Hex Appeal (18 page)

He didn’t reach for it. In fact, he didn’t move at all. I still felt the connection between us, but it was pulling at me like a razor-sharp hook in flesh, and I was gasping from the agony of it. Death was dragging him away, and he was fighting it with every single ounce of magic and courage he possessed.

I didn’t dare try to get to him, there wasn’t time. Instead, I dumped the contents of my own bag on the floorboards.

The gun tumbled out, solid and reassuring, and I got it up and aimed just as a shadow stepped in front of the driver’s side door.

Greg. So damn
normal.
I’d spent an entire evening sitting in a car with him, laughing at his jokes, sharing chips and ranch dip and discussing the merits of the original
Star Trek
with the follow-ons. I’d liked that Greg, but now, as I saw his face, I realized that the man I’d gotten to know had been a ghost. A mask.

What was behind it was something not really human—full of cruel anticipation and dark pleasure and a particularly soulless kind of glee that held no hint of joy.

He pointed his weapon straight at me and smiled. “Drop it,” he said. “I already killed Prieto, and this guy’s gone, too.” He nudged Andy with his foot, and Andy’s head lolled bonelessly. He was pale and lifeless as a rubber doll. His eyes were open, but blank as glass. “Drop it.”

I squeezed the trigger, but he was faster. My shot went wide. His hit my shoulder and slammed me back against the upholstery in a bright red spray of blood. It must have hurt, but my brain skipped a beat, then it was just numb, as if I’d been asleep on that side of my body for too long. Shock, clamping down to preserve my life.

I’d dropped the gun. I bent forward to try to pick it up, but he grabbed my foot and dragged me out, flailing, leaving a thick wet trail of crimson behind. He kept dragging, past Prieto’s corpse, onto the grass. I tried to get up when he released his hold, but he put a knee in the center of my chest as he put his gun away and drew a knife. “Never shot a woman before,” he said. “It’s not as much fun as I’d hoped. You didn’t scream enough, but we can fix that. We’ll have to make this quick, though, Holly Anne; it’s kind of public around here. Exciting, though, isn’t it?” His grin was loose and wet and horrifying. “I sat there all night with you in that car, you know, wondering if I should take you over to that field and do you there for your friends to find. If you’d followed me out there, I don’t think I could have stopped myself.”

I shut my eyes because there was nothing I could do now. I was wounded, and he had the knife, I had nothing at all. Not even hope.

Andy. I love you, I always loved you, I am so sorry I even doubted it …

At least we could be together, somewhere beyond all this. Somewhere far from the pain and the sharp bite of the blade as it touched my arm, widening the bullet wound. Cutting my life away. I heard myself scream, but I focused on retreating into a place of silence, of peace, of
Andy
.

I love you. I’m so sorry for hurting you. You’re the only thing that ever really mattered to me, the only man who ever touched me in my heart, and I love you, I will always …

“I know,” Andy Toland said. I thought it was in my head, I really did; reality had come undone. I opened my eyes. It wasn’t Andy crouching over me, it was the killer, Greg, with his totally normal blue golf shirt underneath, and his totally normal face with a wolf’s eyes and a shark’s smile like some horrible accident of nature …

But it
had
been Andy speaking. He was standing right behind Greg. Pale as death, stark as an ink drawing, built of flesh and blood and bone and
rage.

And below all that, there was love, oh God, so much love it mended my shattered heart into an unbreakable whole.

He pumped his shotgun one-handed and put it to the back of Greg’s head. For a second, Greg froze; his predator’s eyes turned frightened, and his smile faltered. Then he dropped the knife and held up his hands. “Please don’t shoot,” he said. “I surrender. I won’t give you any trouble.”

He must have thought that would do it. I could have told him different because Andy Toland was never a policeman, was never a lawyer; he grew up in a world where, sometimes, the only judge, jury, and justice was to be had in the flash of a gun.

And this was personal.

I turned my head just in time before he fired the shotgun. Both barrels.

Andy had angled the shot up, but some of the blood and … other things … fell on me. I expected to feel Greg’s lifeless corpse sprawl across me, but Andy had hold of his collar, and he pitched him off to the side like trash. Then Andy dropped to his knees and clamped both hands on my shoulder.

I still felt the pull of the dark, but this time I realized that it wasn’t Andy fighting that tide. It was
me.
“Holly Anne,” he said. “Holly, you listen to me.
Listen.
You’re not leaving. I ain’t allowing that. You just
listen.
”

“I’m sorry,” I said. I felt vague and distant now. “I was angry you didn’t tell me. You understand? I didn’t mean to let you go.”

“All done now,” he said in his most smooth, soothing voice. His buttery voice, the one he used to lie to my boss to get my day off. Oh Jesus, I was going to die on my day off. That was just sad. And I hadn’t gotten my reports finished.

Andy cursed in a soft, trembling voice, and fumbled in his pocket for his cell phone. He punched 911, but I didn’t hear the conversation. I was busy thinking how odd it was to be looking at him from so great a distance. He had a nice nose after all, even if it had been broken once. I couldn’t understand why he was crying. “Did you have a shotgun in your bag?” I asked. “Because that must have been really heavy.”

“Shut up, my love, please
Jesus
—”

“I love you,” I said. It was important to say it.

And then I closed my eyes and with a great sense of relief, let go.

And Andy Toland held me, hovering there, suspended in the dark, tethered to him by the unbreakable chain of our love.

*   *   *

It took two surgeries and three weeks in the hospital to put my arm back together properly, and Andy never left my side. I think there might have been some violence involved in his defiance of visiting hours, but by the time I was conscious enough to really know, he and the medical community had achieved a cautious truce.

The police chief showed up to formally shake my other hand and present me with a certificate of appreciation, which was nice. There was a check for my services, too, which was even better. My boss sent flowers.

Andy looked good on the evening news, telling all them reporting sons of bitches to go to hell. I almost choked on my chicken broth.

But the best thing … the best of all … was going home with Andy, and being carried over the threshold, and smelling the astonishing scent of his potion brewing in its final stage. “I made sure it wasn’t so smelly for you,” he said. “Got a surprise, too.”

I breathed in Holly’s Balm and rested my head against his shoulder. “No more surprises,” I said. “Promise me.”

“All right then.” He smiled, put me on the couch, and pulled up a chair. He pulled from his pocket a thick sheaf of papers, which he unfolded. “You need to sign these.”

“What is it?”

“Company papers.”

“Company for
what
?”

“Holly’s Balm,” he said. “You own it, and I just got the first check for agreeing to let this company sell it. All I got to do is give ’em the recipe, and they’ll hire on the potions witches to do it. Us included. Should make us a tidy sum in paychecks, plus this signing bonus for you.”

Oh, there was a check. He held it in front of me.

That was a
lot
of zeroes. Six of them, with a respectably large single digit in front of them.

“Andy—I can’t take all this…”

“It’s only half,” he said. “The other half’s gone to Detective Prieto’s family. They won’t want for nothing, I promise you that. And—and to the families of them girls. I sent it without signing the note.” A quiet, shy smile spread over his lips. “Did good this time, didn’t I?”

I took the check, put it and the papers aside, and kissed him, long and sweet. He tasted like the potion, like every good thing that had ever happened in the world and nothing bad.

“Yes,” I said. “You did good.”

The potion was called Holly’s Balm, but the fact was … he was all the balm I’d ever need.

*   *   *

Author’s Bio:

Rachel Caine is the
New York Times
and internationally bestselling author of the Morganville Vampires series, the Weather Warden series, the Outcast Season series, and the new Revivalist series. She lives and works in Fort Worth, Texas. Her website is www.rachelcaine.com.

SNOW JOB

by
CAROLE NELSON DOUGLAS

Everyone wondered why a Sin City bigwig like Christophe performed twice nightly as “Cocaine” with his own rock band at his Inferno Hotel venue. That was like “the Donald” leading a fifties doo-wop group nightly at the Trump Las Vegas, although that very thought was more shuddersome than a pack of feral zombies invading a tea party.

Everyone was dying to know, in a 2013 Vegas packed with supernatural moguls, just what flavor of paranormal the Seven Deadly Sins’ lead singer, Christophe, aka Cocaine, aka Snow, was. Rumor whispered that he was an albino vampire, but Snow maintained that was way off base.

Except for the albino part, obviously.

One night between shows, the rock-star mogul stepped firmly out of character.

“Get me Delilah Street,” Snow told his security chief, Grizelle, even though he knew that the formidable shapeshifter hated Delilah Street almost as much as Delilah Street claimed to hate him.

“You’ve never asked me to provide you with a woman before,” Grizelle observed.

“I’m not asking now. She’s a paranormal investigator.”

“She’s a self-advertised paranormal investigator. I find her annoying. I thought you did, too.”

His colorless lips sketched the shadow of a smile. “I do.”

“She’s a bloody amateur,” Grizelle went on, “and she’s the Cadaver Kid’s girlfriend, or hadn’t you noticed?”

“She’s going to be
my
bloody amateur next. And, Grizelle, I notice everything, including when you’re jealous.”

“Jealous? Who’s got your back with tooth and claw?”

“You do.”

His pale hand stroked the top of her gleaming ebony hair, which was styled into shoulder-length braids. She was a tall, handsome woman with watered-silk skin, a moiré pattern of black and deepest gray that outshone her emerald green silk sheath dress and metal-heeled gladiator sandals.

As Grizelle leaned into his fond gesture, her moiré skin sprouted black-and-white fur, and the green gown dwindled into the concentrated gleam of feline irises. Now that Grizelle had shifted into a huge black-striped white tiger, her platter-sized paws rested on the broad shoulders of Snow’s white leather jumpsuit, and her emerald eyes were slitted with devotion as one furred cheek rubbed her scent on him.

Her gesture almost dislodged the black sunglasses he always wore to shield his presumably pink eyes from the light.

“I’m going to need a human investigator in my corner very soon, Grizelle,” he whispered into her large, tufted ear.

The white big cat eased down onto all fours before rising in her human form, shaking her stripes into velvety black skin and satiny black hair. Her flashing emerald eyes evoked the glitzy green costume of Envy in the Seven Deadly Sins band.

“I’m your security chief,” she reminded her boss. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

“I told you. Delilah Street isn’t here.” His voice held the sharpness of command now.

“She doesn’t like you,” Grizelle half growled, sounding cattier than a soap-opera diva. “It might be difficult to convince her to jump at your call.”

“I’m sure you’ll devise a plan. Don’t wait. Something wicked this way comes.”

*   *   *

You’d think a girl could get a peaceful night’s snooze in a cozy Enchanted Cottage. Sleeping Beauty managed it for decades in a drafty old castle.

My bedroom isn’t located in any fairy-tale joint, but in a replica of a 1940s honeymooner’s nest from a movie named
The Enchanted Cottage.
Inside it, the film story line went, true love had overlaid movie star looks on a plain old maid and a disfigured war hero.

I awoke to the sound of repeated gunfire and sat up, blinking like a gothic heroine in my filmy-curtained four-poster bed, and immediately scanned for intruders.

One of my two casement windows was open and banging against the wall. The light sweat of alarm on my skin didn’t detect so much as a breath of night air, never mind a window-sash-crashing wind.

Checking the bedroom floor, I saw no sign of my devoted rescue dog. Quicksilver was known to enter and exit the cottage windows at night, though discreetly and without drama, but never on the second floor.

Next I noticed that the creepy “bugs-moving” feeling along my thighs wasn’t my nightshirt riding up. It was the crocheted bedspread slowly ebbing to the bed’s foot.

Since this is post–Millennium Revelation Las Vegas and not your father’s Sin City, but one crawling with supernaturals, I had immediate suspects. The first were the often unseen domestic “helpers” that came with the Enchanted Cottage. The second most likely suspect was a first on my list—a genuine ghost.

I grabbed the absconding coverlet with both hands and jerked it up to my waist again.

It jerked back down.

I leaned forward to jerk harder.

Something grabbed my T-shirt front and tugged even more. I fell facedown on the foot of the bed as that unseen “something” outflanked me to pinch my now-exposed rear.

This indignity ruled out a disembodied ghost, but not the mischievous pixies, gnomes, and poltergeists that abound in the borders between the paranormal and natural worlds. My house “spirits” so far had been as good as two-thousand-dollar-an-ounce gold. Something you could count on.