Michele Hauf - This Wicked Magic

“Yes, you can! Listen, the demons that cling to my soul take over my body when the light does not hold them back. You expelled a carrion demon last night. The bastard was on a quest for raw meat.”

“The werewolf,” she whispered in disbelief.

She clutched her arms to her chest at the notion this man had been seeking the bloody and scattered remains of what she and her sister had cleaned up.

“Is that what you were cleaning? The demon smelled it. It wasn’t me.”

She shrugged, noncommittally, not knowing the man and not wanting to believe he could have been compelled to such a disaster. What would he have done had he arrived before they’d cleaned up the mess?

He approached, and Vika hustled backward until her spine hit the wall of lighted drawers in which she stored herbs and potions. “Stay back!” She put up her hand, and CJ stopped, his chest against her palm. She could feel his heartbeats against her hand. Frantic. Excited. Nervous.

Desperate.

And beneath the desperation hummed his darkness, like a hive of trapped insects seeking escape.

“Powerful magic,” he said softly of the nail at her neck, yet he didn’t move from her touch.

Instead of pulling away from him, Vika spread her fingers, staring at her hand as her palm took in the beat of his life beneath the wrinkled shirt. What witch purposefully journeyed to Daemonia? Gaining access must have proved a monumental feat. And to have survived?

He must be so powerful.

“Tell me what you went there for.”

“I can’t. It was selfish. Vika, please.”

She met his eyes, her mouth falling open in a startled gasp. She was pretty sure Libby had not called her Vika in front of him. How could he know about that nickname? Only her family and friends called her Vika, a Russian shortening of her name.

Breathing out, she shook her head. “I don’t understand what you think I can do for you. So I sneezed. I shot a soul through you, and it expelled a demon. Do you think I have souls to hand? Do you think it’s a process I can duplicate again?”

“Possibly. How were you drawing the soul into you? Was it from the body you’d just cleaned up?”

“Yes, it was the werewolf’s soul. But I didn’t purposely draw it into me.” She slid to the right to get away from his intense closeness and paced toward the door. A shiver traced her spine. Against better judgment, her innate magic was attracted to the man’s power. “I have a sticky soul. It tends to catch lost souls that linger after death.”

“I’ve never heard of that before. That’s cool. So you’re full of stray souls?”

“No, a soul bringer scrubs them from me every so often.”

She turned and saw he looked over her work and the mortar but kept his fingers interlocked behind his back. It was polite not to touch another witch’s work unless invited to do so. As he leaned over her book of shadows to scan the spell, his hair dusted the paper, and she flinched because it was as if she had felt his hair brush her skin.

“You should increase the belladonna,” he suggested. “It’ll jack up the potency, and you’ll need less lavender. For nocturnals to rest, yes?”

“That’s a wise observation.” She strode to the counter and wrote it down on her notebook. “Thank you. I will try that. You said you practice the dark magics. I can’t imagine a simple sleeping draft would be of interest to you.”

“I’m noctambulatory myself. Though I haven’t utilized any spells against it. I’ve come to terms with the night, and it me. Spellcraft is a particular expertise, both dark and light. Though, since I’ve taken on these demons, my power has decreased measurably. I can barely throw air. It’s pitiful. Please.” His hand clasped over her forearm, a warm touch that belied his bedraggled appearance. “If you can replicate the process, I beg you to try. I can’t go into the dark. I need to stay in the light to keep them at bay. I rarely sleep. I fight them daily. These demons inside me...they’ll kill me.”

It was an awful thing to endure, she felt sure. When even one incorporeal demon occupied a soul, it could overtake the person, drive the person mad or kill him or her. And he said many lived within him?

If the soul had moved through him...

“Are you sure the soul I sneezed at you moved through you? What if it’s still inside you?”

She could get back the missing soul!

“No, I definitely felt an exit.”

“Could have been the demon leaving.”

“No, that followed immediately after I felt the brightness pass through me.”

Ah. The brightness. Yes, that was the indefinable feeling.

“It was...wondrous,” he said softly. “As if a divine presence had, for but a moment, brushed against my soul. Trust me, there’s no way I’m carrying a wolf soul around inside me. Just a lust demon, a war demon, menace and grief, and a few others.”

“I need that soul back,” Vika said.

“Because of the soul bringer?”

She nodded. “He’s particular about receiving all the souls in his territory.”

“Then let’s make a deal, shall we?” He tilted a hip against the counter and eyed her up and down, for the first time showing some interest in her for more than what she could do for him.

She liked when men looked at her with blatant desire. Made her feel sexy. Never a wrong feeling. But Certainly Jones made her uneasy. It was the darkness surrounding him. Much as she trusted her grandmother’s nail would protect, she didn’t want to step too close to him without a shield ward to protect her own soul. Nor did she trust her impulsive desire to touch his power.

“What did you have in mind?” she asked.

“I must have a connection to the werewolf soul. Maybe?”

“If it’s still in the vicinity of its death, it may be compelled toward you. On the other hand, it may try to reattach itself to me. I was headed there now—”

CJ clasped her hand. “Let me go along with you. If I can help you locate the soul, will you agree to expel another demon from me?”

“But I don’t think I can.”

“It’s the only thing I’ve got going for me right now. You. Please, Vika. Help me.”

She dropped open her mouth because never had she heard such a sincere plea. And while her neat and ordered heart cringed at the idea of letting this unruly, bedraggled mess into her life, the part of her that squealed over creating order and establishing calm wanted to take the man in hand and clean him up, body and soul.

She nodded, and replied without reservation, “It’s a deal.”

“Thank you.”

“But just this once. If we don’t find a soul, I’m not obliged to help you further in any way, shape or form.”

In all his long life, never once had CJ sat inside a hearse, and he hoped to never repeat the experience when dead because he intended to prolong his life with the classic witch’s immortality ritual—consuming the blood from a beating vampire heart once a century.

Setting the morbid thought aside, he admired the car’s beige leather interior. It was surprisingly clean for an old model. Vika said it was from the seventies. It looked brand-new and smelled like lemons. Certainly was afraid to touch the dashboard for fear of leaving behind the slightest oils from his fingers.

Viktorie St. Charles’s round house and the spell room had been equally as immaculate. He had gotten a chuckle over the little plaque inside the front door that had read A Clean House Is a Happy House. The woman was all about cleanliness. And her appearance reflected the same motto.

Her bright red hair was pulled into a tight braid down the back of her head, not a strand out of place. Her face was like porcelain, her narrow brows perfectly arched and her lipstick red. All contrasted exquisitely with her inquisitive emerald eyes. And the dress she wore was a tight sheath wrapped about her slender figure in a dusty purple color, as if a bunch of roses bound with ribbon.