The Entity Within (2 page)

“What do you have against witches?”

“Everything.”

“That’s no answer,” she said.

“It’s the only answer you’ll get from me.”

“What’s the matter? Are you afraid I’ll cast a spell on you?”

He laughed. “I’d like to see you try.”

“It won’t happen. I’ve given up the practice of witchcraft. Instead I run a legitimate business.”

“Yeah, I read that you run some kind of soap business.”

“It’s not just soaps, it’s bath and body lotions.”

“Magical potions,” he said dismissively.

“That’s not true.” She could tell by his expression that he didn’t believe her. “Look, I didn’t even know there were vampires in this neighborhood until we got here.”

“Then you should have turned right around the moment you found out.”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“Not true. I had you thoroughly researched. You and your grandmother.”

Her heart dropped. No, he couldn’t possibly know everything. Only the other witches in their coven back in Boston knew everything, and they were bound by their own laws not to reveal a thing.

KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON.
Zoe had the T-shirt packed in her belongings back at the house. She should have worn it today—but how could she have known she’d be dealing with vampires? As if moving halfway across the country wasn’t bad enough, now she had Damon Thornheart to contend with.

So he’d had them researched. So what? All she had to do was stay calm. Stay calm and carry on. Oh yeah … and also lie. Big time. Because the truth could get them into a cauldron-ful of trouble.

Chapter Two

Damon clenched his fists. Witches. Why did they have to be witches? The only thing Damon disliked more than witches was demons. He
detested
demons. He merely disliked witches.

He knew how to deal with demons. Not only was he a vamp, but he was also a Demon Hunter. Sending demons back to the hellhole they’d crawled out of was the primary purpose in his afterlife.

His secondary purpose for the time being was to disrupt the facade of calm that the witch had displayed up to this point. He’d sensed Zoe’s panic when he’d mentioned researching them.

“Is that fear I see on your face?” Ignoring the emphatic shake of her head, he continued, “Good. You should be afraid. Be very afraid.”

Damon knew he was being rude and he didn’t care. He’d never been known for his courtesy, but rather for his ruthlessness. That’s why he was so good at security. He always got the job done, no matter what it took.

It was a shame that vampires couldn’t compel witches the way they could humans. Then he could just get rid of Zoe by sending her and her grandmother packing right back to Boston.

Instead he’d had to listen to her claims that they wouldn’t cause any trouble. Yeah, right.

Vampires weren’t known for their patience, and Damon had long ago lost what little he had left. He was accustomed to the loner life of a Hunter. He took jobs like this one in Vamptown when business was slow and to keep up to date on the latest high-tech gadgets. He’d signed a one-year contract as head of security, which was the blink of an eye in vamp terms. Time took on a different meaning when you had an eternity.

Not that vampires were infallible. They could be killed by fire or decapitation.

Damon eyed Zoe, who kept her gaze fixed on the sports memorabilia on the wall by the bar. She was pretty if you went for long dark hair and porcelain-pale skin. She wore a black top and pants along with a red sweater thing that looked like it had shrunk. Even so, she clutched it around her body as if it could protect her from him.

Which was stupid. Nothing could protect her from him.

When she’d first walked into the bar, he’d noticed how tall she was and that she was not wearing those ridiculously high-heeled shoes women went for these days. She had long legs and nice breasts.

The most striking thing about her was her eyes. One was green and the other was blue.

She turned to face him. This was the closest he’d been to her. Before a table had separated them. Now there was little space between them. Her eyes mesmerized him.

“Is that a witch thing?” he said.

“What?”

“Your eyes.” He reached out to shift a strand of her dark hair away from her face so he could get a better look.

Her eyes widened at his touch. He kept his expression stony, but inside he was startled by his reaction to the feel of her soft skin and silky hair. His fingers tingled.

Dammit, had she cast some sort of spell on him? He eyed her suspiciously. He never tingled. He got hard. He wanted sex. But he never tingled.

“Whatever you’re doing, stop it,” he growled.

“Doing? I’m not doing anything,” she shot back. “You’re the one who touched me.”

“A mistake I won’t make again,” he said.

“Good. Glad to hear that. And no, my eyes aren’t a witch thing. I mean, yes, it’s true that several generations in my family have eyes like this, but so do humans.”

“Your grandmother doesn’t have eyes like that.”

“My mother did.”

“She’s dead,” he said.

Zoe took several steps back but kept her eyes on him. If looks could kill, hers would have reduced him to a pile of burnt ashes. She had some serious power locked up in that mild exterior. He wondered what it would take to make her lose control.

She jabbed her finger at his chest. “You’re not fit to talk about my mother.”

Even her finger jab made him tingle, and that angered the hell out of him. Who did she think she was, telling him he was unfit? “Why? Because I’m a vampire?”

“Because you’re arrogant and rude and mean.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Those are not good traits,” she told him.

“They are in a vampire.”

“Nick doesn’t seem to be like that,” she said.

“He’s already taken, so don’t think you can seduce him into your bed.”

Shaking her head, Zoe took several big steps even farther away from him. “That comment was completely inappropriate.”

She sounded so prim and proper that Damon was totally turned on. The Hunter in him responded to her retreat, making him want to give chase. The vampire in him responded to everything about her.

She wasn’t the first witch he’d ever come in contact with, so he couldn’t blame his reaction on that. No, there was something about her specifically that he was finding incredibly sexy.

“Are you trying to cast a spell right now?” he demanded suspiciously.

“No. I already told you I’ve given up the practice of witchcraft.”

“Witches lie,” he said.

“Perhaps some do. I don’t.” Her gaze turned thoughtful. “What made you think I was trying to cast a spell?”

“Nothing.” He wasn’t about to admit that she got to him.

But she seemed to know anyway. “Right.”

“Don’t look so smug, witch.”

“Don’t look so angry, vamp,” she instantly shot back.

Now Damon’s eyes were the ones that widened. No one ever spoke to him that way. He was feared on five continents. He’d escaped one of the levels of hell and had done more killing than he could keep track of.

Yet here she was, standing before him, refusing to back down. But she had shown fear when he’d talked about investigating her background. And she’d shown anger when he’d mentioned her mother. Those were both weaknesses that he was determined to check out. Because he wasn’t about to lose in a power struggle with a witch, no matter how sexy she was.

*   *   *

“So did you and Damon work things out?” Gram asked Zoe once they’d returned to their rental house.

“You mean Damon the Demon?” Zoe said.

“Don’t say that.” Gram looked around nervously. “Demons are not to be messed with.”

“They’re not real,” Zoe said.

“No? Vampires and witches are real. So are demons.”

“Have you ever met any? I don’t mean warlocks who are demon-mean. I mean a real demon.”

“I’ve heard about them and that was enough,” Gram said with a shiver. “How did we get on this horrible topic anyway?”

“You asked me about Damon.”

“He seems nice, right?”

“Nice?” Zoe stared at her grandmother in disbelief.

Gram grinned and elbowed her like an adolescent girl at a sleepover. “I think he likes you.”

“I think he wants to stuff me in a boiling cauldron or toss water on me like the witch in
The Wizard of Oz
and watch me wither away.”

“He certainly was watching you, that’s for sure,” Gram said.

“He dislikes me and all witches, that’s what’s sure.”

“Why would he dislike witches?”

Zoe shrugged. “He wouldn’t say.”

“I don’t understand. We told him we wouldn’t cause any trouble.”

“I know. And speaking of that, he had us investigated.”

Gram’s face paled.

“It’s okay.” Zoe gave her a reassuring hug. “Our coven back in Boston is bound by our laws not to reveal our secrets.”

“Right. If Damon knew the details, he’d have tossed us out immediately.”

“But he is suspicious, so we have to be very careful,” Zoe said.

“Certainly.”

“And that means not drawing attention to ourselves.”

“Unless it’s your Bella Luna products we are drawing attention to, right?” Gram said.

Zoe was proud of the online natural botanical beauty line she’d started. Her business was still in its up-and-coming stage, but a popular artisan soap blogger had said the Bella Luna soaps were among her favorites, which had resulted in a nice boost in sales.

“I do wish you’d let me amp up your products a little,” Gram said. “I could make the anti-wrinkle cream a real winner.”

“No magic.”

“Too late,” Gram admitted.

“What did you do?”

“I used an unpacking spell to get your work area all set up with your creams and things. The upstairs apartment is perfect for your business. It has its own kitchen for you to work out new mixtures and soap combos.”

“The soaps are the most popular items in our product line. I can hardly keep up with the demand,” Zoe said.

“If you’d let me help you by tweaking a few of your items then you could afford to hire someone to help you. I hope you’re not angry that I cast a spell to unpack things for you.”

Zoe headed upstairs to check things out. Her grandmother’s spells had been known to go astray in the past. Her mother’s final spell had ended her life. Zoe no longer trusted magic to always do good.

Zoe couldn’t afford to think of her mother at the moment. She had to stay focused. Looking around the large room that was the new home of her business, she gave a sigh of relief. Nothing was broken. Rows of muslin-wrapped soaps were neatly stacked on shelves. They were in alphabetical order from apple spice to wintergreen, a remnant from her days as a librarian back in Boston. She’d had to leave her job when the books had all started speaking to her at once. The cacophony had been deafening.

Zoe still wasn’t sure what had caused that phenomenon. Sure, growing up she’d always had a close affinity with books, and sometimes she’d inadvertently make the characters of her favorite stories hop off the page and dance around her room—like the time at age five when she’d done the bunny hop with the Cat in the Hat from the book of the same name. But she’d never had her books screaming at her simultaneously, creating a deafening sound that made it impossible to think straight. The library had thousands and thousands of books, all of them screaming various quotes from within their pages or yelling her name. It was worse than the decibel level in the front row of a rock concert combined with the blast of shrieks from a haunted house on speed.

Gram swore she’d had no part in the occurrences at the library that had forced Zoe to leave. The incidents had continued even after Zoe gave notice, right up until she left the building. Thankfully no one else had been aware of the shouting books. Just her. She’d hated giving up a job she’d loved, but she’d had little choice. Zoe hadn’t been to a library since then.

While her professional life was up for grabs, Zoe’s personal life had been terrific. She’d fallen in love with Tristin Winters, a professor of paranormal activity at the local community college. She’d met him while still in library school. After two years as a couple, he’d proposed to her and she trusted him enough to tell him she was a witch. He’d been supportive and understanding. Given his chosen field of study, he’d known a great deal about witches and harbored no prejudice against them.

His requests for her to cast spells to help him economically had started innocently enough. Or so she’d thought at the time. His department had needed more funding, so she’d worked her magic on the lottery to allow him to win. It wasn’t mega-millions, but it was a nice amount.

He said he’d donated it all to the college but that more was needed. He went on and on about the difference his work could make in the world of paranormal research and how he’d studied in Nepal and wanted to help the people there. She hadn’t been a total patsy. She’d checked out his story; Tristin had indeed studied local legends and lore in Nepal. He’d shown her photos of himself with the locals. The faces of the children had been the breaking point for her.

So she’d applied her magic to Wall Street for him. Just a few stocks. Nothing meant to gain attention.

When her mother died and Zoe refused to use magic any longer, Tristin left her. He’d used her and broken her heart. Zoe’s grief at the loss of her mother and the betrayal of her fiancé had nearly undone her. She’d wanted to give up.

Instead she turned to what had been a hobby before—making soap. At a time when her life had seemed out of control, she had been able to focus on creating her own recipes and mixtures for a line of botanical bath and beauty products that were pure and natural … and devoid of magic.

“Does everything look okay?” Gram asked her. “I don’t want your business to suffer because of my mistakes.”

“Having an Internet-based business means that I can pick up and move easier than if I had a bricks-and-mortar store,” Zoe replied.

“Speaking of stores, did you notice the cupcake shop down the block from Nick’s bar?”

“Yes. We will definitely have to check that out later.”