“One move out of you and I jam this into your throat!” I growled.
“You’re good at attacks for a witch!” he said. Oh, how nice of the home invader to give me a backhanded compliment.
I’d be fucking awesome if they actually taught girls to fight.
I thought I recognized this guy but I couldn’t place him. High school? Annual wizard gatherings?
His arms started to move and I jabbed him. He made a surprised choking noise.
“I’m dead serious,” I assured him. “I’ll draw blood and then some. I’ll eviscerate you.”
“I surrender,” he said in a relatively good-natured tone. “Wow, Helena, I’ll never mess you with again.”
Now I placed him.
It was Caleb. Stupid puppy dog Caleb. And I had actually scratched his throat with the edge of my chisel. I took a step back and he rubbed his throat.
“You were trying to rob my house!?” I shouted. “Get the fuck out of here!”
“Let me explain—“
“I don’t want to hear it! There is no explanation that would make any sense!”
“I thought we were friends,” he said, in his aw-shucks voice. “You think I’d try to hurt you or rob your house? I was trying to keep you out of harm’s way.”
“Make your explanation quick.”
“The whole reason Kiersten was trying to get this house is because she heard a rumor that there was a dangerous artifact inside that we could sell to the council for the standard collection fee, so that’s why she made the offer she did. It was kind of a risk for us, you know, because we didn’t know if we’d actually find anything, but as of two days ago a councilman came to us and said he’d double the fee. I didn’t want you to get mixed up in anything! I thought I’d just see if I could find the thing, turn it in, and give you the money after it was all done.”
“Caleb, that is some bullshit. Why wouldn’t you just tell me?”
“I would never put a lady in danger,” Caleb said. “If some demon sprung out of this thing I didn’t want you next to me.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Come on, don’t be that way. You know me. You know I’m a man of honor and I take care of the ladies in my life. Kiersten doesn’t even know I’m here because I didn’t want my lady getting hurt either.”
“Stop saying ‘lady’.” I huffed.
He threw his hands out like I was arresting him, while giving me an expression of dumbfounded hurt. “Sure, sure. I see now that this wasn’t the right way of going about it. I just didn’t want to cause you any trouble at all. I wasn’t going to keep the fee, cross my heart, I just didn’t want you or anyone else to be in danger.” He chuckled. “I’m gonna get oh-Calebed on this one for sure.”
As a reluctant yet constant follower of Kiersten’s social media, I knew that Caleb was about the most unpretentious manual laboring lug out there. She frequently made affectionate posts about the dumb things he would do, like eating potato chips in bed, making the girls nothing but frozen corn for breakfast, installing a light upside down, and painting an entire house the wrong color while she was out sick. These were all hashtagged #ohcaleb.
So it was a little hard to believe he was actually an evil mastermind.
But none of this made much sense. And I was still furious.
“What do you know about this thing?” I asked.
“Nothing much. Councilman Beck just told me that if existed, he wanted it. If that’s even the right thing. I just did a check for wards and found that.”
I was a little surprised Caleb even knew how to check for wards, but I guess we all needed it in this business. “And you cast a ward yourself and blocked the spirits,” I said. I was a little disconcerted that Caleb was this talented at magic.
“Of course I did! I don’t want to get into a ghost battle.” He laughed, getting more relaxed as he gave his wounds a once over and saw they weren’t really bad. “What does that have to do with anything? You haven’t been making friends with a ghost, have you?”
“No.”
“Ohoh, man. I bet you have. I won’t tell Kiersten, don’t worry, but you know that’s rule one, sister!”
“You better not tell Kiersten,” I said. “You better not tell anyone about any of this. This is my house. My stuff. The council comes sniffing around, I’ll blast them too. Tell Councilman Beck there was nothing here.”
He whistled. “Okay.”
Of course, he knew, as I knew, that I couldn’t fight the council.
He started moving to the door, with a few apologetic gestures. “You need any help with anything while you got me? As an apology?”
Suddenly Byron appeared behind him and grabbed Caleb in a chokehold.
“Shit!” Caleb said. He couldn’t even really see Byron. “Is this the ghost?”
“I’m the ghost,” Byron growled. “Thanks for buying enough time for me to break the ward, Helena. And you’re damn right you won’t tell the council.” He started chanting out some spell words in some demon tongue as Caleb tried to wrestle him off. It was obvious that Byron was stronger than Caleb. And he was definitely bigger. I felt a little strange pride in that, like I wished Kiersten could see that my ghost was bigger than her warlock.
My ghost? Don’t get that in your head, girl.
“You want to help me out here, Helena!?” he yelled frantically as Byron kept chanting. Dark smoke wafted from his lips to Caleb’s ear.
As Byron whispered whatever dark spell he was casting, he started to lose his grip on Caleb. The spell had weakened him, that was clear. It made sense. An incubus got his power from sex, so I was guessing all the power fueling him right now came from my kiss in the dream.
Caleb broke out from the demon’s grip as
