I smiled. “It was stolen, but I found it.”

  “You have it?” He frowned.

  “Yes. It’s going to be okay, Donovan.”

  He rocked back in his chair. “I… I’m not sure what to think. This all seems, well, a lot far-fetched. Actually, it sounds totally crazy.” I frowned at that and he gave me a little laugh. “Sorry, Fifi, but it does.”

  “I understand, but I’m not lying to you. I hope the curse is still dormant, but if it’s not, then we’ll know soon enough, right?”

  He cocked his head to the side. “I guess that’s true.” A series of odd expressions passed over Donovan’s face then, like he wasn’t sure what emotion to feel. His jaw clenched, the tendons standing out like cables, before relaxing again. “Can I see it? The amulet?”

  That was a pretty reasonable request, so I fished around in my purse and plucked out the wad of tissues I’d wrapped the clay charm in. Adrenaline made my fingers shaky as I peeled back the layers, offering it to Donovan on my open palm.

  He looked at it for a long moment, before making an abortive move to pick it up. Donovan hesitated again, like he wasn’t sure he wanted to touch it, but eventually lifted it gingerly out of my palm. He held it with two fingers, like it was a snake he didn’t trust not to bite him.

  He glanced at me, and I tried to look encouraging.

  “So, what you’re saying is: this little bit of clay is what’s keeping me from turning into a… what did you call it again?”

  “A ghoul,” I supplied. “I don’t know a lot about them, but from what I’ve heard, they’re kind of an undead, and they eat corpses. Not very pleasant, as far as I can tell. They might also carry diseases. I’d need to check more sources, though, to be sure about any of it.”

  Donovan huffed a laugh, like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing, but his gaze was still riveted on the amulet. “I can’t believe some baked mud and scratches would be enough to hold back a curse.”

  “I don’t think that’s the case. It’s not the amulet itself, but the spell set inside it.”

  He looked up at me then. “There’s a spell inside it?”

  I nodded. “The clay is just a way to anchor the spell and keep it going, but because this one was taken from your great-grandfather’s grave, the spell is no longer active so you’ll need to get it spelled again. Luckily, I know a whole coven of witches who could do it for you.”

  There was a moment of silence while Donovan stared at me. Then he turned back to the amulet with a little disbelieving huff. I was trying to come up with words that might convince him that, no, I wasn’t nuts, and that he needed to listen to me or risk ending up a flesh-eating nightmare, like something out of a horror movie, when he moved.

  Donovan swung the arm that was holding the amulet out and away from the table.

  He dropped the amulet onto the floor.

  In another second, he was standing up.

  And then he stepped on it.

  The old, brittle clay shattered under his shoe.

  ***

  There’s this neat word I sometimes read in the historical romance novels I enjoy; poleaxed. It means ‘stunned’, like someone’s taken the haft of an axe to the back of the head, and it’s totally rattled their brains. I know because I looked it up in the dictionary.

  Sitting there, at Donovan’s table, with candles still flickering in their holders, I finally understood the term fully, because I felt like I’d just been brained.

  Poleaxed.

  I wasn’t a witch. I shouldn’t have been able to sense magic, not really, but I felt it when the charm broke, like a ripple in the breeze. The magic of the amulet hadn’t been dead—well, not until Donovan stepped on it.

  Donovan moved his foot, and all I could do was stare down at the sad little pile of dust that had been an amulet only seconds before. With a sputter and spark, the lights overhead went out, plunging the room into near darkness as I let out a gasp. Before I could think another thought, something sighed in the room, and the candles flared up once, the flames taking on a brilliant blue color. It was over in an instant. The fire turned back into gold and orange, burning in the dark like a pair of malevolent eyes.

  “What did you do?” I whispered, horrified.

  Donovan ran his hands through his hair and stretched. His spine popped twice, and he sighed as though in relief. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve been searching for that damned thing? Years! Years of work, with nothing to go on but old family stories. Stories about why my great-grandfather abandoned his family, moved hundreds of miles away to this Podunk town. All my life I’ve heard: ‘Don’t stray too far, or you’ll end up like Antoine’.”

  “I don’t... understand.”

  He laughed then, sharp and loud, in the quiet of the apartment. “All this time—it’s been like tracking a needle in a dozen haystacks all lumped together. Records from back then were sparse at best, and let’s face it, Antoine didn’t exactly want to be found, did he? Who would have known he’d come to some crappy little town outside of Portland? What was he thinking?”

  Idly, Donovan picked up the chicken drumstick he’d been so carefully cutting the meat from. Grease coated his fingers as he examined the bone, sliding his thumb along it.

  “And it’s so hard to find professionals these days—people who call themselves professionals, anyway. I hired a man named McAdams and gave him one job: get an item from an old, abandoned grave that no one cared about. But the fool messed it all up when he got greedy.” Donovan’s lip peeled back into an ugly sneer. His teeth were very white in the light of the candles. “He had to go stealing from the other graves, drawing attention to himself. And then the prick decided to try and up the price on me once he had the amulet.”

  I swallowed hard. McAdams had been the one to steal the watch then—as well as whatever else he’d managed to take in all the robberies that had been plaguing the cemetery in Haven Hollow. It had been the weaselly guy and he’d stashed his findings (well, at least the watch and the amulet) so he could find them again later.

  The chicken bone snapped in Donovan’s hand, echoing like a gunshot. I couldn’t keep myself from flinching as my heartbeat started in overdrive.

  Donovan dropped the drumstick back onto his plate and grabbed his napkin to wipe his hands clean. “And then, when I got to town to confront him, the moron didn’t even have the amulet on him. He’d stashed it somewhere. Can you believe that?” He shook his head. “I might have lost my temper a bit.”

  “You killed him—McAdams was the man found dead on your great-grandfather’s grave.” The man I’d dubbed ‘weaselly’. My face still felt stiff with shock, and my brain was struggling to catch up. But the important parts, they tended to stick out.

  “Oh, boo-hoo.” Donovan threw his napkin back onto the table as he gave me a laugh that was completely devoid of humor. “One less scumbag in the world, Fifi. I’m sure we’ll all benefit now that he’s gone. I should never have hired him.” He shook his head in disgust. “Aggravating to the end. For the past few days, I’ve had to check all the places he’d gone in an attempt to find my own property. And I still couldn’t find the damned amulet.”

  He smiled again and lifted his wine glass to me in a mocking salute. “Until you were so kind as to bring it directly to me.” Then he laughed. “Who would have thought?”

  I’d started shaking my head, slowly, and I couldn’t seem to make myself stop. “I don’t understand,” I said again through numb lips. Even hearing everything out loud, knowing Donovan had killed a man, that he was the one who’d no doubt terrorized Mrs. Petryka and tried to break into her home in an attempt to locate the amulet, I still didn’t understand why.

  Why had he purposely broken the amulet that protected him against his own curse? “Why in Hell’s name would you want to be cursed?”

  He blinked at me, bemused. “For the power, obviously.”

  “The power?” I shook my head and frowned.

  He nodded. “Of course, ghouls are terrible, but they also live a very, very long time. I’ve done the research, Fifi. Ghouls are hard to kill, they’re inhumanly strong and fast. What’s not to like about that?”

  I sputtered, so appalled I could barely get the words out. “Because they’re the undead! Because they eat corpses! You get that all those so called ‘powers’ come from eating flesh?”

  A slow smile curled across Donovan’s face. His teeth were suddenly way too long and way too sharp to be human. How hadn’t I noticed that before?

  “I’m starting to think that’s a benefit, not a hindrance.”

  Something popped, tendons stretching in his arms, and Donovan’s fingers twitched across the table, almost a spasm as the knuckles twisted. The bones in his face began to shift, lengthening, the muscles in his jaws bunching thicker. It made me want to puke up the few bites of steak I’d actually managed to force down.

  Donovan’s spine did something awful then—making him hunch forward and then his chest cavity seemed to blow outward as his head arched back and he let out what sounded like a painful groan.

  I didn’t stick around for the rest of the show. I’d never fought a ghoul, never even encountered one. Normally, I would have been willing to pit my inner demon against most other supernaturals, but she hadn’t been fed in way too long. And that meant I wasn’t at my top form. The few sips I’d gotten at Roy’s had only managed to leave me almost hungrier than before.

  So, the second Donovan’s attention was fixated on the changes in his own body, I bolted for the door, snatching up one of the table knives as I went. Something blurred past me, and then Donovan was in front of the door, in all his twisted, ghoulish glory. The shoulders of his shirt had torn to fit the new, grotesque muscle, and the fabric gaped like horrified mouths. His skin was now a medium grayish tone and all the hair had disappeared from his body. He was a hunched over mess of ribs and bulging muscle, with long and sharp teeth that seemed to jut out beyond the lines of his almost absent lips. His eyes had sunk into his skull and looked like white lights glowing from within a dark cave. And his fingernails had lengthened into pointed claws. He was hideous.

  I slipped on the carpet, my feet sliding as I tried not to crash into him. My palms were slick with sweat, and I had to grip the knife carefully to keep it from shooting out of my hand. I could taste my pulse on my tongue, thick and sour-sweet, like I was choking on candy.

  “What’s wrong, Fifi?” His voice came out garbled, and incredibly deep, the bits of his new jaw still settling into place. “We’re just getting started. And I’ve always thought you looked delicious.”

  I didn’t respond, just spun on my heel and went for the other door.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I could sense Donovan moving, coming at my back, but then he grunted, and I heard a thud.

  Daring a glance backwards, I looked over my shoulder to see him on one knee on the floor, the bones of his feet moving around, elongating. He was still morphing into his ghoul shape.

  It was disgusting to watch, but it bought me the few seconds I needed to reach the door that led down to the butcher’s shop below. I barely noticed it was unlocked, just threw it open and took the stairs two at a time.

  I just needed to get my head clear. If I could find a place to hole up, a place I could hide for at least a minute or so, I could phone Taliyah and get her to provide me with back up. And, if I managed to survive this whole thing, I was going to make some major changes in my life. First and foremost, I really needed to keep my nose in my own business. Getting involved in other people’s business clearly wasn’t working out for me. Of course, in my own defense, the idea of someone actually wanting to be a ghoul had never even popped into my mind.

  I clattered down the metal stairs, burst through the door at the bottom, and found myself in the butcher shop’s impressive cooler. The shock of the cold air caused my lungs to seize for a crucial second before my breath escaped in a burst of fog.

  Rows and rows of shelves stacked high with various cuts of meat filled the enormous, dark room. They must have taken up the majority of the building, leaving only a small store front in the last corner. A full third of the cooler was filled with huge slabs of meat hung on hooks that dangled on chains from the ceiling. The room smelled like meat and metal, the taste of it coating my tongue. I felt like I could be sick.

  Above me, I heard a door crash against the wall.

  Any head start I might have gotten was now a moot point, apparently. If I couldn’t outrun Donovan, then I just needed to find a spot where I could call in the cavalry.

  There was a horrible noise then—it sounded like metal twisting until it screamed. I raced down the rows of shelves, and ducked into the aisle second from the end, my feet skidding on the slick floor. I just needed a place to hide, just long enough to text Taliyah or Roy or both. Yes, Roy would be pissed at me for meddling (so would Taliyah), but he’d be here for me in a second. I slipped around the other end of the shelf unit, and ducked down, ready to move fast if need be and barely dared to breathe. I inched my hand into my jacket pocket, trying to pull my phone out as silently as I could.

  Donovan’s feet clattered against the metal as he came down the stairs. I had the feeling that he wanted me to hear him. He wanted me to be afraid of him. That, more than anything else, pissed me off.

  Who the hell did he think he was? I mean, were ghouls bad news? Sure, but it wasn’t like they were the biggest or baddest thing I’d ever tangled with. If I’d been well fed, I would have marched right out there and knocked him on his butt.

  Suddenly, everything went quiet.

  Where the hell was he? I didn’t even dare to breathe, my ears straining for any hint of movement. But there wasn’t a single scuff. My skin prickled, lungs aching with the need to take in a breath.

  Where was he?

  I thumbed my phone to silent, so the tones of the buttons wouldn’t give me away. As I pulled up my messages, the buttons still vibrated, which sounded like a freaking gunshot in the room, and I froze, trying to pinpoint where Donovan had gone. Somewhere in the distance, water was dripping. I felt every little plink like a jolt of electricity.

  I risked a peek around the shelf I was pressed against, but there was nothing but more shelves full of packaged meat and plastic sheeting wafting gently in the refrigerated air.

  To hell with it.

  I brought up my text conversation with Roy, and my heart gave a bruised little pang when I realized the last message was my agreeing to come over for dinner. I could only hope that wouldn’t be the last message shared between us.

  I started to type out a quick message, ‘911—butcher’s sh—’, when a monstrous, clawed hand grabbed hold of my arm and wrenched me sideways, back between the shelving units, as if I weighed no more than a rag doll. My phone and the knife I’d been clutching went flying.

  My breath escaped in an implosive little shriek, and my spine slammed into the rounded metal edge of a shelf. Pain shot up and down my back, and I curled in on myself, trying to ease the pressure that was still emanating from my spine.

  Prying my watering eyes open, I stared up into Donovan’s hideous face, and an icy throb of horror ran through me.

  I wasn’t a tall woman. Donovan, in his human form, stood a good six or so inches above me. But now he could rival Roy in terms of height. Even though he was hunched over, it still looked like his arms and legs had been yanked taut on a rack, all stretched out. His jaw was heavy, more like a hyena than a human—a jaw meant for crushing bones and ripping flesh. Gone were his handsome features, and in their place were sunken eyes, hollow cheeks, and breath that stank like old blood. I caught a whiff of it and gagged.

  Donovan plucked my phone from the floor almost delicately, his long, yellowed claws scratching against the tiles. Then he threw the phone down so hard that the plastic shattered, spilling glass and chips of electronics. I watched the bits of my ruined phone skittering across the floor, and my stomach sank like a lead weight. I hadn’t pressed send on my message to Roy. And no call for help meant no one was coming to my rescue.

  Donovan crowded close, his grip on my arm tightening until I felt the bone creak, but I grit my teeth to keep any sounds of pain trapped behind them. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing he was hurting me. Because I was fairly sure that was exactly what he wanted.

  The ghoul that had been Donovan grinned, far too many teeth crammed into his mouth. “No phone calls for you,” he laughed, the sound scraping against my ears in a way that made my skin crawl. “You and I have a dinner date—awk!”

  I’d brought my knee up into his gut, apparently way harder than he’d anticipated, because the breath went rushing out of him as he doubled over. I groped around behind me on the shelves until my fingers closed on the corner of some kind of box. It was solid enough and felt heavy enough, which made it perfect for my needs. My arm swung up, box gripped tightly, and I brought it down on the back of Donovan’s head.

  He went down with something close to a yelp, his grip ripped away from me. Still feeling a pain in my spine, I managed to push through it as I pulled my leg back and then kicked him for good measure.

  Maybe lust demons couldn’t win an arm-wrestling match with a vampire or a sasquatch, but that didn’t mean we were helpless. And any Succubus or Incubus child got taught how to defend themselves from unwanted attention. For most of us, ‘unwanted attention’ was pretty much a non sequitur. But when people started getting grabby, when they started thinking they owned us because we chose to share a night with them? You better believe no demon worth their powers was going to put up with that for a hot second.

  I bolted for the front of the store, moving as quickly as my injured back would allow me. Luckily, I had the ability to heal myself and my body was in the process of doing just that (albeit doing it slowly, owing to the fact that I hadn’t fed enough recently). I had one goal—get out of the shop. If I could get to the street, I could get help. Normally, no one would risk dragging a supernatural fight out in public, but this was life or death.