Wicked Souls (7 page)

“About that…” I started, but before I could
finish the sentence, he shimmered out of sight.

If I’d still been an active witch, I would
have thrown a hex at him.

Chapter Eight

Angelzilla

After that, neither Adam nor I could sleep.
We sat at my kitchen table with cups of coffee and tried to talk.
“Luc explained my situation with Gabriel to you?”
I asked.
“Why I
was…sick?”

He stared at his cooling coffee.
“What I
don’t understand is why you didn’t call me.
Why did you call
him?”

“Gabriel was going to kill me.
Luc was the
only one who could help me.”

“And after you got home?”
His gaze rose to
mine, accusing.
“Why didn’t you call me then?”

“You were working, and I didn’t want to put
you in danger if Gabriel returned.”

His accusing look turned damning.
“What
about Emilia and Liddy and Keisha?
They weren’t in danger?”

I had hoped Luc had explained all this after
he put me in bed.
“I didn’t call them.
Luc did.”

Adam shook his head, doubts flickering
across his face.
Doubts I couldn’t figure out how to relieve.

Doubts plagued me, too, and I had a mountain
of questions of my own.
The problem was, every time I tried to
answer them, my mind would go blank.
The small rebellion I’d
created in the bedroom against Gabriel’s control had vanished into
thin air.
When I tried to explain to Adam about the road blocks
Gabe had erected in my brain, turning me away from Adam and
steering me toward Luc, the pressure returned, sharp and painful.
I
gripped my head and closed my eyes.
The pain subsided.

I was staring at the texture of an orange in
the bowl of fruit on the table, when Adam snapped his fingers in
front of my face to call me back to reality.
Damn, I’d left him
hanging with no real answers and a growing suspicion I was avoiding
telling him the truth.

Cain and Abel made their way into the
kitchen and circled our legs, meowing loudly in their quest for
breakfast.
Thankful for the distraction, I jumped up to fill their
bowls.
Their cries reminded me of something, and as I pulled the
bag of their favorite high-end cat food from the pantry, I said to
Adam, “Do you guys have a pet cat at the station now?”

Adam turned sideways in the chair, leaning
his back against the wall and crossing his feet at the ankles.
“No,
why?”

I filled Cain and Abel’s bowls with food and
set the bag on the counter.
“Right before Gabriel attacked me
yesterday, I thought I heard a cat meow in the locker room.”

Adam’s body tensed, just the slightest
movement, and his gaze dropped to the floor before coming back up
to meet mine.
“You sure it was a cat?”
He sat forward and shrugged.
“I mean, it could have been anything.
Lotta noises in the station
all the time, you know.
Maybe it was on the TV or something.”

Maybe.
Except you couldn’t hear the TV in
the locker room.
It was on the second floor, and no one was in the
station except me and Gabriel.
Unless Gabriel’s new calling card
was to cry like a cat before attacking, I was pretty certain I’d
heard the real thing.

And if the station didn’t have a cat mascot
in residence, maybe it was a stray.
The way Adam was acting,
however, told me it was far more than that.
He was covering for
someone, and I knew who that someone was.

Eve.

“Look at the time.”
Adam glanced at his
watch, jumped up from the table and headed for the front door.
“I’m
on duty until four.
I’ll call you tonight.”

Hunh.
I wasn’t the only one with secrets.
Eve, the mother of humankind, had appeared at Christmas, posing as
a cat in order to get Adam back.
She’d hung around in her cat form
with me for several days, snuggling up to Adam and ruining my first
attempt at playing Santa.
At that point, I figured my relationship
with Adam was over, but he’d settled things with her and sent her
on her way.

Or so I thought.

Up until now, Adam hadn’t been acting
strange, though, so maybe I was jumping to conclusions.
Under the
circumstances, I couldn’t trust my brain, my instincts or even my
magic.
Seemed like the best idea was to let it go.
If Eve was back,
I’d deal with her.
First, I had to reassure Adam.

Rising up on my toes, I planted a kiss on
his lips.
Even with all the problems piling up on my doorstep, I
was looking forward to that evening’s Witches Anonymous meeting.
Especially since I couldn’t be blamed for my magic getting me into
trouble.
The little incident with Luc didn’t count against me since
it was Gabriel, the puppet master, pulling my strings.
“Tonight’s
my six month anniversary ceremony, remember?”

“Right.”
Adam smiled and touched the side of
my face with his fingers, tracing my jaw line and sending a shiver
down my spine.
“This thing with Gabriel…” He paused.
“You’ll figure
it out.”

He was the perfect guy for me in many ways,
and had been since the night I met him at my first Witches
Anonymous meeting.
His confidence in me upped my own confidence.
“Thank you.”

We shared another kiss and then he left.
As
I threw out the cold coffee, my brain churned with thoughts of Eve.
Getting Gabe off my back was priority one.
And if I could get him
to Heaven, maybe he’d take her with him.

I skipped breakfast and met Keisha
downstairs in the shop.
We hauled out a wet-dry vac and went on the
hunt for any cat hair Hathor might have left behind.
While we were
at it, we washed down all the shop’s surfaces, restocked supplies
and shined the glass of the front windows.
By noon, the place
gleamed.
We were ready for the health inspector.

“What’s up with the big guy?”
Keisha asked
when we sat down to take a break.

Not sure which big guy she was referring to,
I gave her an update on all of them.
“Angelzilla paid me another
visit last night and hinted he’s now controlling my freewill.
My
personal demon bodyguard, who owns the other half of my soul, has
done a disappearing act.
And the innocent guy stuck between them is
pretty sure I’m sleeping with the Devil and lying to him about
it.”

Keisha sipped her soda and nodded her head,
as if this were an everyday occurrence.
Which, come to think of it,
it kind of was.
“Any lead on the witch who’s grounded Gabriel?”

Reaching in my apron pocket, I snagged the
white feather and laid it on the table between us.

There’s nothing a voodoo priestess likes
better than a physical piece of a person’s body.
A lock of hair.
Fingernail clippings.
Even blood is a necessary ingredient in many
hexes and spells.
Keisha’s entire face lit up at the sight of the
feather.
“Is that what I think is?”

It was certainly too big, too satiny, to be
a chicken feather.
“Think you can get a magical imprint off of
it?”

She picked it up and turned it over with the
appropriate amount of reverence, considering who it belonged to.
“Won’t know until we try.”

We went to my office to try.

While I cleared off the top of the desk,
Keisha broke out the stash of her supplies she kept at the shop for
emergencies.
As she prayed and chanted over a pot of water filled
with various herbs, animal bones and something that smelled like
she’d stepped on a skunk’s tale, I tried once again to get my foot
between the steel door in my head and the door frame closing off
logical thoughts about Adam, Luc, and myself.
Nothing seemed to
work, though, and eventually it dawned on me why I’d been able to
do it earlier that morning.

Luc.

Even though Gabriel continued to manipulate
my thoughts, Luc had pushed back, using the half of my soul he
commanded to allow my own will and logic to surface and gain ground
over my brain function.
Luc didn’t seem to like his angelic brother
any more than I did, and he certainly wasn’t going to let Gabe get
the upper hand in a fight over control of my soul or my will.
If I
was going to figure out how to defeat Gabriel and get his half of
my soul back, Luc’s help would give me the upper hand.

The skunk smell overtook my office and drove
me out to the alley behind the building.
The air was damp enough,
it landed as mist on my face.
A cool wind blew through the alley,
rattling the rubber lid on a nearby dumpster.

I squeezed my eyes shut for a second,
wondering if I really wanted to do this.
While he was always more
than happy to oblige, I hated asking Luc for help.
I’d always been
independent to a fault, and yet I had no trouble turning to my
friends for help when I really needed something.
Dealing with the
Devil was a different demon entirely, though.
He owned my soul.
Half at least.
And what was up with that anyway?
When I traded my
soul to be his lover, why hadn’t he taken the whole thing?

Another gust of wind raised goose bumps on
my arms.
Giving them a brisk rub, I made up my mind.
“Luc?”
I
called out loud since the alley was deserted.
“We need to
talk.”

The air around me warmed and I opened my
eyes to find him standing a few feet away, a frown creasing his
forehead, his gaze darting all around me, fists clenched as if
someone were about to take a swing at him.
“Where?”

Seeing him, my magic purred inside, but my
heart gave a little spurt of fear at his fighting stance.
I glanced
over my shoulder, down the alley, bawling my fists too.
“Where
what?”

“Where is Gabriel?”

“Oh.”
Duh.
I relaxed my hands, relieved that
he had simply jumped to the wrong conclusion.
“He’s not here.
I
called you to talk.”

Luc’s focus landed on me and his shoulders
relaxed.
The fists disappeared.
Still, he tapped a thumb on the
side of his leg, as if he were impatient, in a hurry.
Or was he
nervous?
“I don’t have time to talk, Amy.”

The Devil was cool, calm, and irritating,
occasionally angry, and always sexy as hell, but never, ever
nervous.
Fear again pinched my heart.
“What’s wrong?”

A muscle jumped in his jaw.
He seemed to be
searching for patience.
“Nothing’s wrong, other than the fact your
soul is split in two.”

“That’s what I called you here to talk
about.
Gabriel is really screwing me up.
My thoughts.”
I pointed to
my head.
“My magic.
Everything.”
I paced to the dumpster and then
back to Luc, holding up my hands in surrender.
“I don’t really
understand how this whole soul thing works.
He’s controlling my
freewill and the only time I wrestled control away from him was
while you were in the bedroom with me.
You helped me, didn’t you?
By controlling the other half of my soul, you also control half of
my will, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Which begs the question, when I gave you my
soul why didn’t you take all of it?”

The thumb tapping stopped.
Luc stared at me,
his eyes as black and deep as the midnight ocean.
“Your will is
very strong, and while possessing all of it would’ve put you at my
mercy, I found it more tempting to leave you with some
freedom.”

Freedom.
I’d always valued that, and my
independence, above everything else.

Unfortunately, the dark side had always been
a force I couldn’t ignore.
Maybe because I’d been born a bad seed
to begin with, or because I’d grown up with my crazy aunt who loved
the occult.
Emilia, however, had turned out good, therefore it was
probably just me.
Bad to the bone was the best way to describe it,
cliché or no.
It was in my blood, which was why I was determined to
prove I could be good.
Determined to make my six-month anniversary
and turn what seemed like fate on its ear.

I never realized when I gave my soul to the
Devil, he would also control my freewill.
For all his sexiness,
that might’ve been a deal breaker.