Waking The Serpent. Jane Kindred

normal expression on her face. She hoped.

      Rafe was clearing off the coffee table to arrange things for the spell—two candles in the top corners and the third in the center, with the condiment bowls holding water and salt on either side of his nearly untouched glass of wine.

      Phoebe grabbed a box of matches from the pantry. “Anything else we need?”

      “Just one or two things, but I’ve got them covered.” Rafe took his knife from the holster and set it in front of the incense holder. “I use it as an athame in a pinch.” He unhooked the pendant from around his neck and let the disc drop from the chain into his hand. “And this will do for the pentacle.” He set it in front of the center candle. “My wind jewel tat can stand in for the image of the god. Do you have anything that can serve as a goddess image? It’s not absolutely essential—”

      “If we’re having a god, we’re having a goddess.” Phoebe began to unbutton her blouse.

      Rafe’s dark brows twitched. “What are you doing?”

      She reached the center button and showed him the silver-blue crescent moon that curled around her navel. “This should do, right?”

      Rafe nodded. “That’s nice work.”

      “Thanks.” Phoebe slipped off the blouse and set it aside. “My little sister designed it.”

      “You don’t really have to undress. It’s mostly symbolic, helps me get my head in the right space.”

      She unzipped the back of her skirt and stepped out of it. In for a penny, in for a pound. “I wouldn’t want you to feel weird being the only one undressed. Frankly, I feel a little weird being dressed when you’re not. I think this evens the playing field. Or the spell-casting field.” She still wore her bra and panties. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t worn skimpier bathing suits in public. Phoebe sat opposite him and tried to maintain an air of nonchalance.

      Rafe struck a match, calling the guardians of the four corners as he lit the candles and incense in a counterclockwise pattern. She’d seen all this before—had even done it, once upon a time, dabbling with witchcraft in middle school until it had become Ione’s “thing.” But the summoning spell was one she’d never witnessed.

      Holding the makeshift athame aloft in his left hand and the wineglass in his right, Rafe began the invocation. “I call on Xolotl, brother of Quetzalcoatl, protector of the sun in its journey through the valley of the dead, and upon Mictlantecuhtli and Mictecacihuatl, Lord and Lady of the Underworld, to open the gates of Mictlan and usher forth the three souls who’ve visited this plane in recent days to share knowledge of the afterlife with me. Jacob, Lila and Ernesto, join us now and speak with us here.” The black ink of his wind jewel tattoo seemed to glow with a pale blue luminescence as he spoke the words, but perhaps it was only the lightning flickering in the window at Phoebe’s back. Thunder rumbled in the wake of the latest flash. A moment later, the electricity went out for the second time today, leaving them in the fluttering glow of candlelight.

      The hairs on Phoebe’s arms rose. For an alarming instant, she thought lightning was about to strike right through the roof, until she recognized the familiar tug. The shades had come and they were seeking entry—all three at once.

      She’d never hosted more than one step-in at a time. When Phoebe opened her mouth to tell them to wait their turn, a wild laugh came out of it. Not her own.

      Dimly, she heard Rafe asking if she was all right, but the shades were pushing her consciousness down, making her a sort of backseat passenger. There was no uncertainty as with the shade this morning, and even her own uneasiness felt secondary to the personalities of these shades. They’d done this before.

      “Marvelous, darling.” Her mouth formed the words in a husky, sensual purr. She sensed Lila as an older woman, pleased with the youthful body she occupied. “Though it’s crowded in here.”

      “Step out, then, chica.” Phoebe’s voice this time was rough and deep, and heavily accented. Ernesto.

      “You step out.” Another masculine cadence, slightly amused, with a soft, Texas twang, challenged the first.

      Phoebe was beginning to feel light-headed, and she must have looked it.

      Rafe reached across the table and took her hands in both of his. “Let me speak with Phoebe for a moment.”

      She opened her mouth to assure him she was still there, but her breath seemed to be sucked from her across the table, and Rafe took in a deep, gasping inhalation, eyes wide, as one of the shades leaped from her into him. It was a first in her experience.

      “What are you doing?” Ernesto protested with Phoebe’s mouth. He swore in Spanish and then Phoebe felt a strange wrenching sensation. Lila was shoving Ernesto out. She thought she’d have more control now with only one shade to deal with, but instead of coming to the fore, she felt herself slipping deeper, her distress at the sensation all but subsumed by Lila’s eminent self-satisfaction.

      Rafe pulled her to her feet and drew her around the table. But it wasn’t Rafe, of course. It was Jacob. “Care to dance?” Jacob’s amusement sparkled in the dark eyes.

      “I thought you’d never ask.” She could swear she was hosting Kathleen Turner. Before she could try to wrest some control from the step-in, she found herself in Rafe’s arms, arousal evident in the hard warmth against her thigh as he pulled her in tight. Rafe’s lips were kissing hers and Phoebe’s were ardently kissing back. She gasped into his mouth as his tongue prodded her open, his fingers drawing goose bumps along her skin, and she moaned as he pinched one of her nipples through the thin cup of lace.

      She was instantly wet, needing this man as she’d never needed anyone, desperate, lest he disappear once more and fade into the incorporeal shade of the man she loved but was denied. Too much time had passed since he’d been taken from her, too much time had been spent alone, and she would not allow this moment to be taken from her, as well. Jacob was hers and she meant to have him inside her, to experience the union she ached for finally.

      Rafe’s fingers slid down Phoebe’s side as he kissed her, dipping inside the elastic of her panties. Phoebe begged with little moans into his mouth for him to go farther, to open her. Two fingers teased at the perimeter of her sex, one slipping toward the center and stroking like a warm knife against buttercream frosting on a springy cake.

      Deep in her mind, alarm bells were going off. This wasn’t her. It wasn’t Rafe. Something neither of them had consented to was about to happen. Even if she couldn’t deny wanting the body pressed against her, the desire flooding her decidedly her own, this wasn’t right. She ought to be the one in control here. She was the mediator. Rafe was essentially at her mercy.

      The panties dropped to the floor and Rafe slid down one bra strap and let the taut nipple peek out, just at the edge of the fabric.

      He lowered his head, his breath against her breast. “God, I want you.”

      God, she wanted him, too. His mouth closed over the nipple, sucked between his teeth, his other hand prodding between her legs, fingers poised to enter.

      “No!” The word tore out of her throat, even as she writhed with pleasure under the adoration of his mouth.

      Rafe paused and lifted his head, confused.

      Phoebe gritted her teeth. “Get out, Lila. Jacob, let him go.”

      Rafe’s hands dropped away from her and he took a step back, doubling over with a sudden groan as if he’d been punched in the gut. The shade rushed out.

      Phoebe heard herself screaming—Lila, anguished and mournful, a banshee’s wail as she was torn from Phoebe’s corporeal matter. For a moment, while the connection still held, she experienced the shade’s desperate sorrow as her own. She felt like a heel as Lila left her. But that was only fleeting next to the full awareness flooding back to her. And just to help out, the electricity blinked back on, leaving them standing facing each other in the glaring light of the wagon-wheel chandelier.

      “Oh,