When he saw Elise paralyzed by her own wonder, Ivan walked over and helped her back to the car. "Are you sure you can drive?"
She nodded. "Do I look all right to you?"
"Lovely," he said, and regretted it instantly.
"Ivan, what's up? I just saw you. And I'll be seeing you again. We're calling an emergency council meeting on Friday."
"Mom." Ivan lay across the hotel bed and kicked off his boots. A boat motor growled outside. It was late. Someone must be docking for the night. "I've got a problem."
"A bigger problem than being the devil's fixer?"
"It's that same problem."
"I'm so sorry, Son-"
"Don't start, Mom. We've been through this."
"And we'll go through it again and again. I wish there was a way to atone for what your father and I did to you."
Yes, there were days he felt the same. And then he got over that bit of sorry-assed self-pity. He was no man to pout.
"You can help me with this problem. That'll go a long way."
"You need a denizen of the dark slain? A sin eater punished? Something you can't handle? I'm your woman." Ivan chuckled. He loved his mother. She was all leather and toughness, and sweet kisses to his brow. The woman used to stand down entire tribes of vampires when her quest had once been to annihilate the species. That was until she had met his father.
Good thing for that crazy love affair. Even if it had resulted in them promising their firstborn to Himself.
"Himself wants me to obtain the Grande Grimoire."
"Yeah, so what's new?"
"He's given me two days to do it. I've already insinuated myself into the witch's life. The one who guards the book. You ever hear of her? Desideriel Merovech?"
"Merovech?" She paused so long, Ivan almost wished he had the ability to read minds. Finally, Ravin said carefully, "I've heard of her. I may have even met her once. She must be very powerful. You know where the Merovech name comes from?"
"Not a clue."
"The Merovingians. Very powerful kings who ruled the areas of what is now France. They were allied with wizards and practiced an ancient form of witchcraft."
Ivan knew the Merovingians had reigned from the 500s to the 700s. Well. Was Dez that old? Not that age meant anything in the grander scheme, but to have lived so many centuries?
"Not any witch is chosen to guard the Grande Grimoire," Ravin added.
"I guess so." Memory of being washed out of Dez's house by a tsunami didn't improve Ivan's confidence at beating her with magic. "She knows her magic. Thing is, she knows what I'm after and has been able to block my every attempt, and I have no idea how to convince her to bring it out from wherever it is she keeps it. It's bespelled, I'm sure."
"Did you mention the council's idea about reversing the Protection spell to her?"
"No, but I actually feel she'd agree to that. She's not against vampires. She's like me, really."
"Does she know you're a vamp?"
"Yeah, the wild roses surrounding her house gave that away the first time we met."
"Ouch. Oh, Ivan, I worry about you. Your job is so dangerous."
"Mom." He rolled his eyes and felt like the kid at school whose mother follows him to the classroom door and gives his face a dash with a wet fingertip before sending him off to face the sneering bullies. It had happened once. The bullies had only laughed once, too. "I can handle myself."
"You need a woman."
"I need..." He sighed.
Always a conversation with his mother became a plea for his domestic satisfactions. Shouldn't she encourage him to live his life a few centuries before looking to settle down? She had lived four centuries before marrying.
"I need help, Mom. I cannot fail this task. I wondered if maybe-"
"I could talk to her? Ivan, I don't know. Wait! Why don't you bring her along to the council meeting? If she could understand the need for us to take action, perhaps she might draw out the grimoire so we can reverse the spell?" "It's a possibility. Dez is compassionate. I think she'd listen to reason."
"You say her name as if she were someone special."
"It's just a name, Mother."
"I'm guessing otherwise."
He rolled his eyes and beat his forehead against the pillow. Mothers were the same, no matter if they were mortal or otherwise.
And it gave him a tickle to know she possessed a domestic bone.
"So what's happened since I was last there? I haven't been following the media."
"A lot, and none of it good. Some paranormal sleuthing show actually has video footage of a supposed vampire drinking blood from a victim. I've seen it, Ivan. It's the real thing. While the public still thinks it's a hoax, it isn't going to be long before the video can be authenticated. I've put out a call to Lucy Morgan, a professional debunker and vampire. You know, Truvin Stone's wife.
She's very good at proving real stuff a hoax. But she said this is going to be a tough one. We've got to do something. Now."
"I'll be there. And I'll see if Dez would like to come along. Not sure if it'll help, but I'll try anything right now. Seduction is going over like a lead balloon."
"Seduction, eh?"
He could hear the smile in his mother's voice, and Ivan took that as his cue to say good-bye.
Her heart wasn't in the right place.
Or maybe it was, and she wasn't reading it right.
The idea to seduce the fixer in the cave had gone over not at all. Dez had spoken the truth about sex being simply sex. And yet part of her denied that vehemently. The deep, gushing, pulsing, pining inner part of her that recognized heart and soul and want.
"He's confused me. I'm trying to think logically, to do what is right for me. But I'm going at this the wrong way."
She knew that now.
Dez collected the glass jar from the shelf and carried it to the center of the still room where she'd cast a circle in Dead Sea salt upon the slate tile floor. White candles flickered at the four compass points. Rosemary and lavender stirred the candle fumes.
Removing the jar cover, Dez reached inside and drew out the slippery morsel. The fairy heart, about the size of an acorn, pulsed more rapidly at the sensation of her touch. It wanted. It desired.
Just as she did.
It would grant her clarity of heart.
To her right, on the edge of the marble butcher block, lay the long silver pin she'd acquired in the nineteenth century from a magician who'd once used it to pierce dove hearts on stage.
Dez wielded the silver pin before her, drawing it over the pulsing lump of muscle and ichor in her palm. Stepping forward, she positioned herself in the center of the salt circle.
Closing her eyes, Dez began to hum, and then intonated an ancient form of rhythmic spell. Quickly she was swept into the energy of spirit and air and earth and light.
Holding the heart between two fingers, and bending backward to expose her breast, Dez then spoke, "Bestow upon me clarity of heart."
The silver pin slid through the heart. Ichor-laden fairy blood dribbled down Dez's wrist and dropped, falling through the air, to land on her chest. There, right over her heart. The ichor, glittering and sizzling, burrowed through her skin.
From now on, she would follow her heart, be it to her best interest or the grimoire's. She had lived a rational life far too long.
Chapter 11.
T he air smelled sweetly of burning peat. Smoke half a mile down the road stirred gray tendrils into the teal and rose sky.
Ivan waited at the end of the walk before Dez's house.
"Like a sleeping beauty waiting behind impenetrable thorns," he muttered. "If she'd hack away those vicious vines it would make my life a hell of a lot easier."
But no one ever said Himself's fixer had an easy life. And Ivan liked that it wasn't. It made it easier to recognize the goodness when that did come into his life. It was rare, but, like the angels he instinctively sensed, he knew it when he saw it, touched it and heard it.
Dez Merovech was goodness.
And he would have to betray her to protect his parent's souls.
He could impart the fact she was very possibly a Merovingian and use that to make her less good. The Merovingian line of kings had been ruthless, albeit that was a mortal's point of view. The French kings had come into their own through wizardry and witchcraft in a time ill-equipped to accept the practice.
Didn't matter who her ancestors were. A man became who he wanted to be, not who his dead relatives thought he should become.
Really? So why do you consider yourself evil because you were born to it? Shouldn't you be able to rise above it?
Ivan winced at his conscience.
A flash inside the house caught his attention. He called out and waved.
If the witch had something so basic as a phone that would help, but she did not even have a cell phone. Her house was bare of most things normal people put inside their homes. Like furniture. And mementoes. And anything that gave a clue someone lived there.
"Interesting. She doesn't get attached to anything. Like men? Maybe that's why she was so willing to have sex."
Had they made love yesterday, it could have only been sex for sex's sake. Should have gone through with it. Shown her who was stronger, in control.
He would be smarter now. Though he couldn't deny he still wanted her-and maybe he didn't need a commitment to enjoy her.
The screen door screeched open and he waved to Dez. She pointed to the roof and slipped back inside.
"Well, it wasn't a no," he said, and took a running leap. He cleared the vines and landed on the roof before the attic window.
Standing and looking out over the treetops, Ivan picked out three church steeples nestled in the village of Willow Cove. "If someone saw me doing this-I'd have to pay them a midnight visit."
He did have a way to persuade the truth into a new reality for any innocents who witnessed his devilish dealings. It involved biting them and drawing out their blood while he worked the persuasion, but that was a bonus. Blood was his sustenance; he wouldn't deny himself of it ever.
"Too bad the persuasion doesn't work on a witch," he said, as he climbed through the open window.
Or did it?
He actually wasn't sure about that. Could he persuade Dez to give him the book?
"Huh. I'm just thinking of this now?" He turned and closed the window, but not completely. She must leave it open for a reason.
There was the trust issue. She still didn't trust him. She was playing with him. Letting him believe she considered him safe, perhaps even a friend, when really she was fully capable of kicking his ass to China should he even think about using force against her.
But drinking her blood?
When a vampire drank from a victim, that victim then experienced the swoon, an intense orgasm from the blood release. The vampire could persuade the victim into a reverie, and they would ultimately wake thinking they'd merely been bitten by a bug; the wounds might even have healed by then, and they'd believe they just passed out.
Ivan had never bitten a witch. Not because their blood was poison to a vampire-he had no fear of that. But if the persuasion did work with a witch, Ivan might be able to suggest Dez bespell the Grande Grimoire out for him to study.
Yes, to study. A simple front to mask more evil intentions. Because now that he knew what the book was about, he did want a few moments with it before handing it on to his master.
First things first. A private jet waited for him at the airport. It would leave in an hour.
Trailing his fingers down the bare walls to the bottom of the staircase, Ivan was greeted with a friendly smile. Dez gestured him into the living room while she plucked a teapot off the stove burner.
He glanced into the still room as he passed by. A scatter of something littered the floor. Salt? Had she been conjuring?
"I expected you," she called.
"And yet, still no brandy."
"I was done with alcohol decades ago."