1 Witchy Business (16 page)

Eventually, we made it up the stairs to his bedroom, laughing, with Niall half-carrying me. We’d laughed at the thought that his staff could have spotted us at any moment. We’d ended up in his bed together, in the middle of a bedroom that looked like the rest of the house, which was to say that it looked like it had been transplanted from the middle of the nineteenth century.

I lay there with Niall beside me, just staring at him, trying to understand all the emotions swirling around inside me.

“What are you thinking?” he asked, brushing a finger over my cheek.

What
was
I thinking? How perfect he looked there, with that golden hair spilling on the pillow. How amazing the last couple of hours had been. How I couldn’t believe I had actually done any of this. And yet, how glad I was that I had.

Yet, there were still things creeping in around the edges. Things I wanted to know. I tried to start with what seemed like the smallest fragment of it.

“What’s so important about 1873?” I asked.

Niall smiled. “All of this—
us
—and that is what you want to know at this very moment?”

I shrugged. “I want to know everything. I’m just not sure where to start, and it feels like you didn’t pick that alarm code at random.”

Niall nodded, half sitting up. Since it gave me a good view of the pale, muscular lines of his torso, I wasn’t about to complain. “1873 is the year I was born.”

“What?” I couldn’t help staring at him, and not just because of how good he looked, this time. “You’re more than a hundred and forty years old? Um…you don’t look your age.”

It was a stupid thing to say, but I couldn’t think of anything better right then.

“I sincerely hope not,” Niall said, reaching out to take my hand and kiss it. His skin was soft, strong, and firm. But then, I already knew that. “This is part of why the coven calls us what it does. There are magical ways to extend a life, but normally, they take too much power, even for the strongest witches. For those of us who can draw power into ourselves from outside sources, though, that isn’t such a problem.”

“By ‘outside sources,’ do you mean people?” I tried to keep my tone neutral. I didn’t succeed very well. Perhaps it wouldn’t have mattered either way. Niall could feel everything I felt, after all.

Niall nodded. “We take energy from them. A kiss, close contact…it will depend on their defenses. The body holds what belongs to it. In environments with a lot of energy, it is possible to use the emotions directly, becoming a conduit for them to work with power, but to truly feed, it must be more direct. You’ve felt the difference, Elle.”

Had I? Of course I had. I thought back to the club, with all of those emotions swirling through me. Emotions that had been beautiful and powerful, enough to get me drunk with that power, yet had seemed to fade and pass as soon as I left. Emotions that had been totally different than the moment when Niall had kissed me earlier, the energy of it swirling down into me to be locked away by some part of myself I hadn’t known was there.

“And, I’ll need to do that? Feed?”

“Frequently,” Niall said. “Your body understands what it can do now. It will hunger for the power to do it. And you will feed your body, in order to keep you strong. You can ignore the hunger, but why would you?”

“Because it’s hurting people. Because I can’t just walk up to someone, force a kiss on them and steal their energy. Because it’s wrong.”

“It’s all right, Elle,” Niall said. “It isn’t like that.”

“Isn’t it?” I had to ask the obvious question. “Have you ever killed anyone?”

His long pause that followed was enough to tell me the answer.

“Oh, Niall. You have, haven’t you?”

Niall nodded. “When I was younger. I learned what I was almost by accident. I killed because I had no one to show me a better way. Believe me though, Elle, you do not have to kill in order to feed your power.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“I know.”

It wasn’t exactly a complete answer. I was just meant to take it on faith that I wasn’t going to hurt anyone, when the coven was so afraid of creatures like Niall? Like me? I tried to push it from my mind though. Maybe I just needed time to think. Besides, there were so many other things I needed to ask.

“Before, you said something about using power taken from groups.”

“To work a spell, yes.”

I stared at him and swallowed. “You’re talking about actual ritual spells?”

“Ah, yes, the coven’s divisions. You’ve spent your life believing that you can’t use magic. Not real magic.”

“I can’t,” I insisted.

Niall held out his hand flat. He seemed to concentrate. Then something impossible happened. Light began to glow above his palm, soft and pale, but there. Undeniably, unmistakably there.

“But that’s…” I was going to say impossible, but that would simply have sounded stupid. Like something an ordinary human might say. We both lived in a world where the impossible happened every day. When had I stopped thinking of myself as human though?

“It is not something that is efficient,” Niall said. “Our skills lie in emotions. Yet power is power. If we take in enough, we can use it for anything. And you have an advantage over me there.”

“An advantage?”

“You grew up the child of a powerful coven witch. I was never connected to the coven, not any coven. You will know more about magic than I ever could, even before we consider the likelihood that you will be stronger than me.”

He knew a lot about me. Of course he did. He’d arranged all of this just to meet me. Which reminded me…

“What are we going to do about the insurance investigation?” I asked. “You broke the law, Niall.”

“I did it for a good cause.”

“Even so…”

He looked at me then. “Are you really telling me that you’ve never lied to insurers before, Elle? With the types of job you take on, the magical things at their hearts, I find it hard to believe that you told the truth
one hundred percent
of the time.”

He had me there. I had lied. Of course I had lied. If I hadn’t spent my professional life lying, then the world would have found out far more than it needed to about boggarts and goblins, the fey and the coven. Even so, I didn’t like the fact that he simply assumed I would lie for him. I didn’t like a lot of things, in that moment. Sleeping with him had been absolutely magical, literally, yet all of the things around Niall seemed so…complicated, right then.

I stood up, hunting for my clothes. At least we’d remembered to bring those up with us, even if they had ended up scattered across the floor like the debris from some kind of explosion. I pulled on my panties first, as he watched me, and then, feeling a blush rise to my cheeks, put on the rest of my dark burglar’s clothing.

“Elle, you aren’t leaving so soon, are you?” Niall asked, his eyes tracing every movement I made as I dressed. Somehow, that was as erotic as anything he had done previously. “If I have offended you, I am sorry. I never wanted to do anything to hurt you. I never
will
do anything to hurt you.”

Aside from telling me that I was a creature who might potentially kill people. Aside from asking me to put aside every scrap of professionalism I’d worked so hard to build. Aside from making me feel so much for him. I had so many conflicting emotions crashing together right then. It was only made worse by the fact that I was sure he knew every one of them.

“I…I’m just going downstairs to get coffee,” I assured him. “I need to think.”

I added the last part
because
I knew he would be able to feel everything I was feeling right then. An hour or two ago, that had seemed like a huge bonus for a relationship, but right now, I could see that it might have its downsides, too. I would never be able to have a private feeling around him. I would never be able to truly hide anything from him.

Although he did such a good job of hiding things from me…

Niall reached out and pulled me down to kiss me. “I will be right here, Elle. Right here and thinking of you. My sweet.”

I nodded and headed downstairs. I did want coffee. Things always seemed easier with enough coffee, so I set out in search of Niall’s kitchen, trying not to think too hard as I went about everything I was now.

I was a vampire. I knew the word wasn’t quite right, but what else was there to describe it? If I called myself an enchantress, then I was pretending that nothing had changed. I was, apparently, a creature who could drain people of their emotions, do things that I’d thought were impossible, and live forever. I was a witch. I was an enchantress. I was a vampire. And I was confused.

Oh, and I was scared because now I knew I had the power to maybe even kill people. If I wasn’t careful. Even if I thought it quickly, and tried to dismiss it, that one was kind of hard to ignore. That I might accidentally kill someone. Or even do it on purpose someday. I had no way of knowing how I might act in the future. Even my certainty about who I was had been proved wrong, so why should that stay stable?

My mother had, apparently, known everything I was. That was obvious from all the tutors and their warnings. The lifetime of training me to hold back my power had been her failsafe, in order to be able to let me loose in the world. I wonder if the coven knew what I was. What must my mother have thought of me as a daughter, being something the coven habitually destroyed because it was a threat to the coven?

And now, Niall wanted me to lie for him. That seemed almost as huge as the other part. Even though he was right, even though I lied to clients all of the time, and even to the insurance company that paid my fee, that still hurt. Why? Because when I lied, I made sure things still worked out the way they should. Because even when a werewolf ran into a car, I made sure that werewolf paid for the repairs. Niall was talking like he expected me to just make it all go away.
Magically.

That wasn’t all he thought. I’d heard him, even if I hadn’t quite believed him. He thought I might be more powerful than him. Certainly more resourceful, with access to the coven’s magic. That made me something worth finding. Something worth controlling, maybe. I didn’t know if what I felt for Niall could be real. Or if what he felt for me could be real, either. Maybe all this was just so that he could take something powerful away from the coven. Had I thought about that?

“Ms. Chambers, is everything all right?” Kelly the housekeeper was there when I took a wrong turn from the bottom of the back stairwell into some dim hallway. I’d expected she would be in bed, but no, it wasn’t late enough for that, was it? It was only Niall and me who had headed there so early. I looked over at her, wondering what she must think of that.

“Everything’s fine,” I said. “I was just looking for the kitchen. I need coffee.”

“Here,” she said, reaching out for my arm as if to steady me, “let me show you the way.”

That little movement to help me told me exactly how much she knew about her employer. She’d obviously helped more than one young woman in the past. It said something about how well she knew him, too. Maybe Niall had even taken Kelly upstairs…or Marie.

No!
Jealousy wasn’t an emotion I wanted to have, but I couldn’t stop it. Niall had talked about feeding regularly like it was nothing, but it wasn’t. How many women had he fed from over the years? What had he done with them? Had he taken Kelly up to his rooms? Marie the assistant? Who else?

“Come on,” Kelly said. “You must be hungry.”

I was, and I didn’t even realize it until she said it. Just not in the way she meant. Before I even had a chance to think about it, I pushed her back against the nearest wall. Doing that was so easy, like she didn’t have any weight. Or maybe it was just that I was stronger than usual.