This Wicked Magic

Chapter 15

When the door closed with an abrupt click, CJ sighed. He shouldn’t have let her walk out like that. But he hadn’t known what to say without raising his voice and going on a rant. Vika’s actions hadn’t jibed with who he thought she was. She’d lied to him.

Not exactly a lie. Worried she wouldn’t be able to handle the interior exorcism, she hadn’t divulged her complete plans for the spell.

“Not like you’re much better, eh?” He tugged up his jeans then wandered over to the salt circle to assess the mess. “She did exorcise another demon.”

The want demon. He knew War, Pain and Protection, along with a few others, were still inside, tittering at him. Laughing, because the weakest demons had gone and now the most powerful could use the space to garner strength.

Sitting on the couch and blowing out a breath, he picked up the remote that he’d programmed to switch all the chandeliers on or off with one press of a button. She’d known exactly what to do and when. The perfect means to exorcism—coax the demon to the fore and out of the protective circle—but so dangerous. Had War or Pain reared their heads, Vika would have been helpless against them.

Against you. It is you who harbors the monsters. You are responsible for her safety.

Shoving a hand over his hair, he tilted his head and growled at the constellation of prismatic light, which had become the ugliest thing in his life. He hated the colors, the riot of flashes, the constant minute tinkling. All he wanted was peace. Quiet.

Darkness. An utterly empty and demonless darkness.

And he wanted it with the beautiful red witch in his life.

“Want,” he muttered, and smirked. “Even when you are gone, I still want.”

He’d wanted many things in his lifetime. Some of those things he had taken, stolen, used nefarious means to obtain, but none had he ever wanted so that he felt the need in his very bones. In his soul. Yes, that writhing nest of twisted demons and darkness occupying his soul. It wanted Viktorie St. Charles.

Was it the demons who desired her, so they could toy with her, play with her, torture her?

No. He felt real desire. In fact, CJ believed he loved her.

And how dare he—him, the witch who had traveled to Daemonia to steal only to keep something away from another witch—even think he could stand beside Vika as an equal and deserve her love in return?

Libby popped her head through the bedroom doorway and gaped at Vika, who lay across her bed, arms stretched high over her head and fingers toying with the cream lace edging the pillow sham.

“What?” Vika asked.

“Your shoes are on the floor.”

“So?” Vika winced at the bright streetlight beaming through the window.

Upon arriving home, she had wanted to sweater herself within the sheets and sleep away the night. She’d gotten this far, but she had expected Libby to pop a curious nose into her room sooner rather than later.

“They’re in the middle of the floor, toppled, as if tossed there...” Libby paused dramatically, and then said, “Haphazardly.”

“What are you getting at, Libby?”

“What’s wrong with you?” Her sister climbed onto the bed and leaned over Vika’s face, her hair spilling over a shoulder. Pink polka dots danced about her white retro dress cinched with a smart plastic pink buckle. “You have a filing system in the closet. Shoes must be immediately put away so as not to cause trippage. You taught me that yourself. And you’re wearing my dress. What in the goddess’s shampoo?”

“You said I could,” she muttered defensively.

“I did, but I didn’t think you were taking this one. The short one. Vika, you never wear short stuff. You say it’s unladylike. That the tease is much better the less they see. Oh, mercy, I think the dark witch has put a spell on you.”

She pressed the back of her hand to Vika’s forehead, as they often teasingly did. It certainly wasn’t a way to determine bewitchment.

Vika smiled and coiled toward her sister. “It’s true. He has bewitched me, bold and bright.”

“You know it for sure?”

She nodded. “I lied to CJ because I’ve fallen under his spell. Tricked him with the bloodsexmagic spell.”

“Oh, hell. You never lie. And you smell like whiskey and vanilla. Merciful goddess, what kind of trouble are you in, Vika? We’ll have to reverse his dark bewitchery. We can do that. I just have to—”

“You’ll do nothing.” Vika clasped her sister’s hand and squeezed. “I’m in love, Libby. Despite his probably never wanting to speak to me again after what I did to him hours earlier, I love Certainly Jones.”

“Love? Huh. What did you do? The sex magic? How did it go?”

“I exorcised another demon by seducing it and letting it have sex with me.”

Libby’s mouth dropped open. “You had sex with a demon?”

“It was Certainly’s body, but...”

“Oh, my goddess.” Libby plopped onto her back, and they lay staring up at the ceiling, shoulders hugging. “My sister is screwing demons.”

“One demon. And it wasn’t in demonic form. It was CJ. For the most part.”

“But a demon controlled his body. Oh, mercy me.”

“Libby, don’t get all worked up over it. I’m safe, and I was never in danger. It had to be done. For him. Because I love him.”

“Well, it’s a kick, isn’t it? Love?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“There’s probably something I should tell you.”

Vika waited, sensing what her sister would reveal.

“I’m in love with the soul bringer.”

“I know that.”

“Yeah, I’m kind of an open grimoire, aren’t I? But I had a thought the other day about Reichardt. You know he’s been alive for millennia, and he’s emotionless. And I suspect all he does is ferry souls all day, every day. Day and night.”

“That is what soul bringers do.”

“Right, but, I don’t think he’s ever gone on a date.”

“Most likely he’s never had the time.”

“Yes, but what I’m getting at is...” Libby rolled to her side and Vika did, too. Her sister’s eyes were a lighter shade of green than hers, and freckles danced upon her nose. “Vika, I think Reichardt is a virgin. He has to be.”

“Your mind goes to weird places, freckled one.”

“I know, right? I’m in love with a two-thousand-year-old virgin. Can it get any worse?”

“I think that is the pinnacle of worse. But look at it this way. He could be so teachable.”

“You think?”

No, she did not think, but she didn’t want to make it any worse than it already was for her sister. The soul bringer wasn’t a man in the sense of the word. He wasn’t dating material. “You taught him to like cookies.”

“I did!” Rolling to her back again, Libby hugged herself. Her sister’s optimistic view of the world never failed to infect Vika’s sullen moods and lift them. Just a bit this time.

“So you’re in love with a virgin,” Vika tossed out there.

“And you’re in love with a demon-infested dark witch whose idea of clean is giving the sheets a shake once a week.”

“His sheets are clean. Bamboo, actually. So soft and snuggly, especially when he lays with his back against mine. Mmm, the man is hot. Anyway, we did it on the couch last night.”

“Yeah, you and his demon.”

She closed her eyes, and an inward cringe was her reward. She never should have gone the sneaky route. CJ had not been able to look her in the eye, and his body language had spoken loudly he’d wanted her to stay away from him. She deserved his hate. Well, not his hate. Perhaps mild disgust, distrust surely, but never hate.

How to win him back?

Did she want to win him? After the many times his demons had tormented her, she should have been allowed that moment of defeating one of them, no matter the method to success.

Yes, she wanted her dark, wicked witch. Because in his embrace, she felt right, as if his arms were the only place other than her home she should be.

Yet what had he done? What CJ couldn’t tell her, she wanted to know. She couldn’t avoid thinking about that detail he didn’t want her to have. It was dark and evil, she suspected.

Don’t think about it. Yeah, right. Now the thought would never leave her mind.

If she could get a few more cleanup jobs she could grab a bunch of souls and—well, she didn’t know how to utilize the souls once they’d stuck to hers. CJ had to actually be there, ready to take a soul before it entered hers.

This was a complicated mess. And for sure, he’d never let her attempt the bloodsexmagic on him again. Not that she wanted to. She had had sex with a demon. What was she becoming?

She tilted a look to her sister and found the same bewildered look reflected back at her.

“I know,” Libby said on a sigh. “What are we going to do?”

The vacuum cleaner rumble set the clouds of crystals to a mad sort of rain dance as CJ moved about the loft, pushing it into long-forgotten corners and collecting his abandoned clothing along the way. He wasn’t sure what had gotten into him, but the place had needed a good going-over.

By afternoon, he’d dusted every surface, organized his spell table and even alphabetized the spell cards and the herbarium. He’d found a missing snakeskin boot and tugged it on to admire it alongside its match. A feather duster had reached only the bottoms of the chandeliers, so he’d performed an air spell to dust the crystals from ceiling beams down to the smallest crystal. When finished, the loft beamed brilliantly.

Too brightly for his taste, but surely this would only aggravate his demons all the more.

Fixing himself a frozen cheese pizza in the microwave, he mused that he’d let his diet slack since his return. Normally, he made everything fresh. He was hungry and hadn’t gone shopping for days. Should probably head out for groceries before the sun set. But his thoughts, now the cleaning had been done, took a sharp turn toward her.

He hadn’t called Vika. Hadn’t dared to go over to her round white house and clatter on the shiny brass knocker. He knew he must be the one to make the first move. And he knew what that move involved.

The truth. The whole truth and all its devious details.

He glanced to the item lying in plain view on his kitchen counter. Plain only to him. The cloaking spell surrounding it was the most powerful magic to his arsenal, and no one, not even the demons within him, could see it sitting there. Vika had stood right beside it more than a few times and hadn’t sensed its presence.

He held his hand over the bone whistle but retracted from picking it up. The truth was going to wrench out his heart and drop it on the floor before Vika’s pretty little feet in a macabre splatter. Witches required a beating heart once a century to maintain their immortality, which must come from a vampire. The source, as the unfortunate vamp was called by witches. Vika would take one look at his dark and disgusting heart and wouldn’t want to sweep it into her bin. She’d run from it, metaphorical as the whole scenario was.

And that kept CJ at home through the evening, safe beneath the prismatic light, sorting through his herbs and tossing out the old stuff in order to avoid the vicious truth.

Ian Grim stared up at the dusty chandelier laden with black crystals. Why did it compel him so? He’d been sitting here beneath the massive structure for hours, his mind unable to grasp anything but the bedamned light fixture.

It meant something. He just didn’t know what that something was. So much so, he’d been compelled into this ancient mansion, which now served as a museum, and had snuck beyond security into this private bedchamber.

“Certainly Jones,” he muttered. “I will not let you get the better of me this time. I am so close. So close!”

He reached and was able to tap the lowest-hanging crystal. It caught the sunlight and flashed in his eye.

“You are not untouchable. If I have to go through your brother, Thoroughly, I will.”

Pouring out a measure of safflower petal onto a crisp sheet of parchment, Vika referred to her spellbook for the correct measurement.

She had agreed with Libby for once and hadn’t called CJ this morning. Sometimes the man had to step up and make things right. And wasn’t absence supposed to make the heart grow fonder?

“Not if his heart is angry with what I’ve done.” She sighed, and the exhalation drifted the airy bits of safflower across the white paper and into a random scatter.

Studying the scattered bits, she utilized a form of tasseomancy, tea leaf reading, which was Libby’s forte. Skilled enough, Vika muddled over the flower petals’ design. And what she saw clenched the muscles about her heart and stole her breath.

“Libby!”

Her sister scrambled into the room, a spatula laden with raw cookie dough in hand. “What? Did you burn yourself? I told you waterfiremagic was tricky stuff.”

“It’s not that. What do you read in this?”

Libby carefully approached the counter and looked over the strewn safflower petals. She clasped a fist to her chest. A gob of cookie dough spilled down her befringed apron. “Oh, my goddess. A warlock? What does that mean? Do you think it’s CJ?”

“I don’t know. He would have had to commit a grave crime against the Light to be deemed warlock. Oh, Libby, he’s been keeping something from me. Something dark. He says he can’t tell me about it.” The sisters hugged. “What is CJ involved in?”