Stripped

She was an ordinary witch. A mundane. No active powers.

Like Lilith. Not before, but now.

Despite her lack of tangible powers, however, Josie always seemed to know when Lilith was up to something—particularly when she was marching straight into disaster.

“Where are you headed in such a hurry?” Josie asked, her tone omniscient.

“The police station.”

“Mac’s police station?”

“There are hundreds of police stations in the city. And yet I keep going back to the same one. Isn’t that a sign of insanity or something?”

“Possibly, since Mac is hot and you’re in love with him.”

Lilith’s jaw dropped open.

Josie tapped her under the chin with her finger. “Don’t gape. It’s unattractive.”

“I’m. Not. In. Love. With. Mac.”

Josie nodded condescendingly. “Then why are you going to the police station?”

Lilith growled as she stuffed her keys into her hip bag. In contrast to Josie’s purse, which was roughly the size of Lake Michigan, Lilith’s bag contained three items. Her keys, her favorite lip gloss and cash. She wondered how much longer she’d have any spending money now that she’d been stripped of her ability to do psychic readings. Too bad the cops didn’t pay her one red cent. Other than all the herbal tea she could drink and a sense of accomplishment, she didn’t get a damn thing from the department. Though without her powers she wasn’t sure she’d be any use at all.

Still, she couldn’t bring herself to tell Mac no. As much as she’d wanted to, as much as the logical part of her brain screamed at her to stay clear of her former lover, she couldn’t deny him.

He needed her.

And she needed him. Or at least, his case. If the Council wanted to witness her good and selfless heart, they could watch her now. So she wasn’t psychic at the moment. She’d find a way to help.

If nothing else, she could flaunt what she hoped Mac was seriously missing from his life—namely, her in his bed.

She’d chosen her outfit with extreme care. Tight jeans. See-through blouse. Skintight tank underneath. Killer spiked boots. Of course, she wouldn’t know if her primping truly enticed him since her powers were gone. Though, how hard could it be for a woman to figure out if a man wanted her? Even ordinary women knew.

Ordinary.

Lilith blanched, then vowed to never, ever be ordinary.

“Did you need something, Josie?”

Discussion of Mac visibly flew out of Josie’s brain. “I had a really odd dream last night.”

Dream interpretation had never been Lilith’s forte. She marched toward the elevator, trying to psych herself up for seeing Mac again. Smelling Mac again. Hopefully feeling Mac again, even if it was just a brush of hands or a shoulder bump.

“You know I can’t help you with that.”

Josie huffed. “Hello? Not everyone who hangs out with you wants something. I didn’t come to you as a psychic. I came to you as a friend.”

Lilith winced and turned slowly.

“Sorry. You know I suck at the whole interpersonal-relationship thing. I’m too self-absorbed.”

Josie took a step back. “You say that as if you think it’s a bad thing.”

“It is according to the majority of people in my life.”

Josie joined her friend across the hall and pushed the down button. “Well, yeah, but I’ve never heard you say so. Since when did you get self-awareness?”

“I’ve had a life-changing experience,” she muttered.

“Something bad?”

Nothing she could talk about. Well, she could tell Josie. There wasn’t actually a witch law that forbade her from revealing herself to a mundane. But centuries of history proved it wasn’t a good idea. Regular people tended not to believe in the paranormal. Dumping such a wild story on her pal would mean she’d risk losing the one and only person beyond her sister that she considered a close friend. Most Wiccans who, like Josie, studied the craft and worshipped the deities never realized that there was a level of witches that existed between the mundane and the divine. Witches with powers that, without utmost secrecy, could be exposed. Some witches possessed telekinesis or the ability to become invisible. Others were adept healers or, like Lilith, could read minds and see the future.

Past tense, she reminded herself.

Still, exposing the presence of such power could put a lot of people in danger—especially the person she told.

“Not all life-changing experiences have to be negative,” Lilith insisted, startled when the elevator dinged and the doors slid open. She really was going to have to get used to operating without her sixth sense.

“That’s a mighty optimistic thing for you to say,” Josie replied, joining her on the lift.

Lilith punched the L button. “Are you implying that I’m a pessimist?”

Josie pursed her lips. “You’re certainly not an optimist. You kind of skirt the line.”

“Story of my life.”

“Is that why you’re going to see Mac? Some sort of danger thing?”

Lilith couldn’t argue that returning to the scene of the crime of her affair with Mac was likely not the smartest thing to do. But helping him find this drug shipment might boost her karma just enough to get the Council to reconsider their declaration and restore her powers. Besides, she intended to show Mac how she’d survived his callous rejection. She was still sexy. Still irresistible.

And he couldn’t have her.

“Let’s just call it extreme dating,” Lilith declared, “only without the date.”

“Sounds more like extreme teasing.”

“Works for me.”

They reached the lobby, but Josie didn’t exit after the doors sliced open. “Do you want to hear about my dream or not?”

“Got a hot date tonight?” Lilith asked.

“You know I don’t,” Josie snapped.

Actually, she didn’t know, but why quibble?

“Well, now you do. Have a date. With me. I’ll bring the tequila and you bring the dreams.”

“I don’t drink tequila,” Josie shouted as Lilith pushed her way out of the apartment building and into the sultry Chicago-in-August afternoon.

“Good! More for me.”

And she had a feeling that after this encounter she was going to need every last drop.

2

HE COULD FEEL HER EYES. As slowly and as nonchalantly as possible, Mac peeled his back off the one-way mirror, certain Lilith had arrived and was on the other side of the deceptive glass. Close. With her palm pressed against the barrier. Her warmth, her spiced perfume, permeated the window with no more effort than a wisp of smoke through a screen.

He’d made a colossal mistake in calling her.

But he couldn’t turn back now.

“Look, man, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Pogo Goins insisted, his eyes redder and droopier than they had been four hours ago when he’d come in. Goins was coming down off his high, which to Mac was both good and bad. On one hand, a little clarity on his part might help him keep his facts straight. On the other, good old Pogo might soon be lucid enough to figure out they had no reason to hold him and he had no reason to answer their questions. “I just want my ride back, got it?”

The interrogation—now being run by Rick and his partner, Det. Barbara Walters, with Mac observing in the background—had been going on for nearly an hour. Why Pogo hadn’t called for his attorney yet, Mac couldn’t begin to guess. Likely because they hadn’t accused him of anything. In fact, they’d catered to the guy, bringing him all the cigarettes and doughnuts necessary to appease a serious hangover. They’d shot the shit since this morning, stringing him along with leads on his beloved stolen vehicle. But criminals came in two types: those smart enough to keep their traps shut until their lawyers showed up and those stupid enough to think they could deal with the cops without legal counsel. He could only hope that Pogo fell into the second group today.

Technically Pogo hadn’t done anything wrong. This time. He simply had information—possibly information he didn’t even know he had.

They’d had a tip.

Nothing more than a vague inference.

Which was why they had to proceed with caution.

Which was why Mac had called Lilith.

Which was why he was heading to Flanagan’s on the River right after work for a stiff drink.

“My, my, don’t you look delicious from behind.”

Mac nearly swung around, but he held steady. He was wearing an earpiece, but even the mechanical device couldn’t dull the intensity of Lilith’s sultry voice.

She even wolf-whistled. She nearly deafened his left ear.

He stretched his hands into his blazer pockets, somewhat obstructing her view of his ass. What he couldn’t do was respond. If Goins got even a hint that Mac was taking help from the other side of the one-way, the interview would be over.

“Mr. Goins,” he said, alerting his detectives to the fact that Lilith had arrived, “I’m real sorry that your car got jacked and that you’ve been here so long. I know you’ve given us all the information you can recall.”

God, he hated playing good cop.

“Yeah, yeah,” Goins replied. “I mean, the snacks and cigs have rocked, but I think maybe I need to get going, you know?”

“He’s nervous,” Lilith said.

No shit.

“We’ve really been trying to cut down on the petty crimes in your area,” Mac said. “I mean, guy like you, on the straight and narrow for, what, a year now?”

Goins nodded, his greasy hair swiping along the sides of his razor-sharp cheeks. “I’m clean, man. You can ask my PO. Nothing dirty on me…nothing dirty around me.”

“You know he’s lying, right?” Lilith interjected. “This is boring. And it’s hot in here. Why don’t you take off your jacket? I could take off my blouse. It’ll be fun.”

He was going to kill her.

“We know you’ve been clean, Pogo,” Mac reassured, attempting to ignore the instantaneous image of a bare-breasted Lilith, licking her lips lasciviously, anticipating the strike of pleasure she’d experience when he took her nipples into his mouth. Moisture swelled on his tongue. He swallowed hard. With conviction.

Conviction. Yeah. Cop word. Remind him of the job. Of the point of calling Lilith in the first place.

Though Pogo had been more relaxed with the other detectives, Mac couldn’t ask Rick or Barbara to plug in with Lilith. Not because he feared she’d tease them mercilessly with her nonstop sexual suggestions, but because he was skirting all kinds of protocols by using a psychic in the first place, especially for a case that had little to bolster it except one vague tip. If anyone got heat from the chief or the new mayor for bringing a civilian into the investigation, it would be him.

Mac patted Pogo on the shoulder. “We know you’re one of the good guys now, Pogo. Word is out you’re not in the game anymore. That’s why we’re all pissed about this punk stealing your ride. Here you are trying to get your life back together and you lose your transportation to work. Where are you working again?”

Pogo’s crooked front teeth chewed on his scarred bottom lip. “I’m driving trucks. For my cousin.”

Barbara tilted her head to the side, her bright blue eyes sparkling with just enough feminine interest to mask the not-so-subtle crinkle of her nose. “Which cousin is that again?”

“Larry. He’s got six rigs. Small stuff. But he makes clean money, okay? Nothing shady.”

“He’s telling the truth about Larry,” Lilith interjected. “But he’s nervous. The word trucks got him. Fish in that direction, hot stuff. See what you can catch.”

The “hot stuff” notwithstanding, at last Lilith had offered something useful. Maybe the cousin, Larry, was on the up-and-up, but someone else in the operation possibly wasn’t.

“Is that where your car got jacked? At the truck yard?”

Goins swallowed deeply.

Lilith whistled softly. “Ooh, that one registered on the Richter scale. Have you ever noticed that the word jacked is sexy? Why is that?”

Mac growled.

Lilith sighed. “Keep going back to the car.”

“We’ve got to establish scene of the crime, right?” Mac asked. “You look a little nervous. You don’t have to be nervous, Pogo. You’re here just as a citizen who has been victimized by a growing criminal element. But we can’t help you if you don’t tell us the whole truth.”

“Can you blame him, boss?” Rick offered, taking the tack of—what?—better cop to Mac’s good cop? The way they’d all been catering to this criminal lowlife made Mac’s stomach turn, but the ends simply had to justify the means. “Mr. Goins has been in here as a suspect. Probably doesn’t trust us. I mean, if I were him, I wouldn’t trust us.”

In Mac’s ear, Lilith cursed. Instinctively Mac’s neck jerked, but Goins’s suddenly sullen expression kept him steady. Mac watched the man’s lips pull tight across his teeth, and when he shook his head, sweat dripped off the stringy strands of his hair. Mac expected Lilith to break in with some sort of insight, though he hoped she’d keep strictly to business. He didn’t know why he bothered with such an unrealistic expectation. The sound of her voice, coupled with her sexy commentary, were playing cruel tricks on his body. She’d always had a knack for banter that ping-ponged between serious insight and naughty suggestions—suggestions she’d make good on once they were alone.

Mac’s mouth instantaneously watered in anticipation.

Damn Pavlovian response.

Yet this time she remained silent.

“Come on, Pogo,” Mac urged, leaning on the cold metal table separating the petty thief and low-level former drug dealer from his detectives. “Tell us where you really were.”

“I was at a bar, okay?”

“Where?”

He gave the location, a hole-in-the-wall with a less-than-reputable clientele.

Rick scooted back his chair, the legs screeching on the tile floor. “You told us earlier you were at the grocery.”

“I was there before. I just went to grab a beer before going home. There’s no law against that. Someone must have followed me.”

“Someone like who?” Barbara asked, her blue eyes narrowing. In her late fifties, she was the top female detective in the department and was especially effective in interrogation, though she and Goins went back so far that any trust between them had been broken long ago. That was the trouble with Goins. He knew practically every cop in the precinct, thanks to his less-than-honest ways. He was particularly hard to trip up, despite his obvious hangover, simply because he’d been in enough interrogations to teach a class at the academy.

“Look, Pogo,” Mac broke in. “We just want to help you find your ride, but now your story is changing on us. Where were you? Shopping for milk and eggs or club hopping with that new squeeze of yours?”

Goins rolled his eyes. “Yeah, do I look like the type bouncers are going to let in some club? I just went in for a brew.”

And overheard something?

Where was Lilith? Mac glanced at the window. He couldn’t see anything, of course. Had she taken off?

Mac considered slipping out for a minute, but Goins seemed on the verge of telling them something. He had to ride this out.

“But you got more than a beer while you were there, didn’t you?” Barbara asked.

Goins pushed back from the table. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, man. I just want my car.”

“There. That’s it, Mac. Go in for the…”

Mac didn’t have a chance to respond when the door to the interrogation room slammed open. The minute he saw the tacky diamond ring on the intruder’s left hand, Mac knew the interview was over.

Shit. Why hadn’t Lilith warned him?

And now what the hell was he going to do?

TORTURE. PURE TORTURE. It was bad enough when Mac faced her, flashing her with glimpses of his deep maple-brown eyes, stubbled square jaw and lips that curved just enough to be delicious and manly at the same time. But when he’d spent the interview with his back to her, she’d had an unhampered, uninterrupted view of his amazingly tight ass. An ass she’d once adored with her mouth and hands in unadulterated appreciation. An ass she craved even now. Damn him.

She sipped her hot drink, brewed with the chamomile tea bag she’d swiped from Det. Walters’s desk. Barbara didn’t seem to mind Lilith’s continued petty thefts. One of these days Lilith was going to replace what she’d taken. That ought to be good for an extra-credit karma point.

But first she had to concentrate.

Okay, she couldn’t read Goins’s mind. When she’d had her psychic powers, she could plug into most people’s thoughts as if she had a listening device implanted in their brain. With more sophisticated liars, her psychic vision had allowed her to see images—pictures, sometimes even words spelled out in block letters—which she’d had to then interpret into the information she needed. Oftentimes, the interpretation had been the hardest part of the experience. Only after years of training with her aunt Marion—the witch from whom she’d inherited her power—had she learned how to block out all the detritus and focus only on the information she sought. Now when she focused, her screen was blank.

But the stirring in the pit of her stomach that alerted her when someone was lying still seemed to work.

And Goins had her feeling as if she needed a huge dose of Tums.

Having Mac so close and yet so far wasn’t helping matters either.

She pressed her fingers against the glass and tried to focus on the subject of the interview. She closed her eyes instinctively, but when she did, the roiling in her stomach ceased. She forced her eyes open. Good goddess, she was going to have to relearn how to do everything. Back when she’d been a child, before she’d grown fully into her power of clairvoyance, she’d suffered endlessly from an upset stomach. Not until her mother had caught her chugging Mylanta had she learned that her physical reaction to lies had been strong enough to sicken her. Her mother, filled with guilt and remorse, had then—and only then—sat her down and explained that Lilith was a witch of sacred gifts and that someday she’d hold sway over those around her because of her abilities.

God, how old had she been?

The sick feeling returned, and not because of mistruths. Only a few months later Amber St. Lyon had died, leaving Regina and Lilith to discover their magic alone. Okay, not alone. Aunt Marion had been there, as well as the rest of the Council, all of them keenly aware that the scope of power passed down through the St. Lyon line required that the girls be groomed and molded with precise care. They’d done a hell of a job with Regina, who’d taken over as Guardian on her sixteenth birthday, the youngest witch in two centuries to assume such a lofty position. With Lilith…well, suffice it to say that by the time she was sixteen, she could control her power…and little else.

“Well, well, if it isn’t the Chicago Police Department’s resident soothsayer.”

Lilith spun around, cursing at being caught off guard yet again. She sharpened her four-letter words from mildly offensive to shockingly harsh when she recognized who’d called her out.

Boothe Thompson.

“That would make you the criminal element’s equivalent of Santa Claus, wouldn’t it?” she snapped.

Boothe smoothed his manicured hands down the length of his tailored Italian suit. “I’m much too slender for that comparison, Lilith, don’t you think?”

She raised an eyebrow. “When exactly did we get on a first-name basis?”

“I find it hypocritical to trade insults with someone and then address them formally. And I may be a lot of things, but hypocrite is not one of them.”

“No, I suppose being a bottom-feeding ambulance chaser takes up way too much time for anything else,” she retorted and then added, “Mr. Thompson.”

His lips curved into a half smile. “You are the feisty one, aren’t you?”

Lilith stepped forward, inwardly cursing at how she could read nothing from this man. And not because of her lost powers. From the first minute she’d crossed paths with this infamous defense attorney over a year ago she’d been unable to read him. She sometimes ran into mundanes—nonmagical mortals—who could effectively block her psychic abilities. She figured a scum-bucket attorney like Boothe Thompson had honed his truth-masking abilities from an early age. She experienced the same effect with some stage-trained actors and, not surprisingly, experienced boutique saleswomen. Particularly those who worked on commission.

“The feisty one? Compared to whom?”

“All charlatans of your ilk,” he replied, sneering. “How the mayor allows his department to employ frauds and swindlers like you is beyond me.”

Lilith rolled her eyes. “I expect there’s quite a bit that’s beyond you. Like the fact that I’m the real deal.”

He stepped closer. “Is that so? Tell me, then, Ms. St. Lyon…” he said, emphasizing the miz sound so that he nearly hissed like a snake. “What does your third eye reveal when you look at me?”

Lilith squared her shoulders and, despite her lack of magical powers, stared into his steel-gray gaze with bold rebellion. She concentrated but saw nothing. Not so much as a flicker. And the sick feeling in her stomach had nothing to do with lies. Pure feminine instinct turned the juices in her belly into hydrochloric acid.

“I see a handsome, arrogant man who believes he holds sway over every man and woman within a fifty-foot radius,” she answered.

Boothe frowned. “Only fifty feet? You seriously underestimate my ambitions.”

She bit the inside of her mouth to keep from smiling. His overconfidence struck her as funny somehow. Probably because in a way it mirrored her own.

“Perhaps. But you like to keep your friends close and your enemies closer. You work in small, concentrated bursts, luring people to your side, confident that even when they’re out of your sight they’ll still love and adore you.”

His eyes brightened. “Perhaps you’re not the fraud I suspected you to be.”

She didn’t reply. A few short days ago, she would have gloated, knowing her abilities were as real as the diamond on his left ring finger. Now all she could rely on were her feminine instincts. But with a guy like Boothe Thompson—slick, attractive and precision-oiled—she had insights to spare.

“You, on the other hand, are all smoke and mirrors,” she concluded.

He chuckled, raised his hand to…what? Pat her cheek? Her fingers coiled into a fist, but he stopped before his skin touched hers when he caught sight of the action on the other side of the one-way.

“Now that isn’t good.”

Lilith spun around and caught the fearful look in Pogo’s eyes. She pushed herself away from Thompson and reestablished the connection to Mac.

“There. That’s it, Mac. Go in for the…”

The door to the interrogation room slammed open.

Instantaneously her earpiece exploded with dueling shouts from Mac and Boothe Thompson.

Game over.

She yanked the listening device from her ear and wondered how one filled out a job application. Judging by her nonmagical performance as a psychic, she needed a new profession. Soon. Very, very soon.

3

MAC PEEKED ONE EYE OPEN, then immediately pressed his lids tight. “Go away, Lilith.”

He heard her close the door. Her stiletto heels clicked across the terrazzo floor but stopped their ominous tattoo when she reached the edge of his desk. A desk he liked in an office he liked—all courtesy of a job he liked. A job he’d devoted his life to since trading his college degree in criminology and four years’ service in the military police for a badge emblazoned with the City of Chicago’s official seal.

A job he might have been kissing goodbye right now if the chief of police didn’t owe him for saving his life once.

“So got any ass left for me?” Lilith asked.

Mac shifted uncomfortably in his seat and opened one eye halfway. “Let’s just say it’s a miracle I’m sitting.”

“Chief chewed off all that prime meat?”