She shook off the glamour as soon as she got home, anxious to get out of her sweaty clothes and into a hot bath. Undressing while the tub filled, she paused for a moment at the sight of the ruined bra in the mirror as she drew the top over her head. The memory of how it had gotten that way sent that frisson of vibration through her once more. The touch of his mouth on hers had been like a narcotic rush, but when she’d felt his tongue on her breast, she’d nearly climaxed. And, God, what a climax that would have been. She could feel it just out of reach even now and she moaned involuntarily.
Ione touched her fingertips to her lipstick-smeared lips. She wasn’t used to seeing herself like this. Usually she cleaned up before dismissing the glamour, because it was a bit unsettling to see the remnants of another face on her actual face. It was dishonest and a sort of dissociative game she wasn’t proud of, but it was a defense mechanism she’d learned long before she’d started hunting Carter’s accomplices. Sometimes she needed the freedom to be someone else. Because Ione Carlisle did not behave like this. Couldn’t behave like this. She had to keep things together. So she’d split herself apart.
After washing off the makeup, she tossed the bra in the trash with a little growl of disappointment. It had been her favorite. Do not think about how it got that way again. But she was already thinking it as she wound her hair up into a loose bun and stepped into the fragrant, foaming bath. The water was a bit too hot, but the sting of it felt good. She closed her eyes and leaned back against the built-in headrest, Dev’s charming accent murmuring in her head. Her fingers slipped down between her legs and she indulged in a little mental replay, the stroke of her own hand making up for what he’d neglected, while hot water and patchouli-rose bubbles sloshed against her nipples as a stand-in for Dev’s sensuous mouth.
The climax made her cry out and she nearly swallowed a mouthful of bathwater and bubble bath as she slipped down the edge of the tub with the release of the tension she’d been holding in her legs. Not nearly as satisfying as actually having that sweet cock inside her, but still one heck of an orgasm.
Ione opened her eyes with a sigh and made a mental note to always carry her own condoms when she went out on a glamour bender. Even if she wasn’t planning on having sex, it was only smart.
The bath and the orgasm had made her nicely sleepy, and Ione fell into bed later without bothering to dress, snuggling under the down comforter while the light patter of autumn rain played against the roof. She fell asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow and, for the first time in weeks, managed not to have a single nightmare about Carter Hamilton.
The chime of her calendar notification in the morning reminding her of the Covent summonses brought her temporarily forgotten troubles crashing back. Time to face the music.
She tried to tell herself she was just being paranoid as she stroked her razor over her legs a bit aggressively as a proxy for the source of her frustration. Though it wasn’t really paranoia when a necromancer had gone to such elaborate lengths to inveigle his way into the Covent’s midst. Carter had spent years on his deception, becoming a respected member of the Phoenix branch of the Covent. He’d come to Sedona as part of a convention of the Regional Conclave to deal with the sudden rash of lingering shades of the recent dead in the area—shades, it turned out, that Carter himself had been trapping here.
Ione let out a sharp exclamation as the razor bit into the tender flesh at her ankle. Blood dripped onto the white marble tile like garnet beads scattering from a broken rosary—blood from the veins of a demon.
That was the crux of it. Carter had targeted her because of something she hadn’t even known she possessed. She had been the last to know and the last to believe that she was a descendant of the most ancient of demons. She was a daughter of Lilith. And the Lilith blood was what Carter had coveted, the magic ingredient that would give him the power to command the dead. Phoebe had been his ultimate target, but he’d used Ione to set her up.
Despite the way they’d found out about it, Phoebe had seemed to take the news of their heritage in stride. Unlike Ione, she hadn’t spent years struggling to reconcile the practice of magic with a belief in God. But everything was easy for Phoebe. She’d walked away from the church and embraced her gift years ago without a backward glance. If you could call being a way station for the recently deceased a gift.
Ione touched her finger to one of the drops of blood on her ankle, holding the tiny red orb on her fingertip under the cool white glow of the LED bulbs around the mirror. She concentrated on the drop until nothing else existed, the convex surface glistening like a miniature crystal ball in crimson in which her reflection was inverted. An angel on the head of a pin. Or a demon.
With a murmured incantation, she set the ruby bead floating above her fingertip. It was a simple trick, one of the first she’d learned. A trick for slumber parties when she was a girl. Light as a feather, stiff as a board. She’d thought then it was her own affinity for magic that had made it come so easily to her. It was because of that affinity that she’d started on the path that had led her to the Covent.
She’d come to believe in magic as a gift, and an art to be learned, not some kind of transgressive aberration. But this tainted blood was where her magical aptitude had come from, not hours of practice and months of apprenticeship; not innate talent. Not a gift from God.
Even so, it had allowed her to do what she loved. And if the Covent was going to take that away from her, she intended to walk into the temple as Ione Carlisle, high priestess of the Sedona Coventry, with her head held high.
She dressed in a crisp, white blouse and slim-cut black pants fresh from the dry cleaner’s, topped with a black, flared, knee-length frock coat with delicate gray pinstripes. Presenting a confident, authoritative air was crucial in maintaining the respect of her coven, and Ione never left the house without making sure she was representing the office of high priestess with the utmost solemnity—when she left in her own face, at any rate. A light layer of foundation, a pale smudge of blush, a swipe of mascara across her bottom lashes and a dab of clear, matte gloss across her lips conveyed both professionalism and a certain understated grace.
* * *
The parking lot of Covent Temple was full when she arrived. As Calvin had implied, every member of the Sedona Coventry must have received a summons. Yet the Covent hadn’t seen fit to inform their high priestess. Tears slammed against the backs of her eyes as she paused inside the atrium, and she dug her fingernails into her palms to keep them from going any farther. This was it. She was going to lose everything. Carter Hamilton had kneecapped her from behind bars without even trying.
Ione deepened her breath and exhaled the frailty of ego. She’d been elected to serve the needs of the magical community, not as some kind of merit badge or status symbol. If what the coven needed to heal from Carter’s betrayal was for Ione to step down as high priestess, she would do it graciously. Even if it meant collapsing into a quivering heap on her bathroom floor when she got home and sobbing until she was sick. And then picking herself up and getting a job in the real world.
When she entered the temple, the rest of the coven members were seated on the comfortable benches that lined the aisles. The temple had been built with much the same design as a Catholic church—the Covent’s origins steeped in the religion from which it had emerged—but its pews were for comfort not worship. So maybe this wasn’t a ritual defrocking, after all; if they meant to perform any kind of ceremony, they’d be gathered in a formal circle at the altar.
All eyes turned to her as she came up the aisle—including a pair that were a glittering tiger’s-eye golden brown.
Ione stopped still, blood rushing to her cheeks as well as to other more inconvenient and intimate places. It was impossible, but there he was, seated among them, just a little apart from the rest: last night’s epic bad judgment. When he rose, the others rose with him.