Michele Hauf: Captivating The Witch

“Tomorrow night?” she asked as the elevator doors slid open. “Another research date?”

“I’m...hmm. Can I get back to you on that one?”

“Oh? Sure.” She’d expected a quick response that he’d love to see her again. Didn’t he want to drop the big question on her? So her shoulders dropped as she headed for the door. “I live in the 6th,” she said.

“I know. By the Luxembourg.”

She cast a look over her shoulder.

“I can smell the pear blossoms and roses from their gardens in your hair. It’s a unique blend indicative of the garden on the Left Bank. If I want to find you, I will. We demons retain scents far better than any werewolf can. You’re in me now, Tamatha.”

And he turned to stroll toward a door set near the elevator bay. Without a goodbye or an au revoir. As last night when he’d left her in the alleyway after that devastating kiss.

Tamatha stepped outside under the moonlight and stroked the back of her hand where he’d licked her. With a shiver, she decided to draw her white light back up.

Chapter 6

The last of a few black feathers dissipated as Ed’s body re-formed into human shape. He tilted his head to the left and right to stretch the kink in his neck, then shook his shoulders to shake out his clothes and return to normality. Or as normal as it got shifting from a conspiracy of ravens to demonic flesh and blood.

There were other terms for a group of ravens, such as an unkindness. He’d stick with conspiracy. As it was, he got enough bad press.

The phone call had come from Inego, whom he’d directed to post guards at the Montparnasse. There were no dead witches in the cemetery this time that he could see. Nor a dismembered demon corpse. But between two mausoleum fronts with rusted iron doors he did find a telling pile of ash. Obsidian flakes clued him in that one of his own had died there. Recently, for the red embers and lingering sulfur that tainted the air.

Yet the sickly smell of rot clinging to the air was not demonic. And the ward on his forearm tingled.

“Witches,” he muttered. “Again. How is it possible? Unless they are alive and just really ugly?”

No, he’d seen exposed bone on more than a few of them the night he’d witnessed Laurent’s murder. Whatever the creatures were, they could not be alive. And they seemed to have a death wish for demons.

Perhaps the situation was more urgent than he’d initially thought.

Kneeling before the ash, he held his palm flat over the pile without touching it. Rising warmth teased at his skin, as if the essence yet remained. He couldn’t get a read that would clue him in to what breed of demon it had been or if it had been male or female.

Scanning the surroundings, he wondered if the demon had been wandering about the cemetery—for what reason?—or if he or she had somehow been lured here. Because it was the same cemetery. It seemed too coincidental to be mere happenstance. Could dead witches do such a thing? Or was someone else luring hapless demons to a sure and terrible death?

The thought was disturbing. And he would find answers.

From a witch like Tamatha Bellerose? He wasn’t sold on her being the most powerful in Paris, but he wasn’t yet prepared to admit to that doubt. She seemed open-minded. She’d even suggested she was not into summoning and then commanding demons to her will. With hope, she would at least hear him out regarding this situation.

He should have been direct with her earlier. But after watching her smudge the office, the whole time he’d slid his eyes over her gorgeous figure and had thought thoughts he wouldn’t want anyone to know about. Lust had altered his initial goal. He’d been thankful for the phone call only because he was pretty sure he might have pushed her down on the couch and made out with her right there in the office.

And what was wrong with that?

“Everything,” he muttered. “She’s a witch.”

He stood, then strode quickly toward the south entrance and slipped through the unlocked gate. He spied Inego parked down the street in a black Audi and slid into the passenger side.

“I posted guards at the front gate like you asked, boss.”

Ed rubbed his lower lip, in thought. Would any future victims really enter through the front gate? If the victim was demon, he or she could enter by a number of means, through shifted shape or by simply leaping over the fence at any point in the periphery. More guards may be necessary.

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