LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter 3

      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.

      The golden-brown eyes widened slightly at the sight of her, and she was certain for a mortifying instant that he’d somehow seen through the glamour last night. He knew exactly who she was. But the expression was gone just as quickly with no hint of recognition in his eyes, only grim determination.

      “Dione Carlisle?” He’d pronounced her given name as “Dee-ohn”—which was the reason she’d changed it.

      She willed herself to behave like someone who hadn’t just run smack into the man she’d sucked off in a parking lot the night before while wearing another woman’s face. “I go by Ione, actually. But I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.” Her cheeks throbbed at the unfortunate word choice, and he studied her with a peculiar expression.

      With a slight, formal bow, he held out his hand. “Dharamdev Gideon. The Leadership Council sent me.” Ione’s heart sank. So this was her replacement, after all.

      His skin tingled with magical energy as she shook his hand. She should have recognized it last night, the vibrational hum his proximity—and his touch—had set off inside her. It was magic—ordinary magical ability and not the pulsing tremor of some karmic sexual connection. She tried to ignore how the warm vibration of his skin touched off

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