Hex Appeal

THERE WILL BE DEMONS by LORI HANDELAND

I’d been out all night shooting trolls with salt—straight through the heart; it’s the only thing that kills them. So when the knock came on my motel-room door before I’d even had a chance to wash their ashes out of my hair, I should have ignored it.

Except no one knew I was in Minnesota, which made me nervous. Though why, I have no idea. Demons rarely knock.

However, when I peered through the peephole and saw a wide expanse of nothing, I whirled to the right expecting, the imminent arrival of a shotgun-sized hole through the door. Not that a shotgun filled with anything but rowan or iced steel would kill me, but getting shot hurt.

Every single damn time.

The knock came again—louder, more insistent. Housekeeping or management would announce themselves. They also wouldn’t stand out of sight of the peephole. Only someone who didn’t want me to see them would. Unless it was someone I couldn’t see.

I didn’t like that scenario any better that the first one. But since I couldn’t stay where I was, listening, hiding, practically cringing—it wasn’t my style—I flung open the door and spewed fairy dust from my fingertips, even as my mind formed the words reveal and freeze.

No demon materialized in front of me. That was good. Then someone coughed, and I jerked my head to the left.

“This is bad.”

His face was covered in silvery particles that stuck to his long, dark lashes like goo. His ebony hair appeared to have been dusted with snow. His face sparkled as if he’d been doused in glitter.

He should be frozen like a gargoyle. Instead, he lifted one hand and wiped at the mess, staring first at his palm, then lifting his dark eyes to mine.

A shudder ran through me. I’d seen those eyes before.

Every night in my dreams for the last few thousand years.

“What are you?” he asked.

“What are you?” I returned.

My hands shook. I stuck them behind my back so I wouldn’t have to explain why. I wasn’t sure I could. I’d been dreaming of him for so long, I’d begun to think he wasn’t real, that maybe what I’d seen wouldn’t happen, that what I’d done wouldn’t matter. I should have known better.

“Name’s Sanducci,” he said. “Jimmy.”

I noticed he hadn’t really answered my question, but then I hadn’t answered his either.

I might have dreamed of him until I knew his face, and his body, even better than I knew my own, but I’d never learned his name or figured out what, exactly, he was.

Despite being tall, at least six feet of rangy muscle, and owning eyes that were haunted with things he would much, much rather forget, he seemed young.

Of course, to someone like me, Methuselah was a toddler. Or at least he had been when I’d met him. By the time the old guy expired, right before the flood, he’d been wrinkled, white, and bent like a question mark, while I’d still looked exactly as I did now—blond, petite, annoyingly perky, and forever twenty-one.

“How old are you?” I asked.

Jimmy’s chin came up. “Old enough.”

“For what?”

“I was sent to meet another DK.”

“Another?” I got that shiver again. “You’re a DK?”

DK. Short for demon killer.

I’m not sure why I was surprised. In my dreams of Jimmy Sanducci, he’d fought demons of many kinds, and they’d killed him in many, many ways. Subsequent dreams revealed that his death tipped the scales in that eternal war between good and evil. Without this man fighting on the side of good, evil began to win. I’d have promised anything to avoid that. Even before I’d started having the dreams of him and me together, the ones where I loved him.

“Are you?” he asked, and at my blank expression, continued. “A DK?”

I nodded. “Summer Bartholomew.”

“She said I’d find you here, and that we should—”

“She?” I murmured, and then I understood. Who else would be able to track where I was but—“Ruthie.”

“She’s my seer.”

Mine too. And she knew that I worked alone. I especially could not work with him. That, however, she didn’t know.

“We’re supposed to—” I held up my hand, and Jimmy flinched. I guess he didn’t want to get socked in the face with fairy dust again.

When the dust hadn’t worked on him, I should have known right away what he was. My magic doesn’t apply to those on an errand of mercy. Since saving humanity from the demon horde was the life of a DK, twenty-four/seven, my enchanted dust was useless on them.

“You better come in,” I said. “I’m gonna have to call Ruthie.”

He stepped into the room, then stared, openmouthed.

On the outside, this place resembled a two-story Bates Motel. But in here …

White plush carpet, French provincial furniture, thick white quilts and huge, cushy pillows on a king-sized bed. Through the open bathroom door, a palatial hot tub was visible, surrounded by tropical plants and gold-tipped white tile.

I clapped my hands, and all of it disappeared, leaving behind orange carpet that I didn’t want to walk across in barefeet—I could swear something was crawling in it—a bedspread that smelled like dead moths, one lumpy full-sized mattress and even lumpier pillows.

“What are you?” Jimmy asked again.

“Ruthie didn’t tell you?” He shook his head. “Then I’m not going to.”

I snatched the TV remote off the chipped, unvarnished wooden dresser and tossed it in his direction without warning. He snatched it easily—most DKs were freakishly nimble and quick. We had to be in order to fight demons. Which meant most of us were at least part demon, too. I wondered what his part was.

“No porn,” I said.

“I’m not a kid.” He pointed the remote at the TV. “I haven’t been a kid since I killed my first Nephilim.”

Nephilim. The offspring of the fallen angels and man. Behind their human facade, they were the beings of legend—werewolves, vampires, shape-shifters, and more. My life has been devoted to killing them. Sometimes, I think I’ll never be able to stop.

“When was that?” I asked.

Jimmy didn’t even look away from the screen. “I think I was eight.”

“You were eight?”

His dark gaze flicked to mine, then away. “Guy came at me all tooth and claw. What was I supposed to do?”

“Drink your juice box and let your parents handle it.”

“Never met ’em. I was on the streets when I was—” He paused, shrugged. “I was always on the streets. Until Ruthie.”

Ruthie Kane—seer, Leader of the Light, mother to all in need of a mother. For a price.

She and I needed to have a little talk.

I grabbed my cell phone from the nightstand and escaped into the bathroom, locking the door behind me before turning the shower on full blast for cover. Although—

If the kid was something special—and I was pretty sure he was—he could hear a pin drop at Niagara Falls. I could.

I left the water on anyway. It dispelled the scent of mold that the closed door enhanced. I could conjure money and stay at a better hotel. However, I’d found over the centuries that the creepy, crawly creatures I hunted usually lived far from the amenities. So I stayed wherever I found a place and magicked that place to my liking.

I hit number one on my speed dial, and five rings later, the phone was picked up in Milwaukee.

“He there already?” Ruthie asked before I could even say hello.

Ruthie didn’t have caller ID. Ruthie didn’t need it.

“What the hell were you thinking?” I demanded.

Silence settled over the line, broken only by the distant wail of a child. Ruthie ran a group home on the south side of Milwaukee, where she took in all the kids no one else wanted. What the powers that be didn’t know was that the kids no one wanted—the ones that trouble followed—were usually the ones Ruthie was searching for.

“I don’t think I heard that quite right.”

Ruthie’s voice was soft, but there was steel beneath. Cold steel. She’d see me dead if I didn’t watch myself. Ruthie might look like everyone’s favorite African-American granny, but she wasn’t. Ruthie led the group of seers and demon killers known as the Federation, and she hadn’t gotten to that position by being kind.

“I can’t work with him, Ruthie,” I whispered. “I just can’t.”

“I know you like to work alone. But I don’t wanna send him out solo just yet. You don’t gotta worry. Fact is he’s scary good. One day, he might even be better than you.”

From what I’d seen in my dreams, he would be. And yet, still, according to those dreams, he would die.

“I can’t,” I repeated.

At last Ruthie heard what I wasn’t saying. “What did you see?”

I might be a demon killer, but I also had the sight. This should have put me in the seer line. However, instead of seeing demons, I saw the future—or at least possible futures.

I’d come to understand that free will fucked up everything. Everyone had it, which meant they could choose to turn left instead of right, take a bike instead of a car, sleep five extra minutes that morning, leave work five minutes late that night, and every choice altered my visions.

“He’ll die,” I said.

“Jimmy? How?”

“I don’t know. I’ve seen it happen a hundred different ways. But it always happens.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t know who he was. Even if he was. I do actually have dreams that are just … dreams.”

And the other ones I’d had—of Jimmy and me all tangled in the sheets, sweaty and panting, my pale skin glowing like pearls sliding just beneath dusky water as he touched me in ways that just had to be wrong, even though nothing had ever felt so right …

Those I was never going to tell anyone about. Especially Ruthie.

“Doesn’t matter,” she said at last.

“He’s your soon-to-be best boy, and his death doesn’t matter?”

“If you’ve watched him die a hundred different ways, that only means he’s continually changing his fate. I bet he avoids it entirely.”

Considering what I’d done for him, I would bet he did, too.

“What you’ve seen don’t change why he’s there. In fact, now I understand why I was told you should go with him. If you recognize somethin’ from one of your dreams you’ll be able to warn him, protect him, save him.”

As Ruthie’s orders came from God himself, or so she said, I stopped arguing. I’d learned long ago that arguing with the boss only got you stranded on the wrong side of the Pearly Gates.

“What’s the assignment?” I asked.

I could almost hear Ruthie’s smile. “Ask Jimmy,” she said, then she was gone.

Since the shower was on, and I still had the grit of a dozen trolls in my hair, I lost the robe I’d tossed on to answer the door and stepped beneath the water.

I could get Jimmy to tell me the assignment, fly there myself—I didn’t even need a plane—leave him behind, hope he’d go home. But I wouldn’t.

If I was supposed to be with him, I needed to be with him. Bad things happened when DKs ignored their seers’ orders. Yes, we had free will, in theory. In practice, we did what we were told, or people died.

I shut off the water, waved my hand, and I was dry, dressed, and ready. I hadn’t really needed a shower. I just liked them.

When I stepped out of the steamy bathroom, Jimmy’s eyes widened.

“What?” I glanced at my usual outfit—tight jeans, a white, fringed, leather halter top, white cowboy hat, and boots. Not a smudge on them.

“You … uh … from Texas?” he asked.

I frowned. “I’m from Heaven.”

He laughed. “I suppose you’ve heard that line a thousand times.” At my deepening confusion, he added: “Did it hurt?”

“What?”

“When you fell from Heaven?”

“I don’t like to talk about that.”

His laughter died. “That was a pickup line. A bad one. As in, you’re so gorgeous, you must be a fallen angel.”

I sat in the chair next to the dresser. “You do know what the fallen angels are, right?”

He’d better, or we were in a lot more trouble than I’d thought.

“Grigori,” he answered, then something flickered in his eyes. He moved so fast, I barely saw it. The switchblade—pure silver, I could smell it—cleared his pocket as he came off the bed, opening with a single blurring motion of his wrist when he stepped toward me.

I tossed magic dust, and this time it stopped him. Planning to slit my throat was not an errand of mercy.

“I’m not a Grigori,” I said. “They’re all in the pit. Sit.” Another swish of my hand, and he sat, just catching his ass on the edge of the bed. “Tell me what you know.”

“God sent angels to watch over the humans,” he recited robotically, which was what I got when I used the enchanted dust. “But some of them lusted instead and were confined to the deepest, darkest level of hell.”

“Tartarus,” I murmured. An extremely unpleasant place. I’d been lucky.

Jimmy gave a jerky nod. “Their offspring—the Nephilim—were left behind to challenge the humans. They are what we fight.”

“And the fallen angels that didn’t succumb to temptation?”

“Too good to go into the pit, too tainted by earth to return home, they became fairies.” Jimmy blinked, and reason returned to his eyes. “That’s you?”

“Me,” I agreed.

“Besides that sparkly gunk”—he waved at my hands—“what else can you do?”

“Fly without wings. Glamour.”

See the future.

I left that last talent out. It always gave rise to more questions than I wanted to answer, and with Jimmy, there’d be questions I couldn’t answer.

“If you can practice glamour, then why do you look like that?”

I tilted my head, allowed what I knew to be perfectly proportioned pink lips to curl. “You don’t like how I look?”

With his olive coloring, it was hard to tell, but I was fairly certain he blushed. Which was one of the reasons I looked like this.

“You look great,” he blurted. “It’s just … well … You seem kind of helpless and—”

“Flighty?” He shrugged. “The more helpless I appear, the dumber I act, the harder they fall.” My smile widened. “Or maybe I should say, the quicker they turn to ashes.”

Understanding blossomed. “It’s camouflage.”

“What else is glamour but that?”

“What do you really look like?”

Something he would never, ever see.

I stood. “You can tell me where we’re going and what we’re killing in the car.”

I headed for the door. When he didn’t follow, I glanced back to find his gaze scanning the room. “You don’t have a suitcase?”

I wiggled my fingers. “Everything I need is right here.”

The late-March sun rose through smoky Minnesota skies, casting dim rays across the still-snow-strewn parking lot. I hoped we were headed south.

“I thought you could fly,” Jimmy said.

“I can, but you can’t.” I cast him a quick glance. “Can you?”

Jimmy hunched his shoulders. “No.”

He never had answered my first question: What are you? I decided to rephrase. “What can you do?”

“Enough,” he said.

I wondered if he knew all he was capable of, or if he was still finding out. Some DKs were late bloomers, their special talents latent until puberty and beyond. Those were usually the most dangerous ones, too, as if all the years spent growing into a power made that power practically explode once it was ready to come through.

“You need to be more specific,” I said. “I’m not going into battle with an unknown weapon.”

He scowled, but he answered. “I’m faster, stronger, and damn hard to kill.”

“So am I.”

He looked down. “I’m a dhampir.”

“Son of a vampire,” I murmured. He didn’t seem happy about it, but then, who would be? Vampires sucked.

Ha-ha.

“I sense them,” he continued, still not looking at me. “I’m extremely good at killing them.”

“Okay,” I said. “So we’re going after a vampire?”

His head came up. Something flickered in those incredible eyes before he glanced away again. He was hiding something, but what could it be?

“We should probably take a plane,” Jimmy said, the words an obvious attempt to change the subject. I let him. I knew what I needed to know. For now.

“I don’t do planes.” The one time I’d tried it, the controls had whirled and whirled until a few of them exploded. I’d never get in one of those tin cans again. Instead—

I lifted my chin toward the powder blue ’57 Chevy Impala. “We’ll take that.”

Jimmy’s lips curved. “Can I drive?”

“No.”

He didn’t take offense. Instead, his smile deepened as he slid into the passenger seat. He ran his hand along the dash, the movement causing something to shift in my stomach as I had an image of him running that hand along me.

To stop that line of thought—remembering Jimmy’s touch when he’d never touched me gave me a shimmering sense of déjà vu that caused my stomach to pitch and roll—I started the engine. The sweet rumble soothed me as little else could. I loved this car. It was the only thing I had to call my own.

After backing out, I headed for the street. “Which way?”

“South,” Jimmy said.

“Hallelujah.”

“And west. New Mexico.”

Hadn’t been there in decades. Or was it centuries? Time got funny once you lived through the first millennium—or ten.

“Where in New Mexico?”

“Navajo reservation.”

“Pretty big area.”

“Twenty-six thousand square miles.” At least he’d done his homework. “Ruthie said we should go to the foot of Mount Taylor.”

What were the odds that I’d need to head to the same place I’d headed to the last time? You’d think pretty damn slim, but when dealing with supernatural entities, the opposite was true. Certain creatures could be found in certain places, and Mount Taylor had always been special. Sacred to the Navajo, but sacred often arose out of spooky.

“You know where that is?” Jimmy asked, and I nodded. “How long will it take?”

“Do I look like I have Google Maps in my brain?”

“You look like you could have just about anything in there.”

He sounded impressed, and a place right between my C-cups went all gooey and warm. No one had ever been impressed by me before.

Scared of me? Horrified by me? Pleased I’d done my job? Sure. But impressed? Nope.

I kind of liked it.

“We’ll be there in twenty-three hours, give or take.”

He sat back. “Quicker if you let me drive.”

“Fat chance.”

“You gotta sleep.”

I snorted. One good thing about being a fairy—I only slept if I wanted to. Considering what I saw when I closed my eyes … I didn’t often want to.

“What are we after at Mount Taylor?” I asked.

“Sorcerer.”

I frowned. He’d graduated from vampires to sorcerers? That was kind of a big leap. This entire situation made me uneasy.

“What kind of sorcerer?”

“Does it matter?”

“The only way to kill something is to know exactly what it is that needs killing.”

“Ruthie said you’d know.”

“Great,” I muttered. I was starting to wonder if Ruthie wanted me dead. “She said this guy—?”

I glanced at Jimmy for confirmation—technically, a woman should be called a sorceress, but it was best to be sure—and he nodded.

“This guy was a sorcerer.” I emphasized the word. “Not a witch or a warlock, a wizard or a magician?”

“No. She said ‘sorcerer.’ What’s the difference?”

“There are two kinds of magic. White is given; black is taken.”

“Given by who? Taken from what?”

The entrance ramp for I-35 loomed ahead, and I waited to answer him until I’d merged into traffic. It was early yet; the road sparkled with the remains of the salt used to prevent vehicles from winding up in a ditch during every snowstorm.

“White magic is learned,” I began. “Given by another devotee. Sometimes inherited through families. In theory, a human can practice white magic. In practice, for magic to be powerful enough to be of any use, it can’t be contained by them for very long. They burn out.”

And wind up gibbering in the corner of their nice, cozy asylum.

“You’re saying anyone practicing magic is a Nephilim?”

“Or the offspring of a Nephilim and a human.” Evil spirits liked to propagate all over the place. It was kind of their thing.

“A breed,” Jimmy spat.

I lifted a brow. Considering he was one, that was an interesting reaction.

“Also fairies,” I pointed out. “I use white magic.”

“So the white and the black have nothing to do with the good or the evil of the magic itself but with the way the magic was received?”

“Anything good can become evil if it’s used in an evil manner.”

“By an evil being.”

“Right. And evil can be used for good.”

“No way.”

I thought of my dreams, the whispers, a promise.

“You’d be surprised.” Before he could question me further, I continued. “A sorcerer, by definition, takes his magic.”

“How do you take magic?”

“By killing someone you love.”

Jimmy flinched. “No one who’s human would do that.”

I wasn’t so sure. I’d met some humans who rivaled the Nephilim for evil. We weren’t supposed to kill them, but … accidents happened.

“Which is why we need to know what kind of sorcerer we’re dealing with so we know how to kill him. Some are part shifter, part vampire—Well, basically anything that creeps can take some magic and become a being that’s even harder to kill.”

Now that I thought about it, Ruthie’s sending Jimmy after a sorcerer alone would have been a very bad idea. As it was … not knowing what kind of murdering magician we were dealing with was a very bad idea. Once again, I got that prickle at the back of my neck.

“Tell me exactly what Ruthie said.”

“She sent me to get you.”

I glanced sideways. “Why me?”

He stared out the front window as if the never-ending highway that disappeared into the flat, soon-to-be Iowa plane was beyond fascinating. “I didn’t ask.”

“No?” That smelled like a lie, but I couldn’t see why he’d bother.

“Ruthie says ‘jump,’ I say ‘how high?’ Don’t you?”

Not in exactly those words, but yeah, pretty much.

“What else?”

“That we should go to the foot of Mount Taylor, where we’d find a sorcerer, and you’d know what to do.”

I’d had better instructions. Then again, I’d had worse. And if Ruthie’d said I’d know what to do, I had to believe I would. No doubt whatever sorcerer we’d find there would be a type I’d found, and eliminated, before.

I began to tick them off in my mind. The Nagual, a Mayan Jaguar shaman, he’d died by silver dipped in blood.

The Aghori, a Hindu cannibal that ate magicians in order to ingest their magic. I’d used hemlock on him.

While I doubted we’d find a Hindu sorcerer in New Mexico—I’d found stranger things in stranger places—I did carry hemlock in the trunk.

I also carried knives made of every metal known to man, bullets in the same colors, crossbows, arrows, assorted poisons in solid and liquid form, animal and human blood, as well as ropes, chains, and whips. It paid—usually in lives—to be prepared.

“Killing what they started out as won’t kill them?” Jimmy asked.

“Once they’re a sorcerer, you’ve gotta kill that, too.”

“How?”

“You know why they burned witches?”

Jimmy shrugged. “Why?”

I tightened my fingers on the steering wheel, then focused on the distant horizon.

“Because it worked.”

Mount Taylor loomed large from the flat, arid land like a pyramid in the midst of Egypt. As we rolled closer, the ponderosa pines that dotted the foothills turned what had appeared from a distance to be a gigantic blueberry snow cone into Tso dzilh, the sacred mountain of the south.

Mount Taylor was one of four mountains that marked the boundaries of Navajo land, known as the Dinetah, or the Glittering World. Strange things happened there—always had, always would.

Jimmy stirred. He’d been sleeping since we hit the New Mexico border. You’d think his being unconscious would have made the trip easier. Unfortunately, it only meant my gaze kept flicking to him, cataloging memories I’d retained from my dreams.

Like the way his lashes lay on his cheeks, thick and dark, reminding me of how they fluttered against my belly in the wake of his lips.

Or the supple length of his fingers, which could leave me gasping, straining, begging with just one stroke.

When the wind whistled through the tiny crack he’d cranked in the passenger window, ruffling across his skin, stirring his hair then flicking the scent of cinnamon and soap into my face, my whole body tingled with the memory of things that hadn’t even happened.

Jimmy sat up, staring at the huge blob of land that filled the windshield. “Needle? Haystack? Hell,” he muttered.

“I know where to go.”

He cast me a quick glance. “You are good at this.”

“I am,” I agreed, though again, his praise warmed me. “But you see that?” I pointed to the billowing cloud of smoke that trailed toward the excruciatingly blue sky. “We should probably check it out.”

“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire?”

“Where there’s destruction, there’s usually a Nephilim. That looks like more than a campfire.” It looked like half a town was burning. “If that isn’t the work of our sorcerer, it’s probably the work of something else we need to kill.”

Jimmy’s hand went to his pocket, where he traced the outline of his switchblade. “Fine by me.”

When we reached the blaze, we discovered enough pickup trucks and old, dusty cars to fill a honky-tonk parking lot and a pyre surrounded by at least a hundred people, who stared at the leaping, dancing flames as if mesmerized.

“Zombies,” Jimmy whispered.

In our world, they might be.

I got out of the car, opened the trunk, grabbed a few machetes, and tossed one to Jimmy. He lifted his brows, and I shrugged. “If parts of them start falling off and they try to bite you?” I made a chopping motion. “Off with their heads.”

I didn’t think they were zombies—I doubted the walking dead would be hanging around so close to a fire since it was one of the few things, along with decapitation, that killed them—but I wasn’t going to bet Jimmy’s life on it.

As we approached, a few of the observers turned. They were all Navajo, and quite obviously alive—no decaying eyes, moldering arms, putrefying thighs, or gangrenous tongues. Lucky us.

Hell, lucky them.

I paused and laid a hand on Jimmy’s arm. The ripple of awareness when my palm touched his skin made me shiver despite the steady beat of the sun on the crown of my hat.

He cast me a curious glance, and I lowered my voice to a range that no human could hear. “The Navajo still believe in monsters. We haven’t had to dust anything out this way in ages. They do it for us.”

“You mean…?” Jimmy let his gaze trail back to the massive, billowing bonfire. “We should just walk away?”

“Well…” I hesitated. “Why don’t we make sure it works, then walk away?”

The Navajo whispered among themselves.

He walks in darkness.

He is the night.

Born of smoke.

Death.

Beasts.

Magic.

I think we’d found our man.

We stood there for hours, waiting for the fire to die. We couldn’t see anything through the thick, choking smoke. We also didn’t hear anything but the crackle of the flames, and we didn’t smell anything but burning wood and acrid fumes.

That should have tipped me off right away. Nothing burns without screaming. Nothing dies without moving. Nothing turns to ashes without one hell of an unpleasant smell.

Eventually, the Navajo climbed into their vehicles and drove away. They didn’t seem concerned about us. Considering the lack of evidence left behind, they didn’t need to be.

When the last dusty pickup disappeared into the sun that hovered just above the western horizon, Jimmy spoke. “Now what?”

“Now we douse that fire, then bury whatever’s left in at least four different places.”

Jimmy’s shoulders slumped on a sigh. “Okay.”

“Disappointed?”

“I wanted to kick some ass.”

Behind him, the ashes rippled. The red embers glowed brighter and brighter, then gave a subtle whoosh.

“We might have to,” I murmured.

Jimmy spun as the pyre reignited, shooting as high as some of the oldest trees. The flames themselves became a man, then the man became a wolf, a mountain lion, a writhing snake. Every time I blinked, the image re-formed—now a hawk, next a tarantula, and, once again, a man.

“Shape-shifter.” Jimmy’s silver blade sliced the heated air.

“Worse,” I said, as the blazing man walked out of the inferno completely unharmed. “He’s a skinwalker. That fire only pissed him off.”

As he stalked toward us, his long, dark hair streamed back, the coming night air causing the flames that still licked at the ends to extinguish with an audible poof. He glistened in the dying sun, the tattoos that graced nearly every inch of his body seeming to dance as muscles rippled beneath his skin.

He wasn’t tall; he didn’t need to be. The power, or maybe it was the fury, cascaded off him with such force the grass beneath his feet curdled and died.

“Should we run?” Jimmy asked.

The man approaching us smiled. The expression frightened me. But Sawyer always had.

I stepped in front of Jimmy, my arm lifting to make use of my magic. Sawyer flicked his hand. He was still five feet away; he never touched me, yet I flew off my feet and landed fifty yards south. If I’d been human, the force of the fall would have fricasseed my brains. Instead, I was up and running almost instantly.

I was too late. I’d known even while I was still airborne that I would be.

Jimmy plunged the silver switchblade into Sawyer’s chest. When Sawyer didn’t burst into ashes, Jimmy took a step back, but he didn’t run. Maybe he should have.

Except Sawyer could shift in an instant; he could move faster than the eye could track. There was no point in running. Jimmy’s fate had been sealed long before now.

Sawyer lowered his head to look at the knife. He seemed calm enough, but the pyre behind him suddenly ignited all the way to the sky. Then, as quick as the lightning he commanded, Sawyer yanked the knife from his own chest and plunged it into Jimmy’s.

Even as I shouted, “No!” I was wondering—

Of all the times I’d seen Jimmy die, why hadn’t I ever seen this?

Jimmy collapsed to his knees, then tumbled onto his side. Sawyer tilted his head like the hawk tattooed at the base of his spine, staring at the dying man before him. Blood trickled down his bare chest, glistening in the glow of the dancing flames. But there was less blood than there should have been. His wound had already begun to heal.

I fell to the ground, tugging Jimmy onto his back. Someone was chanting, “No, no, no.” I think it was me.

His eyes were closed, his face more gray than pale, his lips white. All the blood in the world seemed to be darkening his once mint green shirt.

The panic in my head, the utter devastation in my heart was the same panic and devastation that had swamped me upon awakening from every dream where Jimmy had died.

Sawyer’s hand appeared, reaching for the knife, and I sprayed glitter dust without thought, coating him from knuckle to neck.

“Don’t touch him,” I said, and beneath my usual voice, rumbled a beast of my own. I was going to kill him. As soon as I figured out how. “Never touch him again.”

Sawyer squatted on the other side of Jimmy’s body. “If you want him to heal,” he said in a voice that was so deep it rumbled the mountain, “you need to take out the knife.”

I lifted my gaze. My magic still clung to his skin, but it did nothing to stop him from snatching the blade and yanking it out. He stuck his fingers into the hole the knife had left in the shirt and yanked, exposing Jimmy’s chest, slick with blood, and the two-inch slice in his skin, which had just begun to close. Not as fast as Sawyer’s—his was nearly gone—but fast enough.

“Who is he?” Sawyer asked. “From the way you were keening, I’d guess him to be your long-lost love.”

I kept my gaze on Jimmy’s face, but I felt my own burn. “I just met him yesterday.”

“Sure you did.”

“Ruthie sent him.” I frowned. “To kill you.”

“I doubt that.”

“You don’t think Ruthie would kill you?”

Sawyer laughed, and the sound seemed to flow from those mountains and not his mouth. “If only she knew how. If only anyone did.”

“But he—” I began.

“He’s a dhampir,” Sawyer interrupted. “And a vampire I am not.”

“I know what he is.”

Jimmy’s face was less gray but still pale. The knife wound continued to knit together slower than I’d like. Of course, I’d like never to have been there in the first place, but I’d learned, way back at the Fall, that what I liked meant nothing at all.

“If that were the case, you would have known better than to think a simple knife to the chest would end him.”

I blinked. He was right. But I’d seen Jimmy die so many times in so many ways, I’d panicked.

“I still don’t understand why Ruthie would send him to kill you.”

“She didn’t,” Sawyer said slowly, as if I’d hit my head when he’d tossed me. Maybe I had. Because none of this was making any more sense now than it had before. Unless—

I tilted my head, eyes narrowing. “This was a test?”

Sawyer lifted his bare shoulder—the one where a black wolf howled.

Seemed like a fairly easy test to me. Although Ruthie probably hadn’t expected Sawyer to be on fire when we arrived.

Jimmy’s eyes fluttered, then opened. I smiled. “Hey,” I began.

A spark of red flared at their center, and he reached out quick as any beast, grabbing Sawyer’s ankle and yanking him to the ground. An instant later, he landed on Sawyer’s chest, wrapped both hands around his throat, and began to squeeze.

Sawyer just looked bored.

“Jimmy.” I pulled on his hands. I was strong; he was stronger. So I hit him with a faceful of fairy dust, and whispered, “Stop.”

He did.

Sawyer shoved him off and stood.

“What’d you do that for?” Jimmy wiped the sticky sparkles from his eyes. “And why’d it work?”

“He’s—” I paused. What Sawyer was had always been a mystery.

“I’m one of you,” Sawyer finished.

“No way in hell,” Jimmy returned as he climbed to his feet.

“Her magic made you stop. Would it have if I were evil? If you were actually supposed to kill me? Not that you could, but if I have to keep flicking you off, I might hurt you.”

“Nothing can hurt me.”

“Wanna bet?”

“Let’s see what you got.”

“No.” I stepped between them again, setting one hand on Jimmy’s chest, ignoring the dual sensations of “ick” from all the blood and “yum” from all the muscles. “He’s dangerous.”

Jimmy lifted his chin. “So am I.”

“Not like him.”

Jimmy stared Sawyer up and down—which was pretty easy considering he still wore nothing but tattoos—sneering a bit at the snake inked on his penis. “Is that a joke?” he asked.

Sawyer smirked.

“He’s a skinwalker,” I repeated.

“A shifter. So what?”

“If he was just a shifter, he’d be ashes. He can change into anything with the use of his robe.”

“Robe?” Jimmy gave Sawyer another scornful once over. “Did it burn off?”

“My skin is my robe,” Sawyer murmured. And he could become any of the beasts that he wore there.

“He was created in fire, birthed of smoke,” I continued. “He controls the lightning. He can bring the storm.”

“How do we kill him?” Jimmy asked.

“He’s one of the most powerful sorcerers ever known. There is no killing him.”

Jimmy’s eyes widened. “Everything that breathes can die.”

“Everything but him.”

“Why would Ruthie—” he began.

“She didn’t,” Sawyer interrupted. “This was your test, boy. You failed.”

“Failed?” Jimmy waved at Sawyer’s still-bloody chest. “I got you.”

“Not as good as I got you.”

Honestly. I gave a mental eye roll. Men. Boys. Ancient supernatural creatures. The only difference was the size of their—

Jimmy’s switchblade suddenly appeared once more in his hand. He must have palmed it while still on the ground. I was impressed. Annoyed as hell. But also impressed.

He flicked his wrist, and the dying sun sparked off the edge as it opened. “Let’s go again.”

“No,” I said, and when Jimmy moved, I growled, the sound surprising him enough to make him pause. “Do not make me spray you.”

“You’re taking his side?”

“We’re on the same side.”

“If that’s true, then why were all those people…” Jimmy curled his lip, “his people, roasting him? He must have done something to set them off.”

“It makes them feel better to burn me every generation or so.” Sawyer shrugged. “I let them.”

“You let them?” Jimmy snorted. “Sure you did.”

“You think mere humans could capture me?” Sawyer gave a delicate snort of his own. “They’ve seen me become my animals, watched me turn humans to ashes—”

“Why did they see you?”

Sawyer spread his hands. “Why not?”

“It adds to his legend,” I said. “Makes people fear him. Probably keeps them from burning him more than once a generation.”

“When they watch me die, then they see me a day, a week, a month later unharmed…” Sawyer didn’t exactly grin—I doubt he could—but his oddly light gray eyes sparkled. “It’s one of the few things that amuses me after all these years.”

“How many years?” Jimmy asked suspiciously.

“Sawyer’s as old as I am,” I said. “Maybe older.”

“This is Sawyer?”

Something in Jimmy’s voice made me turn, but he was already past me. I should have taken away that damn knife when I had the chance.

The blade descended, headed straight for Sawyer’s eye, but while Jimmy was fast, Sawyer was faster, and he snatched Jimmy’s wrist, giving it a quick, vicious twist. The sound of the bone snapping warred with the thud of the knife against the ground and my own startled gasp.

Jimmy let his injured hand flop at his side as he stepped in close. “She sobs your name in her sleep, you son of a bitch. What did you do to her?”

“What didn’t I?” Sawyer whispered, then flicked one hand through the air as if batting a fly.

By the time Jimmy landed, and I’d run to him, Sawyer was gone. I don’t know if he shape-shifted, or ran off on his own bare feet. Maybe he just went poof—with him, anything was possible. In truth, I didn’t care how he’d gone, I was just glad that he’d gone.

“You okay?” I asked, but Jimmy was already getting up.

He stared at the place Sawyer had recently stood; the only indication that the man had been real and not a mirage was the imprints of his toes in the dust.

“I don’t care what he is.” Jimmy retrieved his knife. The wrist Sawyer had broken still hung limply at his side, but the fingers had begun to move, curling into a fist I wasn’t even sure he knew he’d made. “I’m gonna kill him someday.”

Only one thing could make men—even those who weren’t completely men—behave like this.

“Who is she?” I asked, proud when my voice didn’t break even though my heart was.

Stupid to feel betrayed. I might have known Jimmy Sanducci intimately for eons, but he’d only met me yesterday. And, from the way he’d said she, another had already captured his heart.

“No one,” he murmured in a voice that clearly said the one.

He walked to the car and got in without glancing my way at all.

I pulled into the first motel I saw, a small, single-wing, once-white place with a neon sign that announced SLEEP EAP. It wasn’t until I parked beneath it that I saw that the C and the H had burned out.

“Why are we stopping?”

Those were the first words Jimmy had said in the hour we’d been on the road.

“I’m tired.”

“I’ll drive.”

“If a cop sees you behind the wheel like that…” I waved at his torn and bloody shirt, his even bloodier chest.

“You’ll magic them, and we’ll keep right on going.”

“It’s easier to stop here, take a shower and a nap, start fresh in the morning.” Besides, I’d magicked so many people today, my hands hurt.

I figured he’d argue, so when he laid his head against the seat and closed his eyes, I palmed the keys and got us a room. There was no way I was letting Jimmy out of my sight until he was back under Ruthie’s thumb. I wouldn’t put it past him to sneak away in the middle of the night and try to kill Sawyer again.

Unfortunately, Jimmy didn’t wait for the middle of the night. By the time I got back to the car, he was gone.

“Fuck!” I kicked the tire. I should have put a leash on him.

I looked up and down the road, but in the middle of nowhere, even with fairy eyesight, the highway disappeared into a black maw of nothing after a few hundred feet.

I honestly had no idea which way to go, or even if I should go. Jimmy was a big boy. He wasn’t my responsibility.

No matter how much I might want him to be.

I turned toward the motel and got a shimmy of déjà vu so hard I staggered. I’d dreamed this.

The Impala right there, the hotel in front of me. Jimmy was gone. I was worried. Everything was the same, right down to the ache in my fingers, except …

The sign had been off—black and still—not flickering like it was now.

In the next instant, the neon died with a sizzling phzaat. Darkness settled over me like a cool spring mist. I held my breath and waited for reality to catch up with the dream.

The animal-like shriek rent the night, and I lifted into the air without benefit of wings.

I flew toward the scream, already knowing what I would find.

A cottage miles away from the nearest neighbor, at the end of what would have passed for a decent road in the year 2, the night so dark the figures that surrounded it were mere wisps darting in and out of the light that shone from the windows.

One man battled a multitude of hunched and decrepit crone-things, with tails like dinosaurs and bony, bald heads. Despite their ancient appearance, they moved fast, and they had very sharp teeth. It wasn’t until one of them bleated like a goat that I remembered what they were.

Chupacabras.

Mexican vampires. The stench of rancid garlic was so strong, my eyes watered. Jimmy had probably smelled them from the car.

He seemed to be doing just fine on his own. Ashes flitted through the dim light. He whirled and jabbed, plunging a wooden stake into chest after naked, scaly chest.

However, I’d been here before, and I knew what happened. The king chupacabra—a much bigger, badder vampire, with spikes down his spine and gigantic bat wings—would swoop from the sky and drive first his right talon, then his left, through Jimmy’s throat.

I snatched up a likely sliver of wood from the pile next to the cottage and began to watch the sky.

Something bleated, and I lashed out, my stake sinking into the chest of the creature that had rushed me. Instead of bursting into ashes, the thing bleated again, a long, hiccoughing expulsion that sounded like laughter, then sank its fangs into my wrist.

I cursed and cuffed the chupacabra upside its bony, bald head. Instead of releasing me, it began to suck.

And from the east, the slow thunk of wings.

Panic threatened. How would I kill the beast coming for Jimmy if I couldn’t even end one of its minions?

Think, Summer! What kills a goatsucker?

If Ruthie had sent me here, she’d have given me more info, or I’d have found some on the way. But Ruthie hadn’t sent me. My dream had.

So I tried to bring that dream to mind, but all I could see when I closed my eyes were the talons going through Jimmy’s throat.

“Cross!” Jimmy shouted.

I opened my eyes, just as the clouds parted enough to reveal a thin sickle of a moon, the light fluttering off and on as the wings of something large and deadly hovered.

Using my free hand, I yanked the stake from the chupacabra and plunged it across to the other side of his chest.

Nothing happened, except that he laughed again, this time the sound not much more than a gargle of my blood in his throat. I threw some dust in his face, and said, “Release me.”

When he did, I retrieved my stake and flew. I’d throw myself in front of Jimmy. Maybe during the time the king goatsucker was trying to kill me, Jimmy could kill him.

But as I flew, another idea of what cross might mean occurred to me. I used my thumbnail to carve one into the wood.

I reached Jimmy as the gargantuan chupacabra materialized from the night. His talons went through my chest as my stake went into his.

He burst into ashes.

I passed out.

I came to inside the cottage. I lay in a bed; a fire blazed in the fireplace. I could still smell the distant aroma of garlic. All I wore were bandages at the wrist and chest.

Somewhere, a shower ran. Even as I turned my head, the water went off, a curtain rattled. Steam and a sliver of light slithered through a crack in the door. A shadow moved beyond the light, beyond the door, then the door opened.

Naked to the waist, his hair slick and shiny, Jimmy wore only a towel that threatened to drop from his hips with every step. His eyes went to the bed, and when he saw I was awake, they widened.

“You okay?” He crossed the room and sat at my side. Reaching out, he brushed back my hair. The warmth of his fingers against my chilled skin made me want to curl into him like a cat.

I opened my mouth, but all I could do was nod and stare at the single drop of water sliding down his smooth, olive chest, glistening like oil. I wanted to touch it. I wanted to taste it. Now.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

“Summer?” His hand cupped my face; his thumb traced my cheek. “What can I do? How can I help?”

He shifted, and his thigh bumped my breasts. I moaned.

“Sorry.” He fell to his knees next to the bed. “Does it hurt?”

I gazed into his eyes and thought: It’s never going to stop hurting. I’m going to love you forever, and you’ll never be able to love me back.

Because of her.

I didn’t know who she was, but already I hated her.

“I’m okay,” I said.

“You saved my life.”

“Right place, right time.”

He tilted his head and his hair, nearly dry already from the heat of the fire, tumbled across his brow. “You knew that thing was coming, didn’t you?”

No point in lying.

“Sometimes I do.” I shrugged, then winced when my still-healing chest protested.

He reached for the coverlet. “Let me see.”

The flames flickered in his eyes as he slowly drew the blanket away. A white rectangle covered a four-inch square above my left breast. He reached out, but instead of touching the bandage, he touched me.

Was it an accident? At the time, I thought so. The way he snatched his hand back, though not too far, and caught his breath, the way his startled, almost mortified gaze flicked to mine.

Later, of course, I knew better, but then, everything seemed so innocent, a product of the moment, of us. We’d almost died. It made perfect sense we should desperately want to prove that we lived.

The loss of his touch was more painful than a talon through the heart, and without thought, I arched, the movement causing hand and breast to collide again. Of its own accord, his wrist—now healed—turned, and my full weight glided into his palm. The next instant he was kissing me, or maybe I was kissing him.

He tasted like the night, cool and dark, even as his skin beneath my fingers seemed to burn. I’d touched him in my dreams a hundred—no, a thousand—times. Yet every stroke was a revelation. As if I were coming home to a house that still smelled new.

I tugged on his shoulders, and he dropped the towel, then slid onto the bed without ever lifting his lips from mine. His hands explored, learning the curves at my breast, hip, and thigh.

“Soft,” he murmured, then moved his mouth across my jaw to my neck, where he worried a fold of skin between his teeth. “Sweet.”

I laughed, and the sound was low, throaty, sexy, not at all like me. Then again, I practiced glamour. Me could be anything at all. Since Jimmy seemed to like this version, I let her stay.

He nuzzled my breasts, laved a nipple, and I caught my breath as the sensation shot through me. He lifted his head; his eyes glittered auburn in the firelight. “You like that?”

“Mmm,” I agreed, and he lowered his head to give me more.

“I’ve been wanting to do this since you opened the door in that robe.”

He drew me into his mouth, suckling hard, and I curled my fingers into his hair. He teased me with his teeth, then blew on the moist, taut peak.

“Did you know I could see the outline of these?” He lifted my breasts to his mouth, tonguing first one then the other. “They were so beautiful, I couldn’t think of anything but you all the way to Mount Taylor.”

“Good at hiding it,” I managed.

He rolled on top of me, pressing his erection right where I needed it the most. “Not anymore.”

I licked the trail of that droplet of water, across his chest to his nipple. Before I could close my lips around it, he plunged.

He was young—who wasn’t compared to me?—but he also wasn’t completely human. He lasted longer than I thought he would.

I set my hands on his hips, gave him the rhythm, lowered my palms a few inches, and showed him the depth. His tongue echoed our movements. My breasts skimmed his chest with each thrust. He stilled, shifted, and did something amazing that made lights go off in the sky, on the ceiling, all around, or maybe just in my head. By the time I remembered my name, he was raining kisses across my damp cheeks and moving within me once more.

He was so beautiful, he made me ache. I couldn’t help but reach up and touch him. When I did, he lowered his gaze, and what I saw there made my stomach jitter and dip. Was that expression merely a reflection? How could he love me so soon? Then again, I’d loved him before he’d even been born.

“Jimmy,” I began.

“Shh,” he murmured, and kissed me, making me forget whatever I’d been about to say. Right now, all that mattered was this. The two of us all tangled up in each other, warm and safe for the moment, a memory I already had come to life.

His movements became faster, harder, I didn’t mind. He couldn’t hurt me.

Or so I thought.

When he pulsed to the beat of my heart, the tandem of that pulse made another start in me. I caught my breath in shock and wonder, crying out as the world again fell away.

I clung. I couldn’t help it. We couldn’t be together every minute. I couldn’t be in the right place at the right time every time. Sure, I’d made a deal, but the one I’d made it with lived on lies and had reneged on bigger deals with better angels than I.

Jimmy lowered his forehead to mine, his hair brushed my cheek an instant before his lips touched my nose, then he rolled to the side, taking me with him, folding me into his arms and flicking the blanket over us both.

His breathing evened out; I thought he was asleep when I whispered, “I dreamed of you.”

As consciousness fell away I could have sworn he whispered, too.

I know.

I awoke alone, which at first didn’t bother me. I couldn’t remember the last time I hadn’t. But I stretched, and the bed was warm everywhere, as if someone other than I had warmed it.

Then I remembered. Jimmy. Me. Us.

I hugged myself and went over every minute we’d shared, beginning with the expression in his eyes that had looked like love.

Then I heard his voice, and I leaped from the cocoon we’d made. When you lived a life like ours, a conversation in the middle of the night was rarely a good thing.

I paused, listening. He wasn’t in the cottage, so I glanced out the window. Jimmy stood beneath the stars, having a talk with his cell phone.

“Mission accomplished,” he said.

It wasn’t until I heard Ruthie’s answer—through the glass, across the distance, on a phone that wasn’t anywhere near my ear—sure I was a fairy, but even I had limits—that I realized I was dreaming.

“Any problems?”

“What problem would there be? You’ve seen her.”

Seen who? What problem?

“Did she suspect?”

“That this was a setup?” Jimmy blew a derisive breath through his lips. “I know what I’m doing, Ruthie. It would have been nice if you’d mentioned that the sorcerer was one of ours.”

“Telling you would have defeated the purpose of the test.”

“That was a test?” Jimmy asked. “And here I thought it was just one giant clusterfuck.”

“Watch your mouth, boy.”

“I could have died.”

“Summer wouldn’t let you. Why you think I made you take her along?”

“I know exactly why you made me take her along.”

Silence reigned for a few seconds before Ruthie murmured, “It had to be done.”

“That doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

“Considering what I usually send you out to do, I wouldn’t think seducing a pretty woman would be such a hardship.”

Suddenly the warmth of the room wasn’t quite warm enough.

“She isn’t a woman.” I stopped breathing even before he continued. “She’s a damn fairy.”

“Not damned,” Ruthie murmured. “Not yet. Besides, she could have been Satan’s little sister, and the mission would have been the same. Count your blessings.”

“This wasn’t a blessing, it was a—” He turned, and saw me standing in the window. “Nightmare,” he finished.

I woke up with a gasp, arms flailing, tangling in the covers as I tried to breathe but was unable to through the pain in my chest. I felt like I was dying even though I was well aware that I wouldn’t.

I was at the cottage, alone in the bed, in the room. Outside, the low murmur of Jimmy’s voice.

“Mission accomplished.”

Ignoring the shimmy of déjà vu, I dressed, taking clothes from the owner’s closet. Considering she was no longer here, and neither was whoever belonged to the man’s clothes in a second closet, I figured the chupacabras had eaten them.

The missing woman was bigger than I but nearly everyone was. I glamoured everything until it was exactly the same thing I’d worn before—fringe, boots, hat, and all. I didn’t bother to cross the room and listen to Jimmy’s conversation. Once had been enough.

For several lifetimes.

I thought back on all the occasions I’d thought he was hiding something, those prickles of unease with Jimmy, Ruthie, the entire situation. But instead of pushing for an answer, I’d been dazzled by him. How could I not be? I’d been waiting for Jimmy Sanducci for centuries.

The door opened. Jimmy saw me sitting on the edge of the bed and smiled. He almost looked as if he meant it.

“You’re good,” I said.

His smile faltered. “Thank you?”

“I actually believed you cared.”

Confusion flickered across his face, then he glanced through the open door, at the window, and again at me. “You heard?”

I shrugged. I had, just not the way he thought.

“Let me explain—”

“I’m sure Ruthie had her reasons.” She always did. “Although I’d think the Leader of the Light would be above pimping for the greater good.”

“It’s a long story. I—”

I zapped him with fairy dust, and he stopped talking. I guess what he’d been about to tell me wasn’t merciful. More about making him feel better than making me not want to dive into a fresh patch of rowan or stab myself in the throat with the nearest cold, sharp steel.

Had Ruthie wanted us to bond? Had she needed me to protect him? She could have just asked. There was something more to this, but right now, I didn’t want to know.

“Listen,” Jimmy said, and that he could speak meant I should. “Bad things are coming. We’re going to have to do whatever it takes to win the coming war.”

The hair on my arms lifted. “Armageddon?”

“It’s almost here.”

I closed my eyes. The last war. The only one that mattered.

Who would win? Our Book said one thing. Theirs said another.

The universe craved balance. God versus Satan. Angels versus devils. Good versus evil. Us versus them.

I’d seen so many things in my sleep. I opened my eyes and stared into Jimmy’s all-too-familiar face. I’d seen him die. But I’d also seen him live.

Because of me.

I loved him. Did it matter if he loved me back? Perhaps my love wasn’t real, just a fantasy manufactured by our side so that I would protect him. But it felt real, and it wasn’t something I was going to be able to magic away. I’d tried.

I’d promised everything I had, everything I was, to keep him safe. And looking at him now, even knowing what I did, I knew I’d promise the same damn thing again tomorrow.

We needed him. Without Jimmy Sanducci, the side of good, of light and right would not survive. I wasn’t certain of much, but I was certain of that. I had to be.

“There will be demons,” Jimmy said. “Scores of them. And the only thing that can stop them is us.” He held out his hand. “You with me?”

Since being with him was all I’d ever wanted, I took that hand, and I kept my promise. It wasn’t easy.

But, then, deals with the devil never are.

Author’s Bio:

Lori Handeland is a two-time Romance Writers’ of America RITA Award winner and the New York Times bestselling author of the paranormal romance series, The Nightcreature Novels, as well as the urban fantasy series, The Phoenix Chronicles. Lori lives in Wisconsin with a husband, two sons, and a yellow Lab named Elwood.

“There Will Be Demons” takes place in the world of The Phoenix Chronicles. For more adventures with the same characters, as well as many others, start with Book #1, Any Given Doomsday.

For more information on Lori or her books, please go to: www.lorihandeland.com.