My Wicked Enemy by Carolyn Jewel

especially proud of their long hair, given short hair meant you were screwed. Durian rarely had to use his considerable abilities to convince a human woman to volunteer for bed duty or a little of the emotional connection fiends found so compelling in humans. He just flashed a smile and fluttered his big brown eyes, and that fueled most any woman’s desire. “She’s not dead. You’ve got that going for you.”
    Nikodemus picked up his beer. “Yeah, there’s that.”
    “Passed out, huh?” He lifted his bottle in a toast. “That’s some serious loving there.”
    “You don’t recognize her?” Understandable if he didn’t. Her hair partially covered her face, and her closed lids hid her gorgeous green eyes. Every fiend in a hundred-mile radius of San Francisco knew Magellan’s witch had green eyes. She was legendary for them. He would have thought Durian would feel the thread of magic in her, stunted though it was. God knows he did.
    Durian shrugged. “Should I?”
    “That’s Carson Philips.”
    Without his smile, Durian didn’t look so affable anymore. In fact, he looked downright dangerous. Easy to believe now that he was a born killer. “Is that so?”
    “Says she ran away from Magellan.” Nikodemus sat on the couch again, stretching his arms along the top of the cushions, a palm curled around his beer. “I found her about half an hour before Kynan did. He had orders to kill.”
    Durian’s eyes opened wide. “Kynan Aijan?” Nikodemus nodded. The other fiend leaned back, impressed. “Why isn’t she dead?”
    He waved off the subject. “Dumb luck? There she was walking downtown, not bothering to hide what she was, and I’m thinking, who the fuck does she think she’s going to bag with that lame come-and-get-me act? Some low-level kin gofer?” He drew his eyebrows together. “The closer I got, the more chaotic she felt.”
    Durian snorted.
    “True tale.” He held up a hand. Carson wasn’t moving, but her magic fluctuated from high intensity to practically nothing at all. Distracting. And enough to make Durian’s head snap toward her. “Relax,” Nikodemus said. “She’s at least twenty minutes from coming to.”
    “What is that?”
    He nodded. “Exactly my point. No way is she helping him. How can she when her magic is like that?” That was the strange thing about Magellan’s witch. Everybody assumed she was Magellan’s partner in crime, but she just didn’t have the ability. “She’s like that when she’s conscious, too. Burn-you-to-a-crisp magic. No magic at all.”
    Durian rubbed his arms through his sweater. “What’s wrong with her?”
    “She doesn’t know shit about anything. Or about us, either,” Nikodemus said. “Just a bunch of bullshit book facts. From what I can tell, Magellan never let her get near the real stuff.” He crossed one ankle over the other. “Except maybe once.” The problem of Carson Philips was getting more complicated by the minute. “It got a little obvious while Kynan was trying to kill her that something major was up.” He remembered his beer and drank some. It didn’t taste as good as he needed it to. “Kynan Aijan is after her, and she’s like a goddamned puppy.”
    “Right,” Durian said. “A wolf puppy who’s going to grow up with sharp teeth and a predator’s instinct.”
    He shook his head. “Well, that’s just it, Durian. She’s not. It’s too late for her.”
    “How so?”
    “She thinks she has migraines. I’ve heard of mages doing this kind of thing to their own. He obviously did it to her.” He stretched and looked over at Carson, still out cold. “Mage finds some young witch or sorcerer with plenty of power. They have to get them young, before they’ve come into their magic.” Durian’s look of revulsion was priceless. “Feed the magelet enough of the right drugs, and then cut the magelet off. The power is still there, but the kid can’t get to it. Ever.”
    “But the mage can?”
    He nodded. “For Magellan