The Sorceress Screams (3 page)

Charon, take
it! Water manipulation
always
worked.
Had the ring provided him with defense, or was Maximo unaffected by Water
magic? Were
vampires
unaffected?

I should know
these things! But it wasn’t as if I could search the Internet for it. Unlike
the undead, true witches were still creatures of myth. And my mother wanted it
to stay that way.

I dropped my
link to Water. An uneasy lump formed in my throat. I forced myself to swallow
it down so I could speak. “What do you want?”

“Dinner.”

A spike of
fear shot through me. I remembered his girlfriend’s idea of dinner.

Maximo’s
nostrils flared as if he’d scented my reaction. “To start,” he said in his
neutral tone.
“Mexican perhaps?”

Hades’s
hair! The
dead
guy wanted me to eat Mexican food
with him less than twenty-four hours after he’d murdered his long-time
girlfriend? That seemed in spectacularly poor taste.

I struggled
not to grimace. But there was really no way around telling the truth. I’d just
have to break it to him gently. “I wouldn’t feel right. Not so soon after what
happened.”

Though his
lips formed his indulgent smile, Maximo’s eyes darkened to an angry sable that
matched his hair. “It’s perfectly understandable.” His voice went
authoritative. “Saturday evening would work better.”

My heartbeat
quickened. He wouldn’t like a second refusal. I needed that ring back.

But how
horrible would it look to be seen in public with him within days of
Ascencion’s
death? The assumption would be I’d killed her
to make room for myself. Or that he had.

Hera
help
me. Had he?

“Margaritas
and tacos,” Maximo said in his amiable way. “And we’ll dance. I haven’t danced
in decades.”

A nauseous
feeling sloshed within my stomach. But I needed the ring, and dinner was the
persuasion he’d said he needed to give it up.

I forced
myself to answer. “Okay.”

The vampire’s
shoulders lifted as if he’d been rigid until then. “Excellent. I’ll pick you up
here at nine.”

I nodded my
agreement, silently praying Trip would scare him off before then.

Maximo paused
at the shop’s door. He sent his soft smile over his shoulder. “I like what you
did with your hair.”

I gaped after
his retreating figure. A murderous vampire liked my new rocker hairdo while the
Water witch who had nearly kissed me could barely look at me without revulsion.

Didn’t it just
figure?

****

The knock at
ten after eleven made me terribly uneasy. Desmond had yet to call as he’d said
he would. It could very well be him standing on my porch. Then again, someone
worse could be out there.

Maximo could
appear and make me tell him the invocation word for the ring on his finger … provided
he’d enthralled me with a vampire’s nasty blood bond while I’d been unconscious
at his house. Come to think of it, he could have already asked for the
invocation word. And he could have made me forget all about it. For all I knew
he was gleefully shooting fireballs at targets and had merely asked me to
dinner so he could taunt me. Considering my track record with nemeses, that
wouldn’t be surprising in the least.

The view
through the peephole showed me shoulder-length brown hair and a tan face. One
of three people matched that description. Since one of the three wouldn’t
bother with the door, I suspected the figure out front was Ryan Steele, my
shapeshifter
neighbor.

I tugged open
the door.

“
Lemme
in.”
Ryan shoved past my shoulder into the apartment. “I’ve got news.”

I closed the
front door, frowning when I noted he’d plunked himself down on the beanbag
chair in my living room. That item of furniture happened to be my mother’s
preferred chair. Would she be miffed if someone else sat there? Especially
someone who could transform into a wild animal?

I didn’t
entertain often, so I had few furniture options.

Okay, I never
entertained.

“Want that
beer?” I headed to the fridge.

“Yeah,” he
said with a grin, clearly recalling why I’d offered.

I shuffled
toward the living room with a bottle of Dos
Equis
and
a bag of Fritos in hand.

“Since you’ve
kept my
secret
so well, I’m keeping
my part of the deal.” He took hold of the frosty bottle, popping the cap with
little fanfare. “The Centralized Coven Coalition is having an emergency meeting
as we speak.”

That might
explain why Desmond hadn’t called me. As the head of the Water witches, he was
a part of the coalition.

Ryan sat
forward and lowered his voice.
“
Dea
Woods—that’s the ambassador plenipotentiary for the Earth Witch
Monarchy—returned from a business trip to Las Vegas and immediately stepped
down from her position.”

I hadn’t
needed the reminder of who
Dea
was. But Ryan didn’t
know I’d met her at the solstice ball. She’d
hadn’t
been warm, but she’d been civil. It was more than I could say for most of the
witches.

“Any idea why?”

“My friend
Henry—” Ryan flushed, probably because I knew exactly what kind of “friend” Henry
was. He cleared his throat before continuing at a rambling pace.
“Knows
Dea’s
Guardian, Richard.
Rich is beside himself. Henry has been sitting with him for the past four hours
on suicide watch. I don’t know how much you know about the role of Guardian. It
may be archaic now, but those who give the vow take it very seriously. I’m
surprised Rich hasn’t already offed himself.
Dea
is
alive.” Ryan had answered the next question I would have asked. “But she no
longer feels she can accurately represent her faction.” He waited a beat,
perhaps for drama’s sake.
“Because a vampire enthralled her.”

“Fuck.”

Dea
was correct. If a vampire had
enthralled her, then she was at their mercy. Anything that came out of her
mouth would be suspect.

“Do they know
who?” I asked.

The nausea
from earlier sloshed in my stomach again. What if Maximo had used the ring to
disable
Dea
so she could be enthralled?

That didn’t
make sense. Maximo had lived in
Wipuk
for at least a
century. He’d had plenty of time to enthrall the witches, and yet no one had
made mention of him doing so. And I doubted he needed my ring to do it.
Ascencion
certainly hadn’t.

“Nadir Khan,”
Ryan said.

I shook my
head, signifying I didn’t know that name.

“Think Prince
of Persia only dead. He’s not really a big deal in our country, but he’s
powerful on the international scene.”

“Why would a
foreign vampire want to enthrall the ambassador for the American Earth
witches?”

Ryan lifted
his broad shoulders. “
Dunno
. Rich said he knew who
had done it but not why, and
Dea
doesn’t remember it
happening. The only reason we know about it is because Rich walked in on the
vampire
telling
her not to remember.
He wasn’t able to stop Nadir in time. The kicker is her career is ruined, and
there’s not a damn thing she can do about it because the vampires consider
enthralling perfectly acceptable.”

I mentally sifted
through everything I knew about vampire and witch relations. “But there have
been peace agreements between the undead and covens for decades, ever since the
wars of the turn of the century threatened to wipe them both out.”

Ryan nodded.
“But peace agreements between American vampires and American witches mean
little to a foreign visitor.”

“That isn’t
right.” I grunted. “Vampires are ridiculously powerful.”

I knew. I was
ridiculously powerful, and yet it hadn’t been enough to save me.

Ryan’s cherry
brown eyes ensnared mine. “Rumor has it
Ascencion
Boleda
is dead.”

A knot of
unease formed in my stomach along with the sloshing. News travelled incredibly
fast in
Wipuk
.

“And that you
know why,” he said in a lower voice.

“I didn’t see
it happen.” My response was quick and defensive because the whole situation weighed
heavily on my conscience. I could have done things differently, and maybe the
woman would still be alive.
Even though she’d been a
murderous bitch.

“I was a
little preoccupied with my head being on fire,” I said upon recalling that bit.
“Hence the new hair.”

“It looks
cute.” The observation had been delivered in a light tone before he lifted his
beer.

How could he
be dubious about my involvement with the death of the vampire in one moment and
complimenting me in the next? It would have made more sense if he were
heterosexual. But he wasn’t.

“So that’s the
gossip.” Ryan drew the bottle up to his mouth again and chugged a good portion.
“
Dea
is enthralled.
Ascencion
is dead. Rich is suicidal.
Just another week in lovely
ol
’
Wipuk
.”

He tipped the
bottle so he could drain the remaining liquid. Hopping up, he tossed it toward
the blue plastic waste bin I’d bought at Target weeks ago. The bottle slid
smoothly into the plastic trash bag, clinking against something glass.

“I’ll let you
know if I hear anything else,” Ryan said on his way to the front door. He gave
me a little wave and then disappeared around the corner, tossing the thing shut
with a noisy thud.

I stifled a
sigh. The gesture had been a little too much like Trip. I still wasn’t
convinced it was a coincidence that my neighbor looked disturbingly like my
lifelong nemesis. Ryan hadn’t been a torment before. But now that Trip was
absent—probably intentionally ignoring me—the
shapeshifter
somehow was. And that made me furious.

I forced
myself up and into the bathroom. The spiked hair in the reflection was
impossible to ignore. Now I had two votes for cute, one who was completely
disgusted with it, and Nell the fence-sitter. I couldn’t help but wonder what
Trip would say.

That’s when I
decided I needed a nap.

Chapter Three

I shot a
guilty look over at Nell when I saw the name flash on my phone—
Desmond Marino
. A phone call was better
than a visit from him, but I didn’t know what he wanted. If it was what I
thought it was, then I needed to be out of earshot.

“I need to
take this,” I said when I was already halfway to the stairs.

She made a
gesture of understanding that I caught out of the corner of my eye before I
ducked into the stairwell.

I pressed the
button to accept the call. “Hello?”

“It’s Desmond.
I’m sorry I didn’t call last night. There was an emergency.”

“I understand
emergencies.”

He cleared his
throat, perhaps recalling I’d dashed out of his place on Monday after he’d been
millimeters from kissing my fingers.

“You wouldn’t
have a … charm to nullify a blood bond, would you?”

Desmond’s
hesitance before the word “charm” made me want to hiss. He
still
believed I trafficked in
spellweaves
.
I didn’t touch the illegal and unpleasant things. Why would I when a weave
required a witch to permanently sacrifice a portion of their power? I’d thought
we were past this.

“No.” My tone
was sharper than usual.

“
Dea
Woods has been enthralled,” he said, shocking me with
his candor. “She’s stepping down. She was a damn good priestess. Her
replacement…” His voice trailed off into a heavy sigh. “Let’s just say I don’t
get on well with her.”

“You get on
well with the others?”

“Yes.”

His terse reply
made me nearly laugh. I adopted a drawl to push him a little further. “That’s
surprising.”

“Is it? By all
accounts I’m a charmingly charismatic individual.”

“Charmingly
charismatic,” I said sourly, not liking
his
answering drawl at all. “That’s just another way of saying manipulative dick.”

“And here I
thought we’d called a ceasefire, Ms. Walsh.”

It was a
little surprising he’d voiced the words in his blank, professional tone without
so much as a huff or puff of irritated air. I must be losing my touch because
he wasn’t all that ticked off yet.

“That was
before you demanded a demonstration of my abilities,” I said.

“I demanded a
demonstration of your access to certain schools of magic,” he said quietly, as
if he were in the office and didn’t want his assistant to overhear him. “I
didn’t demand a demonstration of your abilities.”