One Night With a Witch: Keepers of the Veil, #5

By Zoe Forward

The last thing MI6 agent Eli Morgan expected was Pleiades witch Avery Donovan showing up to "rescue" him. Turns out she's his biggest threat when an unexpected love spell hits them. Now he can't keep his hands off the woman he vowed never to touch. 

But something evil fights to posses Eli's soul. The only one who can truly save him is his soulmate. Can't be Avery. What they feel is spell-induced. Or is it?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Zoe Forward
• Release date: May 6, 2019
• ISBN: 9780692170311

Zoe Forward

Award winning author, Zoe Forward is a hopeless romantic who can’t decide between paranormal and contemporary romance. So, she writes both. Her novels have won numerous awards including the Readers’ Choice Heart of Excellence, Golden Quill, Carolyn Readers Choice Award, and the Booksellers’ Best Award. When she’s not typing at her laptop, she’s tying on a karate belt for her son or cleaning up the newest pet mess from the menagerie that occupies her house. She’s a small animal veterinarian caring for a wide range of furry creatures, although there has been the occasional hermit crab. She’s madly in love with her globe trotting conservation ecologist husband who plans to save all the big cats on the planet, and she’s happiest when he returns to their home.

Book preview

1

Crashing parties and drinking too much? No problem. Saving an undercover MI6 agent with secret druid powers from assassination? This was a first.

Avery Donovan estimated fifteen minutes remained to inspire Eli to exit the swanky Boulonge-Billancourt Hotel bar before he might die. Might. Nothing definitive about information obtained from the precognitive vision of fellow Pleiades witch, Nicole. The nineteen-year-old’s foresights came in short spurts. Although most predicted the future with accuracy, there’d been a few doozies that panned out to be misleading mumbo jumbo.

With Eli’s life she preferred to err on the side of truth. She rushed to Paris, dumped her druid bodyguard in the parking lot of the hotel, and waltzed into the social party after a long day of talks at the International Climate Conference.

Sure, Eli could take care of himself. He was a super spy who’d been in the field for years. He’d survived at least one episode of kidnap and torture, maybe more, not that he confessed his life’s traumas to her. After one too many times of putting his neck on the line for her or one of her witchy sisters, she owed him. But, but, but…being honest with herself, her here was about far more than a debt of gratitude. Years ago, he’d been her high school megacrush right up until fate—or at least her mother’s Tarot—dictated he wasn’t the man for her. Her mother had channeled guidance from the spirits of their Pleiades goddess ancestors to divine the future and advice on life decisions through cards with eerie accuracy.

But she was over Eli.

Avery’s phone buzzed against her chest. Don’t answer it.

The buzzing continued, insistent. It could be an emergency, or updated information about Eli.

She retrieved the phone from her cocktail dress’s cleavage. Shannon? Anything new?

Please, don’t do this, honey, Shannon drawled in her thick Southern accent. I’m worried about you. Eli can take care of himself, like I said twenty minutes ago. He’s a big boy who doesn’t need your help. Nicole’s been known to misinterpret her visions from time to time.

I’m already in the hotel, almost to the bar. At this point I might as well give Eli a heads-up. Avery scanned the throng clustered around bar-height tables. The crystal chandeliers in here are bigger than my car, and these paintings are incredible. I think my inner geek just died and went to heaven. These are genuine Roman classical paintings on plaster. How’d they even get these? They reminded her of her barely begun master’s thesis on early Greek paintings due in a few weeks. A due-date extension might be in the works, but she excelled at working under pressure.

A loud sigh came through the phone.

Shannon hadn’t called to warn her off.

Why’re you really calling me?

Shannon whooshed out, We might’ve done something to help you get Eli’s attention. We hoped it’d make him more compliant to you getting him out of there. Now I feel bad we did it.

Oh, no. "What kind of help?"

I found a charmed crystal in Merck’s stuff. He mentioned something about its ability to boost spells. Shannon cleared her throat. The girls and I might’ve invoked the crystal’s magic and cast a spell to make Eli attracted to you.

"You did what?" she screamed. Merck confiscated objects from evil black magic practitioners who murdered people for pleasure. Few, if any, of those items were benign.

A middle-aged man in a boxy, ill-fitting suit passed by. His gaze dropped to her chest. Avery whirled away from him and the bar’s entrance so fast she knocked over a gaudy Christmas wreath on a stand.

Shannon said, I thought you needed an advantage. The girls agreed it was a good idea, but I wanted you to know before you saw him. You’ve always had a thing for Eli, which means you might misinterpret what he does as being the real deal.

I do not have a thing for him. She tried fixing the wreath, but it refused to hang on its hook. Giving up, she rested it against the stand. Glitter from the wreath coated her hand; it wouldn’t shake off. A few swipes against her black dress helped, but now her dress glittered.

Honey, that man is hotter than a stolen tamale. You always go a little mush brain around him. I think you suppressed how much you like him over the last few years, or maybe since your mom’s reading. What a crappy sweet sixteen gift. I think the reading was total hooey, by the way.

Her heart hurt for her dead parents and sister, but in addition to grief, her emotional mash-up served a huge dollop of humiliation. Shannon fully expected her to fall into Eli’s arms if he gave her a sexy smile. Okay, she might. In her defense, the man had a killer grin. And arms to die for.

Crap, she might not be as over Eli as she should be.

Avery gripped the phone so tight her hand cramped. I can’t believe you guys did this to me.

I’m sorry. Shannon hung up on her.

Her finger hovered over Shannon’s number. No use returning the call. Even if all the girls got together to rescind the spell, it wouldn’t happen in the next ten minutes.

A spell. Not good. Eli despised being the target of any sort of magic from she or one of her six fellow Pleiades witches. As a Sentry druid, Eli was one of the Greek gods-chosen protectors of Pleiades witches like her, even though he’d taken a voluntary hiatus and run back to his position at MI6 after he almost died in the line of protection duty twice last year. Thank the gods he’d been given super healing ability, and the ability to heal others, since it saved his own life both of those times.

Nope, not telling him about the spell.

She shoved the phone back into her dress. Not a lot of room in the top, but she had enough bust to make it work. With a fortifying flip of her long auburn hair, she prepared to face a bespelled Eli. One step and she almost fell over when her heel caught on the carpet. This outfit was a far cry from her normal jeans, a loose shirt, and flip-flops. Eli better appreciate that she’d curled her hair and stuffed her feet into these four-inch death traps.

A slithery sensation tickled the back of her neck, one she knew only too well. A yellow-hued specter hovered twenty feet away. Don’t stare. Seeing ghosts wasn’t anything new. Nothing scary about this particular one. The last thing she needed right now was a friendly ghost chatting her ear off while she tried to save Eli.

Oh, no. Accidental eye contact with the ghost. Ugh. Why did this one have to be one with easy-to-see eyes? On most their eyes were hazy. A visual connection attracted lost spirits like a cat to a freshly opened can of stinky tuna.

The small orange-hued entity glided beside her, jabbering in a language that might be French.

She lifted a glass of champagne from a waiter’s tray when he offered and chugged while careful to avoid any indication she saw or heard the ghost.

A delicate Asian woman hanging off the arm of a man at a nearby table raised her eyebrows at her. The ladylike thing would’ve been to sip. Well, she wasn’t a lady. And, aside from attempting to rescue Eli by herself being the stupidest thing she’d ever done, the ghost’s belligerent tone hurt her ears.

Jabber on, ghost. Ignoring them was a talent she’d mastered by third grade. She traded the empty glass for a full one from another passing tray, toasted the Asian lady, and swallowed half the glass of bubbly in two gulps. The rest she sipped as she scanned around for Eli.

If anyone would die tonight, it wouldn’t be him.

Time ticked. Laughter blared from a crowded table as glasses clinked together.

Her gaze drifted to the back of the bar. She scanned the four tables until…bingo. Target acquired. A jumble of complex emotion hit her square in the chest like it did whenever she first saw Eli after a long time apart.

An hour ago, the idea of using seduction to lure Eli into leaving the bar seemed ludicrous. With the attraction spell in place, it became a serious option. Nah, who was she kidding? Spell or no spell, he’d fight her if she attempted to seduce him into leaving. Getting it on with a Pleiades was a huge no-no for him unless he was her soulmate. And, that was a no.

To an outsider, being a witch sounded like she should have some serious life advantages. As a Pleiades goddess descendant, a human with a bit of magical skills whose ancestors had been labeled witches by uncreative, superstitious people, she wasn’t a stereotypical witch. No eye blinks to grant wishes. No broomstick riding. No green-colored skin. But there were spells. And seeing ghosts.

The ghost, still vomiting words a mile a minute next to her, swiped a