Dark Promises 2: Demonic Obsession Page 3

  How he’d done it so fast, Ellie could only guess. She’d met him once, and she hadn’t seen the appeal. With shabby clothes, shaggy hair, and an unshaven face, he looked like a vagrant. She’d decided on the spot that she didn’t like him one bit. It didn’t have to do with his appearance as much as it did the creepy vibe she’d gotten from him. Something with him wasn’t quite right, but Becca wouldn’t listen to reason. Since that first meeting three weeks ago, he’d stayed away from everyone in Becca’s life—and he’d nearly managed to get her to do the same.

  “How are you doing, kiddo?” Ellie asked her, smoothing one of her sister’s dark curls away from her forehead. At eighteen, Becca’s maturity level was falling fast. She thought she was all grown up, but Ellie still felt the need to watch over her. Becca didn’t show any signs of abuse—yet—but that was only a matter of time. If things kept going this way, she thought about asking Royce to have a talk with Tony. He’d probably get him to stay away from Becca, but she’d promised to give her sister a fair chance. It hadn’t quite been a month. A few more like this one, and she’d come running home before Ellie had to interfere at all.

  “Fine.” Becca smiled. “I can’t stay long. I just wanted to drop in and see how you’re doing.”

  “Do you have time enough to stay for supper, or will he get angry with you?” As soon as the words left her mouth, she winced. When it came to Tony and the way he treated her sister, sometimes she just couldn’t control her temper. She had to keep in mind that Becca was her sister, not her daughter. If their mother wanted to run interference, she was more than welcome to try. But Ellie really had no right to step in, at least not quite yet.

  “Ellie,” Becca moaned in typical teenage fashion. “He’s a nice guy. Leave him alone.”

  Calling Tony nice was like calling a gunshot wound pleasant. Still, Becca was eighteen years old, still a child, but recognized by the government as an adult. Ellie’s hands were tied. “Sorry. I’m sure he’s wonderful.” Gag. “Why don’t you sit down? I made spaghetti.” She had to force the next sentence out. “Do you want to take some home to Tony? I could make a plate…”

  “No thanks. Tony doesn’t like spaghetti.” Becca dug in as soon as Ellie set the plate in front of her. Ellie’s heart clenched at the sight. The girl was skinny enough already, and in the past few weeks had started looking borderline anorexic. According to their mother, Becca and Ellie took after their father with their tall, lean frames. Charlotte, the lucky one, got all the curves. Ellie knew she was sometimes self-conscious of her body, but she didn’t have any reason. At least she didn’t look like a crudely drawn stick figure when she wore a sundress.

  All three girls had their mother’s coloring—fair skin and blue eyes with dark, nearly black hair. That, more than anything else, had children pegging them as weird from almost their first days of school. Making friends hadn’t been easy for any of them, and they’d all found their outlets to deal with it—Ellie in her art, Becca in rebellion, and Charlotte in risk-taking and a heavy preoccupation with anything occult. Her current occupation as a ghost hunter had probably chased her husband away more than the witchcraft.

  “Tony doesn’t like much of anything, does he?” Charlotte came into the room and tossed her backpack onto the counter before she spooned some spaghetti into a bowl and sat across from Becca. “You tell him that if he hangs up on me one more time he’s going to have a serious problem.”

  “When did he hang up on you?” Becca asked in between bites.

  “This afternoon. He wouldn’t even tell me if you were home or not.” Charlotte shook her head, her hair brushing across her shoulders. “I swear, Becca, I have no idea what you see in that guy. You wouldn’t think it would be a problem for him to give you a message if you were out.”

  “I worked this afternoon. I wasn’t at home.” Becca sounded confused. Ellie thought she saw the first sparks of doubt in her sister’s eyes, and she silently cheered. But when she spoke again, she continued to defend the jerk. “He got a job at the grocery store in Randall, and he’s been working the overnight shift stocking shelves. You probably woke him up.”

  “He’s working?” Ellie and Charlotte asked at the same time.

  “Well, yeah,” Becca answered like they should have expected it. “Did you think he was going to sit around on the couch forever?”

  Actually, Ellie had. And it would have made things a whole lot easier. She’d find a way to get Becca away from Tony, even if she had to resort to calling in muscle like Royce and Marco for help.

  “Are you seeing Royce tonight?” Becca asked, obviously looking to change the subject.

  “No.”

  “Are you getting tired of him yet?” Charlotte chimed in. “Because I’d be glad to take him off your hands for a little while.”

  “He’s way too old for you, kiddo.”

  Charlotte laughed. “He’s way too old for you, too. That doesn’t stop you from seeing him.”

  The subject didn’t come up often with them, but they knew that Royce and his family were vampires. Marco had been their grandmother’s neighbor when they were kids, and it was kind of hard not to notice how he hadn’t aged in twenty years.

  Charlotte and Becca had been too young to understand it then, but Ellie had noticed right away that he was different. In her mind, he’d taken over the role of a big brother, or the father figure she’d never really had since her own had taken off a month after Becca was born. She’d learned to love painting through Marco, and that had given her a career as well as an outlet for her frustrations. He’d never mentioned the vampire thing, but she’d always had her suspicions. By the time she turned seventeen and he’d gotten the guts to confess, she’d already known for three years.

  Charlotte’s voice broke into her thoughts, and Ellie turned her focus back to the conversation. “Of course it’s romantic. Spending an eternity with the man you love, having amazing sex, living most of your life at night—”

  “And drinking blood?” Becca wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Eww.”

  “Well, you’ve got to make some sacrifices for love. Right, Ellie?”

  “Yeah, sure.” She left the two of them to debate the supposedly romantic side of vampirism while she concentrated on cleaning up after dinner.

  Somehow, she just couldn’t imagine that Royce’s life was all that romantic.

  Chapter 3

  The next day, Ellie prepared herself for time at her easel. The air conditioner in the studio window started with a thump, followed by a low whine. Almost time for a new one, if she could fit it into her budget. It promised to be another scorching summer, and Ellie didn’t foresee the ancient unit lasting through the end of June. She could probably scrape together the cash, as soon as she convinced Charlotte to find a steady job with a regular paycheck and start to chip in some money for household expenses. The woman was twenty-five, a little too old to be expecting a free ride.

  She placed two candles—rosemary for mental clarity, and pine for protection—on glass dishes on top of a small round table in the corner of the room and lit them before setting up her painting supplies and settling in on a stool in front of her easel. She clipped a picture she’d taken a few days ago of the rocky shoreline to a small stand on her supply table and went to work. Normally she preferred to work from live subjects as opposed to photographs, but in this weather, spending time outside wasn’t high on her list.

  “Do you always leave your door unlocked?”

  She jumped a mile when she heard the deep, smooth voice behind her. Her hand flying to cover her heart—the paintbrush clasped tightly in it smearing blue paint along her jaw line—and spun to face the unexpected visitor.

  Eric Malcolm.

  He stood in the open doorway, his shoulder propped against the doorframe and his arms crossed over his chest. The hard look in his eyes and the grim set of his jaw unnerved her. She swallowed hard even as something in her sparked to life at the sight of him. What was he doing here? She’d invited him to vi
ew her work in the gallery, not come over to her home studio. The fact that he’d been able to find her with apparent ease made her stomach clench into a knot, anxiety and arousal in equal parts mixing within her.

  She understood the anxiety. The man was a stranger, a dark stranger who probably had quite a few dark secrets. But the arousal mystified her. She’d never been this attracted to someone she didn’t know before, especially not a man who scared her nearly as much as he fascinated her. She took a moment to compose herself before she spoke, not willing to give him a hint at her inner confusion.

  “I live out in the middle of nowhere. I’m not usually disturbed when I’m working.” She let out a frustrated breath, not sure whether she was more annoyed with his presence, or her exaggerated reaction. “Besides, the decent thing would be to call before you visit someone.”

  “I tried. No one answered.”

  “You called?” she parroted, surprised at his answer.

  He nodded, a humorous smile playing across his lips. “And I knocked on your front door. No one answered there, either. Then your grandmother came out of her apartment and told me where to find you.”

  She nearly groaned. If Carol had gotten to him, Ellie would never hear the end of it.

  “How did you know where I live?”

  He shrugged. “Telephone book. There’s only one listing for A. Holmes, and I took a chance that it would be you.”

  She blinked. “It was that easy, huh?”

  She hadn’t been hiding, but she hadn’t expected anyone to actually look up her address and seek her out, either. It hadn’t helped that she’d blurted out her full name when he’d flustered her in the park. Most people weren’t even aware that the nickname “Ellie” came from her middle name, and not her first.

  His expression bordered on predatory for a second before his gentleman mask slipped back into place. He shrugged elegantly, his gaze mild, and she began to wonder if she was imagining the whole mysterious aura about him. “It was easy, yes, but I would have found you anyway. I needed to see you again.”

  “Oh.” Shocked speechless by his declaration, it took her a full minute to find her voice. She turned back to her canvas. “Well…it’s not very nice to sneak up on people.”

  He was silent for so long she thought he’d left. When she felt him right behind her, she gasped. He reached his hand up and brushed his fingers over her jaw, sending ripples of sensation through her nerves. She shivered and a glint of humor sparkled in his eyes.

  “Paint,” he said softly as he pulled his hand away, his fingertips blue.

  She nodded, still recovering from her reaction to his brief touch. When she spoke, her voice was barely above a whisper. “I’ll get it off later.”

  He grabbed a rag off her supply table and brought it to her face, rubbing the paint spot gently. The circular motion of the rough cloth in his hands sent tiny quivers down her spine, like little bolts of lightning. She held her breath, her gaze locked with his, while he attempted to remove the paint from her skin.

  Why did her heart have to beat so hard when he was around? The worst part was she knew he could hear it. He could probably feel it from all the way across the room. But she couldn’t control the intense reaction to having him stand so close, touching her in a way that shouldn’t feel so familiar, but did. “If…if you don’t mind, I have work to do.”

  One corner of his mouth lifted mockingly. “No time for a little conversation while you work?”

  “I don’t even know you.” And conversation would be a very bad idea, since when he got within twenty feet of her, her brain refused to function.

  He cocked his head to the side and furrowed his brow. “I told you who I am.”

  “Telling me your name doesn’t constitute getting to know you.” She reached up to brush away the hand still caressing her skin, but he grabbed her wrist and turned it, bringing her palm up to his lips and kissing the center. Oh, goddess. She sighed, her insides melting at the warmth of his lips against her sensitive skin. The gesture was shockingly intimate coming from a virtual stranger, but it felt right.

  That idea was almost unsettling enough for her to get over her schoolgirl crush. Almost. She tried her best for cool and aloof, thinking she’d pulled it off until he laughed. “What’s so funny?”

  “Why are you so afraid of me?”

  “It’s the twenty-first century. It isn’t safe to trust strangers.”

  “I agree.” He smiled and arousal hit her hard and fast. “I’d like to get to know you. Do you have time for a break, at least?”

  She shook her head, but felt her resistance slipping a little more.

  “One quick cup of coffee? I promise I don’t mean you any harm. You can trust me.”

  The expression on his face seemed sincere. On the surface, he looked like a nice, calm man. But deep in his eyes, there was something dark and foreboding. That was what set her on edge—the unknown of what this man could be. She wondered if the perfect gentleman act was just that—an act. Did she really want him to stick around long enough to find out?

  “I really don’t think that’s such a great idea.” She set her brush down and got up from the stool, walking out the wide-open studio door. Despite the air conditioner, the tension-filled air clogged her lungs and burned in her chest. The outside air wasn’t much better, but at least she didn’t feel stifled in a confined space with a man who radiated enough electricity to power an entire neighborhood. He followed, and she turned to face him, her hands on her hips. “You need to leave now. I don’t have time for this, whatever this is. I have a family that needs me.”

  “Children?” He looked surprised.

  “They might as well be.” She grimaced at the thought. “My sisters. They’re both adults, they just don’t always act like it. And Carol, my grandmother. But you’ve already met her.”

  “Oh.” He looked decidedly relieved. “I’m sure they can fend for themselves for a little while, and I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt for you to take some time to yourself.”

  She blinked and turned away, his words hitting too close to home. She rounded the corner of the garage studio and stopped when she saw her grandmother’s white insulated carafe and a couple of mugs in the patio table.

  “What is this?” she yelled over her shoulder. He didn’t answer, just kept walking until he was inches away. He’d stopped before their bodies touched, but he was still too close. She felt the heat radiate from his body and his breath on the back of her neck. Her heart skidded to a stop before it thumped loudly in her chest. Her pulse raced and she drew a deep, shaky breath, clutching onto the table so she didn’t fall down.

  She’d never reacted like this to a man before. What was her problem now?

  “Just one cup of coffee. That’s all.” He spoke in a slow, measured whisper that she could only describe as seductive. “I promise. Your grandmother went to all this trouble, told me to make sure you took a break. You wouldn’t want to disappoint her, would you?”

  His words played along her senses, making every nerve in her body feel raw and exposed. “No. I wouldn’t.”

  ‘Then do you think you could spare five minutes of your time?”

  “It’s too hot for coffee,” she protested weakly.

  “Your grandmother thought this would make you happy. Can you just sit and talk with me for a little while? I promise I won’t bite.”

  She wasn’t too sure of that, but it didn’t matter. At this point in time, with him so close and her body screaming for him to get closer, she’d give him just about anything he wanted.

  “Outside? Won’t being out in the sun bother you?”

  She heard the confusion in his tone when he answered. “No. Why would it?”

  Not the reaction she’d expected. Very strange. “Okay. Fine. I’ll have coffee with you.” She couldn’t see him, but she was pretty sure he was smiling. She added hastily, more for her benefit than his, “Just one cup. That’s all.”

  “I wouldn’t expect anything more.” The
humor and triumph were evident in his voice.

  She flopped down into one of the cushioned outdoor chairs, too embarrassed by her apparent willingness to bend to his will to speak. What was wrong with her? If she didn’t know any better, she’d think his voice alone had the power to hypnotize her into agreement. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, the scent of roses and tulips heavy in the air. He poured her coffee before filling his own mug, then slid the small pitcher of milk across the table to her and took a seat.

  “No sugar?” she asked, pouring milk into the steaming coffee—not what she’d usually drink on a hot day, but Carol had gone to the trouble of making it so she’d deal.

  “You don’t take sugar in your coffee.”

  “How would you know that?” she asked, but then realized Carol had most likely told him. She’d have to remind her grandmother of the dangers of talking to strangers.

  “Ellie,” he said softly, as if testing the sound of her name on his lips. “Tell me something about yourself, Ellie.”

  She liked the way he said it, heck, she liked the way he said anything. As long as he kept talking, she’d sit here all day.

  “There isn’t much to tell.” She sipped her coffee, the brew so strong it tasted like it had been laced with lemon juice. It amazed her that Carol could work any spell given to her, yet hadn’t managed in her eighty-odd years to master the coffee maker. “I’ve lived here most of my life. As you’ve obviously seen, I set up a studio in my garage for my painting. My mother moved to Georgia with my stepfather a few years ago, leaving my two younger sisters in my care. My grandmother just moved into the apartment above my garage a short while ago.”