Something Wicked

Rick.

She’d staked out the hotel earlier. After months of following his ghostlike trail, she’d spotted him just before dawn and had followed him here. One bribe later and she’d acquired the number to his hotel room. She had to hope and pray that while she’d formulated her plan, he hadn’t left. Holding tight to a can of pepper spray in her pocket, she slipped into the alley and, once certain no one was around, jimmied the side door so she could enter without alerting anyone in the lobby. In the minutes just before nightfall, the place was fairly deserted. The hookers hadn’t yet shown up with their johns and the drug addicts weren’t yet sober enough to go out to find their next fix.

But Rick was here. He had to be. She’d been searching for months, ever since he’d disappeared the night Lilith and Mac had been attacked by the mayor. She’d heard from him only once, in a note she’d found hidden in the cash register at her shop, telling her goodbye.

The fact that he thought she’d leave matters alone on account of the contents of one scribbled note verified how little he knew her. Something had happened that night—something neither Mac nor Lilith nor Regina, the Guardian of Witches who had approved Josie’s search, knew about. Something that had sent Rick deep underground.

She’d encouraged him to help Mac and Lilith that night. She couldn’t help bearing some of the responsibility for the aftermath. But that wasn’t why she was here. The drive to find Rick after he’d gone missing stemmed from emotions she’d never felt before. She believed in Fate. She ascribed to the whims of Destiny. And yes, she even had faith in love at first sight.

Though it wasn’t sight that had drawn her to Rick. She wouldn’t deny that he was one of the most handsome men she’d ever encountered, but it took more than a hot guy to turn Josie’s head. Rick had a presence that struck her deep within her soul, in the part of her that longed for someone both normal and extraordinary at the same time.

She’d found that with Rick, she was sure. Unfortunately, he didn’t feel the same or he never would have gone.

Still, his disappearance left too many questions for her to ignore. On the most basic level, she needed to discover where he was and why he’d put himself into the dangerous, gray and bloody area between the magical and the mundane worlds. But more deeply, she had to know if maybe, under other circumstances, their relationship might have worked out. Too bad she had no idea which question she’d tackle first.

She approached his room cautiously. She wasn’t sure exactly what she was going to find on the other side of the pocked and peeling door, but she was about certain there wouldn’t be a single scented candle or soft, romantic music. Not in this joint.

“Don’t go in there.”

Josie yanked her shaking hand away from the doorknob and spun, startled. Unable to move—to even gasp in surprise—she watched Regina St. Lyon emerge from the shadows. Relieved, Josie allowed herself a split second to breathe.

“Oh, it’s you.”

“So you’ve found him,” Regina said.

“Nice to see you, too,” Josie said with a forced smile. She’d hadn’t exactly been avoiding contact with the Guardian of Witches, but she wasn’t thrilled to see her, either. For the past six months, Rick had been causing a disruption in the division between the mundane and magical worlds. As Guardian, it was Regina’s responsibility to find and stop him. Fortunately for Josie, even Regina’s considerable magical prowess did not include the ability to find a nonmagical human who did not want to be found—not and leave him alive. So she’d recruited Josie, giving her six months to accomplish her goal before she took matters into her own hands.

Josie’s time was nearly up.

Regina gave a polite bow and grinned. The effect relaxed the deep furrow on her forehead. “You look well.”

“I was going for sexy,” she answered, tugging her tank tops down a bit lower.

Regina arched a brow. “You plan to seduce him into stopping his rampage?”

“Sounds like a win-win-win for all involved,” Josie said with a smile.

While Regina had a tendency to blow up things that annoyed her, Josie believed in a quieter form of magic, particularly since she had no real powers. What could be more peaceful than motivating a man to stop wreaking havoc in the magical world by distracting him with sex?

Regina’s smile, however, disappeared. She turned her hand palm up. A ball of pure electricity materialized just above her flesh, then spun. The color, deep purple to match her eyes, was entrancing, but Josie knew the sphere was deadly. She’d never seen Regina use her most formidable weapon, but she’d heard enough to know she couldn’t allow Regina and Rick to meet. Not until she’d convinced Rick to give up his apparent quest to destroy all the evil magical beings he could get his hands on.

Not that destroying evil was bad. When Regina had first come to her to solicit her help, Josie had wondered what the problem was. She knew that the Guardian had entire teams of witches training to do exactly what Rick was doing on his own. But he was getting sloppy and if he wasn’t stopped, he was going to expose the magical world to the mundane one. And that wouldn’t be good. The Salem witch trials might have happened a few centuries ago, but they were still incredibly fresh in the minds of anyone who practiced Wicca.

Protecting the secrecy of witches was Regina’s primary duty. She’d vowed to do whatever she had to in order to keep the magical and mundane worlds from intersecting in a violent way. But about Rick, she was wrong. Josie knew that once she caught up with him, he’d listen to reason. And to present her arguments, first she had to go inside his hotel room.

“I will help him,” Josie insisted.

“It’s too late,” Regina said, her generous lips bowed in a tragic frown.

“You said I had six months. That leaves me one more week.”

“I’m not talking about time, Josie. Rick has been dealing with demons too long. He cannot possibly be the same man you knew.”

“You don’t know that,” she argued.

“I know what he has done. His choices—”

“Have served your ultimate purpose. He’s destroying your enemies,” Josie insisted, hoping to buy a bit more time.

Regina arched a perfectly sculpted eyebrow, her mouth still curved disapprovingly. “I cannot deny that Rick’s passion for killing demons has benefited the witching community, but increasingly—” she eyed the door Josie hoped Rick was still behind “—he’s becoming a danger to himself and the secrecy of our world. Look how long it has taken you to track him down. His crimes are coming to the attention of mundane law enforcement. Sooner or later, someone will connect him to us and I cannot allow Rick’s personal vendetta to expose my Wiccan sisters and brothers, magical or mundane. From this point, you should let us deal with him.”

Josie’s heart lurched. “What? Now that I led you to New York? To him? Besides, I thought I was one of us?”

Regina’s smile was only partly reassuring. “Mundane witches are the backbone of our community.”

“Then why didn’t I know you and the others existed until six months ago?”

“Because the knowledge often does more harm than good,” Regina insisted, her gaze slashing toward the door. “Look at Rick. Look at what he’s become.”

“I can’t,” Josie said, “you’re blocking my way.”

After a long pause, Regina stepped aside.

Josie had learned about sacred witches like Regina—those who possessed real, active powers—around the same time Rick had, but the idea that such magic existed still boggled her mind. Regina could materialize from nowhere. She had the ability to produce deadly bursts of energy from the palm of her hand. It had been hard enough for Josie to swallow the fact that Lilith St. Lyon, Josie’s best friend and Regina’s younger sister, was a powerful psychic who’d recently mastered the ability to project her thoughts into the minds of others. And there were other witches out there who could conjure items from nothing, stop time, create doppelgängers and hold sway over the dead. Certainly made Josie’s skills with aromatherapy, candles and, to some degree, potions, pale in comparison.

But no matter their magic, none of the witches could find a human who did not want to be found, particularly a former cop with impressive street smarts. Luckily for her, Josie had been raised on those same streets. Her mother, a longtime con, and her various “uncles” of dubious blood relation had taught her a few tricks of her own. Together with finely honed computer skills and the ability to persuade just about anyone to talk to her and give her information they didn’t want to share, Josie had finally tracked Rick down. She wasn’t going to turn around and hand him over to Regina without giving herself a shot at bringing him home.

“Thank you,” Josie said, placing herself firmly in front of Rick’s door. “I won’t let you down. I won’t let Rick down. I promise.”

Regina’s amethyst eyes narrowed. “This isn’t about you, Josie. This is about Rick. You may care about him deeply, even think you love him, but he’s descended to a place you might not be able to rescue him from.”

Josie lifted her chin defiantly. “I won’t accept that.”

Regina seemed neither surprised nor dismayed. “Then accept this.”

From her pocket, Regina removed a necklace—a green stone flecked with red and set within a gold, heart-shaped charm. She handed it to Josie, who gasped at the instant warmth of the gem against her palm.

“What is this?” she asked, shifting so the dim glow from the single working hallway light washed over the pendant. “A Valentine’s Day present?”

Regina snorted. “Guess again.”

She pushed aside her impatience to reach Rick and looked down at the necklace a second time, running her finger over the reddish-green stone. “Heliotrope?”

“Very good,” Regina complimented.

Josie might not be a sacred witch, but her knowledge of magical herbs and stones was unsurpassed—when she could clear her mind of worry over Rick long enough to think.

“It’s also known as bloodstone,” Regina went on. “A stone of this quality is very rare and very powerful. We use them for protection.”

Josie eyed the Guardian witch warily. “You didn’t add a touch of something else, did you?”

“Well, it is nearly Valentine’s Day,” she replied, a twinkle lightening her unusual eyes.

It was Josie’s time to laugh derisively through her nose. “Last time I checked, the cherub and chocolate holiday was not on the official Wiccan calendar,” Josie charged.

Regina grinned. “Not the official one, no. But St. Valentine’s feast day is tied to pagan fertility celebrations. And since I now know exactly what you’re planning to do to entice Rick back to Chicago…”

“I’m not planning on getting pregnant,” Josie reassured her. Quite certain her mother had never intended to be saddled with a child and knowing the aftermath of such carelessness, Josie had been practicing safe sex since she’d lost her virginity. Without exception. She’d use every weapon in her feminine arsenal to entice Rick home to Chicago, but she would never resort to involving an innocent baby.

“Good to hear,” Regina said, patting her hand. “But I didn’t think you’d go that far. I just know that Wiccan holiday or not, romance is in the air this time of year. Use it to your advantage.”

Josie laughed. “That’s exactly what I intend to do.”

At one time, Josie had doubted she’d ever have even half the self-confidence of either Regina or Lilith. But since meeting Rick—and then losing him before they’d barely had a chance—Josie had tapped into a determination she hadn’t felt since she’d left her grifter mother and started her own life in Chicago. So far, the cockiness had served her well. It wasn’t magic that would save Rick. It was love.

She held out the necklace. “I don’t need amulets or charms. Rick will come back with me in spite of magic, not because of it.”

Regina crossed her arms, ignoring Josie’s offering. “You think so?”

Josie stepped closer and pushed out her words through a determined mouth. This wasn’t the time to show anything but strength. “I’m not your minion, Regina. I don’t have to do things your way.”

Regina eyed her keenly. “No, you don’t. I’m a Guardian, Josie, not a queen. It’s my job to protect and defend.”

Though Josie had practiced the craft as she’d been taught by her aunt and her grandmother—embracing the power of herbs, scents and stones because they connected her to the Goddess and to Mother Earth—she was just an ordinary woman. She had no real magic. No power beyond her own wits. And from the intense look in the Guardian’s eyes, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

Josie swallowed thickly and placed the amulet around her neck.

“Rick is a mundane, like me. You’re part of the world I suspect he’s come to hate, for whatever reason.”

“You know the reason,” Regina insisted.

Josie shook her head. “Covering up for Mac and Lilith wasn’t enough to push him this far. There has to be something more. I’m going to find out what happened. And then, I’m going to bring him home.”

“What if you can’t?”

Josie sighed. She’d languished over this question every minute of every day since she’d set out to find Rick and stem the rampage he’d been on, hunting and killing the demons and warlocks better left to soldiers in Regina’s magical army.

“Lilith told me,” Josie admitted, hardly able to speak the psychic’s distressing premonition, “that I was the one who had to save him. Right after he disappeared, she tried using her psychic powers to find him and, instead, she saw me. She said if I didn’t succeed, he might kill someone who wasn’t supposed to die. And then he’d be lost. Forever. I can’t fail.”

Regina pursed her lips, clearly thinking over all Josie had said. “Lilith’s premonitions are terrifyingly accurate, but the future is never written in stone.”

She laid her hand on Josie’s shoulder, and then stepped back into the shadows. Her disembodied voice echoed through the dingy hallway and chased a shiver up Josie’s spine.

“You have one week. If you can’t stop him, we will.”

3

ONE WEEK.

One week?

Josie wrapped her arms tightly across her chest and leaned her forehead against the wall. She’d come so far. She wouldn’t stop now, not when Rick’s life was at stake. Any battle between the Guardian witch and the rogue cop would result in serious casualties. Stretching, she slid her hand, palm flat, against the door, hoping and praying he hadn’t escaped while she and Regina argued.

To find him, she’d tapped into skills she’d tried to deny since the day she’d been released from juvie for the last time. Once she was independent-minded enough to realize that her mother’s “games” deprived other people of their hard-earned cash and sense of self-worth, Josie had tried to stop the endless stream of cons and grift operations her mother had employed to keep them from living on the streets. But she’d never been strong enough or clever enough to change her mother’s chosen way of life. By the time she was a few months away from turning eighteen, Josie had known her chances of a normal childhood had run out.

Determined to at least keep her adult life cleansed of bad karma, Josie had celebrated her birthday by saying sayonara to her mother and moving back to Chicago. She took control of valuable real estate left to her by an aunt, opened her store and embraced the Wiccan religion of her grandmother. She’d completely reinvented herself, erasing a past fraught with illegal activity and devoid of hope. If she could accomplish such a transformation alone, then no matter what had happened to Rick to send him into this downward spiral, she knew he could come out of the darkness.

She’d make sure of it.

Revitalized, she tucked the necklace Regina had given her down into her T-shirt. Valentine’s Day. For others, it was the holiday of love. For Rick and her, it was D-day.

She knocked on the door, then pressed her ear to the scarred wood to hear if anyone moved inside.

Was that a groan?

She knocked again. “Rick?”

A grunt? Was he hurt?

“Rick!”

She tried the lock. It wouldn’t budge. She glanced down the hall, but nixed the option of running for help. The last time she’d hesitated for this long, Rick had eluded her, disappeared with nothing but a barely warm trail in his wake.

She backed up, aimed her foot at the area near the knob and kicked hard.

Pain shot from her heel to her thigh. She hobbled backward, cursing, when a crash sounded beyond the door. Instinct took over. She attacked again and this time, the lock surrendered, the door swung open and Josie toppled into the room.

The smell caught her instantly—the potent sweetness of leather, gun oil and shampoo. And…sage? She bent down to find wilted leaves strewn liberally across the threshold, then followed a trail to another collection beneath the window. Sage protected against evil. That together with the crisp smell of aftershave, the unexpected scent of a man she’d chased through Detroit, Pittsburgh, Boston and now, New York City, brightened her outlook. Maybe he wasn’t so lost after all. She clung desperately to her impressions of Rick Fernandez—salt of the earth. Even tempered. Open-minded. And at this moment—passed out.

The grimy windows, shaded by blinds with broken and bent slats, blocked out most of the neon glow from the signs outside. But in the center of the room, on a bed devoid of any covering except for crisp, surprisingly white sheets, lay Rick, facedown and fast asleep.

A clock radio, blinking the midnight hour for likely the last few years, had been knocked to the floor. Appropriate, since time stood still the minute she spotted him on the bed, covered only by a towel. His skin damp, his hair spiked from a shower and an empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s clutched in his hand, he was breathtaking.

His dark skin and muscles, which looked hard as stone even in alcohol-induced sleep, made her mouth water. A gold chain cut a contrasting line across his neck, and she imagined that the cross he always wore was tangled somewhere behind his head. They’d only had one real date six months ago and, despite their instant attraction, they’d opted to take things slowly. Now that she’d seen him nearly naked, Josie wondered what kind of a fool of a woman agreed to such a Puritanical condition.

Truth was, from the moment she’d met him, she’d fantasized about Rick naked in bed.

Just not exactly like this.

She shut the door. When she turned back, she gasped. He was sitting up, a gun leveled at her heart, his eyes glazed by a mixture of exhaustion and alarm.

“Rick!”

“Josie?”

She stepped into the dim light streaking in from the window. He scrambled across the bed and snapped on the table lamp.

“Josie.”

For a second, she thought she might have heard relief in his voice, but looking at the deep frown on his face, she figured the sound was simply wishful thinking.

With all the will she possessed, she remained rooted to the spot. She had to be smart. Keep her head. Think coolly. Logically. Just like Rick would have. Before.

“Yes, Rick. It’s me.”

He laid the gun on the mattress but didn’t take his hand off the grip. “What are you doing here?”

She pressed her lips together tightly, unsure at first what words would come out of her mouth. Why was she here? Really?

“I came to find you.”

He snorted. “Congratulations.”

Rick leaned over to the nightstand, exchanged the gun for a package of cigarettes and, finding it empty, threw it, disgusted, onto the floor. Glancing around, Josie doubted this hotel had smoking or nonsmoking designations. She was certain this dump had no maid service, much less the room service she needed to order up a pot of coffee to counteract the slight slur in Rick’s speech and the thick red rims around his once bright and shining dark eyes. Only six months ago, he’d been a cop. A detective. Decorated. Respected. Likely well acquainted with man’s inhumanity to man and yet, when she’d literally run into him at the police station on the day of her first and only paranormal premonition, his gaze had held a smart optimism that had instantly grabbed Josie’s attention.

Now, she saw none of that inner glow. She saw shadows. Anger. A deep, ravaging sadness. Hadn’t she expected this? She’d prepared herself for the jaded darkness that had to come with a man who’d just learned that the evil he’d been fighting all his career was a drop in the bucket compared to the evil that existed in secret. So why was a lump forming in her throat, which was so tight she was scared to breathe?

“Mac wants to meet with you,” she said, having practiced this speech to so many hotel mirrors since she began her search that she had it down pat. Mac Mancusi had been the Chief of Detectives when Rick had disappeared. He’d also been the only other Chicago cop to have witnessed the murders that had sent the city into a tizzy. The mayor dead. The lifeless body of one of the most powerful defense attorneys right beside him. Obviously, a murder-suicide. Obviously—only because Regina had manipulated the scene, with Rick’s reluctant help, to reflect just that scenario.

In reality, the mayor, a murderous warlock, had tried to kill Mac and Lilith so they couldn’t stop him from using the city’s criminals to do his bidding, and the attorney, a rogue witch, had been his right-hand man. Mac and Lilith had stopped the evil plot, but at great cost. Particularly to Rick.

“Mac, huh?” he asked coolly. “I figured he was the one who was two steps behind me this whole time.”

She eyed him quizzically. “No, that was just me.”

“I had no idea you had bloodhounds in your Latina genes,” he snarled, emphasizing the Cuban-American accent he’d long ago learned to play down.

She, on the other hand, suppressed the instinct to tell him off in rapid-fire Spanish.

“Our ancestors did find the new world,” she snapped back. “What’s one rogue cop to a whole continent?” She cursed. Now was not the time for petty exchanges. She did not have a lot of time. “Mac nearly died that night, Rick. Took two months before Lilith recovered completely. If not for them, a lot of people would have fallen under the influence of a very evil man.”

“He wasn’t a man,” Rick corrected, his frown revealing new lines on his once smooth and youthful face. He’d aged in six months. Physically and spiritually.

“He nearly killed your best friend,” she insisted, her heart cracking for the degeneration of the man she’d known, the man she knew he could become again, if only he could see she was here to help.

“Why do you think I left Chicago?”

“To play vigilante?”

His eyes widened at the snap in her tone.

“You think that’s what this is?”

“I think covering up the crime cut at your soul,” she admitted. “I think the magical world bursting into your ordered, ordinary life set you on a difficult path you don’t know how to get off of.”

For an instant, she thought she might have hit a nerve. But a split second later, the flash of surprise in his eyes disappeared.

“Go home, Josie. This is no place for a sweet kid like you.”

Okay, that crack made her fingers itch. By nature, she was a pacifist. But every woman had her limits. And one was being called a kid by a guy who’d had to take a very cold shower after the last time they were alone together.

“You’re kidding, right?” she asked, incredulous. “Who do you think you are, Humphrey Bogart? John Wayne? More like John Wayne Gacy, if you ask me.”

“I’m not a killer,” he spit.

“According to whose reality? I’ve seen the bodies, Rick. I’ve smelled the stench.”

“It’s not killing when the monsters aren’t human.”

“I don’t give a damn about them, you idiot,” she said, marching across the room until she stood at the edge of the bed. One glance into his liquid ebony eyes and her anger abated. He wasn’t doing a bad thing. Destroying evil was something he should be proud of. But he wasn’t proud— he was desperate. And that desperation was going to get him killed.