50 Ways to Hex Your Lover (4 page)

“You don’t want to know.” She looked around the table. “Do you have anything to eat up here? I didn’t get any dinner.” She’d
planned on hitting the drive-through at In-N-Out on her way home, but her run-in with Nikolai had ruined her appetite for
their Double-Double with onions and a large order of fries topped off with a large chocolate shake. The best thing about being
a witch was that she didn’t have to worry about calories and fat grams. And because she was still mad when she came home,
she hadn’t thought to check the fridge contents when she got the wine. She was too lazy to trek back down in search of food
if there was a chance there was something up here. Still, the thought of that hamburger sent her mouth watering. Damn him
for ruining her dinner plans!

A faint rumble overhead shook the house.

Krebs cocked his head to one side. “Man, I sure hope that doesn’t mean we’re in for an unexpected thunderstorm. I can’t believe
you didn’t stop off somewhere for food. The day you don’t have time to eat is the day the world ends.” He slanted a look at
Jazz whose gaze slid to the left. “Lucee, what ’ave you done?” he asked in an incredibly bad Ricky Ricardo accent.

She showed great interest in a pile of papers lying nearby even though she couldn’t read one symbol of the computer code.
“Nothing.” But, coupled with Nikolai’s unexpected appearance at Murphy’s, her own—literally—fiery response to him and his
plea for help, and Eurydice’s wallmail, the question bothered her.

He shook his head, mumbled what sounded like “which means you did one hell of a something,” and returned to his work.

“No, really, don’t you have anything up here to eat?” She was prepared to beg as long as he didn’t ask her about the thunder.
One mega temper tantrum in 1965 and all of a sudden the Great Blackout made national news. It cost her an additional 400 years.

“If you want food go down to the kitchen where it’s normally kept.” He cocked his head to one side to better listen to the
slippers’ babble. Jazz knew it sounded more like gibberish to him. “Seriously, what are they saying?”

One rabbit looked up at him and gnashed its teeth. Jazz grinned.

“Fluff and Puff are debating if it’s true that humans taste like chicken.” She lifted one leg straight out in front of her.
The slipper swiveled his head to look down and uttered a shrieking cry. It exhaled a sigh of relief when Jazz obediently lowered
her leg. “They’re not fond of heights.”

Krebs shook his head. “You are a very sick woman.” He looked down at the chattering slippers. “One thing I could never figure
out.Are they male or female?”

She shrugged. “I’ve never been able to tell and they’ve never said. I think it depends on their mood and if there’s any chocolate
nearby.”

Krebs winced when Fluff, or maybe it was Puff, looked up at him. Its ears stood straight up and drool slid down over its teeth,
dripping onto the hardwood floor. “If they leave any bunny slipper turds around you have to clean them up.” He turned back
to the computer monitor.

Jazz leaned over for a better look. “Whose website are you working on?”

“I’m doing some maintenance for
Dates After
Midnight.
Leticia wanted an edgier look to the site.” His fingers flew over the keyboard. Within seconds the code disappeared and a
digitally enhanced black lace curtain dropped over the screen. A small silver box set in the lower right hand corner of the
monitor winked to life.

“Welcome to Dates after Midnight,” a feminine digitized voice sounded over the speakers. “Please input your password to enter
the portal.”

“It sounds more like an online brothel specializing in dominatrices than a dating service,” she commented.

“Not just any online dating service, but one for vampires,” Krebs pointed out, typing in the password and checking out each
page. “Leticia is a smart businesswoman. There’re other dating services out there, but hers has more class and she makes it
so exclusive that there’s vampires everywhere begging to be accepted. A lot of it due to my website design, of course.”

“Gee, Krebsie, vain much?” she grinned, and then burst out laughing. “Vain. Vein. Get it? I crack myself up.”

“Oh yeah, a laugh a minute.” He rolled his eyes. Jazz hopped off the table and leaned over Krebs’ shoulder to read the members’
profiles.

“‘After dark accountant seeks numbers-minded match. Former NFL star looking for athletic type O+.’” She shook her head. “Are
you sure not just anyone can get into this site? Ads for blood bars and vamp self-help groups tend to put off most of the
living. It even creeps me out a little.”

He grinned. “Not the way I have it set up with enough firewalls to rival the U.S. Government. Leticia’s site hasn’t been hacked
into once.”

“Who knew creatures of the night and the magick-minded would enjoy surfing the net so much. And li’l ole warm-blooded you
designs most of their business sites,” she teased, dropping a kiss on top of his head. She peered closer. “Missing Vampire
announcements?” She pointed at a series of drawings that were remarkably lifelike for creatures whose DOAD—date of actual
death—meant the subjects had been long dead in the mortal sense. Nikolai’s words about members of his kind disappearing teased
the back of her mind. She ruthlessly pushed the thought into a mental compartment that held any memory to do with the sleaze
fang, slammed the door, and locked it. The last thing she wanted was a reminder of the man who could make mind-blowing love
to her one moment and betray her the next.

A faint rumbling sounded overhead.

Krebs swore under his breath. “That better not mean we’re getting a thunderstorm. This has to be finished tonight.”

“It sounded more like a low-flying jet to me,” Jazz said with a nervous twitch. The last thing she needed was a few hours
listening to Mother Nature lecture about not venturing into her territory. She quickly changed the subject. “There’s sure
a lot of missing vampire ads posted. Vampires move around all the time. They can’t stay in one place too long or people start
to notice they’re not aging. So why are vamps thinking others are missing?”

“This is different. Some say they’ve been snatched. There’re even rumors that there’s some kind of cure to vampirism and that
those who were treated successfully have taken up a mortal life again. So far, no one’s come forward to say what’s true and
what’s not. There are even articles about the disappearances posted on some of the vamp news feeds.”

She studied the drawings. “Hmm, I guess it wouldn’t be the same to have the pictures of the missing vampires plastered across
blood bags, would it?”

He looked up and grinned at her reference to a vampire version of pictures of missing children once posted on milk cartons.
“Hey! How did it go with your deadbeat client? Did he pay up?”

“Of course he did. With a little help from
moi.
” She held up her wiggling fingers. “A cookie jar, not to mention pretty much the entire house, cursed by your dead, but
totally insane, mother-in-law is nothing to ignore.” She grinned as she performed an impromptu soft shoe on the polished hardwood
floor. “Martin ‘The Sleaze Bag’ Reynolds learned his lesson to the tune of five extremely big ones.”

Krebs let loose a low whistle. “That’s some markup from your original fee.”

“Expanded curse, expanded fee. Plus he totally pissed me off.” Her bunny slippers starting singing an off-key ditty as she
continued her dance. “I warn my clients up front there are consequences if they cheat me out of my fee. Martin learned just
what those consequences could be. He’s lucky I didn’t make it worse.” She walked over to the small refrigerator set in a corner
of the room and rummaged inside. She cast aspersions on a man who couldn’t bother offering fat and cholesterol-filled snacks
to his visitors. She finally settled on a butterscotch pudding cup. “I don’t know what I enjoyed more—seeing his mother-in-law’s
face pop out of the Picasso hanging over his mantel or the way he panicked when he realized how long it would take him to
bury all the pieces from the cursed antique cookie jar I broke.”

“And you know your antiques well,” he murmured.

“No age jokes, thank you very much.” Further exploration among napkins and single-size nondairy creamers earned her a plastic
spoon that looked reasonably clean.

“Exactly how old are you?”

Although Jazz had related bits and pieces of her history to Krebs, she hadn’t told him everything. A woman had to have a few
secrets, after all.

She merely smiled, “Old enough.”

She walked over to one of the front-facing windows and looked out. The brightly lit amusement park rides at the nearby boardwalk
were easily seen from where she stood. The immense multi-colored disk doubling as a Ferris wheel overlooking the ocean lent
magick to the night. One of the reasons she loved the house was that it was only a ten-minute walk to the beach and boardwalk
when she needed a cotton candy and carnival ride fix.

Krebs glanced up from his work and noticed her pensive expression. “You’re not exactly dressed for the boardwalk, love. Plus
I thought your man-eating slippers were considered bunny
non grata
after their last visit.”

Jazz laughed as one of her slippers snarled a response. “They’re convinced they were framed. Fluff said there was no way he
could eat an entire man on his own. And Puff had a sore throat that day.”

Krebs gave a mock shudder. “Jazzy, love, I’m glad you’re on my side.”

She hitched herself back up onto the table and polished off her pudding.

“In the wastebasket, please.” Krebs glared at the cup she set on the table. She wrinkled her nose at him and executed a perfect
toss into the basket by his chair.

Jazz sat quietly, content to watch Krebs work his own brand of magick. She doubted he’d appreciate knowing she thought of
him as her very own calming influence, something she sorely needed after her emotional confrontation with Nikolai. The sexy
vampire never failed to stir up her hormones, whether she wanted them stirred or not. She was determined to do what she could
to make sure not to run into him again. It should be fairly easy to manage. It wasn’t like she had a lot to do with the undead
community. Vampires weren’t her favorite companions, and they didn’t like witches much either. She tended to steer clear of
them, except for the times she had to drive those who were automobile-challenged. With her blood poisonous to a vamp’s digestive
system, she was safe from becoming a late night snack. They weren’t her favorite jobs—vampires were also incredibly bad tippers.

Despite the large room with its high ceilings she felt a slight pressure building up around her.Without saying anything, she
slid off the table and wandered back to the front window overlooking the street.

The first thing she noticed was a neighbor’s calico cat skidding to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk across the street.
It stared into the darkness and arched its back. She imagined she heard the hiss that escaped the feline’s mouth as it gazed
intently at something the normal human eye couldn’t detect. When the cat ran away, Jazz noticed a faint blur of movement near
the neighbor’s front gate. Then all grew still. She did not need her powers to know what the nearly invisible figure was.

“You just couldn’t stop, could you?” she whispered. “You had to remind me that you’re back and intend to find a way back into
my life again by claiming you need my help. Go find yourself another witch, Nikolai. I’m not going to play with you anymore.”

She didn’t stop to wonder how he had discovered where she lived. If there was one thing Jazz understood, it was that in the
preternatural world there were few secrets. And ex-lovers had even fewer.

Nick ignored the cold fog that swept around him and partially obscured the house across the street.With his enhanced vision,
the fog was not a deterrent. He easily saw Jazz standing at the second-floor window, just as he heard the soul-stealing jazz
music. He imagined he could smell the spicy scent of her perfume mingling nicely with her natural scent. He noticed she’d
smothered the Gael in her voice, but what she didn’t realize was that her heritage showed anytime she was emotional. No matter
how many centuries had gone by, she still couldn’t hide some things.

He unashamedly eavesdropped on the conversation between her and the roommate who did not appear to be her lover. Thinking
back to the bar scene, he recalled that the only sentiment exchanged between her and Murphy’s bartender had been teasing flirtation.
That was unexpected since he knew only too intimately that Jazz had a strong sexual appetite. It was difficult to believe
neither man was her lover, but it was a relief to know she was free.

Considering what he’d just heard her whisper, he knew that knowledge wouldn’t do him any good. She hadn’t exactly welcomed
him with open arms when he approached her. He winced when a movement to one side reminded him of his bruised hip; it seemed
to be healing more slowly than usual. Jazz’s power had increased quite a bit since he’d seen her last. From the size of the
fireball she conjured in the alley he was lucky he hadn’t ended up a charcoal briquette.