my jokes. So you in Paris for a while?”

“Parish and I have relocated here for the summer. I will be updating more hardware for the Council. Might even get a fancy scanner in here to scan books without breaking the spines. Bet that would make your day.”

“It would. The ancient grimoires are delicate. But I’ve no time to work on such a project. Now I’ve got the witch’s address, I’m on my way out.”

“All right, man, take it easy.”

“Say hi to Parish for me,” CJ said as he walked Cinder out of the office and headed for the fourth quarter.

Libby breezed into the bright, spotless spell room, swooshing a flutter of purple ruffles in eyesight, as Vika bent over a mortar of crushed lavender. The spider’s eyes listed in the ingredients she doled out carefully. Only needed half a dozen.

“Working on a sleeping draft?” Libby asked, leaning on the cool, white marble counter. She snapped her banana-scented gum. She cocked out a hip, hitting a pose as always. Rock star was Libby’s innate M.O., despite her lacking fame and the ability to carry a tune.

“For Becky. She’s been sleeping less than a hour a week lately.” The vampire, who was Vika’s best friend, had a lot to deal with, her dad being the devil’s fixer. Becky worried about him constantly. “I don’t need help. I know you had plans for today.”

Libby’s mood perked. On the other hand, when wasn’t her mood perky? The dress she wore was vintage, and the cinched skirt with wide white plastic belt reminded Vika of an old baking ad she’d once seen while paging through her grandmother’s magazines from the fifties. Always so spiffy, those pre-feminism women, when doing household chores.

“I figured I should stick around,” Libby said. “When do you want to head back to the crime scene to look around for the will-o’-the-wisp?”

Will-o’-the-wisp was another name for the corpse light or wandering soul that usually stayed firmly attached to Vika’s soul until the soul bringer arrived to scrub her clean.

“Soon as I’m done here. But I can do that myself. Really, Libby, go and have fun.”

“I wish you’d come along with me. The witches bazaar is always a riot.”

“I know. You’ve told me about all the eligible young witches.”

“I’m sure there’s a few to catch your eye. I know you like them tall, muscled and blond.”

“The opposite of your thick, brute and dark,” Vika answered with a grin. She tapped the last spider eye into the mortar and rolled the marble pestle over the contents with a satisfying crushing noise. “You think Reichardt liked the cookie?”

“Oh, Vika.” Libby sighed. “I dreamed about The Taking of the Cookie last night. You don’t want to know.”

“Yeah, you probably better keep that one to yourself. Would it matter if I said, once again, how wrong having a crush on a soul bringer is?”

“Nope. He’s the guy for me. I know it.”

Good luck with that. The guy was thousands of years old and hadn’t cracked a smile in a millennium, Vika felt sure. His life consisted of collecting souls, all day, all night, all the time. She imagined he did not have a social life, or even a concept of what socializing implied. And to consider love or romance? Forget about it.

“If they’ve any vetiver for sale today, would you pick me up a pint? I’m fresh out. Salamander got into the plant out in the garden and mowed that down smartly.”

“Will do.” Libby leaned in and kissed her on the brow. “Talk to you later, sis. Good luck tracking the soul. But if you can’t find it, I’ll put in a good word for you with Reichardt.”

Libby flounced out of the spell room, and Vika sighed. “If only that were possible.”

She knew well if she didn’t find the soul, Reichardt’s retaliation would be swift and just. She didn’t particularly favor the idea of having no soul, but she knew she could live without one. A soulless body grew cold and emotionless. Soulless would leave her open to all sorts of untold evils. She would not be the same witch of the Light, and she didn’t know if she could live with the consequences.

“Um, Vika?”

She looked up to see Libby peeking into the room, her smile gone. “You forget something?”

“There’s someone here to see you,” her sister whispered covertly. “The guy from last night.”

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 strength, 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.

Viktorie St. Charles’s round house and the spell room had been equally as immaculate. He had gotten a chuckle over the little plaque inside the front door that had read A Clean House Is a Happy House. The woman was all about cleanliness. And her appearance reflected the same motto.

Her bright red hair was pulled into a tight braid down the back of her head, not a strand out of place. Her face was like porcelain, her narrow brows perfectly arched and her lipstick red. All contrasted exquisitely with her inquisitive emerald eyes. And the dress she wore was a tight sheath wrapped about her slender figure in a dusty purple color, as if a bunch of roses bound with ribbon.

She was gorgeous, in a tidy way. He shouldn’t think to muss her. But oh, to unloose that hair and watch it fall over the purple satin and down her narrow back. CJ’s oft-ignored sensual desires hummed for attention.

“What are you looking at?” she asked as she turned the hearse down the alley, their destination.

“Perfection.” He turned and faced forward, not sure if he’d meant it as a compliment. “Was that your sister who answered the door when I arrived? Libertie?”

“Yes, Libby left for the witches bazaar. You ever go there?”

“The one behind the Moulin Rouge? No, it’s a bunch of old hags selling mandrake and love spells.”

“Times have changed, CJ. Now they’re into cyber-spellcraft and digital conjuring. When was the last time you’ve been?”

“Decades. Digital conjuring?” What the young witches wouldn’t think of next. He hated to admit he didn’t know about a particular magic.

She nodded and pulled the car over to park. “You said you know many magics. Is digital one of them?”

It would be as soon as he could dig up some information on it. Cyberhacking, he’d heard of, but to use the computer to digitally conjure magics? Truly, he’d been stuck in the archives too long.

“I’m adding it to my arsenal soon. So this is it? How does the Mistress of Neat like you find herself on the cleaning end of a spattered werewolf? And are you always dressed so elegantly for such a messy job?”

“When I’ve a call, I wear simple clothes under my hazmat suit. And this isn’t elegant. It’s my normal dress. Cleaning is my passion,” she said in a tone that invoked more sensual means to passion for CJ. She opened the car door. “Come on. Let’s see if your dark and weary soul attracts anything.”

“Certainly won’t be an uptight witch,” he muttered as he stood up from the car and closed the door.

“What was that?” She pursed her gorgeous lips and eyed him narrowly over the top of the car. “Did you call me uptight?”

He braced his forearms on the top of the car and smiled at her. “I did, oh, Beauty of the Bizarre and Unnatural Cleaning Jobs. But now you’re going to cut me down for the comment and make me feel like the dirt you think I am, right?”

She tilted her head, considering. “Not worth it. I haven’t made up my mind about you.”

“So not a derelict.”

“That’s apparent. You’ve a job working for the Council. I assume you’ve a home. Derelicts can’t usually claim as much.”

“Your home is a fascinating study in white and roundness,” he said, moving around to the front of the car to lean against the front quarter panel and watch her walk the bricked-in area in small paces. “That spell room of yours. It was so …”

“You said sterile.”

“To a fault. Tell me why someone who is so into cleaning chooses white? I mean, wouldn’t it be easier to keep a darker color clean? Or even wood or steel?”

“It appeals to me,” she said without looking at him. Arms held out, she walked the area as if trying to capture something in an invisible net held between her arms. “It gives me satisfaction to do a job well.”

“I can say the same.”

“What does your job involve, CJ? I’ve always thought librarians—”

“I’m an archivist, and I handle all the records for the Council. That includes all grimoires written throughout the ages, all spells and potions, objects of magical means and nature, contained creatures of mysterious origin, etcetera, and so on. I also keep the database on the paranormal nations.”

She paused, bent over, the gorgeous lines of her body playing deep shadows in the folds of the dress at her knees and hips. Mmm, the woman needed to be bent over the end of his bed …

“All of us?” she prompted, whacking him out of the sudden and illicit fantasy of foreplay on his big, comfy bed.

“Witches, werewolves, vampires, demons, familiars, mermaids, trolls, imps, shape-shifters. The whole lot.”

“No faeries?”

“Absolutely not. The sidhe can take care of themselves, and more power to them.”

“That’s quite a monumental task, keeping track of us all.”

“And I do it well.” CJ spread a hand over his gut and cast a glance skyward. Daylight waned due to what he suspected would be rain before evening. A twinge in his elbow confirmed the weather prediction. “That is, when I’ve not a soul full of demons trying to take over my body and fucking with my magic.”

“Are those spell tattoos on your hand?”

“Yes.” He tucked his hand along his torso. “I’ve quite a few all over. You ever hear of Sayne?”

“Yes, he’s an ink witch who travels Europe. I’ve never thought it an effective form of magic.”

“My tattoos are powerful. Much like your grandmother’s nail.”

“Sure.”

He sensed Vika wasn’t warming to him in any way. And why should he care? He only meant to use her to see if another exorcism was possible. And yet, CJ’s interest continued to stray to the woman beneath the sexy gown, and her sure voice and the confident tilt of her head. Tidily gorgeous. Not his type of woman at all.

You don’t have a type, Certainly Jones.

True. But it was high time he got a type. One of the things he realized he’d been missing after his return from Daemonia was a life. A life shared with others. And if on his bed? Hell, yes.

“So, you feel anything?” he prompted.

“No, but you could walk around and help. See if the soul is attracted to you.”

CJ wandered the enclosed area, focusing, eyes closed, to see if he could sense or feel the same brightness he had last night. What he did sense was the demons inside him chuckling and writhing in accusatory glee. Idiot witch, they screamed at him. Just wait until nightfall.

Perhaps by nightfall Vika will have exorcised another demon from him. It had to be possible. He wanted nothing more than freedom from the bastards inside him. And if he needed a stray soul to do so, he’d stand here all day waiting for the little bugger to attach its intangible essence to him.

“So when you’re in the light the demons don’t bother you?” she asked over her shoulder as she strolled along the brick wall blocking in the small parking area.

“Mostly. The incandescent stuff only works for so long. Daylight is iffy when the sky clouds up.” He glanced skyward. Many gray clouds. Should he be here? “A few months ago, I discovered prismatic is the best kind of light to deter demons, keep them back, if you will.”

“And what happens when the demons take over? Do they do it all at once?”

“Fortunately, no. Usually there’s an inner struggle I feel, as if the lot of them are ripping at my insides, and then one comes to the fore. Takes over my very being. I’m aware of what it’s doing and not. Depends on how strong it is. The damned lust demon took me out to a nightclub last month and I ended up—”

Yeah, he wasn’t going to finish that one. He’d never had sex with a dryad before. Wasn’t sure how it had gone down, and he didn’t want to think about it now. At the least, it had broken his dry spell with women. If she had been a woman. Yes, she’d been female. It was too wrong to think any other way.

“So you’re not in control of your body when the demon comes to the fore?”

“Not one hundred percent. It’s different each time. Some are more powerful than others. I can fight the demon, but it looks like I’m spazzing out, and sometimes it’s easier to surrender. I never stray too far from home.”

“Which is where?”

“In the fifth. I live in the DeMarck Building.”

“I know that place. Gorgeous iridescent tile work on the outside?”

“That’s the one.”

“You said it’s been six months since you returned from … that place?”

She didn’t want to speak the name Daemonia? Probably for the better. Smart woman.

“Yes. I do have one good demon in me, though. It’s a protection demon. I let that one out because it has a tendency to paint protection sigils on the walls and floors of my home. Haven’t noticed they’d done much good, though. They’re wearing me down.” He stopped and put his head into his hands. “It’s getting so hard, and I’m tired. I want them gone.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have gone into the place of all demons in the first place. Why did you go there, and what did you do? You must have pissed off someone or something, or apparently, a whole host of demonic somethings. Whatever it was, you probably deserve the punishment.”

“I don’t need the admonishment right now.’’

But she was right; he deserved any bad karma coming to him because of what he’d done. But as long as he’d gotten there before Ian Grim, that was all that mattered.

It was always about Grim.

“I’m sorry, I— Well, no,” Vika said. “It’s what I feel. A guy goes into the place of all demons, he’s got to expect retribution.”

“Do you always follow the rules, Vika? Live by the book? Make sure your life is as clean as it can possibly be, from outside to soul?”

She lifted an indignant chin and nodded minutely.

“You ever have any fun?”

“Of course I do.” She cast him a glance through her lashes, which stirred CJ’s passions again. “But I suspect my idea of fun and your idea of fun are vastly different.”

“I suspect so. We’re very different souls.”

“That’s no understatement,” she agreed.

He gave his arms a waver across his chest. “Not feeling anything.”

“You haven’t gone over there.” She pointed toward the end of the hearse. “You know, there are other methods to casting out demons.”

“Tried them all. Even ventured into a Catholic church and had the priest lay his hands on me. I suspect he got frightened when the chaos demon starting chewing on his cross. I was spitting out marble for hours after that one. Think I chipped a molar.”

“So the demons inside you are impervious to exorcism? That’s remarkable. I’ve never heard of that.”

“I suspect because there’s a whole gang of them inside me. They’re not particularly friends, but I think they band together to hold the fort, if you know what I mean.”

“And they’ve come directly from Dae—er, the place of all demons, instead of being summoned here through a conjuring, so I suspect that makes them stronger, as well. A witch can only control a demon they have conjured personally.”

“Exactly. Yet they can’t access my magic, which is a good thing. Just wish I had more control over it.”

“There must be something. Some spell?”

“I haven’t had a lot of free time to research in the Council archives, though I wonder if the answer isn’t there.”

Vika stopped before him, crossing her arms over her chest. The position emphasized her small breasts and revealed the hard peaks of her nipples beneath the thin fabric. Sexy, yet controlled, and perhaps a little curious. CJ entertained mussing her up. She would be a challenge he wasn’t prepared to take on because his record with women—well, he hadn’t established much of a record over the decades.

You need to change that, buddy. But probably not with a witch who called him a derelict and couldn’t even utter the name of Daemonia. Much too uptight for him, though he’d seen glimpses of the sensuality she probably tried very hard to keep under control.

On the other hand, he needed intimacy, plain and simple. Dare he imagine he could find it with this beautiful creature?

“You’re staring at my breasts,” she said drolly. A shadow passed over her face as the sky darkened.

“I am.” He spread his hands before him. “They’re nice and neat. Just like you.”

“That’s the strangest thing a man has ever said about my breasts.”

“You prefer suckable? Lickable?” Her eyebrow lifted. “Sorry, that was vulgar. I’m not up to speed with accepted comments on a woman’s anatomy. But isn’t that what most men think? Hell, it’s what I’m thinking, but I thought we were still on polite terms.”

“I think you’ve moved on to lewd and tasteless.”

“Woman, get off your broom.”

“Seriously? Did you just say that?”

Before he could retract the callous comment, she marched to the driver’s door and opened it. “We’re finished here, Monsieur Jones. Do not return to my home, because I warn you, it will be warded against asshole witches from this day forth.”

And she drove off, leaving Certainly shaking his head and laughing. Yet deep inside, he felt the gang of demons curl their fists and shout triumphantly.

Once the hearse reached the end of the alleyway, Vika stepped on the brake and slammed a fist against the steering wheel. “I will not let that arrogant man get to me. He doesn’t know a thing about me.”

So why did she feel as though the dark witch had peeled away a layer from her, and what he’d exposed beneath was still as pin-neat as the top layer? Uptight? She was not. And she was hardly a prude. Men had spoken much more vulgar things to her, and often she warmed to the dirty talk. Let it not be said she didn’t enjoy a lusty make-out session with a sexy man.

But she was not aroused or interested in Certainly Jones. Because he was wrong. Tainted by devious demons.

“Someone has to keep a tight grasp on sanity around here.”

She checked the rearview mirror. The dark witch stood at the end of the alley, hands in his jeans pockets, looking her way. She couldn’t see the expression on his face. Was he waiting to see if she would back up? Or was he laughing that he’d sent her running with her tail between her legs?

Maybe it was the demons? Had it been a demon spouting crude comments about her breasts back there?

“He said he was fine in the light.” Most light, anyway. Prismatic light protected him best? “Interesting.”

Everything about the man tweaked at her curiosity. He was scruffy and pale, while she preferred her men neat and sun-kissed. When she looked in his eyes, she couldn’t see beyond the flat jade there. Most men’s eyes gleamed and gave away their thoughts before they had them. And his unabashed willingness to say what he thought offended her, but only because she was taking offense.

If she did not take offense, then he had no power over her.

Vika shifted into Reverse but didn’t take her foot off the brake.

Certainly Jones. What a name. Must be English. He did have the slightest hint of a British accent. Accents did appeal to her carnal passions, as they did Libby. Yet she was calm and cool when around an attractive man. A wise woman never let loose and gave away too much too soon.

She didn’t need him to find the missing soul. She could attract a wayward soul on her own, thank you very much. Not that she’d been successful at it thus far.

He’d turned, and the silhouette of him, head bowed and arms slack at his sides, looked pitiful. A lost boy trying to fight off the real demons in his life. The Catholic Church couldn’t help him? She was surprised he’d set foot on holy ground. She didn’t know for sure, but she guessed he must have worked extremely foul magic to have been able to set foot in Daemonia.

“He deserves whatever he’s gotten,” she whispered.

And yet, he’d pleaded for her to help him. He was desperate. The man couldn’t go into darkness for fear of a demon taking over his body.

“There must be some spell,” she mused. “And if there is, I want to find it.” She eyed him in the rearview mirror. “You ready for me, CJ? Because I always accomplish what I set out to clean—I mean, help.”

Uh-huh. She’d meant clean.

Vika took her foot off the brake and backed down the alleyway. Shadows glanced off the white hood of the car sandwiched between three-story buildings. When the hearse sidled alongside the man, she rolled down the passenger window.

“Get in. I have a lot of work to do, and the day isn’t getting any lighter.”

He slid inside but didn’t offer a gregarious I’ve won smile, as she had expected. Instead, he winced. In fact, he struggled to keep his jaw from opening, or maybe he was fighting a shout. And when he turned a frown on her, his face looked different. Not so slender.

And his eyes glowed red.

Vika heard the lightning crackle the air before darkness swept the sky.

CJ grabbed the steering wheel and slid his boot over on top of her foot. “Let’s go for a ride, sweetie.”

Chapter 4

Vika struggled to control the hearse as it careened down the street and toward the main avenue, where there would be hundreds of tourists in danger should CJ manage to steer against her—so far—firm grip. His foot pressed over hers on the accelerator, and though they were going only about twenty kilometers an hour, it was too fast for the looming touristy area.

And it wasn’t CJ. Some kind of demon controlled him. Didn’t matter. She had to fight them both to maintain control.

The demon hissed and slid closer, cramming her body against the car door as it tried to take over the seat. It gripped the steering wheel and wrenched the car sharply to the right. Vika kept her eyes on the road, and both hands were still on the wheel. So far, they’d hit nothing.

A hot tongue licked up the side of her face, and CJ chuckled in a breathy, evil rumble. “Strong witch. But driving down the middle is not fun at all. Obstacles must be crushed!”

CJ jerked the steering wheel to the left. With her vision blocked because his body was in the way, Vika didn’t see the parked car. The hearse’s bumper scraped along the side of the vehicle, the noise crunching and loud. She elbowed CJ in the gut, connecting with hard muscle, and he flinched. His foot left hers, but his hand remained on the wheel.

If she could find a well-lit area, the demon may flee. It was day. Though the sky had suddenly darkened, there was no rain, and no streetlights had flickered on yet. Ahead lay the main avenue and, beyond, the River Seine.

Attempting to brake was impossible because the demon-possessed witch tugged her out of the seat and, switching places with her, shoved her onto the passenger side. Now she lost track of where they were headed. In a last effort, Vika scrambled upright, grabbed hold of the shift and shoved it into Park.

The hearse squealed and spun, the engine making an awful hissing noise. The back of the vehicle swung around. A car horn honked. Vika braced for impact against the chest of the man, who hooted and beat the ceiling of the car with a triumphant fist.

The hearse stopped with a dull, crushing metal noise. Stretched across the front seat, Vika landed flat upon CJ’s chest. She winced, anticipating a crash from another car. What a horrible way to die, sprawled across a man she barely knew and trusted not at all.

When the impact didn’t come, she immediately opened the glove compartment and took out the flashlight. Clicking it on, she shone the bright light at the dark witch’s eyes. “Get out, you bastard!”

Crawling backward and kneeling, yet keeping the light aimed on the witch, she shoved at his knee as he struggled to untangle himself from under her. When he was free and gave a hefty exhale, she did not relent with the light.

CJ put up a palm to block the light. “It’s okay now. It’s gone. I’m me again, thanks to your quick thinking with the light.”

“Yeah? Well, get out! Right now, dark one. I don’t need your kind of trouble. We could have harmed innocents!”

“Vika, I’m sorry, I had no control—”

“Damn you!” She slapped his shoulder with the flashlight. “My car is probably totaled. Get out!”

“Okay!” CJ opened the car door, which slammed against the concrete barrier fronting the river. He had to ease his way out through the narrow space.

Around them, a crowd had started to gather to assess the situation. Smoke hissed from the hood of the hearse.

“It was the menace demon,” CJ said, bending to offer the weak explanation. At his temple a streak of blood glistened. “The shadows in the alley were enough to give it control. Vika, please, let me help you with this. Can you start the car? Let me drive it off the street and deal with the authorities.”

“I said to get away from me,” she said firmly, directing the light at his eyes again for the annoyance factor. “I don’t want your kind of mess in my life. Please, walk away. I can handle this myself.”

He put up his hands and stepped back. A bystander approached him and asked if he was hurt.

Vika settled in the passenger’s seat and blew out a breath, anticipating dealing with the concerned mortals outside. She could hardly tell them a demon had been in control of the car.

“Goddess, I hope it’s drivable. I do not need a repair bill right now.”

Opening the door, she nodded she was fine, but when the ambulance arrived on the scene, she realized it would be better to submit to their triage than try to walk away, as Certainly had.

He was out of her life. And life would be better off without his danger.

So why, then, did she search the crowd in hopes of spying his dark tangle of hair and regretful eyes?

Ian Grim looked up from the crushed raven bone he was preparing to burn along with rowan bark and amber in the mortar. Perched over his spell table all afternoon, daylight had slipped away from him. His lover for centuries, Dasha, was away to Venice photographing a piece for a Gothic magazine. When the cat was away, the mouse did like to play.

Candlelight flickered, yet he had to blink a few times to adjust his focus on the tracking spell set before the windowsill.

It was moving.

“Finally.”

Dropping the steel pestle in the mortar, Grim rushed to the windowsill and leaned over the brass pendulum. It was suspended from a fine chain above a map of Paris. Paris being the most likely place to find Certainly Jones. It was his home, after all, and a man rarely strayed far from home. But since Grim had become aware of Jones’s return from Daemonia six months earlier, he’d been off the grid. The dark witch had warded himself into a literal black hole. And only Jones was capable of concealing himself with such powerful magic.

Grim had been patient. This vita spell utilized a strand of hair he’d gotten off Jones and had been saving for decades. It sniffed out Jones’s DNA.

“So you’ve been injured,” he muttered, studying the map below the pendulum. It pointed to a spot along the Seine and didn’t move from there. “Just a drop then. Not trailing blood in your wake.”

Unfortunate, because it would not ultimately lead him to Jones, unless of course, he’d been injured where he lived. He doubted the witch would allow that to happen. But having his blood would make it easier to break through the wards, perhaps even conjure a battering spell. No matter, with the witch’s blood he could concoct a successful tracking spell.

“I will find you, Jones. And then whatever you took from Daemonia—” and he had his suspicions “—will be mine.”

Vika had the hearse towed to a local car repair shop. Other than the broken headlight and a wicked scrape in the metal down the passenger’s side, everything was in working order. The brake pads needed changing soon, the repairman suggested, but could probably go another few months if she needed to save for such an expense.

Vika thanked him and drove away. The sun cast a thin pink ribbon along the horizon as it dipped below the dark silhouette of a city park. While waiting for the repair work to be done, she’d sat in a café across the street, nursing a pumpkin mocha latte. She was hungry now but felt antsy. Heading home to make dinner was not tops on her list. She wasn’t ready to explain her harrowing experience to Libby and get the big sad eyes from her or the admonishment for hanging out with such a dangerous man.

CJ wasn’t dangerous; it was the demons infesting his soul who harbored the danger.

“Infested,” she muttered.

It sounded wicked and not at all appealing. And yet, he could not control the demons. And she couldn’t get the sight of his sad jade eyes out of her thoughts.

The man could be a perfectly nice, kind soul if she’d give him opportunity to prove that. Not to mention his compelling sensuality. When he’d been in her spell room, he’d seemed so grounded, comfortable in his skin. She’d been attracted to his power, against her better judgment.

“What are you doing?” she whispered. “Don’t try to talk yourself into liking the guy. Just move on.”

Right. She could find the missing soul by herself. Didn’t need a witch who knew every magic in the book to help her. Much as she’d like to delve into his magical knowledge, she knew that way lay disaster.

“So his intelligence appeals to you,” she reasoned out loud as she navigated the streets, taking a bridge across the river to the Left Bank. Not the side of the city she lived on. “Because it certainly isn’t his looks. Dark, wicked, evil-looking man.”

And yet his hair was so glossy it gleamed like hematite in the light, and despite that odd tattooed hand, his fingers were long, graceful and full of expression. A man’s hands told so much about the owner. And his eyes—goddess, but he was attractive in a sad, pleading way.

“I was hard on him after the crash. He could have been hurt. Oh, I wonder if he was?”

The emergency crew with the ambulance had told her she checked out, and then cautioned her to have someone stay with her tonight and keep an eye on her in case of a concussion. But what about Certainly?

“If he was hurt he could be lying on a street somewhere, bleeding out. If he lays there too long, it’ll grow dark and then—”

Her heart sped up at the thought of CJ’s demons rampaging the streets of Paris. It would be her fault, too, because she’d dismissed him so quickly and so angrily.

“I shouldn’t have taken my anger out on him. It wasn’t his fault.”

Stopping at a sign, Vika remembered he’d told her his address. It was a nice neighborhood in the fifth, and she wasn’t far from there. She turned the hearse toward his building.

“Just a quick check. I need to know he’s not dying.”

Then, she could put away her worry for Certainly Jones and be done with him.

Certainly trampled down the stairs from the building’s roof and into the brightly lit hallway before his flat to find Vika poised to knock on his front door. In a flash of red hair and heather skirts, the witch turned to him and offered what looked like a forced smile.

“This is an unexpected pleasure,” he offered. “Or is it?”

“I couldn’t rest without checking to see if you were all right.”

“Thoughtful of you.” Yet he was leery. She’d raged at him after the crash. As she’d had every right. The trouble he could give her was not something he wanted to unleash on her quiet, perfect life. “I’m good. Not even a scrape.”

“Then you haven’t looked in a mirror. There’s blood on your forehead.”

He touched his forehead, feeling the crusty trail of blood and examining the crimson flakes on his fingertips. Damn. He’d been cut? He hadn’t felt it or realized it until now because he’d gone straight up to the roof. Had he bled at the accident sight? Not good. Extremely not good if he’d left behind even a single drop of blood.

“Are you all right?”

He nodded absently, not wishing to let on to his alarm. This was something in which he must never involve Vika. It was too dark for her brightness. Thanks to the menace demon, he’d already rubbed a black mar along her life.

“I’m sorry, Vika. There’s nothing I can do to change what happened. And I can’t claim no fault because it was me doing the bad stuff, despite my body not being completely my own during that awful moment.”

“Yes, but it wasn’t your fault. It was the menace demon who made you do it.”

“It was, but that you believe me means—wow. Thank you. Just, thank you. That means a lot.”

“I’ve had a few hours to think it over while I was waiting for the car to be repaired.”

“You got it in already?”

“Yes, well, a little persuasive magic never hurts, does it?” She winked and then touched her lips, as if rethinking that impulsive act. “I stopped by because I needed to know you’re not hurt. How are you?”

“Shaken and stirred, but all in one piece.”

“Same with me. I think we both need to get some rest. Can you … sleep? If a cloudy day brings up your demons, I can’t imagine what night does to you.”

“I’ve trained myself to sleep with all the lights on. Not the most relaxing, and I’m lucky if I doze for three or four hours a night. Noctambulatory, remember? Spend a lot of time bent over my workshop table, crafting spells that never work. Lately, I can’t manage more than allotriophagy or scrying. Don’t give me that look. You know someone has to practice dark magic to balance the light. I bet I seem a real basket case to you.”

“You do.”

He rubbed a palm down his chest. “Demonic possession tends to leave me a bit worse for wear. But I clean up nicely. Will you come in and let me make you something to eat? I can do amazing things with fresh veggies. I promise you will be impressed.”

“No, I—”

“Right. It’s not safe with me,” he added, stepping back from her defensive posture. “Probably it would be better if you drove to your little round, white home and put your spice rack in order.”

“It is in order. Alphabetized, too.”

“Naturally. Have you eaten?”

“No.” She sighed. Resisting the offer, surely. Scanning the tiled walls and ceiling, she avoided eye contact with him. He knew his eyes went red when a demon was in control, and he hated she’d seen him like that. “The lights are very bright out here,” she offered.

“I’ve replaced them all with the highest wattage possible. The residents bitch about it, but I’ve put a shock spell on the fixtures so if they try to change them—zap!”

“That’s cruel.”

“It’s called survival.” He clutched the doorknob. “Give me a few minutes to try to win back your trust after our harrowing experience this afternoon? Dinner and then a sip of chartreuse?”

“I am a bit peckish. And I prefer crème de violette. But I won’t stay long. You feed me, then I’m out of here.”

“Excellent. I happen to have crème de violette. I should warn you before going inside. There’s no real way to prepare a person. What I’ve acquired since returning to this realm, what I surround myself with, is a means to survival.”

She gave him a hopeful gaze, and his heart thudded hard. Those huge emerald eyes. He wanted to kiss them and savor them. Apologize to them and be worthy of their admiration.

“So try me,” she said.

“All right. But take it all in before you say anything. Promise?”

She nodded, and when he opened the door, the red witch stepped over the threshold and gasped, clutching her throat, as her eyes veered skyward.

Chapter 5

Head tilted back, Vika wandered into the huge loft apartment that mastered the sixth floor. Marveling, she took in all the busy wonders suspended above her.

“Prismatic light,” she whispered, her footsteps moving her slowly forward across the hardwood floor.

Everywhere hung chandeliers. Clear crystal chandeliers, colored and black crystals, all strung, attached and hanging upon silver, brass and black iron and steel fixtures. The entire rainbow dazzled. And bewildered. There were massive structures stretching over six, seven, even eight feet across, and smaller ones hung as if fruits laden heavily within an orchard.

Overwhelmed by it all, she clutched her arms about her and looked to CJ, who still stood in the doorway, ankles casually crossed and thumbs hooked in his jeans pockets.

“My home,” he offered.

“There are so many.” She spread her arms as if to take them all in, but it was impossible. “And all of them on all the time?”

“Yes, I never turn them off. Have a backup generator up on the roof in case the power goes out. It’s disconcerting at first.”

“I’ll say.”

She moved down the aisle toward the kitchen. The loft was spread across an open floor plan. To her left, a huge four-poster bed mastered what must be the bedroom, with a Chinese screen offering little privacy, save perhaps to stand behind to dress. The kitchen sat plopped in the center of the vast hardwood-floored area, the chandeliers above it all clear and casting a rainbow upon the counters and fixtures. Way over to the right a comfy gray couch and a few easy chairs gathered about a massive granite coffee table.

Behind her and around a long counter forming a half wall along one side of the entry looked like where CJ might do his spellwork. A scatter of magical accoutrements sat beneath crystal clouds of dazzling light.

Stumbling, she stepped aside a heap of jeans mounded on the floor and noticed other things lying about. An empty box here, a pair of boots over there. A tangled electrical cord and various screws and bolts, perhaps from the installation of a chandelier. Sigils had been drawn with what looked like white spray paint here and there on the hardwood, and she noticed some on the brick walls, as well, but had no clue how to decipher their meanings.

The place was a mess below, but above? Some kind of crystal heaven. And she didn’t subscribe to the idea of a physical heaven.

“You take a look around,” he said. “I’m going to start something for supper, as promised. You like the tiny tomatoes?”

“Love them.”

“Caprese salad, it is. I’ve fresh mozzarella and capers and a delicious red wine vinaigrette from a local artisan who lives just down the street.”

Reaching up, Vika touched a particularly low crystal hanging in the center of a chandelier that spanned five feet in diameter. Tucked among the behemoths were smaller, more personal light fixtures one might see above a dining room table. There must be hundreds.

She walked down the aisle along a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows where old wooden shelves harbored dusty vials and pots and vases of herbs and potions. A gorgeous ruby crystal chandelier captured her attention, and she stopped below it and caught the red reflections dancing on her palm.

The overall result of chandeliers filling every space in the air above her was both gorgeous and terrible. It was as if Versailles had been slapped together with a cheesy Las Vegas casino. Kitschy. Disturbing. Strangely sexy—like the man himself.

She hadn’t seen anything lovelier. And at the same time, never had she seen something so monstrous. These light fixtures had been hung in an attempt to fend off the demons infesting CJ’s soul. And the man slept with them on all night?

“I would go mad,” she whispered.

More so, if she lived in this place, the disorder would send her to madness faster than the cacophony of light. The urge to tug on some rubber gloves and mix up an herbal cleaning solution tweaked at her sense of order as she ran her fingers over the light coating of dust on the well-pocked butcher-block worktable.

Behind a curtain of crystals strung on thin wire that served as a sort of veil instead of cupboard doors, sitting on the shelves were dusty bottles of vampire ash, faery ichor, angel dust and bat brains. Standard spell ingredients. And then the less standard, such as a newborn’s cry, demon scales and the air from a corpse’s hollow skull.

Distracted by an open grimoire, she checked over her shoulder to ensure CJ was still in the kitchen. Flipping back to look at the cover, she saw his book of shadows featured the three faces of Hecate: snake, dog and horse.

“Without death there can be no new life,” Vika whispered, recalling Hecate’s teachings.

Leaning over the red leather-bound book, she inspected the page that put out the slightest odor of chicory when touched. The spell name, In Which the Dark Is Stopped, was scrawled in tiny ink marks.

Most grimoires promised the impossible. Only a truly powerful witch could achieve something so grand. He’d said he had mastered many magics, yet was weak. Perhaps CJ would be powerful had he not a soul weighed down with so many hitchhikers.

She perused the required ingredients. A few common herbs, and some less common: rat’s spine and troll blood. The process was something else entirely. It required the name of an angel who had extinguished heaven’s light. Angel names were not easy to come by.

“Impractical, yes?”

Jarred from her intent study, Vika spun around and squeaked out a distressed cry.

“Sorry.” He stood before her, a kitchen butcher knife in hand. “Just checking you didn’t fall under the spell of bedazzlement some do when they stroll under the lights.”

“They certainly do have the power to dazzle.” She pressed her fingers on the top of the blade he held and directed it downward to his side. “Be careful. If you want my help, you’ll need to keep me intact.”

“You’ll help? I thought I’d frightened you away for sure. Or that Menace had.”

“I’m much tougher than you believe. Most certainly wary, but also fascinated for reasons beyond my ken. I trust you are different from the demon who has shown itself to me.”

“Thank you for that trust.”

“You have earned my cautionary trust.”

“I’ll accept that.” He nodded toward the grimoire. “You think you can work the spell?”

“I don’t know. It is impractical. To erase darkness from the world for twenty-four hours?”

“True. And what good would it do me to gain but twenty-four hours? I want these bastards out, not merely pacified.” He pointed to his chest with the knife, which made Vika cringe. “It was just a consideration. I’ve many more grimoires to go through, but not a lot of time in which to browse them.”

“Your job at the archives keeps you busy?”

“That, and trying to stay in the light and alive.”

Such a simple goal—to stay alive. One she took for granted daily. Surely, a grander challenge than merely protecting one’s soul from an angry soul bringer.

Pleased she’d decided to stop by and had gotten a glimpse into this fascinating man’s life, she took the knife from him and walked toward the kitchen. “Do you need help? Oh.”

A bowl of salad waited and two plates had been set out on the round, glass-topped table. A sexy purple bottle of crème de violette sat in an ice bucket. It was a quaint, romantic scene, one that stirred her heartbeat faster. Totally unexpected, and yet it prompted her wariness about the man’s intentions.

But overall? Nice.

Certainly reached around and grabbed the knife from her grasp. “Dinner is served, mademoiselle.”

It felt too easy. A little bit right. And not at all wrong standing next to Vika and washing dishes like an old married couple. Graceful in her movements, she did not set a plate aside for drying until it had been scrubbed sparkling. She was easy to talk to now they’d gotten past her mistrust of him. Not completely, though. CJ knew she wasn’t going to let down her guard around him, and he expected as much.

When they’d finished, she washed out the sink and dried that, too. Was he supposed to do that after dishes? Whoda thought?

Vika folded the drying towel and placed it neatly on the counter, then straightened the chairs before the table and blew out the beeswax candle, squeezing the homemade wick to a fine point. When she blew, her lips pursed and CJ had to lick his lips at the sight. So kissable.

“Have you a broom?”

“Huh?” Snapping up from his stupid stare, CJ twisted his thoughts around her strange question. If he let her go much longer, she might start picking up the clothes on the floor, and he did own a vacuum somewhere in this mess.

Vacillating on the pros and cons of letting the witch go to town on his disaster of a life, Certainly decided he couldn’t let it continue. Not on the first date. That was for making a good impression, not tricking the woman into manual labor. And yes, he was calling this a date for his own personal fulfillment.

He didn’t do dates. One-night stands, casual encounters leading to sex and no returned phone calls, were his standard. Busy with work, always, and never inspired to seek consistent companionship, Certainly had lived up to his best friend Lucian’s nickname for him, Brother. It implied a monkish lifestyle, and CJ could not deny it.

Though he did desire. And since returning from Daemonia, his aspirations and life outlook had changed. He wanted—no, craved—closeness with a woman. And standing not ten feet from Vika, having watched her smile and chatter about the spells she and her sister were practicing over supper, and now feeling her wonder as she inspected the chandeliers, he felt the desire rise and the need to explore the tender and wanting emotions he’d ignored over the years.

“No broom, and I insist you stop trying to clean the place. Let’s have an after-dinner drink.”

He poured a small narrow glass of the crème de violette for her. It smelled of violets, but he preferred the spicy chartreuse, which he poured for himself. They clinked glasses, and Vika sipped hers, while he swallowed his measure in one tilt.

“Isn’t chartreuse made by monks?” she wondered. “And so many herbs in it. I think the taste would get lost.”

Pouring another draft, he offered her his glass. “Smell.” She leaned in, closing her eyes, and drew in the aroma. It took all his control not to reach for her porcelain cheek and brush a finger along it. Not yet. “Each time, you smell something different, taste the tarragon, and then the anise, or even the mountain lavender.”

“I’ll stick with my sweet liqueur,” she said, curling her wrist toward her as she sipped the violet concoction. “I like things sweet. Now, you are a little bit sweet yourself.”

“Me? Sweet?”

“You’ve a decidedly cedar scent that rises above a mix of many other herbs. I like it.”

“Must be from the herbs I use for spellcraft. I don’t pay much attention.”

“It must be difficult for you, if you’re such a powerful witch, to have that power depleted by the demons.”

“It is, but they cannot deplete the greatest of my powers.”

“Which is?”

“Well, it’s been said a witch’s greatest power is not theirs to wield. Rather, it exists in the minds of others.”

“Oh, yes. What someone believes you are capable of may be the power that holds them back, whether or not you possess such power. It is the power of the mind.”

“Belief,” Certainly chimed.

“I agree with that.” She smiled freely, tipping her glass to his in a bright ting.

Paused in the center of the kitchen looking about—for more cleaning work, he presumed—Vika set her glass aside as he reached her. He moved in for a kiss. It was quick and a little off her mouth. A hint of violet liqueur hushed out at her startled gasp. He’d screwed it up, and he pulled back with a wince.

Mouth open, she gave him a stunned once-over. “What was that?”

“It was an awful, botched attempt. A horrible kiss, as far as kisses go. Sorry.”

“Never apologize for a kiss.” She clutched the front of his shirt, pulling him down to her mouth, and kissed him.

More intrigued than startled—although he was still kicking himself for such awkward first contact—Certainly stepped in closer and slipped an arm around behind her slender back. All he’d needed was a test kiss and an acceptance from her. He relaxed now, and Vika’s mouth melded against his. Of course, he should expect nothing less than perfect from her. Perfect looks, perfect life, perfect kiss. And suddenly he wanted to mar that perfection, to imprint it with his own rough and messy darkness.

Hand gliding up against the back of her head, his fingers diving into the soft garnet braid, he deepened the violet and chartreuse kiss, clutching her tighter and teasing her to answer his force if she dared. She didn’t balk. The witch wrapped her sorcery about his intentions and pulled tight, taming his sudden wildness until he moaned into her mouth. Her hair, silken and slick under his exploring fingers, pulled free from the updo and tumbled over his face and neck. It spilled endless streams over him, ensnaring, capturing, tying him up in her delicious net.

The body melded against his was long and lithe, soft and hard, hungry and undulating, pressing against him, daring him, meeting his challenge. He grew hard. He pulled her hips forward, crushing her against his aching want. It had been too long. Until he’d gone to Daemonia, he’d not had a relationship with a woman that lasted longer than a night. He’d never felt the desire to make a lasting connection.

Everything had changed. He wanted—no needed—someone. All his life he’d fended on his own. Family was close but distant. He didn’t even know where his sister, Merrily, was right now, yet he sensed she was safe. He didn’t know the concept of family in any other terms, but he felt something was missing. Life was precious. He wanted to experience romance and love, and to know the feeling someone cared about him and waited for his return, no matter where he should wander.

Vika pulled away and stumbled backward, catching her palms on the counter behind her. Her eyes wide and vibrant, she brushed away strands of hair from her cheek. “Wow.”

“No kidding.” He chuckled. “Mistress of the Unexpected Kiss, you are filled with surprises.”

“You’re pretty spectacular in your own right.” She touched her lips, reddened from their kiss. “I, uh … Wow.”

“I could feel the nail hum in that kiss.”

“I could feel your power, dark yet restrained.”

They exchanged laughter and goofy grins. It was a moment of utter wowness, and all they could do was share some shy glances.

“I’ve never been kissed like that,” Certainly offered. “So brazenly.”

“You haven’t been around much, have you?”

“Much as I’d like to lay claim to a certain macho prowess, I’ve been busy studying magic over the decades.”

“Decades? Seriously? You’re a handsome, virile man, Certainly Jones. Have you been so busy you haven’t taken the time to kiss a woman?”

“Pretty damn close. I get it when I need it.” That had been a vulgar confession. She didn’t seem to mind. “I just …” He touched her lower lip, wanting to remember the shape of it, to imprint its seductive power upon his flesh. “I think you just touched parts of me that haven’t seen light in a long time.”

“Really?” She glanced above their heads. “Even with all this prismatic noise going on?”

“Vika, there are places inside me that will never see the light.”

“That’s awful to say.” A stroke of her fingers along his jaw, and he closed his eyes to focus on the exploring touch, to memorize it. “We’ll get the demons out.”

“You’ve suddenly become my cheerleader for demon expulsion.”

She gestured with a shrug of her shoulders. “Guess I figured out you might be worth the trouble.” She kissed him again and, spreading her fingers through his, entwined both her hands within his near their thighs. “Between fighting for my life with the menace demon earlier and walking beneath this amazing constellation of light, my world view has altered in a way not even magic could manage. I’ve always liked things a certain way, neat and tidy. You disperse disorder, chaos and menace with every footstep you make.”

“It’s not something I can control.”

“I know, you explained that. But, well …” She smiled a blushing smile, and her thick lashes fluttered coyly, like butterfly fringe. “I think I understand now why my sister is always falling for the bad boys.”

CJ’s shoulders straightened proudly. “Are you saying I’m a bad boy? I’m just me. Certainly Jones. Boring ole archivist and occasional adventurer to places no human or paranormal breed should ever venture. Fearful of the dark, and keeper of prismatic light.”

“And the best kiss I’ve had.”

He tilted down his head as if to say “really?”.

“Ever. And that’s saying a lot, trust me.”

“Guess I’m not so rusty as I think.” She strolled past him toward the door, and Certainly’s heartbeat stuttered. “You’re leaving?”

“Yes.” She twisted an end of red hair about her finger. “I feel compelled to leave the night where it stands, kind of wondrous and new. To save some anticipation.”

Really? That’s what women wanted? Anticipation?

“I want to spend some time browsing through my grimoires tonight, see if I can find something to expel demons.” She paused at the door, hand falling onto the knob. “You didn’t expect me to stay?”

“Oh, no. I mean, not unless you wanted to.” At her raised brow, he rushed out another forced refusal. “No. That would be forward. I’m not that kind of guy.” He winced. “I’ve never been that kind of guy.”

He wanted to change that, though, to somehow fit into Vika’s idea of anticipation.

She smiled, and her emerald eyes beamed brighter than the crystals overhead. “See you tomorrow, Certainly. If you happen to feel a stray soul brush up against you, grab it, will you?”

“How do I contain it?”

“With a mirror. You know catoptromancy?”

“Of course.” The practice involved catching souls with a mirror. He should be able to manage that, even with his lesser powers. “Good night, Vika, Purveyor of Anticipation.”

She tilted her head and blew him a kiss.

And he felt it land in the vicinity of his core, there in his center where the demons roiled, anticipating the night. The darkness. Yet something bright and bold had touched their incorporeal carcasses.

And they didn’t like it one bit.

Vika spun beneath the chandelier in her living room, only to crash into her sister. Libby held her back, her eyes wide and a silly smirk tickling her lips. “What is up with you, sister mine?”

“Don’t ask,” Vika rushed out. “You’ll just laugh.”

“I have never seen you dancing in the middle of the room as if you were at a Samhain festival frolicking naked through the coltsfoot. And no music. You are in a good mood. What’s up? Oh, tonight’s Friday. Are you and No-Name Titan headed out to the clubs?”

She and her best friend, Becky Titan, held Fridays as sacred. “You can call her Becky. Just because her dad didn’t give her a name doesn’t mean we can’t make one up. We use Becky most often. And she’s in the States with her father, visiting friends.”

“Then what is it that’s brought the color to your pale, perfect cheeks? The last we spoke you were going to find the soul— Ohmygosh. The derelict?”

“He’s not a derelict, so stop calling him that. His name is Certainly Jones, and he’s the archivist for the Council.”

“A librarian?”

“Not exactly. He catalogs more than books. We went looking for the soul.”

“And found it! No wonder you’re so happy.”

“We didn’t find it, and in fact, one of his demons made a horrible showing and crashed the hearse.”

Libby’s eyes widened.

“Just a broken headlight, which I’ve already had fixed. Sorry, had to dig into the household account, but I promise to concoct a few spells for you to bring along and sell at the next bazaar to make up for the expense. I plan to return to the area tomorrow and spread out the canvass periphery. How can one soul hide? It’s got to want to go somewhere, don’t you think? Oh, no, I wonder if it attached itself to someone else? I may never find it.”

“You’ll find it. You need to be vigilant, and I happen to know you do vigilance well. But that’s still not the reason for the happy dance. You know I will break you down, Vika. It would be wiser to speak now than have me go at you until you talk.”

True. Libby never let anything go if it was a secret or mystery. She had once badgered Vika about an All Hallows’ Eve present for six days. Vika was expert at holding out information. It gave her satisfaction to do so.

“I can’t say.”

“I won’t laugh. Promise. I’ll tell you my news if you tell me yours.”

“You have news?”

Libby pulled a red glass witch ball out of her tote bag. “Got it at the bazaar. Isn’t it gorgeous?”

Vika studied the handblown glass ball. Long glass strands dashed from side to side within the globe. “This is amazing.”

“The strands are supposed to trap souls. I thought to hang it in the garden above the white heliotrope.”

“Perfect. Though, I hope it won’t interfere with the souls that stick to me.”

“Oh, I didn’t consider that. I was thinking to catch a few butterfly souls to use in my spells. I’m so sorry. We can’t put this up.”

“No, do. I’ll let you know if it causes a problem.”

“If you’re sure, then I will. Now tell.” She went dead serious. “Or I’ll have the vines in the garden rise up and meet you next time you go out back.”

“I’d blast them with nightshade. Libby, you know you can’t go up against me when it comes to spellcraft.”

Her sister’s shoulders wilted.

Vika started up the stairs, gliding her fingers along the railing and looking down over the chandelier. It dazzled, but it was as if a speck in the universe compared with CJ’s amazing constellation. She wanted to return to his loft and lie on the floor and lose herself in the terrible beauty of it all.

“I kissed him,” she called down, and then dashed into her bedroom and closed the door behind her.

“What?” Libby’s footsteps trampled up the stairs in record time. She pounded on Vika’s door. “The derelict?”

“He’s not— Libby!”

“You kissed him.” On the other side of the door, her sister turned and leaned against it. “Was it good?”

“We both said wow after we kissed,” Vika called through the door.

“Oh, wow. But he’s the complete opposite of everything you find attractive. And he’s so … messy. How did you two manage to get your lips in the vicinity of one another to make a kiss happen?”

“I’m taking a shower now,” Vika called out, and smiled all the way to the bathroom.

Chapter 6

Paging through a few grimoires in search of a spell to help CJ, Vika was worried she wouldn’t find anything for casting out demons. Her grandmother’s magic had been focused on earth spells, and it was the rare spell that dabbled with the dark. Though certainly she would associate demons with the earth and the lower realms.

“What do you think?”

Libby spun into the room, purple crocheted skirt skimming the air. The concoction was tightly knit and hugged her sister’s ample curves in all the right places. It stopped scandalously high upon her thigh with a wave of crocheted ruffles as Libby did a guitar-strumming rock star move.

“Uh.” Vika pushed aside the spellbook and vacillated on the truth or the embroidered truth. “I love the color. It’s perfect with your hair.”

Libby pouted. “What’s wrong? Is it too tight?”

“No, it’s just right. You’ve such nice breasts. I always wonder why I wasn’t gifted that attribute,” she said of her smaller assets.

“Because you got the bright hair.”

“Is this wild red flag of hair I have a better tradeoff than sensuous breasts? Some days I’m not so sure.” Vika twisted the strands of jade mala beads wrapped around her wrist.

“Wow. You rarely feel down on yourself. And after the high you were on last night? What’s up, sis?”

“Nothing. I …” She tugged the natty, cloth-covered grimoire closer. “I’ve spent hours going through grimoires but can’t find anything for expelling demons that hasn’t already been tried.”

“For CJ? You must really like him. Have you tried to comb his hair for him yet? I can’t imagine that mess is something you could stand to look at for more than a few minutes.”

“His hair doesn’t bother me. And it is combed. It’s just long and in need of a trim.” And it usually covered the bruise on his neck, which she hated looking at. A demon mark. Awful thing, that. “He doesn’t have time for a visit to the barbershop because he’s stuck in a literal struggle for survival against the demons inside him.”

“How many?”

“I’m not sure. I’m thinking it’s an infestation. The light keeps the demons back. Most of the time. But it must be a specific kind of light. Prismatic,” she said, remembering with a shudder the terrible constellation that had hovered in CJ’s loft. “Yesterday when the menace demon reared its nasty head, the clouds had come out and it was merely an overcast sky.”

“You have to be careful around him, Vika.”

“I am wary.” Wasn’t she the chick who avoided dark magic? So what had that kiss been about?

That kiss.

After CJ’s initial awkward kiss, she’d been compelled to answer, and he’d quickly gotten over his nervousness, and their contact had stirred her from the tips of her toes to the ends of her eyelashes. A truly wow moment. And as a woman who prided herself in sensuality and knowing exactly what it took to turn her on, it had surprised her in a good way.

“It’s not so much I like the guy—though he is growing on me….”

“It’s that you want to clean him up. I know you, Vika. I can see your fingers twitching to get into the mess of Certainly Jones and sort him out. He’s got a strange, sexy vibe going for him. Nice broad shoulders, darkly handsome. I’m sure there’s more tattoos under those clothes, too, and the goddess knows I do love a man with tattoos.”

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