“After what you did to his dick, Stefan probably thinks you’re the baddest thing around.”

She smiled broadly. “Now I can die happy.”

Lady, what had he just done?

CHAPTER FOUR

FOUR

ISABELLE ENTERED HER SISTER’S POSH CONDO IN LINCOLN Park, the rich scent of vanilla and roses enveloping her as soon as she stepped within. She’d been staying there since Angela had died and still burned her sister’s favorite candles every morning in a vigil of sorts.

She set her keys down on the bar that separated the gourmet kitchen and large living room and glanced around at the homey furnishings. The place was decorated in calming blues and silvers, filled to bursting with overstuffed couches and chairs, soft throw blankets and plush area rugs covering the shining hardwood floors. Soothing modern artwork adorned the walls, pastel colors swooping and arcing across the canvases.

This place was Angela. It embodied her very spirit—cool, composed, emotionally centered, and sensitive. It didn’t really suit Isabelle’s personality, but she wished it did. She wished she had a few more of her sister’s qualities, rather than their mother’s. Angela must have inherited her easygoing calmness from her father, whoever he’d been. Angela’s father hadn’t been the same as Isabelle’s. Their mother, Catalina, got around.

Isabelle slipped her shoes off and unstrapped the small, pretty knife with the copper blade she wore sheathed to her wrist. Laying it on the counter, she ran her finger over the swoops and whorls engraved in the handle. Angela had given Isabelle the knife after a trip she’d taken to Peru. Isabelle had been wearing it to demon-hunt ever since Angela’s murder. Not built for anything more than looks, it was really just a symbolic gesture. A nod to her sister.

After fishing a pint of Chunky Monkey out of the recesses of the freezer and grabbing a spoon, she padded across the area rug in the living room to the window that overlooked the heavily tree-lined street below. There she stood and contentedly picked out the chocolate chunks from the banana ice cream while she watched a woman with a stroller walk by, men in business suits arriving home after a day at the office, and kids coming home from school.

Normal people with normal lives.

Angela hadn’t been killed in her condo. Rather, the demon had followed her to her work, a law office, no less. Angela had been a defense attorney, specializing in the magickally inclined. Witchdom had such professionals across all aspects of society, helping hide their existence from non-magickals—the normal people with normal lives.

Knowledge of their existence only brought fear and burnings, history had shown that amply enough. There weren’t enough witches in the world to fight against what might happen if their existence was discovered. Elemental witches were woefully outnumbered so they did all they could to hide.