“The Council Archives?” he guessed. “Sounds like a bunch of stuffy old books.”
“It is, but books are awesome. I could live in the stacks, reading everything about all things. I never want to leave. My boss usually has to remind me to go home.”
“There is something about librarians that arouses most men’s imaginations.”
“Is that so?” She stood from collecting her things, then swiped the toe of her shoe through the salt circle, effectively rendering it but a broken circle of salt and no longer a protective barrier. “I’ve never considered myself a librarian. Bookish, I guess. But I know how to party it up. I’m down with all that.”
Ed chuckled. He took her hand, and when she thought he would lead her to the door, instead he kissed the back of it. Clutching a candle and the knife to her chest, she sighed at the chivalrous move. But when he licked her skin, she flushed to her core. Goddess, what would that feel like on other places on her body? Like her breasts?
“Tasting me?” she tried lightly.
“We demons can tell a lot from taste,” he said. “That’s a freebie for your research.”
“It’s only a freebie if you explain yourself. What can you tell about me from tasting my skin?”
“Let’s talk on the way out, shall we? That call was urgent.” He led her down the hallway, and as they waited for the elevator, he again clasped her hand. “I can taste the wine in your blood and a salty remnant of the pommes frites you downed five or six hours earlier. Possibly on your way home from our less-than-stellar encounter here earlier.”
“There’s a Greek restaurant down the street from my apartment. I love their fries and chicken gyros. Tell me more.”
“Your blood pressure is slightly elevated.” He winked and smirked. “I’ll attribute that to being here with me, your hand in mine.”
She shrugged, acquiescing to that one.
“You are indeed very powerful because I could feel those electric vibrations tingle at my tongue, as if the white light, but I can differentiate and know it is your magic. You’ve been on this earth for about a century...” He tilted his head. “I can feel the ancient ways in you, but not so old that I sense you were around preautomobile.”
The doors opened and they stepped into the elevator.
“You’re very good,” Tamatha said. “I was born in the 1920s.”
“I assume you’ve taken a source?”
“A decade ago.”
When a witch wished to maintain her immortality, she had to consume the live, beating heart of a vampire once a century. Witches called them sources; vamps called them ash. Nasty work, but immortality was well worth the mess and vulgar taste.
“And you emanate light,” he finally said. “And joy and curiosity. But I didn’t have to lick you to learn that. Such lightness is written all over—” he spread his hands before her to take in her shape “—this gorgeous piece of work.” He exhaled. “I’ve that thing to get to.”
And she sensed he was giving her an escape from what could turn into an evening of debauchery. That neither of them would protest. Yet she wasn’t quite ready to dive in so quickly with this intriguing yet deeply mysterious man.
“Tomorrow night?” she asked as the elevator doors slid open. “Another research date?”
“I’m...hmm. Can I get back to you on that one?”
“Oh? Sure.” She’d expected a quick response that he’d love to see her again. Didn’t he want to drop the big question on her? So her shoulders dropped as she headed for the door. “I live in the 6th,” she said.
“I know. By the Luxembourg.”
She cast a look over her shoulder.
“I can smell the pear blossoms and roses from their gardens in your hair. It’s a unique blend indicative of the garden on the Left Bank. If I want to find you, I will. We demons retain scents far better than any werewolf can. You’re in me now, Tamatha.”
And he turned to stroll toward a door set near the elevator bay. Without a goodbye or an au revoir. As last night when he’d left her in the alleyway after that devastating kiss.
Tamatha stepped outside under the moonlight and stroked the back of her hand where he’d licked her. With a shiver, she decided to draw her white light back up.
The last of a few black feathers dissipated as Ed’s body re-formed into human shape. He tilted his head to the left and right to stretch the kink in his neck, then shook his shoulders to shake out his clothes and return to normality. Or as normal as it got shifting from a conspiracy of ravens to demonic flesh and blood.
There were other terms for a group of ravens, such as an unkindness. He’d stick with conspiracy. As it was, he got enough bad press.
The phone call had come from Inego, whom he’d directed to post guards at the Montparnasse. There were no dead witches in the cemetery this time that he could see. Nor a dismembered demon corpse. But between two mausoleum fronts with rusted iron doors he did find a telling pile of ash. Obsidian flakes clued him in that one of his own had died there. Recently, for the red embers and lingering sulfur that tainted the air.
Yet the sickly smell of rot clinging to the air was not demonic. And the ward on his forearm tingled.
“Witches,” he muttered. “Again. How is it possible? Unless they are alive and just really ugly?”
No, he’d seen exposed bone on more than a few of them the night he’d witnessed Laurent’s murder. Whatever the creatures were, they could not be alive. And they seemed to have a death wish for demons.
Perhaps the situation was more urgent than he’d initially thought.
Kneeling before the ash, he held his palm flat over the pile without touching it. Rising warmth teased at his skin, as if the essence yet remained. He couldn’t get a read that would clue him in to what breed of demon it had been or if it had been male or female.
Scanning the surroundings, he wondered if the demon had been wandering about the cemetery—for what reason?—or if he or she had somehow been lured here. Because it was the same cemetery. It seemed too coincidental to be mere happenstance. Could dead witches do such a thing? Or was someone else luring hapless demons to a sure and terrible death?
The thought was disturbing. And he would find answers.
From a witch like Tamatha Bellerose? He wasn’t sold on her being the most powerful in Paris, but he wasn’t yet prepared to admit to that doubt. She seemed open-minded. She’d even suggested she was not into summoning and then commanding demons to her will. With hope, she would at least hear him out regarding this situation.
He should have been direct with her earlier. But after watching her smudge the office, the whole time he’d slid his eyes over her gorgeous figure and had thought thoughts he wouldn’t want anyone to know about. Lust had altered his initial goal. He’d been thankful for the phone call only because he was pretty sure he might have pushed her down on the couch and made out with her right there in the office.
And what was wrong with that?
“Everything,” he muttered. “She’s a witch.”
He stood, then strode quickly toward the south entrance and slipped through the unlocked gate. He spied Inego parked down the street in a black Audi and slid into the passenger side.
“I posted guards at the front gate like you asked, boss.”
Ed rubbed his lower lip, in thought. Would any future victims really enter through the