Page 44 of An Oath at Midnight

I turned to him. “What the hell was that? What was she talking about?”

“No idea,” he said, crossing his arms. “She’s a demon.”

He said it as if that explained everything. “What does she mean, risk not waking up?”

His gaze hit mine. “How the fuck would I know?”

The bite to his voice, his obvious overreaction to my question, told me he was lying, and I hated the feeling.

The demon strode back, stepping in behind the counter, and dumped my supplies on top. I walked over as she rang everything up.

“I’m out of belladonna, but I have rosary pea. It’s more potent, you’ll need less. It’s heavy-duty shit, and I’d advise you to leave it here if you don’t know what you’re doing with it.”

“I’ll take it.” Abrus precatorius, or rosary pea as it was more commonly known, was deadly. No, I’d never used it before. Like belladonna, it was forbidden by the council to grow ourselves, but I knew how to handle plants and herbs, deadly or not.

She smirked. “If you say so. As for the vamp blood, leave a number and I’ll call if I get some in.”

“You have any idea when?”

“Could be days, could be weeks. Harvesting that shit isn’t like plucking a bunch of herbs from your back garden, sweetie.”

I ignored her attempt to get a rise out of me, and it wasn’t easy. “So you have a lot of regular witches coming here?”

“Yep,” she said as she wrapped the rosary pea and slid it in the bag with my other supplies.

“From here or out of town?”

“Both.” She grinned, and I realized she had sharp, elongated fangs, not vampire or shifter, these were all demon.

Were these other witches like me, like Agatheena? Did they carry darkness inside them along with light? Or were they pure darkness? Did I know them?

The other female slid the bag toward me, and Bram handed her a wad of cash.

She grinned. “I’ll call if we get some blood in.”

I nodded, and we walked out. The street was fairly busy, and I could hardly believe everyone around us were demons. The knights always said not all demons were created equally, and I finally understood what that meant. Those around us were nothing like the monsters we encountered in the forests.

Not everyone here was harmless, of course, but if they wanted a life outside Hell, they had to obey the rules, and, apparently, most of them had been.

As we headed back the way we came, several questions were on the tip of my tongue, like, what the hell was the demon in that store talking about when we walked in?

I dropped my keys and stopped to scoop them up. Bram kept walking, not realizing I’d stopped. I straightened, about to jog to catch up, when someone hooked me around the neck and jerked me in close to their side.

“Hey, gorgeous,” a roughened voice said against my ear. “Wanna party?”

“Not even a little bit.” I clenched my fist, about to dislodge him the way Asher had taught me, when a dark shadow materialized behind him.

One moment Bram was a shadow, the next he stood behind the demon, one hand gripping his chin, the other pressed to the side of his head, and that vicious, sinister look was back on his face, his features distorted by rage.

“Release her, or die,” he said in a voice I barely recognized, a voice that projected pure hatred and violence.

The demon released me instantly, but Bram didn’t let go. No, his arms tensed, his muscles flexing. He was going to break the demon’s neck anyway.

“B,” I said, gripping his forearm, “he let me go. Let’s walk away.”

The demon nodded. “Listen to your female. I was just messing. Didn’t mean any disrespect. Saw a pretty girl on her own, thought I’d take a shot. My bad.”

“Bram,” I said again.