Chapter Eleven

A pregnant hush descended, followed by a swift sigh of relief from Calypso. Ignoring the sting of the wound Blake had inflicted, Mel opened one eye. Normally the sight of blood left her light-headed, and this time she swayed just a little before Palmer jammed a rolled-up towel over the thin cut.

A nervous laugh erupted from somewhere deep, and she met Blake DeWitt’s incredulous stare. “See? I’m fine. I’m not a demon. This is…great.”

Silence. Palmer stared at the bloody towel he’d removed from her hand. Calypso gasped, and DeWitt’s jaw dropped.

Uncomprehending, Mel glanced at her hand. The cut was gone. Not even a scar remained. She’d healed instantly.

“Uh…is this a bad thing or a good thing?”

Cal grabbed the knife from DeWitt and without warning jabbed the tip into the pad of Mel’s thumb. She yelped and pulled her hand away, shaking drops of bright blood across the white towel Palmer had spread on the coffee table.

Cal squeezed Mel’s thumb, and another dot of blood formed. Pain from the tiny wound radiated into her wrist. “Give it a minute. See if it heals.”

They all stared, and a moment later, another small drop of blood formed on Mel’s thumb.

“It’s not healing,” she said.

“Let’s try a bigger cut.”

“No!” Mel snatched her hand away from Calypso. “This is plenty, thanks. And it hurts. Look, there’s still a red spot there.”

“Cut her again.” Cal jammed the bone-handled knife back into DeWitt’s grasp.

Fortunately DeWitt hesitated. His bewilderment mirrored her own. “But I spilled her blood. Look at the towel.”

“The cut healed. Maybe the wording was off. Maybe you can spill her blood, but you can’t kill her.”

“Could we not try to find out, please?” Mel asked.

With a fierceness Mel had never seen before, Cal snatched the knife back and gestured with it. “This is important, Mel. Everything depends on us knowing whether or not you have the Cabochon.”

All eyes followed Cal’s movements. The knife blade flashed as she ranted. “If you have it, your life is in danger. Now, that first cut could have just been…an anomaly.”

“I don’t heal anomalously, Cal.” Mel stared at the spot where DeWitt had cut her. Palmer cupped her hand in his and ran gentle fingers over the soft, unbroken flesh. Under other circumstances Mel might have found the touch soothing, even sexy. She shivered but not from desire.

DeWitt pulled her hand away from Palmer. His voice went harsh, matching Cal’s tone. “Give me the knife.”

“I’m not a pincushion, you know. Cal, you said you would do a healing spell on me. Maybe—”

“Would do. Haven’t yet. Cut her.”

DeWitt obeyed, and Mel whimpered. Would this go on all night? After the blade sliced her skin again, she pulled her hand back. Palmer stood ready with the bloody towel, but there was no need. As they watched, the thin red line running from the base of her index finger to the heel of her hand faded to nothing.

“It still hurts, you know,” she announced just in case they decided to try best three out of five.

“It’s in you.” Cal’s conclusion silenced them. A cold sense of doom gripped Mel’s innards. “It has to be.”

Her shivering increased. “What does that mean? Are demons going to follow me for the rest of my life?”

“No. We’ll find a way to keep you safe.” Palmer didn’t sound convinced. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. The weight of it should have been comforting, but instead Mel felt smothered. She slithered out of his grasp.

“Cal? Tell me what I’m supposed to do now.”

“I don’t know. Of all the witches I talked to today, the general consensus was that this test would prove you didn’t have the Cabochon. It wasn’t meant for a human. No one wanted to consider the alternative.”

Anger bubbled inside her, hot and icy at the same time. “Well now they’d better consider it.” Her words ended with an odd growl, a snarl, and she covered her mouth with her fingers. “What the hell was that? Oh my God, I’m a demon. I’m a demon!”

She rounded the coffee table and scurried toward the bedroom. DeWitt’s heavy footsteps followed her, and his grim reflection met hers in her bedroom mirror. “You’re not a demon.”

“Yes, I am. I have to be. Palmer can’t remember me because I’m a demon. I absorbed the Cabochon because I’m a demon, and now I’m growling because I’m a demon!”

“That was your stomach. You’re hungry. Have a cheeseburger and calm down.”

“I’m not hungry. I haven’t been hungry since this happened, and I haven’t slept either.” She held out her hands for his inspection. “Do my nails look longer to you? Am I going to grow a tail?”

He raised one dark brow. “You’re going to end up in a straitjacket if you don’t calm down.” He put his hands on her shoulders, and his touch centered her. Her heart raced in her rib cage, and her whole body trembled as he pulled her back against his broad chest. “Palmer’s right about one thing. We’ll take care of you. We’ll figure something out.”

Mel nodded. It all seemed so simple. For a split second, the burden lifted, and the way seemed clear. They would help her. Between Palmer and Calypso and DeWitt, they would free her from this, and everything would be normal again. Then the crushing sense of doom returned with a vengeance. “Oh no.”

“What? A tail?”

She turned in his arms and spied Cal and Palmer watching from the bedroom doorway. “This means the only way to end your curse is for me to die.”

From the moment of Melodie’s realization, things went swiftly downhill. She panicked and threw a bit of a tantrum, which in all honesty, Blake couldn’t blame her for. He was somewhat pissed off himself. Fate had thrown a curveball he never could have anticipated. Killing a demon to retrieve the Cabochon had never posed a moral issue for him. Now, not only had he discovered he couldn’t kill the demon who held the gem, he couldn’t kill another human being to end his curse. Not that he’d actually considered it.

Why couldn’t it have been Van Houten? There was a moral dilemma he might have enjoyed grappling with for a while.

As it was, he sat now with the demon hunter in Melodie’s microscopic kitchen, eating cold cheeseburgers and drinking diet soda from plastic glasses.

He almost preferred his granite exile to making small talk with Joe College.

“So about how big would you say the Ak’mir was?” Palmer asked between one burger and the next. The All-American could certainly pack away food.

The faint sounds of a feminine argument drifted from Melodie’s bedroom, and both men paused to listen for a moment. “Maybe I should go in there…”

Palmer shook his head. “I have sisters. I never, ever get between them when they argue.”

“But they’re friends. They shouldn’t be—”

Something heavy hit the wall that separated the kitchen from the bedroom. Sobbing ensued. Blake tensed. Could this sudden attack of temper be a side effect of the Cabochon?

Palmer dug into another burger. “So this Ak’mir…?”

“It was huge.” Blake embellished. “Largest one I’ve ever seen.”

“How did you kill it?” The question had a skeptical lilt to it.

“I never reveal trade secrets.”

“And your trade is demon hunting now?”

Blake allowed himself a smirk. “Someone has to pick up your slack.”

All-American dropped his burger and scraped his chair back. “Hey, I was doing just fine until you came along. You blew out some valuable memories when you dusted me, and like Melodie said, it wasn’t necessary.”

“No, but it was fun.” His smirk morphed into a grin. Not much brought Blake pleasure these days, but seeing Van Houten all flustered and annoyed certainly did the trick. Blake braced for a tirade, prepared to match his nemesis insult for insult, but Melodie appeared in the kitchen then, looking reasonably calm and collected. She’d changed from her virginal white shift into an ensemble that virtually screamed Demon Queen.

Black boots laced up her calves, and skillfully faded jeans hugged curves he hadn’t realized she possessed. Skull beads dangled from the fringes of her leather belt, and she wore a tooled suede vest over a ruffled shirt. Silver earrings sparkled beneath her now voluminous chestnut curls.

Palmer’s eyes bulged, and his Adam’s apple bobbed.

Blake would have gaped also, but with Palmer practically drooling on the linoleum, he wanted to at least hold the illusion of being a little more sophisticated. “I didn’t realize getting changed could be such a battle.”

“I was upset.” She tilted her chin up, daring him to comment on her understatement. “I’m okay now. Calypso is going to talk to the witches again and find a way to get this thing out of me. She also promised to ask them about breaking the curse.”

“She promised, did she?” Blake had his doubts about Ms. Smith. He’d yet to meet a witch both capable and amenable to putting the vengeance against Percival Blake to rest.

Behind Melodie, Calypso appeared looking rather haggard. “I keep my promises, DeWitt. It’s not about you, though, so don’t get any warm fuzzies about it. If the Cabochon can be absorbed by a human, then humans will be at risk. You might not be able to hurt Melodie, but someone else acting on your behalf could. That interferes with the intent of the curse.”

“I often wonder what the real intent of the curse was. Percival Blake’s own son, Rene, was only twenty-four when his father died and the curse transferred to him. His son, Paul, was only twenty-seven. There’s no evidence that either of those young men hunted witches, yet they suffered for decades because of it. I’ve been at this half-life for ten years now, and I don’t know how much more I can take.” He glanced at Melodie, who might have been over her tantrum, but she looked anything but content at the moment. “At the risk of you all thinking less of me than you already do, if putting a human in danger will finally convince the esteemed Witches’ Council to end this…torture, then I’m all for it.”

Calypso glared, just as he’d suspected she would. Melodie only checked her watch and sighed. “I’ve got to go to work. Cal is going back to talk to her coven members tonight, so can one of you guys drive me?”

“I will.” Palmer practically leapt over the kitchen table. Fresh from his own short tirade, Blake had little fire left in him to fight for the privilege of escorting Melodie across town. He hung back as they made their way past Calypso and out of the kitchen. “I’ll follow after. I’m going to do a little demon hunting first.”

Palmer ignored the jibe, but Melodie glanced back over her shoulder. “Be careful.”

“Yes,” the witch added with a sharp curve to her tone. “We wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.”

“I apologize for my little freak-out back there,” Mel said when she and Palmer pulled up in front of Gleason’s. She had no idea how she was going to concentrate on work with every nerve in her body jangling and her brain on overdrive.

“Don’t worry about it. It has to be a shock…but just because you have, or seemed to have, absorbed the Cabochon, doesn’t mean you’re a demon. There’s obviously some sort of loophole in the curse. Maybe with no other demon available, the Gogmar had to give the gem to whoever was on hand.”

“The fact remains, demon or not, the gem doesn’t change hands unless whoever is holding it dies. I could have this thing in me for the next…fifty years or more.” She didn’t want to think about it, couldn’t stand the thought of Blake DeWitt waiting for her to die so he could have another chance at ending his curse.

Palmer shut off the engine and hopped out of the Jeep. He loped around the front end and opened Mel’s door for her. “I’m sure Calypso will come up with something. I don’t know much about witches, but rumor has it the Council is made up of some pretty powerful individuals. Hey, look, if someone could create a curse this powerful, there has to be someone who can break it, right?”

Mel’s boots hit the sidewalk, and again, a displaced sense of well-being washed over her. Sure, it would be all right. In fact, everything would be great.

She tossed Palmer a bright smile and sauntered toward the bakery. With practiced ease, she unlocked the door, punched in her security code on the alarm system and headed toward the kitchen. There would be four dozen carrot-apple cupcakes that needed autumn-leaf motif icing for the Women’s Club luncheon waiting for her. She’d have plenty to do, and even with Calypso gone, she’d have someone to talk to tonight while she worked.

That, at least, was something to be thankful for.

While she mixed a batch of sweet cream-cheese icing and sorted through Arnie’s collection of cookie cutters looking for the exact shape of autumn leaf she had in mind, Palmer played watchdog. After a quick recon of the alley, he stationed himself in front of the back door, arms crossed over his broad chest, blue eyes watchful and intense.

Mel would have found it amusing, and definitely sweet, except her thoughts swirled around DeWitt and the pain she’d seen in his eyes when he’d spoken of his family. Even though Percival Blake’s son and grandson would have lived more than two hundred years ago, it was clear that Blake felt a connection to his forefathers. Their lives had been diminished by a curse of vengeance, and beyond blood, he obviously felt a kinship with these men.

Tears stung her eyes and the back of her throat as she rolled out the fondant for the cupcake leaves. She turned away from Palmer and used the back of her hand to dab away the first salty drop of moisture that rolled down her cheek. If the curse passed from father to son at the moment of death, what would happen to a young child if his father died too soon? Blake hadn’t mentioned having children of his own, but the implications were staggering.

A full-body sob racked her as she cut the first leaf from a thin layer of orange fondant.

“Melodie? You all right?”

She squeezed her eyes shut for a second. “Fine. I’m fine.” She swiped another tear and turned. Her bodyguard gave her a curious grin that seemed to morph into a hot, sexy, come-hither wink. Was he serious? Mel almost laughed at her own absurd thought. Surely Palmer wasn’t coming on to her.

She shook off the tingle of curiosity that swept through her and fought to ignore the wicked hint of mischief that caused her to eye him from under her lowered lashes after cutting another leaf. Her ability to distinguish a good idea from a bad one fled after another sidelong glance at his broad shoulders.

She dropped the cookie cutter and stalked across the kitchen, drawn like a magnet to Palmer’s incredibly delicious lower lip. She cupped his jaw in her floury palms and lunged in for a feral kiss, a drink of him that ended in a bite.

Stiff as a mummy under her onslaught, he tipped back against the kitchen door and uttered a muffled, “Mfflat erf yudoo…ing?”

He tasted like sin, which happened to be Mel’s favorite flavor. She ignored his halfhearted protest and hitched one jean-clad thigh up on his hip. “I’m hungry. I haven’t eaten since yesterday, and I want a taste of you.”

“Uh…”

She had him writhing between her and the fire door. His hands seemed to be everywhere at once, which was fine with her until they ended up on her shoulders, pushing her gently but firmly away.

“I think maybe you’re a little stressed,” he said. His eyes were huge, and beneath her spread palms, his heart beat like a war drum.

“Come on. Don’t you want me? You drew a portrait of me, for heaven’s sake. You obviously put a lot of thought into my eyes, my hair, my lips…” She dove again, and he ducked, leaving her staring at the door.

“This doesn’t seem like you.”

“How would you know how I seem? You don’t even remember me from the other day. For all you know, after you killed the Gogmar, I might have been so grateful that I threw you down on the floor and had my way with you right here in the kitchen.”

He raised a brow and continued to back up until he reached the workstation island in the middle of the room. “You told me Blake came in and dropkicked me.”

“Maybe I lied.” She fingered the buttons on her shirt and let her hungry gaze travel down to an interesting spot just below his belt buckle. “Maybe we did things too wild to talk about.”

“Somehow, I doubt that.”

Mel pouted. She had no doubt that DeWitt would have accepted her advances and helped her slake her sudden desires. Maybe she’d go find him.

She dismissed Palmer with a wave and turned to open the back door. “Don’t say I never gave you a chance, hot pants.”

The night air hit her like a splash of cold water, followed immediately by the hot, putrid breath of a creature that made the Gogmar look cuddly.

Claws the length and shape of scimitars protruded from long, spindly fingers. Flesh the color of moldy bacon hung in folds from a body that had a few too many limbs and not quite enough muscle. A dozen clustered eyes, lidless and black as midnight, blinked at Mel, and a mouth that looked like a gateway to hell gaped at her.

She didn’t scream.

She wanted to, but fear had closed her throat up tight and threatened to suffocate her.

Behind her, Palmer’s voice reached her as if through a long, water-filled tunnel. “Maybe we should sit down and talk about thi—”

The demon struck, and everything went black.