LITMIR.BIZ

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      “Fine!” she called as he closed the door behind him.

      Melissande plopped onto the bed and crossed her arms. A pout felt necessary. Seriously? He was going to treat her like a naughty five-year-old? She hadn’t expected the harpie to come swooping out of the sky, wings flapping and bared yet feathered breasts shocking.

      “This heart attracts some strange energy.” She tapped the container. “Good thing I had Tor to fight off the bird chick.”

      Because in the moment out on the deck and under attack, she hadn’t been able to summon any deflecting magic. She could do that. With ease. A mere flick of her wrist and a few words of intention would make others walk a wide circle around her, or even push back a potential attacker. But she’d panicked. And in such a state, her magic was useless. Only when she’d gotten inside and knew she was out of the harpie’s path had she been able to focus.

      Now she gave her kinetic magic a try. A twist of her wrist slid the books on the shelf from one end to the other. “Just so. I seriously have to learn to relax during terrifying moments.”

      Yet despite her faults, she had managed to obliterate the harpie. And that made her sad. She hadn’t wanted to kill the thing, just consign it back to Faery. Truly, this strange new magic she sought was going to take some getting used to.

      With a nod, she decided she would concede to Tor’s request. The man had a life, and he had agreed to help her. Which meant she had to understand that he must have engagements and things to take care of. He wouldn’t be able to stand as her guardian 24-7. And she didn’t expect that. Should she?

      She was getting nervous that the next few days could prove more harrowing than she was prepared for.

      Her only chance to acquire the heart had come yesterday afternoon while searching the Archives for the proper spell. A spell she’d already had, thanks to one of her father’s grimoires. However, she’d told her uncle Certainly she hadn’t the full version, so he had allowed her to search the stacks.

      The Book of All Spells contained every spell designed, conjured and/or invoked by every witch who ever existed (and some by witches who were yet to exist). It was constantly updated as new spells were spoken. She’d browsed that massive volume without intent to copy anything out. Never was an item allowed out from the Archives—it was first and foremost a storage facility—but she’d often copied out spells or spent an afternoon studying an incantation to enhance her magic.

      Having already studied the spell, she’d gone into the Archives knowing exactly what ingredient was required to make the spell successful: Hecate’s heart. And after a lot of digging and sorting through dusty books, old wooden boxes and piles of unidentifiable artifacts, she’d found it wrapped in faded red silk, tucked between a book on crystal alchemy and a steel box that had rattled when she’d brushed it with the back of her hand. She had absconded with it while Uncle CJ had been talking on the phone. With a wave and a merci, Uncle!, she’d told him she’d see him soon.

      Fingers crossed that her uncle didn’t notice it missing from the Archives. It wasn’t as though he did a thorough inventory. He very likely had no idea exactly where the hundreds of thousands of items were at any given moment. Melissande had but to perform the spell and free her mother from the haunting, and then she could return the heart. And in the process of invoking dark magic, she could prove to her dad she had what it took to be a dark witch. Just like him and his twin brother and her twin cousins, Laith and Vlas. Even CJ’s wife, who had once been a light witch, was now half-and-half.

      The practice of dark magic was a Jones family tradition.

      “Whoopee.” Melissande sighed.

      Was dark magic all it was cracked up to be? Try as she might, over the years she’d never been able to bring herself to pull off so much as a hex. Hexes were strictly dark magic. They fed off negative energies and sometimes required demonic familiars. Bruce was about as far from demonic as a familiar got. That amphibian was light, all the way.

      Of course, she was aware that without dark magic, light magic could not exist. It was how the universe functioned. No good without bad. No peace without war. No heaven without hell (if you were a human). No Beneath without Above (for the paranormals). No yin without yang. No black without white. No glitter without ash. Someone had to practice dark magic. And in the hands of her dad and his brother, it was handled with grace, respect and kick-ass power.

      Her sister, Amaranthe, had possessed that kick-ass skill. She had once been able to stand between CJ and their dad, TJ, and hold her own. Melissande missed her. But lately it was difficult to feel compassion toward her younger sibling for the havoc and utter terror she currently held against their mother.

      And if a nudge from Amaranthe was required to push Melissande toward the dark in order to save her mother’s sanity, then so be it.

      She glanced to the big-screen TV that hung on a black wall. She shook her head. She wasn’t much for mindless entertainment. And the books...

      “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.” She read one of the spines. “The man is uptight. But a cute uptight. And what a swing he’s got.”

      Watching him wield the club against the harpie had almost distracted Melissande from the spell. Well, actually it had distracted her. Otherwise, the harpie would have been banished to Faery, and not...dead.

      “She deserved it,” Melissande muttered. “Can’t have harpies flying about Paris all willy-nilly.”

      Bouncing up to her feet, she ran her fingers along the wall opposite the bed, then opened a door, which she assumed was the closet. A press of the light switch at shoulder level flicked on an overhead row of fluorescent bulbs. She leaned in and peered down the long stretch of closet, which was a small room lined on both sides with immaculate shelves and clothing hung and spaced precisely. Everything was neat as a pin. And all in blacks, grays and whites.

      A hint of cherries and tobacco tickled her nose. Mmm...he smelled so good.

      Unable to resist the adventurous call to explore, she ventured inside.

      Tor thanked the interviewer for his time and ensured him he was on call for an in-person follow-up.

      “We’ll call you soon if interested, Monsieur Rindle.”

      “You’ve got my number. Merci.”

      Tor signed off from Skype and sat back, clasping his fingers behind his head. A smile was irrepressible. He’d aced it. He could win this job—if the in-person interview went well. Which it would. He was experienced in human relations, having worked spin for The Order of the Stake. The only difference was he’d be talking about human issues to humans. He could do that. He had no doubts about his qualifications, and had successfully bluffed his way through the real-world applications parts.

      As was necessary to any sort of spin job, he knew how to take rotten lemons and make spectacular lemonade.

      Closing the laptop, he hummed a few bars from “They Can’t Take That Away From Me” and performed a side-to-side then forward swanky dance step into the kitchen. He opened the fridge and pulled out a bottle of Perrier. He drank half and set it on the counter. The day had taken a turn. It hadn’t started out all that swell, with a tea hangover and the harpie attack. All because of the—

      “The witch.” He’d forgotten about the witch in his bedroom.

      Loosening his tie and humming his way down the hallway, Tor felt a new enthusiasm for this unexpected protection job. The witch needed his help. He was the man who could help her. It would be his last hurrah before entering the corporate realm of humans and all things mundane.

      Opening the bedroom door, he stepped inside to find...no witch.

      “Hmm...” To his left, the closet door was open. Had he forgotten to tell her not to touch anything? He never overlooked the details most important to him.

      Tor stepped into the closet. “I’m finished—”

      The

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