Bittersweet Magic (The Order #2)

A slow smile curved his lips. “Maybe I’ll make it pleasurable next time—do you think she’d enjoy that?”


Sister Maria let out a little whimper, and Roz allowed the fury to rise inside her. Always in the past, she’d kept her emotions locked away. The last time she’d really given them free rein, she’d ended up making a deal with a demon. Now, they filled her mind like a rushing of wind. Over her head, lightning flashed. She stared up into the sky as the rumble of thunder sounded close by. Inside her, power stirred uneasily, but it was a power she had no clue what to do with, or how to harness, and she ground her teeth in frustration.

She looked down to find everybody staring at her. Ryan quirked a brow. Sister Maria crossed herself. Jack stared at her with narrowed eyes. “What are you?” he asked.

She wished she knew, really she did. “You drink one more drop of blood from either of my friends and you’ll find out.” She forced herself to take a step closer and poked him in the chest—this was no time to show fear. He felt like solid rock. “Got it?”





Chapter Thirteen


After they’d gone—sort of vanished in a puff of sulfur—Roz sank down onto the pavement. The adrenaline was seeping away, leaving her shaky and weak.

She was a danger to everyone she cared about. That was why she’d always avoided emotional entanglements in the past. How had she allowed them to creep up on her now?

It was probably because she’d believed that soon she would be free of the demon. She’d thought she’d be human, normal like everyone else. That was obviously not going to be the case.

She rubbed the spot between her eyes, trying to ease the tension. She had to decide what to do. There were options; she just didn’t like any of them.

The easiest would be to follow through with her original plan. Go pick up the Key from Ryan’s place and hand it over to Asmodai. She glanced at her watch—she would be late, but he would wait…probably. And once she’d handed it over, she would be free, and she could just vanish.

And Ryan and Maria would die.

And Asmodai would do God knew what with the Key, though that didn’t worry her so much as the Ryan and Maria part. Yes, Asmodai was a demon, but she’d come to know him over the centuries. While his morals were never going to be what normal people would consider, well, moral, she didn’t believe him to be evil. But that was beside the point. How could she run away and try and live a normal life with the blood of her friends on her hands?

It wasn’t an option. So what next?

She could go get the Key and hand it over to Piers. The problem was, while she was sure Piers would do what he believed to be right, she also suspected that what he considered right would be right for the Order and not necessarily right for Ryan and Maria. While he wouldn’t go out of his way to harm humans, as Jack would, she doubted that saving them was high up on his priority list. He’d take the Key and keep it safe. But Ryan and Maria would die.

Piers would probably even explain it away—they were dying to save the world. And Maria and Ryan might even see it that way. After all, they were a nun and a policeman—both, in their ways, were dedicated to saving their fellow men.

But after being alone for so many years, Roz had come to realize that it was individual people who mattered. Oh, she might have tried to deny it to herself, tried to pretend that she didn’t need anyone, but it was a lie. Without caring for the people who made up the masses, ideals meant nothing, and the whole world might as well go to Hell.

So it looked like option two was a no-go as well.

Option three: keep the rendezvous with Jack, hand over the Key, save Maria and Ryan, and disappear before anyone could find her. She’d have to sever all contact with her old life. No doubt, Asmodai would be after her, and with the sigil still in place, he would find her, and there was a good chance he would kill her for this betrayal. She couldn’t go back to the Order. She couldn’t work with Jonas and find out who or what she was. And she would never see Piers again.

Why did that hurt so much?

She’d known he was dangerous from the first moment she had seen him. Drawn to him, she had tried to tell herself that it was purely physical, but it went deeper than that. Now she’d never have a chance to explore just how deep.