Devil's Thumb by S. M. Schmitz Read Free Book Online

fingers were already trembling with excitement. “Where can we go? If we could learn how to control this… I don’t know, maybe that’s what it’ll take to actually kill these archdemons. The energy is too scattered right now, but if we can channel it…”
    Colin’s fingers tingled with the same sense of anticipation now, too. “How soon can we leave?”
    Lacey’s coffeemaker made that wooshing sound as it finished brewing and she gestured toward her kitchen. “Um, coffee first?”
    Normally, Anna would have agreed. Wasting coffee was a borderline criminal offense, but she was anxious to start practicing and to find out if this gift was as useful as they’d been hoping it could be. Lacey sighed when she sensed their eagerness and offered to find enough thermoses to take the coffee with them. As soon as she disappeared into the kitchen and Anna heard her rummaging through cabinets, she turned to Luca and whispered, “Does she know how old you are?”
    Luca’s mischievous grin crept over his face and lit up his eyes. “I’m 28.”
    Colin snorted and Anna rolled her eyes. “You’re too old for her,” Anna teased.
    “I’m too old for everyone,” he retorted.
    “Exactly. So don’t screw things up for us here,” Anna chided. “If she can help us by getting us out to secluded areas, we may actually figure out how to destroy these archdemons.”
    Luca clicked his tongue at her. “My sweet girl, I won’t mess up anything for you. She’s completely under my spell now.”
    “Oh good Lord,” Colin muttered. “Luca, I’d only believe that if it were literally true. Were you gifted any sorcery powers?”
    Luca answered him in an old Italian and Anna stood up because Luca was obviously in one of his I’m-a-sex-god moods, and Anna was pretty sure he was no Eros. Or Cupid, considering he was Italian and all.
    Lacey returned with a thermos in each hand and set them down on an end table. “You’d better be willing to drink it black if we’ve gotta leave now,” she warned. Lacey drove them out of the city where barren fields stretched for endless miles; she pulled off the highway and onto a narrower, emptier road with more yellow-orange expanses of empty spaces around them.
    Luca was following her in his car with Dylan and Max, and as Lacey pulled over to the side of the road, Luca parked behind her. “We’ll go on foot for a while now,” she announced. They walked into that vast wasteland and Anna shuddered as the memory of a nightmare from her abduction resurfaced, of being trapped in a blistering desert with a sun that never set and scorching sands that burned her skin and eyes.
    But the air here was cool and dry, and the morning sun was comfortable, not oppressive. But Colin took her hand and brought it to his lips, kissing it gently as the horror of that memory emerged. He tried to replace it with more pleasant images and thought of the first time she’d tried to teach him the foxtrot. They were in New Orleans in 1925 and Anna wanted to go dancing. Colin took her to a club where the bartender introduced her to her new favorite cocktail and as the band played another ragtime tune, Anna tried to drag Colin onto the dance floor. He pulled her back and looked at her warily.
    “What are they dancing?” he asked.
    Anna smiled because it was just like Colin not to pay attention to the crowd when they went out. “It’s the Foxtrot, Colin. They’ve been doing it for a decade now.”
    He watched the dancers skeptically. “It’s like a fast waltz?”
    Anna shrugged. “With an extra beat. And a few more flourishes.”
    Colin still looked skeptical and Anna laughed. “Oh, come on,” she pulled him back toward the dance floor and this time, he let her.
    Anna leaned her head against his arm as he replayed this memory for her, this playful memory as she taught him a dance he’d only learn to appreciate over the years as swing dancing became popular. He’d take the foxtrot over that any day. But he learned