Katie's Hope (Rhyn Trilogy, Book Two) (23 page)

“Soon, my love, you’ll be back with me
forever,” she said and lovingly wrapped her hands around the finger
in the only hug she could give her dead lover. It was the
culmination of two years of spells and research. One of her shadow
demons had finally found him. “Just one more thing, and I’ll recall
you from the dead.” She set the finger down and pulled her wallet
free from her purse. “Slave!”

“Yes, mistress.” The shadow demon’s voice was
monotonous and his presence cold as he joined her.

“Find this girl,” she ordered, pulling out
the only picture in her wallet. It was of two people: her soul mate
and the interloper who stole her soul mate from her. Ages ago, the
three of them had been friends. Her gaze lingered with repressed
anger on the woman in the picture. The interloper’s was an earthy
beauty: peachy skin, light brown hair, dazzling green eyes, and a
beautiful smile. Olivia’s own beauty was cold, gothic: her skin was
porcelain, her hair straight and black, and her eyes a mesmerizing
blue. Her spells had taken some of her beauty from her, which made
the jealousy in her blood burn hotter.

“Adam,” the shadow demon said and took the
picture. “I will bring him back soon, as my mistress demands.”

“My sweet Adam. I’ve waited two years for
this,” she whispered. “I’m almost ready for you, bitch. You won’t
run from me this time, Emma, and Adam will stay with
me
forever.” She looked at the shadow demon. “Go find her, slave!”

* * *

Across the state line in northern Virginia,
Emma shivered as she reached the door to her sister’s apartment.
The hair on the back of her neck was standing on end, as if she
were being watched. It was the same sense she felt every time she
came to visit her sister, though this time, she could almost feel
the presence of someone lurking in the darkness of the stairwell.
She looked around then shook off the feeling. She was beyond tired
from her late work schedule and frequent visits to her sick
niece.

She entered the quiet apartment. Her sister
was curled on the couch, asleep. Emma pulled a blanket over her
before she went to the doorway of her niece’s bedroom. Sissy’s
baffled doctors had finally given up the day before with a grim
prognosis that Sissy would probably die within the week. Emma felt
the black witch’s curse: the coldness of the shadows crowding the
corners and stuffed animals. Earlier, in broad daylight, she’d
ventured into the room to snag a toy and shoved it in a box,
running out before the dark shadows could claim her, too.

She balled up her fists. She never suspected
Olivia’s cruelty ran so deep as to target a four-year-old.

Damn you, Adam. As usual, you took the easy
way out and left me alone to deal with the witch.

If he hadn’t jumped off the Bay Bridge two
years ago, she’d push him and Olivia off the bridge herself to make
sure they both stayed out of her life for good. The outcome of that
doomed affair-- sweet, innocent Sissy pale and limp on the bed
before her-- made her stomach roil.

“I’ll fix this, Amber, I swear it,” she
whispered to her sister.

“No one … can help her,” came the despondent,
drowsy response. Emma turned to face her sister, who pushed herself
up from the couch.

“I know I can. I did some research, and I’m
going up the Maryland coast to a small town north of
Annapolis.”

“You think you found a doctor?”

“Maybe,” Emma replied vaguely, unwilling to
tell her sister no
doctor
could fix Sissy.

“Hurry, Emma,” Amber said.

“I will, Amber, I promise,” she said. “Take
care. I won’t be gone long.” She took one last look at Sissy’s tiny
frame and Amber’s haunted features and left the apartment for the
parking lot. Even as she neared her car, she could feel the
coldness of the toy in the box on the passenger seat.

If someone like Olivia could inflict Sissy
with illness, only someone with the same skill could lift the
curse. A list of addresses and names of people and places
associated with the occult and witchcraft were scribbled hastily on
the notebook next to the box in the passenger’s seat and her GPS
was already loaded. She’d gone only to say farewell to her sister
on her way out of town.

The late October sun was setting earlier than
she wished. She flipped on the interior lights of her car, hating
the darkness. She already had a headache from a couple of sleepless
nights of research, but seeing Sissy’s helpless body reignited her
desperation.

She had to fix this. No doctor could help
Sissy, but maybe, just maybe, she could.

Her hope held out until sunset the next day,
after she’d visited the two dozen shops that lined Demon’s Alley,
the downtown of Wooster, Maryland, which boasted of its ties to
witchcraft and the occult.

“Sure, we can help. It’ll cost you your
soul.” The clerk with black nails and pink hair burst into
laughter.

“You know, that joke is getting really old!”
Emma snapped. She snatched the box off the counter and left,
agitated to see the sun was near setting. She’d been to almost
every store on the Alley with no success. The tourists had thinned
out for dinner and were replaced by Goth vampire wannabes and
fairies in heels. The locals took pride in their hallmark Alley,
enough so that the street was decorated in Halloween colors and
signs that read
Welcome to Hell on Earth.

“They got that right,” she mumbled to
herself. Her eyes settled on the only storefront she hadn’t
visited. The Devil’s Depot was directly across the street from her
car, behind a group of teenagers dressed as fairies in cheap
plastic wings. She set the box on her hood and checked her pockets
for the third time that day. She’d lost her keys somewhere along
the Alley.

The clerks in all the other shops grew uneasy
when warning her against visiting the Devil’s Depot
.
She’d
left it for last because every clerk claiming to be a vampire,
witch, or demon had become strangely uncomfortable discussing the
shop’s owner.

He’s the only
real
demon in the
Alley
, one clerk confided in her after the joke about her soul.
Emma, torn as to whether she wanted to try the store, had tried
everywhere else first. After all, she needed a witch to counter
Olivia’s spell, not a demon.

The Devil’s Depot was her last chance. With a
deep breath, Emma crossed the street and noticed the small sign on
the window advertising
Occult and Unnatural Incident
Consultations
. She knelt before the panting hellhound lying on
the wooden stoop in front of the shop. It was much tamer than the
barking Rottweiler hellhounds with spiked collars guarding one of
the shops down the street. The Great Dane showed its age; gray
trimmed its muzzle, flanks, and ears. She waved a hand in front of
milky-white eyes. The dog didn’t blink, but its long tail thumped,
and a tongue flicked out in search of her.

“Any man who keeps a blind dog can’t be too
bad,” she tried to convince herself. “Stay here, angel, and watch
out for those idiots in capes.” She fished the squishy remains of a
candy bar from her pocket. Her hand emerged coated in melted
chocolate and coconut.

“Dammit.”

Emma pinched the wrapper away with her
opposite hand and handed the remains to the dog, whose nose prodded
her forearm at its scent. It scarfed the candy and licked her hand
clean. She rose and wiped the dog slobber on her jeans before
glancing at the store name once again.

Candles flickered at her entrance into the
shop, and she distinguished several rows of shelves sagging under
the weight of goods her eyes were too tired to make out. One wall
glowed with the outlines of drink freezers. Her gaze lingered
before she realized Coke was the last thing a place like this would
stock. It smelled better than the other shops, emanating a spicy,
masculine scent with an undertone of basil.

On the opposite end of the store, scowling
clerks at the cashier counter looked up when the wooden floor
creaked beneath her feet. She girded herself for yet another
unfriendly exchange when a warm, charged current of air reached
her. She glanced in the direction from which it seemed to come. The
store was chilly aside from the peculiar current emanating from the
corner to the right of the entrance. The darkness of the corner was
impenetrable.

Someone’s there.

She blinked away the eerie sense, turning
when the hellhound’s paws clicked on the wooden floor. It ambled
into the shop, swung its massive head from right to left, wagged,
and sat in the doorway. Had the two silent, brooding clerks not
been staring at her, she would’ve retreated to pet the single
friendly soul on Demon’s Alley.

“Good evening,” she said and started toward
the counter.

“What are you looking for?” one asked.

“I need a consultation on the occult,” she
said.

“Consultation?” The girl glanced at the
other. “Advice isn’t free. You have to buy something.”

“Can you tell me if you’re going to be able
to help me first?” she asked.

“Buy something then we’ll talk.”

Emma looked around, frustrated. Her eyes
settled on the hellhound.

“Your dog,” she said.

“That’s Tristan’s. You’ll have to ask him,”
the clerk said with a roll of her eyes.

“Fine. Just tell me what you want me to buy,
and I will!”

“Don’t worry about it.” The girl sat down
with a huff and tossed a hand toward the front corner before
sitting down and pulling out her iPhone. Emma watched her text
someone and waited. The girl looked up. “Go see Tristan. He’s
over there
.”

Emma held back her temper, but her pounding
head was ready to explode. She started toward the corner with its
impenetrable darkness. Her fear of the dark made her stop at the
edge of where the light reached, a safe distance away from the inky
blackness.

Light reflected off two black eyes peering at
her from the dark but disappeared as she blinked. Unable to summon
a clear explanation among her tired thoughts, she chalked the
glowing eyes up to imagination and waited for the figure in the
corner to emerge.

“What kind of advice are you looking for?”
The voice was soft, husky, and dark. It sent a shiver through her
and was very much like the scents in the store: masculine and
soothing.

Suspecting someone was hiding in the darkness
hadn’t bothered her;
knowing
someone was there did. Emma’s
tired senses heightened, but she took a step forward. Her
imagination was strained enough with the events of the past two
weeks that she didn’t need to make monsters out of men sitting
alone in the dark.

“Could you please come out of the dark?” she
said. “I like to see the people mocking me.”

“I’m not mocking you.” His voice was like the
early fall breeze, sweeping over her in a combination of warm and
cool, tickling her ears and the sensitive hairs at the base of her
neck. She shivered.

The man materialized out of the shadows in a
way that brought to mind the warnings from the other shops’ clerks.
He took shape as he moved from total dark to partial light. Shadows
clung to him, obscuring the width and shape of his frame even when
he stood before her. Darkness hovered around him like a cloak,
stretching toward her ...

Emma stepped back. The shadows were gone.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I’m a little
tired.”

She looked up into the man’s face, and her
breath caught. His features were uneven and his eyes close
together, yet his dark aura rendered him mysterious where he wasn’t
necessarily handsome. Sculpted lips were full, and his skin was
olive tinted. A low brow with thick eyebrows hovered over dark,
warm eyes.

“Why don’t you sit down?” he asked in the
quiet voice.

Run like hell,
her instincts urged.
One of his eyebrows quirked, and her tired mind suspected he heard
her thought.

“Please.” His tone softened, a faint smile
tugging up one corner of his mouth. He took her elbow, and the
spell of his gaze released her. She drew a deep breath, surprised
to find she had been holding it, and pulled away.

“Wait,” she said and shook herself mentally.
“First, I’ve wasted a lot of time today, and I can’t afford to
waste more. I need some sort of consultation with someone who
understands … who understands … witchcraft.”

“Why don’t you sit down, and I’ll bring you
some tea?”

“No!” she said more forcefully than she
intended. “I mean, no, thanks. I’m in a hurry. I just need to know
if you can help me.”

“I can. Sit down.” It was not a request, and
before she could pounce on his response, he breezed past her,
brushing her arm. Emma shuddered as a flare of warmth traveled up
her arm. He smelled good, of dewed grasses and sandalwood. She
glanced around, distinguishing a table and two chairs in the corner
into which she hadn’t been able to see a moment before.

A chill swept through her. She swallowed hard
and looked around. She grabbed a small candelabra from the window
and set it on the table before she sat. The dog’s nails clicked as
it drew near.

Animals can sense evil and storms
, she
assured herself, ignoring the small voice that reminded her that
the street was populated by faux vampires in capes the blind dog
seemed to have no problem with.

Tristan emerged from the shadows once again,
his gleaming eyes visible first, then his shape molding from
shadows. She purposely avoided wondering why her mind played the
same trick on her twice and watched him set down the tray. Her eyes
were drawn to the movement of his well-manicured hands. He poured
her a cup of green-brown tea that smelled as calming as the store’s
incense and placed it before her.

He sat across from her, his calf brushing
hers. A shot of warm electricity jarred her, and her leg jerked
upward instinctively, slamming into the table and spilling tea. She
gave a growl of frustration and pain and pulled her knees from
beneath the table, rubbing one. Her face was warm.