She grimaced at both that realization and also at the sensation of her magick receding, coiling once again in the center of her chest without Jack's fire to coax it from her. Sorrow welled up at the loss of it. Mira pressed her palm between her breasts and slowly inhaled. She'd never even known it was there, and now she missed its presence.

With one kiss, Jack had clouded some things and made others incredibly clear. All of it was true. His magick, her magick. They were real, tangible things, forces of power within their bodies. Now that she'd held her magick in her hands, so to speak, there was no doubt.

Mira closed her eyes. And, oh, fuck... she was a witch. A real one. Not just a Wiccan who called herself a witch. No. She was an honest-to-Goddess witch with powerful magick to call.

She looked down at her hands. They were shaking.

That meant that everything else was true. Her parents hadn't died in a car crash; they'd been murdered. Worse, the murderer had gotten away with it.

Mira licked her lips, still tasting Jack on them, and swallowed hard. There was the possibility that she might be able to somehow bring her parents' killers to justice— whatever justice might exist in this case. Adrenaline shot through her just thinking about it. She was not exactly a rough-and-tumble kind of girl, ready to rampage across the country in search of revenge, but they had murdered her parents. She wanted ... needed to make them pay for that.

Jack was right. She would stay here of her own free will.

She got up and searched for a phone. Sinking into an armchair, she took the cordless handset she found on an end table in the living room and punched the number of the restaurant with trembling fingers.

The lie stuck on her tongue, but she told Mike that she was having a family emergency and needed some time off to get it straightened out. It was even sort of true. At least she didn't have to fake the quavering emotion in her voice.

It's not like she could tell him the truth. She couldn't tell him that she'd discovered that some of the things that went bump in the night were actually real and she was one of them. And, oh, by the way, she had to avenge her parents' deaths at the hands of a group of warlocks while trying to prevent those same warlocks from using her to raise a demon.

Somehow she just didn't think Mike would believe her.

Like the great guy he was, Mike assured her they could cope without her for a while and wished her well. Told her to hurry back and that her job would be waiting for her when she returned.