Angie Fox - ADS 03 - A Tale of Two Demon Slayers

I didn’t bother responding. It wouldn’t matter to her, and besides, I could see Dimitri walking out of the darkness of the garden.

Amara smoothed her dress. “Please,” she said, motioning to the table.

I sat facing Amara, and Dimitri slid onto the seat next to me, his thigh coming to rest against mine. “Where are your sisters?” I asked. Or for that matter, Amara’s brother.

“They’re back at the house,” he said. “Unlike your family’s magic, which seems to thrive on chaos, our clan works best when we focus our energies.”

I nodded. It made sense. Yet as I looked out into the blackness of the gardens, I couldn’t help feeling a little exposed.

When my hair had soaked in the bowls and Amara had sung a lilting melody in Greek, we were finally ready.

“Quiet now.” She stood opposite us and held her hands over the table. “I call to my spirit guides. To Maia. To Aethra. I call to those who can see the yet unseen.” A soft wind scattered her hair about her face as she closed her eyes, transfixed. The water in the bowls began to bubble softly.

Dimitri took my hand under the table. His warm, steady grip reassured me. Everything would be all right. It had to be.

“I call to you to trace what is untraceable.” Her eyes flicked open. “Dimitri, I need you over here, please.”

Dimitri untangled his hand from mine. I immediately felt the chill as he rose and went to her, his white shirt blowing against his muscular chest from a wind I certainly couldn’t detect on my side of the table. Amara planted her hands on his chest and sucked in a breath of plea sure.

It had better be the magic talking.

“It isn’t enough,” she murmured, fingers splayed, leaning into him. “I need skin-to-skin contact.” She slid her hands to the top of his shirt and flicked open the top button, then the one below that, and the one below that. She bared his chest like a starving woman after crumbs. Dimitri pushed her hands away and finished unbuttoning himself.

He shrugged out of the shirt and tossed it onto the floor.

“Perfect,” Amara murmured, moving in, close enough to kiss, drawing her fingers across his wide shoulder.

“Can’t you just hold his hand?” I muttered under my breath, realizing I wouldn’t like that very much either.

A muscle in his jaw twitched. “This doesn’t mean anything,” Dimitri said, his voice hard.

But that’s where he was wrong. It meant a lot to Amara. How much, he had no idea.

The water in the bowls bubbled harder.

Her pink tongue touched the corner of her lips as she drew her hands down his dark, muscled chest. “I can feel it,” she said, her voice husky. She raked her hands slowly back up. For a moment, I thought she was going to thumb one of his nipples.

I could see she was aroused. I braced my palms on the cold bench, ready to stand, when Amara blew out a slow breath and retreated. The bubbles in the bowls slowed, the strands of my hair churning in lazy circles. Dimitri glanced around him, as if he too sensed it was over.

Amara took Dimitri’s hands in hers. “I have good news,” she said. “I felt your magic and it is alive and strong and”—color crept up her chest and neck—“intoxicating.”

“Where did it lead?” Dimitri asked, breaking the contact.

Hurt flashed across her features before she composed herself once again. “That’s the part I don’t understand,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s right here, on your estate.”

Dimitri looked as surprised as I felt. “Impossible. Why would anybody steal it and keep it here?”

Amara seemed mildly offended. “I don’t know, but I’m certain it’s here,” she insisted. “It’s not in the house, but it’s definitely on the grounds. I can’t tell you exactly where. I’m a psychic, not a diviner. But I can tell you whoever—or whatever—is holding it feels twisted and dark.” She touched him on the arm, worship in her eyes. “I’m so worried about you, sweetheart.”

“Okay,” I said, rising from the table. “That’s enough.” I was a good little demon slayer while she played her games, but if we were done with the ceremony, she was done taking liberties.

Surprisingly, she broke contact with Dimitri, a wide smile on her face.

“Let’s clean up and get back,” he said, shrugging into his shirt. “If we do have enemies on the grounds, we need to come up with a game plan.”

We let Amara handle the bowls. I tried not to trip her while I returned her scissors—and her razor. Dimitri studied the bronze knife. “What was this for?”

Amara hesitated. “If touching didn’t work,” she said, running her fingers through the air as if she were stroking a lover, “I might have had to cut you.”

Naturally, she’d opted for the touching first. I shook my head as I stowed her scissors in their case. Of course touching was better. I had to stop letting her bother me.

Amara joined me, practically thrumming with excitement as she wiped out the bowls with a chamois cloth.

“You’re certainly happy,” I said.

She turned to me, her eyes bright. “I saw something else.”

I tried not to cringe. “What?”

“I’m not leaving. You are.”

“Emergency meeting,” Dimitri announced as we poured into the dining room for the second time that night—the Dominos clan on one side of the long wood table, Dimitri’s sisters and I on the other.

Dimitri stood over Amara, his entire body tense. “Are you positive it hasn’t left the grounds?”

Amara clenched her small hands into fists on the table across from me, her attention riveted on Dimitri. “I know it doesn’t make any sense, but that’s what I saw,” she said. “I am not wrong. The threat to Miss Brown, along with the magic you used to hold it, is still here ”—her voice cracked—“somewhere.”

Why was I more scared than comforted? Despite the coolness of the night, I could feel myself sweat. I couldn’t imagine why the thieves hadn’t fled to the mainland—or heck, another dimension—unless they needed to be close to me in order to do something terrible. I squashed down a wave of panic.

I took a deep breath and stood. I needed to move, to think. “There has to be another way to find it.”

Dyonne glanced at the psychic. “She’s done everything she can.”

“I know that,” I said, thinking, walking just to walk.

I did have to give Amara credit for refusing to do another rub-all-over-Dimitri ritual. I’d actually been the one to offer. If she’d thought she could see more, I’d have been all for it.

But Dimitri’s ex had turned me down flat, too frightened for him to even consider what she could get away with.

Amara knotted her hands together on the table in front of her. “There is a terrible threat tied to both of you,” she said, her eyes darting from Dimitri to me. “I don’t know why your enemies would stay here on the grounds of the villa unless they are forced to do so.” She turned to Dimitri. “Are you sure you didn’t tie your magic to this place?”

Dimitri plowed a hand through his coal black hair, leaving a wave of tousled locks in its wake. “I didn’t need to tie it anywhere. I only needed it to find Lizzie.”

His eyes locked with mine and I saw the desperation, the worry, as well as his unspoken apology.

“What about you, Dyonne?” Talos folded his long fingers in front of him. Amara’s brother had been so quiet, I’d almost forgotten he was there. Talos seemed reserved, determined, yet the type of person who thought things through, who didn’t talk unless it was important.

Worry pricked at me. I could tell from the dread written across his features that Talos was about to bring up something I didn’t want to hear.