Page 65 of Magic of the Damned

Letting all thoughts of Dominic slip from my mind, I realized how much I’d missed being with Emoni, talking, the normality of it.

“The owner of the Kingmakers would like our band to be regular,” Emoni told me after we got a coffee from Intermezzo. I wasn’t sure if the sneer on her face was from all the shop’s designer coffees and super sweet desserts: frosted cookies and muffins, fudge and candy. “This isn’t a coffee shop, it’s a bakery,” she complained under her breath after the barista gave us a judgmental eyebrow cock at our black coffee order and rejection of pastries.

“Really.”

“It was the woman I was speaking with at Books and Brew after my performance.”

There was a hitch in her voice. Apprehension. Where she should have been excited, she wasn’t.

“She booked the band for twice a month,” she admitted. The heartache was so heavy in her voice, I stopped walking and looked at her. “And me and Gus on Wednesdays, as a duo.”

I blinked once and made my face emotionless. A blank canvas to give her what she needed.

“Does she want you to do covers, like you two did at Wine-Down?”

She nodded. “On Wednesdays, twice a month. She believes it will be a good fit with the Wednesday crowd. You know how I feel about covers. It’s fun occasionally but I need to do my own music. Songs that I wrote and I let her know that.”

“And?”

“She agreed if I’d do a mix.”

“What are you thinking about doing?”

She guided my elbow as we took a different route back to the coffee shop, one with noticeably fewer people around.

Taking a sip from my coffee, I waited for her to speak. She seemed to be having an internal debate.

“A few artists have been discovered. Performing without the entire band seems like a betrayal,” she admitted. “Gus is on board—he doesn’t see it that way.” She rolled her eyes. “But maybe she saw something in just the two of us performing that I missed. The two of us might find more success. It will give us an opportunity to write more songs for the both of us. Two days a week, I’m turning my back on my band.”

She shrugged and blew out an exasperated breath. “I’m twenty-six and unfortunately—” She frowned the rest of her statement; we’d gone through this a thousand times. She was always pointing out that her race, age, and “exotic” look might limit her. I wasn’t sure about the others, but her looks definitely would not hold her back, but it wasn’t the time to point that out. Her biggest complaint was that people were placed in boxes and artistic expression was limited for a myriad of superficial reasons.

She looked at me earnestly. “It’s a great opportunity and could open doors for me.” There was still a hint of hesitation. “What should I do?”

I gave her the impression of thinking about it for a long time, although the moment she asked, I had the answer. “I think you should do it.”

Something snapped against my back, pushing the wind out of me as I fell face forward onto the ground. I quickly rolled onto my back, spilled coffee soaking into my shirt as I moved. Four supernaturals sped toward me. A vampire was to my right. Her finger under Emoni’s chin, she drew Emoni’s eyes to hers.

“Thank you, Emoni, for bringing her to us. Forget that you saw Luna today. You called her and she said she’s visiting family. Return to the coffee shop.”

She continued instructing Emoni, implanting a new situation in her mind. She wouldn’t remember our conversation or seeing these creatures. Anger and fear warred in me. I didn’t want them exposed, I wanted them gone.

I scuttled back on my butt, trying to put some distance between me and the supernaturals, and looking for anything I could use as a weapon. Nothing. My coffee had spilled. My phone was in the car.

Stopping the vampire from further compelling Emoni had to be my secondary objective. I wanted her to forget this.

We had navigated to where factories and businesses had been converted to industrial-looking lofts. No one was around. Even if anyone wanted to come outside, magic would be preventing them.

One of the four, a shifter, approached, his cold, predatory eyes fixed on me. I was cornered. He was about to shift, when his head snapped toward the vampire who had been staked. The vampire’s dusted body speckled the air. It was the first sign of Dominic’s presence. His claw sliced the vital arteries in the shifter’s neck. He collapsed to the ground, covering his neck, waiting for his preternatural healing to kick in. The silver blade Dominic shoved into his stomach would make that more difficult.

No longer under the dead vampire’s compulsion, shock cut Emoni’s scream off. Open mouthed, her eyes widened at the violence before her, at Dominic’s violence. I hurried to her.

“It’s okay,” I soothed, but it only made her direct her disgust to me.

“Luna, what the fuck have you gotten yourself into?” She wouldn’t let me get close to her, shuffling back several feet for every step I took toward her. I felt the magic against my back, heard the violence of a gasp being cut off, and if I hadn’t already seen variations of what was taking place behind me, I would have been able to imagine the brutality from what was playing out on Emoni’s face.

Wind gathered, whipping in the air, its cyclonic pull tugging us toward it. I looked over my shoulder. The remaining supernatural—a witch, her fingers whirling around. Emoni and I ran, fighting against the growing force. Before we could get any distance between it and us, the small cyclone disappeared and the elemental witch collapsed face forward on the pavement.

Emoni had no problem with her scream this time. It resounded like an alarm. I launched at her, slapped a hand over her mouth. “Stop. Please. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

---