Wicked Souls (4 page)

Chapter Four:

Crime Witch Investigator

All witchcraft leaves evidence, a trail, and
a witch or other supernatural can follow it like a bloodhound
following a scent.
Practicing witches recognize each other on
sight, and every witch has her own personal magic imprint…a witch
fingerprint in other words.

I didn’t need to look for a fingerprint or
follow a trail to find out who’d put some kind of spell on Gabriel.
I simply walked through the front door of my ice cream shop.

The place was almost empty.
A single
customer, dressed in black from head to toe, leaned casually
against one counter, dark eyes following Keisha as she scooped
Bodacious Butter Brickle into a large sugar cone.
The guy had been
dropping in daily for the past week, every day trying a new flavor.
In my experience with people and ice cream, that was a bad sign.
He
was either indecisive or a commitment-phobe.

Keisha’s head was tipped down but I could
see the shy smile on her lips as dozens of beaded braids swung
around her chin.
She was making quite a production of scooping the
ice cream, using the motions to show off her cleavage, and I knew
what that meant.
She was trying to impress him, even though he
wasn’t worth impressing.

As the doorbell tinkled above my head, the
man’s eyes slid over to look at me.
Keisha also looked up.
Seeing
me, however, the smiles on both their faces disappeared.

I seemed to be having that effect on a lot
of people that day.
“Ice cream’s on the house,” I said, barreling
in behind the counter without even taking my coat off.
Lifting the
cone from Keisha’s hand, I gave it to the customer, who looked
surprised and then annoyed.

As I went back to his side of the counter, I
snagged a metal ice cream scoop and hustled him toward the door.
Under my breath, I gave him some words of advice, while I
brandished the scoop in front of his face.
“Screw around on my
friend and the term ‘double scoop with nuts’ will take on a whole
new meaning for you.
Comprende, amigo
?”

His annoyed look deepened as I pushed him
through the door and shut it behind him.
The bells jingled madly
over my head.

I turned and found Keisha, fists on her
hips, glaring at me.
“What the
what
was that?”

Along with various euphemisms, the word
what
had been substituted in our lexicon for certain cuss
words in keeping with Father Leonard’s no-cuss missive.
I typically
forgot to use it, but Keisha was almost religious in her commitment
to stay cuss-free.
Sometimes it made for interesting
conversations.

“Geronimo will be back,” I said.
“He’s
totally enamored with you.
For now anyway.”

“His name is Pedro, and he’s interested in
voodoo.
I was going to give him lessons.”

Uh, huh.
Right.
“His name is Geronimo
Martinez.
He calls himself Pedro, because he’s embarrassed that his
first name is Geronimo.
He’s an Episcopalian, still lives at home
with his mother, and has strung along six different girlfriends
over the past eight months.”

Keisha’s face hardened.
“You ran a
background check on him?”

“Someone had to.
You’re a little slow on the
uptake.
And it wasn’t a background check.
I looked at his Facebook
page.”

Her face softened and her gaze dropped to
the floor.
Disappointment oozed from her pores.
“Satan’s balls.
This is what I get when I look for a nice guy.”

New descriptive terms had replaced Keisha’s
tried and true favorite cusses as well.
This one particularly
bothered me, due to the fact I had intimate knowledge of the body
parts in question and their owner.
Today I let the term slide.

Since Adam had come along and made me happy,
Keisha had dropped her endless supply of bad boys and tried to find
a nice guy too.
So far every nice guy she’d fallen for had turned
out to have a big L plastered on his forehead.

I shrugged off my coat and pointed toward my
office door.
“We need to talk.”

The skeleton-head earrings hanging from her
ears bobbed as her dark brown eyes jerked up to meet mine.
“Oh,
God.
Now what?”

On my way past her, I put an arm around her
shoulder and guided her toward the office.
“Did you really think I
wouldn’t find out?”

Her already big eyes grew to the size of
quarters.
“You know?”

“You’re the only witch in Eden powerful
enough to have done it.
But why?”

“I’m slow on the uptake?”
Her voice was
thick with sarcasm.
“Why do you think I did it?
For you.”

I faced Keisha from across my desk.
“I
appreciate it, whatever
it
is, but it’s backfired.”

“Huh?”

I spilled the details for the third time
that morning and watched the corners of her full lips turn down as
she listened to my story.
Her brows drew down as well, but
confusion darkened her eyes.
When I finished, she stared at the top
of the desk as if that would help her understand what had
happened.

Apparently it didn’t.
“All I did was light a
candle and say a prayer for you.
For God to stop all those crazy
biblical characters coming back to Earth expecting you to fix their
problems.”
She eyed me with a look that said she still didn’t
understand how her actions had backfired.
“Father Leonard told me
it might help.”

Now I was the one confused.
“You went to the
church?”

She nodded and braids, beads and earrings
swung forward.
“Seemed like the best place to get the Big Guy’s
attention.”

Contrary to popular belief, voodoo and the
Catholic Church have a lot in common.
Keisha entering a church of
any faith, however, was about as likely as Lucifer taking up the
cross and singing hymns.
“You did that for me?”

“Leo and I had a priest-to-priestess chat,
and we agreed on one thing: you needed all the help you could
get.”

No wonder my life had been calm since
Christmas.
With Keisha and Father Leonard both working their
respective magics on me, I was being protected by saints as well as
spirits.
“You didn’t cast a spell on Gabriel?”

Keisha sniffed.
“I wouldn’t waste my time on
him.”
A wicked gleam came into her eyes and she leaned forward.
“But I sure would like to know who did and what kind of spell it
was.”

“You and me both.”

We smiled at each other across the desk, for
some reason caught up in the idea that a witch could cause Gabriel
so much trouble.
“The two of us would know if a witch was working
dark magic in town.”

“Maybe she’s flying under the radar.”

I thought about it and shrugged.
Although
some witches kept a low profile, I’d never encountered a witch who
purposely hid her magic.
“Must be really under the radar.”

Tracking a witch wasn’t hard if you knew
where to start.
I cringed at the thought of going to the only lead
we had.
“To find her, we have to start with Gabriel.”

Keisha screwed up her face.
“Shit.
I mean
snap
.
How are you going to do that without getting
killed?”

Luc’s face flashed in front of me.
I hadn’t
told Keisha about my near death revelation—it was just too
embarrassing—but he was the only entity, human or supernatural,
that could help me with this.

As if my simple thought plunked him on the
express train to my office, he shimmered into being, making both of
us jump.
Keisha’s hand flew to her chest.
My heart went zinging
around inside mine.

Calm and unemotional, Luc stood there
staring at me.
“Gabriel will never hurt you again.”

The sharp planes of his face were as strong
as ever.
The broad expanse of his shoulders as straight.
A wave of
protection washed over me and my body relaxed into it, even though
my mind said,
bad idea, Amy
.
I couldn’t help it.
Lucifer and
his take-no-prisoners attitude eased my anxiety.

Keisha gulped loud enough for me to hear it.
He was an imposing sight, tall and dark and so intense my toes
wanted to curl, but my reaction wasn’t based in fear like Keisha’s.
Mine was based in…

No
.
I do not love him
.
Not
anymore
.

Chapter Five:

Personal Demon

“You don’t have to protect me
twenty-four-seven,” I said, slamming my apartment door shut behind
us a few minutes later.

Luc nodded, cool and detached, but I’d been
with him for seven years and I knew that look.
He wasn’t about to
give in.
“I am the only thing standing between you and Gabriel.
Do
you think it wise for me to leave?”

He followed me into the kitchen as I avoided
his eyes.
While it was only noon, dark clouds covered the sky and
my apartment was in shadows.
In the kitchen, I flipped on the
overhead light and my new refrigerator gleamed under it.
The old
one had died, and since Adam had kept it well stocked in order to
cook for me, I’d splurged and bought a modern stainless steel one
to replace it.
I also found out how sturdy it was when I’d proposed
Adam have me for dessert one night and he’d turned from the sink,
where he was washing out a pan, and had his dessert up against the
fridge’s door.

Opening it, I peered inside, not seeing the
food but needing something to keep my eyes off Luc.
The power and
competence radiating off him called to me like a Dove chocolate.
Like a whole
bag
of Dove chocolates.
A mountain of Dove
chocolates.
I wanted to breathe in his tantalizing scent, peel off
his wrapper, and taste the decadence lying underneath.

Slamming the door shut, I hastily reached
for the glass bowl of Doves sitting on the counter.
I crammed one
in my mouth and chewed, not even taking time to really enjoy it,
just needing my fix.
“If Gabe shows up,” I said around the
chocolate, “I’ll call you.”

Cain, my black Persian, strolled into the
kitchen and rubbed against Luc’s leg as if the past six months of
his absence had never occurred.
Luc picked him up and scratched
under his chin.
Cain purred in response.
“You may not have a chance
to call next time.
If Gabriel decides to come back for you, it
won’t be to talk.
You won’t have a chance to call for me.
And if
Adam or Emilia or Keisha are here with you, they may end up
collateral damage.”

He stood there in my kitchen, petting my
cat, and looking exactly the way he had six months ago before I
caught him hexing it up with Emilia.
In his defense, he was under a
powerful, angel-generated spell.
Still, I couldn’t get over the
fact he’d been seduced by my sister.
Eww.

Now sincerity oozed from his pores.
Like
always, he was manipulating me, sounding as if he truly cared about
my boyfriend, my sister, and my best friend, when in reality, he
just wanted to get me in bed.

The magic in my chest strained to unfurl and
go to him, eager as always to do his bidding.
My skin tingled and
my pulse throbbed in my ears…
yes, yes, yes
.
I reached for
another Dove.
“Stop it.”

He looked at me, perplexed.
“Stop what?”

Take me, take me, take me
, the pulse
continued its raging chant.
I bit off a piece of chocolate, chewed
it and swallowed.
Usually chocolate calmed me.
Today, with every
bite, my nerves hopscotched, my fingers shook.

I crumpled the wrapper and threw it in the
garbage can with a little more force than necessary.
It pinged off
the rim and shot across the room.
“Pretending you care about
anybody but yourself.”

He stopped scratching Cain and went still,
his black-as-night eyes locked on mine.
He set the cat down, strode
the two steps across the short expanse of kitchen and pinned me
against the counter, hands on either side of my hips.
“I’ll do that
when you stop pretending you don’t care about me.”

Yes!
Yes!
Yes!
Now my magic was in
cahoots with my raging pulse.
He had me on that statement, both
figuratively and literally.
I couldn’t budge from his encompassing
stance nor could I fudge the truth with any degree of
believability.
And like earlier that day, I saw the worry in his
eyes, the sincerity I didn’t want to believe.

Up close, the stress in his face was also
visible.
Lines that hadn’t been there six months ago, even four
months ago, cut across the corners of his eyes.
His body strained
against mine, not just from lust, but from real emotion.
Emotions
he didn’t quite know how to handle.

Heat engulfed me as if someone was pouring a
bucket of warm water over my head, desire running from head to toe
in a rush.
His fire magic commanded my air magic to respond and it
did, breaking free and reaching for him as energy popped and
crackled along my nerve endings.
Cain meowed and ran from the room
as my hands lifted to follow my magic.

Before I could touch Luc, though, he jerked
away, stumbling backwards three steps until the stainless steel
fridge brought him up short.
Chest heaving in time with mine, he
held up a hand as if to ward me off, his eyes wide and fierce in
his strained face.

For several minutes, we stayed that way,
staring at each other in a haze.
My mind whirled with conflicting
thoughts.
My heart, with conflicting emotions.
I tried to bring up
Adam’s face, but the moment it appeared, pressure filled my head,
and the image morphed back into Luc’s.

Three feet away, he started to say
something, shook his head, tried again.
Nothing came out.

With the physical distance between us, the
energy tingling my nerves began to abate and I whistled softly
under my breath.
It was still there, ready to leap and arc with his
magic if he let go and allowed his emotions to surface.
However, by
the look on his face, I could see that wasn’t going to happen again
anytime soon.

Which was good, right?
I certainly didn’t
want to blow my magic-free lifestyle or my relationship with Adam,
and that kind of power, that kind of magic, was impossible to
fight.
I knew it, and judging by Luc’s response, so did he.

Luc and I had always shared a potent brew of
magical energy and lust, but I’d never felt anything like this
before.
A witch drew magic from her emotions.
I’d never realized,
however, that Lucifer’s magic might do the same.

We stared at each other across the tile
floor, neither of us comfortable with what had just happened and
yet wondering what exactly
could
happen if we let it.
I
swallowed the ball of fear and excitement in my throat and cleared
it.
I forced myself to think of Adam.
There.
I could at least
picture his tattoo from that morning, the muscles moving under it.
“You’d better leave.”

Luc’s face cleared, his eyes going hard and
flat again as he tamped down the last of his unruly emotions.
He
stood for a long moment staring at me, the wheels in his head
turning over whether he should risk leaving me alone or risk
self-combusting if he didn’t.
Decision made, he gave me a nod.
“I’ll figure something out.
Meanwhile, the first sign of Gabriel,
you call.
Got it?”

Back to business seemed the safest course.
“Can you, I don’t know, ask around—” I pointed at the floor “—down
there and find out what happened to him?
Why he’s here and who
might have put a spell on him?”

Luc gave me one more downward jerk of his
chin and shimmered out of sight.

Cain reappeared in the doorway, eyeing the
spot Luc had vacated.
Seeing Luc was gone, he gave a disgruntled
sniff and left.

I shut my eyes, leaned against the counter,
and took a deep breath, my body and mind a complete mess.
“Holy
guacamole, Amy.
What the Devil have you gotten yourself into?”

The lion roared in my chest.
“Easy girl,” I
said and reached for another Dove chocolate to feed her.

While eating all of the chocolates in the
bowl to calm my magic, I paced the apartment and tried to figure
everything out.
If Gabriel thought I put a spell on him, then he
had to know I’d be the only one who could break it.
Why would he
try to kill me?
The logical answer was on the edge of my mind when
that strange pressure—half pain, half stone wall—built in my head
again and I suddenly found myself fascinated with the shoes in my
closet.

I kept each pair in their respective boxes,
lined up neatly and alphabetized by designer.
And while the
collection, which took up more space than my clothes, was an
impressive sight, it was also a ridiculous distraction in my
current situation.
I shook my head and marched out of the bedroom,
trying to remember what I’d been thinking about.
One of my brain
waves theorized it had been Luc, but that didn’t seem right.
Adam?
That wasn’t right either, and yet my psyche cheered and told me to
go with it.

The moment I did, however, the pressure/pain
returned, seeming to wrestle my frontal lobe into a submission
hold.
My head felt like it was splitting into halves.
Pressing my
hands against the sides of my temples, I paced into the living room
and heard someone outside the door murmuring under her breath.
The
voice was familiar.
I opened the door to find Keisha standing
there, eyes closed and hands raised like a Southern Baptist
preacher blessing his flock, two shakes from the shop in a drink
carrier at her feet.
Her lips continued to move in a soft
chant.

“Are you hexing my apartment or sacrificing
milkshakes to your dead ancestors?”

Her eyes flew open and she lowered her
hands.
“I, uh…” She stooped to pick up the shakes and handed one to
me.
“Thought you could use some lunch.”

“With a side order of a hex?”

“Not a hex.
Protection spell.”

“No offense,” I said.
“But do you really
think your voodoo can protect me from an archangel?”

She sniffed, reminding me of Cain.
“It can’t
hurt and you’d do the same for me.”

Of course I would.
Except I was magic-free.
The only protection I could offer her was my physical presence and
my heightened strength.
“Who’s watching the shop?”

“Liddy.”

Liddy was the sweetest person who’d ever
walked the earth and I adored her.
She was not, however, management
material, unless you ran a cattery.
“Are you insane?”

Keisha wiggled the shake in front of my
face.
“What could go wrong?
In case you haven’t noticed, business
is slow because of all this gloomy weather.
She can handle the shop
for half an hour, and she’s got your number on speed dial if she
needs one of us.”

The right side of my brain argued with the
left about the wisdom of leaving Liddy in charge of the shop, but
before I could get up a full head of steam about it, I sucked on
the shake and the uptight Amy I usually was about my ice cream
business disappeared.
Keisha was right.
Liddy could handle it.

The cool ice cream livened up my taste buds
and slid down my throat with practiced ease.
We’d been eating
liquid lunches for the past week, ever since Keisha tossed a scoop
of Chocolate Raspberry Truffle together with two scoops of
Raspberry Cheesecake on a whim and blended them into a frothy
concoction of wickedness.
I slurped up some more while Keisha hung
her coat over mine on the rack and we sat down in the living room.
While a hundred issues prodded at my brain, there seemed to be a
steel door keeping the majority of them at bay, and I didn’t feel
like talking, mostly because at the forefront of those issues was
Luc instead of Gabriel.
Which was wrong.
Very wrong.
And yet I
couldn’t remember why.

Keisha seemed to sense my need for mindless
distraction and reached for the TV remote.
She was still pining for
her own reality TV show—no surprise she landed on
Bravo
and
turned up the volume.

I tried to get lost in the show’s artificial
drama and my shake’s semi-artificial chocolate and raspberry
overdose, but when Keisha jumped up at a commercial break and
stated she had to use the bathroom, I realized I was still stewing
about Luc.
And Gabriel.
But mostly Luc.