Of Witches and Warlocks: The Demon Kiss (17 page)

The sun sank speedily after that, so it
seemed, and soon it was time for all of us to get to our jobs we
had been given.

“Let’s take our car since Stacey drove yours
earlier today,” Dad said to Vance, as we headed out of the elevator
and into the parking lot. “Just to be safe, in case anyone would
remember seeing it from this afternoon.”

We walked over to the dark-tinted Toyota
Camry and climbed inside together, though we were silent for most
of the drive.

There was a lot of traffic out for the
evening. We weaved our way through it, across town, over to Benito
Juarez. Dad pulled around when we arrived so we were behind the
shop in a little alleyway.

“I think we shouldn’t have the car out in the
open, since it should be well past closing time by now,” he said,
though neither Vance nor I had questioned his motives.

Juan was waiting for us at the back door. As
we exited the vehicle, he eyed Vance carefully, with extreme
caution, the distrust still plainly visible in his eyes.

Vance greeted him kindly and pretended he
didn’t notice the nervous stares coming his way as he helped Dad
unload some surveillance equipment from the trunk. They carried the
items into the store.

Juan stood nearby the whole time but stayed
out of our way, choosing just to observe us instead. We soon had
the monitor and recording devices all set up on a small table ready
to go.

“Should be anytime now,” Dad said looking at
his watch. “My mom should be checking the building perimeter for
any magical barriers as we speak.”

We each pulled up a folding chair and sat
down to wait. It seemed like the time was dragging slowly, and I
watched as Vance rubbed his hands slowly together, trying to calm
his own anticipation.

Soon the point where we should have received
a signal had come and gone. Dad stood up and started pacing the
floor nervously.

“What is going on out there?” he asked in
frustration, to no one in particular as he kept checking and
rechecking his watch.

He had ordered that no one use their cell
phones during this time, so as not to draw attention to the trio
while they were setting things up.

Suddenly, a flicker crossed the television,
followed quickly by a clear, black and white picture which popped
into view.

“There we go!” Dad said in relief as he
clapped his hands together. He sat down and adjusted a few things
until we had some audio also, although it sounded a little bit
scratchy.

His cell phone rang then causing us all to
jump as the unexpected sound pierced the silence.

“All clear,” Grandma’s voice came out from
the speaker. “Sorry for the delay. There was a man out walking his
dog by the building, and the dog chose that place to sniff around
for a little potty stop.”

“No problem,” Dad said, smiling. “I’m glad it
all worked out okay. Everything looks good from this end of things,
so you three go ahead and return to the resort for now.”

He hung up after he said goodbye, and we all
pulled a chair up then to watch the streaming feed.

The delivery truck from earlier in the day
was still there, parked up against the bay. Though we couldn’t see
into the back of it, it appeared to have been completely unloaded
as several of the crates were stacked upon each other against one
of the walls inside the roll-up door in the storage area.

“I wish the truck would move,” Dad
complained, as we watched the small screen. “I can’t see into the
warehouse or if anything is going on inside it.”

After several minutes of nothing, we finally
saw some movement. We watched with piqued interest as a worker came
out onto the dock and lit up a cigarette while checking his
watch.

“He’s waiting for someone, it looks like,” I
said, after he continued staring off into the distance and
repeatedly looking at the time.

The nervous man paced back and forth for a
while, until we noticed that he straightened up suddenly and quit
moving completely, after flicking his cigarette to the ground
beneath him, crushing it out with his foot.

A long black sedan pulled into the picture
then, the sound of the tires crunching on gravel as it moved. The
car pulled up next to the truck at the dock, and the man jumped
down to open the back passenger door.

A tall man exited the vehicle. He was dressed
to the nines in a dark suit, his semi-dark hair cut close to his
head. He turned a bit, looking around while he adjusted his sleeve
and cuff links.

“That’s him,” Vance said, leaning back into
his chair a little, a strange emotion flitting briefly over his
face.

I could see Vance must have gotten some of
his looks from his dad. I might have called Damien handsome, except
that his face was so hard looking that it was more like I was
looking at the devil himself. There was no friendliness there. He
exuded danger in his very persona.

“Why was the truck so early today, Marco?”
Damien’s smooth cultured voice echoed out into the lot. “And why is
it still here so late?”

“I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to get here so
early. I must have miscalculated due to the change in time. Peter’s
asleep in the truck cab. He had a long night last night after we
picked up the shipment.”

“Did he indeed?” Damien quirked an irritated
eyebrow at Marco, as he walked up the steps of the platform and
inside the warehouse.

He passed out of view behind the truck, Marco
following, and we could no longer see anything useful.

“I knew that truck was going to be a
problem,” Dad grumbled, but he stopped as the speaking resumed.

“Open this one,” Damien’s voice came over the
scratchy speaker.

“Right away, boss,” Marco said.

We could hear some scraping sounds, like
metal rubbing against wood, and we assumed one of the crates was
being pried open with some sort of instrument like a crowbar.

“Ah! Very good! Where is this one from?”
Damien asked about something we couldn’t see.

“India,” came the reply.

“Yes. I can see that now. I should have
known. Very nice indeed and quite refined looking.”

“Maybe he’s still importing regular
artifacts,” I said softly, wondering what else he could possibly be
speaking about.

Damien began talking again.

“Let me see the invoice,” he demanded.

There was silence for a few moments before he
spoke again.

“Bring these four to the house. The rest you
may divide amongst yourselves,” he said.

“Will do, boss. Thanks!” Marco said, and we
could here him scuttling around, making loud sounds.

Damien exited the building and walked toward
the waiting car. The driver suddenly hopped out and opened the rear
passenger door. He held it while Damien climbed back into the
vehicle, then closed it and returned to the front, before slowly
pulling away from the lot, out of the range of the camera.

“Well, we know for certain that he’s here
now,” Dad said, as he looked at Vance. “I don’t think we’ve learned
anything else, though. We still have no idea what he’s shipping in
the crates.”

“What would he be taking to his house and
dividing the rest among his staff?” I asked, completely perplexed
at the conversation we had just heard.

“We need to get hold of Hal and Bruce and see
if they were able to charter us a boat for tomorrow. We have to
start surveillance on that place,” Vance said to Dad. “That’s
probably the only way we’re going to be able to find out what’s
being delivered there.”

Dad nodded his head in agreement before he
flipped out his cell and dialed up Bruce, talking for a few minutes
before hanging up.

“He got a boat called the Deep Fisher. It
frequents the waters in that area regularly. He’ll have a light
crew on so there’ll be plenty of room for the three of us to go
with them. They leave at first light.”

“We’ll be ready,” Vance said, reaching for my
hand.

We continued watching the monitor until we
saw Marco reappear and shut the door. He hopped into the truck and
drove out of the picture.

“Let’s call it a night then,” Dad said as he
reached over to turn off the equipment. “I doubt they’ll be back
again this evening. We’ll set people up in shifts around the clock
in the morning if we need to.”

My dad thanked Juan in broken Spanish and
informed him that someone would be probably returning in the
morning.

Juan shook hands with him and followed us as
we left the shop, locking the door behind us.

We went back to the hotel, where we met
everyone in our condo and told them what we had learned this
evening.

Dad set up a schedule of assignments for
Juan’s shop, to begin first thing in the morning, and then the
group broke up and headed off to their own condos.

“So how was your evening?” I asked Shelly,
after everyone had left and we were straightening up the condo.

“It was awesome!” she replied, smiling
broadly. “Brad and I had a great time with your grandma when we
went to set up the camera. We were all dressed head to toe in
black. It was like we were spies or something.”

“Well, you kind of were,” I replied, grinning
at her enthusiasm.

“Your grandma showed us how to use our
crystals to reveal any hidden alarms or charms that aren’t visible
to the naked eye. We could easily see the fields surrounding the
building next door, but there was nothing on the building we put
the camera on. It was so cool,” she added, her eyes flashing
brightly.

“I’m glad everything went all right for you.
We were beginning to worry about you when the signal was late,” I
said.

“Stupid guy and his dog held us up,” Brad
said over a mouthful of leftover mashed potatoes and gravy. “We
could have been in and out of there in the amount of time we had to
wait for him.”

“We’d better call it a night, baby,” Vance
interrupted, looking at me. “We have an early morning ahead of
us.”

“Oh!” I said, thinking of something else I
had wanted to ask him about. “Are you going to be okay to go? What
about your withdrawal?”

“I’ll wake up early,” he said with a shrug.
“Hopefully that will help.”

“I hope so, too,” I replied feeling worried
about him and wishing there was some way I could help him.

He reached a hand down, pulling me up off the
couch and started walking me toward my room.

I pulled back on his hand to stop him from
going any farther, and he turned to look at me with a puzzled
expression.

“What is it?” he asked, stepping closer to
me.

“I want to spend the night with you tonight,”
I said, searching his eyes for some clue that he wanted to be with
me, too.

“You know that isn’t the best thing for us
anymore,” he said softly, and I saw regret flash over his face
briefly.

“I know,” I agreed, knowing that he had been
trying to protect me. “It’s just you found your dad again tonight
and I can feel the conflicting emotions running through you. I
don’t want you to be alone. That’s all.”

He sat there staring at me for a moment,
weighing the situation in his head, before turning and walking
toward his room, pulling me behind him.

“Goodnight,” I said to Shelly as I passed
her.

“Goodnight to you,” she said giving me a
knowing smile, along with a wink in my direction.

Vance flipped the light on in his room,
without touching the switch, as we walked through the doorway. He
let go of my hand, and I crawled up onto his king-sized bed, while
he went over to the dresser and removed his sweatpants.

I laid my head down on one of the pillows,
watching as he pulled his shirt off over his head, and I was glad
that he didn’t look over at me, because I couldn’t take my eyes off
his fabulous physique. When he reached for the button on his pants,
however, I demurely closed my eyes. I felt him sit on the end of
the bed to remove his socks and shoes, before he stood up
again.

“Here,” his voice said to me, and I felt
something soft hit my face. “Get comfortable. I’ll be back in a
minute.”

I opened my eyes to find one of his t-shirts
lying there. He wanted me to sleep comfortably. It melted my
heart.

I stood up and quickly removed my own
clothing and pulled the soft shirt over my head. It hung to
mid-thigh on me. I looked in the mirror, rubbing my hands down over
the fabric. I liked wearing his clothes.

Suddenly, I realized that seeing me dressed
like this might be a huge turn on for him, though, so I quickly
folded my clothes and laid them neatly on the dresser and climbed
back into the big comfy bed.

I flopped back onto the fluffy pillow and
pulled the comforter up to my chin, just as the door to the room
reopened.

“All comfy?” he asked casually, softly
closing the door behind him.

“Yes,” I replied, as I snuggled down farther
into the pillow, suddenly feeling very relaxed.

“Good,” he said, as he flipped the light off
with a snap of his fingers, enveloping the room in darkness.

He walked over to his side, but he didn’t get
in. Even though it was dark, I could feel his stare as he looked at
me.

“Do you promise to be good tonight, Portia?”
he asked me from the edge of the bed.

“Of course I do,” I replied, knowing I
wouldn’t move an inch all night long if he would let me stay with
him.

I was very surprised at his next move, when
he lifted the covers and crawled in next to me, scooting over to be
clear up against me, with nothing in between us. This was something
he rarely, if ever, did … and certainly not given the circumstances
surrounding us lately.

“I know. I’m tempting fate,” he said with a
sigh, as he wrapped his arms around me. “I hope you’ll forgive me,
but I’ve missed you, too. So, I’m going to do my best to think
chaste thoughts and not about how sexy you might look in my shirt
right now. Tonight we sleep.”