This Strange Witchery Read online

  She set the thing on her lap and placed a palm over it, which quieted the glow to a smoldering simmer. “It’s Hecate’s heart.”

  Tor didn’t recognize it as a volatile object from any lists he had read or compiled, but that didn’t mean anything. There were so many weapons, objects, tools, even creatures that were considered a danger to humans and paranormals alike. The most dangerous had to be contained, or Very Bad Things could happen in the mortal realm.

  “What does it do besides blind a man?” he asked.

  “Hecate was the first witch.”

  “I know that. But she’s long dead. Is that her actual heart?”

  “Yes.” Melissande patted it gently. The object pulsed with each touch. “It’s said that should her heart ever stop beating, all the witches’ hearts in this realm would suddenly cease to beat. Ominous, right?” The red glow softened her features and gave them an enchanting cast. Her lashes were so thick, they granted her eyes a glamorous come-and-touch-me appeal. “But it’s pretty indestructible. I dropped it earlier. Got a little dirt on it. No big deal. Though it looks like glass, it’s not. It’s sort of a solid gel substance.”

  “You dropped it? Wait.” Tor took a moment to inhale and center himself. And to remember his goal: normal. “I’m not doing this. I’m no longer in the protection business.”

  Melissande’s jaw dropped open. And those eyes. Why couldn’t he stop staring at those gorgeous eyes? Was it the sparkly makeup that made them glitter, or did they really twinkle like stars? Maybe she’d cast an attraction spell on herself before finding him. Witches were sneaky like that. And how had she found him? Tor prided himself on his ability to blend in, to be the classic everyman. That she had been able to track him down without a phone call...

  He wasn’t going to worry about this. He’d made his decision. Normal it was.

  “I need to get on the road and dispose of the remains,” he said, turning on the seat and gripping the steering wheel. “You can leave now.”

  “I’m not going anywhere. Did you decide just now you’re not doing the protection thing anymore?”

  “No, I—”

  “Or is it me? I get that my dad and his brother are a couple of big scary witches. Woo-woo dark witch stuff is imposing. But I’m not asking you to work with them.”

  “I’ve been considering this decision for weeks. Months,” Tor protested. “And it’s final—”

  “Oh, come on. One more job? I need your help, Tor. I’m just one tiny witch who has an ominous magical artifact stuffed in her purse that seems to attract strange things to it. In proof, on the way to finding you, I gave a zombie the slip.”

  “Zombies do not exist,” Tor said sharply. “Revenants do. But the walking dead are a false assumption. It’s impossible to have a dead person walking around, decaying, and actually surviving more than a few minutes.”

  “Is that so? That’s good to know. Still not sure I believe you. But revenants...” She cast her gaze out the passenger window.

  And Tor couldn’t help but wonder what it was about revenants that gave her pause. Damn it! He didn’t care. He could not care. If he were going to make the transition to normal, he had to get rid of this annoyingly cute witch.

  Yet the glow from the heart, seeping between her fingers, did intrigue him. Something like that should be under lock and key, kept far and safely away from humans. And should it fall into the hands of the Archives, whom her uncle Certainly Jones headed? The Archives wasn’t as beneficent as they were touted to be. The things they stored weren’t always left to sit and get dusty. Tor didn’t even want to think about all the nasty happenings that occurred because something the Archives had obtained had been used.

  Yeah, so maybe he had stepped into that circle of danger with one of the Jones brothers. Whew! He knew far too much about the ominous power of dark magic. And yet he had lived to breathe another day.

  “You want me to protect you and that thing?” he asked. “You know the Agency would take that heart in hand and put it under lock and key? In fact, if you want to hand it over, I guess I could take it right now—”

  “No.” She lifted the heart possessively to her chest. Tor squinted at the maddening glow. “Can’t do that. I need it for a spell that I can’t invoke until the night of the full moon.”

  Which was less than a week from now. Tor always kept the moon cycles in his head. It wasn’t wise to walk into any situation without knowing what phase the moon was in. Had tonight been a full moon? That werewolf would not have gone down so easily for the slayer. And burning it would have roused every bloody wolf in the city to howls.

  Tor rubbed two fingers over his temple, sensing he wasn’t going to be rid of her as easily as he wished. “Why me? What or who directed you toward me and suggested I might want to help you?”

  “If I tell you, you’ll think I’m weird.”

  “I already think you’re weird. I don’t think a person can get much weirder than stealing a dead witch’s beating heart and then breaking into a stranger’s van to beg for his help.”

  “What makes you think I stole this?”

  “I—I don’t know. Is it a family heirloom you dug out of a chest in the attic? Something dear old Granny bequeathed to you on her deathbed?”

  “No.” She hugged it tightly to her chest. Guilty of theft, as he could only suspect. And he had locked the van doors. He never forgot.

  “People only find me because someone has given them my name,” he said. “And I always know when someone is coming for me, because that’s how it works. I want to know how you learned about me.”

  “Fine. This evening, after I’d gotten home with the heart and sat out on the patio to have a cup of tea—I like peppermint, by the way.”

  “I’m an Earl Grey man, myself.” The woman did go off on tangents. And he had just followed her along on one! “You were saying what it was that led you to me?”

  “Right. As I was sipping my tea, a cicada landed on my plate. It was blue.”

  Now intensely interested, Tor lifted his gaze to hers.

  “Cicadas always look like they’re wearing armor. Don’t you think? Anyway, I didn’t hear it speak to me,” she said. “Not out loud. More like in my head. I sensed what it had come to tell me. And that was to give me your name. Torsten Rindle. I’d heard the name before. My dad and uncle have mentioned you in conversation. Cautiously, of course. I know you stand in opposition to them. And they know it, too. But they also have a certain respect for you. Anyway, I knew you could help me.”

  A cicada had told a witch to seek him out for help?

  Tor’s sleeves were still rolled to the elbows. Had the light been brighter, it would reveal the tattoo of a cicada on his inner forearm. The insect meant something to him. Something personal and so private he’d never spoken about it to anyone.

  “How did you know—”

  A thump on the driver’s side window made Tor spin around on the seat. A bloody hand smeared the glass.

  “That’s the zombie,” Melissande stated calmly. “The one you told me didn’t exist.”

  Chapter 2

  Melissande observed as Tor swung out of the driver’s seat and darted into the back of the van. Heavy metal objects clinked. The man swore. His British accent was more pronounced than her barely-there one. He again emerged in the cab with a wicked-looking weapon. Actually, she recognized that hand-sized titanium column as one of those fancy stakes the knights in The Order of the Stake used to slay vampires. Was that supposed to work with zombies, as well?

  “Stay here,” he ordered. Tor exited through the driver’s door, slamming it behind him.

  Crossing her arms and settling onto the seat, Melissande decided she was perfectly fine with staying inside the nice safe van while the hero fought the creepy thing outside. Zombies didn’t exist? The man obviously knew nothing about the dark arts.

  A han
d slapped the driver’s window, followed by the smeared, slimy face of something that could only be zombie. One eyeball was missing. From behind, Tor grabbed it by the collar and swung it away from the vehicle.

  Melissande let out her breath in a gasp, then tucked the heart she still held into her bag on the floor. Growing up in a household with a dark witch for a dad and a cat-shifting familiar for a mom, she should be prepared for unusual situations like this, but it never got easier to witness. Dark magic was challenging. And sometimes downright gross. She was surprised she’d accomplished her task today, securing Hecate’s heart. But she hadn’t expected it to attract the unsavory sort like the one battling Tor right now. Earlier, that same creature had growled at her and swiped, but she’d been too fast, and had slipped down the street away from the thing in her quest to locate the one man she knew could help her.

  Anticipating the dangers of possessing the heart, she had known she might need protection. She couldn’t ask her dad, or her uncle. And should she ask her cousins—the twins Laith and Vlas—they would have laughed at her, saying how she’d gotten herself into another wacky fix.

  She did have a knack for the weird and wacky. It seemed to follow her around like a stray cat with a bent tail. She didn’t hate cats, but she’d never keep one as a pet or familiar. When one’s mother was a cat-shifter, a girl learned to respect felines and to never take them for granted.

  The not-zombie’s shoulders slammed against the vehicle’s dented hood. Melissande leaned forward in time to watch Tor slam the stake against its chest. The zombie didn’t so much release ash as dechunk, falling apart in clumps, accompanied by a glugging protrusion of sludgy gray stuff from its core. Gross, but also interesting. She’d never witnessed a zombie death.

  With a sweep of his arm, Tor brushed some chunks from the hood. He tucked the stake in a vest pocket, then smoothed out the tweed vest he wore. Shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows revealed a tattoo on his forearm, but she couldn’t make out what it was in the darkness.

  He was a smart dresser, and much sexier than she’d expected for a jack-of-all-trades human—because she had expected something rather brute, stocky and plain. Probably even scarred and with a gimpy eye. Tor’s short dark hair was neatly styled (save for the blood smeared at his temple and into his hairline). Thick, dark brows topped serious eyes that now scanned the area for further danger. With every movement, a muscle, or twelve, flexed under his fitted white shirt, advertising his hard, honed physique. And those fingers wrapped about the stake...so long and graceful, yet skilled and determined...

  Melissande’s heart thundered, and it wasn’t from fear of a vile creature. The man did things to her better judgment, like make her wonder why she had never dated a human before. Maybe it was time to stretch her potential boyfriend qualifications beyond their boundaries.

  “Did you get him?” she yelled through the windshield.

  Tor’s eyebrow lifted and he gave her a wonky head wobble, as if to say, Did you not see me battle that heinous creature then defeat it?

  She offered him a double thumbs-up.

  He strolled around the side of the van. The back doors opened, and he pulled out something, then came back to the front. A shovel proved convenient for scooping dead zombie into a body bag. He was certainly well prepared.

  After the quick cleanup, he again walked to the back of the van. Melissande glanced over the seats into the van’s interior. When he tossed in the bag and slammed the door, she cringed. The driver’s door opened, and Tor slid inside. She noticed the blood at his neck that seeped onto his starched white collar. It looked like a scratch on his skin. If that thing had originally been a vampire, it could be bite marks. Tor slammed the door and turned on the ignition.

  Melissande leaned over to touch his neck. He reacted, lifting an elbow to block her. But she did not relent, pressing her fingers against his neck. “I’m not going to bite,” she said. “I want to make sure you didn’t get bitten.”

  “It’s just a scratch. The thing didn’t get close enough to nosh on my neck. Sit down and buckle up.” He pulled away from the curb as she tugged the seat belt across her torso.

  “Was it a vampire?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure. Hard to determine with all the decay.”

  “Zombie,” she declared.

  “Not going to have that argument again. Probably a revenant vamp.”

  “I’ve heard they’re rare. And don’t live in the city.”

  “Dead vampires who live in coffins and have no heartbeat? Most definitely not common. And generally not found in any large city, including Paris.” He dusted off some debris from his forearm. “Though I didn’t notice fangs. And usually decapitation is required. Whatever it was, it’s dead now.”

  “You’re driving with me in your van,” Melissande remarked cheerfully. “Does that mean you’re going to protect me?”

  “No. That means I’m going to take you home and send you off with a pat on your head and well wishes. Where do you live?”

  Pouting, she muttered, “The 6th.”

  In the flash of a streetlight, he cast her a look. It admonished while also judged. Such a look made him fall a notch on her attraction-level meter.

  “You’re not very nice,” she offered.

  Tor turned his attention back to the street, shaking his head.

  “I’ll pay you,” she tried. “I would never expect you to work for free.”

  “What’s the address?” he asked.

  Obstinate bit of...sexy. If he weren’t so handsome, she would ask him to stop and she’d catch a cab. She was not a woman to hang around where she wasn’t wanted.

  After a reluctant sigh, Melissande gave him the street address and muddled over how to convince him to protect her. She didn’t know who else to contact. She’d overheard her dad and his brother one evening talking about the various humans in the city whom they trusted. The list had been short. And while they’d both agreed that Torsten Rindle was definitely not on their side, they’d also agreed that he was a man of honor and integrity who could get the job done, and who had a concern for keeping all things paranormal hush-hush without resorting to senseless violence or assuming all nonhumans walked around with a target on their foreheads.

  At the time, Melissande had known if she’d ever need help, he was her man. And then, when the whole conversation earlier with the cicada had occurred—well. She never overlooked a chat with a bug.

  She hadn’t told her dad, Thoroughly Jones, this part of the plan, though he did know her ultimate goal. She’d agreed to take on this task because she knew how much of an emotional toll it would take on her father. And she intended to handle every detail on her own, so he could focus on taking care of her mother, Star, when she really needed the attention.

  Poor Mom—she had only just been reborn a few weeks ago after a fall from a sixth-floor rooftop, and this life was not treating her well.

  Melissande’s neighborhood was quiet and quaint and filled with old buildings that had stood for centuries. The Montparnasse Cemetery wasn’t far away, and often tourists wandered down her street, but were always respectful of the private gates and entrances. She loved it because she had a decent-sized yard behind the house, fenced in with black wrought iron, in which she grew herbs and medicinal flowers. It served her earth magic. Her two-story Victorian, painted a deep, dusty violet, held memories of ages past. But no ghosts. Which bummed her out a little, because she wouldn’t mind a ghost or two, so long as they were friendly.

  Tor parked the van before her property. The front gate and fence boasted a healthy climbing vine with night-blooming white moonflowers. Opening the van door, she breathed in the flowers’ intoxicating scent. “Blessed goddess Luna.” Soon the moon would reach fullness. And then Melissande would be faced with her greatest challenge.

  Tor swung around the front of the van before she’d even gotten her first foot on the
ground. “I’ll walk you up,” he said as he rolled down his sleeves.

  She dashed her finger over the cut on his neck and was satisfied it was just a nick.

  “I’ll live.” He offered her his arm.

  Startled by such a chivalrous move, Melissande linked her arm with his, and with a push of her hand forward and a focus of her magic, she opened the gate before them without touching it.

  She’d been born with kinetic magic. Sometimes the things she needed moved did so before she even had the thought.

  “Witches,” Tor muttered as he witnessed the motion.

  “What about witches?” she challenged. The narrow sidewalk forced them to walk closely, and she did not release his arm when she felt his tug to make her step a little faster. “You got a problem with witches?”

  “I have little problem with any person who occupies this realm. Unless they intend, or actually do, harm to others. Then that person will not like me very much.”

  “I know your reputation. It’s why I came to you. But you’re not a vampire slayer, so why the stake to fight the zombie?”

  “Revenant.” They stopped before the stoop, and she allowed him back his arm. Tor pushed his hands into his trouser pockets. “I like to keep my arsenal varied. The stake was a gift from an Order knight. I also carry a silent chain saw and a variety of pistols equipped with wood, iron and UV bullets. And at any given moment I might also be wielding a machete. Gotta mix it up. Keep things fresh.”

  “You don’t use spells, do you?”

  “Not with any luck.”

  “Good. That’s my expertise. Do you want to come in for some tea before you abandon me to be attacked by all the vile denizens that seek the heart?”

  “No, I’m good.” He winked.

  Melissande’s heart performed a shiver and then a squeezing hug. Surely the heat rising in her neck was a blush, but she couldn’t remember a time when she’d blushed before.