Strange Magic (The Witches of Cleopatra Hill Book 9) Read online

  But neither did she want to be his consort. She’d brought him here in a moment of foolishness and stubbornness, but that wasn’t his fault. None of this was his fault.

  On the other hand, she knew she didn’t have the courage to admit to him that somehow she’d managed to fall in love, not with the creature she’d brought here, but with the man who was supposed to help send him back to the netherworld where he’d been created.

  “I — ” She stopped there, not sure what she’d meant to say. “Do you have a name?”

  “No. It is for you to name me.”

  Great. If she named him, that would mean just one more connection between the two of them. “I think you should choose your own name.”

  “I do not know your names.”

  Well, this could go on all night. In desperation, she got up from her chair and went to the nightstand. Sure enough, there in the top drawer was a Gideon bible. “Here,” she said, and placed it on the table in front of him. “There are all sorts of names in here. Pick one.”

  He lifted a curious eyebrow, then opened the bible. His brows drew together.

  Oh, shit…maybe he can’t even read.

  But that worry disappeared soon enough, since she saw the way his lips shaped the words as he ruffled through the pages. Well, he could speak English, so she supposed he must be able to read it as well. Magic could do funny things.

  “Leviticus,” he announced after a long pause, and she had to fight back an incongruous giggle.

  “That’s a little unwieldy,” Zoe said. “Could we shorten it to Levi?” And that was a little too close for comfort to the name of the man who had inspired her creation’s face, but she knew it would be far too difficult to explain to the strange being who sat across from her. Levi he would be, it seemed.

  “If that is what you wish.”

  What she wished was for none of this to have ever happened, but it was a little late for that now. “I think it would be easier,” she said gently. “Anyway, Levi, it’s late, and I don’t think now is the time for us to be making any big decisions. Why don’t you come back in the morning, and we can have breakfast and talk some more?”

  And maybe by then I’ll have figured out what the hell I’m supposed to do next, she thought. Or at least I’ll have had a chance to talk to Evan.

  “And then we will be consorts?”

  “Um…not exactly. But it’ll give you a chance to see a little more of how the world works.”

  He seemed to consider that statement. “Very well. I will be here in the morning.”

  “Not too early,” she warned him. “Do you know how time works?”

  “It is always around us, if that is what you mean.”

  “Not exactly.” She pointed at the clock. “You see how it says ‘2:33’?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that means it’s very early in the morning, just a few hours past midnight. I want to meet for breakfast at ten. That’s eight hours from now.”

  Frowning, he glanced over at the clock, and then back at her. “An hour is an increment of time.”

  “Yes. It has sixty minutes in it.”

  “I do not know what a minute is.”

  “Well — ” She floundered for a second, then said, “Let’s watch the clock together. It just turned over to 2:34. In sixty seconds, it’ll be 2:35. Watch the clock, and you’ll see how long a minute is.”

  “If you wish.”

  They were both quiet then, staring at the clock until the display showed the time as 2:35. Zoe looked over at Levi. “You get it now?”

  “Yes. Sixty of those is an hour, and ten in the morning is seven and a half hours from now. I will be here then.”

  She summoned a ragged smile. “Ten it is. And Levi — ”

  “Yes?”

  “You might want to find some shoes while you’re at it.”

  A glance at his bare feet, and then he sent her beatific smile, one that would have made shivers go all down her back only a day and a half ago. “Shoes. I will do that for you, Zoe.”

  And then he was gone, vanishing into the darkness as if he’d never been there at all. Zoe drew in a breath and glanced around the room, but yes, she was alone.

  What the hell she was supposed to do next, she had no idea.

  17

  He’d definitely heard voices next door. Evan told himself he should go back to sleep, that what he’d heard was just Zoe watching TV — for all he knew, she was a night owl, or an insomniac — but dammit, one of those voices had sounded like hers. The other was definitely male.

  Silence fell once again, however, and he glanced at the clock. Two forty-two. Not exactly the best time of night to go knock on someone’s door and ask if they’d had company recently.

  He was here to watch out for her, though. What if the creature had appeared and had stolen her away, right under Evan’s nose?

  No, he doubted something like that could have happened. Zoe would have kicked up a ruckus, would have screamed and started fighting back. The whole hotel probably would have heard that kind of commotion.

  Just do it, he thought. If she’s fallen asleep with the TV on or whatever, apologize and go back to bed. Better to embarrass yourself and know she’s safe. You know you’ll never forgive yourself if something really has happened to her.

  So he got out of bed and pulled on his jeans and the T-shirt he’d left draped over the back of a chair. He wouldn’t bother with shoes, but at least he was covered enough to venture out into the hallway.

  After sliding the key card for his room into his pocket, he went out into the corridor and then lingered for the longest time in front of the door to Zoe’s room. He was going to feel like a real idiot if he woke her up.

  She’d forgive him, once she knew the reason for his disquiet. Or at least he hoped she would.

  He raised his hand and knocked softly on the door, saying, “Zoe? Are you okay?”

  To his relief, she opened the door just a few seconds later. If she’d been asleep, he doubted she would have been that fast. Dark hair tumbled over her shoulders, and he tried very hard not to look any further than that, because he could see she wore a thin-strapped tank top that only came down to mid-thigh, baring her long, tanned legs. Also, that tank top wasn’t doing much to conceal her chest.

  Before she could speak, he said hurriedly, “I thought I heard voices.”

  She peered past him into the hallway, but since it was the dead of night, no one else was out and about. “Come in,” she told him, her voice barely above a whisper.

  Evan really wasn’t sure how good an idea that was — not with her looking like that — but he also knew he didn’t have much of a choice. He moved past her into the room. The bed was definitely rumpled, as if someone had slept there, but the lamp on the nightstand had been switched on. The TV, however, was off.

  Well, of course she turned on the light, he thought. You made her get up to answer the damn door.

  Since he didn’t know where he should sit, he went to the window and stood there, pretending to look through the sheer drapes out to the parking lot below. Zoe came over and paused a few feet away from him, arms crossed.

  “He was here.”

  Evan didn’t ask who “he” was, even though in his own mind, he always thought of the creature as an “it.” “Here?” he demanded. “In your room?”

  “Yes, here,” she said, sounding tired. “I was asleep, and something bumped into the bed…and there he was.”

  “Why didn’t you yell for me?”

  “And wake up everyone on the floor? That’s a great way to keep this whole thing quiet.” She pushed her hair back from her face. For the first time, Evan realized she didn’t have on a speck of makeup, but he liked her this way. Something about it seemed more honest. Besides, those big dark eyes with their long, long lashes hardly needed any embellishment. “He didn’t — he didn’t hurt me or anything. We talked.”

  “You talked,” Evan echoed, voice flat. “About what?”

&n
bsp; “Well, he’s still pretty insistent on being my consort. And….” She paused then, her gaze not meeting his. “He’s changed again. He looks — well, he looks like the way I’d meant him to look when I first conjured him. You’d never think…anyway, he’s not going to make any crowds of people scream and run away now, that’s for sure.”

  Evan sure as hell didn’t like the sound of that, just because it seemed to confirm the nagging fear he’d had for a while, that eventually the creature would come into its — his — own, and then maybe Zoe wouldn’t be nearly as repulsed by him. She’d have the man of her dreams, and Evan would have to go back to Jerome, alone again.

  Stop the “woe is me” shit, he thought, right before he said, “If he was so insistent about being your consort, how’d you get him to leave?”

  “I promised him we’d have breakfast and could talk more in the morning, but it was way too late tonight for that sort of thing.”

  “And he agreed to that?”

  “Yes,” Zoe said, then burst out as he frowned at her reply, “Stop looking at me like that! What else was I supposed to do? I needed to buy us some time so we could figure out what to do next.”

  Any protests Evan had been about to make died then. She was right — they did have to come up with some kind of plan, even if he had no idea what that might be. “What time?”

  “What time what?”

  “What time did you tell him to come back?” he gritted.

  Her eyes flashed with dark fire; he could tell she wasn’t thrilled by his tone. But her voice was even enough as she said, “Ten o’clock. I didn’t know if I could push it much later than that.”

  “We’ll just have to work with it.” He ran a hand through his hair, no doubt making it stick out every which way, but he couldn’t worry about that right now. “At least now we know when he’s going to show up, so we can be waiting for him. I’ve been working through your spell in my mind, and I think I have an idea on how to reverse its effects so we can send him back for good this time.”

  “No,” Zoe said, and Evan’s scowl deepened. He wondered if he somehow hadn’t heard her correctly.

  “What?”

  “No,” she repeated, her voice firm. “I know this is going to sound crazy, but — but I talked to him, Evan. I don’t care if I somehow managed to conjure him out of nothing. Now he’s a real person, with thoughts and wishes and needs of his own. Sending him back, making him nothing again…it would be like murder.”

  He couldn’t be hearing this. Had Zoe just gone right off the deep end? Wasn’t the whole point of this exercise to get rid of the creature she’d summoned?

  “You’re right,” he said, and watched her expression relax slightly, right before he added, “It does sound crazy. So, what — you’re going to make him your consort after all?”

  “No.” She glanced away, small white teeth working at her lower lip. “I don’t want him to be my consort. I want — ” The words broke off as she appeared to wrestle with herself. “I want you to be my consort, Evan.”

  She might as well have punched him in the gut. Such a blow would have produced pretty much the same effect — the sensation that he couldn’t quite breathe, that there wasn’t enough air in the room to fill up his lungs. Never mind that he’d been doing his best to ignore his attraction to her, the growing need that he’d never be able to satisfy. He couldn’t be her consort. He was absolutely the worst person in the world for that particular job.

  Somehow he managed to get out, “I can’t.”

  He’d expected her face to fall in disappointment. Instead, she raised her chin and said, “I don’t think that’s your decision. I think that’s for the universe to decide.”

  Which was true enough. The individual wishes of the prima-in-waiting and her consort didn’t factor into the matter. Either they were compatible, or they weren’t. Still, Evan wished he could come up with some sort of logical argument as to why her suggestion was all kinds of crazy. But with those big dark eyes staring up into his, her full mouth parted slightly, the logic centers in his brain seemed to have taken the night off.

  Apparently taking his silence as tacit agreement, Zoe went on, “I’ve spent the past year kissing guys I really didn’t want to kiss. Now I have someone standing in front of me that I’ve wanted to kiss almost since the moment I saw him. Just let me have that, Evan. Maybe you’re right. Maybe you aren’t the one, and it’ll just be a kiss. At least it’ll be a kiss I actually wanted. Anyway, the universe will tell us one way or another, won’t it?”

  “I — ” He shook his head. Right then, in the depths of the night and with his brain fogged with weariness, maybe it didn’t seem like such a bad idea. No, he really didn’t think he was her consort. But to be able to kiss her just once, to feel those soft, full lips against his, to take her in his arms and hold her…well, he’d be crazy to pass up that opportunity, wouldn’t he?

  Or maybe he’d be even crazier to take it. For the longest moment he stood there, gazing down into her lovely face as he warred with himself. This had the potential to go so horribly, horribly wrong.

  On the other hand…maybe it would go completely right. Right then, he just didn’t have the strength to fight the attraction any more.

  “Yes,” he said, “let the universe tell us.”

  She smiled and came to him, wrapping her arms around his waist. Ah, she was a goddess, the sweet scent of her hair, the sensation of her full breasts pressed against him, unencumbered by a bra. Hot, cramping need went through his body, making him grow stiff already, and they hadn’t even kissed yet.

  Well, he’d just have to remedy that situation.

  He bent his head, and claimed her mouth with his.

  Pure, sweet golden light. That was what it felt like, arcing along every nerve ending, rushing through every limb. None of the other candidates’ kisses had felt anything close to this, even the ones who seemed to know what they were doing. No, their kisses had left her cold, because they weren’t the one.

  But Evan was. Heat flooded all through her, the need for his mouth, his touch. At the same time, she could feel her powers waking even further, energy humming in all the cells of her body. Her aunt had told her this was what it would be like, and yet Zoe had still found it difficult to believe her words, to think that one man in all the world would be the match to her soul, the single person to ensure that she would be a prima in possession of all her powers.

  The kiss lasted forever, an eternity in which their mouths touched and their spirits mingled. At last, though, she knew she’d have to come up for air, and so she pulled away ever so slightly so she could gaze up into his face…his dear, perfect face.

  His breath was ragged and hoarse, a glow of perspiration on his forehead. “Was that — ?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, Evan. That was the soul-mate bond waking up. You’re my consort.”

  He still looked completely dazed. “But…how can I be? I’m too old, and — ”

  “I suppose the universe doesn’t care about that as much as you think it did,” Zoe replied with a smile. Her whole body was thrumming, and she had to make herself stand there and talk rationally with him when all she really wanted was to push him onto the bed and let him finish sealing the bond between them. “Luz tried to explain it to me. She said that there were probably several people at any one time who could be a prima’s consort, but they wouldn’t necessarily cross paths. Maybe there was someone else in New Mexico, or Colorado or Wyoming. That doesn’t matter, because the person here and now who is best suited for me is you, Evan McAllister. And anyway, that whole thing about candidates being under twenty-five is really just tradition.” She didn’t mention him being divorced, even though she knew that no de la Paz prima had ever bonded with a divorced man.

  Until now.

  Pulling in a breath, she added, “It’s not like someone came down from the mountain with it written in stone. Understand?”

  “I think so.” His gaze traveled to her mouth. “Can I kiss you
again?”

  “I’d be pissed if you didn’t.”

  In the next second, their lips were touching again, all sweet fire, and her body throbbed with need once again. She wasn’t even sure who made the first move toward the bed, only that suddenly they had both fallen onto the mattress, mouths devouring one another as she grabbed his T-shirt and pulled it over his head, and he pushed up the tank she wore so his hands could close on her breasts. His touch made her gasp. She’d never realized her breasts could be this sensitive, that the whisper of his fingertips across her taut nipples would be enough to make her ache with desire.

  Then he let go so he could grasp the hem of her tank and pull it all the way up, drawing it over her head just as she had with his shirt a few seconds earlier. The cool air of her hotel room washed over her bare skin, and she sucked in a breath.

  “You’re perfect, Zoe,” Evan whispered. His hands moved over her, tracing a path from her waist back up to her breasts. “Every inch of you.”

  “So are you,” she said, which was only the truth. He still wore his jeans; however, the light from the bedside lamp sent the defined muscles of his stomach and chest and arms into sharp relief. She’d hoped he would be built like that, but somehow seeing his body revealed made her want to just stare, to drink in all of him, every perfectly sculpted detail.

  His fingers hooked into the waistband of her panties, but then he paused. “Is this — is this what you want?”

  Was he kidding? Right then she couldn’t think of anything she wanted more. “Of course it is. It’s what we’re meant to do — to seal our bond.” As he still seemed to hesitate, she added, “And if you stop now, I will never forgive you.”

  She’d said the words in a halfway teasing tone, but they seemed to be enough to convince him. He pulled down her underwear, while at the same time she reached over so she could undo the buttons of his Levi’s and yank them down along with the black boxers he wore, although she was careful not to get them hung up on his obvious erection. He was big. She’d sort of expected that, because he was tall, but being confronted by the reality of him was a little overwhelming.