That Old Black Magic - By Michelle Rowen Page 0,62

angelheart and the attempt to slap the silver chain on Brenda for her hellish job interview had both ended in failure.

And yet Lucas was still willing to take some of her darkness away from time to time so her soul wouldn’t be too damaged. It was still gray, even after all the black magic she’d burned through.

Thanks to Lucas.

Eden had to talk to him, and it couldn’t wait another minute.

She scrambled to her feet so fast it made her dizzy. Darrak was gone, no question about that, but it was possible he wasn’t gone for good. She might have a window of opportunity here—a very small one. So small she hadn’t even noticed it before.

This had to work.

Her hand shook as she slid it into the pocket of her coat to find the marble.

Nothing was there.

She reached deeper, then tried the other pocket, patting down the lining of the coat in case it had dropped through a rip in the seam.

Dark panic returned, chasing away her momentary glimmer of hope.

“Where is it?” she choked out.

Her mother and Ben had stolen Maksim’s containment spell while she’d been unconscious. Had they taken Lucas’s summoning crystal, too? It was all she had—the only way she could contact him.

She tried the pockets one more time as if the marble might have magically reappeared. “Why the hell isn’t it here?”

Then, shaking, tears streaming down her cheeks, she sank back down to the floor and grabbed hold of Andy as an anchor. He rested his currently furry head on her shoulder and whimpered.

“It’s too late. I can’t find it. I don’t know where it went. It was my only hope.”

Andy’s mournful whine turned into a dangerous-sounding growl, low in his throat. Eden froze, then slowly swiveled to glance over her shoulder.

Lucas stood behind her, his palm outstretched. On it lay the marble. “You wouldn’t happen to be looking for this, would you?”

“Wh-what are you . . . ?” She was so stunned she could barely form words.

He cocked his head. “I guess you were distracted earlier. You didn’t see me sitting in the corner of the café drinking a latte. Looked as if you and your mother were having a lovely family reunion. Warms the heart.”

Magic immediately crackled down her arms, begging to be used. “So you saw what happened to me and didn’t do anything?”

He seemed unimpressed with her show of anger. “No, I didn’t intervene. Sometimes it’s important to let nature take its course.”

He’d just been watching her get tranquilized and thrown in the back of a van while Darrak was trapped in here? “Was this all your doing, Lucas? Did you destroy Darrak?”

“If I wanted to destroy him, I would have done so a long time ago, Eden, and no adorable displays of magic would be able to stop me.” He slid the marble into the pocket of his rumpled jacket.

She wondered, not for the first time, why this was the form he chose to use here in the human world. From what she understood, he could look like anything he wanted. And yet, this disarming, brown-haired, brown-eyed man was his look of choice.

“You have to help me.” She forced the words out. “You have to bring him back.”

Andy stayed right next to her.

“But don’t you feel relieved that he’s gone? You’re finally free from him. You can admit it to me, Eden. I won’t tell anyone.”

“Do I look relieved to you?”

Lucas swept his gaze over her. “Not particularly. Honestly, though, it shouldn’t be such a big loss to you. He was trouble, he brought bad things into your life from the first moment he possessed you. I’ve told you before, Darrak was just some hellfire I decided to give a personality to once upon a time. Nothing worth shedding tears over.”

Yes, she’d heard this before, but she still didn’t care. Darrak came from lowly beginnings—so did a lot of people. Maybe not quite so literal, but it didn’t matter to her who Darrak was, how he’d been created, or how he’d spent the first portion of his existence. All she cared about was the man—yes, the man—she’d grown to know and love with every ounce of her being. He wasn’t simply hellfire with a personality. Not to her. Never to her.

Lucas cast a glance through the small office space. “You broke the door.”

“Screw the door.”

He touched the frame and it mended itself before Eden’s eyes, the shards of glass reforming so there wasn’t even a crack left to show what had happened