The Witch with No Name

FIB officers watched a safe two blocks down since getting a coffee wasn’t illegal. I didn’t expect them to help. Didn’t want them to. They’d only get themselves killed. What had I been thinking telling Edden to make a stand?

“Ivy had better be okay,” I muttered as Mark sighed from behind the counter and Cormel entered the shop, his motions graceful with the ease and inevitableness of death. The man had run the country during the Turn, and his confidence was absolute. Handing his felt hat to the man coming in behind him, he stood just inside and breathed in the air, nose wrinkling as he scented demons under the rich coffee and tang of spent magic.

“Demons,” the man said, his Bronx accent obvious. “Have you gotten rid of them, then?”

“No. Why?” I said, and Cormel nodded to Trent as he shrugged out of his coat and carefully set it on the chair by the door.

“You’re a hard man to find lately, Kalamack.”

“Cormel,” Trent said in greeting, the thinnest trace of magic flowing through him making my skin tingle.

Blinking, I turned to Trent when Jenks whistled appreciatively. Not only was Trent’s hair slicked back and clean, but he was clean shaven. “H-how . . . ,” I stammered, then, “When did you learn that?”

A hint of red about his ears, Trent adjusted his collar. “It came with the, ah, circumcision curse. Kind of an all-encompassing trim-and-neat . . . spell.”

Do tell . . . I gave him an askance, approving look. Cormel was eight feet away, and all I wanted to do was run my hand over Trent’s smooth face. My eyes lost their focus, and when Cormel cleared his throat, I flushed.

“If Ivy is not okay, I’m going to slice your chest open with a plastic spork and rip your wrinkly heart out.”

“Charming . . . ,” Cormel drawled, and my eyes narrowed as he shifted one foot to stand directly on a painted line, in effect preventing Trent or me from circling him with the patterns in the floor. “I’m glad the rumors of your demise were premature.”

Premature? I thought dryly. Was that a threat?

Making a show of breathing in my rising anger, Cormel smiled. “Get me a small black coffee,” he said to the tidy man with him. “No cream. And whatever anyone else wants?” he asked pleasantly.

Okay, he was being nice, but that only made me more suspicious.

Jenks came in from the back smelling of fresh air. “I’ll have a buttercream latte if you’re buying,” the pixy said, and Cormel blinked before waving his hand at his aide to get one.

“You’re not afraid of me anymore,” Cormel said, and I shrugged, my attention on the parking lot behind him. The FIB had moved in and they were talking amicably with Cormel’s men. I felt a twinge of guilt. It wasn’t safe. Why had Edden listened to me?

Cormel cleared his throat, and my focus shifted to him. “Oh, sorry,” I said, and Trent hid a smile behind a cough. “Ah, no. No, I’m not.”

“You’ve no idea what that does to the undead,” Cormel said, his voice a mix of velvet and smoke. Behind him was the mundane sound of coffee being prepared, a study in contrasts.

Tired, I leaned against a table. It began to slide, and I jerked up again. “Yes I do. That’s why I apologized. Would it help if I shivered a little?” I said sarcastically. “Pressed up against the wall, maybe?”

“Shame what happened to your property,” Cormel said lightly. “Exploded boiler, was it?”

Jenks’s wings hummed louder, hands on his hips and near his sword as he hovered between Cormel and us. “It was my property, blood bag, and it’s going to take a lot more than a coffee to make up for it.”

Not a flicker of shame showed itself as Cormel settled his feet firmly on the floor, put his hands behind his back, and rocked forward and back. “You will return the demons to the ever-after.”

Is that what this is about? My shoulders eased. Ivy was okay—so far. “I’m not the one who freed them. Talk to Landon.”

Still as death and unmoving, I watched his thoughts realigning themselves in a pattern I couldn’t guess at. “He’s missing. You will send them back,” he insisted, a hint of a threat behind the professional cajoling. His lackey had come back with his coffee, and Cormel took it—never shifting his eyes from mine.

My skin was itching, humming almost where it was closest to Trent. It was kind of uncomfortable, and I edged away from him. “No. I like them where they are.”

Trent tensed at the flicker of anger crossing Cormel’s face as the vampire sipped his drink. “Landon claims you are able to reverse the spell and send our souls back to purgatory. That would be a mistake—Rachel.”

He had said my name, but he was looking at both of us. “How’s Felix?” I asked, knowing I’d hit a nerve when Cormel ignored my question, taking the top off his cup and going to the condiments bar. “When the sun comes up he’s going to walk.”

“Ah, Rachel?” Trent said, feet scuffing as his eyes flicked from me to the FIB guys outside. “The intent is to avoid conflict. Not incite it.”