“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?”
“I, uh …” She wrenched her shoulders free from his possessive grasp and stepped back, stumbling against the stool. Her hand upset a pile of rosemary, and the earthy scent renewed in the air. Rosemary for remembrance and for a clear mind. She was anything but clear at the moment. Clasping the nail at her neck for strength, she said, “No. I can’t. It was a fluke. A demon? And as I’ve said, I’m busy. Please, I want you to leave now.”
He approached her, and the dark menace in his eyes grew apparent. Vika would not cry out like a frightened child. She was strong and had stood against many much more frightening than this man.
“I command you out! Xum!” She pronounced the air spell etz-oom.
With a dramatic gesture of her hand, Vika flung air magic at him, and it managed to sway his upper body, but he maintained a firm stance.
The dark witch grinned. “I warded myself before entering your little round house,” he said, rubbing the palm of his tattooed hand. “Not as well as I thought. You shouldn’t have been able to move me.”
“Xum!” She flung more air magic his way, but this time it managed only to swish the hair away from his face. And it revealed the deep violet bruise at the side of his neck opposite the side of the tattoo.
He noticed her hard stare and stroked the bruise with his fingers. “It’s a demon mark,” he said. “Been there for six months. Ever since I returned from Daemonia.”
“You went to …?” She daren’t even whisper the name of the foul destination. To do so felt sacrilegious. The place of all demons was not a place she liked to think about, let alone put into voice.
CJ nodded. “On a quest to find something.”
“Did you find it?” she asked quickly, so unbelieving he had actually survived to return to this realm in one piece.
“I did.”
“And you’re … fine?”
“Fine is a subjective definition. It doesn’t matter, because all my energy has been focused on one thing since my return. Surviving.”
“Surviving what?”
“If I tell you, will you promise to help me?”
Vika had never been intrigued by secrets. Even less so by one involving the place of all demons.
“I promise you nothing,” she said. “Tell me, and then I’ll ask you to leave.”
“You’re the only one who can help me, Viktorie. I’ve not had any luck expelling these demons in six months.”
“Have you spoken to an exorcist?”
“Many. No luck. When I returned from Daemonia, I unknowingly brought along a few passengers. About a dozen, as far as I can determine. These demons are firmly affixed to my soul. Or so I thought until last night, when with a simple sneeze, you did what I haven’t been able to accomplish.”
She did not wield such power. A witch had to study for years, decades, to learn exorcism. “It was a fluke.”
“I’m sure it was. Yet even my brother, TJ, who has mastered persuasive exorcism and releasement,