1 Witchy Business (12 page)

Now that I was out of the club, though, it was hard not to feel a little shaky as the emotions drained out of me. It did feel uncomfortably like a hangover. Not that something like that exactly improved my mood.

“I was having a perfectly good time with Niall until you two came on the scene and he…” Vanished.
Left me.

“The coward,” Evert said under his breath. “Couldn’t even face us. And you don’t call kissing him in the middle of a club full of people stupid?”

“No.” I shook my head. That kiss, that kiss was so amazing that I was going to remember it forever.

Evert visibly stiffened beside me. I could sense the simmering anger under his veneer of silence, and a layer of jealousy as well, but there was more than that. He was actually turned on by what had happened. By having me trapped here, by what had happened at the club. What kind of man got turned on by the idea of a woman torn from a fight like that? Like I was some kind of spoil of war?

I was shocked, appalled. I couldn’t even look at Evert right then, because I didn’t know how I would react. I wasn’t too worried about what he might think. What he might
do
, on the other hand…Then there was Rebecca, who fed me paying investigation work through the coven. Who was probably one of the closest things I had to a real friend. Rather than look at him, I turned my face to the dark window, watching the city lights blur through angry tears that I would
not
allow to fall.

“I still don’t see how you could have done something like this,” Rebecca said from the front seat of the car. “How you could have gone so far with Niall. Unless?”

She didn’t finish that thought. It sounded ominous.

“Unless what?” I asked.

She exhaled hard, as if I should know what she was talking about.

“He’s an enchanter, Rebecca,” I said, trying to explain, trying to show her that there was nothing wrong. Why couldn’t they see there was nothing wrong? “Like me. He told me, and he took me to the club, and he kissed me. And I liked it.”

“He used you,” Rebecca snapped.

“He didn’t use me. I was perfectly fine until the two of you showed up!”

“Elle, you don’t get it at all. He fed from you.”

“Fed from me?” I didn’t understand. How could Niall
feed
from me? Don’t talk crazy, Rebecca.”

“We’re saying that your new boyfriend is a vampire,” Evert said, with that same blunt tone.

“He’s a what?” I turned to stare at him, and then looked from him to Rebecca and back. “That’s…that’s insane. Of course he’s not a vampire. I mean, do they even exist? Werewolves, yes. Fey, obviously. But vampires?”

No. It didn’t make sense. I’d run into all kinds of supernatural creatures in the course of my job, but never a vampire. They couldn’t exist. I would have at least
heard
of them, wouldn’t I? Wouldn’t I?

 “Vampires are real,” Rebecca assured me. “Although it would be a lot better for all of us if they weren’t.”

Struggling for a comeback, I latched onto what seemed to be the most obvious point. “No, you’re wrong. I mean, he’s nothing like any vampire I’ve heard stories about. I’ve seen him during the day. He doesn’t have fangs, and as for turning into a bat…”

“We call them vampires because it is a convenient term,” Rebecca said patiently, “but that doesn’t mean the old stories are true. Or that they’re any less dangerous just because they don’t fit them.”

“So, what is true?” I asked, trying to work out a way that Rebecca could be lying to me, or joking with me. But she wasn’t joking. She wasn’t the kind of person who swooped in with comic relief in a bad situation.

“Things like him feed off emotions,” Evert said.

“
Things?
” I insisted.
“Did you really say
things
? Niall is not a thing. Anyway, what do you care?”

“Oh, we care,” Evert said quietly. “You have no idea how much.”

I could feel the truth of that bubbling up through him. Actually, the intensity of what I could feel from Evert scared me a little. Yet there was something about Evert’s protective demeanor that made a lump rise to my throat. I forced myself to focus on the important point, pinching the bridge of my nose.

“Tell me about vampires,” I said.

“There isn’t much to say,” Rebecca said. “They exist. They steal emotions. They steal and they steal, and their victims slowly weaken. Eventually, they take too much from someone, and then there’s nothing left of them but a husk.”

“They can just walk up to someone and kill them?” I asked, not believing it. The world would be full of people dying at their hands.

“They need a connection,” Rebecca explained. “A break in the body’s defenses. A wound. A kiss.” She paused. “You feel something very strong for Niall, and he used that as a way to get to you.”

“I don’t believe it,” I said.

“Most vampires cut people or bite them,” Evert said, matter-of-factly. “Those are the easy ones to spot.”

Rebecca nodded. “It’s all just a way through. Prolonged contact, or a kiss…”

She left that to sink in. She didn’t have to leave it long.

“You’re really saying that’s what he was doing to me?” I shook my head. “No. You’re so wrong. It wasn’t like that. He wouldn’t have hurt me.”

“Let me guess,” Rebecca chimed in. “He showed you a whole different way of seeing the world. With your powers.”

“Yes,” I said quietly. “He gave me the feeling of the entire club running through my veins and it didn’t kill me. It didn’t leave me a gibbering wreck. He let me stand in a room full of strangers in a way that I never would have believed possible. So, you are
not
going to believe that he was just—”

“What do you think I’m doing here?” Evert demanded from beside me, cutting me off. “Things like him kill people. They drain them and they leave what’s left for people like me to find. You think I want to see you dead on the floor of some club?”

I could feel the fierceness of the emotion behind the words, and I clamped down my shields around my abilities like a straightjacket. It didn’t help. If anything, it made me feel worse, off balance and jittery. I could feel the dull throb of a headache starting around my temples and I groaned.

“I can see it’s useless to try to explain what I have with Niall to the two of you,” I said. “What business is it of anyone’s who I kiss or how I kiss them?”

“It is the coven’s business if he’s using you to build up his powers, sucking you dry,” Rebecca insisted from the front seat. “Our collective thrives on the powers of its members.”

“So, how does that make a vampire any different than another witch who shares her power with another witch?” I demanded. Maybe my own anger had made me careless.

Rebecca’s eyebrows went up and she glared at me in the rearview mirror. “Heresy will get you nowhere, Elle. Witches don’t steal each other’s powers. We share. We help one another to become more powerful and we use our collective power to protect each other. Vampires just take.”

I twisted my hands in my lap, a childhood measure of comfort that still popped up now and then if I was under pressure. And I was under pressure now…pressure to admit that Niall was a vampire. I refused to believe it. Or say it.

Evert weighed in, but the words he spoke were far different from the emotions I was picking up from him. I had no doubt that if Evert and I were alone, there would be a whole different conversation going on in the car.

“After he kills you, Niall will go on to another and another and another, until the whole coven is dead.” He leaned in to whisper in my ear. “There’s a fine line between what love feels like and what magic feels like. You’re easy pickings for a vampire like Niall.”

 “There’s a reason we don’t let them live, Elle,” Rebecca continued from the front seat. She sounded almost sorry.

She was talking about killing Niall. Seriously talking about killing him.

“No,” I said. “I’m not going to let you just hurt him. I…I’ll…”

“Don’t make threats, Elle,” Rebecca said. “You’re in enough trouble with the coven as it is.”

“Whatever happened to the coven’s tolerance directive?” I demanded. “If he is a vampire, then Niall’s a supernatural creature, so wouldn’t the tolerance directive apply to him?”

Rebecca and Evert looked at each other in the rearview mirror and Rebecca’s face reddened in the glow of the dash panel lights of the long, black car in which we still rode to a destination unknown to me.

“Leave the directive out of this, Elle.”

I shook my head. “You’re the one who opened that can of worms with your coven talk. You may be higher in the coven than I am, but I know the rules, too, and I live by them, like a good little witch. But now, a life is on the line. Niall’s life. I will not be silent if you intend to go through with killing him. I will not be a party to it.”

Evert nodded at Rebecca. “You’d better explain the fine print of the tolerance directive to our little witch.”

I leaned forward expectantly. “This had better be good because I am at the end of my patience with you two.”

Rebecca didn’t look like she was going to say anything for a moment, but finally, she nodded. “It’s simple. Werewolves and fey, goblins and the rest if they don’t do too much harm, there’s no reason to get involved. As witches in a coven, we’re more organized than they are, and there are more of us than of them. We’re higher on the food chain, if you like that term.”

“I do not,” I said. “Some of my best friends are goblins.”

“Goblins don’t matter,” Rebecca snapped back. “The
point
is that goblins don’t matter. Vampires are different. If we let them live, there wouldn’t be a witch left in the entire world. They’re a threat.”

“Are you trying to convince me or yourself?” I managed. “Next you’ll be organizing a torch mob to storm his castle. Haven’t witches experienced enough prejudice, without inflicting it on someone else?”

“Enough,” Evert said.

“No, it is not enough,” I insisted. “Are we such hypocrites that we believe we are the only supernaturals who are entitled to exist and thrive?”

“That
is
enough, Elle.” Rebecca echoed Evert even as the car rolled to a halt. I looked up, barely registering that I was back outside my house. Oh, so that’s where they were taking me? Home? And here I had thought I was being kidnapped.

“I’m not trying to convince you,” Rebecca said. “I’m trying to warn you. Niall Sampson is dangerous. Too dangerous to be around. Especially for you.”

“What? Why?”

Rebecca didn’t answer for a second or two. I got the feeling she was trying to think of the best way to say it. “Because you’re vulnerable, Elle. You’re an enchantress and a good one. You work with emotions. He feeds off emotions. You must be the perfect food source for him. In there, in that nightclub, he had you working with the emotions of the clubbers, didn’t he?”

“Just feeling them,” I insisted. “I didn’t do anything with them. I just absorbed the energy and I gave it back to the crowd.”

“That’s something,” Rebecca said with a sigh, “but if he fed from you when all of that was running through you…you’d be like a battery, Elle. It might even be what he wants. He feeds you encouragement and what seems like the bloom of love and you give him back easy access to all the emotion he could want.”

I swallowed hard. That didn’t sound good. Even so, I couldn’t quite believe it of Niall. Not yet. Not when it was the first time I’d met anyone who seemed the same as me. “He didn’t feel like what you’re describing,” I insisted. “He felt like an enchanter.”

“He was playing you,” Evert said. “He got you drunk on emotion so he could do it. He is what he is. If you stay around him, you’ll probably end up dead.”

“But the kiss—”

“Doesn’t matter,” Rebecca insisted. She sighed. “Honestly, Elle, will you just for once listen without wanting to know every last thing?”

“I am an insurance investigator. It’s my job.”

That earned me another sigh. “You really are drunk with him, aren’t you? I should never have let you stay around him. I should have told you to get out of town for the week. It’s what your mother would have wanted.”

 “Too late for that,” Evert said, looking ruefully at Rebecca, as if she had crossed some kind of line.

“Too late?” I said.

“We need her,” Evert said, still talking to Rebecca.

“Oh…right,” Rebecca agreed.

 “Are you two ever going to tell me what’s going on?” I demanded.

“It’s simple,” Rebecca shot back. “You’re going to help us to kill Niall Sampson.”

I stared at her. She wanted me to help kill him? The man who had just kissed me? The man who had shown me a whole new way to feel things in the middle of that club? The man I had just told them I wouldn’t let them hurt?

“No, I can’t. I won’t.”

“You have to,” Rebecca insisted. “You know what he is now, even if you plan on sticking your head in the sand. We’ve told you the harm he could do, to you and to the coven. If we don’t stop him, then it looks like he’s coming after you and that means he has tapped into the powers of our coven and we can’t allow that. The things that could happen then…if there were another way, we’d take it. It isn’t as though I
like
seeing you hurt like this.”

“There isn’t another way, Elle,” Evert insisted, looking at me with that deep intensity he had. “It has to be you. He ran at the club when he saw us coming. You don’t have to be the one to kill him. I just need you to get me close. Find me a way in. You should be good at that, with your job. I thought you were one of the best at what you do?”

“The best at insurance investigations,” I insisted. “I’m no mastermind for an assassination, and I never will be.”

“You’ll do well enough,” Evert insisted. “Just get me close. I’m the best at what I do, too.”

Rebecca chipped in. “We need your help and you are the only one who can get this guy to stay in one place for longer than ten seconds.”

“You just said he was dangerous,” I pointed out.

Evert shrugged. “He’s hunting you. I can’t stop that. I can use it to get close to him. If I can’t kill him before he gets to you, you’re dead either way.”

“Oh, thanks,” I said. “So now, I am reduced to being the bait for an assassination attempt?”

Rebecca got out of the car and Evert unlocked the doors.

“Come on, Elle. We’ll make sure it’s safe inside. That he isn’t in there.”

She took a step or two away from the car, and I started to get out, but Evert put a hand on my arm.

“I wouldn’t risk your safety,” he said in that clipped way he had. “This is the best chance for you, do you understand? I would never risk you. We will be right there with you the whole time.”

“Gee, that almost sounds like you care.”

I was reaching for the door handle when Evert pulled me back to him. “I shouldn’t care. I can’t afford to. Not in my job. But…”

He bent his head and there was no escaping as Evert kissed me. I didn’t fight him or pull away, despite that there was nothing gentle about Evert’s kiss. There was no soft build to it, no slow, aching need of desire, and certainly, there was a shield over his emotions. They were unreadable and he meant it to be that way. Just the physical. There was just the raw breathlessness of Evert’s mouth on mine. His mouth claimed mine, taking every inch of it with lips and tongue while his hands pulled me to those strong expanses of muscle. I felt his thigh firm against mine as we pressed together there on the street.

When he finally broke the kiss, I said, “Why, Evert?”

“I kissed you so that you know the difference between a real kiss and what that thing did to you,” Evert replied. I could feel that he didn’t believe that as a reason any more than I did, yet it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that my pulse had jumped about fifty beats a minute in the last few seconds.

Rebecca opened my front door with a wave of her hand.

“Hey,” I called. “I usually use my house key to get in. Is nothing sacred to you, Rebecca?”

She didn’t look happy with me. “Are you coming in, or not? Evert and I need to check the house and make sure the vampire isn’t inside.”

“Say that a little louder. I’m sure some of my neighbors didn’t hear you.” I got out of the car a little unsteadily. I didn’t know if that was due to being kidnapped from the club, Niall’s fate hanging in the balance, or simply Evert’s kiss. I guessed that it was some combination of all of it. Sometimes, it was not fun to have so much sensitivity to emotion.

“Remember,” Rebecca said. “You need to find Evert a way in to get close to Niall. Something that won’t have him detected. You need to do it and let us know, as soon as possible.”

“And then?” I needed to hear it again, even if I didn’t want to.

“And then we’ll do what needs to be done. We’ll kill Niall. Together.”

I stood outside Niall’s house, being careful to keep to the shadows as I approached the front door. Not just because I wanted to make sure that Evert wouldn’t be able to spot me from across the street. If things went wrong, I wanted as few people as possible to have seen me. Even insurance investigators weren’t allowed to go around stealing from people’s houses.

What was I doing? I’d asked myself that question a dozen times already that day as I had prepared for this task. I’d asked myself, “Why am I doing this?” while pulling on the tight black sweater and dark pants that I wore to make it easier to hide in the shadows. I wore black trainers, in case I had to run. I’d asked the question while getting together the equipment I would need for the evening’s efforts. I’d asked it over and over while heading here, driving most of the way with my knees shaking. I’d asked myself the question as I waited while I watched the place before leaving my car at the top of the street to walk the rest of the way.

Every time, though, the answer was the same. It was what I needed to do. There wasn’t any choice. I’d tried everything else I could think of to solve this case and I still had nothing.

I didn’t want to leave things like that. Part of it was simply that I had a reputation to maintain. Of course, my employer didn’t want to pay the claim—a cool and overinflated £1,000,000 in Scottish notes they had let Niall declare as the value of the piece so they could collect very high premiums for insuring it. I had checked and found that Niall had paid £80,000 in insurance premiums on just this one piece of artwork. It was shocking.

It did not escape my thinking that the insurance company would like to see Niall dead as much as Evert and Rebecca right then, if only because it would save them money. I planned on solving their problem, at least, another way.

And so, I began my life as a burglar…

I’d kept away from Niall’s house for a couple of days while I made up my mind and mulled over all of the ins and outs of my scheme. I’d stared at the home’s security plans that had been filed with the insurers.

I’d ignored calls from Niall, and from Evert. Evert’s voicemails and texts had gotten more impatient and angry.

Niall’s voicemails and texts had gotten more and more plaintive and sorrowful, in a way that pulled at my heartstrings. Niall didn’t want me to do something for him. He simply wanted…me.

It was obvious to me how each man felt about me. Evert was domineering and overbearing, manipulative and impatient. Niall and I clicked so well together that, under different circumstances, we’d be madly dating, and falling in love in our own time.

The one time Rebecca had gotten through—I answered only because I didn’t want them to report me as a missing person—I’d told her simply that I was trying to think about it all. She’d seemed to accept it, but I knew it wouldn’t last. It hadn’t.

“Elle,” she’d said when she phoned earlier, “are you with us on this or not?”

“I…”

“This is no time for indecision.”

“That’s easy for you to say. This is someone’s life.” And not just anyone. Someone who’d kissed me. Someone who’d given me that moment in the club.

“Sometimes we do what has to be done,” Rebecca said. “You’ve handled plenty of violence before.”

“I’ve
stopped
violence,” I pointed out. “Killing someone is a big deal, even if he’s everything you say he is.”

“He is,” Rebecca insisted. She stopped. “I know how difficult it is. Believe me, I
know
. I’m the one who has to call in Evert and people like him.”

“Even so…”

“Elle, I wouldn’t be asking for your help if we didn’t need it. If you can’t do it, then I need to know, and you need to get out of town so that at least you’re as far away from Niall Sampson as possible. Because when we hit, we are going to hit hard, and you need to be out of the line of fire.”

I swallowed, trying to think of something to say. There must be some answer to all this that would make it all go away. Nothing came to mind.

“I need more time,” I said.

“I need an answer, Elle. The right answer.”

“I know you do, Rebecca.”

“For the good of the coven, and for you.”

It all made sense. The urgency, everything. Even so, I paused. “Tomorrow. I’ll come over to see you tomorrow morning. I promise.”

“You’d better be here, Elle,” Rebecca said. “One more delay and we will proceed without you.”

She hung up on me and I cringed. My standing with the coven was looking shakier by the second. If I couldn’t get answers, my career was on the line, too. And Niall’s life was on the line.

I’d bought myself one night. No, I’d bought Niall one more night. He was the one who was on the verge of death here. Yet, what could I do? Break away from the coven? Ignore its orders? To my knowledge, no witch who had broken away from a coven had ever lived for more than a year. They couldn’t allow defiance.