“There’s something off about that guy,” Marty continued, studying me narrowly. “And, there’s something off about you that I’m pretty sure has everything to do with him.”

  I swallowed hard. “Something off?”

  He nodded. “Didn’t you see the way he acted? The way he was preening around in front of the mirror like he was a peacock?”

  “I didn’t notice.”

  “And he was… pretty rude to you, Wanda,” Marty continued. “I’m surprised you let him talk to you like that.”

  “Like what?”

  Marty shrugged. “I don’t know—like you were beneath him.” He took a deep breath. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more conceited asshole in my life and there was… something off about his energy.”

  Now it was my turn to raise my eyebrows. “No, no, no! You’ve got him all wrong. He was just trying on his outfit and wanted to make sure it fit properly.” Why was I standing up for him?

  “He didn’t look sideways at the outfit and he didn’t look sideways at you. He was staring at himself the whole time. I’m surprised he didn’t kiss the mirror.”

  I gave a nervous laugh. “He wasn’t that bad.”

  Marty wasn’t laughing, though. “I’m telling you, Wanda. There’s something wrong with that guy… I could feel it in the air around him.”

  “He looks to me like there isn’t anything wrong with him—not one thing. His body is perfect. His hair is perfect. His clothes are perfect. His teeth are perfect…”

  “That’s just the problem.” Marty made a face. “No one is that perfect. He’s a cardboard cutout of a person. It’s like… like he wasn’t real, like he was a hollow shell.” Then he shrugged. “That’s the feeling I got from him anyway.”

  I bent over my work. “You just… don’t know him.”

  “And you do?”

  The words hung heavy over me as I thought about them. I didn’t know Dev and, furthermore, Marty was right—there was something off about him, something that was rubbing off on me, changing the way I acted, the way I thought. I suddenly couldn’t keep working.

  Marty took a deep breath. “Look, I don’t have anything against the guy, because I don’t know him from Adam. I’m just saying I get a bad vibe from him and I don’t like the way he talked to you or treated you. Call it me being protective toward a friend.”

  I looked up with difficulty and found him studying me with exceptional intensity. If Marty Zach got a bad vibe from someone, that was not a signal any sensible person should ignore. Why? Because Marty was a null which meant he was immune to magic. Translated, that meant magic didn’t work on him—Marty would be able to see Dev for who and what he really was. Even though he was human, he still had an uncanny ability to pick up on things. If he said there was something off about Dev, he was probably right.

  Come on, Wanda, you thought there was something off about Dev, yourself! Admit it.

  No! Dev is fine. Dev is… gosh, he’s just so handsome. He’s like the epitome of the perfect man.

  Stop! I yelled at myself. Think rationally! Listen to what Marty’s saying!

  It was true—I’d sensed something off about Dev from the first moment he set foot in my store. I just didn’t want to think about it too closely because… well, then I’d have to actually do something about it. And there was an overwhelming part of me that didn’t want to do anything about it. That part wanted to accept Dev for whoever and whatever he was.

  As if speaking the words out of my own mind, Marty lowered his voice to a confidential murmur, “Do you notice anything strange about him?”

  My shoulders slumped as I realized there was no use fighting it. Much though my brain wanted to, I had to fight my own feelings. “Yeah.”

  “Tell me everything you know about him.”

  “Well…” My eyes shot to the door like Dev might catch me talking about him and that thought suddenly scared the crap out of me, though I wasn’t sure why. “When he first walked into the store, he did… something to me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I shrugged and took a deep breath. “It’s hard to explain.”

  “Okay, but try.”

  I nodded. “My brain kind of shut down and I couldn’t think or talk. He did all the talking and I couldn’t look away from him. It was like… like I was mesmerized by him. His eyes hypnotized me.” I decided not to tell him about the kiss I was sure Dev had given me even though he hadn’t touched me. It just sounded… too weird.

  “Did he really hypnotize you?”

  “I… I mean, I don’t know.”

  His expression was insistent. “Think, Wanda. Are you just saying that or was it really some kind of hypnosis?”

  “I…. uh….” My hand flew to my head. “I can’t remember. It’s so hard to think about it, to remember it exactly... It was really strange.”

  Marty started pacing around the sewing table. “What did he say to you?”

  “I can’t really remember,” I said as I scratched my head and wondered just why that was.

  “You can’t remember?”

  I nodded. “It’s weird but, my memories from the first time he came into the store are… almost blurry. It’s like I was drunk or something and can’t remember what happened.”

  “Can you remember anything? Start with anything you remember at all—like what you had for breakfast or lunch that day.”

  I thought, hard and all of a sudden, it was like a dam broke and thoughts and images started flooding my mind. “I remember… he said he wanted a custom order, and he picked this outfit from my design book,” I said as I yanked the book out and pointed to the outfit in question. Then I looked back up at Marty. “Then he asked how long it would take to make and he said he’d come back the next day so I could take his measurements since I was closing for the night.”

  “Anything else?” Marty demanded. “Anything at all?”

  “Yeah…” I looked over my shoulder again. What did I think I would see there? “He touched…” And here was the embarrassing part. “He ran his thumb across my lip… here. He said I had mustard there from my dinner, but when I tried to lick it off, it tasted like…”

  Marty halted right in front of me. “It tasted like what, Wanda? This is important.”

  I lowered my hands to my lap. Why in Hecuba’s name had I ignored all these details before now? “It tasted like blood.”

  Chapter Nine

  Marty scared the pants off me again by clapping loudly. “I knew it!”

  “You knew what?”

  “He bewitched you,” Marty said, nodding as he started pacing again, throwing his hands behind his back like he thought he was Sherlock Holmes or something. “This is classic bewitching—everything you just mentioned. It all fits.”

  “He bewitched me?” As much as I wanted to laugh, I couldn’t. I mean—it kind of made sense.

  Marty nodded. “I would bet he marked you with some kind of magical sigil.”

  “A magical sigil?” I repeated, shaking my head as Marty’s idea fell flat. Marty had his own ghost hunting company in town and sometimes this stuff went to his head. I was starting to think this was one of those times.

  “Last I checked, I didn’t have any new marks on me.”

  “Maybe it was an invisible one,” he answered with a shrug. Before I could argue, he continued. “What else can you tell me? What happened when he came back and you took his measurements?”

  “Um, well, he asked me out.”

  Marty whipped around fast, his eyebrows reaching for the ceiling. “He what?”

  “He asked me out,” I repeated, frowning at him. “Don’t act so horrified—I am single.”

  He charged the sewing table and planted his arms in front of me. “This is serious, Wanda!”

  “Well, I wasn’t joking. I mean… I am single.”

  But, Marty wasn’t listening. Instead, he was back to pacing. “He enchanted you at your first meeting and marked you with a sigil in order to assert his influence over you. Then he asked you out on a date on your second meeting.” Then he looked over at me. “Tell me you refused?”

  I clenched my jaw as I frowned. “Actually, I went out for coffee with him.”

  His jaw hit the floor. “You didn’t!”

  I leaped to my feet and tossed the rumpled denim pieces on the table. This was turning into an interrogation, and I didn’t like one minute of it, especially because I didn’t consider Marty someone worthy of interrogating me. He was a null human, for Hecuba’s sake! Even if he was immune to magic, he didn’t possess any of it, either.

  Furthermore, if Marty kept on asking me questions, I was worried the conversation would travel into the embarrassing territory of the sexual dream I had about Dev that turned into a real-life encounter-turned-attack with Lorcan. I did NOT want that to happen, even as I realized it was probably a pretty important point of this… case. But, no, I would take that one to my grave.

  The more I thought about Marty’s idea that Dev bewitched me, the more sense it made. And I could divorce the fact that the idea came from a human—sometimes even humans are capable of making correct associations. So it was starting to look like that disastrous night where I dreamt of Dev and ended up with Lorcan wasn’t an instance of my own magic going haywire. I hadn’t inadvertently called Lorcan to climb into bed with me in the middle of the night… Dev had been responsible for it… but how and why?

  Unless… unless Dev wanted Lorcan to bed me and, in the process, turn me? But, I couldn’t see how that would be because Dev… I didn’t get a vampire feel from him. No, his energy wasn’t death energy. It was something else entirely—sex energy. And, furthermore, why would Dev bother asking me out on a date and then enchant me with dreams about him if he wanted me to desire Lorcan? Yeah, that didn’t make sense.

  When I didn’t elaborate on my coffee date with Dev, Marty went back to pacing. “The question is: what is Dev that he could put an enchantment like that on you, a powerful witch?”

  “I wondered that, myself. The first time I met him, I could feel the magic in his aura and it was a power I’ve never come across before.”

  Marty nodded. “He must be a warlock or something. Maybe he’s another vampire.”

  I took my iron out from under the sewing table and plugged it in as I shook my head. “He can’t be a vampire because the energy pouring out of him wasn’t death energy. And, he was here in broad daylight and, contrary to popular belief, vampires can’t hypnotize anyone with their eyes. They can’t make people do things they don’t want to do—the desire has to already be there.”

  “That means he’s a warlock then. And he’s putting the whammy on you.”

  “I highly doubt he’s a warlock,” I returned with a shrug, deciding to ignore his use of the word ‘whammy’ for now. Marty was quite the nerd. “For one thing, warlocks are extremely rare.”

  “Rare but not non-existent. Might I remind you, your cousin Charmin is one.”

  “You don’t have to remind me,” I grumbled. “And his name is legally Maverick now.”

  “Really?”

  I nodded. “Really.”

  “Anyway, maybe Mav has something to do with this? He hates you since you banished him from Haven Hollow, right?”

  “Right, but he’s banished so…”

  “So, that wouldn’t stop him from sending someone else after you.”

  I snorted, but when I tried to come up with some argument against his logic, I couldn’t think of anything. I stared at him, putting the puzzle pieces together. Dev didn’t strike me as a warlock. As a witch, I would have been able to pick up on his energy since the magic that animates a witch is the same magic that animates a warlock. But, no, I didn’t get that feel from him.

  The sequence of events fit, though. Dev had to possess magic because he’d put me under some kind of thrall when he first walked into the store and every time I’d encountered him since. Then there was that whole encounter where he kissed me, but didn’t kiss me. That was all magic. And then he’d reached out and touched my lip.

  He’d reached out and touched my lip…

  And that was when it dawned on me… “I never had mustard on my lip,” I said as I faced Marty, my eyes going wide.

  “What?”

  I nodded as realization filled me. Dev never cleaned the mustard off my lip, because there wasn’t any to clean. Instead, he’d marked me—that was the sigil Marty was talking about. And when I licked the sigil on my lip, the magic traveled through my entire body, affecting my mind.

  And then once he’d gotten beyond my defenses, I could only imagine he’d further bewitched me on our coffee date to get inside my head. And that was why I couldn’t stop thinking about him—and I dreamed of him, getting him confused with Lorcan.

  In fact, my feelings for Lorcan had spiked off the charts ever since I met Dev. Lorcan had never affected me in such a visceral, sexual way before. In the past, I’d never had any trouble keeping Lorcan at arm’s length, and I’d certainly never called him to my bedroom in the middle of the night. I’d never had erotic, fantasy dreams about him and I didn’t…

  Okay, so that last one wasn’t strictly true, but that only proved the point. Meeting Dev didn’t just affect the way I felt about Dev. It affected the way I felt about Lorcan. It broke down the walls keeping me safe from Lorcan’s influence. But, why? If Dev was a supernatural being, why would he bewitch me to fall for someone else instead of, or in addition to himself? It made no sense.

  I swept the denim pieces aside and yanked the iron’s power cord out of the socket. Then I kicked the sewing stool under the table and stormed behind the counter. I was suddenly in a foul mood because I hated having more questions than answers.

  “What are you going to do?” Marty asked.

  I grabbed my handbag from under the counter and took out my phone. “I’m going to call in a few favors.”

  “A few favors?”

  I nodded. “First, I’m going to find out if there’s a stray warlock who happens to be hanging around Haven Hollow, causing trouble.”

  “But, I thought you said he wasn’t a warlock?”

  I shrugged. “I didn’t get that feeling from him but maybe he’d magicked himself to cover it up? I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.”

  “You should go to Poppy and see if she has any potions that can break Dev’s influence over you,” Marty suggested.

  I nodded as I’d already considered that. “That’s the second thing I’m going to do.”

  ***

  “Yes, I heard you, Wandellmellia,” Mother drawled as I looked over at Marty and shook my head, sighing in exasperation. I’d put the call on speakerphone so he could hear what I had to deal with every time I spoke with my mother. “You don’t have to yell.”

  “I’m not yelling,” I snapped. “I’m just asking. If this Dev character isn’t a warlock, he must be something.”

  “He cannot possibly be a warlock,” Mother sniffed, sounding bored as she usually did whenever we talked on the phone, which wasn’t often. “We’ve been over this a dozen times and the answer is still the same. Your cousin, Charmin, er Maverick, is the only warlock to be born in the last seven hundred years.”

  “So far as you know, you mean,” I interjected as I looked to Marty and noticed he was pacing the store again. I imagined he burned through lots of calories on a day to day basis…

  “Of course I know.”

  “Mother, you can’t know all things. A warlock could have been born and maybe you just didn’t find out about it.”

  “That would never happen. Every witch in every coven on the planet is bound by strict rules of…”

  “I know the rules as well as you do,” I returned, “but not every witch belongs to a coven. And even the ones that do belong to covens don’t always follow the rules. You only have to look to your own coven to know…”

  “We are NOT going into THAT conversation, Wandellmellia.” Her tone turned icy in a split second. That woman knew how to shut down a discussion with the flick of her eyelashes. “Your cousin is the only warlock alive on Planet Earth right now and we all want to keep it that way.”

  I drew in a shaky breath, because I couldn’t agree with her more. Warlocks were a pain in the ass, in general. “All right. Thank you for telling me.”

  “Are you sure you can handle this Dev character?” she asked. “He sounds like he’s… powerful.”

  “I’m fine.” As if she really cared about my personal well-being, anyway.

  “Remember, my offer still stands. I’m more than happy to provide you with a nice cottage far away from Haven Hollow.”

  I groaned inwardly, but I made sure not to do it aloud; not after she’d just spent the last hour and a half telling me how wrong I was about Dev being a warlock. “Thank you, but I’m not ready to leave Haven Hollow yet. I have a life here and…”

  “If that’s what you call a life, then we were right to expel you from the coven. You’re degenerating faster than we expected.”

  I froze. Expelled? This was the first time she’d openly admitted she really had expelled me from the Crescent Circle coven. Up until today, she’d always couched my leaving in terms of my best interests—that she’d wanted to make me more comfortable by moving me away from other witches who might react badly to my situation. At least, that’s the explanation she’d given me when she basically shunned me out of Portland.

  She either didn’t notice her slip or didn’t care. I was betting on the latter.

  “Is there anything else I can do to help you today, Wandellmellia?”

  “No, that’s it, Mother. I’ll talk to you later.”

  I hung up.

  Talk to you later… as in maybe another five hundred years.

  “Well that didn’t help much,” Marty said.

  I nodded.

  Every time I got off the phone with Mother, I always promised myself I’d never talk to her again. Because every time I called for help, all I got was a lecture instead. Actually, this time I’d gotten more—this time I’d gotten a bald-faced admission that the coven and her precious coven sisters’ opinions were more important to her than I was…