Stone Cold Lover (15 page)

Fil shuddered. “Yeah, thanks for putting that thought in my head, because it’s not like I had anything to worry about.”

Her friend winced. “Sorry.”

“We will contact this professor tomorrow,” Spar said, reaching out to take her hand in his. “And if he cannot help us, we will find someone who can.”

“In the meantime, Ella and I will search for the Warden. We have hopes not only that can we find him alive, but that he might have information on the location of one of our brothers. We must assume that the danger to them is greater than ever.”

“Agreed. We should stay in contact every few days at the very least. We will need to pool our knowledge and resources in order to remain ahead of the
nocturnis.
”

“This method of communication seems adequate and efficient.”

Ella shot Fil a grin. “That’s big, coming from Kees. Modern technology has yet to win him over. At least, anything that doesn’t have wheels and a really big engine.”

Spar met his brother’s gaze in the screen, and his lips curved at one corner. “My human has a motorcycle. I quite enjoy riding on it, but I hope to persuade her to allow me to drive it.”

“Just as soon as I’m cold in my grave,” Fil growled, frowning at him.

Ella laughed. “Good luck with that, and with your professor. Send me a text or an e-mail and let me know how that goes, okay? And call if there’s anything you need.”

“I will, El. Thanks.”

“No problem. Talk to you later, sweetie.”

“Bye.”

Fil took the phone from Spar’s grasp and ended the call. She leaned forward to set it on the coffee table, only to have him tug her right back against his chest.

“You should have remained asleep.”

She leaned into him and let her head rest against his shoulder. “If you didn’t want me to wake up, you should have stayed in bed.”

“I feared the sound coming from your device would disturb you.”

“No, I was disturbed when I got cold.”

His hand slipped between the sides of her robe and traced over the top of her bandage. “I worry that I might have been too rough with you. Your wound needs time to heal.”

“I’m fine.” She laid her hand over his chest and felt his heart beat against her palm. “Physically anyway. I can’t deny that I’d feel better without this thing on my hand. Getting rid of that would certainly brighten my day.”

She felt the press of his lips, warm and tender against her forehead. “Tomorrow we will contact this man at the university and demand that he find us a witch.”

Fil chuckled and angled her head to give him a wry glance. “We might want to try asking nicely first. He was pretty stoked about the work I did on his manuscript page. I think he’ll help if he can.”

“Good.”

He held her in silence for several minutes, and for the first time since her break-in at the abbey she felt completely safe and nearly at peace. Of course, with his hard thighs pressing against her bottom and his large hand absently stroking her hip, it wasn’t long before she began to feel another, more urgent sensation.

Tilting her head back, she pressed her lips against the scratchy underside of his jaw. She felt him tense and let her tongue dart out to tease his skin.

“You should rest,” he said, his voice the familiar low rumble that went straight to her libido. He made as if to ease her off his lap, but she could tell his fingers had tightened around her, reluctant to let go.

“You know where’s a really good place to rest?” she purred, wiggling her bottom and feeling his erection beginning to swell beneath her. “In bed. Why don’t we go there, hm? Together.”

Spar groaned like a man tormented, but that didn’t stop him from surging to his feet with her still cradled protectively in his arms. “You will rest,” he ordered, heading toward the hallway with a determined stride and eyes that glinted with want. “You must promise.”

“Absolutely, babe. I promise I’ll rest.” She twined her arms around his neck and lifted her mouth to his. “After.”

*   *   *

Professor Massello turned out to be a man of average height, average weight, and keen intelligence. In his late thirties or early forties, he looked more like an older version of one of his students than the stodgy, serious academics Spar mentioned encountering in his previous years. Of course, having not awoken for the last two hundred of them might have colored his view just a bit.

Tim, as he encouraged them to call him, waved them into his office with a warm smile and closed the door on the throng of students milling in the hall.

“Sorry to interrupt your office hours, but I figured it was my best chance to actually find you in your office.” Fil smiled.

“Don’t worry about it. You caught me on the tail end. I was actually just about to lock the door against the teeming vermin and get some grading done.” He waited for them to sit in the uncomfortable chairs facing his desk before he hitched a hip onto the edge of the piece and raised an eyebrow. “So what can I do for you, Fil? I suspect you haven’t dropped by to take me up on that cup of coffee I keep offering to buy you.”

Fil heard Spar grunt and shot him a warning glance. “First, I guess I should introduce you two. Spar, this is Professor Timothy Massello of McGill University, Quebec. Tim, this is my friend Spar—”

“Livingston,” the man in question broke in, offering the other a brisk nod.

Living stone?
Fil nearly pulled a muscle trying not to roll her eyes at that one.

“Nice to meet you.”

Tim sounded a little wary, but friendly enough. Maybe he’d picked up on the way Spar had entered the office and immediately scanned every inch as if searching for threats, or maybe he’d simply noticed the protective way the Guardian nearly hovered over Fil. Either way, he kept his expression relaxed and made no move to continue the flirtation he’d previously begun with her. She could only be grateful for that. More complications were not what she needed at the moment. She needed help and answers, and for Tim not to assume she had lost her ever-loving mind when she told him her story.

Taking a deep breath, she decided to just get it out. “Okay, so this might sound a little bit crazy—”

“Oh, all the best stories start that way.” Tim grinned and waved at her to excuse his interruption.

“But I was hoping that your more, um, esoteric research might mean you can help me with a problem I’m having.”

Fil had spent half the night and all of the morning debating how much to tell the professor, and in the end she’d decided to stick with the minimum amount possible. He really didn’t need to know about Guardians, the Order of Eternal Darkness, or the ongoing war between the forces of good and evil. Better to keep things simple and just focus on the mark and the help she needed to treat it.

“Hm, I take it you’re not talking about my papers on the spiritual dimension of rites of passage in the sub-Saharan tribes of Africa.”

Fil blew out a chuckle. “Not so much. I’m thinking more along the lines of your book, specifically the more modern section.”

Tim’s brows darted toward his hairline. “You’re interested in neo-paganism? I thought you told me you were Catholic. Are you looking to explore alternative spiritualties?”

“I’m more interested in getting your take on the people who practice them on a practical as well as a religious level.” When he frowned at her, Fil sighed. “I was hoping you could put me in touch with a witch.”

Tim huffed in amused confusion and shook his head. “What, don’t tell me you’re looking for someone to sell you a love spell, Fil. I don’t think my imagination bends that way.”

She forced a smile. “No, no love spells. I don’t suppose you met anyone during your research with any expertise in practicing magic? Or, um, curses?”

There was a moment of silence while Tim simply stared at her. “I have a hard time believing you’re trying to find someone who can help you put a curse on something, but it’s even harder to wrap my mind around why else you might be asking me this.”

“Tim, when we talked about your research before, while you were still out there in the field, you told me you had seen some pretty remarkable things, right? Things you wouldn’t have believed if you hadn’t witnessed them with your own eyes.”

“Yeah, I did, but—”

“Well, at first, I thought you were a little bit off your rocker, or at least maybe too naïve to realize when some of the people you were observing were playing tricks on you. You know, using smoke and mirrors to put on a good show so that you’d write about what you thought they could do as if it were really magic.”

When he just stared at her as if she’d lapsed into Lithuanian without realizing it, she sighed. She pulled her left hand out from where she’d tucked it between her leg and her chair.

“Today, I don’t think you’re naïve and I don’t think you’re crazy. I think that if you really saw some people practicing magic during your research, I might need their help.”

Holding up her palm, she watched as his gaze fell to her skin.

His eyes widened. “Holy crap, Fil. What the hell is that?”

“We think it’s a kind of curse, and we’d really, really like to find somebody who might be able to help us get rid of it.”

Tim reached for her hand, but froze when Spar growled a warning. Fil shot him a quelling glance, then nodded at the professor.

“Go ahead, take a closer look. It’s pretty messed up, I know.”

Carefully, he cupped the back of her hand in his palm and angled her skin to the light shining in though the multipaned window. At first, he seemed to keep one wary eye on Spar, but within seconds all his attention was focused on the mark covering Fil’s palm.

“This is amazing. How did this happen?”

“That is a really long, really weird, and really not-the-time-or-place-for-it story. Suffice it to say, someone got mad at me, ridiculous and unbelievable things happened, and this thing just kind of showed up.”

“It looks almost like a burn or a brand of some sort, but the mark isn’t raised off the skin the way keloid scarring usually is. In that way, I suppose it resembles something more like a tattoo. It’s fascinating.”

Fil made a face. “That’s because it isn’t on your hand.”

Tim glanced up, looking guilty. “I’m sorry. Does it hurt?”

“No, it’s not painful, just … disturbing. Which is why I’m asking you if you’ve ever met anyone who might know about things like this and how to counter them.”

Spar reached out and tugged Fil’s hand down, clasping it firmly in his. Tim looked from one to the other and shook his head.

“That’s a huge question,” he said. “I met plenty of witches and people who called themselves that during my interviews, but for, like, ninety-nine percent of them, what they call magic is what an academic like me would call accessorized prayer. They decide what it is they want to accomplish, and they use symbols and ritualized actions to focus their intent on making it happen.”

“Remember that we are not academics,” Spar said, his voice deep and sharp enough that Tim’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard.

“Right,” he hurried to say. “What I mean is, say one of these witches thinks a neighbor is spying on her. You know, looking in her window while she’s getting changed or something. She might get a small mirror and hang it on a string like a sun catcher. She’ll cast a spell over it, which is really like saying a prayer, and envision the mirror reflecting back the energy of the person who’s facing it. Then she’ll hang the mirror in the window and close her curtains. When the neighbor stops spying and she finds out he lost his job when his company caught him using the Internet at work to look at porn, she tells herself her spell worked. Really, the guy stopped watching her because she kept her curtains closed, so he had nothing to look at anymore, and his company monitors all of its employees’ computer usage.”

Spar snorted. “That is not magic; it is self-delusion.”

“That’s my point. People believe in it because they have faith, the same way Catholics have faith that when they eat that little wafer the priest hands them at Mass, they’re partaking in the body of Christ. It has meaning not because of what it accomplishes, but because of what they think it will accomplish.”

That was not what Fil wanted to hear. She needed actual help, not futile prayers. Those she could handle herself.

“You said ninety-nine percent,” she pointed out. “Doesn’t that mean that there’s one percent that isn’t that way?”

“I did meet one woman,” Tim said, looking thoughtful. “I met her by accident, really. She wasn’t one of the people I sent my letter of inquiry to when I was initially looking for subjects. I ran into her when I was in an occult store talking to the people who worked there. She’d come in to sell some herbs she had grown in her garden.”

“She’s an herbalist?”

“Among other things. She grows herbs, makes teas and lotions and bath products from them. She’s also a licensed massage therapist and a basket weaver.” Tim grinned. “When I first saw her, I took her for any other hippie, new-age Wiccan type.”

Spar narrowed his eyes. “What made her different?”

“At first, nothing. She went about her business with the shop manager while I talked to the owner behind the counter and left, but when I finished my initial interview and left the store, she was waiting for me outside. She warned me that some of the information the store owner had given me about plants and herbology was just plain wrong. She advised me to speak with a woman at a different store out in Anjou. After we chatted for a couple of minutes, I asked if she’d be willing to do a formal interview for my research. She turned me down flat.”

“So how did you find out she was different from the other people you talked to?”

“That already was different. Most of the people I approached couldn’t wait to talk my ear off.” Tim shook his head. “It took me six months of dogged persistence to get her to even consider going on record about what she does.”

“And what does she do?” Spar demanded.

“I once saw her bury an apple seed in a plain garden pot and place her hand over the soil. Within five minutes, I watched while a green shoot pushed out of the dirt and budded a new leaf. I dropped my digital voice recorder and nearly lost the entire morning’s interview.”