“Then what do I use?”
“Your soul. And you can best access that sight with your eyes closed. Magic 101, Eden. Class is now in session.”
Learn something new every day. “So how do demons and other non-souled entities do magic if they don’t have souls?”
“We don’t do the same sort of magic as witches and wizards. It’s very complicated stuff, trust me.”
“I’ll have to take your word for it.” She exhaled and closed her eyes.
“See past the darkness. I’m touching you, so you should be able to sense me a bit easier on that level. To see me.”
He was right. With enough concentration she did see him. He looked different at that level of perception—not like a human form with two legs, two arms—more like a metaphysical presence, but it was still Darrak. She would recognize him anywhere. He was a warm presence who held her anchored to the real world.
“Do you see me?” he asked.
“Yes.” She saw shapes and colors shifting together and pulling apart, sort of like what it might be like to swim inside a gigantic lava lamp filled with black water.
“And what about the spell?”
She focused harder, and it felt as if she slipped down another level or two—as if she was in a high-rise apartment and the elevator had sunk down a couple of floors in the lava lamp world. Everything deepened and became more dimensional. She felt pressure—a force that pushed against her on all sides. She concentrated on the being that was Darrak. His form contained equal parts of light and dark—two separate pieces butting up against each other every few seconds like bumper cars at an amusement park.
He didn’t feel that light inside of him, she thought, but it was very bright. As bright as the darkness was dark. It was his celestial side, growing brighter every time he absorbed her endless supply of celestial energy. It fed him, kept him from fading away, allowed him to take form when for hundreds of years he’d been stuck bodiless and needed to possess humans. He’d absorbed humanity from those humans, even the nasty ones. He’d developed stronger emotions than what he’d had as an archdemon. He’d developed a sense of right and wrong. It hadn’t been a conscious decision, and perhaps he’d always had that sense, but he’d sided with the darkness before. He hadn’t been able to feel empathy, sympathy, worry, or compassion. Seeing him like this, the proof before her very eyes that he was changed, was a powerful thing to witness and it made her throat thicken with emotion.
He was different now and he’d never go back to how he’d been before, even if he wanted to. What had changed him hadn’t been a spell. It hadn’t been a curse. Those things had propelled him in this direction, but it wasn’t who he was at a core level.
This—darkness and light combined—it
was
Darrak. And it was there because of her. No demon had ever been infused with celestial energy before. It was like an experiment gone wrong. Or right, depending on how you looked at it.
Eden worried that when Darrak learned of this it would shake his sense of self and his confidence even more than it already had. Darrak liked being a demon. Sure, he’d made his peace with being a demon who had a little humanity to deal with. But being told he was now part angel . . .
He wouldn’t be happy about that at all.
That was something to worry about another day.
She focused on the task at hand instead. “I can see it—I
think
I can see it. The spell.”
“What does it look like?” he asked cautiously.
“Like a film—a transparent film that coats your entire being. It shimmers and moves and it . . . it feels like pure power. Like you’re coated in a perfume of power.”
“Does it have a scent?”
She inhaled. “It smells like . . . hmm. It smells really good.”
“Sex magic would. It’s the whole reason for it to exist. It’s like pheromones on crack. Probably explains your behavior in the car. I mean, I know I’m hard to resist, but . . .”
She grimaced. “Let’s not talk about that right now.”
“Good idea. Much too distracting.”
She focused on Darrak’s warm skin against hers. “So what do I do now?”
“This I can’t help you with. But if your magic is identical to Selina’s, that spell you can see belongs to you, too. You might be able to just suck it back up and send it back from whence it came, easy as pie.”
“Easy as pie?”
“Well, probably not as easy as pie. Piece of cake, maybe?”
She exhaled shakily. “I’ll try.”
“Just . . . try your best not to make it any worse than it already is.”
She stiffened. “Wait a minute,
worse
? What do you mean?”
“If you make the spell worse, it’s possible I won’t even be able to touch you at all anymore. That’s one of the reasons I’m touching you right now so you can sense if something bad is happening.”
“That really could happen?”
“Sex is the extreme. Touching is the safe end, but it’s still in the same realm. I have agreed not to have sex with you again for your own good, but not touching you at all for an eternity of being bound together like this would be much too cruel. It would mean I could never kiss you again. Hold your hand. Brush against you. Nothing.”
Her breathing sped up. “That would be bad.”
“Glad to see we agree about something.”
“Can we stop this and regroup?”
“No, it’s too late. You’re too deep and you’ve already accessed the spell enough to see it. Keep going, but take as much time as you need.”
She’d dived in headfirst without thinking much about it first. Didn’t sound like her usual self—that had been much more reckless than she normally was.
They couldn’t stop. But she had to be very careful.
Eden concentrated and went deeper still, a few more floors down. She was in this now, for better or for worse. She’d already touched the spell—the gossamer coating that covered his form on this level of consciousness. That was what she focused on.
Go now
, she thought.
Leave here. I no longer need you.
As she thought the command, sending out the magic through what she now knew was her soul, she felt it respond. It was as if the spell had a personality—like a puppy. It recognized her magical signature and wagged its tail. And then it extracted itself from Darrak to return to her and . . . disappeared.
Hocus-pocus.
She inhaled sharply and tried to stand up from her chair, but her knees buckled. Darrak caught her in his arms.
“Eden . . .” he said from what sounded like a great distance. “Eden!”
She blinked, her eyelashes fluttering as she opened her eyes and smiled up at him. “I think I did it.”
His expression looked strained, concerned, but hopeful. “You should be teaching Magic 101. I can’t help but be impressed.”
“Maybe Maksim’s advice was too good not to be true.”
“Maybe.” Darrak looked conflicted by this possibility. Part of him, though, looked cautiously optimistic. But then his gaze moved to her chest. It only took her a moment to figure out why.
Her amulet.
Damn.
“It’s darker,” she said. “Isn’t it?”
“Maksim said this wouldn’t use your black magic in a destructive manner.” He swore under his breath. “But he was wrong. It used your magic and your soul at the same time. It was like introducing two horny people on a blind date. They went for each other immediately. It was a direct conduit to your soul for that black magic.”
She glanced down at the amulet, taking the cool piece of oval-shaped stone in her hand. It was significantly darker by at least two shades. It was now a medium gray with lines that were the color of charcoal. It was quite pretty, actually, if you didn’t know what it really meant.
Instead of panicking, she felt a strange sense of resolve.
“It was worth it,” she said, mostly to herself. “Besides, I don’t feel any different.”
“Not yet.” He paced back and forth before stopping and looking at her. “You know, there is a way to take it back a few shades before it gets too much darker.”
She shook her head. “No, Darrak.”
“You think I like the idea of it? But if necessary, it’s what you have to do—”
“Stop it.” Her voice cracked on the words.
“Another kiss from Lucifer wouldn’t really be so bad, would it?” His eyes burned bright with immediate jealousy, but a dark smile twisted on his face.
“Keep it up, Darrak, and the next time I see him I might not only kiss him.”
That helped erase the humorless smile completely.
However, she couldn’t exactly argue with his logic. It had already been proven that kissing the Prince of Hell, even a chaste, emotionless kiss, drew the darkness out of her and straight into him. He was the ultimate magnet for evil. But he was a devious, manipulative man. Fallen angel. Demon. Prince. Prisoner. A split-personality Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
All of the above.
She didn’t trust him. That her life was now irrevocably intertwined with his didn’t exactly help her sleep that well at night.
In a way she felt sorry for him, and that didn’t help much either. Lucifer, or Lucas, which was the name she preferred to use for him, felt trapped in Hell. His only desire was to go back to Heaven where he thought he truly belonged, but his darkness was an eternal anchor keeping him stuck in the Netherworld.
Lucas thought he was cursed. Eden couldn’t very well say he was wrong about that.
When the prince chose to come to the human world, he did so with one drawback. Here he was mortal. He still had power, especially over beings like Darrak, whom Lucas had created himself, but his mortal body could be killed. And if so, his essence would be sent back to Hell with no chance to escape again for a very long time.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“What for?”
“Everything.”
“You’re taking my lines again, because I’m the one who’s sorry.”
“Maybe we’re just a sorry pair.”
He snorted. “No kidding.”
She slid her hands up his chest. “There is some good news, though.”
“Oh?”
“Your spell is broken.” She smiled. “You can’t give me any more black magic than I already have.”
“Oh.”
“Can you feel it?”
“I think so.”
“How does it feel?”
He lowered his face so they were eye to eye. “It feels very good.”
“This means we can be together. Whenever we like.”
She thought he was going to pull away, tell her to wait, but instead he kissed her, a kiss that didn’t hold back anything. It was deep, searching, passionate, and she wanted more. Desire swelled within her swiftly, immediately.
“Here?” he asked.
She just nodded.
A smile spread across his handsome face. “Your wish is my command.”
He pressed her back against the desk, his mouth moving down the column of her throat, and then she heard the sound.
A jingle. Somebody had entered the office.
Damn it. They should have locked the door. They were lucky no one had walked in during the spell removal.
She swore against Darrak’s lips as he kissed her one more time before releasing her, and they turned toward the door. A young and pretty raven-haired woman stood there looking at them with a hand on her hip and a raised eyebrow.
“Am I interrupting something?” she asked.
Eden cleared her throat and stood up. Her legs felt shaky, and she ran a hand through her long hair to neaten it.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That must not have looked very professional.”
Darrak shrugged. “Sometimes I just can’t keep my hands off her. She’s irresistible.”
Eden couldn’t help but laugh as she cast a look in his direction. “Anyway, let’s start again.” She moved toward the woman and stretched out her hand. “I’m Eden Riley. Welcome to Triple-A Investigations. And you are?”
The young woman grasped Eden’s hand tightly in hers, her eyes sparkling with happiness. “Honey, it’s me.”
Eden frowned. “Excuse me?”
“It’s me,” the woman said again. “Your mother. I’m back!”
FIVE
Eden tried to process what she’d just heard.
Her mother? That was impossible.
This dark-haired woman was barely in her midtwenties and was completely different from her mother. Caroline Riley had looked just like Eden, only with blonde hair rather than the bright red Eden always dyed to a less attention-grabbing auburn.
“I know this comes as a shock, sweetie,” the woman said. “But it’s true. Maybe you should sit down.”
Eden did just that, staggering behind her desk and dropping back into her swivel chair. “What the hell is going on?”
The woman spread her hands. “Okay, so I died.”
“I know that part.”
“Next thing I know I’m in a holding cell in Hell scared out of my mind. I had no idea why I was there and it truly felt like forever, before they told me I was free. Next thing I know I’m back here, but I had no body. I had to improvise.”
“You’re a drifter,” Darrak said, eyeing her carefully.
The woman eyed him right back. “Is that what I am? Sounds like a good term for it.”
Eden’s heart sank. A drifter was a bodiless spirit who was able to possess humans at will, pushing aside their consciousness to make way for their own. Unlike Darrak, who was stuck with one human host until their death or his exorcism—or, preferably, his curse removal—a drifter could change bodies as easily as changing their outfit.
Her mother had died three months ago after breaking her neck falling down a flight of stairs in Las Vegas. She already knew Caroline had been sent to Hell. Lucas used her mother as blackmail to get Eden to help him out recently. She’d agreed, albeit reluctantly, and the last she knew her mother’s soul had been released.
Eden assumed she’d gone to Heaven.
Instead she’d flitted around until she’d found a suitable body—a young, pretty brunette.
“You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.” Caroline laughed at her own joke. “Listen to me. Still hilarious after everything I’ve been through. But seriously, thank God I was able to find a body. Otherwise I’d be totally screwed. No way to communicate with you or anyone else. That would be so horrible. You know how much I love to talk.”
“Where did you get this body?” Eden said tightly.