That Old Black Magic

FOURTEEN

Eden had a hell of a hangover. Somehow, somewhere, she’d drank way too much and now had to pay the price.

Her eyelashes fluttered as she opened her eyes.

“Eden, sweetie,” her mother’s brand-new voice said softly. “You’re awake. Good.”

“Give her a minute,” Ben said. “She’ll be woozy for a bit.” Her throat felt like sandpaper. “Wh-what happened? Where am I?”

“You’re safe.”

She was confused, but her vision began to come into focus. “You… have you taken me to the Malleus?”

“No, of course not,” Ben said. “This doesn’t have anything to do with them. They don’t need to know about this. It’s safer that way.”

Safer. Sure, now he gets cautious when it comes to those jerks. Maybe he’d learned a few things in the last little while.

Wait a minute.

She tried to push herself up and looked around the small enclosed space. “Where am I?”

“In a van I rented,” Ben said.

“A van. So you…” She felt her shoulder where the injection went in. “You drugged me and threw me in the back of a van?”

Her mother’s currently young and beautiful face loomed in front of her. “Seemed like a good gathering spot on short notice.”

“And what is this? Your intervention?”

Ben cleared his throat. “Yup. Kind of amateur, I’ll admit it, but it worked well enough.”

Unbelievable. How many times did she have to say she didn’t need anyone’s help before they’d leave her the hell alone?

“I don’t have time for this.” She glared at them. “You have no right to approach me ever again, you hear me? I swear to God, if you do then you’re both going to be sorry. I don’t want your help or your stupid intervention.”

“It had to be done,” Ben said. “You’ll see that eventually. Maybe not today, but soon. And you’ll thank us for this.”

Her eyes narrowed on him. “You know, I once thought you were a really nice guy, Ben. Someone who wanted to do the right thing, even at a cost. I heard you’d left the police force.”

“Couldn’t balance things as well as I thought. Had to choose.”

“I guess that brand on your arm made that choice nice and simple for you.”

“I know you think the Malleus are evil, but they’re not. Not all of them, anyway.” His jaw clenched as if he didn’t entirely believe his own words.

“Let me out of here. Now.”

They exchanged a look. Great, Ben and Caroline had forged a bond of some kind. United to save Eden from the big bad demon. How did they even meet?

She felt magic spark in the palms of her hands, ready, willing, and able to be used whenever she liked. “You have three seconds to get out of my way. Three, two, one.”

When they didn’t do anything, she cast a focused look at the back doors of the van and they swung wide open. She scooted toward the exit before she noticed something that made her gasp out loud and her heart start pounding hard in her chest.

“Why is it dark out?” She didn’t get an immediate reply so she turned to look at them. “What time is it? How long was I out?”

Caroline pressed her lips together and glanced away.

Ben held Eden’s gaze steadily. “It’s six o’clock. You were out for a little over an hour.”

Eden began to tremble. “No… but — but I need to—”

She leapt out of the van and scanned the parking lot. They hadn’t gone anywhere. They were still here, next to her Toyota. Next to Triple-A. She ran so fast she nearly twisted her ankle. The door was locked and she yanked on the handle so hard it hurt her hands.

Fumbling in her pockets for the spell, she realized with a horrible sinking feeling that it wasn’t there anymore. Suddenly, Caroline was next to her, the paper clutched in her hand.

“We had to do it to save you, Eden,” she said, her voice shaky. “It’s going to be better now. You’ll see.”

Tears blurred her vision, and she snatched the paper away, quickly speaking the Latin words to break the spell that had sealed the office up. There was a slight swell of light to show it worked.

She grasped the door handle and pulled, bursting into the office. “Please, please still be here.”

A large doglike creature scrambled toward her, and she reacted instinctively, balling her hand, ready to unleash magic to protect herself if the werewolf attacked. Instead, it sat down on its haunches in front of her and whined, raising its front leg to paw at the air.

“Andy… what happened? Where’s Darrak?” She turned in a circle. “Darrak! Where are you?”

Andy tilted his muzzle back and howled mournfully.

And then she just knew.

Darrak wasn’t here. He’d been trapped inside the office by the spell. He couldn’t possess Andy since he was a shifter. Darrak had nowhere to go when he lost solid form.

He was gone and she hadn’t felt a thing. Nothing. She’d felt nothing. Not even when she’d woken up — not even a twinge of pain to signify what had happened.

But she felt the pain now.

“Sweetie,” her mother said from the doorway. “Come on, let’s leave. Get a good night’s sleep. Things will be better tomorrow.”

“Things will be better tomorrow?” she managed. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done here?”

“Yes,” Ben said. “Something that should have been done weeks ago.”

“It’ll be okay now,” her mother soothed. “And… uh, why’s there a big scary-looking dog in here? Where’s Andy?”

A moment later, the glass door shattered into a million pieces. Caroline shrieked.

Eden turned to face her mother and Ben, the two people who’d taken Darrak away from her. They’d decided to save her from the demon who possessed her and they’d gone ahead and destroyed him.

“I’m going to kill both of you. Right now.”

Power surged into her hands. Lucas once told her that using black magic to kill a mortal would turn her soul jet-black. She’d be hellbound with no chance for redemption.

At this moment, she honestly couldn’t care less. Darrak was gone, and it felt as if her heart had been torn right out of her chest.

She did love him — utterly and completely. But she’d been afraid to admit the depth of her feelings for him, even to herself. She hadn’t known how she’d truly felt until it was too late.

He was gone, and nothing else felt like it mattered anymore.

“Don’t, Eden.” Ben held his hands up. “We did this to help you!”

“I loved him. And you took him away from me, you self-righteous son of a bitch. I want you to suffer. I want to watch you bleed.”

“Eden!” Caroline snapped. “Don’t do this. He was a damn demon who’d corrupted your soul. How could we not do anything we had to do to help you?”

“He wasn’t just a demon. Not to me.” Her voice was eerily quiet. The flood of black magic had given her that much — cold, emotionless resolve. “He was everything. He was a part of me. And now there’s a hole where my heart used to be — a wide, gaping chasm of darkness.”

“Oh, don’t be so damn melodramatic,” Caroline snapped. “And don’t aim that nasty magic toward us. I raised