50 Ways to Hex Your Lover (3 page)

“Not this time.” That whiskey and velvet murmur followed her, trapped her within its selective intimacy—tumbled her desperately
resisting psyche onto its back, legs spread, arms open wide in invitation. “No splinter, no toothpick, no stake, Jazz.”

“Fire it is then,” Jazz agreed, keeping the raggedness out of her voice through superwoman effort. Forcing herself to focus,
she rekindled the simple witchflame in her palm and thrust it into Nikolai’s face. He blanched instantly, rearing back.

“Jazz…”

“No.” She was harsh, determined. “Don’t even…” Deliberately she turned her back on him and—without extinguishing the witchflame—headed
out of the alley. Toward what remained of her sanity—her car and … That damned ghost.

“Jazz.” The vampire’s footsteps sounded behind her, an intentional effect by a being whose normal approach was more silent
than fog. “Wait. I—
we
—need your help.”

“Of course you do.” Jazz didn’t stop, didn’t turn, until she was within two feet of the T-Bird. She merely allowed the orange-red
ball of flame in her palm to grow visibly. “There could be no other reason to come find me after thirty years, could there?”

“That was a generation ago, Jazz,” the vampire told her without emotion. “Needs must—then and now.”

“Go f—” Jazz began, but a delighted, ghostly squeal interrupted her, putting an instant kibosh on the building tension between
witch and vampire.

“Is that Nikolai?” Irma chirped, leaning out of the car as far as she could go. “It is! Nicky, sweetie, it’s been so long
since we’ve seen you. Come give your Auntie Irma a kiss!” She puckered up, her Tangeed lips almost glowing eerily under the
dim streetlight.

“Not now, Irma.” He concentrated on the glowing ball of fire dancing in Jazz’s palm. “Jazz, members of my kind have gone missing.”

“And this is a bad thing?”

“Don’t be petty. It’s not your style.” The shadowy anger in his eyes matched her temper perfectly. It had made them ideal
as lovers. “If you wish to hold a grudge against me personally, so be it, but I need you to listen for ten minutes. Surely,
you can give me that.”

“Get staked,” Jazz advised, feeling behind her for the car door handle before her natural curiosity, Nikolai’s obvious attractions,
and her traitorous libido got the better of her.

me,

“Tell pookie,” Irma invited. “When she’s not as cranky as she is now, I’ll make her understand why you need her help.”

He darted a glance at the ghost, then gauged the diminished witchflame Jazz still controlled.

“Back off,” Jazz snapped, climbing into her car and slamming the door behind her. With a quick twist of the key, she gunned
the engine, taking off with a squeal and smell of burning rubber.

“Merciful heavens, one day you’re going to get us both killed!” Irma’s protest echoed in the night.

Nikolai shook his head in frustration as he watched his ex-lover race off. He knew it wasn’t retreat on her part. Jazz never
retreated. She only regrouped. The world might change, but Jazz never did. And he thanked the Fates for that.

He wasn’t surprised that she had displayed her temper the moment she saw him. That was the first thing he had noticed about
her, the heated passion that seemed to fuel her soul. If he were a vampire who fed on emotions, he would have been well sated
by her alone. Instead, Jazz had sustained him in other ways through the centuries.

He knew it wouldn’t be easy to chip away at the hard exterior she had erected over the years, but he was a stubborn man.

And Jazz Tremaine was worth it.

Two

Jazz ignored Irma’s mutterings about the late hour and her rude behavior toward Nikolai. The warm buzz from the ale she’d
drunk had dissipated the minute she spied the vampire cop. Now all she was left with was a bad mood hangover. In the words
of Dr. Phil, she had a lot of issues with her ex-lover.

Unfortunately she could not still the insistent niggle of his voice inside her head when he’d said, “
Members of my kind have gone missing
” and “
Ten
minutes, Jazz. Surely you can give me that
.”

She did not want to give him anything, damn it.

Not again. Not ever. And yet …
No.
Firmly she shook off all thought of Nikolai—at least for the time being. There would be ample time to dwell on him later,
in her dreams, whether she cared to admit the vulnerability to herself or not. Right now, she had other vermin to boil in
oil and—if she was very lucky—blow up in lieu of her ex.

“It was bad enough you wouldn’t take me inside that bar. And I know you have the power to do so if you would bother to try,”
Irma complained. “It wouldn’t hurt you to do something nice once in awhile. Instead you leave me at the mercy of any drunken
bum that might stagger by.”

Jazz so did not want to deal with the cranky ghost occupying the passenger seat of her car. Why did Nikolai always have to
show up when she was downright happy and felt she had her life together? And why did she have a sinking feeling this wouldn’t
be the last time he’d do this? Probably because he had done it in the past, and each time she gave in and helped him and along
the way fell once more back into his bed. So either she gave in and allowed him to pull her into whatever mess he was dealing
with right now or she avoided him at all costs until he got the message she didn’t want to talk to him ever again. She knew
him well enough to know that if he felt he needed her help, he was going to harass her until he got what he wanted. The problem
with the stubborn vampire was that he could make her life miserable indefinitely. The pit of her stomach turned into a trampoline.
After all these decades, he still affected her strongly. She just didn’t know if she wanted to stake him or make love to him.

“The least you can do is speak to me!”

She pulled back from her musings about Nikolai and affected concern. “Irma! I’m shocked to hear you wished to enter an establishment
serving alcohol! I would never dream of offending your sensibilities that way. You being such a fine upstanding member of
the community and all. Where was it? Raspberry, Iowa?”

Irma lifted her chin. “Jasper, Nebraska. My grandfather was one of the founding fathers of our town and opened the first bank.
And if it hadn’t been for my father’s generous nature and contributions to the community, the farmers would never have done
as well as they did during the Depression.” She glared at Jazz. “Many of them didn’t lose their farms because he was willing
to work with them instead of going in and repossessing their property right and left. Oh, that’s right,” her glare turned
to a smile that wasn’t the least bit friendly, “you were flitting around back then, weren’t you?”

Jazz winced. Irma in a snit was worse than Irma any other time. She steeled herself to listen to the woman ramble on about
the town of her birth and death. Luckily, their destination was not far from Murphy’s. She was still ignoring Irma’s babbling
ten minutes later when she turned down a street that looked as if the dwellings on either side had been frozen in the 1880s.
Old-fashioned street lamps stood like silent sentries of a long forgotten past and highlighted three- and four-story Victorian
mansions. Wisps of fog wrapped their ghostly fingers around the iron bases of the lampposts, giving the night an eerie feel
that fit right in with the houses and Jazz’s own mood. Luckily, the closer she got to her home the more her dark disposition
lifted. From the moment she had first driven down the street and saw the houses she felt as if this was the place she wanted
to stay forever.

If she had her way no land developer would ever build twenty-story apartment buildings or housing developments in this particular
area. Many of the homes in a five-block area were registered historical landmarks, but she always feared the city council’s
greed might find a way to override a home’s olden past. This section of the city portrayed a part of its history she wanted
to see kept intact. From the beginning she had been tempted to set up special wards around this block, but the Witches’ High
Council had all these pesky rules about not using magick for anything but the greater good. Protecting her home didn’t seem
to fall under that category. But if someone grew too proactive about developing here she’d have to rethink her “be careful
where I interfere” policy.

“Would it hurt you to buy a nice little space heater for me?” Irma sniffed as Jazz pulled into the carriage house and parked
her car next to a sleek fire engine red Porsche. “It’s like a meat locker in here.”

“The car doesn’t need central heat and neither do you.”

“Then what about a pet?” The ghost twisted in her seat to look at Jazz. “What would be wrong with my having some company?”

Jazz sighed. “Irma, while a pet might sense your presence, it wouldn’t be able to interact with you because it wouldn’t hear
you talking to it. It wouldn’t be fair to a pet to keep it out here just so you can have something to keep you company. Besides,
you have the TV/DVD combo out here to give you something to do.” Jazz had fixed it so that Irma could change channels verbally
and merely say the name of a DVD in her collection for it to insert itself into the machine. She knew the ghost also enjoyed
staying up late watching infomercials.

“A house isn’t a home without a pet,” Irma said primly.

“I’ve managed just fine without one all these years, thank you very much.”

“What do you call those furry monsters you keep in the house?”

“Footwear.” Jazz headed for the open door.

“Then what about a canary?” Irma wasn’t about to give up. “I’d need a heater in here though. They’re very delicate creatures.”

But Jazz wasn’t listening. She activated the sensor that automatically closed the carriage house door when she exited the
building.

As she approached the back door she looked up and noted lights highlighting the elaborate stained glass windows that decorated
the second floor. Krebs was back. Hurray and damn, all in one package.

All she wanted to do was go up to her third floor suite of rooms and sulk. Maybe throw a good witchy tantrum that involved
pictures falling off the wall, vases dancing
The Hustle,
and sparklers flying around the room. Nothing too involved and something easily rectified. Instead, she’d have to stop by
Krebs’ floor and make nice because he’d wonder what was wrong if she bypassed him.

She liked that her roomie worried about her and was willing to talk when she needed a willing ear. Especially since men weren’t
known to want to listen to a woman’s angst.

She now wished she had stayed at Murphy’s for a couple of hours, drank more ale, and just plain kicked back. Instead, her
evening had been ruined when Nikolai showed up and all sorts of memories were dredged up that were better left tucked away
in a corner of her mind with the door firmly closed and locked with multiple deadbolts.

Her sitting in a filthy cell in Prague because he decided she was part of a gang of thieves.

Nikolai making love to her in a mountaintop villa in Italy where the moon glowed over them like molten silver.

Running from the
gendarmes
in Paris.

There were many exquisite reminiscences courtesy of the somber-faced vampire who made her heart race just by touching her
face, but there were also too many recollections over the past five centuries or so that involved manacles, jail cells, and
the threat of hanging or beheading.

That was when she had decided it was best she stay out of Nikolai’s sphere. If they remained together too long she’d only
come up with new ways to make the vampire suffer. And she’d suffer in the process. It wasn’t worth it.

Ah, hell. She liked Krebs. He was cute and funny and he made her laugh. Nikolai and his demons had screwed with her mind long
enough; she’d take the cheering up for now and work on the sulking later.

Always best to do it later,
an inconvenient gargoyle in her mind suggested.

She felt like punching herself in the jaw to shut it up. Too bad she couldn’t punch it in the jaw.

A stop at the refrigerator netted her two glasses of Chardonnay before she ascended to the third floor that housed her living
quarters. Jazz quickly changed into a pale blue tank top and boxer shorts decorated with clouds. She slid her feet into her
favorite slippers and loosened her hair from its braid. She dug her fingers into her scalp, massaging away the tightness as
she headed for the door. She noticed a faint glow covering the bedroom wall she deliberately kept blank. She paused, thinking
it would be “wallmail” from one of her sister witches. The elaborate dark gold script scrolling across the wall warned her
otherwise.

Be advised that Griet of the village of Ardglass
has sixty days added to her banishment due to the
wrongful use of her power this night.

Eurydice,

Mistress, Witches’ High Council

The ornate lettering slowly faded from the wall, but the memory of the words was embedded in her brain.

“Could be worse. I wonder what they would have given me if I had actually thrown that last fireball,” she muttered, making
her way down to the second floor. “And my name is Jazz and has been since 1921!” she informed the empty wall. Not that it
would do any good. The Witches’ High Council didn’t hold with modern names. Using her birth name was their heavy-handed way
of thinking they kept their outcast witches in line. As if!

Soulful jazz music drifted from the second floor. Jazz reached the front of the house where the walls had been knocked out
to create an open floor plan with the perfect working environment for its resident. While the house’s exterior portrayed the
richness of the past, the second floor’s interior was pure new millennium. Long tables were covered with state-of-the art
computer equipment that would make any techno geek drool. A dark haired man faced a thirty-inch flat panel monitor that displayed
scrolling lines of computer code.

“Whom are we mourning tonight?” she asked, setting one of the wine glasses on the table close enough for him to reach but
far enough away to not endanger the equipment if it fell over.

“Who says I’m mourning anyone?” he said in a monotone of concentration as he continued to stare at the monitor. He nodded
his thanks for the wine before picking up the glass, taking a sip, and setting it back down again.

“You only play Miles Davis when you’re having a pity party.” She hitched herself up on the table then moved down to the end
when he frowned at her. “I wasn’t sitting on anything,” she protested, looking around to make sure she was telling the truth.
“Come on, Krebs. Dish the dirt.” She cradled her wine glass in her hands.

Krebs, aka Jonathon Shaw the Third, kept his focus on the monitor, his fingers flying over the keyboard. After watching a
Dobie Gillis marathon on TVLand together, Jazz had affectionately dubbed him Krebs, for Maynard G. Krebs, when Jonathon said
he identified with the laid-back beatnik.

“Heather wants to see other people.”

Jazz winced. She knew he had hoped Heather was “The One.” Jazz knew better. It didn’t take a witch’s power to know that the
clichéd blue-eyed blonde saw Krebs as her very own golden ticket into old California society. What she didn’t know was that
he had blown off his family, and their fortune, fifteen years ago. In typical Krebs fashion, he had rejected the family tradition
of attending Harvard and joining the family business and pursued his own path. After some rocky years spent roaming the sex,
drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll beat, he managed to get himself back on track. Thanks to a flair for the unusual in web design and
a knack for real estate investment, he had no money worries. When he rented the third floor to Jazz four years ago, she’d
found a good friend. For one brief wine-soaked evening they had even toyed with the idea of becoming lovers, but sanity won
out and their friendship had flourished until they were closer than they ever would have been as lovers. She was grateful
that he understood her witchy side.

The sound of low mutters in an incomprehensible language finally penetrated Krebs’ concentration. He looked down at Jazz’s
feet and groaned.

“Did you have to bring them in here?” he asked. “It’s bad enough they manage to find their way in on their own to make a mess
when I’m not around. I swear they’ll think there’s an open-door policy, and this is the one place they don’t belong. I’m still
positive they were behind the disappearance of two important CDs.”

Jazz looked down at her off-white fuzzy slippers topped with bunny faces that would have looked downright adorable if it hadn’t
been for their large and very sharp teeth and the fact that the sweet-faced bunnies snarled instead of squeaked. Their ears
twitched back and forth as their heads moved from side to side while they chattered away to each other. An intricate gold
chain with a tiny gold broom charm circled Jazz’s bare ankle. A small but perfect amethyst winked from the broom handle.

“Come on, Krebs. You have no proof they ate those CDs. Besides, they were lonely. And they really like you.”

“Sure they do. As dinner, perhaps. Can you really understand what they’re saying?” he asked, resting his hands on the keyboard.
Jazz knew that past experience had taught him not to touch the bunny faces if he wanted to keep his fingers intact. They loved
to nibble on anything that got too close to their mouths or anything they could catch. They also had the digestive system
of a garbage disposal.

She nodded as she continued sipping her wine.

“What are they saying now?”