A Demon Does It Better (23 page)

“Yes, you are being arrogant. All demons are arrogant. It’s part of your DNA, or whatever in Hades you want to call it.” Lili turned her head to stare at Vonnie. Her heart clenched as she saw agitation move over the witch’s body in rolling waves. Then she smiled as Cleo carefully climbed onto the end of the bed and gently touched Vonnie’s leg with her paw. A moment later, she returned to natural slumber while Cleo reclined next to her.

“I never saw a cat do that,” Jared commented.

“Cleo’s constantly full of surprises.” She felt her cell phone vibrate and pulled it out of her pocket. “Hmm, seems Zane has arrived early.”

“And is probably very worried about the love of his life,” Jared said sardonically.

“Of course he is.” She quickly typed in a text. “I was going to make him wait in the lobby, but I think I’d like to have a chat with him instead. I asked Deisphe to take him to my office. I’m sure we’ll need some privacy for this particular conversation.” She looked at Jared and arched an eyebrow. “Are you ready to terrorize what’s probably an arrogant little pissant of a mage?”

Jared flashed a grin while his eyes sparked fires. “Nothing I’d like better.”

As she returned downstairs and walked briskly to her office, she ignored Jared’s presence, as she had earlier.

Deisphe stood by the door while her charge sat by Lili’s desk. Lili didn’t miss that the young mage sat there blatantly flirting with the Were. The gorgeous cat looked ready to take a nasty bite out of him.

“Hello, Zane, I’m Dr. Carter.” She entered her office and held out her hand. The minute she touched him, she felt a sense of imbalance in his power and noted the flickers of lack of control in his eyes.
Jared’s right. He needs a fix. Good thing there’s no way he can get to Vonnie.

She stared at the blond-haired mage with the winning smile and boyish good looks. A bronze pin tucked in his shirt collar indicated his status as a mage second class. She wondered how many exams he had cheated his way through to get that pin.

“How is Vonnie?” he asked, masking his earlier flirtation with concern.

“She’s very ill.” She gestured for him to be seated and walked around to sit behind her desk. She sensed Jared had taken possession of a shadowed corner. Deisphe straightened up as she felt an odd shift of power in the room, but not even by a flicker of her eyelash did she indicate she knew something was different.

“What’s wrong with her?”

“We’re not sure. I’m still running tests,” Lili said with her best doctor’s smile meant to reassure a patient’s next of kin.

He leaned forward in his chair, his fingers tapping the arm of the chair. “I want to see her.”

Lili looked up at Deisphe and gestured for her to leave the office. The nurse frowned but finally slipped away. The witch still gave no indication Jared was present.

“I’m afraid that isn’t possible,” she informed the young mage. “Since we don’t know what’s wrong with Vonnie, I’ve had to place her in a seclusion room. For all we know, she could have been exposed to something highly contagious. We can’t take that chance,” she said blandly.

“I want to see her,” he demanded.

Lili placed her linked hands on top of her desk. “I’m sorry, only family members will be allowed inside the room.”

“
I’m
her family. Vonnie only has me!” Zane shouted, showing a loss of control.

Jared started to push away from the shadows, but an incline of Lili’s head stopped him.

“You’re not mated, therefore, you’re not a family member,” she stated. The charm had to be on him. She didn’t want to think about finding a way to strip him down to find it. But she would if she had to.

Then she noticed a jagged piece of metal decorating a leather band wrapped around his left wrist.
Near
his
heart. Power base.

“I love Vonnie. I need to be with her,” Zane insisted, his white-knuckled grip almost breaking the chair arms. “Take me to her now.”

“I don’t think so.” Lili ignored his attempt to compel her to follow his demand. She wanted to slap the youngling down, big-time.

“You’re hurting, aren’t you, asshole?” Jared stepped out of the shadows. “It’s like a drug. Once you’re hooked, you can’t stop. Your body is demanding a fix.”

Zane’s eyes widened. The smell of fear flowed off his skin like an acrid stench. “Who… what are you?”

“I’m your worst nightmare, you son of a bitch.” He reached down and tore the leather band off the mage’s wrist, leaving a painful welt behind.

“You’re a demon.” Zane almost crawled up the back of his chair. “You’re supposed to help me keep what I rightfully paid for.”

“I had nothing to do with this transaction.” Jared held up the band, the metal glinting dark glimmers in the room. “Why don’t you tell me about your talisman?”

The mage couldn’t take his eyes off the leather bracelet. His fingers twitched with the need to snatch it back. “That’s nothing. Just something I wear for luck.”

“Why wear
nothing
for luck?” Jared countered in a silken tone that sent shivers along Lili’s spine.

She stood up and braced her hands on her desk. “Luck as in keeping it close to you so you can drain the woman you claim to love of her magick,” she accused. “You’ve almost killed her by using that illegal charm.”

“Not to mention getting yourself in a shitload of trouble for dealing with the wrong kind of demons,” Jared hitched a hip onto the corner of her desk. “What did you give the demon for this charm?” He dangled it in front of Zane. “And don’t tell me it’s not a charm,” he warned when the mage opened his mouth. “I’m able to smell and feel a demon binding charm miles away.”

“I was told no one could sense it.” Zane knew his mistake the moment he spoke.

Jared loomed over him, resting his hands on the chair arms. “I’ve got news for you, sport.
Demons
lie
,” he said softly, the words like razor blades across the skin.

Lili ratchetted up her personal protections as she stared at a new scary side of Jared. This creature could easily twist Zane’s head off his neck and hand it to him without breaking a sweat.

“He’ll be taken care of, Jared,” she murmured. “I’ve already arranged for him to be held accountable for his crime.”

“And I will let you do just that, right after he gives me the name.” He leaned down until he was nose to nose with a heavily sweating Zane.

“I can’t,” he stammered, now refusing to look at the band Jared held. “He said I’d die the minute I say his name.”

“And you’ll die if you don’t.” He bared his teeth. “So let’s try this again. Name and clan. In order for you to have procured this,” he dangled the band in front of Zane’s frightened eyes, “you’d have to know both.”

Lili’s nose wrinkled at the acrid sulfuric scent drifting in the air. She couldn’t miss the shadows crawling across her office floor, heading for Zane’s chair. “Jared, don’t take the law into your own hands,” she warned. “Get them to back off now.”

“Only if he tells me what I want to know.” He refused to move as his gaze bored into Zane’s eyes. “Don’t you have something to tell me?”

Zane looked as if he was going to swallow his tongue. “Fearce,” he choked. “Fearce of the Moutanni clan. He sold it to me. He vowed no one, not even a demon, could tell what it was.”

Jared pushed himself away and stepped back. “Yeah, well, like I told you. We all lie.”

“Is this a private party, or can anyone join in?”

Lili looked at the doorway and smiled at her visitor. “Maggie! I think your new little friend will be very happy to see you.”

Maggie O’Malley, a high-ranking member of the Hellion Guard, protectors of all supernatural creatures, sauntered into the room. She looked totally badass in a pair of black skinny jeans and a silk tank top the color of ripe watermelon. A diamond-encrusted black widow spider tattooed on her bicep completed the look.

“Please tell me we won’t be here for long,” the spider said in a French accent. “I have an important date tonight.”

“Hi, Elle,” Lili greeted Maggie’s sidekick with a broad smile. “You look as beautiful as ever.”

“Thank you,
ma
chérie
. I must say, you give us the most interesting toys, Lili,” the spider told her, eyeing Zane as if he were a tasty treat. He looked more uncertain by the minute.

Maggie was engrossed in her new prisoner, who slouched deep in his chair. Her eyes flicked over the charm Jared dangled from his fingers. “In my professional opinion, I’d say your new jewelry is demon-crafted and very nasty to witches,” she stated. “My, my, someone’s been a naughty boy.” She transferred her attention to Zane.

“Good eye,” Jared complimented her.

“My boyfriend’s a half fire demon, and I tend to keep up on the bad toys you all come up with,” she said, pushing back a lock of pale blond hair. She looked down at Zane. “So you’re the nasty little troublemaker I’m here to collect.” She shook her head and made strange sounds with her tongue. “I swear, you mages get stupider all the time. Don’t you learn anything at those schools you magick users pretend to attend? There are some things you just don’t fool around with. Any kind of demon spell tops the list.”

Zane looked as if he wasn’t sure whether Maggie was his savior or a new enemy. No wonder, since the badass Hellion looked ready to turn him into something a lot nastier than a toad.

“If you’re a member of the Hellion Guard, you have to protect me against this demon,” he insisted with a defiance that grated on everyone else’s nerves. “Plus, this bitch won’t let me see my girlfriend who’s really sick. I know my rights! I am a mage second class.” He puffed up, not realizing he looked even more ridiculous.

“Sorry, sweetheart, just now you have no rights.” Maggie snapped her fingers. Manacles clicked tightly around Zane’s wrists. “Using demon olde magick on a witch is a very bad offense. A Class A felony, in fact. Now let’s go quietly. I have to attend parent-teacher night tonight, and I can’t be late, since I’m supposed to bring lemon bars for the get-together. And I’m sure I’m going to hear that my kid’s been stirring up trouble again.”

“How is Courtney doing?” Lili asked, referring to the teenager Maggie and her demon lover, Declan, adopted.

“She wants a tattoo, she’s flunking world history, and for some insane reason, she adores The Librarian, and he’s actually nice to her. How twisted is that? In other words, she’s your typical teenager.” She walked over to Lili and grasped her arms, staring into her eyes. Whatever she saw there had her smiling. “Look at you,” she said softly. “Trust me; it’s an e-ticket ride, but more than worth it.” She dropped a kiss on her friend’s forehead. “And if you need me, you know you just have to call,” she whispered, hugging Lili tightly. “You’re not alone in this.”

Lili’s smile wobbled a bit. “I know, and thank you.”

Maggie’s focus then shifted to Jared. She flashed him the sunny smile that most men would consider sexy, but her friend knew exactly what it meant. And it wasn’t always good.

“And you, you cute li’l ole demon, you,” she practically purred. “If you do anything to hurt my friend, I will turn you into sushi and feed you to the cat.”

Maggie stepped back and took a deep breath. “Okay, junior, up and at ’em.” She gripped Zane by his collar and hauled him to his feet as easily as if he were a rag doll.

“Wait a minute,” he started to say, stumbling, but Maggie held up a warning hand.

“There’s no ‘wait a minute.’ No asking for a lawyer. No insisting you know your rights. There’s just me, and I’m not all that nice,” she told him in a voice that practically sprouted razor blades. “You violated a witch with an illegal demon-crafted charm. Do you understand the penalty for such a crime?” She smiled at the fear flowing across his face. “Ah, I see you do. You better hope Vonnie doesn’t die from what you did. There’s a whole new death penalty for that. Time to go, sport. Since I’m short on time, we’re using a portal that will get us back to my Compound at supersonic speed, even if it tends to turn your stomach upside down. Do not even think about puking on my boots once we arrive, or you’ll discover what real pain is.” She hauled him out of the office, easily ignoring Zane’s entreaties, then his screaming threats, along with his insistence he hadn’t done anything wrong. A moment later there was a popping sound and then silence.

“You have some interesting friends, Lili,” Jared commented once they were alone.

“Maggie was in my class at the Witches Academy. With her skills, there was no doubt that the Hellion Guard wouldn’t waste any time snapping her up,” Lili replied. She eyed the charm the way she’d look at an ugly insect. And she really hated insects. “Do you honestly know what to do to destroy the spell?”

He nodded. He pocketed the leather band and held out his hand. She slipped her hand in his as he gently pulled her toward him.

“I’ve got to say, you liven up my days,” he murmured, brushing his lips across her brow, then trailing them down to the corner of her lips. He smiled as he stepped back. “I know. You have a patient to treat.”

“And get you back below before someone discovers you’re gone,” she said, her eyes shadowed with sorrow. She didn’t want him to leave. She would rather they went somewhere, even if only to have coffee.