Bewitch(6)

She turned down another street to her left, leading him through the rabbit warren of buildings. There were fewer stores in this neighbourhood. Most of the single storey buildings looked like residences, most of them painted in bright colours. Stalagmites rose from the flat roofs of many of them, reaching upwards towards their deadly counterparts on high.
Payne stopped a few steps into the new narrow street and backtracked. He raised a single dark eyebrow at the wooden sign affixed to the painted black wall of the building nearest the crossroads. Well, what did’ya know. He took a piece of paper from his pocket and matched the symbols to those of the street name. Bingo. We have a winner.
The witch had stopped and was staring at him, curiosity burning in her silvery eyes.
He didn’t need her after all.
He stalked past her, checking each door for the right symbol. Somewhere down here was the witch he had come to find. His eyes darted from the crumpled piece of paper in his hand to the painted purple wooden door of the pink stone building on his left. Match.
He rapped his knuckles against the door.
The female witch stopped beside him. He glanced at her. She was frowning now and it didn’t suit her. He didn’t like how she looked as though she was trying to see right through him to wheedle out his secrets.
He opened his mouth to explain himself.
She slid a brass key into the lock, twisted it and pushed the door open. She breezed into the dark building and lights came on, glowing warmly and illuminating the clutter in the small room.
She lived here?
She was the witch?
She tossed the key and silver rope onto a messy wooden desk on the right of the room. A fire burst into life in the grate to his left, near two tattered armchairs. A dark threadbare rug spread across the stone floor between them, covered in haphazard piles of books.
Payne closed the door behind him. The witch bustled through into an adjoining room and returned with a hairbrush that she put to good use, viciously dragging it through her tangled hair. She didn’t flinch when it caught on knots and pieces of hay. She grumbled in the fae language, dark things that had Payne remaining close to the exit. She was livid about something. He could feel her anger in her blood and hear it in her heartbeat, and sense it in other easier ways too. The fire on the grate roared like an inferno and the flames on the candles were six inches tall and blazing white, evidently a response to her rage.
She paced, heeled black leather ankle boots loud on the stone floor.
Whoever those males had been, she was pissed as hell at them.
Payne leaned his back against the wall and breathed slowly. She wasn’t a threat to him. He focused on the calm ebbing and flowing through him, trying to instil that same feeling in her, and raised his hand to his face. He was still bleeding. He licked the blood from his fingers and then licked them again and dabbed his saliva across the cut.
She stopped pacing then and tossed the brush onto one of the dark red armchairs. It bounced off the cushion and landed on the fire. She cursed, shrugged, and approached him. She looked different with all the tangles and twigs gone from her chestnut hair, but she still had a wildness about her, a wickedness that Payne found alluring.
The witch stopped in front of him. He looked down at her. She was petite, a good nine inches shorter than he was.
“Elissa.” She offered her hand. He didn’t take it. It had been hard enough dealing with skin contact in the street. If he touched her now, when they were alone, in private, he probably wouldn’t be able to stop his hunger from rising again. If that happened, he would have her on that bed he could see in the adjoining room and naked in under five seconds. She frowned into his eyes. “Thank you for helping me...”
Clever ploy. She wanted his name.
“Payne.”
It seemed she wasn’t satisfied with his aloof air and refusal to place her at risk by touching her. She tiptoed and touched the cut on his cheek.
Payne felt that same intense gut-tugging jolt as he had the first time they had made skin contact.
Warmth crept outwards from where she touched, turning him hazy, drugging him with how good it felt. His very nature said to go with the flow because the flow felt divine. The little witch could give him what he needed. Not just the method of freeing Chica from her bond. She could give him bliss.
He could feed on both her energy and her blood.
His incubus side and his vampire one purred at the prospect.
His cut stung and he could almost feel his flesh knitting back together. Magic.
“Witch,” he growled, a low warning that he didn’t like her meddling with his body.
She didn’t heed it but she did eventually withdraw her hand. She smiled up at him. “Sort of.”
“Sort of?” He frowned at her. How could you be sort of a witch?