Magic of the Wood House (The Elemental Phases Book 6) (29 page)

Missy
pulled it out of the oversized pocket of her frilly white dress.  For some
reason, the Happiness Tablet had a red velvet ribbon tied around it, but there
was no mistaking the power of the small cube.  “What do you have to trade?” 
She asked again, giving it a careless toss in her palm.

Raiden
winced.  If she accidently dropped that thing, the universe would be nothing
but a pothole.

“I
have what you want most.”  Daphne smirked.  “I have your Match.”

Missy
froze.

“In
exchange for the box, I’ll tell you where he is.”  Daphne continued.  “Just do
me a favor and try to be a
little
less insane.”  She held up her thumb
and forefinger with some space between them to symbolize an inch or so of
mental health.  “I’m fond of the guy.  I’m not worried you’ll hurt him, but
things will go smoother if you don’t act…”

Missy
threw the Happiness box to her, not even waiting for Daphne to finish the
caveat.  “Where is he?”  She demanded sharply.  “Give him to me
now
.”

Daphne
caught the box one handed and sighed.  “Have it your way, crazy pants.”  She jerked
a thumb towards the sofa.  “He’s right there.”

Missy’s
eyebrows compressed, her eyes whipping towards Zakkery.  She stared at him for
a long moment, her head tilting at an odd angle.  “Oh.”  She finally whispered.

“Holy
shit.”  Zakkery blurted out.

Daphne
glanced over at Raiden.  “See how I bring people together?”

Here’s
a preview of another Cassandra Gannon novel:

Love in the Time of Zombies

Chapter
One

Bright side
to the zombie apocalypse:

You will
never have to wake up and go to your crummy job, again.

It
was the end of the world.

“No,
no, no, no, no.”  Scotlyn Summerline vainly hit the reload button on the
computer, trying to force the winning bid higher.  That final total just
couldn’t be right.  It
couldn’t
.  Not even her luck was that bad.  She needed
money and she needed it yesterday.  Actually, by her landlord’s calculations,
she needed it last Tuesday.  So that terribly low number just
couldn’t
really be the selling price.

It
wasn’t fair.

How
could something so terrible befall a nice girl like her?  She voted in every
election and was polite to the elderly and donated money to a cat shelter. 
What kinds of karmic sins had she committed, besides shoplifting that tube of
lipstick in the tenth grade?  Why was this happening to her?

What
kind of loving God would allow a perfectly beautiful Louis Vuitton handbag to
sell for only forty-two dollars?

Scotlyn
resisted the urge to throw the flat screen monitor like a Frisbee and settled
for a
slightly
suppressed scream of frustration, instead.  Her hands
beat against the counter in a quick tantrum.  Damn internet!  Damn eBay!  Damn…

She
squinted at the high bidder’s screen name.

Damn
VannaFan4Eva!

Wait…
Vanna
Fan?

Jesus.

It
really was the end.  Scotlyn just gave up.  Her forehead flopped forward to
bang against the keyboard.  What was the use of even trying when everything
always
went wrong?

Her
favorite purse now belonged to some
Wheel of Fortune
groupie.  She was
still
dead broke.  Soon-to-be homeless.  Working the nightshift at an adult themed
mini-golf course.  In Vegas.  For an evil asshole.  Earning minimum wage. 
Selling the last of her possessions for pennies at a glorified cyber yard sale.

Barring
a meteor strike, things just couldn’t
possibly
get any worse.

But,
then again, Scotlyn had been telling herself that for the past year.  Ever
since she got downsized out of her casino job and had to hang-up her feathered
headdress for the fast- paced world of putt-putt golf.

Economic
downturns hit showgirls, too.  Especially the ones who were too short and
wholesome looking to work anything but the Saturday morning kids shows, which
were only put on so hung-over parents could have a few more hours of shuteye. 
After she was downsized, job hunting went nowhere.  Unemployment checks dried
up and her savings sure didn’t last long.  Then, the credit cards got maxed out
and nasty debt collector people started calling.

Soon
here she was:  Scenic rock-bottom.

Scotlyn
lifted her head to look around the sleazy front office of Topless Golf World. 
The whole place was decorated exactly how you’d
expect
a business called
Topless Golf World
to be decorated.  Only worse.  No one could have
pictured the lamps shaped like penises or the tassels and g-string painted onto
the little ladies’ room door icon.  Those subtle touches could only come from a
mind like Ezekiel Macready and, thankfully, her boss was one of a kind.

The
lone bright spot to the job –and the only reason Scotlyn didn’t quit and resign
herself to living in a cardboard box-- was the fact that the employees didn’t
have to actually
be
topless here at Topless Golf World.  Which was
something many a disappointed bachelor party had bitched about when they
arrived and saw her shirt blocking their view.  Still, it kept the business
juuust
this side of legal.  In fact, that was the company’s unofficial motto.

Fortunately
for Scotlyn, the oh-so elegant name referred to all the naked statuary out on
the greens that drunken sportsmen got to knock their little balls through.  In
between their clumsy attempts to hit on her and the occasional drug deal out by
hole fourteen, of course.

Once
upon a time, Topless Golf World had been called Little Fairytale Putt Putt. 
Scotlyn had worked at the kiddie course as a teen, which is how she knew to
come crawling back to this particular eighteen holes-in-the-ground.  Over the
years, though, the neighborhood went to hell and all the sane parents started
staying away.  Desperate for new business, the former owner Mr. Jamison had
re-themed Little Fairytale Putt Putt into an XXX-travaganza.  All the
fiberglass nursery book characters were retrofitted with skimpy outfits, and
garishly painted so they all but glowed in the dark.

Zeke
had won the golf course from Mr. Jamison in a card game about two weeks after
Scotlyn returned to work.  When he took over, he’d kept her on as the secretary
and she’d tried to convince him restore the fairytale motif.  He seemed to find
that hilarious.  Zeke called the nude statuary and all the new nightmarish
décor he added “catering to the audience.”

Scotlyn
called it perverted.

Her
entire life had become a nightmare of flashing neon, golf clubs, and gigantic
statues with plastic breasts.  This
Debbie Does Vegas
vision has
completely usurped her happy girlhood memories of princesses, and unicorns, and
reading fairytales to little golfers.  Now, it was all nudity and squalor.

Scotlyn
should have turned around the second she pulled into the parking lot and saw
the course had changed its name.  She’d been lured in by that “Help Wanted”
sign in the window, though, and now she was stuck here in Playboy Bunny
purgatory.

She
had to get out of this dump before she actually got used to the horror of it. 
The only thing that could be worse than the sickening sensation of
embarrassment and self-pity she got when she manned the counter every evening…
would be manning the counter and
not
feeling that sickening sensation of
embarrassment and self-pity.  Of growing resigned, giving up, and making this
place her tacky, glittery coffin.

Scotlyn
had
to escape, before she grew immune.

To
do that, she needed money.

Prince
Charming was twenty-eight years late to the rescue, so it didn’t look like any
help was coming on the
handsome-stranger-saves-Scotlyn-and-whisks-her-away-on-his-enchanted-yacht
front.  And, on the other end of the feminist spectrum, no Fortune 500 companies
seemed eager to hire her, either.  Even
Pizza Hut
had turned her down. 
Her thousands of resumes were no doubt lining birdcages all over Nevada.  She
should totally ask for a refund on that year of business school.

Likewise,
a life of crime seemed pointless because she’d just get caught.  Scotlyn
always
got caught when she did something wrong.  She was doomed to be a moral
citizen.  Even the Great Lipstick Caper when she was sixteen had landed her in
front of the store detective.  Plus, she’d gotten nervous and pilfered the
wrong color for her skin tone, so the whole thing had been pointless.  She
sucked at crime.  If she tried to knock over a bank or something, she’d land in
jail before she could get her Ronald Regan mask on.

Her
options were getting limited.

Clearly,
her road out of hell was not paved with designer handbags, but maybe she could
sell something else.  What else did she even own?  Lingerie?  Scotlyn cringed
at bit at the thought.  Pretty, fancy, lacy underwear was her greatest weakness. 
But, at least half of everything she owned had never been worn, so she
could
sell a few embroidered bras with their tags still attached if it meant eating
this week.

Maybe.

Or
maybe
not
.

After
all, she
did
need to lose a few pounds.  More than a few.  No longer
wearing a bedazzled bikini costume to work had
some
perks, after all. 
Like relatively guilt-free “Ben and Jerry’s for dinner” night when she was
feeling particularly depressed.  And Scotlyn was depressed
a lot
these
days.  Maybe she could just go hungry, keep her handmade undergarments, and
consider extreme poverty --like-- a default diet.

Or
maybe she could sell a kidney.

“’Bout
time you got here.”  Zeke strolled out of his office, running a hand through
his dark hair and stifling a yawn.  “You make coffee, yet?”

Or
maybe she could sell
Zeke’s
kidney and leave him in a hotel bathtub full
of ice.

“I’ve
been
here for four hours.  You were just busy napping and missed my
arrival.”

“Uh-huh… 
So, you made coffee, then?”

“It’s
all gone.”  She bit off testily.

Like
she did every day when she first saw Zeke, Scotlyn found herself resisting the
urge to just stare at him in frustrated amazement for a minute or two.  He was
just so astoundingly, effortlessly, strikingly handsome.  It didn’t seem
possible for an ordinary human to be
that
stunning.  Or fair that
someone so annoying should have such an undeserved genetic gift.

Oh,
Zeke did his best to disguise his looks with general sordidness.  As usual, he
covered his very impressive chest with some loud Hawaiian top, worn over a
t-shirt with a comic book logo.  The guy didn’t seem to own a pair of shoes
that weren’t rubber flip-flops.  His unevenly cut dark hair fell forward over
his face, showing off the perfect angles of his unshaven jaw.  He had three piercings
that she could see, two in his ear and one in his eyebrow, plus a zigzagging
tattoo of sharp angles around his wrist.

No
matter how hard he tried, though, Zeke
still
looked like Sir Lancelot on
a bender.  Perfect face, perfect body, perfect voice,
perfect
Central
Casting choice for the gallant hero of a nice girl’s daydream.

Except,
of course, for the fact that Zeke wasn’t going to rescue anyone,
ever
. 
If a fire breathing dragon showed up, he’d probably just start taking odds on
the numbers of villagers slaughtered.  They guy was nobody’s hero.  He’d told
her so himself the last time a mouse skittered across the floor and she
shrieked at him to kill it.

“Make
more
coffee, then.  Christ, it’s in your job description, right?”  He
opened the cash register, no doubt to reimburse himself the twenty dollars he
planned to spend on Tanna, the neighborhood’s most popular hooker.

Scotlyn
might’ve considered some strategic pilfering too, if there was anything at
Topless Golf worth taking.  Sadly, unless you shared Zeke’s interest in real
cheap dates, it was a pretty hopeless place for white-collar crime.  Well,
honestly, she wouldn’t have stolen,
anyway
.  Not only was she terrible
at theft, but that damn “nice girl” thing wouldn’t let rip off her boss.

Even
if he deserved it.

“Actually
no, making coffee is
not
in my job description.”  Her mouth tightened as
he shoved the bill he’d swiped into the pocket of his jeans.  “And FYI for tax
day:  I don’t think the IRS actually lets you hang out with prostitutes in your
Jacuzzi and then write it off as a ‘business expense.’”

“Hey,
it’s the
company
Jacuzzi and I’m only gonna consult with Tanna about
marketing strategies.”  Zeke arched a brow.  “The girl’s
got some
special skills that you could really learn from, by the way.  Very
accommodating lady, unlike
some
puritanical blonde killjoys, I was
misled into hiring.”

“How
did I mislead you?  I told you I didn’t do shorthand or accounting or anything
when you took over.  And I set up the computer system, so…”

“Like
I give a shit about your office skills.  Hell, I only got the damn computer to
watch porn.”  Zeke leaned across the counter, closer to her.  He smelled like
he’d just finished showering under an Alpine waterfall, the bastard.  “I
thought you’d be a lot more fun around here, Trix, that’s all.  For instance, I
don’t know how they did casual day, back when you were a stripper.  But here at
Topless Golf World, we are
fine
with some tasteful
nudity, if…”

“I
was a
showgirl
, not a stripper.  I’ve told you that a
thousand
times!”

And
honestly, she’d only been a showgirl in the technical sense.  Scotlyn had never
done any perfectly choreographed kick lines or anything even pseudo-glamorous.
The Coney Island Casino, where she’d worked, catered to families.  The whole
resort was themed as a boardwalk midway.  Mainly, she’d just posed for tourist
photos with hyper kids and sang Disney songs to her pintsized audience.  Her
career in showbiz had been kinda pathetic.

No. 
Not “kinda,” come to think of it.  Just plain old, straight up pathetic.

It
also hadn’t paid well.

Zeke’s
lavender eyes sparkled at her indignation.  He seemed constantly amused by the
image of Scotlyn in fishnets and sequins.  Now a days, she wore the vestiges of
her old weekend wardrobe to work.  All the lovely, stylish, designer clothes
that had briefly made her very happy… Until she got the bills.