Jingle Hells (5 page)

His queen? I didn’t know whether to roll my
eyes or chuckle. Queen Amy did have a nice ring to it. “I’m not
hurt,” I told him, letting the term of endearment slide.

Luc eyed Samson and then shot a look at me.
A look that set off an alarm in my brain. Something had just dawned
on him. Something about Samson and the Erelim. I stood. “What is
it, Luc?”

Adam glared. “It’s time for him to go.”

Samson stepped up beside Adam, towering over
Luc in some sort of weird unity. “Agreed.”

Luc gave them a condescending smirk and then
glanced at me again. As he shimmered out of sight, his eyes were
the last feature to disappear, and in them, I saw the flames of
lust flare with renewed passion. Magic rippled over my skin and my
heart banged hard against my ribs.

Adam flinched, jerking his hand away as if
I’d burned him. Thanks to Luc’s magic, I probably had.

“Sorry about that,” I said. “About
everything.”

His lips curved reluctantly, showing me his
dimple. “Not exactly the homecoming I anticipated.”

There was still one too many men in my
bedroom, and I shooed Samson backwards, grabbing Keisha by the arm
and pulling her aside. “Take him home with you. Delilah too. I need
time alone with Adam. I’ll work on their problems tomorrow.”

“You’re kidding right?” She snorted. “The
way they fight? I’ll be lucky to keep them both alive until
tomorrow.”

“So work your matchmaker magic on them.”

“They were a couple already. Didn’t work
out, as you can see. Magic can’t fix that.”

“All right. Take Samson to Liddy’s place and
you keep Delilah. Liddy will keep the big guy calm and you can work
some voodoo on Dee, make her less…annoying to him. Just for
tonight.”

Keisha pursed her lips and glared at me. She
was having none of it.

“Please,” I begged softly, giving her the
old standby you’re my best friend and I’d do it for you look.

She shook her head.

So much for friendship.

Desperate times called for bribery. She’d
wanted to display a Christmas tree at the shop but I’d told her no.
“I’ll let you put up a tree.”

A spark of surprise flashed across her face.
“I can decorate it any way I want?”

I checked the moan in my head as visions of
skulls and crossbones danced through it. “Sure.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and
tapped her foot on the floor. “Not enough.”

Glancing at Adam, I found him still smiling
at me, his green eyes sparkling with humor. I needed a dose of him
and I needed it bad. “I’ll come to your winter solstice party. I’ll
even bring sage for the offering.”

Keisha sighed, dropped her arms. “Fine. But
bring that seven layer taco dip instead.”

“Taco dip for the offering? What gods are
you paying privilege to?”

She took Samson by the arm and propelled him
toward the living room. Delilah stepped back and let him pass, but
not before they both glared at each other. “Not for the offering,
stupid, for the buffet.”

“Oh, right.” As she headed out, I called
after her. “Take Liddy’s cat with you, too. It can’t stay in the
shop.”

She waved a hand over her shoulder, agreeing
or brushing me off, I wasn’t sure. A minute later, we heard my
apartment door close and silence stole into the room.

Adam and I lunged for each other without a
word. He hugged me close and I relaxed into the familiar feel of
his strong arms and broad chest. Our lips reacquainted themselves
with soft, passionate kisses, and soon our hands got in on the
action.

My shirt was off and my bra was about to
join it when I finally caught my breath enough to ask, “How was
your trip?”

“Too long,” he murmured against the skin of
my bare shoulder, his fingers slipping my bra strap down.

“Did you find what you were looking
for?”

His lips followed the edge of my bra cup
before he peeled it aside and licked my nipple. Everything in me
yelled, yippee! “Yes and no.”

“I see,” I said, even though I didn’t. Hey,
I was having trouble connecting the mental dots at that point.
Still, one more nagging question hovered in my brain. “You never
called.” That sounded defensive, even a little whiney, so I added,
“I was worried.”

Warm fingers unhooked my bra and Adam’s face
brightened as he surveyed what he’d obviously been missing. He tore
his focus away from my assets to look in my eyes for a quick
second. “I tried calling you every day, but I never could get
through.”

In the distant recesses of my mind, a couple
of thoughts zipped by. One, he could be lying. Two, he could be
telling the truth and the interrupted phone service was due to
natural causes. Service in that area of the Middle East was
probably unreliable. Or, three, someone had purposely kept him from
getting through to me.

Ding, ding, ding, went the one brain cell
still functioning. Next time I saw Lucifer, I was going to do more
than punch him in the stomach.

Running my hands through Adam’s hair, I
tugged his face close to mine. “Well, you’re here now. What do you
say we make up for lost time?”

Next thing I knew, we were on the bed and I
was tearing Adam’s shirt off in my zest to get skin to skin. I
hadn’t meant to do it, but buttons popped and I held a hunk of
cotton in each hand.

Cain and Able ran from the room. Adam raised
his eyebrows at me. I shrugged and tried to look apologetic. The
effect of his bare chest was so mesmerizing, however, lust trumped
my sorry face. Seeing how overcome with desire I was, he took the
shirt pieces from me and tossed them over his shoulder.

In a flash I wiggled out of my jeans and
went to work ripping his off.

“Now that’s the homecoming I had in mind,”
he said as we finally came together hot skin to hot skin.

The giggle stuck in my throat as Adam dipped
his head and found the perfect way to show me how much he’d missed
me.

Chapter
Five: My Nightmare Before
Christmas

I woke with Cain on top of my head, hogging
my pillow, and Abel tangled in my feet under the covers. The sounds
and smells of Adam in the kitchen filtered through the apartment
and delicious anticipation zinged through my nerve endings. He
liked to cook and his dishes were blue ribbon worthy. Since my
refrigerator’s inventory consisted of white wine, a loaf of stale
bread and a few condiment bottles, I wondered what Adam had managed
to whip up for breakfast. It smelled glorious.

After stumbling through the cluttered debris
still in my living room, I found him at the stove, frying bacon and
scrambling eggs. Next to the stove, a chopping board contained
pieces of onion, mushrooms and fresh chives. A cat circled his legs
as he worked. Not one of my cats—I’d left both in bed. Liddy’s
calico rubbed against Adam’s leg and purred as I watched. Her tail
whipped back and forth in what seemed like a challenge.

I was up to my eyeballs in cats and men. It
was making me delusional.

Adam caught sight of me in the doorway. “You
didn’t tell me you got a new cat.”

We hadn’t exactly done a lot of talking
during the night. “She belongs to Liddy.”

He turned his smile on the cat. “She’s a
beauty. Smart, too.” He pulled a plate from the rack next to him.
“She put on a quite a show for me this morning. I think she likes
me.”

“She’s not the only one.” I scooted up next
to him and we kissed. Out of nowhere, a sharp pain hit my calf.

I jumped back. “Ow!”

The cat had scratched me. She sat back on
her haunches and dropped her eyelids to half-mast as I examined my
scratched leg.

“You must have stepped on her tail,” Adam
said, going for a paper towel. He kneeled down and dabbed at the
blood.

I had not stepped on her tail. I hadn’t even
touched her. While Adam went to the bathroom to find a bandage, I
squatted down across from the cat and narrowed my eyes at her.
“Listen up, kitty. I don’t know what your deal is, but you scratch
me again and I won’t even try to find you a nice home. I’ll take
you to the shelter and let them deal with you.”

She hissed, rising up on all four paws and
shooting her tail straight up in the air. All my witchy instincts
buzzed an alarm. Was she trying to throw a hex at me?

I shook my head. She was just a cat. A
weird, neurotic cat, but still.

“Behave yourself,” I warned her as Adam came
back in the room.

* * *

Later that morning when Keisha and Samson
arrived at work around eleven, I was swamped with customers all
wanting my special of the day: candy cane smoothies. Delilah,
suited up in an elf costume I’d found in the storage room, was
handing out samples on the front sidewalk. The combination of her
exquisite beauty and the enticing holiday ice cream had men lined
up in droves around her.

Even Samson did a double take on his way
through the door with a fresh spruce tree. Keisha followed with
boxes and bags of ornaments and garlands in her arms. She took one
look at Delilah and arched an impeccably groomed brow at me. “You
put your guest to work?”

“Dee’s good for business,” I said. “And
besides she owes me after her and lover boy here wrecked my
apartment last night.”

Samson set down the tree and bowed his head
at me. “I am truly sorry, my queen.”

“Queen, my ass,” Keisha muttered as she
passed me to deposit her decorations in the office.

I handed the next man in line his smoothie.
“Language,” I called after her.

Everyone at the counter was staring at
Samson. As long as Delilah was helping out, seemed to me he should
too. After crooking my finger for him to come behind the counter, I
tossed a pair of stretchy latex gloves at him. “Wash up, put the
gloves on and crush those candy canes by the shake machine.”

Keisha returned and began running the cash
register. She preferred working with money over scooping and that
was fine with me. My arms were toned and strong from the manual
labor and I enjoyed the intensity customers put into picking out
their favorite flavors. Sharing my love of ice cream with fellow
connoisseurs never got old.

When the rush was over and the tables clean,
Keisha put Delilah behind the counter, got Samson decorating the
tree, and pulled me into my office. “What’d’ya find out from Father
Leonard about Emilia?”

“Nothing.” I flopped down into my chair.
Liddy’s cat was on my desk again and I chased her off with a wave
of my hand. She jumped into Keisha’s lap. “You were supposed to
take that cat to Liddy last night.”

Keisha rubbed the cat’s face and ignored my
statement. “You mean Emilia isn’t possessed by Gabriel like you
thought?”

“No, what I mean is I never had a chance to
get answers to my questions.”

“Why not?”

“Well, first there was a wolf on the church
steps refusing to let me in and then there were the Siamese Twins.
Except they aren’t technically Siamese twins, just twins that
reminded me of Siamese cats.”

I shivered at the memory of their slit green
eyes and the way they had stroked Father Leonard’s arms. Funny, I
was more scared of them than the wolf.

Keisha absentmindedly scratched the cat’s
ears. Loud purring ensued. “The wolf was Luc, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, but why would he care if I went into
the church?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Crucifixes, holy water,
priests. You were an evil witch in his employ just a few months
ago. I can see why he might worry you’d get hurt in a holy
place.”

“He could have saved me the trouble if he’d
just tell me where Emilia went and if she’s okay.”

“Maybe, like he told you, he really doesn’t
know.” She’d stopped petting the cat and the calico rubbed its head
on her chest. “I’m surprised you’re that worried about her.”

I rocked my office chair. Emilia’d been
missing for seven weeks but it wasn’t like I could go to the police
and tell them about the last time I’d seen her. She was responsible
for burning down a building and putting people’s lives in danger.
When I replayed the scene over in my head, though, it was Gabriel’s
face I kept studying. He’d used her to get to me, I was sure of it.
“There’s something fishy going on and I want to know what it is,
but I keep running into dead ends.”

“That why you had a booty call with Luc last
night?”

I gave her a disgusted look. “Since my
research was at a standstill, I asked him for help. I figured if
anyone outside of the priests would know about heavenly entities,
he was my best bet. He told me some interesting things about dear
old Samson and the Erelim.”

Like always, at the mention of the name, the
calico stood up and arched her back. She had just launched herself
out of Keisha’s lap when a shimmer of black materialized beside my
desk. A second later, a man and two women were standing there in a
triangle. The women were the same Siamese cat twins I’d met the
night before in the church. They took up glaring at me the same
way.

“You.” I returned the glare. “I knew you
were magical. What are you doing here? Better yet, what are you
doing pretending to be church members at Immaculate
Conception?”

They spoke in unison. “That is not your
concern.”

The man stepped forward and held out what
looked like a miniature laptop. Instead of the usual Dell or HP
emblem on the cover, however, there was a stylized devil’s face
complete with horns. Lucifer had apparently branched out his
business product line. “Satan asked us to give this to you as a
replacement for the one you lost last night.”

I glanced at Keisha out of the corner of my
eye. She looked as surprised as I felt. Only I had a good deal of
annoyance running through my veins as well. The twins were
obviously up to no good with the priest and I had a sudden urge to
defend him. “Why would Luc send the three of you to bring me a
present?”