“Stop,” she said again. Her voice was strained. “Rachel. I’m trying to let go of you, but you have to stop. You’re making things worse. You have to believe me.”

I took a gasping breath and held it. I flicked my gaze at what I could see of her. Her mouth was inches from my ear. Her eyes were black, the hunger in them a frightening contrast to the calm sound of her voice. Her gaze was fixed to my neck. A drop of saliva dropped warm onto my skin. “God, no,” I whispered, shuddering.

Ivy quivered, her body trembling where it touched mine. “Rachel. Stop,” she said again, and terror swept me at the new edge of panic in it. My breath came in a ragged pant. She really was trying to get off me. And by the sound of it, she was losing the battle.

“What do I do?” I whispered.

“Close your eyes,” she said. “I need your help. I didn’t know it was going to be this hard.”

My mouth went dry at the little-lost-girl sound of her voice. It took all my will to close my eyes.

“Don’t move.”

Her voice was gray silk. Tension slammed through me. Nausea gripped my stomach. I could feel my pulse pushing against my skin. For what felt like a full minute I lay under her, all my instincts crying out to flee. The crickets chirped, and I felt tears slip from under my fluttering eyelids as her breath came and went on my exposed neck.

I cried out when her grip on my hair loosened. My breath came in a ragged gasp as her weight lifted from me. I couldn’t smell her anymore. I froze, unmoving. “Can I open my eyes?” I whispered.

There was no answer.

I sat up to find myself alone. There was the faintest sound of the sanctuary door closing and the fast cadence of her boots on the sidewalk, then nothing. Numb and shaken, I reached up to first wipe my eyes and then my neck, smearing her saliva into a cold spot. My eyes rove over the room, finding no warmth in the soft gray. She was gone.

Drained, I stood up, not knowing what to do. I clutched my arms about myself so tight it hurt. My thoughts went back to the terror, and before that, the flash of desire that had washed through me, potent and heady. She had said she could only bespell the willing. Had she lied to me, or had I really wanted her to pin me to the chair and rip open my throat?

Seven

The sun was no longer slanting into the kitchen, but it was still warm. Not warm enough to reach the core of my soul, but nice. I was alive. I had all my body parts and fluids intact. It was a good afternoon.

I was sitting at the uncluttered end of Ivy’s table, studying the most battered book I had found in the attic. It looked old enough to have been printed before the Civil War. Some of the spells I’d never heard of. It made for fascinating reading, and I would admit the chance to try one or two of them filled me with a dangerous titillation. None even hinted at the dark arts, which pleased me to no end. Harming someone with magic was foul and wrong. It went against everything I believed in—and it wasn’t worth the risk.