The Entity Within

“Would it kill you to just accept her thanks?” Bella said with an impatient swish of her tail.

“He’s immortal,” Zoe said, repeating the words he’d said to her. “So obviously it wouldn’t kill him.”

“You wouldn’t know it by the way he’s acting,” Bella said. “Show him your mother’s necklace.”

Zoe reluctantly did so. “It’s amethyst.”

“Catherine the Great’s favorite stone,” Bella said.

“And I care about that because?” Damon said.

“Because the necklace has a bear carved into it.”

“A protection amulet against demons,” Damon said.

“See?” Bella said. “I told you he’d know what it meant.”

“Does it work?” Zoe asked.

“It’s an old wives’ tale. A myth,” Damon said.

There was no reason for Zoe to be disappointed. She already had a protection spell. She didn’t need an amulet.

“You look exhausted,” Gram told her. “Try to get some rest. Take a nap.”

Great. So it had finally come to this. Now Zoe had to nap before she could kick demon butt. She had never needed a nap before. A sniff of peppermint essential oil and she was usually ready to go.

But then she’d never dealt with demons before. Or hot vampires. What happened to vampires being cool, pale, and all shimmery? Was the hot thing unique to Damon?

Gram was right. Zoe was exhausted. And thinking about hot vampires wasn’t helping, which is why she made no protest as Gram and Damon left her alone to rest. Alone … with Bella.

The gray cat sat beside her on the bed. “Lie back and I’ll tell you a bedtime story about how I became a familiar.”

“You never talk about that,” Zoe said.

“Be quiet and listen. Once upon a time there was a beautiful, brilliant woman who married a count and became a countess who was a close confidante of Catherine the Great. They didn’t have Viagra in those days so the marriage with the much older count was a bust. But this countess was smart enough to make good connections and not get caught up in the backstabbing and the espionage taking place on a daily basis at court. I avoided any mention of the king of Prussia like the plague. Not that he had the plague, although Catherine’s husband, who had a similar problem getting it up, had smallpox before they were married. He was German as was Catherine, whose birth name was Sophia. But this isn’t about them. It’s about me. I had a great life until an evil witch turned me into a familiar and I had to do her bidding. The end.”

“That’s it?” Zoe said.

“What? You were expecting and then they lived happily ever after? Didn’t happen. When she died, I became the familiar to her daughter and so on until finally we left Russia for London before the Revolution. From there we traveled to Boston first class. The witches became more and more difficult and my life sucked until I was sent to you.”

“Why did the witch turn you?” Zoe said.

“She was jealous of my beauty and brains.”

“That’s sad.”

Bella eyed her suspiciously. “Are you hormonal or something?”

Zoe blinked back tears. She didn’t know why she felt sad, she just did. Like she needed a reason after what she’d been through lately.

“I could use some pet therapy,” she said.

“Get a dog,” Bella said.

Zoe’s lips trembled.

Bella shook her head but moved closer until she was curled against Zoe’s side. Once there she started purring. “Better?”

Zoe smoothed her hand over Bella’s head. “Yes, thank you.”

“Go to sleep.”

Zoe woke in time for dinner. She felt guilty wasting time that way and tried to make up for it by spending the rest of the evening alternating between going through the Adams Book of Spells and the Internet searching for a connection between the equinox and demons or any reference to the Book of Darkness.

The closest she got was a reference in their Book of Spells with drawings of demons with claws surrounded by flames. She’d never seen this page before. That was the problem with magic. Things had a way of appearing and disappearing at awkward times. Sometimes there were meanings behind it, or messages trying to be sent. But trying to decipher it all was not an exact science by any means.

Gram, still shaken from the Vamptown Council meeting, had been unusually quiet during their meal and had retired to bed early.

Damon focused on his phone.

“Anything new?” she asked.

“Not yet.”

Her cell phone rang. It was Daniella. “I’m so sorry about Tanya calling you and your grandmother in front of the council. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for you.”

“They told me you couldn’t attend because you’re not a member of the council.”

“Because I’m a hybrid.”

“Did you have flames at the cupcake shop?”

“No. You know, I may have been a bit off on my premonition. It could have been the flames through the floor vents and not that the entire neighborhood would be incinerated. Not that I saw anything incinerated. I didn’t mean that.”

“So what are you saying? That the precipitating event you listed before may not be a problem? That it’s okay to … you know.”

“You’re asking if it’s okay to have sex with Damon?”

“Yes.”

“That’s your call. I do know there is a very powerful bond between you two. Maybe it’s fate. Maybe it’s your destiny.”

Daniella’s words stayed with Zoe long after she’d ended the call.

It wasn’t logical but Zoe was dealing with legends and magic, not logic. She was also dealing with demons, darkness, and doom.

She wasn’t someone who used sex like chocolate to feel better after a bad day. At least, she never had been in the past.

Maybe when this was all over, if it went well and the demons were demolished and good won over evil then … maybe then …

Oh, who was she kidding? There was no guarantee that good would win over evil. Even Pat said the odds weren’t in their favor. Zoe wasn’t giving up, but would it be so wrong to …

Yes, it would. Anything that didn’t directly apply to destroying the demons and the book that called them forth was a distraction. It was wrong to think or speculate or fantasize about anything other than those goals.

“Something is wrong,” Damon said.

“Ya think?” Demons were threatening and she was thinking about sex with Damon. Hell yes, something was wrong.

“I haven’t heard from Simon. He hasn’t responded to any of my attempts to contact him.”

“Who is Simon?”

“My sire. The Demon Hunter who turned me.”

“How did he do that?”

“Simon used his fangs to open the vein on his wrist and then held it to my mouth, urging me to drink his blood. I did and that created an irrevocable bond between us. Because when you are turned, the first blood you get is from the vampire that turned you. He taught me how to survive the transition.”

“Survive it? I thought vampires are immortal.”

“You aren’t a vampire until you survive the transition. I did. Some don’t. After that, Simon taught me how to hunt.”