Waking The Serpent

Phoebe was beginning to feel light-headed, and she must have looked it.

Rafe reached across the table and took her hands in both of his. “Let me speak with Phoebe for a moment.”

She opened her mouth to assure him she was still there, but her breath seemed to be sucked from her across the table, and Rafe took in a deep, gasping inhalation, eyes wide, as one of the shades leaped from her into him. It was a first in her experience.

“What are you doing?” Ernesto protested with Phoebe’s mouth. He swore in Spanish and then Phoebe felt a strange wrenching sensation. Lila was shoving Ernesto out. She thought she’d have more control now with only one shade to deal with, but instead of coming to the fore, she felt herself slipping deeper, her distress at the sensation all but subsumed by Lila’s eminent self-satisfaction.

Rafe pulled her to her feet and drew her around the table. But it wasn’t Rafe, of course. It was Jacob. “Care to dance?” Jacob’s amusement sparkled in the dark eyes.

“I thought you’d never ask.” She could swear she was hosting Kathleen Turner. Before she could try to wrest some control from the step-in, she found herself in Rafe’s arms, arousal evident in the hard warmth against her thigh as he pulled her in tight. Rafe’s lips were kissing hers and Phoebe’s were ardently kissing back. She gasped into his mouth as his tongue prodded her open, his fingers drawing goose bumps along her skin, and she moaned as he pinched one of her nipples through the thin cup of lace.

She was instantly wet, needing this man as she’d never needed anyone, desperate, lest he disappear once more and fade into the incorporeal shade of the man she loved but was denied. Too much time had passed since he’d been taken from her, too much time had been spent alone, and she would not allow this moment to be taken from her, as well. Jacob was hers and she meant to have him inside her, to experience the union she ached for finally.

Rafe’s fingers slid down Phoebe’s side as he kissed her, dipping inside the elastic of her panties. Phoebe begged with little moans into his mouth for him to go farther, to open her. Two fingers teased at the perimeter of her sex, one slipping toward the center and stroking like a warm knife against buttercream frosting on a springy cake.

Deep in her mind, alarm bells were going off. This wasn’t her. It wasn’t Rafe. Something neither of them had consented to was about to happen. Even if she couldn’t deny wanting the body pressed against her, the desire flooding her decidedly her own, this wasn’t right. She ought to be the one in control here. She was the mediator. Rafe was essentially at her mercy.

The panties dropped to the floor and Rafe slid down one bra strap and let the taut nipple peek out, just at the edge of the fabric.

He lowered his head, his breath against her breast. “God, I want you.”

God, she wanted him, too. His mouth closed over the nipple, sucked between his teeth, his other hand prodding between her legs, fingers poised to enter.

“No!” The word tore out of her throat, even as she writhed with pleasure under the adoration of his mouth.

Rafe paused and lifted his head, confused.

Phoebe gritted her teeth. “Get out, Lila. Jacob, let him go.”

Rafe’s hands dropped away from her and he took a step back, doubling over with a sudden groan as if he’d been punched in the gut. The shade rushed out.

Phoebe heard herself screaming—Lila, anguished and mournful, a banshee’s wail as she was torn from Phoebe’s corporeal matter. For a moment, while the connection still held, she experienced the shade’s desperate sorrow as her own. She felt like a heel as Lila left her. But that was only fleeting next to the full awareness flooding back to her. And just to help out, the electricity blinked back on, leaving them standing facing each other in the glaring light of the wagon-wheel chandelier.

“Oh, my God.” The blood drained from Rafe’s face as Phoebe tried to re-cover herself with as much cool, collected calm as she could muster—which was zilch.

Rafe grabbed an afghan from the back of the couch and threw it around her. “Phoebe, I—I swear to you, that wasn’t my... I don’t know what happened—”

“You don’t have to explain. It was the shades. I’ve never felt any quite so...determined before.” Her knees began to shake in the aftermath of the possession, quickly morphing into a full-body tremble, complete with chattering teeth. “I need to warm up.” How ironic. She’d been plenty hot a second ago. “This happens sometimes, after.”

“What can I do? What do you need?”

“Run a bath for me. Please.” Her knees buckled and Rafe caught her, easing her to the couch. After gently setting her head on a pillow, he hurried down the hall, the sound of running water announcing he was doing as she’d asked. He stayed in the bathroom while the tub filled, too mortified, she supposed, to be in the same room with her. She had to admit, not looking at him right now was probably a really good idea.

When it was ready, he came to get her, dressed in his damp, steamy clothes fresh from the dryer. She was still unsteady, and she made a little yip of surprise when he swept her off the ground and carried her the rest of the way, setting her on her feet only when he’d reached the bathroom rug.

“Do you need any help?” He addressed the top of her left ear.

“No. I’ve got this. Thanks. It’ll just take me a few minutes to warm up.”

Rafe nodded and stepped out, closing the door to give her privacy. He’d also given her bubbles—lavender. That was sweet. Phoebe dropped the afghan and her underthings in a heap and climbed into the claw-foot tub, sinking into the aromatic suds. It was impossible not to replay every touch—illicitly received though they might have been—as she lay back against the porcelain and closed her eyes. Her body wasn’t likely to forget it, even if she managed to stop thinking about it. Even the taste of his mouth and the smell of his skin lingered.

A sound carried from the front of the house—the click of the front door closing. Damn.

Chapter 5

Rafe drove through the storm toward home on autopilot, his gut churning as his truck wound through the hills. What the hell had just happened? He was beginning to think the Covent was right about step-ins. If one could control him so completely, it was easy to imagine he’d been taken over by a step-in long enough to kill poor Barbara Fisher. Yet for this, despite being unable to take autonomous action, he’d been fully aware on some level—watching himself. Feeling every sensation.

And what sensations. Phoebe’s skin against his had felt like the rain itself, caressing, enveloping, washing him clean. He knew it was Jacob’s desire for Lila he’d felt, but it was impossible to extricate his own from the experience. He’d never wanted any woman so intensely. His cock was still stiff as a steel rod in his pants.

He could smell her on his fingers gripping the wheel, intoxicating and incredibly arousing. There was no way he’d be able to sleep tonight without relieving the tension. Yet the thought of what he’d done, lack of personal volition notwithstanding, was mortifying. How could he even think of taking pleasure in the memory?

The storm had passed over the valley by the time he punched in his code at the gate to Stone Canyon. His place was modest compared to the family home, but the gated community always made him feel like an imposter. Phoebe Carlisle’s little cottage was much more his style. Of course, if his lawyer couldn’t get him acquitted of the murder charge, he’d be living in an altogether different gated community soon enough.

That ought to be what occupied his mind right now—the very real possibility that he might spend his life in prison for a murder someone else had committed, whether with his hands or otherwise—not his inappropriate arousal at being used as a vessel for another man’s desire. How very Freudian it all was, even without the puppet sex show he and Phoebe had almost starred in. Had starred in. Things had gone far enough to constitute one hell of a performance.

He had to get her out of his head, and the scent of her off his skin. As soon as he arrived at the house, he hit the shower: cold and pounding him with the ultra-massage setting. It was a temporary reprieve, but he needed to pull himself together and take care of some business before clients started backing out after hearing he was being investigated for murder. God only knew what kind of conversations they’d already been having with Rafael Sr. The fact that his father had sent his fancy lawyer to the county jail to intervene but hadn’t contacted Rafe himself spoke volumes.

After drying off and getting dressed, he pushed down the insanity of the entire day and dove into his business communications to keep operations running smoothly. He’d earned a reputation as a solid manager in the years since graduating from college and taking on increasing responsibility while Rafael Sr. concentrated on his political career, and he knew he could count on the people in his employ.

In the beginning, the men and women on the ground at the Diamante sites had viewed him as some kind of pampered playboy amusing himself with his father’s money, but he’d quickly proved himself and earned their respect. And when he’d taken his place in the Covent after earning that on his own, as well, through hours of mundane magical practice, the privileged connections available through the arcane community had also become his own instead of hand-me-downs from his father.

When he made his calls, he made a point of asking after family members and mentioning them by name before addressing the Fisher business, as if it were an unfortunate misunderstanding that would blow over by Monday.

Distracting himself with business worked until he collapsed into bed and closed his eyes. The scent and taste and texture of Phoebe rushed back at him as if she were lying right beside him. Worse than the ill-gotten knowledge of her body was the certainty that his desire for her was distinct and his own. This wasn’t some residual effect of the step-in. And no amount of worry about the Fisher case or the business could seem to dampen it.

But it didn’t matter, because the unfortunate incident with the step-ins wasn’t going to be repeated. He’d have to clear his name without Phoebe Carlisle’s help.

As he drifted off into a fitful sleep, the tattoo seemed to prickle under the skin at his back, as though Quetzalcoatl were moving.

* * *

The evidence of last night’s debacle spread across the coffee table like a surrealist painting: The Persistence of Memory in encaustic. She’d let the candles burn down, too tired to come back to the living room after her bath.

Phoebe sighed and got to work scraping the spattered puddles of wax off the table and the hardwood while Puddleglum looked on with disapproval at her apparent misplaced interest in something that didn’t involve rectifying the travesty of the tiny spot of emptiness visible at the center of his otherwise full cat dish.

It was possible she was getting dangerously close to becoming one of those crazy cat ladies, providing motives and inner dialogue for Puddleglum as a sad testament to having no life. Nah. That was totally what he was thinking.

“At least you don’t bolt in horror if you accidentally see me naked.” Because there was nothing weird about having a one-sided conversation with her cat. Not that talking to herself was new. It had taken her until fifth grade to realize no one else had “guests” stepping into them to ask questions—out loud, through their mouths. She’d developed coping mechanisms, becoming a theater geek so she could pass off her random changes of voice and non-sequiturs as doing impressions or rehearsing lines.

Ione had teased her mercilessly, thinking Phoebe was just a weird kid, while the twins, Theia and Rhea, five years younger, were immersed in their own private language—and what often seemed to be their own private world. Then Ione had taken an apprenticeship with the Covent, leaving Phoebe to her own devices. Luckily, being on her own was something she’d always excelled at. She’d had to. By the time she went off to college, it had become second nature to have step-ins wander in and out—which wasn’t exactly conducive to friendships or romantic relationships.

Despite the delicate balance on the edge of consent, she’d sometimes enjoyed the company. But she’d also resented it, being at the beck and call of the dead because no one else was ever listening. It had made her cautious about letting anyone get close. And it had also made her protective of the shades.

But the step-ins last night—she’d never experienced anything so overwhelming, never had one direct her own actions against her will. Though maybe the will part was the problem. Maybe she hadn’t been entirely resistant on some deeper level. Or some not-so-deep level. She hadn’t been touched, after all, since...well, in an embarrassingly long time. Or maybe it had been the wine.

And maybe she could come up with a million other excuses for being so easily controlled by Lila. The fact remained that her engine had already been revving for Rafe Diamante without the influence of the step-in. Lila had just stepped on the gas pedal. And floored it.

Phoebe opened the broom closet and chucked the candle viscera into the trash, cringing as she recalled how Rafe had looked as if he’d sobered up in the middle of a “coyote” date. “Yeah, well, you’re not so hot, Rafe Diamante. Bet you were a dork in high school.”

“Sorry?”

With a sharp inhalation, Phoebe swallowed the gum she’d been chewing to keep the morning-after nausea at bay, narrowly missing her windpipe. She whirled around to find Rafe Diamante standing on the other side of the screen door.

Chapter 6

Rafe’s heart sped up a little just at the way she moved. This was starting to seem like a worse idea than it had before.

Phoebe stood poised in the open arch between the kitchen and the living room, limbs smooth and supple in a light-blue ribbed tank and a pair of curve-hugging cutoffs, the ponytail clipped high and swooping over backward. “How long have you been lurking out there?”

“Not lurking.” He held up her tablet. “You left this at the jail yesterday and I forgot to give it to you.”

“Oh. Wow.” Phoebe came to the door and opened it to accept the tablet. “I thought I’d never see that again. Thanks. You’ve saved me a lot of time and aggravation.” She held it awkwardly inside her folded arms, as if aware of the effect the skin-hugging fabric was having on him. “Did you want to come in?” It was obviously an invitation he was meant to refuse.

“No, I just came to...” He paused, distracted by what he thought he’d heard. “Were you talking to me just now? I thought you said my name.”

“To you?” Phoebe gave him a look that said he was full of himself. “I was just working with a step-in. Some dead cheerleader or something. She was kind of incoherent.”

“Oh.” Rafe ran a hand over the thick waves of his hair, kept manageable in a short tail at his nape. “Anyway, I wanted to apologize for what happened last night, and to make sure you were all right.”

Phoebe stared him down. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Rafe pocketed his hands. She wasn’t going to make this easy. “I should have stayed to see that you were. You were pretty shaky on your feet. And I think maybe I’m the reason things got so...weird.” Her cheeks flushed pink and he hurried on. “I think it was the invocations I used.”

“The invocations?”

“To the Aztec deities. The Lord and Lady of the Underworld. I think it may have created a double channeling—you channeling the shades and the shades channeling Mictlantecuhtli and Mictecacihuatl. They’re more chaotic, passionate gods than the usual pantheon invoked in the craft. A lot of practitioners stay away from them because of the darker history they became associated with, but I’ve always felt drawn to their primal archetypes. I never thought their history mattered. I assumed the symbolism invoked by the deeper mind was important, and not the specific energy it raised. At any rate, I feel responsible, and I just wanted to say that.” He reached into the back pocket of his khakis for his checkbook. “I still want to pay for your time last night. And don’t worry. I won’t be bothering you for any further help contacting the shades. I’ll figure something out. What’s your hourly rate?”

Phoebe’s eyes darkened from periwinkle to violet and she pushed the screen door wide. “Don’t write me a check standing on my porch.” Her smile seemed forced. “People will talk. Come in and sit down for a minute. I’ll get you a lemonade.”

Rafe hesitated but decided he’d seem like more of a jerk if he said no. He stepped inside, surveying the stained wood of the wax-encrusted coffee table as he sat on the couch while Phoebe went to the kitchen. “I should have put foil under the candles.”

Phoebe grabbed some glasses from her dish rack and took a pitcher out of the fridge. “I should have put them out instead letting them burn down into a soup.”

“You were in the bath. I should have put them out when I left.”

“I—” Phoebe came around the bar with two glasses of lemonade and cocked her head. “Wait, whose turn is it again? Does one of us win a prize if we manage to be the most self-effacing?”

“I wasn’t trying to be self-effacing—”

“Man, I don’t have the energy for ‘who’s more defensive.’ Besides, I think you’d win that one hands down.”

Rafe scowled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

She smirked as if he’d proved her point. “You seem to be taking all of this personally, like your honor’s in question. It was an awkward night, and it wasn’t anyone’s fault. Let’s call it a learning experience and move on.”

This had definitely been a bad idea. Rafe stood, feeling large and awkward in her cozy living room. “You can mail me an invoice.”

“Jesus, Diamante. Just drink the damn lemonade. Fresh squeezed.” Phoebe shoved a glass at him. He was out of his element here. “It’s okay to be freaked out by what happened last night. It freaked me out a little, too. But let’s not make any hasty decisions just because it was uncomfortable. You’re facing a murder charge, and the evidence is stacked against you. If we set some ground rules for the shades next time we summon them, we can avoid any surprises.”

The condensation-damp glass nearly slipped from his hand. “Next time? You’d actually consider doing that again? Knowing the risk?”

“You said they wanted your help. It doesn’t seem like they’d be deliberately contrary if we make the rules clear and tell them they have to abide by them to get what they want.”

Perhaps the shades Phoebe was used to dealing with weren’t contrary, but he had a feeling she hadn’t dealt with any like these before. These shades had a history. That much, at least, Rafe could explain. As long as he could keep his mind off the soft slope of Phoebe’s skin where the moon tattoo nestled above the hip-hugging panties she’d been wearing last night. And everything beneath them.

Rafe took a swallow of lemonade and cleared his throat. “You need to understand where these shades are coming from. There’s been an increase lately in the number of shades who aren’t crossing on their own. That was the source of my falling out with the Covent. They felt they needed to address it and I, of course, disagreed. But they overruled me and decided to convene the Conclave.” He sat on the couch again and Phoebe sat beside him.

“To censure you.”

He gave her a wry smile. “Censuring me was just a convenient bonus. They actually came for the ritual.”

“What ritual?”

“A sort of wide-net snare—to cross every shade in the valley.”

Phoebe made a noise of outrage. “Every shade? Shades they hadn’t even encountered, who hadn’t bothered anyone—they were going to haul them all in?”

Rafe nodded. “Regardless of how recently they’d passed or whether they had any unfinished business.”

“That’s barbaric.”

“I don’t disagree.”

Phoebe’s eyes, darkening again to violet, held the same passionate intensity they’d had last night, though this time it was the passion of anger. She reminded him distinctly of a young Liz Taylor.

He realized he was staring. “They went ahead with the ritual, and I stood in the back of the temple refusing to be part of it.” Gabriel’s pleading had been fresh in his mind, and Rafe had been unwilling to leave, wanting to stop it from happening somehow, to keep his coven from doing to any other shades what he’d done to Gabriel. “You could feel the energy of the shades being drawn into the circle as the ritual began. It was palpable. I couldn’t see or hear any of them like I had with Gabriel, of course. When he came to me, I could see the apparition because we had a blood bond. I’m sure you’ve experienced that with people you’ve known who’ve passed.”

The terse shake of Phoebe’s head surprised him. “I’ve never had that kind of visitation. Just the step-ins.”

“Well, these shades weren’t visible or audible, but the energy was like a pulsing wave. It was heavy and oppressive and I couldn’t just stand there any longer and let it happen. As the rest of the coven began the crossing invocation, I raised my voice in objection.” He hadn’t meant to, but he’d called the shades to him, and he and Matthew had been surrounded. He didn’t feel like describing that peculiar moment when the psychic energy in the temple had nearly overwhelmed him. It had seemed for a moment as if the shades were waiting for him to command them.

“So what happened?”

“I must have disrupted the coven’s focus. The shade energy dispersed before they could cross them and the ritual was in chaos.” Rafe shrugged. “Most shades, new ones, anyway, aren’t aware there’s a self-appointed afterlife policing effort from the Covent. But they’d drawn in so many with this ritual the word is presumed to be out, and they’ve been having trouble raising any shades at all.”

“That must be why.” Phoebe looked thoughtful as she sipped her lemonade. “I drove by the temple yesterday. Something drew me there, the presence of a shade that seemed to want to make contact, except it didn’t step in—maybe couldn’t. And the air around the temple seemed full of shades, but none of them tried stepping in, either. Which, well...you probably can’t appreciate how unusual that is. But I got the feeling they were caught in some halfway state. It was unsettling.”

The idea was worse than unsettling. As much pain as it caused him to think about what he’d done to his brother, he’d hate to think of Gabriel’s spirit being trapped.

Phoebe regarded him. “So that’s when they branded you an oath-breaker.”

He nodded. “The Conclave revoked my active status with the Covent and the right to practice ritual.”

“Which you evidently ignored.”

Rafe met the twinkle in her eye with one of his own. “Evidently.”

“But the Covent’s lawyer is still defending you. How’s that work if you’ve been excommunicated?”

“It’s not quite that severe. It’s more like I’m on a metaphysical ‘time out.’ At any rate, their reputation is at stake if my association with them comes up in a murder trial. And the lawyer is actually my father’s, which he thinks I’m unaware of.”

Phoebe leaned her elbow on her knee with her chin propped in her hand. “Ione didn’t think you knew.”

He shrugged as he took a sip of the lemonade. “We all do a lot of pretending, I guess, so everyone gets what they want.”

“So, after the ritual, you went to the psychic?”

Rafe nodded. “My apprentice left town without a word right after the ritual. I was worried about him and hoped she could help me find him.”

“You have an apprentice?”

“Well, had, anyway. The Covent gave him the boot for not standing against me. Matthew’s a freshman at the University of Metaphysics. He applied to the Covent as an apprentice after a summer internship. But no one there has heard from him since last week.”

She was staring at him with an odd expression. “Matthew?”

“Yeah. Why?”