all strung, attached and hanging upon silver, brass and black iron and steel fixtures. The entire rainbow dazzled. And bewildered. There were massive structures stretching over six, seven, even eight feet across, and smaller ones hung as if fruits laden heavily within an orchard.
Overwhelmed by it all, she clutched her arms about her and looked to CJ, who still stood in the doorway, ankles casually crossed and thumbs hooked in his jeans pockets.
“My home,” he offered.
“There are so many.” She spread her arms as if to take them all in, but it was impossible. “And all of them on all the time?”
“Yes, I never turn them off. Have a backup generator up on the roof in case the power goes out. It’s disconcerting at first.”
“I’ll say.”
She moved down the aisle toward the kitchen. The loft was spread across an open floor plan. To her left, a huge four-poster bed mastered what must be the bedroom, with a Chinese screen offering little privacy, save perhaps to stand behind to dress. The kitchen sat plopped in the center of the vast hardwood-floored area, the chandeliers above it all clear and casting a rainbow upon the counters and fixtures. Way over to the right a comfy gray couch and a few easy chairs gathered about a massive granite coffee table.
Behind her and around a long counter forming a half wall along one side of the entry looked like where CJ might do his spellwork. A scatter of magical accoutrements sat beneath crystal clouds of dazzling light.
Stumbling, she stepped aside a heap of jeans mounded on the floor and noticed other things lying about. An empty box here, a pair of boots over there. A tangled electrical cord and various screws and bolts, perhaps from the installation of a chandelier. Sigils had been drawn with what looked like white spray paint here and there on the hardwood, and she noticed some on the brick walls, as well, but had no clue how to decipher their meanings.
The place was a mess below, but above? Some kind of crystal heaven. And she didn’t subscribe to the idea of a physical heaven.
“You take a look around,” he said. “I’m going to start something for supper, as promised. You like the tiny tomatoes?”
“Love them.”
“Caprese salad, it is. I’ve fresh mozzarella and capers and a delicious red wine vinaigrette from a local artisan who lives just down the street.”
Reaching up, Vika touched a particularly low crystal hanging in the center of a chandelier that spanned five feet in diameter. Tucked among the behemoths were smaller, more personal light fixtures one might see above a dining room table. There must be hundreds.
She walked down the aisle along a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows where old wooden shelves harbored dusty vials and pots and vases of herbs and potions. A gorgeous ruby crystal chandelier captured her attention, and she stopped below it and caught the red reflections dancing on her palm.
The overall result of chandeliers filling every space in the air above her was both gorgeous and terrible. It was as if Versailles had been slapped together with a cheesy Las Vegas casino. Kitschy. Disturbing. Strangely sexy—like the man himself.
She hadn’t seen anything lovelier. And at the same time, never had she seen something so monstrous. These light fixtures had been hung in an attempt to fend off the demons infesting CJ’s soul. And the man slept with them on all night?
“I would go mad,” she whispered.
More so, if she lived in this place, the disorder would send her to madness faster than the cacophony of light. The urge to tug on some rubber gloves and mix up an herbal cleaning solution tweaked at her sense of order as she ran her fingers over the light coating of dust on the well-pocked butcher-block worktable.
Behind a curtain of crystals strung on thin wire that served as a sort of veil instead of cupboard doors, sitting on the shelves were dusty bottles of vampire ash, faery ichor, angel dust and bat brains. Standard spell ingredients. And then the less standard, such as a newborn’s cry, demon scales and the air from a corpse’s hollow skull.
Distracted by an open grimoire, she checked over her shoulder to ensure CJ was still in the kitchen. Flipping back to look at the cover, she saw his book of shadows featured the three faces of Hecate: snake, dog and horse.
“Without death there can be no new life,” Vika whispered, recalling Hecate’s teachings.
Leaning over the red leather-bound book, she inspected