Page 22 of Lovely Violent Things

I have no ethical quandary when it comes to her.

I’ll do anything.

“I’ve only seen one other first edition at an exhibition in London,” I say as I remove my glove to flip the pages. “A rare book collection from a Rutgers professor.”

Halen rushes the table. “You can’t touch it like that,” she scolds.

“Gloves are far more damaging to the aged pages than the oils on our skin,” I say.

She huffs a derisive breath. “I’m not concerned about damaging the book. Your fingerprints are now all over it.”

A smile tugs at my mouth. “Just push it to the back of the stacks,” I say, flipping a page. “They’ll never find it.”

I can feel her weighty stare on me, scrutinizing my every word.

“Isn’t the task force required to submit fingerprints to be excluded from crime scenes?” I ask.

Her mouth twists. “Yes, but it’s a stretch to include you as part of the task force.”

I touch my chest in mock offense. “The way you wound me, little Halen.”

She lowers her gaze to look at the book. “What is that?”

Holding a page mid-flip, I say, “Come around here.”

After a tentative beat, she moves to my side of the desk, though she keeps a good two feet between us. “Anything of importance to the case?”

“I won’t bite.” I eye the distance between us. “Hard.” At her refusal, I hook my finger through the beltloop of her jeans and drag her to my side.

“Kallum—”

“Aleister Crowley’s magnum opus on magick.” I point to a verse under a unicursal hexagram, which Crowley incorporated from Bruno’s figure of love. “Every intentional act is a magickal act,” I read aloud.

“Sounds remarkably similar to Nietzsche’s Will to Power,” she says.

“Good girl.” I cast an appreciative glance at her, my viscera abuzz at her nearness. Halen likes to accuse me of deceptive methods, twisting the truth, yet she has her own little tactics she employs. She’s far more intellectual and insightful than what she allows others to see.

“Crowley more than idolized Nietzsche, he declared him a profit,” I say, “but he also proclaimed himself ‘the wickedest man in the world’ and the Great Beast six-six-six. So take his eccentric declarations with a grain of salt.”

“Stimulating,” she remarks. “Are you intentionally stalling this investigation?” She glances at the shelves higher up along the walls. “I know this library is your wet dream, Kallum, but we’re here to search out any link to the victims.”

A dark thrill courses through my blood. “Oh, sweetness. I’ll swipe these books to the floor without a fucking thought if you want to put this desk to better use.” I pat the mahogany surface in challenge.

Her gaze clashes with mine, and I love the way she can’t repress the little quake rolling through her body. A crooked smile carves my mouth. “Crowley was scandalously known for his practice of sex magick,” I say. “He classified the act of sex as the most powerful expression of our will, the most potent energy source.”

Despite my desire to explore that theory this very second, I’d have to politely disagree with the master on this one. Blood is the most potent medium.

My gaze slips to Halen’s shoulder, where my teeth imprint her flesh. During our ritual, I employed a combination of mediums and expressions—blood, sex, saliva, semen—to charge a new sigil and bring her back.

The ire I see brimming in her ethereal features states how utterly I failed. “Kallum…stop,” she warns.

A deviant thought creeps from the abyss, whispering that blood sacrifice is the most concentrated form of black magick, and may be the only way to unblock her memory.

I turn my gaze back onto the book. “As you wish.”

The storm outside releases a torrent against the windows. The roaring downpour drowns out the frantic beat of my heart as Halen starts to ease away. I link my finger through that same beltloop to prevent her escape.

She casts a pointed look at my hand, then her gaze narrows on me like a devious little sprite. “Most of your power lies in intimidation.” Bravely, she steps into me. Her thighs become flush with mine, her gloved palms seek the hard plane of my chest. “But I think some of it is an act. I think…” She peels a glove off and slips a finger up to my neck, where she gingerly traces the ink, making me spellbound by her. “I think it’s a form of misdirection. One of your tricks.”

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