Mark of the Witch. Maggie Shayne

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СКАЧАТЬ functioning one, he hadn’t experienced this level of temptation since—well … ever. It was growing stronger with every second he spent in her company, and they were going to be together—alone together—for the next week or so.

      Was it a spell? Was she, as Father Dom had warned, perfectly aware of her bond with the demon, ready and willing to help him, and using her wiles to enchant and bewitch the priest sent to stop her?

      Or was she as innocent as she seemed?

      He didn’t suppose it mattered, honestly. He had to resist her, had to stop her, and how much she knew or didn’t know was irrelevant. Moreover, he had to convince her that her mission, her calling and her key to salvation from the torments afflicting her, were all one and the same: to help him stop the demon from crossing the Portal. When in truth, he was pretty sure her true mission was just the opposite.

      The three witches were foretold to be the demon’s consorts. They were supposed to help him escape the Portal. But they were also the only ones with the power to stop him.

      He supposed he would have to tell her that part of it at some point.

      “I’m going to have an omelet,” she said as they got out of the car. “A big fat three-egg omelet with a half pound of cheese and ham and mushrooms and—no, wait.” She held up a hand, apparently deep in thought. As if the choice was one of the most important of her life. Then she snapped her fingers. “Belgian waffles, with butter melting down the sides and all that whipped cream piled on top, and fruit, and maybe sausage on the side.”

      She was walking as she was talking, absently rubbing her upper arm. He wondered about that as he held the door open for her and she stepped inside, inhaled, then closed her eyes as if smelling the sweetest perfume. “Coffee,” she muttered. “Hail the Goddess Caffeinna.”

      “That’s sort of blasphemous, you know.” He was only teasing. He was starting to enjoy her use of sarcasm-laced humor to deflect the things she called scary, even beginning to return it in kind.

      “Oh, please, not to the Holy of Holies, Divine Creatrix of the sacred coffee bean.” Her attention switched, quick as a heartbeat, to the hostess who’d just appeared to greet them. “Two for breakfast, and a vat of high-test, please. Death to decaf!”

      The hostess smiled at her enthusiasm and led the way to a booth.

      Indira rubbed her arm again, only this time she pulled her hand away quickly, as if the arm was sore to the touch. Frowning, Tomas looked at her. “Everything okay?”

      “Yeah. Fine.” She dropped her hands to her sides.

      He wished he could see her arm better, but she’d donned a brown leather jacket with a fake fur collar that looked as if it ought to have a matching helmet and goggles to go with it. Beneath that, she wore a T-shirt that came just to the low-slung top of her skin-tight jeans, so he caught glimpses of bare midriff every time she moved. The jeans were tucked inside a pair of cowgirl-style boots, brown, with stitching and embossing in swirls, loops and flowers, and impossibly high heels.

      She looked as if she’d stepped off the cover of some urban style guide. Her T-shirt read Born Again Pagan, and had a triple moon logo that glittered when the light hit it at the right angle. She wore a pentacle, a different one, suspended from a thin silver chain, its star formed in the shape of a gleaming spider’s web, with the spider in the center. Its body was a moonstone, its eyes tiny bits of ruby, its legs made of black tourmaline. She had earrings that matched, each with a tiny pentacle web at the earlobe and a thin chain dangling with the spider at the end of it. Same gemstones. Same size.

      She might as well have worn a flashing neon sign proclaiming herself a witch. It wasn’t a habit he’d noticed in her before, and it sort of belied her claim that she’d become an atheist. Maybe she just felt safer, wearing the symbols of her former faith.

      The looks they were getting as they sat at their booth, she in her pentacles, he in his collar, were almost funny. A priest and a witch, having breakfast together. Indira ended up devouring a stack of Belgian waffles and an omelet, washing every other bite down with creamy coffee, and claiming she would quit caffeine again when life returned to normal. He only picked at his own pancakes.

      He was too tense to eat, and not only because she was proving to be the biggest test his faith had ever undergone.

      Of course, he’d been in a crisis of faith for a while now. And all of this was making him wonder if he’d made the right decision. Because if this was real, after all—if Dom’s obsession turned out to be true …

      But this wasn’t the time to ponder those things. That would come later.

      Right now, he was about to face a demon. Maybe the devil himself. With a witch as his only ally, a witch who didn’t know—or did she?—that she was that demon’s friend. Either way, that alliance made her Tomas’s enemy.

      It seemed unnecessarily risky to take her so near the Portal, since allegedly the demon couldn’t pass through without her help. But Dom said it was worth the risk. That she had to be there to help Tomas destroy the demon for good.

      He’d trained for this, he’d studied, he knew what had to be done, but that was all back when he thought the whole thing was just an old man’s crazy fantasy. But now it was here, real and present. And complicating things further, in all his thoughts on this very topic, he had never counted on liking the woman.

      He looked up at her. Sipping her coffee, eyes closed, thick lashes resting on those high-boned cheeks, skin like a ripe peach. He was drawn to her and felt an unbelievable urge to touch her at every opportunity.

      She burped, interrupting his thoughts. Her hand flew to her mouth, and her eyes went huge. “Well, that was polite,” she said. “Excuse me.” Her cheeks were pink with embarrassment, her smile self-deprecating.

      She was charming the socks off him, he thought.

      He glanced at her plate. Empty. She ran her forefinger through the syrup on the edge and popped it into her mouth, and he clenched his jaw to keep from groaning out loud. “God, that was good,” she said.

      “Glad you enjoyed it.”

      “You eat like a bird, Father Tomas.”

      “Not normally. Got a lot on my mind.”

      “Ow!” She gripped her arm again, then frowned and lowered her hand.

      “Are you going to let me take a look at that?”

      “There’s nothing to look at.”

      He tipped his head to one side. “Clearly, it hurts. You keep grabbing it, then quickly letting go.”

      “And just as quickly putting it out of my mind. It only hurts if I think about it, so I wish you’d stop reminding me.”

      “Sorry. It won’t happen again.” He picked up the check their waitress had dropped, and rose from his seat. “Are you ready?”

      The bubbly mood she’d been emanating seemed to burst. Back to reality, he thought. She really was dreading what lay ahead. “Yes. All ready.” She got up, too, snatching her mug off the table and taking one last gulp before hurrying to the counter with him. She tugged on his sleeve and said, “Restroom” in a stage whisper. He nodded and tried not to watch her as she walked away.

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