This Wicked Magic

Vika dropped the heavy marble pestle in the mortar. “The derelict?”

“Derelict?” A tall man with coal hair and an easy stance walked around beside Libby and crossed his arms. He looked only one step up from derelict, with his black clothing hanging on his broad frame and his jeans hems scraping the hardwood floor. He gave the spell room a once-over, drawing his eyes from the walls of glass-fronted cupboards to the inset halogen lights that fashioned the space into the ultimate clean room for concocting and conjuring. “This is your spell room? It’s very …”

“Clean?” Vika offered hopefully.

“Sterile.”

“Thank you.” Pleased with the comment, she stood and gestured her sister to leave. “It’s okay, Libby. The problem may now be solved.”

Her sister winked and made a kissing gesture behind the man’s back before giggling and dashing off to spend the afternoon trading spells and herbs with the local covens at the weekly bazaar.

“Viktoria St. Charles?” he asked, stepping down into the room. His boots clicked the highly glossed marble floor.

The man inserted a void of darkness into the clean room with his presence. He wore black from head to toe, and the room was white upon gray marble. As much as black was her preferred color scheme, Vika always wore pale colors in this room to honor the pure atmosphere. Today, it was a soft heather, fitted to her body from shoulder to ankle in a corseted maxi dress that flared out from the knee.

“Viktorie,” she corrected. “As in successful. It’s an old Russian name.”

“Oh, yes, Viktorie. I’m sorry.”

“Why are you here, monsieur …?”

“I looked you up on the Council database. I’m Certainly Jones.” He offered his hand to shake, and she did so, quickly, finding his grip sure.

The man recoiled, shaking his hand as if he’d been stung. “What the hell was that?”

She had no idea what he’d felt. Pressing a hand to her throat—ah, yes. “My grandmother’s nail.” She lifted the leather cord she always wore about her neck. A centuries-old nail was twisted about it as a pendant. “It was taken from her grave after she’d been buried by the villagers.”

“Don’t tell me.” He winced as he studied the necklace. “Nails had been pounded around her clothing to keep the witch down so she would not rise from the grave?”

“Actually, this one, and the one my sister wears, were taken from her jaw.” The practice had been a cruel and unusual attribute of the witch-hunt madness of the eighteenth century. “Her magic is contained within this nail. It protects me from dark magic.” She lifted a defiant brow.

“It’s powerful. I felt it.”

“That means you practice dark magic.”

“It does.” At her silence, he added with a splay of his hands, which revealed his left was covered in a tight assortment of black tattoos, “Someone’s got to do it.”

Uh-huh. She’d never had a dark practitioner cross her threshold before, and she wasn’t sure she liked it now. Best to get rid of this one quickly.

“So, Certainly Jones,” she said. “I’ve heard of you. The Council’s resident librarian.”

“Archivist, actually. My job involves much more than cataloging books. And you are a cleaner who is also a witch? This spell room is so …”

“Impressive?”

“Sanitary.” He looked about as if a dark angel lost among the clean and pure. Rubbing a palm up his arm, he gave a noticeable shiver. “Derelict, eh?”

Vika walked along the marble counter, trailing a fingertip along the cool, curved edge. A means of grounding herself, because she suspected the witch was powerful and wielded much darker magic than she could imagine. It hummed from him, and it felt wrong in the air.

It disturbed her, and she wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.

“Derelict? You did present a bedraggled appearance last night. As well as now—”

“And you look like a dream. Green eyes. I was right about that.” A wink surprised her.

“Ahem.” She was not so easy to win over, despite the lucid warmth she felt from his soft stare. “You look as if you’ve seen better days, Monsieur Jones.”

He pushed a hank of hair away from his face. The motion revealed a tattoo on the side of his neck, but she didn’t look too closely. He wasn’t unattractive, Vika decided, just … not neat. Rumpled and scruffy. Her skin prickled to wonder at how ill-kept his home must be if this was the appearance he presented to the world.

“I have seen better days,” he said, followed by a heavy sigh. “And I’m hoping you can return those better days to me. I need your help, Viktorie.”

She tilted up her chin. The call for help always tweaked at the protective bone in her body. She strived to be her best, always, to help others, and to do right by the witch’s rede. But she was having a hard time relaxing around this man. His presence prickled across her bare arms, and it wasn’t an altogether uncomfortable feeling. Persuasive, and yet warning.

She didn’t need the warning; dark magic was something with which she refused to associate.

“I don’t understand how you think I can help you, Monsieur Jones.”

“Please, call me CJ. Last night you did something incredible for me. I’m hoping you’ll be able to do it again.”

“I didn’t do a single thing for you. I saw you. I got in the car and drove off. But I’m still not sure how you saw me. That area was warded to keep bystanders from seeing us while my sister and I cleaned the crime scene.”

“The carrion drew me. Strange, because I’m a vegetarian. But your little ward wasn’t powerful enough to blind me.”

Little ward? Vika stiffened, putting her hands to her hips. He was wearing out a welcome she’d not granted him.

“You sneezed,” he offered.

Vika turned away. That damnable sneeze! It had put her on the soul bringer’s most-wanted list and now brought this practitioner of dark magic into her sacred spell room. She said over her shoulder, “And you’ve come to say gesundheit?”

“How about I offer you a blessed be? Far too late, but well meant, I promise.”

His manner was too kind to fit his appearance. And his presence. She didn’t like how he made her feel unsure in ways that inappropriately warmed her skin. She slid her hands along her hips down to her thighs.

Did she feel attraction for the man? No, impossible. Maybe the tiniest bit of curiosity. The man was just so … there. Never had she felt another person’s energy so strongly. And for as much as it was dark, it also pleaded. Which set up all kinds of warnings in Vika’s wanting heart.

“Now if that’s all you’ve come for, I do need to get back to work. I’ve a spell—”

“I need you to do exactly what you did last night, Mademoiselle St. Charles. Please. You sneezed, and then I felt something move through me.”

Vika gaped. She turned to face him. Had the soul she’d sneezed away passed through this man? To consider it briefly, it may have been possible, since, if the corpse lights could permeate her, then they could certainly enter another.

She stepped closer to him and studied his deep jade eyes for a lie. “Are you sure? You felt it travel through your body?”

He nodded. Not a flinch or a blink. He was being truthful. “What was it that I felt move through me?”

“A soul,” she said softly, and then snapped her mouth shut. She’d said too much. She knew the man not at all. Yet, if she were to find the soul, he was the last person to—not have seen it, but rather, have touched it.

“A soul.” He nodded. “That makes weird sense. It chased the demon right out of me.” He grabbed her shoulders, forcing her to meet his gaze. “Do it again. Please?”