Chapter 10
Tia waited until darkness shrouded the busy neighborhood and the streets emptied of traffic before she approached the coffee shop. She’d arrived in New York hours ago, but after settling into the elegant apartment her staff had arranged, she’d taken time to brew a new batch of potions. It wasn’t often she spent an extended amount of time in a Gyre—especially one this powerful—and she fully intended to take advantage of t he extra magic.
She was a woman who always took advantage.
Life had taught her that if she wasn’t on top, she was on the bottom. And she was never going to be on th e bottom again.
Stepping out of an alley, Tia walked to stand directly in front of the glass door of the small coffee shop. The Witch’s Brew . Tia rolled her eyes. Everything about the place was chintzy. From the coffee cup in the center of the witch’s hat on the neon sign. To the windows that were painted with Easter Bunnies. Breathing a soft incantation, Tia released a burst of magic that sliced through Maya’s layers of protection before crushing the lock. It didn’t matter that she was destroying property and breaking several laws. She wanted inside, that’s all that mattered.
Pushing open the door, she closed it behind her before turning in a slow circle. The inside was just as chintzy as the outside with gleaming white tiles and frilly dollies on the tables. The sort of place for a basic human, not a mage with extrao rdinary powers.
With a shake of her head, Tia moved into the attached bookstore, pausing to absorb the peaceful atmosphere. There weren’t any spell books on the shelves, but there was some sort of magic drifting in the air. It brushed against her with a delicate urge to sit and relax.
Once she accepted that there was nothing of value in the room, she moved toward the office. She’d kept a close watch on the shop for the past two hours, making sure that Maya was gone. She wanted to discover what Maya had unearthed about Batu and his potential return to life without enduring a face-to-face conversation. The stubborn mage would withhold the information just to be a p ain in the ass.
Skirting past the long table in the center of the room, Tia was a few feet from the private office when she abruptly spun around, her gaze darting fro m side to side.
There was nothing to see beyond the shadowed outline of bookshelves and large, cushioned chairs set near the table, but Tia wasn’t fooled. There was someone lurking in the darkness.
“Who’s there?” she demanded, more annoyed than frightened. She was in a hurry. She didn’t have time to be interrupted.
“Jinx,” a male voice responded. “I was going to ask you the same question.”
Tia slid her hand into the pocket of her Burberry jacket that she’d matched with a pencil skirt and three-inch heels. She’d filled a dozen round vials no bigger than pearls with a variety of potent potions. They weren’t designed to kill, but they would make any attacker very sorry they’d chosen her as a po tential victim.
“ Show yourself.”
She sensed rather than heard the approach of the intruder, and, moving until her back was pressed against the wall, she reached out to switch on the overhead lights. Instantly a soft glow spread through the room, revealing the short, oddly dressed male with a hat shoved down to his eyes and his face hidden behind a thick beard.
He looked like a garden gnome wrapped in a vel our sweatsuit.
“Go away,” she commanded, assuming he was a homeless person who’d followed her into the shop.
“ Jinx,” he said.
“Jinx?” She scowled. That was the second time he’d used that word. “Is t hat your name?”
“Name?” He clicked his tongue, continuing toward her until he was standing just a foot away. A tremor shook beneath her feet. An earthquake in Jersey? Odd. “My name is Joe,” he chastised.
“So why do you kee p saying Jinx?”
“Don’t you know anything? You say ‘jinx’ when you both say the same thing. Although it’s usually at the same time or something—”
“Shut up,” s he interrupted.
“You shut up.”
“Seriously, stop talking,” she hissed between clenched teeth. “You don’t want t o piss me off.”
“Why not?”
Tia forced herself to count to ten. She didn’t want to hurt him. Not when she suspected he struggled with his mental health. She might be the bad guy, but she didn’t abuse the defenseless victim s of the world.
“Unfortunate things happen when I’m mad,” she ground out.
Joe tilted his head to the sid e. “Like what?”
Tia allowed her magic to tingle through her blood. She didn’t have to physically hurt him to drive him away. Lifting her hand, she was preparing to launch her spell when her magic abruptly faltered, her breath tangling in her throat. The male in front of her was no longer an annoying pest. He might look the same, but a fierce emerald fire burned in his eyes and the tremors beneath her feet buckled the floorboards and sent several books flying fr om the shelves.
It was a blatant warning not to use her magic.
“You’re not human?” she breathed, trying to determi ne what he was.
The creature shrugged. “Ne ither are you.”
She ignored his accusation. “Not v ampire. Demon?”
He sniffed, as if offended by her question. “There are no words t o describe me.”
She narrowed her gaze. “Oh, I can t hink of a few.”
Joe smiled, the air scented with...what? Power. That’s the only way she could describe the sharp, painfully crisp odor. Power at its most raw a nd basic form.
“Feisty ,” he murmured.
Tia battled against her strange urge to cower from the stranger. She’d faced down murderous humans, feral demons, and the Cabal. She wasn’t going to ben d her knee now.
“Did you just c all me feisty?”
“Hmm. Let me think.” The creature had the audacity to stroke his beard, as if in deep thought. “Yes. Yes, I rathe r think I did.”
“You.” Tia wrapped her fingers around a potion bead in her pocket. She was going to singe that beard off his face. Then they would see wh o was laughing.
“Enough playing.” Joe abruptly interrupted her angry thoughts, stepping so close she could feel the heat pulsing off his body. “Why are you here?”
Her lips parted to tell him to go to hell when she was captured by his emerald gaze. Suddenly the room disappeared and there was nothing but her companion and the need to offer him the informa tion he wanted.
“I’m loo king for Maya.”
“Why?”
She licked her lips, struggling against the compulsion to answer his questions. “Wha t do you care?”
“She’s under my protection.”
Tia released a humorless laugh. Only Maya would have this mysterious, insanely powerful creature as her perso nal protector.
“Of course she’s under yo ur protection.”
The male arched his shaggy brows. “You sound jealous.”
“I’m not jealous, I’m...annoyed.” The words were wrenched from the deepest, darkest part of her soul. Words she would rather cut her tongue out than admit. “Precious Maya was too valuable to be sacrificed by Batu, but he had no hesitation in trying to destroy me. And naturally she had to be rescued by Ravyr, who would have happily left me to rot in that hellish lair if he hadn’t been protecting his beloved woman. Then she manages to stumble across two of the most powerful mages to walk the earth in centuries, and instead of using their devotion to challenge the Cabal, she hides herself in a chea p coffee shop.”
Joe pursed his lips, glancing around the bookstore. “It’s not really cheap. You should see what she spends on those fancy little napkins and hand-painted teacups. Then there are the trips to buy her coffee beans—”
“What have you done to me?” Tia furiously interrupted the ridiculous babbling. As if she cared what Maya sp ent on teacups.
“Nothing.” There was a deliberat e pause. “Yet.”
Tia didn’t believe him. Not for a second. “You forced me to say those things.”
“I only did what was needed,” he assured her. “My grandmother would tell you that bitterness is better out than in. It eats away your soul. Plus, it gives you heartburn.”
“There’s no way you have a grandmother,” she snapped. “You crawled from be neath a rock.”
Joe shru gged. “Busted.”
Tia pulled her hand out of her pocket. The urge to toss a few potions at the aggravating creature was overwhelming, but she hadn’t survived for centuries by being impulsive. “What do you want from me?” she in stead demanded.
“Tell me wh y you’re here.”
She answered before he could force her. “I had a dream. Maya’s enemy is still alive.”
Joe muttered something under his breath. Words that Tia had never heard before. Then, without warning, he stepped forward and placed his palm against her forehead . “Let me see.”
“Stop.”
She lifted her hands, pressing them against his chest as she tried to shove him away. A mistake. As soon as she touched the velour jacket, she was sucked into a silvery mist that was bright enough to hurt her eyes. It was impossible to determine where she was; the only thing she could see was the towering form in front of her. She blinked, clearing her fuzzy vision to study the angular face that was framed by long, coppery hair that shimmered in the strange glow.
A choked sound of disbelief was wrenched from her throat as she tried to accept the blinding perfection of the male. He was gorgeous. Fairy-tale gorgeous with elegant features and bronzed skin so smooth it cou ldn’t be real.
It wasn’t until she concentrated on the stunning beauty of his emerald eyes that she was struck with the mind-numbing realization that she knew this male.
J oe. It was Joe.
Seemingly unaware that he’d wrenched her into this strange, misty bubble out of reality, the male abruptly dropped his hand, his expression grim as a thunderous power smashed into Tia, nearly driving her to her knees.
It wasn’t the icy pulse of a vampire. Or the blunt force of a demon. This seemed to well from beneath her feet. Like lava erupting out of a volcano.
“This can’t be allowed to happen,” he growled, turning away to disappear into the mist.
Tia watched in dumbfounded bewilderment, her hand reaching out as if she could stop him. Then, still struggling to wrap her brain around what was happening, the mist swirled and there was a weird popping sound. A second later she was once again in the bookstore. Tia slammed her back against the wall to keep her balance, gasping for air as if she’d been holdi ng her breath.
“Wh at. The. Hell.”