Part 12 (1/2)

I frowned at Parrish's inert shadow. Another suspicious thought occurred to me. ”You're running from someone, too, aren't you?” ”Let's just say an unfortunate incident caused me to consider a permanent relocation.”

”You p.i.s.sed someone off,” I translated.

”Not precisely. Unless you consider that someone myself.”

”I'm confused,” I admitted.

”I'll tell you all about it come nightfall. I promise. That is, if I can stay here?”

I let out a sigh that let him know he'd won.

”Thank you,” he said. Then his head flopped down against the beanbag, and Parrish went back to the sleep of the dead.

With Parrish pa.s.sed out on my favorite napping spot, I had no excuse not to do the dishes. I don't really enjoy was.h.i.+ng up, but the apartment didn't come with a dishwasher, and I've discovered that there's a certain rhythm to the work that gets me kind of Zen: scrub, rinse, stack, repeat.

Besides, the kitchen was sunny and cozy. An archway led to the tower, a small, circular room with windows on all sides. Sunlight streamed in everywhere. I'd opened them to let in the smell of the neighbor mowing his lawn. The door was closed to protect the sleeping Parrish from the harmful UV light.

I loved my kitchen. As a Witch, I'd very consciously worked at making the hearth the heart of my home.

Maple cabinets stretched from floor to ceiling, and like most kitchens built in the Victorian era, mine was narrow and cramped. Instead of trying to work against that, I brought the walls in closer with a peachy-yellow paint and filled the shelves with books and various knickknacks. I displayed my grandmother's needlework in frames on the walls. The kitchen was my nest.

As I worked at a particularly tenacious glob of melted cheese stuck to the side of my favorite copper-bottomed pot, I thought about the last few days. They'd been doozies, starting with Lilith's destruction of my driver's license.

Lilith certainly had been omnipresent in the past forty-eight hours. Never since the first night we merged had She been so... there. We used to share this body without a lot of ha.s.sle. Honestly, most days I barely remembered She possessed me. On average, She let me live a fairly routine life. Sometimes I'd have to control her rising when I felt a particularly strong emotion, like anger or, well, even s.e.xual desire, but I'd always won before. I'd always been able to contain Her.

I s.h.i.+vered, remembering the helplessness of being discorporate. How had She done that? And not one, but two dreams in which She spoke to me?

Something was seriously wrong.

I had to put a lot of elbow grease into dislodging the goop, and the bite mark on my shoulder throbbed in protest. Then there was Sebastian. Lilith didn't like him; that much was obvious. I liked him quite a bit, but he definitely came with complications: an irritating son, the corpse of a lover who was dead/not dead whom he clearly still pined after, and... well, and now there was the matter of the stolen book, whichwas not entirely my fault, but a difficulty nonetheless.

Now to top off an insanely bizarre couple of days, the only other vampire lover of my life shows up, unannounced, looking for a place to stay. d.a.m.ned if Parrish's appearance didn't seem a bit too coincidental for my taste. I couldn't see how all the pieces fit together yet, but I felt a strong sense that everything was connected somehow.

Barney jumped onto the countertop and made a slow, deliberate procession across the back of the sink, delicately stepping around the faucets. Pausing at the pile of dishes blocking her way, she glared meaningfully at me, as if to say, ”This obstructs me. Remove it.”

”I'll put the dishes away in a minute,” I lied. I had no intention of touching the pile of drip-drying dishes and utensils I'd precariously stacked in the drainer on the counter. I disliked was.h.i.+ng, but I absolutely loathed putting things away. Why put everything back in the cabinets, if you're only going to pull them out again? Much easier to just retrieve them from the counter, I figured.

Instead, I pulled the plug. Barney and I watched the sc.u.mmy soapsuds disappear down the drain.

”What's your theory?” I asked her. ”Why is Parrish really here?”

Her drawn-out meow sounded a bit like ”I dunno.”

”What about Lilith?” I asked my cat. ”Why is She so powerful right now?”

Barney apparently had an answer to that, because she leapt over to the bookcase that held all my recipes and the ephemeris, which I used to cast my daily progress chart.

I spent the next several hours poring over my astrological textbooks.

First of all, I read up on Jupiter. Jupiter is called the ”great benefic.” It's the astrological symbol of fortune, luck, optimism, and generosity. When any planet goes retrograde, its energy is considered blocked. So the short of it was that with Jupiter retrograde, I couldn't count on getting a lucky break.

Anything that could go wrong, would.

Which fit directly with my next discovery.

Lilith, the asteroid, had moved into a powerful new position in my natal chart. That is to say, the asteroid had returned to the precise location in the sky it had been on the day of my birth. Not surprisingly, Lilith was, as we say in the astrological business, well aspected in my birth chart- almost all of my major planets interacted with the asteroid in one way or the other. Thus, Lilith influenced every part of my life.

With Lilith's return to the same placement, all those bonds were reenergized.

”Wow,” I said when I looked up at Barney, who lay sprawled across the pile of books and papers I'd spread all over the kitchen table. ”Lilith must be drawing on all this activity to boost Her power over me.”

Barney cracked open one yellow eye. She extended her front paws until the flash of claw showed. Then settling back down, she rested her chin on her outstretched limbs with a huff of a sigh.

”Well, excuse me for being so slow,” I muttered, rubbing her exposed belly fur. Barney s.h.i.+fted onto her back so I could reach more of her tummy and began purring contentedly.

According to my computations, the asteroid would be in this position on and off for the next several days. Lilith the G.o.ddess would be able to tap into this power during that entire time. Picking up my pencil, I chewed on the eraser.

Barney looked briefly put out that I'd stopped single-mindedly rubbing her belly, but after a little s.h.i.+ft of her shoulder blades so she could cover more of my pile of papers with her body, she shut her eyes.

Closing the book I'd been consulting, I sat back in my chair. I tapped the pencil against my chin. So now that I knew where Lilith got the strength to take over my body, how could I stop her from doing it again whenever she liked-especially since the transit was supposed to last until next Wednesday? And then, in the way of the ”wanderers,” would be back again for another few hits over the next few days.

I got up ostensibly to get myself a soda from the fridge but, really, I think best on my feet. Barney, who had started to snore, didn't even twitch a whisker as I made my way across the creaky linoleum, which was good, because I knew she wouldn't approve of the answer already forming in my head.

Magic.

What else was there, really? The true question was, what kind of spell should I use? Would a general protection spell counter the celestial vibrations from the asteroid? I could certainly perform a quickie protection spell this afternoon that would cover me for a month and a day. Considering the company I was keeping and the threat of the Vatican agents, it was probably a good idea, anyway. I made plans to do one as soon as I could work my way to my bedroom and the attic door.

Barney's nose twitched in her sleep. She huffed, cracked open her eyes to give me a dirty look, stretched a paw to cover more of my books and papers, then settled back into her nap.

Grabbing a soda from the bottom shelf of the fridge, I contemplated something more serious. Maybe it was time to excise Lilith completely. I'd considered evicting Lilith before. I even made a couple attempts right after we bonded, but found that I just didn't command enough power alone. She always knew what I was up to and fought against me. I figured if I was going to succeed, I needed the full strength of a coven behind me, or at the very least another Witch who was in on the plan. Yeah, it would be handy if I hadn't p.i.s.sed off Sebastian, because a Witch his caliber was probably just what the doctor ordered.

Although... in the last couple of hours, Lilith had taken over twice now without any fatal consequences: first when she defended against the ghost and again when she stole the book. She apparently had some kind of chat with Sebastian the first time I unleashed Her, and the second time She just used my body to steal his book.

c.r.a.p. The book. It was still in the grocery bag by the door in the living room.

My first impulse was to scurry in there while Parrish still slept and retrieve it quickly so I could hide it somewhere. Then again, it was probably smarter to leave it where it was so as not to draw attention to it.

Leaning against the windowsill, I cracked open the top of my pop and took a long swig. The sun warmed my back, and the smell of freshly cut gra.s.s drifted in through the window. I set the can down with a sigh.

I laid a hand on my stomach. Lilith thought Sebastian's grimoire held the key to life. Something shewanted only women to have.

Okay, Iwas curious.

I tiptoed over to the kitchen door and slowly swung it open. I made sure to keep the light out of the path of Parrish's inert body. He hadn't moved-not one muscle. His body draped casually, conversationally in the beanbag. Other than the fact that his head now flopped back, he looked startlingly like he'd just sat down for a friendly little chat.

I had to laugh. I mean, the guy must have known he'd be stuck in whatever position he lay down in, and so gone to the effort to artfully arrange himself for maximum s.e.x appeal. There was something both pathetic and endearing about that.