In the Company of Witches

Isaac was still in the house. So was the Dark Guardian.



Hell, she was really off her game. It was past time for Monday brunch. She hadn’t formally introduced him to the staff. But she hadn’t expected him to be up before she was, not after a night of strenuous fucking. Irritating male.



Since they rested on Sunday, the staff shared a brunch on Monday, a family get-together. Maintaining the house protections took considerable energy, so they were used to her sleeping deep on Sunday night to rebuild her strength, coming in a little later to join them. Not this late, but there was no reason for her to be flustered. Monday was also the day she spent on Craft, reinforcing spellwork and feeling for any weaknesses or cracks in the house protections, using her rejuvenated energy to double-check everything.



That would have to wait, because the possibility of her new brunch guest annihilating one of her staff took higher priority.



When she got to the dining room, Cathair still with her, she saw all dozen of her incubi and succubi were there, intact and gathered at one end of the antique dining table that sat twenty. Isaac was among them. Mikhael was on the corner chair at the other end, eating by himself, reading today’s paper. Apparently, he tracked local news.



She subscribed to the paper because her staff liked passing around the comics and reading horoscopes. Or exchanging local news tidbits from the police blotter and front page. She herself nursed the private pleasure of cutting coupons, pestering Li to use them when she sent him and Gina out on supply runs in town. It never hurt to save a dollar.



Given that Gina had spread the news a Dark Guardian was in the house, Raina was surprised to see everyone present, none of them chickening out and staying in their rooms. However, Gina would also have shared Raina’s statement that he was a guest and they would not be harmed. Their faith in her judgment, coupled largely with their passion for Monday-morning brunch, had apparently overcome any wariness. It was flattering, but a little disturbing as well, knowing they had that unwavering confidence, even in the face of a Dark Guardian’s presence. She hoped she could live up to it.



Nonsense. Of course she could. It irritated her that she allowed herself a moment of doubt. They had a balance in her household. Her spells allowed her staff to feed on the sexual energy of clients without taking their life energy, which was a win-win. The clients were more exhausted afterward than they might be with a human escort, but they also had the sex of their lives, and a desire to return for more. She had only a few rules, but they were nonnegotiable. Her staff knew that if any one of them went outside of her house to feed, therefore resulting in a kill, they were expelled, out the door for good. As Isaac’s circumstances starkly demonstrated, most sex demons never found the safety her house offered, the stability and quality of life that existed here.



Monday brunch merely punctuated that fact. Though they didn’t live on human food, succubi and incubi had taste buds like anyone else. Eating human food was like eating candy. No nutritional value, but they liked it, and it whetted their appetites for the real nourishment, arriving later in the evening.



Matilda, their cook, was an unflappable black woman who could talk to spirits, and did so quite often. In fact, she preferred to talk to them, such that Raina often found out what Matilda was thinking or demanding only by her loud conversations with the spirits none of them could see. She ignored any menu Raina told her to prepare, doing what the spirits told her instead. Which was fine, since she had a flawless track record for providing the perfect thing for every occasion. She also knew when someone needed a comforting bowl of soup or a steaming hot cup of tea. As such, Raina had decided that, just because she couldn’t see Matilda’s spirit pals, there was no reason not to defer to their wishes in menu choices. It took meal planning off her to-do list, after all.



Matilda went home each afternoon to her shack, built deep in the swamp on Raina’s property. She always left Sweet Dreams before they opened for business. The one time Raina had asked her to stay, to help cater a party event, Matilda had come to a full stop. Banging her wooden spoon on the edge of the chowder pot, she’d turned toward the potato and onion bins, where her spirits apparently preferred to congregate while she cooked.



“Ain’t none of us going to stand for all that fornicating,” she informed those potatoes and onions. “No, sirree, we won’t be anywhere near this house when that nonsense is going on. And we going to put Tabasco sauce on that naughty Luke’s unmentionables next time he lets that robe gap open at dinnertime to tease old Matilda. He’ll be dancing and howling like all you spirits do on All Saints’ Night. Just you watch.”



She was worth every penny of the exorbitant salary Raina paid to keep her.



Matilda was a perfect mesh for the house itself. Sometimes Raina scheduled a client for one particular playroom, only to discover that door locked when the time came, diverting them to another, more appropriate place. It didn’t happen often, for Raina was very good at reading her clients, but she’d learned to respect powers greater than herself to override certain decisions. The house also had its own mind about opening and closing doors and windows, so door locks were fairly useless…unless the house wanted to lock the door. Whether the decisions came from the ghosts that still lingered in the old house or the nature of the magic that saturated it, she and her staff took it in stride.



Today the house apparently wanted the doors to the back garden thrown wide-open. It was funneling a pleasant breeze into the dining room by moving the panels in and out in a slow, fanlike motion, like children hanging on to the knobs, rocking the panels back and forth. Mikhael not only seemed unconcerned about that; he also appeared indifferent to the obvious shunning of her staff. Their gazes would dart toward him if he so much as lifted his coffee cup to his lips, but then just as quickly dart away.



When he scraped back his chair, he caused a synchronized jump, like a flock of birds startling, but he paid no attention, turning it to the side so he could put his ankle on his knee, lay an elbow on the table by his plate. Occasionally, he took another bite from a croissant or piece of bacon before he folded back a page. He was wearing his jeans from last night, with a shirt this time. The shirt was carelessly closed, just two buttons in the middle, and his feet were bare, his hair attractively tousled. Positively mouthwatering. And disgustingly effortless.



No woman looked that good without trying. In action movies, when the hero was grungy, bloody and in torn clothes, he looked absolutely edible. Lara Croft, in the same situation, had to have perfect makeup and hair, clothes fitted to best advantage, with just a little stage makeup for the dirt and blood, an artful rip to the tight T-shirt. Otherwise, a woman rolled in the dirt looked like…well, a woman rolled in the dirt.



And she didn’t even want to get started on men’s ability to metabolize food. Her succubi and incubi didn’t have any problems in that area, but with her half-human blood, Raina had to be careful not to pack on too many pounds. Eyeing Mikhael with his carb and grease breakfast, Raina concluded women’s attraction to men was an involuntary chemical thing, because there were just too many reasons to hate them with a homicidal intensity.



Who and what was a Dark Guardian, really? She knew they served the Underworld for all eternity. They weren’t highly favored by Light Guardians like Derek. Dark Guardians were a puzzle to them. Why was there a need for an Underworld legion to ensure the balance of Dark against the Light, when the Dark seemed so prevalent without help? Of course, Dark Guardians weren’t the PR sort, readily volunteering the reasons for their existence.



But a man was more than what he did for a living, even if he didn’t think so. She was in the business of knowing the soul below the surface. Did he truly not mind that no one was sitting with him, or had he gotten so used to being alone in the many years that he’d done what he did, that he didn’t think about it anymore?



Of course when he wasn’t serving Lucifer’s purposes, babysitting an incubus thief, waiting for a female demon to show up at a remote Southern bordello, he might be a big party animal, getting wasted at keg parties and hooking up with trashy women.



Yeah, right.



Coming into the room at last, she passed her people first, transferring Cathair to Li. She touched shoulders, asked how their night was. Despite their bravado, there was some uncertainty about Mikhael’s presence, so she calmed the more shy or nervous ones. Her newer staff members were like young cats, hyperalert to threats.



Li was the leader of the group. The oldest at twenty-six, he was the one who would reinforce her reassurances with the others. He was also intuitive enough to discern her night had been a little more entertaining than usual.



The protections on her bedroom tower maintained privacy as well as safety, and Mikhael had reinforced those during their encounter, which meant no sound or evidence should have disturbed the rest of the house. However, physical evidence was hard to hide. Li’s handsome Asian eyes sharpened, registering the relaxed movements of a woman well sated. His slim black brows rose, his sensual lips quirking in barely contained curiosity. He would want details as soon as he could corner her. Lots of them.



Not likely. She was still wrapping her own mind around it.



The youngest sex demons sat the farthest from Mikhael, the others a buffer between them. Gina was one of the former, sitting next to Marisa. Gina didn’t take clients yet, because she was still mastering the basics of working with Raina’s protections so the client could have a pleasurable experience without hospitalization or a morgue. Right now, she and Marisa worked as a team and Marisa fed the younger girl from her offerings. Enough male clients wanted a three-way with two beautiful women that Marisa could tutor her at the same time she nourished her.



Isaac sat on the other side of Gina, sandwiched between Luke and Isabella, good choices. Though all of her staff had been with her at least two years, with Li being the longest at six years, Luke had come most recently and could give Isaac the male perspective on his situation. Isabella could make any male, human or incubi, her devoted slave in no time.



The appeal of sex demons in the paid companionship trade was the lack of artifice. They genuinely enjoyed carnality, in all its offerings and varieties, the same way mortals enjoyed a wide array of meals, the different flavors and textures.