Page 42 of Inflamed By an Incubus

He felt dangerously close to screwing everything up in the same way he always did.

His need for Evelyn was intense, and the more he denied himself what he really needed to keep him strong and keep the hunger at bay, the more that need grew.

Until he reached breaking point and found himself seducing his mate.

Which, in turn, always made her fall in love with him again.

And got her killed.

Not this time. This time Fenix would live with the guilt of kissing other females, would continue to feed as best he could without crossing the line he had drawn for himself, and he would stay the hell away from Evelyn until he knew where the mage was.

As soon as he had the male’s location, he would go to her and free her of Archer’s grasp, and would take her to the mage and force the bastard to undo his curse.

Fenix reached the lake house and studied it in silence, covering every inch of it with his senses.

It was empty.

Again.

He stretched his senses out around him. Nothing as far as they reached. He was alone.

Not the best result, since he was yet to see the mage who lived here, but also not a total loss because he had resolved to do a little snooping if the house was empty this time. Maybe this mage would have some scrolls or whatnot that were about curses.

He peered through a window and teleported inside, landing in the main living area of the house, and turned in a slow circle, his gaze sweeping over the mundane furniture that made it look like something out of a magazine. He bet none of the humans who happened to visit the mage who lived here had a clue what he was—that he wasn’t human. It all looked so normal.

So normal that Fenix started to worry that Hella had been mistaken about this place and it wasn’t the home of a blood mage at all.

He prowled through the large house, covering every inch of the ground floor and noting that there wasn’t a basement. When he reached the main staircase again, he headed upstairs and found three very normal looking bedrooms that cemented the feeling he had been wrong about this house.

Fenix considered teleporting to his next location and then glanced at the two doors he hadn’t checked yet. He might as well check them out. The first door was a bathroom.

He approached the second.

And froze mid-stride as the hairs on his nape rose on end and he caught the faintest whiff of magic.

He hurried to the door, shoved it open, and frowned at the room on the other side, unable to believe his eyes.

Well, the neighbours would certainly worry about whoever lived here if they saw this room. There wasn’t anything normal about it.

On the wooden floor, someone had scrawled symbols, some of them carved into the planks and some of them painted. Fenix wasn’t sure what kind of spell it was, but considering he hadn’t smelled or sensed magic until he had been on top of this room, he figured it was a cloaking spell.

He hesitated, his eyes on the markings, apprehension pouring through him as he debated whether he really wanted to risk stepping into the room to sift through its contents. For all he knew, the spell could be a trap for intruders.

Fenix eyed all the ancient books that filled the shelves lining two of the walls and the stacks of parchments and scrolls that littered an old oak desk in front of him, and all the glass bottles and canisters of every shape, colour and size that occupied another bookshelf off to his left. Somewhere in here could be the answer to undoing the curse the mage had placed on him and his beloved.

He sucked down a breath.

So he was doing this.

If he got trapped, he got trapped.

He stepped into the room, tensed and braced himself as he waited to feel something. Only he felt the same as he had on the other side of the edge of the spell. He grinned and headed for the desk, and sifted through hand-written parchments that dated back decades. Most of them were spells and elixirs involving phoenix blood. None of them looked like a curse. Not that he really knew what a curse looked like.

But he knew someone who might.

He just needed to get all these documents to her.

Fenix turned to look for a box.

---