My Dangerous Pleasure (5 page)

“Put that away,” Harsh said.

“Restraining order?” Iskander asked.

She stared at the two men, phone in hand, aware she’d made a mistake. She wouldn’t be the first victim of a stalker to get evicted. Or the last. She punched the number 9 on her phone. Her stomach hurt, but she didn’t have a choice. She hated that her life had gotten so out of control. “Yes,” she said. “A restraining order.”

Harsh put his palm on the door of her apartment. “Stop her, Iskander.”

Before she could press the other two digits, Iskander leaned down and wrapped his hand around her phone. His fingers were warm around hers. “Five minutes before you call, okay?”

“If he’s been here, I need the police to know.” Her arms shook.

Iskander’s fingers tightened over hers. “Five minutes.”

Her door swung open. Odd, because her keys dangled from Iskander’s other hand. Iskander turned around and stared into her dark apartment. An odd smell wafted out the door. He shot out an arm when Harsh took a step forward. “No, Harsh. Let me.”

The other man nodded. Iskander shoved her keys into his pocket and replaced Harsh at the door. Poised at the entrance, he did something graceful with his hand and slipped inside her apartment like a shadow. Harsh came down a step, took the bag she held, put it with the other, then grabbed the one she’d put down and did the same with it. He crouched at her door, staring through the opening with one hand on the landing, poised on three fingers.

She clutched her phone. Every nerve in her body screamed at her to get away. If Rasmus was inside, she didn’t want to be anywhere near here. She ignored her fear and used her phone to snap a couple of pictures of the vandalized wooden faces. Three was all she managed before she was too creeped out to stay close. She backed away.

“Paisley.” Harsh spoke softly, but she heard him. He made a downward motion with his other hand like he was telling her to be quiet. “Iskander can handle this.”

Softly, she said, “You don’t know what he’s like.”

“Iskander?” He laughed. “He’s one of the most dangerous men I know.”

She blinked. “Him? Dangerous?” That lighthearted, gorgeous, always-smiling demigod? A man who didn’t even seem to have a job?

“Yes. Very.”

“Well, I’m sure you’re right. But I didn’t mean him.” Paisley shook her head. She meant to tell Harsh about Rasmus, but Iskander came to the door and she didn’t get the chance. The odd, musty smell coming from her apartment got stronger.

Rasmus Kessler had been here. In her apartment. She felt his presence down to her bones. He was crazy. A nightmare that wouldn’t stop. Their meeting for coffee had been a disaster to say the least. She’d politely declined his further requests for dates. After the sixth request on the same day, she’d told him as plainly as she could that she wasn’t interested. Despite that, he called her at the bakery several times a day and lurked outside, waiting for her. She had to start leaving by the back door. Sometimes he waited near the bakery from opening to closing or until she called the police and had him rousted. He tricked someone into giving him her cell number, and now he called every day. Dozens of times a day in the weeks since the date from hell.

He’d threatened her male friends and employees and told anyone who would listen that he had a sexual relationship with her and that she was either the love of his life or a lying, cheating bitch. He sent her insane, threatening, and cajoling e-mails and left notes and gifts at the bakery every day. After the first package with a dead bird inside, she threw his gifts away without opening them. He’d called her bank and, posing as a bakery employee, convinced someone to transfer money out of her account.

In the doorway, Iskander’s eyes slid to her for a minute. “Gone.”

“How bad?” Harsh asked.

Iskander did his little flicker of a glance at her before he answered. “Bad.”

Paisley headed up the rest of the stairs. “What did he do?”

Iskander’s friend took a step back, opening the door wider. The lighting was all wrong, and at first she didn’t understand what she was seeing. Something crunched under her feet, a fine gray sand. She gripped her phone when she saw what her tormentor had done.

That same grit covered the entire floor and drifted from the ceiling.

Other than that, there was nothing left. Everything in her apartment was gone.

C
HAPTER 4

I
skander flinched whenever more than a few of the still-live particles landed on his bare skin, biting like tiny embers blown from a fire. The residue covered the floor and was inches deep in places. It slid down the walls and drifted from the ceiling with a malevolent life of its own and made the air smell like madness.

Every room in the apartment had been scourged. Utterly and completely. There was nothing left, and if that wasn’t a statement of rage and retribution, he didn’t know what was. Everything had been reduced to dust: furniture, the appliances, pictures on the wall, electronics, plants, books, dishes, and papers. The mage had left a message in the dust, which Iskander left intact since the words gave away nothing of their magical origins.

You belong to me
.

“He did a number on her.” Harsh had his back to the wall by the open front door. He brushed dust off his arms, but Iskander knew there wasn’t any way to wipe away the rage that had shattered the apartment.

“Back in the States less than a week,” Iskander said, “and things are already crazy.”

Harsh sent a cautionary glance in the general direction of Paisley, who was waiting in the doorway. Somebody needed to make sure she didn’t call the cops yet. “Any ideas which mage it was?”

He shrugged and, like Harsh, kept his voice low when he gave his best guess. “Kessler?”

They shared a glance that acknowledged Rasmus Kessler was at the top of the short list of mages who could scourge an entire apartment. If Kessler was responsible, there was a strong likelihood that Fen was involved. Not to mention his tenant was in a world of danger. Kessler didn’t fuck around. If he wanted to screw with Paisley, he would. Hell, he already had.

As his oath to his warlord required, Iskander had told Nikodemus about what had happened with Paisley before and about the evidence that made him suspect a mage had gone after her. Per Nikodemus’s instructions, Iskander had kept an eye on her, and for six weeks there hadn’t been one single sign that Paisley was under another magical attack. There hadn’t been any sign of her developing or using any powers or otherwise going witchy. She continued to go to work six days a week. She kept the same crazy hours and never brought anyone home with her. Except for that one night, none of the magekind or demonkind, excluding him, of course, had made contact with her—as far as he knew.

“What?” Harsh asked.

He told Harsh about the night he found her in her apartment with no idea what had been done to her. “She doesn’t remember anything about what happened,” he told Harsh. “I upped the proofing around her place, and since then, nothing. I figured whoever it was gave up, and that was that. Obviously not.”

Harsh shook dust off his feet. “From what she’s saying about a restraining order, my guess is someone’s been messing with her a lot more than just one night six weeks ago.”

Iskander nodded.

“If it’s Kessler, it makes sense he’d try to avoid doing anything here. He knows you’d be on it in a minute.”

“True, my friend. Very true. Except, one”—he began counting off on his fingers—“he did do something six weeks ago.”

“If Kessler had been inside her apartment then, you’d have known. Whatever he did, he did it off-site.”

He nodded because Harsh was right. “Two, something changed, because look at her place. He was here for this.”

Harsh glanced into her apartment. “Sending you a message?”

“Great. Now I really feel like shit. It’s my fault her life just got fucked up?”

“Maybe it’s Kessler. Maybe it’s not.” Harsh slid a look in Paisley’s direction. “Safest to assume the worst—that Kessler’s after her for some reason.”

“It’s him,” Iskander said.

“Using her to get to you.” Harsh took the words right out of his mouth.

Paisley walked in, her shoes raising tiny clouds of gray dust, and looked with shock at the devastation. The dust that hadn’t yet lost its magic gravitated toward her, though she was oblivious to the meaning of the undulations in the ashy grit that was in every corner and crack. He sighed. There went any hope this was a warning directed at him. The still-animated particles were like iron filings, and she was a magnet. No question Paisley was the target. The message blurred, but she saw the words.

Her throat worked. “Oh my goodness.”

Iskander watched her in the gray-tinted light. She was trying not to cry.

Damn.

If this was Kessler’s work, they might all be in trouble. Including him. But especially her. She wasn’t equipped to deal with a mage of any ability, especially not one like Kessler. Iskander walked into the center of the room, avoiding the message. The ceiling light fixture was gone, but dust trickled from the remnants of the electrical fittings. He’d already been inside long enough for a layer of gritty ash to cover him. Not good. The shit made him jumpy. He waited until he had Paisley’s attention; then he put his hands on his hips and said, “
This
is going to cost me a fortune to fix.”

Her eyes got big. Big, gorgeous hazel eyes filling with tears. Ever since he’d been severed from his blood-twin, he couldn’t take it when a woman cried. He always felt like he personally had done something to cause the tears. Even when he knew he hadn’t. That just wasn’t right, a woman crying. Not that it happened much. Women seemed to like him. A lot. Usually he made them laugh or, best of all, scream his name while they held on tight.

She walked past him to the bedroom. He stayed where he was. At least he’d got her thinking about something else. He knew what she was going to see in there: dust. Pretty soon she was going to realize that everything she owned or had ever touched had been destroyed. This hadn’t been a trivial bit of magic. Whoever the mage was, Rasmus Kessler or someone else, he had some powerful magic at his command. Kind of limited the suspects to a handful.

Harsh nodded at the floor. The particles were being pulled in the direction of the bedroom now, so the message was all but unreadable. He pushed the toe of his leather boot through the dust. “I think we can assume whoever did this is upset.”

“No kidding,” Iskander said in a low voice.

“What have you been up to while I was gone?”

He laughed. “A little of this. A little of that.”

“Body count?”

“I don’t know.” He looked toward the bedroom door to make sure Paisley wasn’t close enough to overhear. “Twenty or thirty, I think.”

“You’ve been busy.”

“Nikodemus isn’t screwing around.”

Paisley wandered back to the living room, passing through what was left of the message. He wondered if she’d done it deliberately. Whatever the answer, she stopped in the middle of the room, phone clutched in one hand, the strap of her purse in the other. Her eyes were wide and practically all pupil. The movement of the dust toward her accelerated.

“I know who did this,” she said.

“You do?” Iskander said. He couldn’t help noticing she was hot. Really pretty, and with a body to bring a man, or a demon, to his knees.

“His name is Rasmus Kessler.”

Well, damn. He worked hard not to react. A glance at Harsh told him he was doing the same. He wasn’t sure whether to be relieved to know the answer or worried that Kessler was responsible.

“Let’s get out of here,” Iskander said. “This stuff can’t be good to breathe.”

She blinked and headed for the door. “I’m not letting him get away with this.”

Out on the landing, he and Harsh stood there with no choice but to let her make the phone call. She was a normal human. Or mostly so. You could never be sure with humans and even less with her, considering fucking Rasmus Kessler was after her. The littlest thing could spark up magic in a vanilla human. Like a mage touching you with enough power to blister skin. Or taking a taste of blood from a fiend. Or both.