This Wicked Magic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vika winked at Libby, who winked back.

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

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

“Missing? But—”

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

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

“I need that soul.”

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

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

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

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

Libby squealed. “He took a cookie!”

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

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

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

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

Which meant …

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

“Please.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hey, CJ!”

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

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

“Great. You need an assistant.”

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

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

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

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

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