Page 55 of The Mating Claim

It was all too much for one day.I’m losing my damn mind. Forget the damn candle.Lacey blew out the flame and collapsed into the brown chintz chair customers used for centering their chakras and attainingpeace.

Something squished beneath her. She jumped to herfeet.

“What fresh hell is this?” she cried out, turning to see the bottom of her jeans covered with a gross brown substance. “Awshit!”

“Not shit. Spit. Demon spit,” Xavier offered. “It is quite potent. And smells like… you know. Allowme.”

The Crystal Wizard snapped his fingers and the disgusting stain vanished from her bottom and thechair.

Caderyn glanced at Drust. “Yourcall.”

The Coldfire Wizard glowed with power. He waved a hand and in an eye blink, the shop was restored to normal. No trace ofdamage.

“No insurance necessary.” Drust blew on his finger as a gunfighter would blow on his revolver. “Now that Willow has been vanquished, your shop isclean.”

“Except one thing.” The Shadow Wizard narrowed his eyes. “You still possess the Book of Shadows, youngwitch.”

“I’m not a witch.” Her voice came out as a squeakywhisper.

Caderyn and Xavier glanced at Drust in some silent, unspoken communication. “We will leave this to you, Drust,” the ancient Shadow Wizard said. “You know what todo.”

His expression sympathetic, Xavier clapped a hand on Drust’s suddenly stiff shoulder. “Sorry, dude. Wish it could beotherwise.”

When the two other wizards dematerialized, she relaxed. Perhaps a little. But Lacey had come to adecision.

No magick book was worth the price of a child’s life. Or a dog’s life. Or anylife.

Certainly not worth summoning another demon, even if she had not intendedit.

“Drust, we need to talk. I’m ready to tell you where the book is now. So you can eliminate it.” Her sigh came from deep in her chest. “I don’t want to screw up like that again and risk hurting someone else I care about. Or just anotherinnocent.”

Drust rubbed the back of his neck. “I am afraid it is not quite that easy. I cannot destroy it. It must be hurled into the afterworld of the Shadow Lands from which itcame.”

Lacey’s jaw dropped. “But, you’re the ColdfireWizard!”

“Which means little. You used a powerful spell from the book, Lacey. You opened a window to allow a demon into this mortal plane. Caderyn confirmed it. Once a spell from the book is used, the mortal using it is bound permanently to the book. The only way to destroy the book is to return it to the Shadow Lands from whence itcame.”

His next words filled her with terror and dread. “Which typically means in order to destroy the book, the mortal must be destroyed aswell.”

Chapter 12

He would not allowthis to happen. Lacey must live. Why he felt so compelled to save her, Drust did not know. Perhaps it had to do with the dream he’d had of her, in which he saw himself with her in the past. Lacey who was not Lacey, her long ash brown hair cascading down her bare back as she twirled in a forest glen and laughed, enticing him into herarms.

The dream had faded soon as he opened his eyes, leaving him only with a strong sense of her, her scent, the taste of her mouth as he’d kissedher…

The exquisite feeling of her naked, soft body beneath his as they made love in hisdream.

But more than that, he suspected it had to do with Lacey herself and her stubborn, rebellious spirit and zest forlife.

She is your charge. Nothing more. Rules arerules.

Tristan had warned him to stop seeing things in black and white and to consider the gray areas. But doing so with a dragon like Lacey, one he found desirable and engaged his male interest, wastroublesome.

If he violated his vow to never get involved with one of his dragon charges, he failed as a wizard. Failed his goddess, his fellow wizards andhimself.

Thoughts of the Shadow Lands always danced around the edge of his conscious mind. All the long, lonely centuries spent there had taken theirtoll.

Drust felt like a condemned prisoner freed at last, now staring at the looming threat of another prison cell. If he made a colossal mistake, what if there was no fixing it and the goddess saw to return him to the ShadowLands?