A wise woman never let loose and gave away too much too soon.
She didn’t need him to find the missing soul. She could attract a wayward soul on her own, thank you very much. Not that she’d been successful at it thus far.
He’d turned, and the silhouette of him, head bowed and arms slack at his sides, looked pitiful. A lost boy trying to fight off the real demons in his life. The Catholic Church couldn’t help him? She was surprised he’d set foot on holy ground. She didn’t know for sure, but she guessed he must have worked extremely foul magic to have been able to set foot in Daemonia.
“He deserves whatever he’s gotten,” she whispered.
And yet, he’d pleaded for her to help him. He was desperate. The man couldn’t go into darkness for fear of a demon taking over his body.
“There must be some spell,” she mused. “And if there is, I want to find it.” She eyed him in the rearview mirror. “You ready for me, CJ? Because I always accomplish what I set out to clean—I mean, help.”
Uh-huh. She’d meant clean.
Vika took her foot off the brake and backed down the alleyway. Shadows glanced off the white hood of the car sandwiched between three-story buildings. When the hearse sidled alongside the man, she rolled down the passenger window.
“Get in. I have a lot of work to do, and the day isn’t getting any lighter.”
He slid inside but didn’t offer a gregarious I’ve won smile, as she had expected. Instead, he winced. In fact, he struggled to keep his jaw from opening, or maybe he was fighting a shout. And when he turned a frown on her, his face looked different. Not so slender.
And his eyes glowed red.
Vika heard the lightning crackle the air before darkness swept the sky.
CJ grabbed the steering wheel and slid his boot over on top of her foot. “Let’s go for a ride, sweetie.”
Chapter 4
Vika struggled to control the hearse as it careened down the street and toward the main avenue, where there would be hundreds of tourists in danger should CJ manage to steer against her—so far—firm grip. His foot pressed over hers on the accelerator, and though they were going only about twenty kilometers an hour, it was too fast for the looming touristy area.
And it wasn’t CJ. Some kind of demon controlled him. Didn’t matter. She had to fight them both to maintain control.
The demon hissed and slid closer, cramming her body against the car door as it tried to take over the seat. It gripped the steering wheel and wrenched the car sharply to the right. Vika kept her eyes on the road, and both hands were still on the wheel. So far, they’d hit nothing.
A hot tongue licked up the side of her face, and CJ chuckled in a breathy, evil rumble. “Strong witch. But driving down the middle is not fun at all. Obstacles must be crushed!”
CJ jerked the steering wheel to the left. With her vision blocked because his body was in the way, Vika didn’t see the parked car. The hearse’s bumper scraped along the side of the vehicle, the noise crunching and loud. She elbowed CJ in the gut, connecting with hard muscle, and he flinched. His foot left hers, but his hand remained on the wheel.
If she could find a well-lit area, the demon may flee. It was day. Though the sky had suddenly darkened, there was no rain, and no streetlights had flickered on yet. Ahead lay the main avenue and, beyond, the River Seine.
Attempting to brake was impossible because the demon-possessed witch tugged her out of the seat and, switching places with her, shoved her onto the passenger side. Now she lost track of where they were headed. In a last effort, Vika scrambled upright, grabbed hold of the shift and shoved it into Park.
The hearse squealed and spun, the engine making an awful hissing noise. The back of the vehicle swung around. A car horn honked. Vika braced for impact against the chest of the man, who hooted and beat the ceiling of the car with a triumphant fist.
The hearse stopped with a dull, crushing metal noise. Stretched across the front seat, Vika landed flat upon CJ’s chest. She winced, anticipating a crash from another car. What a horrible way to die, sprawled across a man she barely knew and trusted not at all.
When the impact didn’t come, she immediately opened the glove compartment and took out the flashlight. Clicking it on, she shone the bright light at the dark witch’s eyes. “Get out, you bastard!”
Crawling backward and kneeling, yet keeping the light aimed on the witch, she shoved at his knee as he struggled to untangle himself from under her. When he was free and gave a hefty exhale, she did not relent with the light.
CJ put up a palm to block the light. “It’s okay now. It’s gone. I’m me again, thanks to your quick thinking with the light.”
“Yeah? Well, get out! Right now, dark one. I don’t need your kind of trouble. We could have harmed innocents!”
“Vika, I’m sorry, I had no control—”
“Damn you!” She slapped his shoulder with the flashlight. “My car is probably totaled. Get out!”
“Okay!” CJ opened the car door, which slammed against the concrete barrier fronting the river. He had to ease his way out through the narrow space.
Around them, a crowd had started to gather to assess the situation. Smoke hissed from the hood of the hearse.
“It was the menace demon,” CJ said, bending to offer the weak explanation. At his temple a streak of blood glistened. “The shadows in the alley were enough to give it control. Vika, please, let me help you with this. Can you start the car? Let me drive it off the street and deal with the authorities.”
“I said to get away from me,” she said firmly, directing the light at his eyes again for the annoyance factor. “I don’t want your kind of mess in my life. Please, walk away. I can handle this myself.”
He put up his hands and stepped back. A bystander approached him and asked if he was hurt.
Vika settled in the passenger’s seat and blew out a breath, anticipating dealing with the concerned mortals outside. She could hardly tell them a demon had been in control of the car.
“Goddess, I hope it’s drivable. I do not need a repair bill right now.”
Opening the door, she nodded she was fine, but when the ambulance arrived on the scene, she realized it would be better to submit to their triage than try to walk away, as Certainly had.
He was out of her life. And life would be better off without his danger.
So why, then, did she search the crowd in hopes of spying his dark tangle of hair and regretful eyes?
Ian Grim looked up from the crushed raven bone he was preparing to burn along with rowan bark and amber in the mortar. Perched over his spell table all afternoon, daylight had slipped away from him. His lover for centuries, Dasha, was away to Venice photographing a piece for a Gothic magazine. When the cat was away, the mouse did like to play.
Candlelight flickered, yet he had to blink a few times to adjust his focus on the tracking spell set before the windowsill.
It was moving.
“Finally.”
Dropping the steel pestle in the mortar, Grim rushed to the windowsill and leaned over the brass pendulum. It was suspended from a fine chain above a map of Paris. Paris being the most likely place to find Certainly Jones. It was his home, after all, and a man rarely strayed far from home. But since Grim had become aware of Jones’s return from Daemonia six months earlier, he’d been off the grid. The dark witch had warded himself into a literal black hole. And only Jones was capable of concealing himself with such powerful magic.
Grim had been patient. This vita spell utilized a strand of hair he’d gotten off Jones and had been saving for decades. It sniffed out Jones’s