Read Online Demons Are a Girl’s Best Friend by Linda Wisdom - Free Book Online Page A

lights buried in the black glass counter. She noticed the lights pulsed in time with Disturbed’s “Into The Fire,” which blasted from speakers embedded in the walls.
    “Do you think that’s some sort of code?” Sybil stared at the bar with the fascination of one who could be easily hypnotized.
    “Could be, so I wouldn’t look at the lights for too long.” Maggie pulled her along and then stopped short when Declan turned around with two champagne flutes in his hands. He smiled and held them out.
    “A product of France,” he assured them.
    Sybil disregarded Maggie’s look of warning and accepted the flute held in front of her. “As if he’d try something here.” She took a tiny sip and giggled. “The bubbles,” she explained.
    Maggie wanted to refuse the champagne, but she knew she couldn’t with her friend sipping away. “I’m usually more a Stoli gal, but you did say the champagne is French.” She took an experimental sip and then another. For a moment, she was transported back to a France of beauty and old-world elegance, where carriages were everyday transport and a lady never revealed a bare limb.
    And Madame Guillotine would have had another victim if a rogue of a French pirate hadn’t spirited her away from the dungeons holding the nobles awaiting their death. During that dark time, Maggie had learned that some of the cells below the earth held a magick-dampening effect. The experience had taught her that she liked her head where it was—and that a pirate ship smelled worse than the cell where she’d been incarcerated. Even after all these years, the memory of the stench remained in her olfactory memory.
    “What stories do you have to tell?” Declan murmured in a voice that was meant for her ears only. “What adventures have you had over the centuries you’ve wandered this earth?”
    “Very boring. I’m sure you have much more interesting stories of your time in the demon realm.” She observed no reaction from him and decided to press further. “Or is that why you chose to come here? For a change of pace? Did you receive the club for good behavior or for your birthday?”
    “I earned this club,” he told her. “And I intend to keep it.”
    “Dancing, I’m going dancing.” Sybil moved toward an elf that’d given her the eye. She set her champagne flute down on a nearby table as she swiveled her hips his way.
    Declan stopped Maggie’s instinctive motion to check out the male her friend was pursuing. “Nothing will happen to her,” he assured her. “By now, everyone in here knows the two of you are under my protection. Although I’m certain you don’t appreciate the gentlemanly gesture,” he teased.
    She was chagrined to discover that he had managed to maneuver her away from the dance floor and toward the entrance of a long hallway. Every step of the way, she’d felt the heat of his hand resting lightly against her spine. The moment they passed through the archway, the music became so muted that she had to deactivate the sound-dampening spell.
    Declan stopped at some double doors and threw them open.
    “Come into my parlor,” Maggie murmured as she brushed past him.
    “You surprise me, Maggie.” He opened a cabinet and pulled out a bottle of champagne, opened it with a thought, and lifted it in a silent question. He topped off her flute and then filled another.
    “I’ve been known to throw people off-kilter.” She walked around the office, noting the spare decor and a large desk of highly polished dark wood that boasted only a laptop, a telephone, and a six-inch statue carved from black psilomelane drusy. She wondered how he had obtained such a large chunk of the rich, natural-black metallic mineral. The quartz crystals covering it glimmered in the dim light.
    She ran her fingertips across the top of the figurine and then lifted it, rubbing the tip as she gauged the magick that coated the stone. “I will admit curiosity. Why do I surprise you?”
    “You were worried