Whiskey Witches, F.J. Blooding [ap literature book list .TXT] 📗

Dexx had knocked out his fair share of people. In his line of work, being polite could get him killed. Or worse. So, he knew what he was doing. Paige was out cold. He maneuvered her onto the bed, then sat beside her, grabbed his flask of holy water out of his bag, and poured some into her palm.

Nothing happened.

Recapping the flask, he grabbed a ball point pen.

It proved a theory. Or did it?

Paige was a demon summoner. She didn’t know that, thanks to Alma and Leslie. But she was. Demons were naturally drawn to her. It didn’t matter if her gift was working or not.

So, maybe, when the demon had attempted to possess her, she’d been able to fight back somehow. Maybe.

Or maybe the son of a bitch was just hiding.

What demon had he heard of that could hide inside a host from fucking holy water?

He dug out his phone, thumbed through his recent calls and hit Leslie’s name.

“Hey, Dexx,” Leslie Whiskey said, her voice full of laughter. “No, Mandy. Please, I’m on the phone.”

Dexx could hear the girl in the background, but couldn’t make out what she said.

“Later. Okay.” Leslie’s Texan drawl softened. “Sorry about that, Dexx. What’s up?”

“It’s a demon.” He started a protection sigil on Paige’s wrist.

“What happened?” Leslie asked, all distraction erased from her tone as panic rode in. “Is she okay?”

“For now.” He studied the blooming bruise on Paige’s jaw. “But I don’t know for how much longer.”

“Where is she? What happened? Did she summon?” With each question, her voice rose another octave.

Which question was he supposed to answer first? “No.”

“Then what happened?”

He filled in the outlines of the mark. “Les, who else knows about her gift?”

“No one outside the family.”

Not entirely true. “I know.”

“You’re family. Dexx, what’s—”

“There was a trap spell.” He couldn’t be sure. He wasn’t a witch and didn’t know much about spells. “At least, I think.”

Silence on the other end of the phone call. “It could have been for anyone.”

Seriously? She was going to play dumb. “Why weren’t there any trap spells before this? He’d murdered two others prior to her being asked on the case.”

“It could be that this guy just didn’t know what he was doing and set something up on accident.”

“How many times does accidental magick happen? On this scale?”

“Accidents happen all the time.”

“Demons, Les. Paige.” Dexx gripped the pen too tight in his frustration, digging too deep into Paige’s skin. “Not an accident, Les. Someone knows.”

Leslie was quiet on the other end of the line.

He needed to lighten up. Leslie was his bet to help Paige. He just needed her to quit refusing to see what was right in front of her face. They were out of time. Paige, for whatever reason, had always been a player in the magickal realm. Demons. Angels. The fucking assholes wanted to take over the damned war.

Taking her out of the fight had been a bad move for all kinds of reasons.

“I’ve seen would-be practitioners,” Dexx said, forcing his voice to level out, “do some pretty dumb things in my day, but this? People who kill people are serious about something.”

“Buckets of beans!” Something clunked on the other side of the call.

“Les, such language.” Dexx grinned. He knew from experience that the woman could make sailors blush.

“Don’t make fun. How’re the shields on her gift holding?”

“Damn it, Les.” Dexx pressed his lips together as he fought to refrain from saying what was really on his mind. “Les, why haven’t you take the memory blockers down? Don’t you realize how open for attack she is now?”

“Do not blame this on me. I released them before she left, but…” He heard her take in a deep breath. “It was worse than last time. If you want to place blame, start with Grandma and Balnore.”

“It’s the gift she was born with, Les. There has to be a reason it was given to her.” His hand jerked the pen in anger along Paige’s wrist, creating a line that didn’t belong on the sigil.

“She’s dangerous and you know it. She summoned demons to kill, Dexx.”

“Just one demon and just one person.” He brushed the pen across the sigil to repair the damage.

“My mother.”

Rachel Whiskey, fucking bitch—mother from Hell. “You have met the woman, right? The world would be better off without her in it, especially after what she did.”

“Be that as it may, Paige didn’t deserve paying the repercussions of that on top of losing her job and Leah. I didn’t know what else to do.”

Dexx still didn’t understand how they’d done it. “How’d you manage to wipe Leah from her memories, anyway? And get her to forget all about her abilities? She can’t even summon fire.”

Leslie was quiet a moment. “It wasn’t easy.”

Paige was the reason Rachel had left Texas when Paige was ten. According to Rachel, Paige was the devil’s own child.

Dexx had been living with Rachel and Nick when she’d decided to go back to Texas and “save” Paige’s daughter, Leah. And, sadly, he’d supported her, thought it was the right thing to do. He hadn’t realized how someone with a demon summoning ability could be good. He’d lost his brother to a demon. So, he hadn’t been too generous.

Rachel had swooped in, taken Leah—legally, which still left Dexx scratching his head as to how—and returned to New York. A real hero.

That was when Paige had summoned a demon to kill her.

Knowing what he did now, he probably