This Wicked Magic

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

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

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

“Vika, I’m sorry, I had no control—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was moving.

“Finally.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Infested,” she muttered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Are you all right?”

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