Red House (5 page)

His jeans were zipped but the top unbuttoned. No shirt or shoes. Blond hair mussed. He looked like he’d just rolled out of bed, which he probably had. Pointing at the backpack he said, “You don’t have to leave just because I have company.”

“I know. I just thought I’d make myself scarce for a while. Maybe go find a quiet place to try a little energy work. Hey, I got a good client. The job may be tough but I don’t think the check will bounce.”

He grinned. “That’s always good news. Tell me–” With unnatural speed he slipped around me to stare downstairs at the entrance.

“What is it?”
 

The muscles of his neck and shoulders bunched with tension, his hands white-knuckling the banister. “Somebody’s here.” A baleful glare and a hint of fang. “For you.”

“What?” My confusion didn’t last long. Only one person would be coming to see me that could piss Daniel off that much. “No way.”

Loud knocking on the door echoed through the foyer and up the stairwell. “Damn it, Roxie.”

“You remember what he smells like?” This was disturbing on a number of levels.

“Hard to forget the stench of insufferable asshole. Roxie, please tell me you won’t get mixed up with him again.”

“I have a daddy, you know.” Leaving my backpack on the floor, I raced down the stairs to open the door. Blake stepped inside without waiting for an invitation, dropping a kiss on my forehead.

“Hi, sweetness. You left before we could make plans for tonight.”

“I told you not to call me sweetness.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t mean it.” He winked before shifting his gaze to the top of the stairs. “Hi, Bubba, how are you?”

The banister snapped under Daniel’s grip, the sound of crunching wood loud and unmistakable. “She’s the only one allowed to call me that.” Pointing at me, he said, “You got two minutes to get him out of my house.” He disappeared.

Blake whistled. “That vampire speed thing is impressive.”

“Not near as impressive as his vampire strength. He can put his fist through your face, Blake. Don’t antagonize him.”

“He won’t hurt me.” Blake left the foyer for the living room and wandered around, randomly touching things. I wondered if he was looking for something or just nosy. “You won’t let him hurt me, will you, Roxie.” Clearly a statement and not a question. With amusement shining in his dark eyes, sexy smirk in full force, I had to tamp down thoughts of all the dreams I’d been having about him.

“What makes you think I have any control over him?” Even I could hear the lack of conviction in my voice. If I drew a line on this matter, Daniel would toe it. I knew that. I also knew if I said make him go away and never come back, Daniel would do that, too. Right now I didn’t know what I wanted from Blake, but seeing him hurt wasn’t it.

He found the antique radio, bringing it to life with a light touch of his hand. Music spilled forth, a jaunty big band number. The smirk changed to a smile. “Well, isn’t that something. How’s it work, do you know?”

I joined him at the table. “I think it’s enchanted. It doesn’t feel like there’s a spirit trapped inside.”

Blake examined the radio carefully, holding one hand an inch from the surface. I tipped my glasses down. A faint wave of energy flowed from the radio, crackling against his skin.

“Pretty nifty magic.” He grinned.

I was about to answer when movement drew my attention to the foyer. Daniel came to the bottom of the stairs with a great big slab of cowboy beefcake at his side.

“Guess I better get going,” Beefcake said in a deep rumbling voice.

“Yeah,” said Daniel.

I tried not to gape as they kissed goodbye, Daniel giving Beefcake a slap on the ass as they broke their embrace. His cowboy boots clunked on the hardwood as he sauntered to the door. “I’ll call you tonight.”

“You better.” The naughty purr in Daniel’s voice was quite a surprise.

I struck as soon as the door closed. “That was some choice grade A sirloin there, Bubba.”

Blake piled on. “Hope he gave you more than an eight second ride.”

Daniel gave Blake a show of fang and a snarl. “You better be gone by the time I get out of the shower. Hear me, Roxie?”

Suppressing an eye roll, I waved a hand dismissively. “Yeah, yeah.”

Daniel did not suppress his disapproval, giving me a look that would melt glass. But he left us alone, climbing the stairs at a stately pace.

“Blake, you shouldn’t be here. It’s his house and he doesn’t want you here.”

“Okay, then, let’s go.” He grabbed my hand.

I pulled it away. “I’m not going anywhere with you. I’ve got things to do.”

He took my hand back and led me to the sofa. I managed to avoid being pulled into his lap, but just barely. We sat so close our bodies touched. He draped an arm around me, drawing me even closer. He radiated warmth and comfort and I let myself enjoy it.

“What do you need to do that’s so important?”

“I have a job tomorrow. I need to get ready.”

“What’s the job?” He smoothed a lock of my hair behind my ear. “Is it dangerous? Is it fun? Best of all, is it both?”

I smiled before the scoldy schoolmarm voice in my brain could order me not to. “It’s a possible haunted house.”

“Sounds like it could be both, then. Can I go with you?”

“Absolutely not.”

“What, is Daniel going with you?”

“No, I’m going out there the first time during the day.”

“Then let me go with you. Maybe I could help.”

“Why are you so eager to go on a job with me?”

“Why are you so suspicious?”

“You really want me to answer that?”

He laughed. “Okay, you win that round. Look, I just want to spend time with you. Is that so bad?”

I didn’t have an answer for him because I didn’t know.

I felt his eyes on me as I stared at the floor. After a moment he loosened his hold, not putting distance between us but still making me feel less crowded. “How about if I promise to behave? Would you at least go on a date with me?”

“Do you know how to behave?”

“Uh, you might have to remind me.” He gave a throaty chuckle. “Make some rules, maybe.”

“An actual date? You mean like normal people do?” Again I wondered if he had some other motive. I didn’t want to believe there was, I wanted to believe he really was here for me. It just didn’t seem plausible.

“Look, we didn’t meet under the best of circumstances, and we didn’t get to spend a lot of time together. That’s all I want, for us to spend time together.”

Shifting to put a few inches between us, I gave him the raised eyebrow. “You know I don’t trust you when you sound all reasonable.”

“What? Come on, I mean it.” He couldn’t maintain the expression of faux indignation. The smirk returned. “Okay, yeah, I want to get you into bed, like, now. But I still want us to spend time together.”

I shook my head. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

“I came back for you, Roxanne. I came back to be with you. Let me prove it to you.”

The smirk was gone, and along with it all the playful teasing of earlier. Sincerity filled his eyes. I still didn’t believe him completely, but I believed him enough to relent. Besides, I enjoyed his company. Why pretend otherwise?

“Okay. We can have dinner tonight. And you will be a perfect gentleman. That’s rule number one.”

He leaned in, lips pressing against mine firmly. He didn’t try to take the kiss further, though. “Yes, ma’am.”

Chapter 4

Rozella’s grimoire had been tucked away in a safety deposit box until a few months ago. I retrieved it after certain things began to happen that suggested I might be leveling up in the magical abilities department. I’d been working with roots and herbs for years, making various types of charms and other things. There’s a big difference between combining energy with outside tools to cast spells and create a result, and using only the power of one’s magical will to affect things. Especially when those things had energy of their own, like ghosts and demonic entities. The grimoire was full of spells, rituals and recipes, but interspersed throughout were notes Rozella wrote giving her thoughts on different subjects. One of them was energy work.

I thumbed through the book until finding the right page. After convincing Blake to leave and setting up a time for this dubious date, I had to placate Daniel for a while before the vampire finally got tired and went to bed. I had planned on leaving but changed my mind. Bringing a quilt and a big glass of tea along with the book, I found a shady spot under one of the large oaks in the massive back yard. Lying on my stomach on the quilt, I read Rozella’s notes on energy work.

Much in the same way a person can only do so much with their muscles unless working to make them stronger, a witch can only do so much with their magical energy without practice. That was the point of some energy work. We’d never done much of this when I was her student but I always knew Rozella could do more than she taught me. She had no desire to hide knowledge from me, but she fervently believed there were some things a student needed to seek out on their own. It wasn’t her fault I’d never sought certain things on my own.

I hadn’t brought a candle with me but had something else in mind to try. I’d been doing a lot of thinking about what appeared to be my natural affinity for the element of fire. What else could I do with that besides light candles?

There were many different flavors of witchcraft but there were some common denominators among them. One of those was the four natural elements of earth, air, fire and water. Those four elements corresponded to the four states of matter–solid, gas, plasma, and liquid. My desire to go beyond the party trick of lighting candles without a match led me to research plasma. Other than bad memories of science classes in high school, I didn’t get much out of it. An idea for a very basic experiment occurred to me and I’d been waiting for the time to try it.

Wishing I’d brought an empty glass, I drank the rest of the tea and tossed the ice into the grass. I laid the book aside, along with my glasses. Drawing into a sitting position, hands resting lightly on my thighs, I did a slow grounding. Despite having spent a great deal of time here, I still wasn’t as familiar with this plot of land as I was with my own. Opening myself up, I reached out to the energy around me. The earth below, the sky above, streams and underground water sources, trees and vegetation–all of them flowed together into a natural rhythm. Beyond that was
 
the man-made energy of the city itself. Point and counterpoint. Or if not that, then at least two separate rhythms that somehow managed to work together, like an improbable mash-up of two radically different pieces of music.

I expected all of that and had felt it before. What shocked me was the bang and clatter of something atonal, chaotic. Hard bop on meth, instead of cool jazz or trance blues. Concentrating on the discordant notes, it overtook everything else until its rattle was the only thing I could feel. A rushing wildness, dark and hungry, pulled at me. It pressed against my chest and tugged at my limbs. Fear exploded in my gut, followed quickly by recognition. That recognition saved me from what might have turned into a nasty panic attack. Reaching for calm, steady earth, I pushed away the chaos and took slow even breaths.

It was the flood. The land, the people, every source of energy in the area had been traumatized by the flood. There hadn’t been enough time yet for any real healing, so the menace still lurked just beneath the surface of things. And if it was at all present, that meant it could continue to affect things.

My breathing got a little out of sync as fear nibbled at the edges of my thoughts. I had to distract myself or pretty soon all I’d be able to think about was my destroyed home. Hard bop on meth was not really a good analogy for this area. Well, the meth part worked. What other musical analogy might work to describe the flood’s leftover energy? I struggled to come up with something but the best I could do was “redneck Rammstein.”

I would not be sharing that tidbit in conversations with either Daniel or Blake.

After giving myself several minutes to calm down, I turned my attention back to my experiment. I shook the last remnants of liquid from the tea glass then placed it on the ground bottoms up, trapping air inside. Focusing my auric vision to see deeper into the spectrum than usual, much deeper, eventually I was able to see telltale traces of that trapped air’s energy. It was very faint, the faintest of pale watercolors, but it was enough to help me with visualizing what I wanted.

According to my research, ball lightning was a natural example of plasma.

I focused my will on the air inside the glass. The idea was to tap into that vein of fire magic that let me light candles with just a flick of power directed at a wick and use it to heat the air. By the time I felt the first spark of connection my skin was covered with a fine sheen of sweat, my t-shirt stuck to my body. It was some time later before I could see something in the glass, a tiny pop of gold that disappeared as fast as it arrived.

I kept at it. Muscles protested and despite the heat of the day I began to shiver. A slightly larger dollop of gold appeared in the glass, zipping in a jerky pattern before dissipating.