Praise for the novels of

MAGGIE SHAYNE

“A tasty, tension-packed read.”

—Publishers Weekly on Thicker Than Water

“Tense … frightening … a page-turner in the best sense.”

—RT Book Reviews on Colder Than Ice

“Mystery and danger abound in Darker Than Midnight, a fast-paced, chilling thrill read that will keep readers turning the pages long after bedtime … Suspense, mystery, danger and passion—no one does them better than Maggie Shayne.”

—Romance Reviews Today on Darker Than Midnight [winner of a Perfect 10 award]

“Maggie Shayne is better than chocolate. She satisfies every wicked craving.”

—New York Times bestselling author Suzanne Forster

“Shayne’s haunting tale is intricately woven … A moving mix of high suspense and romance, this haunting Halloween thriller will propel readers to bolt their doors at night.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Gingerbread Man

“[A] gripping story of small-town secrets. The suspense will keep you guessing. The characters will steal your heart.”

—New York Times bestselling author Lisa Gardner on The Gingerbread Man

“[A] crackerjack novel of romantic suspense.”

—RT Book Reviews on Kiss of the Shadow Man

Also by Maggie Shayne

Secrets of Shadow Falls

KISS ME, KILL ME

KILL ME AGAIN

KILLING ME SOFTLY

Wings in the Night

TWILIGHT FULFILLED*

TWILIGHT PROPHECY*

BLOODLINE

ANGEL’S PAIN

LOVER’S BITE

DEMON’S KISS

BLUE TWILIGHT

BEFORE BLUE TWILIGHT

EDGE OF TWILIGHT

RUN FROM TWILIGHT

EMBRACE THE TWILIGHT

TWILIGHT HUNGER

TWILIGHT VOWS

BORN IN TWILIGHT

BEYOND TWILIGHT

TWILIGHT ILLUSIONS

TWILIGHT MEMORIES

TWILIGHT PHANTASIES

*Children of Twilight

DARKER THAN MIDNIGHT

COLDER THAN ICE

THICKER THAN WATER

Look for Maggie Shayne’s next novel

DAUGHTER OF THE SPELLCASTER

available March 2013

Mark of the Witch

Maggie Shayne

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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Once in a lifetime, if you’re lucky, you’ll have a friend like my BFF Michele M. A friend you love so much that when you go out in public together, people mistake you for a couple. A friend you share Stevie Nicks concerts and road trips to the Grand Canyon with, even though it makes your men jealous. A friend who, when you crawl inside an empty crypt and everyone else is yelling “Ewwwww,” hushes them all and shouts “Hold still!” and takes your picture. Then she Photoshops your name on the outside of the tomb so you can use it in the back of your next book. A friend who will double-stick tape your boobs into your too-low-cut Romance Writers of America RITA® Award gown on the big night while making you laugh so hard you nearly bust the zipper but forget your nervousness. A friend you would trust with your life—no, more than that: with the lives of your kids. That’s the kind of friend I have in my beautiful Michele.

Michele, you are the Thelma to my Louise and I love you more than chocolate.

The Portal Series (all of it) is dedicated to you.

I even put a treasure chest in it, sort of.

1

Dammit straight to hell, I was being sacrificed again.

I stood on the edge of a precipice, the hard ground under my bare feet already warming beneath the rising, scorching sun. The unblinking red-orange eye of an angry god rose slowly over distant desert sands, beyond endless dunes, watching as I paid for the sin of practicing magic without a license.

Just as I had been at every execution before, I was dressed in almost nothing. A white scrap of fabric tied at my hip, covering one leg and leaving the other bare below the knot. Another length of the same stuff was draped around my neck, crossed in front to cover each of my humongous boobs, and then tied behind to keep it there. My hands were tied behind my back. I wore no jewelry. Resentment rose up in me at the notion that Sindar, High Priest of Marduk, had stolen it. And then I wondered how I knew that.

This isn’t me. I mean, it feels like it’s me, but it can’t be me. She’s olive-skinned. She’s gorgeous. Her boobs are huge. I’m pale and blonde and too thin. No curves here. Not like those, anyway.

And yet it was me. I was there. On that cliff. In that body. No denying it.

There were two other women, dressed pretty much the same way I was, one standing on either side of me. I felt close to them. I loved them.

Three men stood behind us. I felt the one behind me, his hands, warm and trembling, resting softly on my back, low, near my waist, where the skin was bare. My back was screaming with pain I didn’t understand, but that man’s touch was good. Soothing. I tried to relish it, thinking it was the last time I would feel it or anything good. Ever.

I wanted to turn my head, to look back at him, to see his face, but somehow I could not convince my dream self to do that. It didn’t matter, though. I knew what he looked like. In my mind, I saw him clearly: his long black hair, his fine white tunic with a sash of scarlet, the fat gold torque around his corded neck. His arms were banded with steel and coated in fine dark hair. He was strong, and he had ebony eyes.

I didn’t need to see him, nor the poor, half-dead man being held captive by soldiers a bit farther away. He’d already been beaten bloody, but he was struggling to break free as they forced him to watch. I’d glimpsed his face as they’d marched us up the cliff, far from our city gates. He barely looked human. His own mother wouldn’t have known him.

And Sindar, the High Priest, he was there, too. I knew his face, as well. Eyes lined with kohl, lips darkened with the juices of rare desert berries. The rolls of fat at his neck, sporting layer upon layer of gold. His robes of the finest fabric, imported from the East. His belly so big that the golden cords of those robes had to be tied above the bulge, making him look like a mother about to give birth. I knew he was there, knew the secret lust in his eyes for what was about to happen to us. He was twisted, turned on by violence. Or maybe just by the rush of knowing he held the power of life and death in his hands.

I was going to have to kill him one day.

I tried to look at the other women, because, aside from the touch of those large male hands on my skin, they were the most interesting part of this whole thing. They had dark hair and dark eyes, just like I did. But as I looked at them, they changed, the way a reflection in still water will change when a stone is dropped into it. One briefly became a blue-eyed platinum blonde, the other a fiery redhead, modern women in modern clothes. It was brief, the illusion, and then the High Priest was speaking in some long-dead language, and the hands at my back began trembling harder than before—kneading my waist, I thought—and I closed my eyes in bittersweet anguish.

“Remember, my sisters,” said the raven-haired woman who had so briefly been a blonde. “Remember what we must do. We cannot cross over until it is done.”

Oddly, the words I heard were spoken in an exotic language I knew I didn’t know, yet I understood every word.

I tugged at the ropes that bound my wrists, tugged so hard I felt new blood seeping from the welts already cut into my flesh from my struggling. My gaze strayed to the jagged rocks far, far below, and my toes dug into the hard earth as my body instinctively resisted.

But, as always, it was futile—and I knew it. So I relaxed and reminded myself of the plan.

An instant later, my body was plummeting.

There were no screams, not one, not from any of us, as we arrowed downward like hawks diving onto their chosen prey. Our own weight propelled us as our feet pedaled uselessly. The only sounds were the soft flapping of our garments and the arid wind rushing past my face, whipping my long black hair above me. I smelled that wind, sucking it in deeply, tasting every flavor it held in my final breath. I closed my eyes, and awaited my fate. Then I heard the others, their voices chanting a familiar verse, and I joined them. My heart raced faster and faster as I waited to feel the impact of the already bloodstained rocks below.

I felt a sudden jarring blow, like the hit of a powerful electric jolt, in every cell of my body. And then nothing. Blackness.

I opened my eyes and stared through the darkness at the ceiling of my tiny Brooklyn apartment, willing my heart rate to drop back to normal. It was running like a late bicycle messenger on deadline, banging so hard against my rib cage that I thought for a second I might be having a heart attack. I lay very still, afraid to move and make it worse, my eyes wide, blinking at the ceiling.

I’m not in some fucked-up desert. I’m not wearing an I Dream of Jeannie Halloween costume. I have little boobs. Nice, firm, little boobs. And blond hair.

I moved my hand carefully, as if I was afraid to set off some unseen trap, and lifted a lock of said hair, so I could see it for myself by the glow of my plug-in night-light.

Yep. Blond. Perfectly blond. Or amber-gold, as my stylist calls it. Crimp curled, only without need of a crimper. And hanging just below my ears, right where it belongs. No long, flowing, ebony tresses in sight.

I took a deep, cleansing breath, inhaling till my lungs wanted to burst, then holding it for a beat or two, before blowing it all out, real slow. And then I did it again. And again. It was a technique I’d learned in the open circles I used to attend, led by my friend Rayne—Lady Rayne, that is—back when I used to believe in magic and shit. Which I didn’t anymore.

When I felt it was safe to move again, I turned my head to look at the clock on the nightstand. Midnight. Again. It was always midnight when I woke from the damned recurring dream—

The Witching Hour. And on the night before Halloween, too.

Shut up. I’m not a witch anymore.

—and I could almost never get back to sleep.

The adrenaline rush of being shoved off a cliff tended to get a person’s blood flowing, I supposed. Sitting up in bed, I pushed both hands through my hair. My spiky bangs were sideswept and tended to fall into my eyes. I thought it made me look mysterious.

My heart was still hammering. I needed a smoke, but like a jackass, I’d quit again, so there wasn’t a cigarette in the entire place. No, wait, maybe—I’d switched out handbags just before my latest attempt to go healthy. I might have missed one.

I swept off the covers and got up too fast, then pressed the heels of my hands to my eyeballs to make the room stop spinning. Hell. Another deep breath. Damn, I needed nicotine.

Okay, steady again. Good. I made my way across the bedroom to the halfway decent-sized closet that had been the apartment’s one and only selling point—besides it being only two subway stops or a good brisk walk from work—and rummaged around in the darkness within. I stubbed my toe on my antique replica treasure chest and cussed it out for being in the way before I located my most recent handbag, a pretty little leopard print Dolce & Gabbana number that had cost two months’ rent.

I had a weakness for shoes and bags, and killer good taste. There were worse things.

Yanking the bag off the shelf by its tiny silver handle, I opened it and had an instant rush of gratification at the whiff of stale tobacco that wafted out. I pawed inside until I felt a crumpled, cellophane-wrapped pack that still held one beautiful, stale menthol.

One. Just one. My precious.

Lighter? Junk drawer. I dragged a bathrobe off the foot of my bed on the way into the living room-slash-kitchenette, then rounded the Formica counter that separated one from the other. The junk drawer—official holder of anything I didn’t know where else to put, size permitting—yielded a yellow Bic.

I smoothed the wrinkles out of the slightly bent cig and put it between my lips. It felt good there. Lighter in hand, I speed walked to the bedroom window and wrenched it open. Then, sitting on the sill, illuminated by the moonlight I used to dance beneath, one leg dangling outside, the other holding me firmly in, I cupped my hands at the far end of the cigarette, like any smoker does when there’s likelihood of an errant breeze.

But before I could flick my Bic, I went very, very still, my eyes glued to my wrists, which, I suddenly realized, really hurt. They’d been quietly hurting ever since I’d awakened from that stupid nightmare. The pain had seemed like part of the dream, like the pain all over my back and the impact with those rocks. I’d been waiting for it to fade, like the rest, but clearly it wasn’t going to.

Clearly. Because there were angry red welts on my wrists, welts that had been bleeding, and that still bore the twisted pattern of rough-hewn rope.

My jaw dropped … and my one and only cigarette fell from my lips and fluttered down, way down, to the sidewalk below, looking a bit like a girl in white, plummeting from a friggin’ cliff overlooking the desert in Bumfuck, Egypt.

Not Egypt. Babylon.

I turned around so fast I almost fell, looking to see who had just whispered the correction. But that was stupid, because it had come from inside my own head.

Father Dominick St. Clair led the way, and Father Tomas, his chosen successor, followed with his heart in his throat. He was nervous, and not ashamed to admit it. It wasn’t every day a man was asked to assist in an exorcism. So far, it had all the markings of a made-for-Hollywood production. Creepy old house sadly in need of a paint job, check. Careworn mother, old beyond her years, dressed in clean but faded clothes, check. Narrow staircase that creaked when you walked on it, check. Big wooden door with unearthly moaning coming from the other side, double check.

He stood there and told himself he was a twenty-nine-year-old man with a first-rate education—Cornell, for crying out loud—and a left brain that ruled him. Practical. Intelligent. That part of him did not believe this could be real.

And he suspected that was the part of him Father Dom was trying to stomp out. The doubting side. The doubting Tomas.

The older priest couldn’t know it was already too late. Tomas had made his decision. He couldn’t keep living something he didn’t believe in. He was only waiting for the right time to explain that he couldn’t keep living in service to vows that no longer meant to him what they once had.

Dominick paused outside the old wooden door. It had an oval brass knob that had probably been there for two hundred years. “The job I’ve been grooming you for is coming soon.”

He was being “groomed” to keep a witch from releasing a demon from its Underworld prison. Great. He’d often wondered if the Church elders knew about Father Dom’s obsession with the ancient legend of He Whose Name Must Not Be Spoken. All Tomas had wanted was to be an ordinary priest, to help the poor and hungry and misled, to offer faith to the faithless and hope to the hopeless, to pay back the kindness shown to him by the Sisters of St. Brigit and Father Dom himself, who’d raised him from the age of ten after his faithless, hopeless, addicted mother’s suicide.

He’d studied. He’d excelled. College, then the seminary. But unlike every other seminarian, he’d been yanked out of school early and personally ordained by Father Dom. He’d been given special dispensation with regard to Tomas, the old man had said, because of the importance of the mission.

“Did you hear me, Tomas?” Dom asked, sounding impatient.

Tomas snapped out of his thoughts and looked the old priest in the eye. Dom’s face was like a white raisin, his body stooped. Yet his eyes were sharp and his perception sharper. Sometimes Tomas thought the old man could see right inside his brain, read the thoughts going on there. But then, he should. He probably knew Tomas better than anyone.

“Your faith isn’t strong enough yet to do what will be required of you, Tomas,” Dom said, and Tomas realized that he’d already said it once while he’d been lost in thought. “Faith ought not need proof to sustain it. But time is short, and you need to know. Demons are real. And powerful. See for yourself.”

He opened the door, and Tomas looked inside. The girl in the bed might have been twelve. Maybe less. She was thrashing, arching her back, grunting and moaning. He froze in place as his mind tried to process what he was seeing. And his initial feeling was that he ought to yank out his iPhone and call 9-1-1.

Dom pushed past him, his black bag already open. He pulled out a crucifix and a bible, small and black and worn, its pages edged in gold. “Get the holy water. Bring it here.”

Tomas pushed his doubts aside to be considered later. He took the bag from Father Dom and rummaged inside until he found the vial, pulling it out and uncorking it.

“Use the water and draw an X on her forehead whenever I tell you.”

Tomas moved up to the other side of the bed. The girl stank of urine, and it made him want to gag. She was foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog, thick white bubbles erupting everywhere.

“Exorcizo te, omnis spiritus immunde …” Dom nodded at him, and Tomas wet his forefinger with holy water and drew an X on the girl’s forehead. She was hot to the touch, and Dom was still praying. “In nomine Dei Patris omnipotentis …”

He kept going. Tomas stopped listening. He found himself pulled into the girl’s eyes until they rolled back, and he shot Dom a look. “She needs an ambulance. A hospital.”

Dom stopped what he was doing and glared at him. Then he lifted one long arm and pointed his arthritically bumpy forefinger at the door. “Get thee behind me.” He didn’t say “Satan,” but it was in his tone.

Tomas didn’t argue. He didn’t want any part of this. He left the room, head down, and walked down the stairs and out of the house. His trusty old Volvo wagon was waiting at the curb, behind Dom’s boat-sized seventy-something Buick. He got in and drove, and he didn’t look back.

I sat at the Coffee House. That was the name of the place, the Coffee House. Its stylized Formica tables were kidney-shaped and orange, with half-circle bench seats curving around the widest side. Stainless steel “pipes” twisted and curved overhead, lights affixed to them, aimed in random directions. Someone once said it was supposed to be retro, but it felt more like “Jetsons Chic” to me. The colors were perfect—today was Halloween, and I was at an orange Formica table waiting to meet with a Wiccan high priestess.

I was feeling awkward as hell as I waited for Rayne Blackwood to arrive.

She was one of my best friends, or had been until I’d renounced my witchhood and handed in my pentacle. (Okay, figuratively, not literally. The pent was still in my treasure box, along with all my other witchy stuff.)

I’d started studying the “Craft of the Wise,” otherwise known as witchcraft, several years earlier and, being an independent type, I had preferred practicing alone to joining a group. Besides, they still called them “covens,” and I just couldn’t stop sniggering at the word. Call me a cynic. Whatever. So I’d been what was known in the Craft as a “solitary practitioner.” Even now, when I was no longer a believer, Craft holidays still felt like my holidays. But there was a lot to be said for celebrating the holidays with others. Banging on a djembe drum alone in my apartment just wasn’t the same as sitting in a circle with twenty others, all playing as one. I know it sounds lame, but don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.

Anyway, since the only people who celebrated Wiccan holidays were Wiccan people, I’d wound up seeking them out.

Rayne’s coven (snigger) was a very traditional one in a lot of ways, with secret oathbound rites and all that. Rayne was its leader, a Third Degree High Priestess with a Pagan lineage as long as her arm, and therefore entitled to be addressed as Lady Rayne. But Rayne had never bought into the lofty title thing, either. None of her witches called her “Lady” anything.

Still, she was a big deal, Wicca-wise. And not a small deal mundane-wise, either—a partner in a Manhattan law firm and a class-A beauty. Green eyes, red hair, killer figure.

Almost as soon as I visualized her in my mind’s eye, Rayne came in, waved hello and sent me her stunning smile, then stopped at the counter on the way over, not continuing until she had a cup of high-test in her hand. She wore a sassy little designer suit, black tailored jacket with a short skirt, teal shell underneath, and a tiny, tasteful silver chain around her neck, with matching studs in her earlobes. No giant pentacle pendant. No dangling crystal stars or moons at her earlobes. She was a practical witch. Didn’t feel the need to announce her faith on a sandwich board while walking to work. Don’t laugh. Have you been to Salem?

“Trick or treat,” she said, as she slid onto the bench. “How have you been, Indy?”

“Good.” I lowered my head, feeling awkward as hell.

“Uncomfortable, are you?”

I looked up to see her smiling at me. She reached across the table, short French-manicured nails gleaming as she covered my hand with hers. “No need to be. I know we’ve barely talked since you left the Craft, but—”

“What do you mean? I leave comments on your blog every few days—”

“I mean talked. Facetime. Not online. It’s been eight months since I’ve even seen you. Do you really think I care what your faith is, sweetie?” She rolled her eyes. “Core Craft tenet, ‘to each her own.’”

“You made that up,” I said, but I was smiling, relaxing. She didn’t hate me for walking away. For not believing anymore. I was glad. Guilt wasn’t an emotion I allowed very often, but faith of any kind had been new to me, and leaving it unheard of. Some witches still practiced shunning of those who walked away. Or so I’d heard.

“I made up the wording, for simplification purposes, but not the notion. If I didn’t follow it, there would be war in my own family. Your truth is as sacred as mine, Indira.”

“Even if my truth is that there is no truth?” I asked, watching her green eyes.

“Even if.” She patted my hand three times. “Now what’s going on?”

“I’ve missed the shit outta you,” I told her.

“Yeah, I’m sure that’s all it is.” Sarcasm dripped. She flagged down a passing waitress, who had her arms full and looked harried as hell. “Bring us each a big fat gooey glazed donut, would you? But only when you get a minute.”

The waitress would undoubtedly have barked at anyone else, with a “this isn’t my table” or an “I’ll get to you as soon as I can,” sort of put off. But she smiled at Rayne. Everyone smiled at Rayne. She had the kind of personality that made people love her, no matter what she said or did.

Or maybe it was some of her magic leaking out.

Except I didn’t believe in that anymore. I lowered my head and caught sight of Rayne’s feet. Three-inch stilettos, black leather, ankle-covering uppers that zipped, and open toes. “Oh, my God, I love your shoes.”

“Thank you. But I assume my shoes are not the reason you emailed me. And since I’m on my lunch break, and hence my time is limited, it might be best to skip straight to your problem.”

Nodding rapidly, I pulled my head back into the game. I was way too easily distracted. And this was important. But, damn, I had to remember to find out where Rayne had bought those shoes.

Stay on topic, Indy.

I sat up straighter, focused. “I’m sorry I waited for a problem to force me to call. That’s pretty rotten of me. I just felt—”

“I know. It’s okay.”

“And I appreciate you giving up your lunch hour to help me out. And I’m buying, by the way.”

“Damn right you are.” Rayne winked, and sipped, and the waitress came back with the biggest glazed donuts I’d ever seen.

I took a small bite, followed by a sip of my herbal tea, secretly longing for the caffeine in the cup across the table. Maybe I should give up one vice at a time. Tea and a donut just wasn’t the same. Then I swallowed and looked my friend in the eye. “I’ve been having a recurring dream. Nightmare, really.”

“Ahh. All right. Well, I’m pretty good at dream interpretation.” She shifted in her seat, crossing one gorgeous leg over the other, settling in to listen. “It’s not surprising. I mean, you know the veil between the worlds is thin this time of year.”

“Yeah, I know.” Samhain, the actual holiday on which Halloween was based, was still a week away. Meaning my problem could only get worse.

“Go ahead, tell me about it.”

I nodded and tried to believe that it could get better, too. “I don’t think it’s actually a dream at all.”

“No?”

“No.”

“What, then?”

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

Rayne tilted her head, taking that in, her eyes going serious and contemplative. The effect was ruined when she took a giant bite of the huge donut right after her sincere, “Go on.”

“Okay. In the dream, or whatever, I’m standing on the edge of a rocky cliff, wearing clothes from some other era, but not many of them. There’s a man that I know is a high priest—not a Wiccan one, mind you—speaking some language that I’ve never heard before. Two other women stand on either side of me, dressed pretty much the same way I am. We’re very close. We love each other—”

“Love each other? Is this dream heading for a lesbian three-way?”

I stared at her blankly.

“Sorry. Trying to make you smile. I’m not used to seeing you so freaking intense, Indy.”

“This is intense. Whatever it is, it’s … Just let me finish, okay?”

She made a zipper motion over her lips.

“We have some kind of a plan, but I don’t know what it is. I mean, in the dream I do, but I don’t remember when I wake up. Our hands are tied behind our backs. Three men stand right behind us. I feel one of them—his hands are on my back, and it kind of turns me on, which is really fucked up, since I think he’s about to shove me off the freaking cliff.”

Rayne had resumed eating her donut, but she stopped in midbite, her eyes going wider as I went on.

“The next thing I know, we’re falling. Hitting the ground. Dying on the bloody rocks at the bottom, except things always fade to black before that part.”

Rayne lifted her head, met my eyes. I saw rapt interest in hers.

“It’s always the same,” I said. “We all have black hair, dark eyes, the kind of naturally tanned skin that suggests we’re Mediterranean or Middle Eastern or something. I’m pretty sure it’s some kind of a ritual sacrifice. And there’s always another man, a soldier, being held nearby. He’s been badly beaten, and he’s being forced to watch.”

Rayne blinked. “Any names floating around in your head? Any of the words spoken by the high priest, maybe?”

I nodded hard. “The high priest’s name is Sindar. He serves a Sun God, Marduk. I keep getting the feeling I was caught practicing magic and that it was forbidden.”

She was nodding. “Any clues in your clothing or the geography?”

“My clothes look like they were lifted from the wardrobe room for Aladdin. From the cliff, we’re looking out over a vast desert. I can see the shadowy outline of what I think of as my city in the distance.”

“Anything else?” she asked, as if fascinated by the story.

“Why? Is this ringing any bells for you?”

“Just tell me the rest.”

It was. I could see that it was. “I woke up referring to the city as Bumfuck, Egypt, and I heard a voice in my head say Babylon.”

Her eyes flared a little. “And that’s all?”

“No. There’s this.” I held up my hands, pushed back the draping sleeves of my paisley smock top and revealed the rope burns on my wrists.

“Holy shit.” Rayne grabbed my hands, turned them over.

“Yeah, that was my reaction, too.”

Her gaze remained riveted on my reddened wrists until I lowered them to my lap and let my sleeves fall back in place.

“So? What do you think?”

Rayne shook her head as if trying to clear it. “Are you absolutely sure you didn’t get those marks some other way? Some ordinary way?”

“Kinky sex with a bondage freak, you mean?”

“Indy …”

“There were no marks when I went to bed. They were there when I got up. There’s not a rope in my entire apartment. No one broke in, drugged me, bound me, raped me, untied me and left again, unless they managed to get into a locked apartment and lock it again on the way out, chain and all. I’m telling you, this is … it’s something else. It’s something … not natural.”

“Supernatural.”

“Yes. That.” Which means I was wrong to stop believing, doesn’t it?

Rayne nodded. “All right.”

“All right? What do you mean, all right? You look like there’s more. Do you know what this is about?”

She opened her mouth, then closed it again. “I’m going to do some research, and I’ll get in touch, okay?”

She knew something. I could see she did. But she wanted to make sure. Fine. “I can’t wait long.”

“I wouldn’t ask you to. Meanwhile, maybe we should try a protection spell. Would you be willing to let me do that for you?”

By “we” I was sure she meant the full coven. I would have to look all those witches in the eyes knowing that they knew I had turned my back on their faith. On my faith. On the Goddess.

And yet, I needed something. I needed Rayne’s cooperation, if nothing else, and sure as shit I would offend and wound her if I didn’t agree. Besides, I’d asked for her help. I couldn’t very well refuse it when she offered, could I?

Was there some little part of me that had missed this kind of hocus-pocus bull, too? Yeah, probably, way down deep.

“When?”

“Tonight,” she said. “The sooner the better.”

I nodded. I wasn’t sure if I felt better for having my insane experience validated, or whether that just made it more frightening. “Where? In the park where you usually hold your open circles?”

“No. No, this needs to be private. There’s an occult shop in the Village. They have a tiny backyard.” She dug in her handbag, pulled out a pen and a business card, flipped the card over and wrote on the back. “I’ll get the coven together. Not all of them, just the Seconds and Thirds. If this is what I think it is, it’s serious stuff.” She slid the card across the table so I could see the address she’d written. “Be there by 10:00 p.m., okay?”

Blinking, feeling a ridiculous burning sensation behind my eyes, I nodded. “Okay. Thank you.”

“I’m a high priestess. This is part of my job.” She twisted her wrist to look at her watch. “My other job, that is, besides the one I’m late getting back to. But before I do, I need your permission to share what you’ve told me with one other person. Someone I trust more than anyone else in the world. You can trust him, too. And he might have information we need. All right?”

“Is he a shrink?” I asked, and when she frowned at me, I said, “Yeah, permission granted. Go for it. Just try not to make me sound too warped.”

She was already on her feet, using a napkin to pick up the remaining half of her donut, hoisting her bag, which, I’d just noticed, matched the shoes—same black leather, same silver zipper—higher onto her shoulder. “I’ve gotta run, Indy. Take care of yourself, okay? And trust me, we’ll figure this out.”

I tried to smile. “Okay.”

And then she was gone, clicking away in her fabulous shoes at high speed. She’d left a half cup of caffeine-laden brew at her seat. Reflexively, I started to reach for it, felt eyes on me, heard a throat clear, and saw a waitress looking at me.

Sighing, I lowered my hand to my own cup of putrid tea. At least I had my donut.

2

“Father Dominick. You asked for me?”

“In the office,” Dom called.

Tomas entered and closed the front door behind him. The old priest’s entire house smelled like a combination of mothballs and muscle rub that always made Tomas’s stomach clench and his nose wrinkle. He forced himself not to allow the latter as he walked through the cluttered living room into what had probably been a den or a library when the old Victorian was built and now served as Dom’s office. Crucifix on the wall, books everywhere. Not just on the shelves—and there were lots of those—but in stacks and standing upright along the floor between every piece of furniture that could serve as a bookend. Old books, their bindings and pages overwhelming the smells in the rest of the house, much to Tomas’s relief. The smell of books was soothing. It was the smell of knowledge, preserved and passed on.

Father Dom was sitting at his desk, facing his computer. “Come around here, Tomas,” Dom said. “I have someone who wants to talk to you.”

Frowning, Tomas moved behind the desk. Dom nodded at the big monitor, and when Tomas looked, he saw the girl from yesterday, sitting up in her bed, smiling at them via Skype. “Hi, Father Thomas,” she said.

“It’s Toe-MAHS,” Father Dom pronounced. “Say hello to Dora, Tomas.”

“Hello, Dora.” He couldn’t believe his eyes. The girl looked fine. Oh, a little pale, a little tired, but her eyes were bright, and she appeared perfectly healthy.

“You look much better,” he said.

“I know. I feel better. I just wanted to thank you for helping me.”

Shame rose, and he bowed his head. “I didn’t really do anything. It was all Father Dom.”

“No, you were there. I remember. I don’t blame you for leaving. Mamma says it was awfully scary. But you came, and I’m better now.”

Tomas glanced at Dom, who smiled and nodded at the girl. “Well, we’ll let your doctor be the judge of that,” he said. “You’re seeing him this afternoon, aren’t you, Dora?”

“Yes, at two.”

“Let me know what he says, will you?”

“Of course. Bless you, Father Dom. Father Tomas.” She said it correctly that time, and then the on-screen window with her face inside it vanished.

Dom rolled his chair away from his desk but didn’t get up. “Her doctor will give her a clean bill of health. Of course, he couldn’t find anything wrong with her to begin with.”

Tomas nodded. Doubted, but nodded. “I’m sorry I doubted you, Father Dom. I just … in my experience … I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

“I’ve seen it a hundred times. Exorcised more demons than any priest in the church. Which is why I inherited this assignment of ours to begin with. This quest.”

“And I’m humbled that you chose me to be your successor.” He ought to tell him. He really ought to. But no, not yet. The wheels took time to turn, and this was going to be a huge and painful discussion when it happened.

Dom grunted as if he doubted it. “You’re the least humble man I know, son. But you were chosen for this. Sent to me just for this. Sit, Tomas,” he ordered. “I don’t like looking up at anyone.”

Tomas sat. The gruff old man was his mentor, his teacher and the closest thing he’d ever had to a father. Yes, he believed in things Tomas had come to consider unbelievable. But even he didn’t doubt the man with as much conviction as he used to. His doubts were still strong enough for him to know this was not the life for him, however. So he sat and tried to assume a humble demeanor. He loved the old priest, despite the fact that he’d always considered him a little bit crazy.

“Pull your chair around here,” Dom said. “We’re not through with this machine yet.” He was clicking keys as he spoke—slowly. Hunting and pecking with a single forefinger, knuckles swollen from arthritis.

Tomas nodded and moved his chair closer, turning it so he could see the computer screen again. It showed a lengthy series of astrological terms, symbols for the signs, abbreviations for alignments and conjunctions and oppositions at varying degrees. It stood beside a map of the solar system with lines and arrows and more symbols all over it. It looked like an NFL coach’s playbook. Astrology had never been his strong suit.

“What am I looking at?”

“This configuration. Right here.” Dom pointed. “In a week it will be exactly the same as it was in the beginning.”

“The beginning …” Tomas looked up from the screen, meeting Dom’s aging but sharp cornflower-blue eyes as he finally got the old man’s meaning. “The beginning? The fifteen-hundred-BC beginning?”

“More precisely, Samhain Eve, fifteen hundred and one BC. The day a high priest of the cult of Marduk imprisoned He Whose Name Must Not Be Spoken in the Underworld. If the demon is going to try to escape into our world again, Tomas, it will be soon. Samhain Eve, in fact. And I’m no longer strong enough to do what needs doing, though it pains me to admit it.”

Tomas searched Dom’s face. “You’re not well?”

Dom shrugged. “I feel fine.” He turned his head, gazing across the room at the oversize crucifix on the opposite wall. “But the Lord has spoken to me, told me it has to be you. This is the mission I’ve trained for all my life. Now it falls to my successor before his time. But that’s the way it has to be. So sayeth the Lord.”

“All things happen for a reason, Father Dom.” But inside Tomas was thinking this couldn’t be happening. Now not, not when he’d finally made the decision to leave the priesthood and sent in the paperwork making the request formal.

Thank God he hadn’t yet told the old man.

“Watch and wait for the signs, Tomas. Watch for the witches of Babylon. The Demon’s whores. Each of them bound by oath and by blood to help He Whose Name Must Not Be Spoken to escape. Stop the first of them and you stop them all. You must do this, no matter how difficult, in order to keep the demon from emerging and wreaking havoc on the world of man. It is our calling.”

It is a fairy tale, Tomas thought. But I’ll humor you a bit longer. “How will I know—”

“It’s written, ‘the witch’s past sins will rise up to mark her flesh and wake her memory.’ Watch, wait, listen, and take heed when you are called. I’ll help you all I can, Tomas, but the task, for some reason, must be yours.”

Tomas nodded solemnly. He wasn’t entirely sure Dom was 100 percent wrong about this, after all. The scrolls were real, and the tale was in them. He had seen it. “And if I locate the first witch and stop her from helping the demon—”

“Then the next will never be activated and our mission is done. Theoretically the Portal won’t open again until the next alignment, another three thousand five hundred years from now. But if you fail …”

“If I fail to stop the first witch, I have to try again with the second. And if I fail to stop her, then I try again with the third.”

“And if you fail then … the demon walks among us and the world of man is doomed.” Father Dom gripped Tomas’s wrist in his hand, squeezing so hard it hurt. “Do you believe me, Tomas? Have I shown you enough proof of the existence of demons, of the power of them, of the danger they pose, to make you a believer in the ancient prophecy?”

Tomas met the old man’s eyes. There was holy fire sparking from their depths. “Yes,” he said at length. “Yes, Father Dom. I believe.” It was a lie, and he felt guilty as hell for telling it, but what else could he do?

“Hold on to that faith, my son. You are going to need it.”

No harm in humoring him a bit longer, Tomas thought. He would play along. But he knew there would be no signs. No witches. No marks. Samhain would pass, and Dom would have to concede defeat. And then Tomas could leave knowing he’d done the best he could for the old guy.

Then his sister called, and all that changed.

The occult shop in Greenwich Village had a minuscule backyard enclosed by a vine-smothered stone wall and bathed in moonlight. Fingers of dark cloud slithered over the face of the moon, only two days past full. A true Halloween moon—perfect ambiance for a Halloween night gathering of witches. There were fountains and statues marking the four directions. Venus in the west, pouring water from a conch. Brigit—the Celtic goddess of the forge and giver of creative fire to poets—in the south, holding a shallow basin where blue flames floated. On the east wall, the beautiful Eostre—Germanic goddess of spring and rebirth—a ring of wildflowers upon her head, incense wafting spirals of fragrant smoke around her. The north boundary was the back of the brick building, and in front of it stood a modern rendition of Gaia. She held a dish of sea salt in her lap.

I sat in the center of it, and five witches stood around me in a circle. They had already performed all the preliminaries and had gone silent now to listen to Rayne as she led the rite.

“We come to weave a web of protection around the solitary witch Indira,” she said, her voice deep and compelling.

I wanted to correct her—former solitary witch. The words rose in my throat, but I bit my tongue to hold them in.

Rayne wore her long black robes tonight, her vivid red hair loose and moving in the slight breeze, her eyeliner exaggerated, and every limb dripping with sacred jewelry. The other women were dressed much the same way. Everyone jingled when they moved. Even me. I’d dug through my closets and pulled out my old witchy wardrobe. I had chosen white, since this was a spell of protection. A white one-shoulder dress with gold trim that could have been Grecian. But it reminded me, too, of the clothes I wore in that powerful, terrifying dream.

I’d donned my pentacle again. I told myself it didn’t mean I was returning to the fold or had started believing again. I didn’t believe. There was no magic in the world. I’d proven that to myself. I’d cast and cast and cast my spells, but my soul mate hadn’t appeared. And I’d been so damned sure he would—so certain he was real. All my life I’d felt this unnamed, unknowable longing gaping like a great big giant hole in my gut. A yearning for the man who was supposed to be by my side, whose absence I felt keenly, even though we had never met. It was real, that feeling. Which meant he had to be real, too.

I ached for him. Sometimes even cried for him. Like a real lover I’d had and lost. That’s how vivid the feeling was.

Sort of like those damned dreams.

Hey, that was encouraging. Maybe they were as flimsy and imaginary as he was.

Anyway, he hadn’t come, so I’d stopped believing. Magic either worked or it didn’t. Black and white. Scientific method. Test the theory, prove it right or wrong. I’d tested it. It hadn’t worked. Ergo, no magic. Period.

And yet, when I’d pulled out my pretty mini-treasure chest from the back of my closet and opened it, and the smells of sandalwood and dragon’s blood resin had enveloped me like a puff of magic from a genie’s lamp, I’d felt it all coming back to me. Witchcraft might be all bullshit, but it had felt very real from time to time.

It felt real now.

Rayne was still talking. Her voice was different during a ritual. Deeper. More powerful. “Together with the powers of Earth, Air, Fire, Water and Spirit, and by the unyielding power of the Goddess Herself, we weave this web so that nothing, be it from this world or any other, may harm this woman.” Facing me, she said, “Do you have any requests of the Goddess before we raise the cone of power, Indira Simon?”

I nodded and, rising to my feet, lifted my eyes and arms skyward. I felt a tingle flowing through me from the tips of my fingers down my arms, into my spine, and another upward from the ground, through my feet, up my legs and into my spine, until the two energies met and exploded. I pulsed with it and reminded myself it was just a trick of the mind.

“Show me what I need to know,” I said, though I was sure no one was listening. I was playing along because Rayne knew something and I wanted her to tell me what it was. “Show me what these dreams mean, what you want of me. More than anything right now, I need clarity. Wisdom. And information.”

And while you’re at it, that soul mate I’ve been longing for, forever and a day, would be a really nice bonus. You know, on the off chance you’re real.

Stupid. You gave up on that, remember?

“So mote it be,” Lady Rayne said.

“So mote it be,” the others all repeated in unison.

“So mote it be,” I whispered softly. I don’t have any idea why there were tears rolling down my cheeks. Maybe my eyes were just reacting to the smoke from the incense that hung in the air. It didn’t dissipate like you’d expect it to do, outside like this. And even though it was the end of October, it was warm within the circle, as if it were physically holding our body heat and the fragrant smoke within it, just like it would supposedly hold the energy we raised until Rayne sent it forth to become the magical goal.

One woman hit her djembe drum, beginning a slow, steady beat. Another joined in, adding an accent, and then another brought a flourish of her own. A fourth woman shook a rattle in time, and then Rayne began a chant that echoed the heady music.

“She changes everything She touches. Everything She touches changes.”

On and on the chant went, and it grew louder, its pace picking up. The witches joined hands, began walking in a circle, spiraling inward until the first of them reached me in the center, then turning to spiral outward again, forming a human snake with no end and no beginning. The drums kept up or led the way, it was impossible to tell which, but everything increased in both volume and tempo until the entire area was vibrating with energy. I felt it in my chest, in the pit of my stomach, all around and within me, until it reached a fever pitch and the chant evolved into a simple, rapid repetition.

“Touches, changes, touches, changes, touches, changes, toucheschangestoucheschangestoucheschanges …”

Then, like the crack of a starter’s pistol at the beginning of a race, Lady Rayne pressed her palm flat to my chest and shouted, “Release!”

And I swear to God, I was knocked backward, right off my feet. A witch standing behind me caught me, though, so I never hit the ground as the energy wave—or whatever it was—rushed over me. I sank to my knees in reaction. As I lifted my head, blinking my eyes open once more to look around me, I was not surprised to see several of the other witches sitting on the ground, where they’d settled as they let the power surge from them. I could almost see the result of the spell—the bubble of light around me. I could certainly feel it.

I tended to be a skeptic about most things of a so-called paranormal nature. But in witchcraft, I had believed—had really believed—and moments like this were why.

The mind sure is a powerful thing, isn’t it?

“It is done,” Rayne said. “Now you’ll be safe, at least. And pretty soon, I bet you’ll receive the information you’ve asked for. Watch for signs, Indy.”

I nodded. “I was hoping some of that information might be coming from you, Rayne.” I searched her eyes. She averted them.

“I have a call out. I might have something for you by tomorrow.”

I guessed I would have to be satisfied with that for tonight.

Rayne turned to her fellow priestesses. “Ladies, would you kindly wrap things up for me? I’m drained.”

As Rayne took a seat on the cool ground beside me, the other women took over. One thanked the Goddess for Her presence and aid, then each of them bade a hail and farewell to the energies of the four directions. Finally one woman took up the magic circle, the invisible space Rayne had cast. The magic circle was the witches’ temple. Sacred space. Holy ground. I knew better than to leave before all of that was complete, but I was eager to go once it was finished, hoping to find a smoke on the way home. I was dying for a cigarette.

Rayne put a hand on my arm and I jumped. “You need to eat something, Indy. Ground yourself. I’ve got coffee and cake inside.”

“Right. Ground myself.” I’d forgotten the habitual post-ritual snacking. Always seemed to me that the “grounding” thing was just a good excuse for a pile of sugary carbs. “I know it’s rude of me to rush off, but I just feel … compelled to get home.”

“Then that’s where you should be.”

“Thanks for understanding. And for all of this …”

“Text me in the morning, let me know how it goes tonight. I’ll do the same as soon as I have any information for you. Blessed be, Indy.”

“Blessed be,” I replied automatically.

I headed for the subway stop on the corner, intending to catch the next train to my Brooklyn neighborhood.

But there was something happening to me. A tingling, like an itch I couldn’t reach way down deep in my psyche, and a slowly spreading darkness that kept sucking my attention away from the here and now. Like a person running on lack of sleep who almost drifts off, then shakes herself awake, I fought against the somnambulant state trying to overtake me, went down the stairs (into the Underworld), dropped a token (paid the ferryman) and pushed through the turnstile (entered through the first gate). I found a post to lean against on the nearly empty platform and waited for my train to arrive.

A few other people wandered in, most not paying any attention to me. There was an old man who made brief eye contact and smiled, breaking an unspoken rule, probably because in his day it was rude to do otherwise. There was a cluster of pants-hanging-off-the-ass punks, one of whom had a nice crisp unlit Marlboro Light Menthol in his hand, and a nice-looking couple who were too lost in each other to notice anyone else.

Off in the distance, I heard the train echoing closer.

I drifted, pulled myself back, drifted again. I kept almost falling asleep and seeing myself in different clothing. Not quite like in the dream, though. This time I wore a long cloak of black, with a hood pulled up over my hair, bathing my face in shadows.

Stupid dream. Can’t you at least wait until I get home?

I jerked myself back to the present. The train was closer. The other people were beginning to edge nearer the tracks. The punks were uncomfortably close to the old man. The lead one was about to light his smoke, lighter in his other hand. But then he paused, pocketing the lighter, smiling at the others, nodding the old man’s way. The intended victim seemed to realize it about the same time I did. And just as the flash of alarm showed up in his kind blue eyes, one of the underwear-showing assholes pulled a knife. I felt myself lunging toward them even as I fell into the blackness of my dream world.

I woke groggy, rolled over in bed and pried one eye open to look at the clock. There was a cigarette, a white filtered Marlboro Light Menthol, lying in front of my little alarm clock, pristine, unsmoked, waiting for me. Had the nicotine fairy visited last night?

Then my foggy eyes focused on the illuminated red digits. 11:11. I’d slept way late, which was totally unlike me. My brain reminded me that my shift at Pink Petals, the flower shop sixteen blocks from my apartment, started at noon today, and that, more than anything, set a fire under my ass. I bounded out of bed, took a record-speed shower and toweled down in front of the mirror. A handful of mousse and a quick finger comb, and my hair was done. Easy breezy. I was still tugging its natural crimp-curls into shape as I gave my mirror image the once-over, but I stopped moving with one hand still tangled in my hair. My forearm was sporting a black-and-blue mark the size of a pizza slice.

Frowning, I lowered my arm and looked down at my body. Small boobs, still hanging where they ought to, no marks on what I’d always considered a rather boyish figure. I was kind of straight—slender, but straight—long waist that was nice and lean, but no flaring out at the hips. No booty in the back. I was small everywhere. Delicate and slight. I turned and looked back over my shoulder, spotting a good-sized slate-colored blob on one shoulder blade and a maroon one on my butt cheek. Legs looked okay in back. I looked down and cringed at the way the second littlest toe on my right foot was all bent out of shape and discolored. Looked broken. Felt it, too.

I turned back and met my own eyes in the mirror. “What the hell happened last night?” Damn. I was a mess. And that was about the time it hit me that I didn’t remember how I got home. In fact, I didn’t remember anything except standing in the subway, trying to hold on to the here and now, while something else was trying to suck me in. I remembered the punks and the old guy. I remembered one of them with a knife, and another with a mouthwateringly good-looking smoke in his hands. I remember lunging toward them.

And then … nothing.

And now there’s a mouthwateringly good-looking smoke on my nightstand. Coincidence? Or not …

I went back to the bedroom, picked up the cig, looked it over. I wanted to smoke it almost more than I wanted to know how I’d gotten home and into bed last night, but I couldn’t. God only knew what might be in it. Punks like that, you just couldn’t tell—assuming that was where I got it, which was impossible to know.

I picked it up, drummed up every ounce of will in my entire body, took it to the bathroom, dropped it in the toilet and flushed it away.

I almost cried.

I grabbed my towel off the floor, hung it up to dry and rubbed some witch hazel on my bruises. Then I dressed—leggings and a pretty little white camisole with lacy straps, long minty-green sweater over that, with a wide enough neck that it could hang off one shoulder. I added a wide pale brown leather belt that matched my short, kick-ass boots right down to the big gold buckles.

Then I wielded my makeup brushes like magic wands, and in another five minutes I was ready to face the day. Heavy eyeliner, dark shadow, luscious long lashes. I was still wearing my pentacle from the night before, and I decided to keep it on. Hell, it couldn’t hurt. And it might help. It had my birthstone, an amethyst, in its center, and ivy vines made of silver twisting around the circle that enclosed it. Each leg of the star was made of a tiny broomstick. I liked it, lapsed Wiccan or not.

Giving one final glance in the mirror, I headed out of my apartment. My boots protected my sore toe so I didn’t even limp. None of my bruises showed. No one would ever know what had happened last night.

Apparently not even me.

Sixteen blocks was a good brisk walk, and I loved it. I walked to work most of the winter. I walked it in the rain, when it wasn’t torrential. Today was gorgeous. Cool but sunny, and it smelled good outside for a change. I liked the neighborhood, the people I passed on the way, the excuse to get my heart and lungs working a little bit harder than normal. It was all good.

I passed the little convenience store where I used to buy my smokes and almost went inside. I even slowed my steps as I went by the door and, glancing in, saw my beloved Marlboro Light Menthols in their pretty white-and-green boxes, stacked inside a locked, clear plastic case. And the little lighters on the counter. I’d need one of those, too. Maybe just for today …

I stopped. I took one step into the doorway, and then I closed my eyes. It’s been three weeks. Three hellish, miserable weeks that I never want to go through again. If I buy a pack now, I’m going to have to go back to Day One. Start over. No. It’s got to get easier soon.

“Lucy?” said someone from inside the store.

My eyes popped open. A man stood just inside the entrance, facing me. And for a long moment I sort of locked onto his eyes and couldn’t look away. There was some kind of buzzing in my head, and my skin was cold and prickly.

“Hello,” he said.

His voice felt like warm fingers on my skin.

I feel his hands on my back.

I blinked myself out of whatever sort of idiot-haze I’d fallen into and tried to look at him the way I would normally look at any stranger who called me by the wrong name. He was gorgeous, that was for sure. Italian, or maybe Spanish. Sun-kissed bronze skin, hot Hershey Bar eyes, wide, kissable-looking lips, and a bod to die for underneath an all-black getup with—oh, shit, I was going straight to hell—a white tab at the front and center of his collar.

“I’m sorry, Father. I’m not Lucy. You must have me mixed up with someone—”

“Not Lucy,” he said, “Loosie.” As he said it the second time, he pointed to the counter, where another clear plastic container held loose cigarettes. The sign above them said, Loosies, $1 ea.

“Is that even legal?”

“I have no idea. If not, it won’t last long.”

“Still, a buck for a smoke? That’s effing highway robbery. Uh, sorry about the effing part. Habit.”

“When you’re trying to quit, you’d pay five bucks for just one, and you know it,” he said, a little humor in his tone and in his eyes.

My knees wobbled. I locked them.

“It’s effective, too. You give in to temptation once, but you do it without buying a whole pack and then feeling justified in smoking all twenty. Perfect solution. Weak moment, give in, and you’re still okay. Right?”

He made perfect sense. But I couldn’t tell him so, because my eyes were on the smooth skin of his neck above the forbidden collar, and the tiny bits of whisker he’d missed shaving this morning. I wanted to rub my cheeks against them.

“So? Loosie? It’ll be on me.” He pulled a cigarette from the pocket of his clerical black shirt and held it up, much the way I envisioned Eve holding that glossy red apple or pomegranate or whatever it had been, up to Adam.

I took it with a quick snatch. “Imagine a priest counseling me to give in to temptation.” Especially one who looks like he does. ‘Cause … damn.

Smiling a little, he pulled out a lighter, and I took a step backward so I could make immediate use of it. I flicked his Bic, smiling at the evil rhyme scheme that brought to mind. The flame rose up and danced like a tiny reminder of hellfire, and there wasn’t even a breeze to interfere. I held it to the tip of the slender white confection and drew in my first breath of carcinogenic smoke in three long weeks. Closing my eyes, I let my lips pull up at the corners in sheer bliss and blew the smoke slowly from them.

“Oh, that’s good,” I whispered. Then I opened my eyes and met the priest’s. “Thank you, Father.”

“You can call me Tomas.”

He pronounced it Toe-MAHS, with the accent on the “mahs.” Italian? Spanish? A priest, either way. As in forbidden. Hands off. Don’t even think about it.

“Thanks.” I took another puff, saluted him with the cigarette between my fingers, and turned to continue my walk to work, smoking all the way and pointedly ignoring the people who waved their hands in front of their faces and coughed big fake coughs when I passed them, even though they had plenty of room to give me a wider berth. “It’s still legal on the sidewalk, dumb-ass.”

“That’s quite a temper you have there.”

I frowned, turning around. That gorgeous priest was following me, just a couple of steps behind.

“I’m sorry. Was this your only one? Did you want to share?” No effing way. I looked at him, and my eyes tripped over the dimple in his cheek when he smiled. Okay, I’ll share.

“I have another. Just waiting to get to a spot with a little more room around it.”

“Don’t tell me you’re scared of the fake-coughers?”

“Not at all. Just see no need to offend everyone I pass on my way.”

“On your way to where?” I asked.

He hesitated just long enough that I knew something was off. This was not a chance encounter, and given the shit that had been going on with me, and the fact that I had no memory of a long section of last night, I got a little shiver right up my spine. I don’t know that I had any specific theory about what he might have had to do with it, but I was pretty sure there must be something.

Then he said, “Flowers. I need flowers.”

“Flowers.” I sucked in another drag. Half gone already. They really ought to make those loosies in 100s. If someone was desperate enough pay a buck for a smoke, they would certainly pay two for a longer one. “Just by coincidence, I work at a flower shop.”

“Which one?” he asked.

“Pink Petals. Four more blocks.”

He smiled. “May I walk with you?”

This man was not safe. There were a thousand voices whispering things in my head, and I couldn’t understand a single one of them, but being near him made them louder. And yet for some reason I heard myself tell him, “Suit yourself.”

So we walked. And the quiet got a little awkward, so I said, “What’s the occasion, Padre?”

“Occasion?”

“You’re looking for a florist. That usually suggests an occasion.” I puffed and savored, and figured his company was a small price to pay for the pleasure. Besides, his company wasn’t all that unpleasant.

“I just want to send some flowers to a friend. Maybe you can help me with that.”

“Bet I can. You looking for anything in particular?”

“I’ll know it when I see it.”

“And is this for what? A birthday? Anniversary?”

“Samhain Eve, actually.”

I stopped dead with my smoke halfway to my lips. He’d even used the correct Irish Gaelic pronunciation, Sow-en.

He was watching me, gauging my reaction, I was sure. “Halloween was last night. You’re a little late, aren’t you?”

“I didn’t say Halloween. I said Samhain Eve. It’s the original Halloween. This year it falls on—”

“November seventh,” I blurted, then barely resisted clapping a hand over my mouth.

I looked up to see him nodding in a self-satisfied way. “So you do know about Samhain,” he said.

“I’m a lapsed Wiccan, and yes, I know about Samhain.”

“Lapsed?”

I shrugged. “It’s all just superstition. So’s your path, by the way. I’m an equal opportunity atheist.”

“Wouldn’t know it by your jewelry.”

My hand flew to the pentacle hanging against my sweater, between my breasts. “It’s a pretty piece. Nothing more.”

“I see.”

“In addition to knowing about Samhain, I also know that, as a rule, Catholic priests do not follow witches, lapsed or otherwise, around New York City on the day after Halloween. So would you mind telling me just what it is you want from me?”

His smile faltered, and he lowered his head. “I’m not a Catholic priest.”

Note to self—he didn’t open with “I’m not following you.”

“Anglican?” I chanced.

“Gnostic.”

My brows went up.

“A very-little-known Gnostic sect, actually, known as the Keepers of the Pact.”

“Vroom, vroom.” I made a twisting motion with my hands, and then, when he didn’t smile, sang a few notes. Nothing. He was just staring at me, those dark brown eyes trying to swallow my soul.

And my soul was wanting to be swallowed. Utterly wanting it.

“So you need an arrangement—”

“I don’t need an arrangement, Indy. I need you.”

I closed my eyes tight, sighed hard. “I was afraid you were going to say something like that.” So, he was some kind of stalker, then. I took the last puff of my smoke, looked sadly at the butt, wondering how it had gone so fast, and dropped it down a sewer grate. “Look, I don’t know what you’re up to here, but—”

“I’ll tell you, if you’ll let me. Will you give me five—maybe ten—minutes? Will you do that for me?”

“Do I really need the whole spiel, Father? Can’t you just hit the highlights? Nutshell it for me?”

“All right.” He took my arm and led me off the sidewalk toward a café where they still had a few tables set up outside. It was only another block to Pink Petals. I could see the sign from here. We sat down as if we planned to order breakfast. And then he looked me straight in the eyes. “This is going to sound—well, insane. I didn’t believe it at first. But I’m changing my mind.” He took a breath, lifted his chin, held my eyes and sort of rushed ahead. “There is a demon who is going to try to come through a portal into our world on Samhain Eve. If he succeeds, he could very well bring about the end of mankind. You are destined to help me stop him.”

I tightened my lips, inhaled, nodded slowly, surreptitiously looking around us to see if I could spot a cop. Just my luck, not a single one in sight. “Hoookay. Um, I am pretty sure you have the wrong girl, Father Tomas.” (Emphasis on the Mahs.) I got to my feet, inching sideways, clear of the table.

“The woman I’m looking for has lived many lifetimes, Indy, including one in ancient Babylon in which she and her two sisters were executed for the practice of witchcraft.”

His words slammed into me like a baseball bat in the hands of Derek Jeter. I stopped moving and tried very hard not to look the least bit intrigued, not to meet his eyes as I asked, “Executed … how?” Despite my best efforts, my voice came out hoarse and wobbly.

“Pushed from a cliff.”

I felt it again, those hands at my back, warm, the touch filling me with utter pleasure and horrible grief all at the same time. I felt the moment when my feet left the solid earth, and the sickening way my stomach seemed to float upward as my body fell. I heard the wind whipping past my ears, tugging my hair.

I sank into the chair again, shook the vision away before I had to relive that horrible impact, and kept my eyes lowered. “I think you’re probably a little bit disturbed, and maybe not even a real priest.” My voice was very low, very soft, the words delivered in a slow, deliberate monotone. “I’m going to go now, and if you follow me, I’m afraid I’ll have to call the police.”

He sighed, lowering his head. “Call them with what, Indy?”

Frowning, I started to reach for my BlackBerry in its handy pocket on the side of my French vanilla suede Louis Vuitton bag, but it wasn’t there. I must have lost it … probably in the subway last night.

When I looked up he held it in his hands.

“Where did you get my phone?”

Touching the screen a few times, he laid the phone faceup on the table and slid it across to me.

“How did you …”

“Look,” he said.

I frowned down at my phone at the familiar black box of an online video just as it began to play. It took a few seconds for me to realize that I was the star of the piece.

I snatched up the phone and stared in disbelief as I, Indira Simon, wearing the very same clothes I’d had on for the ritual last night, flung my hands out toward a knife-wielding gangbanger and without so much as touching him, sent him flying so hard his pants fell the rest of the way down before his butt hit the concrete. Then I spun around, flinging my hands toward another, and his head bounced back as if I’d delivered an uppercut to the jaw. Only, like before, I’d never touched him.

The way I was moving was like tai chi on fast-forward. Graceful, rapid, powerful. I yelled something at them, but in some strange language that sounded made up. The old man ran away, looking back over his shoulder at me like I’d sprouted horns or something. And then I got nailed from behind and went down hard. But I sprang up again, did a flip—a fucking flip—that seemed to defy gravity and every other law of physics and whipped my hands once more, shouting more words in that same foreign language. I missed that time, nailing a big metal wastebasket and sending it flying like a missile. It came apart when it hit the wall, clanging and banging to the floor. And then the punks closed in on me all at once, kicking the shit out of me for a minute, before someone off camera—probably the person holding it—shouted, “Hey, get the hell away from her. I’m calling the cops!”

The voice was female. And familiar, though I couldn’t quite place it.

The punks ran for it. Well, two of them did. The third was basically being dragged between them. And then the camera came closer, as if the person carrying it were bending over me. “Are you okay?” a male voice asked.

I heard the woman ordering this guy away, too. Demanding to know if he’d actually been filming an assault instead of helping. I couldn’t see her coming closer, as the camera was still on me as I stared up at it. Close up, my eyes were black—jet-black—except my eyes are blue—and then I said, “Milik ša zanunzê ihakkim mannu?”

The camera backed away and the video abruptly ended.

I blinked, staring at my BlackBerry, swearing under my breath as I dragged my finger along the bar at the bottom, managing to rewind the video just a little. Then I hit Play and stared again at the close-up of my face.

Yes, my eyes were black. Irises, pupils, everything. Just two black marbles. Dead-looking eyes.

The woman in the video, a woman I still couldn’t think of as me, uttered her strange words again, and I whispered along with them, “Who can know the minds of the Underworld Gods?”

“What’s that, Indy?”

I’d forgotten the priest was still sitting there and looked up at him quickly. “It wasn’t me.” I barked the words so fast, I didn’t take time to think about them first. But once they were out, I knew it was the only possible argument I could make. I turned the phone toward the priest. “Look at the eyes. Those aren’t my eyes. This is just some chick who looks like me. My eyes are blue. Not black. All right?”

“But she looks just like you,” he said.

“No, she doesn’t. She has black eyes. And she knows a lot of martial arts shit I wouldn’t even begin to be able to do. And how the hell did you get my phone?”

“You left it at your friend’s place.”

“My f-friend?” I blinked at him, looking like a doe in the headlights, probably. “You mean Rayne?” I thought that was her voice on the recording.

He nodded. “She went after you to return it and saw the last bit of the attack. Then she realized that guy was recording it. She tried to get him to delete it, but he told her to go to hell, that it was going to go viral. She took you home and put you to bed, but she was so upset she forgot she still had your phone on her.”

“So … you know Rayne?”

He nodded but didn’t elaborate. “She knows about my … mission. That’s why she told me about you.”

I was feeling horribly betrayed by my friend, and there were tears in my voice when I asked, “And have I gone viral?”

“Thankfully, no. Most people who commented seem to think it’s a hoax. But you and I both know it wasn’t. Was it, Indira?”

“It wasn’t me, and it wasn’t real, and I don’t want to talk about it anymore, okay?” I got up, hitched my bag higher on my shoulder, turned to leave. “I’m going to be late for work. I have to go.” I started walking.

He came with me, damn him. “Trust me, I know how hard it is to believe all this. It took a lot to convince me, too. Took seeing the impossible with my own eyes, and I’m still arguing with my doubting side.”

“Your doubting side is right. I’m not a demon fighter. I’m just a simple ex-witch trying to eke out a life in the big bad city. You’ve got the wrong girl.”

“You’re a Warrior Witch. One of three. And I need your help.”

“You’re not getting it.” I strode faster, aiming for the big pink sign on the front of the shop up ahead.

“The dreams are not going to stop, Indy.”

“She told you about the dreams, too?” No wonder he knew details—the cliff, the location. Everything.

“The dreams have come to call you to action, to make you remember your mission, your duty, your calling.”

I reached the door of the Pink Petals, yanked it open hard and looked back at the priest. “My only calling is going to be to nine-one-one unless you get the hell out of my face—now.” I swung my arm out, aiming my forefinger back the way we had come, and a gust went with it, just as if I’d caused it, blowing over a wastebasket and sending every discarded piece of sidewalk litter airborne all at once.

Could have been a breeze. Had to have been a breeze.

He lowered his head—I hoped in defeat—took a card from his pocket, and a cigarette along with it, and closed the distance between us. “My cell number is here. I’ll be in the city for a while. If anything else happens, please call me. I’m the only one who can help you, Indy.”

He handed both the card and the cigarette to me. I would have refused to take the card, but I wanted that smoke—badly—and he knew it, damn him. So I took them both.

His fingers brushed over mine.

I jerked as if electrocuted. A flash, white-hot, blinding bright, flesh on flesh, coppery naked flesh on flesh. Thick black hair, bodies entangling through veils of silk.

I feel his hands on my back.

He gripped my shoulders. “Are you all right?”

His touch burned. And he felt it, too, I knew he did. He held my eyes for a long moment, and chills rushed right up my spine. Tears—tears, for crying out loud—burned in my eyes.

He blinked as if stunned, dragged his gaze from mine, pushed a hand through his thick, dark hair, much the way I wanted to do.

Stop it! He’s a priest!

I straightened, realizing he’d grabbed me because I’d nearly fallen over backward, knocked off balance by that brief, vivid flash of lovers entwined. “I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not. And we both know it. It’s going to get worse for you, Indy. I’ll help you. Even if you refuse to help me, all right?”

I squinted at him, delivering my patented “Who the fuck do you think you are?” look, proudly made in Brooklyn.

But he just turned and walked back the way we’d come, moving in long, powerful strides as I noticed the breadth of his shoulders. He had to be cut underneath his black priestly clothes. I wondered if Gnostic priests from the Leaders of the Pack sect took vows of celibacy, then shook the thought away. It didn’t matter. I was never going to see the man again.

However, there was a certain high priestess who was going to get a fucking earful as soon as I got off work. Because if this guy was her idea of a confidant, she was the most messed-up witch I’d ever heard of.

Then I looked down at my forefinger and wondered if I had really made that phantom whirlwind kick up, and whether I could do it again.

3

Hours later, my workday finished and another long night alone the only thing on my to-do list, I figured I had nothing to lose. If I had somehow tapped into a power beyond everyday witchcraft—which was really not a lot more than positive thinking, focus and luck, or so I’d always thought—then I might as well use it.

I put an old coffee mug I wasn’t overly fond of on the counter. It was a putrid yellow shade and had come with a set of four that someone had given me. I’d already broken the other three. Time to get rid of this one.

Standing back a few feet, I focused my eyes on the cup, my arm bent at the elbow, forefinger aimed at the ceiling. When I felt ready, I bought my arm down fast, aiming right at the mug and willing it to explode to smithereens.

It didn’t even wiggle.

Huh. Okay, reload and try again. This time I used a sideways sweep of my arms. But nothing. Drawing like a gunfighter didn’t work, either. I sank onto a stool for a break, and quickly flipped open my BlackBerry and searched for that video of me, found it, played it, reviewed my moves, tried to find a pattern.

Okay, okay, I had a little more flourish, a little more flair and a lot of anger in my black alien eyes, in the vid. I set the phone down, got to my feet, shook my arms and shoulders to loosen the muscles, cracked my knuckles. “All right, I got this. You’re going down, cup.”

I attacked again.

And again, the cup just stood there. I think it was looking defiant.

“Well, shit.”

I heaved a giant disappointed sigh and decided to resort to the more mundane forms of magic. Maybe I had been just a solitary, but I’d still been a witch. “And a witch knows how to deal with unwanted nightmares and hunky priests poking their nosy noses into her problems. Even if she can’t explode innocent coffee cups at will.”

I got busy moving furniture.

An hour later I stood back and surveyed my work.

The living room of my three-room apartment was no longer a living room but a temple. I’d pushed the love seat—love seat, what a joke—and chairs past the countertop that divided the living room from the eat-in kitchenette. They filled that tiny space. My psychedelic print love seat had my retro lime-green rocker recliner balanced precariously on top of it. I’d dragged the coffee table I’d rescued from the curb out of the way. It had started out ordinary, but I’d sanded it down, painted it yellow, and then added swirly vines and leaves and blossoms with teeth in them to cover its entire surface. The only thing that I’d paid for, besides the paint, was the custom cut piece of Plexiglas I’d screwed onto the top to protect it.

My living room was bare now, except for the contents of my old treasure chest. I’d laid out seashells and tumbled stones on the beige carpet—God, I hated beige—in a circle big enough to enclose the entire room. I’d set votive candles in tiny clear glass holders at the four cardinal points. I’d placed a black one in the center, inside my old iron cauldron.

I didn’t believe in magic anymore. I reminded myself of that over and over again. I was just doing this as a sort of … precaution. As a “just in case I’m wrong” thing. All the lights in my small apartment were turned off, except for the little bulb in the tall floor lamp whose base was a tarnished copper mermaid. I’d found it in a thrift store and scored it for ten bucks. It was worth a million to me. I had just enough light to work by, and I would turn even that off once I lit the candles.

My drapes were drawn, door locked, phones turned off. I was naked. I’d taken a quick shower to rinse away any negative vibes that might have been clinging to me from the day. It was tradition, and while I didn’t expect any of this to work, because I didn’t believe in magic, I also wanted to do it right. When the spell failed, I didn’t want to wonder if it was because I’d done a slipshod job of casting it.

I took a few deep breaths, and stepped into the circle of shells and stones, lifted my hand and imagined a beam of light drawing a magic circle of energy. I led it backward, following the outline of shells and stones. Counterclockwise. Widdershins, in witchspeak. I opened the quarters in reverse order, too, lighting candles as I went. This was a banishing spell, after all. I didn’t have formal coven training, but I knew my shit. I’d only half believed, even when I was practicing. But tonight I was going full throttle. Giving magic one final chance to prove to me that it was real.

I guess seeing myself on that video, wielding what looked like invisible power from my own two hands, had shaken my disbelief. Or maybe I was just wishing it was real. ‘Cause, hell, who wouldn’t?

With all the candles dancing and sandalwood incense filling the entire place with its exotic scent, I reached for the mermaid lamp and turned it off.

Soft yellow candlelight threw shadows around my feet that danced like little fairies and shadowy gnomes. I inhaled the scent of hot wax and dusky smoke. My body and mind responded instantly.

Because these are all psychological triggers due to repeated use in the past, shifting my brain waves into alpha rhythm. It’s not magic, it’s post-hypnotic suggestion.

Every ounce of tension left my muscles, my eyes went soft, and my lips pulled into a relaxed, easy smile. My heartbeat slowed. My breathing, too. Every part of me felt easier, lighter. And there was a tightness in my throat and a hotness behind my eyes.

Okay, okay, I miss it. Doesn’t make it real. Just makes it … nice.

I knelt in front of the black candle inside the cauldron in the center of the room, my eyes getting lost in the flame until it went out of focus and became a blob of light. “I call upon the darkest form of the Mother. I call upon the Lady of Death and Transformation. The Guardian of the Crossroads. She whose cold hand leads us from this life into the next. Goddess of the Underworld, of the dead, of the past, of every witch who ever lived, and those I have been before. I call you.” I closed my eyes, opened my arms, tilted my head back and waited to feel the presence of the Goddess, who I never called by any specific name.

But then, for some reason a name whispered from my lips without my consent. “Ishtar,” I whispered. “Ishtar, heed the call of thy priestess.” My eyes popped open. What made me say that?

A sudden crash spun me around as my big living room window exploded. I fell to one side, reflexively raising my arms to shield my face from the flying glass. The wind, on what had been a perfectly calm night, whipped my drapes inward and swirled through the apartment like a twister. The mermaid lamp slammed to the floor. My Warhol print soared off the wall and hit me in the forearm—aiming for my head.

The candles blew out, and the whirlwind kept raging.

I jumped to my feet to try to deal with it, though I had no idea how—turn on the light? cover the window? call 9-1-1?—but something stopped me. I held steady, somehow knowing I had to ignore the chaos and finish what I’d started.

I sank onto my knees once again, the windstorm still raging around me, my hair blowing into tangles that would rival Medusa’s, and resumed the goddess pose, arms up and outstretched. “Nightmares have plagued me. But they will plague me no more. I banish them!”

The wind seemed to grow even stronger.

“This priest who follows me, thinking I am some relic of a past life, I banish him, as well. He will plague me no more! By the power of Ishtar, I command it!”

Hell, that doesn’t even sound like my own voice….

Rising to my feet, I stood in the circle’s center, and spun widdershins, slowly at first, then faster and faster. “I banish the dreams, I banish the priest, banish the dreams, banish the priest, be gone, be gone, be gone, be gone!” With the final words I let myself sink to the floor, releasing the spell into the universe as the wind kept whipping around me. I closed my eyes to stop the room from spinning and muttered, “So mote it be.”

Something growled at me, long and low, like a wolf about to spring.

From my position on the floor, feeling almost too shocked to move, I opened my eyes. “What the fuck was that?”

The cauldron in the middle of the floor was swirling with colors that glowed and shifted and moved. It was the only light in the room. And the growl … It came again. From that cauldron.

I crawled closer and looked at the impossible.

The swirling, hazy colors inside the cauldron were real. I stared into them, through them. A shape formed. A torso—nude, male, muscular. And then a head, a man’s head, except that it wore a demonically twisted grimace of anger, and its eyes blazed red with an energy that blasted me with pure pain. It hit me hard, and I couldn’t look away. And as I stared unwillingly at the image of the beast inside the cauldron, it opened its mouth and released a roar of anguish and rage. It had fangs. Cloven hooves. A tail?

The Devil himself?

But I don’t believe in the Devil.

I jerked backward, but it held my eyes. I tried, I really did, to look away, but it was like this thing held me.

And then the image in the cauldron changed. The colors swirled again, overtaking the beast, hiding him, and then changing from oranges and reds and yellows to soft blues and gentle greens as a different face formed. A woman’s face this time, a black-haired beauty in flowing robes. Her brows were thick and dark, her eyes like shining chunks of coal.

I know her! She’s one of the women from my dream!

Her full lips parted, and she whispered two words. “Help him.”

“Who? The priest?”

The beautiful woman lowered her eyes to look down, into the swirling orange and yellow depths at the demon I’d just seen.

“Him?”

“Help him.”

“But I don’t … I don’t know how. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. How am I—Wait. Wait!” I reached my hand toward the iron kettle as if I could grab hold of the image inside, but it was fading. The cauldron turned slowly black again. “At least tell me your name!” But it was useless. She was gone.

Lilia.

The wind died with a soft sound that might have been nothing more than its final gasping breeze. I stayed on the floor, lowered my head to the carpet and tried to hold back the crying jag that was fighting to bust out.

Great. I’m being sacrificed again.

I stood near the cliff, not on the edge yet, but tied between two posts nearby, arms raised and stretched to either side. The goddess position again. Memories—yeah, memories, not illusions—flooded my brain. I heard a crack and felt the brutal slash of a whip slicing my back, and it was as real as anything I’ve ever felt in my life. And far more painful. It went on until the cutting, burning pain was everywhere all at once. I was shaking all over in agony. It was unbearable, and I longed to pass out, but I didn’t.

I screamed until my voice was gone and I could scream no more. My faith went with it, severed along with the ropes that held me as the soldiers cut me down and retied my hands behind my bleeding back. Then I—no, we—were marched closer to the edge of the cliff. I’d seen him again, that other man near the rocks, where soldiers held him. He was more battered and beaten than we were. He’d been forced to watch as we’d been whipped, and he was being forced to watch still, as we were about to be sent plummeting to our deaths on the rocks far, far below. He struggled, though he had to be near death. Hell of a man, that one. Too bad they probably killed him right after us.

I looked sideways at my sister Lilia. She was the youngest, and I was amazed at how straight she stood. How proudly she held her head. She looked like royalty. I was crying softly, almost silently, unlike my other sister, Magdalena, who was loud and sloppy. But little Lilia, the one we’d always thought of as the weakest of us, had been as cruelly tortured as we had, and yet she was the strong one now.

We were at the cliff’s edge.

Wakeupwakeupwakeup!

I felt those warm, familiar hands at my back. And again I had that totally fucked-up feeling of liking his touch. His palms warm on my skin, carefully not touching the raw ruin of my flesh. My toes curled instinctively to grip the smooth stone beneath my feet, trying to hang on.

I was going to die on those rocks down there. With my sisters.

Again.

4

Tomas had parked his Volvo across the street from Indira Simon’s apartment building, where he had a beautiful view of her windows, and spent the entire night there, trying to keep watch, hoping he would know if something went wrong. He saw other tenants come and go, and at one point, while out stretching his legs, he caught the door before it swung closed and jammed the latch, so he could get in if necessary.

Yes, he’d thought Father Dom was two-thirds of the way to insanity with his obsessive predictions about this demon and its witches. Until he’d seen that subway video. And met her. That woman was something else. He could feel it just by looking into her eyes. And when she’d swung her arm in anger, a burst of genuine power had erupted from her.

She’d been as surprised by that as he had.

And now everything he’d been so sure was just the outrageous exaggerations of an aging priest with delusions of grandeur seemed like it just might be real, after all. Which threw everything else he thought he’d known into question.

His crisis of faith, his decision to leave the church, all of that, he’d decided, had to be put aside until this was finished. Because if he’d been wrong—well, he couldn’t undo that. But he could carry out this mission for Dom, at least far enough to make sure it really was just part of an old man’s ramblings. Maybe generations of old men. The rest … the rest could wait.

He knew already that some things Dom had told him were utterly false. Things about her. She was not evil. No demon’s whore. Not that one. She hadn’t tried to seduce him or ensorcell him as Dom had predicted she would. She’d run from him instead.

But he’d followed. Because he had a feeling that just wouldn’t leave him alone. Clearly some of the things Dom had believed in for so long were true. Were, perhaps, unfolding as had been predicted. And the most important thing that meant to Tomas was that she might be in danger. So while this would be his final mission as a priest, it was still his mission—and he was still a priest. And he intended to do it right. Maybe that would assuage his guilt over leaving the collar behind, and for not believing in Dom’s obsession until now.

He had expected that he might catch a glimpse of Indy moving around behind her apartment windows, though the drapes were drawn. He had not expected to see her on the building’s rooftop just before dawn.

When he caught sight of her up there his heart almost stopped. She was standing near the brick safety wall, which reached almost to her bare shoulders, her hands along the top of it, the wind blowing through her hair. It looked as if she was getting ready to climb up.

“God, save her,” he whispered.

He was out of the car instantly, racing to the building’s door and yanking it open, glad he’d thought far enough ahead to disable the lock. He took the stairs two at a time all the way to the roof. Then he slid to a stop. She was standing on the wall now, completely naked. Wobbling dangerously, she held her arms behind her back as if they were tied there, even though they weren’t. It was still dark, but there was something staining her back—crisscrossing stripes with scarlet rivulets running from them. And something else, a tattoo on her lower back. Three rows of symbols.

Was that cuneiform?

God, what had happened to her? And what was he supposed to do?

Waking a sleepwalker was a bad idea—especially when they were standing seventy feet off the ground. But he couldn’t just let this play out and hope she didn’t plummet to her death.

Quietly, he approached from behind. She was standing still, her short hair riffled by the wind, her skin pebbling with goose bumps in the cold. She had to be freezing. It was the second of November, for crying out loud. As he crept slowly nearer, she leaned forward, arching her back. No more time. Tomas lunged, snapping his arms around her just above hip level, which was as high as he could reach. The momentum of her body tried to pull him over with her, but he braced one foot against the brick wall and jerked her backward, hard. He landed on his back on the rooftop with her butt on his chest and her lower back against his face. No sooner had he begun to release his pent-up breath in a sigh of relief than she was scrambling off him and onto her feet, turning to look down at him, stark accusation in her huge black eyes.

“Atta balata u anaku mut amât!” she shouted.

Then her eyes rolled back in her head and she collapsed straight down, as if her legs had dissolved beneath her.

Tomas got onto his feet. She’d bled on his clothes. On his face. Her back was cut to ribbons. Bending, he gathered her carefully into his arms, then turned to carry her back down to her apartment.

“Owwwww.”

I was facedown on my bed and hurting like hell, and when I tried to roll over, a strong male hand on my shoulder kept me lying where I was.

Who the hell is that, and what is he doing in my apartment?

I twisted my head to see. It was him. Of course it was him. Hunky Father Tomas was sitting on the edge of my bed. His face was twisted with what looked like worry, and his hands held gauze and a bottle of something aromatic.

“Father Tomas? What happened? Why are you here? And why the hell am I hurting so bad?” I craned my neck a little farther and got a nice clear view of my own bare ass. “I’m naked!” I tried to roll over again, but his hand held me still.

“It’s all right, I’m a priest.” He wasn’t trying to be funny. He tugged the bedsheet up a little to cover my cheeks. “Lie very still or it’ll hurt even more. If you’ll stop trying to roll, I’ll show you what’s hurting in the mirror.” The bed moved as he got up and walked to my dresser. I tried to remember whether I’d left anything embarrassing on it. Tampons, undies. I wasn’t exactly an immaculate housekeeper. He was back in seconds, holding my silver hand mirror at an angle that allowed me to see my back. And when I did, my stomach heaved and I closed my eyes. My back was covered with deep, long cuts. Stripes. Like a whip would leave behind if—

A whip.

“Shit.”

The nightmare or memory or hallucination or whatever the hell it was came back to me so hard and fast I had to jam my face into the pillow to muffle the sob that lurched inside my chest. I was pretty sure he heard it anyway.

“What happened last night?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” I turned far enough so my words could emerge unmuffled. “I was … I was trying to work a spell. You must have seen the living room.”

“I saw the circle. The candles. Figured that much out.”

Frowning, I twisted my head a little farther. “The circle. The candles … that’s all?” He hadn’t mentioned the shattered window, broken glass, toppled lamp, tangled curtains.

“Furniture piled in the kitchen?”

I blinked. “There was a storm. It smashed the window to hell and gone.”

He was staring at me, silent.

“Didn’t it?”

He shook his head slowly. “It must have been part of another nightmare,” he said. “I spotted you on the roof. You damn near went over the side, but …”

“But you saved me.” I no longer cared if he saw my tears. He’d seen my bare ass and my living nightmare. What were a few tears?

“I was across the street in my car. I saw you up there and—They’re going away.”

“What?” I was confused by the sudden change of subject.

“The wounds, they’re … they’re going away.” He held up the mirror again.

I ignored it. Pushing past him and his mirror to get to my feet, dragging the sheet with me and holding it in front of my body, I turned my back toward the large mirror on my dresser and looked over my shoulder at my reflection.

The stripes across my back were closing up, forming small pink lines, like battle scars, but then they started fading, too. There was a tattoo, as well, on my lower back, and I knew damn well I’d never had a tattoo in my life. Odd little symbols in neat rows. But they, too, were fading fast. Ten seconds, I stood there. Tomas came and stood right beside me, staring into that mirror. I didn’t even care that my ass was exposed again. Ten seconds, and at the end of them nothing remained of those ghastly wounds except for a few smears of blood Tomas must have missed in his ministrations.

I looked at the floor, belatedly pulling the sheet the rest of the way around me.

“This thing—it could have killed you tonight, Indira.”

It was true. I shivered with the knowledge that it was absolutely true.

“Next time I might not get to you in time.”

“What can you possibly do about it?”

“Take you with me to Ithaca. I’ll help you solve this thing. I’ll make it go away, I swear I will, if you will just help me keep the demon where he belongs in return. Please, Indy. Before he can hurt you any more.”

“Why Ithaca?”

“It’s where we need to be. I’ll explain more on the way. All right?”

I hated to admit that I was losing my skepticism. I hated to even think about believing any of this. But it was real. I’d seen it, right there in my own mirror. I’d seen it. I was still shaking, and it pissed me off. But I ignored that and nodded, a quick, jerky motion that was anything but graceful.

“All right,” I said. “You win.”

Tomas had told me to take the day to get ready, and to phone if I needed him. I didn’t. I made arrangements at work—I had five days’ vacation time coming, and if that wasn’t enough, I could tack on a few sick days. I didn’t need to tell them I was actually talking about my mental health. I packed up my things, enough to last a week, got some cash out of the bank and tried to call Rayne. She didn’t answer, so I had to settle for leaving her a snotty voice mail message asking if she’d lost her mind, sharing my most intimate confessions with a demon-fighting priest.

That night, I took an antihistamine along with cold medicine, and for once, I didn’t dream. Slept like a rock, in fact. And damn but I needed it.

Next morning I showered, dressed and met him out front as planned, even while wondering if I’d lost my freaking mind to be buying into any of this.

Of course, the bloodstains on my sheets said I wasn’t crazy at all. What was happening to me was completely insane, but I wasn’t imagining it or dreaming it or hallucinating it—it was real. And who the hell else was going to help me figure it out? Who else would even believe me?

Rayne, maybe. But I’d gone to Rayne. And she had basically handed me off to this priest. As angry as I was at her for that, I trusted her. She wouldn’t set some lunatic on my trail. She must believe he could help.

He pulled up right on time to take me off to Never-land in his sagging chariot.

Father Tomas’s car was an aging, once-white Volvo station wagon that looked as if it had been through a series of natural disasters. Its color had yellowed to a sort of dull cream that was flaking off in places. He stowed my gear in the back, like he was a gentleman and I was a helpless little female. I stood on the curb just staring at the car, sort of in awe that anything that ancient could still run.

He caught my expression and smiled. “It’s a classic. A 1967 Amazon.”

“Looks like you found it in the Amazon.”

His smile didn’t falter. “I’m restoring it myself. It’s a … hobby, I guess.”

“Heaven help me. My savior is not only a priest but a motor head.”

He opened a door that looked as if it weighed a ton and held it for me. “Trust me, she runs like a dream.”

“She looks like a nightmare.” Still, I got in and dutifully buckled up, surprised that the inside looked pretty nice. Definitely a lot better than I’d expected.

In seconds he was behind the wheel, turning the key, smiling at the sound of the engine. “Hear that?”

“Sounds like a car, all right. So it only looks like it’s going to fall apart on the road, then?”

He rolled his eyes. “Mechanics first, comfort second, cosmetics last of all. It’s the unwritten motor head code.”

It was comfortable, I had to give him that. There was enough room in the back to transport a small sofa. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but it was big. Despite the super-soft leather and the ultracozy seat, though, I still felt like shit, no matter how I sat.

“Your back?” he asked.

I sent him an almost irritated look, though I was secretly impressed and a little surprised by how much attention the guy was paying to me. “It doesn’t really hurt. It’s like a phantom pain, every time I remember—” I stopped there, because giving voice to anything more would only conjure it again. The brutal lashes of the whip. Oh, shit, too late. “You don’t miss much, do you?”

“You’re my calling, Indira. I’m not likely to miss a thing now that I’ve found you.”

“Hell, Tomas, if you weren’t wearing that collar, I’d think you were about to propose.”

He looked at me briefly, then pulled away from the curb. I could have sworn a hint of panic appeared on his face, but maybe I’d imagined it. And that was another reason I wasn’t worried about going off with the guy. He was a priest, and he hadn’t done a single thing out of line. I was the one having impure thoughts, not him.

I figured I’d give him a break and change the subject all the same. “So tell me about your demon fighting thing. You do it often?”

He smiled a little. “Never. And it’s just the one demon.”

“Does he have a name?”

“I’ve only heard him called ‘He Whose Name Must Not Be Spoken.’”

“Are you shitting me? He doesn’t even have a name?” I looked at him, waiting for the punch line. But he only smiled and shook his head.

“I know. I know how crazy it sounds. And to tell you the truth, I was pretty skeptical myself until I saw those marks on your back.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I gotta say they made an impression on me, too.” I didn’t want to talk about that, though. My world had taken a turn for the macabre, and I was trying to focus on the parts that went down a little easier. Those phantom lashes from that phantom whip had left real wounds, and that flat-out scared me too much to dwell on just yet. I’d get to it. But right now, I thought, let’s stick to the easy stuff. Stuff about him and this so-called demon of his.

“So how many priests are there on your … um … anti-demon squad?”

“Two,” he said. “Me and the man who trained me, Father Dom. You see, one priest from our sect—”

“The Leaders of the Pack.” That’s right, keep it light.

“The Keepers of the Pact,” he corrected. He gave me an odd look, like he was amused but trying to figure me out at the same time. I liked the way his eyes felt when they moved over my face, probably because I got the feeling he liked what he saw.

Priest, Indy. Priest. Priest. Priest.

“One of us is chosen from each generation as the Guardian of the Portal. Dom chose me. Just as he was chosen by his predecessor.”

“And what was his name?” I asked. “Father Dom’s predecessor?”

Tomas frowned. “You know, he never told me.”

“I bet it rhymed. Tom. Dom. Rom, maybe?”

The look he sent me this time was a searching frown, like he was seeing through my plot. Yeah, I was using humor to keep this light, to try to pretend nothing all that serious was happening. But I was also scared half to death. And I was pretty sure it showed. I got the feeling there wasn’t much I could hide from those perceptive brown eyes of his.

“When the current Guardian begins to age, he chooses and trains his replacement. That tradition has continued since the time of ancient Babylon.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” I said, holding up a hand to stop him. “Even I know ancient Babylon is BC, as in Before Christ.”

“Fifteen hundred and one BC, to be precise.”

“Pre-Christian, either way. Can’t have a Gnostic sect, no matter how rare, prior to Christianity, can you?”

He smiled widely, nodding his head not in agreement but in approval. “You’re smart. I like that.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m freakin’ Einstein. But you didn’t answer my question. Nice dodge, though.”

“It was a compliment, not a dodge. And it was sincere.”

I gave him a thank-you nod and tried not to warm at the praise. He hadn’t said I was a knockout, driving him mad with carnal lust. He’d said I was smart. That’s all. Down, girl. I tried to focus on the city as he maneuvered the relic through it, instead of on the intense awareness that there was only a foot of space between us. That space, though, wasn’t empty. It was crackling and snapping.

“Priests of numerous religions have been entrusted with the mission. From the Cult of Marduk to the Egyptian followers of Ra to the earliest Jews. The calling doesn’t end, it just converts. It’s only recently that Dom realized the way the stars are lining up on Samhain this year makes it a propitious time for the demon to come through. He probably should have seen it sooner, but he’s getting a little … unfocused.”

He means senile, I thought. I nodded as if that made perfect sense when it actually made none. “You talk about him a lot. Dom.”

I spotted the crease between his brows when I said that. Worry? Something. I wanted to smooth it away with my finger, whatever it was.

“Dom took me in when I was a kid.”

“Took you in—”

“I was an orphan.”

“You were an orphan?” Wait a minute, did my voice just sound like a cheerleader spotting a puppy?

“That’s really not on topic at all, though. You were asking why we need to go to Ithaca.”

He was changing the subject. And just when I’d decided I was far more interested in his sad childhood than I was in some moldy old Babylonian legend. Even if I was somehow intrinsically involved in its fulfillment.

“The Portal is somewhere in Ithaca, at least according to Dom’s calculations. By going there, we can not only prevent the demon from coming through this time but destroy him utterly.”

“Huh,” I said.

“What?” He looked at me, brows raised.

“Well, it’s just that—” I shrugged. “I mean, just playing demon’s advocate here, but … the dude’s been in this underworld slammer for three thousand five hundred years now. It seems a little harsh. A lot harsh when you add ‘destroy him utterly’ to the equation. What did he do, anyway?”

Tomas tipped his head to one side. “I don’t know.”

“You never asked?”

He shrugged. “It seemed enough that he’s a demon.”

“Isn’t that what they said about witches during the hysteria? I mean, can he even help being a demon?”

“You’re confusing the issue.”

“I don’t know that I am. Couldn’t he be a good demon? Couldn’t he have been rehabilitated by now? Open your mind, Padre. Think outside the box.”

He looked at me as if I’d just sprouted horns and a forked tail.

“There’s no such thing as a good demon.”

“That’s what the witch-hunters said about us.”

“What he did isn’t as important as what he will do, given the chance.”

“And what’s that? What’s this big bad demon’s dastardly goal? No, wait, wait, I remember.” I leaned forward, hands on my hips in a superhero pose. “He wants to take over the world.”

“I can’t believe you’re making jokes about this, Indira. Especially given what’s been happening to you.”

I only shrugged and looked away.

He pulled into the long line of traffic heading onto the bridge, and took the opportunity to turn and stare intently into my eyes. “The goal of every demon is the same. Destruction of all that’s good. Perversion of the sacred. Power over the world of man. He could become the anti-Christ, Indy.”

I just sat there staring at him, trying to determine whether he actually believed his own words. I mean, he suddenly sounded like a fire-and-brimstone pulpit thumper in a revival tent. I wondered if that was him talking or if he was channeling his precious Dom, and I decided on the latter. “Uh-huh. So we’re going to Ithaca to face and annihilate the anti-Christ.”

He sighed, lowered his head. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

“Not so much, no.”

Traffic was at a standstill. His hands gripped the wheel, bumping each other right on top, and I could tell he was squeezing hard.

“And none of it really seems to tie in with what’s been happening to me. The dreams. The marks.” I touched his shoulder, and he picked his head up fast. “Can you tie it together for me? ‘Cause I’m kinda lost.”

He nodded. “You and your two sisters lived during the time when he was cast into the Underworld. And you’re the only ones with the power to destroy him.”

“So it’s past life stuff. Destiny stuff. That kind of thing.”

He nodded.

I drew a deep breath, blew it out again. “This is scary as hell, you know that?”

“I know.” He turned and looked me in the eyes, reaching out to clasp my hands in his. I sucked in a breath and stared down at them. I knew he was only trying to comfort me a little, but it felt like way more. And he felt something, too, I knew he did. The way my hands fit inside his, the warmth of them, and their size and shape and strength. The strangest feeling washed over me as we sat there, facing each other in the comfy front seat of the old Volvo, our eyes locked onto our joined hands as we both began to tremble. It was vivid. Surreal. Dizzying. Like déjà vu.

“Tomas?” My voice emerged soft and raspy, and it didn’t help matters. He looked up, into my eyes, and I knew he was as shaken as I was. What was this?

Behind us, an idiot laid on his horn, and we jerked apart. Traffic had moved on without us. I blinked and sat back in my seat, looking anywhere but at Tomas. He pulled the car back into motion, but it bucked and stalled. So he was as flustered as I was. Then he quickly started it again and got moving.

I wanted to change the subject—because really, no matter what was happening to me, it wasn’t that big. It couldn’t be. I was just … me. Not some soldier in a war between God and the Devil or whoever. “I never had breakfast this morning,” I said. Damn, my voice had this funny little tremor underneath it. “And I’m starved.”

“Okay.”

She was afraid, Tomas thought. Scared to death of the horrors he was likely to reveal to her if they kept on talking, and putting off that moment of revelation for as long as she possibly could.

She’s arguing for the demon’s side, and probably trying to ensorcell you while she’s at it.

That was not his own inner voice. That was Dom, lecturing him on the powers of the witch. And while he might have changed his mind about disbelieving the rest of this, he was standing firm on that.

Food was an agreeable distraction, and when he located an IHOP about an hour later and pulled in, he knew by the look of rapture in her eyes that she hadn’t only been making excuses to end the conversation. She was, by all appearances, ravenous.

And beautiful.

Difficult for him to believe she was one of the three witches whose souls were allegedly bound to a demon. And that was only a small part of what was unbelievable about all of this.

Dom had warned him repeatedly these chosen witches were cagey and clever, and might or might not be aware of their mission, but that he must always presume they were and guard against their tricks. They were powerful women, all three of them. They would sense a man’s weakness and use it against him.

Tomas had rolled his eyes at the notion. He’d never thought he had any real weaknesses. Oh, he didn’t believe himself perfect by a long shot, but he didn’t think he had any particularly lethal vulnerabilities.

Now, though, even that belief was being challenged. Because he was attracted to this woman. Sexually attracted. And while he was still a man, a fully functioning one, he hadn’t experienced this level of temptation since—well … ever. It was growing stronger with every second he spent in her company, and they were going to be together—alone together—for the next week or so.

Was it a spell? Was she, as Father Dom had warned, perfectly aware of her bond with the demon, ready and willing to help him, and using her wiles to enchant and bewitch the priest sent to stop her?

Or was she as innocent as she seemed?

He didn’t suppose it mattered, honestly. He had to resist her, had to stop her, and how much she knew or didn’t know was irrelevant. Moreover, he had to convince her that her mission, her calling and her key to salvation from the torments afflicting her, were all one and the same: to help him stop the demon from crossing the Portal. When in truth, he was pretty sure her true mission was just the opposite.

The three witches were foretold to be the demon’s consorts. They were supposed to help him escape the Portal. But they were also the only ones with the power to stop him.

He supposed he would have to tell her that part of it at some point.

“I’m going to have an omelet,” she said as they got out of the car. “A big fat three-egg omelet with a half pound of cheese and ham and mushrooms and—no, wait.” She held up a hand, apparently deep in thought. As if the choice was one of the most important of her life. Then she snapped her fingers. “Belgian waffles, with butter melting down the sides and all that whipped cream piled on top, and fruit, and maybe sausage on the side.”

She was walking as she was talking, absently rubbing her upper arm. He wondered about that as he held the door open for her and she stepped inside, inhaled, then closed her eyes as if smelling the sweetest perfume. “Coffee,” she muttered. “Hail the Goddess Caffeinna.”

“That’s sort of blasphemous, you know.” He was only teasing. He was starting to enjoy her use of sarcasm-laced humor to deflect the things she called scary, even beginning to return it in kind.

“Oh, please, not to the Holy of Holies, Divine Creatrix of the sacred coffee bean.” Her attention switched, quick as a heartbeat, to the hostess who’d just appeared to greet them. “Two for breakfast, and a vat of high-test, please. Death to decaf!”

The hostess smiled at her enthusiasm and led the way to a booth.

Indira rubbed her arm again, only this time she pulled her hand away quickly, as if the arm was sore to the touch. Frowning, Tomas looked at her. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah. Fine.” She dropped her hands to her sides.

He wished he could see her arm better, but she’d donned a brown leather jacket with a fake fur collar that looked as if it ought to have a matching helmet and goggles to go with it. Beneath that, she wore a T-shirt that came just to the low-slung top of her skin-tight jeans, so he caught glimpses of bare midriff every time she moved. The jeans were tucked inside a pair of cowgirl-style boots, brown, with stitching and embossing in swirls, loops and flowers, and impossibly high heels.

She looked as if she’d stepped off the cover of some urban style guide. Her T-shirt read Born Again Pagan, and had a triple moon logo that glittered when the light hit it at the right angle. She wore a pentacle, a different one, suspended from a thin silver chain, its star formed in the shape of a gleaming spider’s web, with the spider in the center. Its body was a moonstone, its eyes tiny bits of ruby, its legs made of black tourmaline. She had earrings that matched, each with a tiny pentacle web at the earlobe and a thin chain dangling with the spider at the end of it. Same gemstones. Same size.

She might as well have worn a flashing neon sign proclaiming herself a witch. It wasn’t a habit he’d noticed in her before, and it sort of belied her claim that she’d become an atheist. Maybe she just felt safer, wearing the symbols of her former faith.

The looks they were getting as they sat at their booth, she in her pentacles, he in his collar, were almost funny. A priest and a witch, having breakfast together. Indira ended up devouring a stack of Belgian waffles and an omelet, washing every other bite down with creamy coffee, and claiming she would quit caffeine again when life returned to normal. He only picked at his own pancakes.

He was too tense to eat, and not only because she was proving to be the biggest test his faith had ever undergone.

Of course, he’d been in a crisis of faith for a while now. And all of this was making him wonder if he’d made the right decision. Because if this was real, after all—if Dom’s obsession turned out to be true …

But this wasn’t the time to ponder those things. That would come later.

Right now, he was about to face a demon. Maybe the devil himself. With a witch as his only ally, a witch who didn’t know—or did she?—that she was that demon’s friend. Either way, that alliance made her Tomas’s enemy.

It seemed unnecessarily risky to take her so near the Portal, since allegedly the demon couldn’t pass through without her help. But Dom said it was worth the risk. That she had to be there to help Tomas destroy the demon for good.

He’d trained for this, he’d studied, he knew what had to be done, but that was all back when he thought the whole thing was just an old man’s crazy fantasy. But now it was here, real and present. And complicating things further, in all his thoughts on this very topic, he had never counted on liking the woman.

He looked up at her. Sipping her coffee, eyes closed, thick lashes resting on those high-boned cheeks, skin like a ripe peach. He was drawn to her and felt an unbelievable urge to touch her at every opportunity.

She burped, interrupting his thoughts. Her hand flew to her mouth, and her eyes went huge. “Well, that was polite,” she said. “Excuse me.” Her cheeks were pink with embarrassment, her smile self-deprecating.

She was charming the socks off him, he thought.

He glanced at her plate. Empty. She ran her forefinger through the syrup on the edge and popped it into her mouth, and he clenched his jaw to keep from groaning out loud. “God, that was good,” she said.

“Glad you enjoyed it.”

“You eat like a bird, Father Tomas.”

“Not normally. Got a lot on my mind.”

“Ow!” She gripped her arm again, then frowned and lowered her hand.

“Are you going to let me take a look at that?”

“There’s nothing to look at.”

He tipped his head to one side. “Clearly, it hurts. You keep grabbing it, then quickly letting go.”

“And just as quickly putting it out of my mind. It only hurts if I think about it, so I wish you’d stop reminding me.”

“Sorry. It won’t happen again.” He picked up the check their waitress had dropped, and rose from his seat. “Are you ready?”

The bubbly mood she’d been emanating seemed to burst. Back to reality, he thought. She really was dreading what lay ahead. “Yes. All ready.” She got up, too, snatching her mug off the table and taking one last gulp before hurrying to the counter with him. She tugged on his sleeve and said, “Restroom” in a stage whisper. He nodded and tried not to watch her as she walked away.

The restroom was deserted. Perfect. I needed privacy, big-time. ‘Cause something was going on with my arm, despite my denials to Tomas.

God he was good-looking. And funny. And interesting. So okay, he believed in demons and a fairy tale grimmer than anything the Grimm Brothers could have come up with. And he’s a priest. Don’t forget that minor detail. But no one was perfect.

I pulled off my jacket, wincing as it peeled down over my right arm, then, turned my shoulder toward the big mirror.

My blood rushed straight to my feet, leaving me so damn dizzy I almost fell over. My arm looked as if it had been hacked by a mini-madman with a tiny blade. Little cuts crisscrossed my flesh like a road map, and blood had run everywhere. The inside of my favorite jacket must be soaked in it. Ruined.

Damn it all, Past Self, if you want me to bail on this whole harebrained road trip, you just keep fucking with me.

I looked up at my own face in the mirror, but someone else was looking back at me. Not a pale-faced dirty blonde with a killer sense of style, but a copper-skinned woman with thick black hair hanging long and wavy, heavy brows in desperate need of tweezing, and black, black eyes.

And behind her—no, behind me—stood another woman with similar coloring but a totally different face.

Lilia.

I ought to turn around, see if she’s really standing there. I really should.

Too bad I was too scared to move.

She stared at me in the mirror, then suddenly shouted, “Remember, Indira!”

After jumping out of my skin, I yelled right back at her. “Remember what, for cryin’ out loud!”

“I’ll make you remember!” I sort of heard her say inside my head. Then she lifted a big curved blade that glinted in the fluorescent restroom lights as she swung it down to carve me up some more.

That was enough to end my paralysis. I spun around, screaming at the top of my lungs. But there was no one behind me.

Before I could even sigh in relief, though, I heard the hissing sound of the invisible blade as it cut the air, and something slashed across my chest. I felt it slicing my flesh, saw the gaping cut opening up like a zipper, saw the blood flowing out of me as I sank to the floor in pain. In terror.

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