Love Charms (62 page)

The ghost flickered away,
leaving only his wife and me. Melissa still stood beside the circle, her
fingers still wrapped around the can of salt.

“Bastard,” she muttered for
good measure. She looked over at me, embarrassment coloring her fair face.
“I-I’m sorry, Jade.”

I shook my body, feeling the
rest of the glamour wash away. I ruffled my stringy hair and gave her a
halfhearted grin. “No need.” I extended the piece of paper. “You deserve it.”

Thinking about the potential
haunting I’d caused for a woman who was dressed in an outfit that cost as much
as my rent for a whole year, I knew my words was far from the truth.

Chapter Two

Temptation is Good for the
Soul

I looked out at the quiet
street and took a long drag from my cigarette. If you would have told me a year
ago that I would stare at a Raleigh night with fondness, I wouldn’t have
believed you.

The maddening sound of where
I grew up was a symphony of awesomeness – everything in New York is
magnified in vibrant Technicolor, every street an adventure. Life in North
Carolina moved slower, the crammed apartments replaced by fields and Bojangles,
a very popular restaurant chain. But there was something charming about the
South, personified by the caramel drawl of the locals. My oasis used to be
Central Park in the wee hours of the morning…now I’d traded the park for the
patio of my apartment.

I tilted my head when I heard
the familiar squeak of the patio door. I gripped the rail, biting my lip as my
boyfriend’s scent flooded my nostrils. Jack Xavier Badeau – he always
smelled like Harlequin romances say a man should – bittersweet, heavy,
and strong.

“Come back to bed,” he said
behind me. I sighed contentedly as he wrapped his thick arms around me, pulling
me close to his chest.

I could still remember the
first time I saw him at Royal Bean. His shoulder length blonde hair hung in
waves, his chiseled jaw set in concentration. He looked like Sawyer from the TV
series Lost, and I have to admit, my attraction was purely physical at first. I
practically drooled all over myself imagining all the naughty things I wanted
to do with him. On an island, in my bedroom, wherever.

After a couple of nights out
– old movies on the lawn outside the art museum, Italian at Bella Monica,
CocoRosie at Cat’s Cradle, and grave hopping off Glenwood Avenue, I found
myself wondering if my no dating rule was well founded. After all, I’d found an
attractive, smart, well-adjusted man who made me want to pretty up and fight
the new day. And the sex was, well, earth shattering.

Then I realized that he
always left before dawn. When I joked that my morning breath wasn’t that bad,
he shut down completely. In spite of myself, I concocted all these theories.
The most fantastical was that Jack was a super spy and broke all the rules by
even being with me. The lamest was that Jack wasn’t a morning person and was
worried his bad moods would turn me off.

The truth was a little more
alarming.

When I kept suggesting
meeting up for lunch or doing other daytime activities, he always got sick at
the last minute or pumped out some other sorry excuse. Finally, I showed up at
his apartment for lunch. Jack had already eaten…a preppy co-ed lying on his
living room floor, drained of all her blood.

Usually having a boyfriend
that wanted to suck your blood would act as a kind of repellant or red flag of
some sort, but one of the perks of being a necromancer is that my blood is
poison to vampires.

There’s a long drawn-out
prophecy that kind of explains it, but mostly it’s because I communicate with
the dead. During our first summoning, a necromancer has to ingest a large
quantity of dead man’s blood. It acts a bridge connecting us with the All, or
the underworld where spirits go when they kick the bucket.

Unfortunately, my blood
doesn’t guard me against werewolves, shifters, or a whole host of other
supernatural creatures, but I try to appreciate the small things.

At the moment, it was hard to
appreciate much of anything. Yes, I was a couple of hundred dollars richer, but
I felt a chill remembering the ghost’s power rippling through the room. During
my first summoning that went wrong, the ghost,
Sherry
Jackson, threw a glass across the room.
The one I summoned an hour ago
almost shook the very foundation of the building.

I let out a sigh, staring at
the embers that burned from the tip of my cigarette. My hands still shook a
bit. The ghost had really done a number on me.  I finally answered Jack’s
request. “I’m not really that sleepy. Sorry.”

“You wanna talk about it?”
Jack asked, his strong fingers tousling my hair. He knew I hated it, especially
when it was freshly twisted, but it gave him a thrill to wind me up. And okay,
maybe I liked to have my buttons pushed. Sometimes.

“You think it would make it
easier to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“You’ll feel better,” he
probed.

“Not likely,” I said
truthfully. “Unless you know a guy that could have a sit down with a ghost.”

“Perhaps,” Jack said slyly.
“Right now I’m more concerned about you, though.”

“Are you, Dr. Badeau?” I said
with a smirk. Back when he was a human, Jack was Jacques Xavier Badeau III. He
studied medical arts in Montpellier, even working under Jean-Baptiste Denys for
a time before forsaking an opportunity to work as the personal physician to the
Crown after Denys stepped down due to accusations of malpractice. Before he met
his maker a few days before his 25th birthday, he’d opted for a simple life in
the Americas. Still, every now and then I’d catch his head in some medical
journal, his eyes full of life and excitement.

“Truth be told, as your
personal physician, I require you to make love to me several times more before
the sun rises,” he said with a grin.

I turned to him then, batting
my dark lashes at him flirtatiously. “Why, doctor! Are you sure such a vigorous
regimen is warranted?”

“Only one way to find out.”
He tickled me then, his touch soft and hard on all the places he knew
intimately. He stopped when he saw that my mind was elsewhere. “You’ve gotta
talk to me, babe.”

I’d been necromancing with
NACA for almost a year now. At first I’d thought it was glamorous. I was paid
in cash with very little effort on my part. I burned the oils, I walked in a
circle, I said a few words in Latin, I got paid.

And working for NACA had
other perks – I had access to supernatural resources that I’d been barred
from as a free agent. From having lattes with fairies to meeting a real live
dragon, I’d seen fantastic and terrible things.

But there are only so many
times one can summon some greedy fat cat ghost for an equally greedy living
relative. I mean, as pissed as Mrs. Brooks was, that couldn’t have been the
first time she experienced how truly sleazy her husband was. And as far as
money was concerned, while she may not have been able to lead the life that
she’d grown accustomed to, everyday Americans were getting by on less.

To make matters worse, I
involved some other guy, essentially putting him in grave danger. What I’d done
was sloppy, careless, and downright dangerous. And for what? A new pair of
Converse and a fancy athame I’d been eyeballing? What was I becoming?

“Any other night,” I said
wearily, glancing away. “Just not tonight, Jack. Okay?”

 “I’m not trying to get
inside your head, babe,” he said, wheeling me around to face him. “But you’ve
been moody-”

“I’m always moody,” I
retorted.

“Abnormally moody,” Jack
elaborated. “And you haven’t slept in days.”

“What are you talking about?”
I said, blowing out a plume of smoke. “You and I took that catnap just last
night.”

He pushed his hipster glasses
up the bridge of his nose. “Human beings can’t survive on a half hour of sleep,
Jade.”

I shrugged, tying my coat
with a flourish. “I’m 21. I’m in the prime of my life. Hell, when Mom was my
age, she’d go weeks without sleeping and she turned out just fine.” As soon as
the words came out, I knew how ridiculous they sounded. My mother only left her
house to go grocery shopping and even then she was a nervous wreck.

“Really?” Jack said, raising
an eyebrow. “She’s fine, huh? This the same dysfunctional mom that you avoid
like the plague?”

I unwrapped myself from his
arms and sank into a patio chair. “I don’t avoid my mother.”

“Ah,” he breathed. “So your
whole ‘Tell her I’m busy’ sign language thing you do every time she calls
– you’re secretly communicating that you want to talk to her?”

I gave him the finger.

“Again?” he said with a
smirk. “You sure you got another in you?”

I chucked a plastic ashtray
at him, shaking my head. “Why do I put up with you?”

“Devilish good looks and free
therapy,” he winked. “And I’m killer in the sack.” Which was mostly true.
Before I could shoot back a snarky reply, he held up his hands, his green eyes
softening. “Truce?”

I chuckled, cocking my head
at the chair beside me. “Pop a squat.”

“So how was work?” he asked,
stretching his lean arms above his head.

“Riveting,” I said, stubbing
out the last of my cigarette. I could still see the white-hot fury on Melissa
Brooks’ face. I had a feeling that if it were possible to bring her husband
back and kill him herself, she’d be game. “The wife doused the guy with salt.
Pretty amusing.”

“Ghosts always are,” he
grinned. “How much did he stow away?”

“5.5 mil.”

“Holy shit,” he whistled.
“And your cut?”

“Significantly less than 5.5
million dollars,” I laughed. I had no idea how much my boss charged for
consultations, and I didn’t have the cajones to ask.

As sketchy as my work could
be at times, I really couldn’t complain. My abilities as a witch kept me from
doing well in school, making any real friends, and maintaining any sort of
romantic relationship. For someone without a college degree, it was either the
service industry or honing my talents and making pretty good money with NACA. I
went with option B.

“Maybe you should consider
contracting,” Jack said, staring out into the night.

“Yeah,” I snorted. “And when
The Watchers comes knocking, who’s gonna answer?”

The Watchers did just
that…watched all supernatural beings and specials (humans that had magical or
supernatural abilities). They’re like the supernatural CIA. They ensured that
Dick and Jane didn’t go blabbing to CNN about Fido shifting into a sultry woman
and seducing their sixteen-year-old son. They also enforced the supernatural
laws that kept me from setting up shop on my own and vampires like Jack from
snacking on whomever they pleased
.
Accidents happened, of course (see: Sherry Jackson),
but whoever tripped
up was summarily taken care of.

There were ways around The
Watchers’ closed-lip policy about the supernatural world…NACA advertised on TV
for crissakes. Most rational, thinking humans shrugged it off as a scam, and
any that dug too deep suddenly had really selective amnesia.

Jack puffed out his chest a
bit. “I’ve got connections too, you know.”

It was my turn to raise an
eyebrow. “Vampires only reign supreme in Twilight. Besides, you’re what? 310?”
Give or take a couple dozen years. Jack was turned when he was 24, and vampires
usually don’t count their human years unless they’re feeling nostalgic. “The
Watchers would eat you alive, babe.”

 “Life existed before The
Watchers, you know,” he said through clenched teeth. “My kind were-”

“Raping, pillaging, and
sucking the marrow out of women and small children?” I piped, my voice candy
sweet.

“You’re pushing it.”

“But now you’re just another
supernatural being,” I continued with a devilish grin. “You kowtow to The
Watchers just like every other thing that goes bump in the night.”

I gasped as he moved quicker
than my human eyes could see, pushing me against the railing. I stood on my
tiptoes, my back arched as he pressed his body to mine. I felt the curve of his
erection raging against me. “You’ll talk to me with some respect, human.”

I leaned in close, my mouth
inches from his. “Who’s gonna make me?”

His lips quivered with
desire. We knew this game all too well. He’d threaten to kill me, I’d call his
bluff. The thought of him feeding on me made my body tremble with longing. I
wanted to feel his teeth rip into the tender meat of my neck. I wanted to be
that close to him, to become a part of him.

“Maybe you don’t have it in
you,” I baited him.

“Maybe I’ll eat you for
dinner.”

I bared my neck. “Give it
your best shot, fanger.”

I watched as his canines
elongated, shimmering in the moonlight. I could feel how much he wanted me
– it burned in his thoughts, in his touch.

As his lips brushed my neck,
I let out a small moan of pleasure. I felt the warm throbbing at the heart of
me as his thick desire hardened, pressing through my thin nightgown.

“Such beautiful skin,” he
murmured, his body muscled and powerful against me. “My little ebony witch.”

Usually his pet name for me
would make me roll my eyes, but I found it endearing. Hot. My breath came in
stuttering gasps as I looked at our skin clashing into each other, his
luminescent, mine dark and glittering. Ebony and ivory. Witch and a vampire.

I pushed aside the consequences.
So what if he would be driven mad and drink me until my body was dry? Who cares
if I became a succubus, cursed for giving into my forbidden desire? Right now,
all I could think about was pushing him to the floor of the patio and screwing
his brains out.