Page 98 of A Witch-ish Guide to Protectors and Pendulums

“I’m okay. You saved me.” The man bent in to kiss me and I didn’t know how to explain it, but it felt like this huge sense of hatred and dread had lifted from my shoulders. I blinked several times before realizing that my mate stood there showing the goods to everyone in the room.

“What happened?” I asked. Karro and Shafira stared at me, which was a feat, given Connor’s state of undress.

“What do you mean?” Connor asked.

“It felt like I was here, but I wasn’t here. Like, I don’t know… I absorbed the power of the space.”

“A power-up,” Karro said.

“But this place is evil, so she absorbed the feelings along with the energy?” Shafira asked.

“Seems like it.” Connor pulled me tighter against him. “Baby, we have to get you out of here.”

Yes. Yes, we did. We needed to get out of here. And that was when we heard the slow whistle and all our eyes turned to Karro, who now openly gawked at my mate. “Jiminy Christmas—who gave you the right to have an ass like that?”

“Don’t turn around,” I ordered the gorgeous man. Karro seeing the back of him was bad enough. They didn’t need to know the heat my mate packed in the front.

“Not planning on it.”

“Please tell me you’re into threesomes—oh, better yet, where can I get me a hellhound all to myself?”

Connor laughed. Yes, helaughed. I wanted to rip Karro’s throat out for suggesting a threesome. I had to get out of this place.

“I thought you were smitten with that demon back at Belphegor’s place,” Shafira put in.

He sighed. “Crap. You’re right. A boy can dream, though.”

“Belphegor?” Connor asked at the same time I closed my eyes to manifest him a pair of joggers, a T-shirt, and some nicerunning shoes. The outfit showed off his assets nicely, but in a comfortable, breathable way that allowed quick movements, and right now, we needed quick movements.

“We made a stop at the Western Australian Coven. That’s where I picked up Karro, here.” I pointed to my cousin. “He’s a Lilium, too. But it’s a long story. We have to get out and find a place to hunker down for a rest.”

“Where do we go?” Karro asked.

Shafira shrugged. Great, another thing left up to me. Or so I thought, but then Connor surprised me—well, all of us.

“There’s an abandoned outpost on Antarctica that the demons were talking about,” he said.

“Did you hit your head or something? We don’t want to go where there are more demons.”

He shot me his ‘Simone… shut up’ eyes. Kind of ungrateful for a man who had just been rescued from the brink of death, but I digress. And I shut up. “They stay clear of it because it’s haunted. It freaks them out.”

“Wait, wait, wait…” Karro said. “There’s a place thatdemonswon’t go because they think it’shauntedand you want us togo there?”

“You got any better ideas?” he asked. And not only did none of us have any better ideas, we heard more of the enemy clamoring down the corridor. We’d literally run out of time to decide.

“Shit or get off the pot,” I murmured, closing my eyes as I wrapped us all, including an immobilized Kimaris, in my manifestation bubble. Haunted, abandoned outpost in Antarctica, here we come. I chanted the location in my head over and over again.

We disappeared right as the first demon to enter the room with us yelled, “What the hell?”

Understatement.

And the next thing I knew, we popped up inside a dark room. It looked like some kind of old station with a very dated sofa, chairs, a couple of tables—one for coffee and one for dining—then as whoever had designed it had designed a very open-concept space, to the back of the room sat a full kitchen. The room might’ve been dark, but waning daylight streamed in through the windows, giving me enough of a torch-like effect to see what we were dealing with.

That was when I remembered the demon along for the ride. I remembered because he began stirring. The arrangement worked for now, but I’d have to keep diligent by watching him like a hawk to make sure he didn’t recover enough to become a problem for us. To get anything done, we needed a different method of keeping him inactive and ineffective for the axis of evil. There were some things even I couldn’t do, like creating wards. I had no problem breaking them—well, the ones to confine or keep out witches and demons. I’d yet to encounter a ward geared toward the Lilium. To get demon wards, you needed a demon—strike that, you needed apowerfuldemon to create them for you. I figured the Western Australian Coven had contacted Belphegor or one of his upper management. The problem with asking a demon for a favor came in the form of repayment. I’d absorbed that knowledge back in the witches’ archives. That seemed like a million years ago. It made me wonder what the Western Coven might have offered up or agreed to pay to get said wards.

“What are we going to do with him?” Connor asked, pointing to the unconscious Kimaris.

“We need wards,” I replied. “We can’t plan or try to make contact with anyone if we’re constantly trying to keep him out. We need Luc.”

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