Of Witches and Warlocks: The Demon Kiss (8 page)

“What are you wearing?” she asked in horror,
spraying toothpaste out of her mouth, giving me the once over.

I laughed at the expression on her face.

“I’m wearing happy memories,” I replied with
a smile.

“Whatever that means,” she said, rolling her
eyes before turning to spit into the sink and rinse out her mouth.
“Now let me have a better look at that ring.”

She grabbed my hand and held it up into the
light.

“Mmm. Half carat, princess cut, set in
fourteen-carat white gold. Good clarity it looks like. Nice choice.
He paid a pretty penny for that.”

I laughed at her and her spoiled little rich
girl qualities that were coming to the surface.

“What?” she asked. “I’m not joking. That ring
was well over a thousand dollars.”

I stopped laughing and began choking.

“What?” I brought a hand up to my throat.

“It’s a really nice ring,” she said,
nonchalantly.

I strode out of the bedroom and marched down
the hall to Vance’s bedroom and knocked on the door.

He opened it, wearing only a pair of
boxers.

I sucked in a breath as I tried not to let
his body distract me, but I had to pause for a quick glance. I had
never seen him this undressed before.

I shook my head, trying to clear my mind.

“A thousand dollars?” I questioned, holding
up my hand so the ring was shoved in his face. “Where did you get
that kind of cash?”

He paused for a moment with a look of subtle
surprise before he answered.

“About that …,” he started, watching me
carefully, “I may not have ever mentioned it to you before, but I
happen to have quite a bit of money.”

“What? From where?” I demanded, none of this
making any sense.

“You remember when I told you my mom cleaned
out her bank account when she ran with me?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Well, she emptied my trust fund, too. All of
it was signed over to Marsha. I received it on my eighteenth
birthday.”

“So, you’re trying to tell me you have like a
hundred thousand dollars or something stashed away in some bank
account somewhere,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest.

“No,” he replied, shaking his head, “it’s
more like a million.”

“A million dollars!” I shouted.

“A little over actually,” he replied,
laughing at my reaction. “Give or take a couple hundred
thousand.”

“What’s all the commotion about?” Shelly
asked coming up into the hall next to me just as Brad opened his
door.

“She just found out that I’m a millionaire,”
Vance said with a smile, leaning against the door jam with his arms
folded over his chest.

“That’s awesome!” Shelly said smiling, as if
finding out one was a millionaire was an everyday occurrence in her
world.

“Where did you get that kind of money?” Brad
asked casually, slightly lifting an eyebrow.

Vance shrugged a shoulder, almost as if the
subject was boring him.

“My dad opened the account for me before I
was even born. I guess he used to deal in antiquities quite a bit.
He made a bundle off it,” he explained.

Brad looked at Shelly in amazement.

“Told you,” she said, flipping her hair back
behind her shoulder.

“Told you what?” Vance asked.

“It’s nothing,” I said, waving my hand in
dismissal, as I recalled their conversation about a demon dealing
in antiquities. “It was a comment she made at one of the warehouses
one day, which is proving to be surprisingly accurate.”

“Can I speak to you privately?” he asked,
gesturing for me to come into his room with a nod of his head.

“Alright,” I said, entering the door, as he
stepped backward into the room, and closing it softly behind
me.

I stood with my back up against the door, and
he leaned over me placing one hand on either side of my head.

“I want you to listen to me careful, Portia,”
he began. “I need you to understand that none of this changes who I
am,” he said, searching my eyes.

“It is just money. Money is helpful, but it
doesn’t buy you happiness. It just buys you things. Do you get what
I’m telling you?”

“Yes, I think so. It’s just I just had this
image of you in my head,” I explained. “You know, the guy who
couldn’t afford a motorcycle, so he fixed one up, that kind of
thing.”

“I built the motorcycle because it’s
something I enjoy doing. I like working with my hands. There are
times I could do things with magic even and I don’t because I enjoy
the work it gives me. I really am just a t-shirt and jeans kind of
guy.”

“Well, you aren’t right now,” I said, letting
my eyes trail away from his face and down his rock hard body, over
the sculpted chest, the six-pack abs, the muscled legs, before
traveling back up to his face.

His eyes were already glowing by the time my
gaze returned to his. He dropped his arms to his sides, leaning
back, away from me.

“You’d better leave this room right now if
you intend on looking at me like that one more time,” he said,
deadly serious.

I turned quickly, being careful not to touch
him, and opened the door as he moved away from it. I stepped out
and hurried down the hall, my face flaming at my brazen reaction to
him.

“Hey,” he called after me, and I turned to
look over my shoulder at him. “I love the pajamas.” He winked at me
with one of his red eyes before closing the door.

I smiled to myself and went back to my
room.

“So how does it feel to be rich?” Shelly
asked, from her perch atop the huge bed, where she was watching
television.

“I’m not rich,” I replied, climbing up into
the bed next to her.

“You will be,” she said with a smile.

“I don’t care if I ever see a dime of that
money. I just want him,” I said, meaning every word of it.

“Well, you’d better get used to seeing more
than just a dime of it, ‘cause there’s a thousand dollars of it
flashing around on that finger of yours,” she said flickering her
gaze over to my hand.

I held my hand up and really looked at the
ring, letting it sparkle in the dim lights.

“He wants to marry me,” I said, with a small
smile before biting a little at my lip.

“I know!” Shelly giggled, grabbing me into a
girlish bear hug with a little squeal.

“Are you excited?” she asked, when she pulled
away.

“I can’t think of anything I’d love better in
my life.” I replied as a grin spread wide across my face.

We moved at the same time, so we could curl
up underneath the down comforter on the bed.

I sighed heavily, closing my eyes.

“Portia, it’ll be okay,” I heard Shelly say.
“I believe we’ll find a way to help him out.”

“I hope so,” I said, as a slow heaviness
began to creep back into my heart. “Just knowing he’s still in
danger makes everything else seem unreal. It’s like none of this
can really happen until we get him all squared away.”

“I know. Just keep the faith,” she replied
with a yawn, and soon she was fast asleep.

For a long time afterward, I lay awake, just
thinking things over. So many thoughts were racing through my
mind.

“You’re doing it again.” Vance’s voice crept
into my head.

“I know. Sorry,” I replied back, feeling
badly that I was keeping him awake.

“Just get some sleep now, Baby. We’ll talk
over everything in the morning,” he said.

“All right.”

I tried really hard to relax my mind,
concentrate on breathing, and just let everything go. It wasn’t
working. My thoughts of him continued to race through my head,
worries and fears on his behalf.

“Portia, listen to me. I want you to repeat
the words I tell you, okay?” he whispered into my head.

“Okay.”

I listened as he spoke.

“Let go thoughts and feelings,

“Let go now to dreaming.

“Let body relax into sleep,

“Let the rest be ever deep.

“Let me wake with morning light.

“Let me now enjoy this night.”

I realized as I repeated this that these were
the words he had quietly mumbled to me on other occasions when I
couldn’t rest. I had never really known what he was saying
before.

As soon as I was finished reciting the spell,
I was asleep almost instantly.

When I awoke in the morning, I was refreshed
and ready for the new day. I was a little surprised I didn’t
remember dreaming anything at all.

“Good morning,” I heard him say softly in my
head.

“Back at you,” I said, smiling as I stretched
in the bed.

“Did you sleep well?” he asked.

“You know I did,” I said, feeling apologetic.
“Sorry I didn’t see you in my dreams.”

“It was my choice,” he replied casually. “We
both needed the rest.”

I climbed out of the bed, padded down the
hall to his room, and opened the door.

I gasped in surprised at what I saw.

He was sitting up on the edge of the bed,
shaking violently. He lifted his head as I entered the room, and
the flaming red eyes greeted me.

Instinctively I moved to go to his side, but
he held up his hand to stop me.

“Stay there,” he said through gritted teeth.
“I don’t want you to come any closer.”

“What can I do?” I asked helplessly, knowing
he was trying to protect me, but desperately wishing I could just
hold him.

“I’ll be okay. The withdrawal is always the
worst in the morning when I wake up.”

A tear ran down my face as I watched him
struggle.

“Don’t cry,” he said, clenching his jaw.
“Just give me a minute, all right?”

I nodded my head slightly and stepped
backward through the door, closing it after me. I turned my head
and found that Brad was standing behind me.

“Is he tripping out again this morning?” he
asked when he saw my face.

“Again?”

“He had a pretty bad episode of it at the
hotel in Albuquerque,” he explained, glancing down the hall.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I almost wanted to
strike out at him for not telling me something so important.

“He told me not to. He didn’t want you to be
scared,” Brad said, with a slight shrug of his shoulders.

“Yeah. Well, I am,” I replied and moved away
from him to walk across the room, going over to sit on the
overstuffed sectional with a plop. “I’d hoped he was cured of all
this.”

“You just stopped the demon conversion from
progressing any further,” Brad said, following after me. “He
explained it all to me. It sounds like all this residual stuff
sucks, though.”

I ran my fingers through my hair and looked
out the window at the peaceful morning outside, the ocean moving
out with the tide.

“It’s just so unfair.” I sighed, turning back
to look at Brad. “He’s such a good person. He deserves to have that
kind of life, too. I just don’t know what to do to help him. I
still don’t really understand any of this.”

“There may be nothing you can do, Portia,”
Brad said, a sorrowful look on his face.

“So then what? Does he just exist like this
for the rest of forever? Or will the cravings eventually subside
like they do for someone going through rehab?”

“Time will tell, I guess,” Brad said giving
me a sympathetic look.

Shelly walked into the room then, in her cute
little tank top and shorts she had worn to bed.

“Hey,” she said and wandered toward the
kitchen. “I thought we could go to the little supermarket we passed
last night on the way to dinner and pick up some groceries for the
condo.” She gave a slight yawn before really looking at us. “What’s
the matter?”

“Vance is having withdrawal this morning,”
Brad said.

“Again?” she asked.

I threw my hands up in the air in
exasperation.

“Does everybody know except for me?”

“Brad told me,” she said, with a
matter-of-fact air about her. “We’re supposed to be helping to
protect you. I needed to be informed.”

“Really?” I asked, getting a little upset
now. “Well, I just pledged to spend the rest of my life with the
guy, so it might be nice if I actually knew what was going on
around here when it comes to him!”

I stood up brusquely and went out onto the
patio, shutting the sliding door behind me. I walked over and
grabbed the railing tightly, my knuckles turning white as I stared
out over the grounds below and into the sea.

This was so irritating to me! I hated it when
people treated me like I was too weak to handle anything of
importance. Hadn’t I proven myself to anyone yet? I thought I had
been doing a pretty good job at holding my own lately, especially
under the circumstances. Sure, I didn’t always know what the heck I
was doing, but at least I was trying to help out … to make things
work for the better.

My thoughts continued to boil in my head for
the next several minutes as I attempted to try and calm myself
down. I took several deep breaths and listened to the soothing
sounds of the ocean moving back and forth in its timeless
rhythm.

“Hey. You aren’t going to jump are you?”
Vance’s voice said from behind me.

I slowly turned around to face him. He
appeared to be a little bit pale, but other than a slight bloodshot
redness in his irises, he looked almost normal.

“Are you okay?” I asked him, my concern for
him almost overwhelming me.

“Nothing I can’t handle,” he said walking
closer to me. He reached out to lift my left hand toward him. “You
don’t want to bail on me now, do you?” he asked and ran his finger
back and forth over my ring.

I shook my head.

“Nope,” I replied solemnly. “I’m in this for
the long haul.”

“Well, I’m sorry I’m the baggage that you
have to carry on this trip,” he answered softly.

“You aren’t baggage, Vance. I love you. I’d
do anything I could to help you.” I reached my hand up to cradle
his face.