by Alyssa Day
“Oh, boy. Here we go.” Squeezing his hand for luck or reassurance—she wasn’t sure which—Amy walked into her aunt’s house.
She’d barely gotten the door open when the excited chatter inside died away, and Granny’s voice rang out. “Bring that hottie over here so I can get a good look at him, Amaryllis. I forgot my glasses at home.”
“It’s Amy,” Amy groaned.
William chuckled, but it didn’t last long, because he went straight into a sneezing fit.
They walked into the family room, and the usual suspects were there. Granny, Aunt Sue, and Rose, all lined up on the couch, staring at them with varying levels of guilt-inducing reproach (Rose), fierce indignation (Sue), and salacious appreciation (Granny, who’d always liked the handsome ones).
“I’m sorry, okay? Let me just apologize in advance,” Amy said. “I shouldn’t have made you worry, I shouldn’t have gone off with a strange vampire, I shouldn’t have fought werewolf mafia in Central Park. It has just been one of those days.”
“I don’t consider myself to be strange,” William murmured, and Granny’s near-sighted eyes narrowed.
“Amy,” she demanded. “Introduce your friend.”
“Granny, Aunt Sue, this is William Pemberley. William, this is Sue Cardinal and my great-aunt, who only goes by Granny, and whose real first name is lost in the mists of time.”
“Watch it, honey,” Granny advised. She stood up to peer up at William, but she had to peer way up, because she was shorter even than Amy, and she had terrible eyesight. Granny was ninety something and didn’t look a day over two hundred. She was currently wearing yellow stretch pants, a black turtleneck, and yellow and black socks. She looked like a demented bumblebee.
William bowed low and kissed her hand. “Mrs. Cardinal, it is my very great pleasure to meet--"
Sneeze.
“—you.”
“Allergic to magic, huh?” Granny laughed, which oddly enough didn’t sound anything like her usual cackle. She flashed her enormous dentures at William, who made a choking sound.
For a second, Amy was worried the allergies were suffocating him, but then she realized he was trying desperately not to laugh. She poked him in the side with her elbow.
“Amy,” Sue said, clearly caught in an internal debate over whether to go with “Mind your manners” or “Let’s hurt the evil vampire who abducted my niece.”
“Don’t be rude to our guest.”
Huh. Apparently manners trumped danger to family members every time.
“Pemberley is clearly a fake name,” Rose pointed out, scowling at both of them. “You whammied me, didn’t you? Earlier, at Amy’s. It took me a few hours, but then it all came back to you. You’re lucky Alejandro isn’t here, or he’d have shot you on sight.”
Ouch. Amy hadn’t even thought about that, but Rose was right. Alejandro and vampires did not get along. There was a lot of very bad history there.
“Not that I need him to protect my cousin from you,” Rose continued, reaching for a delicate glass vial that contained a sparkly blue liquid. “Step away from Amy this instant, or you’ll be very, very sorry.”
Sneeze. “Perhaps we got off to a bad start,” William said, his rich, deep voice reduced to a scratchy whisper. “I will be glad to leave your home until Amy can explain--"
“No,” Amy said. “We need to fix this now. Okay, everyone, listen up. A wizard cursed William to be allergic to magic--"
“He probably deserved it,” Aunt Sue said primly, folding her arms across her chest. “I remember the coffee shop, Amy.”
“I did deserve it,” William confessed. “I asked him to cast a spell that would allow me to walk in the daylight. When he refused, I threatened his family.”
A sudden and profound silence greeted this statement, and Amy figured it was all over. Family was everything to the Cardinal witches.
Granny hopped up on the couch so she could stare straight into William’s eyes, and she waved one hand with a dramatic flourish. “TRUTH,” she said, in a deep, dark voice that in no way resembled her own.
“I would never harm a woman or child and have never done so,” William replied. “I even apologized to him, later, for the false threat, but it was too late. I was young and stupid and desperate to see the sunshine one more time.”
“Okey dokey,” Granny said, jumping down off the couch and then reaching up to pat William’s cheek. “We’re good.”
William started frantically scratching his arms with both hands and burst into a wild sneezing fit.
“What do you mean we’re good?” Amy was ready to drag her vampire out of there. “It’s pretty obvious that he’s not good.”
“Oh, that’s just residual from Mom’s truth spell,” Sue said, heading for the kitchen. “Nothing to worry about.”
Amy clutched her head while William collapsed on the couch, sneezing and scratching. “Can you fix him?”
Granny looked surprised. “Of course not. You’re going to have to find the wizard’s grimoire for that. I can give him a little relief for now, though.”
She closed her eyes and muttered something under her breath, and William gradually stopped sneezing and scratching. The blotchiness faded, too.
“I am profoundly grateful,” he told Granny, who grinned at him.
“I know. I’m pretty awesome,” she said, with her usual complete lack of humility.
“So, if I find this grimoire, you can cure me?” William took a cautious breath, didn’t sneeze, and stood up.
“You can’t find the grimoire,” Sue said, walking back into the room with four glasses on a tray. “Amy has to go with you to find it.”
She handed William the first glass. He swirled the amber liquid in the glass and looked a question at Amy. “Potion?”
“Tequila,” Amy said, sighing. “The curse of womankind. I can’t just drop everything and go running around the world, looking for a grimoire.”
Granny smacked her on the arm, hard. “Of course you can, you dolt. World travel has been your dream since you were a tiny girl. Now you get to travel and help the hot vampire. It’s a win/win.”
“Totally hot vampire,” William added helpfully.
“Shut up while you’re ahead,” Rose advised him.
“If it helps, I will give your family the million dollars,” William said.
“Enough with the million dollars. Nobody wants your million dollars,” Amy shouted.
“Down the hatch,” Granny crowed. “Also, I wouldn’t mind a million dollars. I could go on one of those dating sites. Match A Witch dot com.”
With that, Amy slugged her shot of tequila. Nobody needed to think about Granny on a dating site.
William raised his glass in silent salute to her family, then tossed it back, watching Amy with those glowing eyes the entire time. “Will you help me? I know I have no right to ask.”
She tilted her head and thought about it for a long minute. “Do you promise me werewolf fights, penthouse suites, carriage rides and wonderful food?”
“All of that,” he said, that slow, sexy smile spreading across his gorgeous face again.
Amy reached out and took his hands. “I might have a few months to spare. What if--"
But she didn’t quite finish her sentence, because he pulled her into his arms and started to kiss her, right there in Aunt Sue’s living room, and the whirlwind of sound and light swallowed them whole. By the time she opened her eyes, still dazed from his kiss, William was staring over her shoulder at something behind her.
She whirled around and then backed up, right into the hard muscles of her vampire’s chest. “William.”
“Yes, Amaryllis Minerva?”
“We’re in a tent.”
She could feel the laughter rumbling in his chest against her back. “Yes, I noticed that.”
“Why is there a camel wearing a gold crown in our tent?”
“Apparently, the camel had a very good time.”
“Oh, boy.”
N
OTE FROM ALYSSA DAY:
I’ve said it before -- I have a crazy family. We were Air Force brats as kids, and then I grew up and married a Navy Guy, so life has been one adventure after another. I’ve lived in or travelled to almost every state in the U.S. and lived in 3 foreign countries.
So my “What if?” for this book – and I always come up with my book ideas by following “What if?” down twisty paths – was “What if a family as crazy as mine also happened to be a family of witches?”
And the Cardinal Witches were born!
I’m thrilled to announce that the Cardinal Witches will continue for at least nine books in total, and you’ll be able to read the continuing adventures of William, Amy, Granny and the rest, coming soon!
If you want the scoop on all new releases, behind-the-scenes details, and the chance to win prizes, Text ALYSSADAY to 66866 to sign up for my newsletter. I promise never to sell, fold, spindle, or mutilate your information so you will get no spam—ever—from me.
You can also follow me on BookBub if you only want new release news.
Thanks again for reading—you rock!
Alyssa
Excerpt: Damon’s Enchantress
Washington, D.C.
Damon Jones yawned and showed his teeth to the ringleader of the smuggling ring, who promptly fell to the floor in a dead faint.
This wasn’t all that surprising.
Damon had very large teeth.
“All right, Jones,” his partner, Zane, said. “Enough with the lion form. Time to switch back into a human, because I’ll be damned if I’m doing all the paperwork this time.” Zane cuffed their captive--who currently stank up the Number 3 spot on the FBI Paranormal Operations Division’s Most Wanted List—just as the scumbag twitched his way back to consciousness.
Damon looked at both of them and then casually extended the claws of one dinner-plate-sized paw.
Number 3, who’d just come around, made a moaning sound and passed out again.
“And quit playing with the prisoner! You damn cats. Always playing with your food.” Zane was six feet of attitude wrapped up in bad ass, and one of the few people—in or out of the FBI—who dared to mouth off to Damon.
Damon was currently in his alternate form: six hundred pounds of pure Barbary lion. He’d measure nine feet long from head to tip of tail, if anybody had ever dared to approach him with a tape measure, and his head was at the level of Zane’s shoulder. He stretched and then shifted back to human form in a shimmering kaleidoscope of magic.
“Your analogy sucks. I’d never consider that moron to be food,” he said, grinning. “Nice call on barricading the warehouse exits, by the way. Sam caught two of this idiot’s flunkies trying to sneak out of the second story window.”
Zane stared at him. “How could you possibly…oh. You smelled them? Also, did I mention how glad I am that you don’t shift into a naked human? I really, really don’t want to see your dangly bits.”
“I heard Sam report in on your radio. Cat hearing, remember? And, sadly, nobody has seen my dangly bits in far too long.” Which was for the best, probably. The last thing he had time for was emotional entanglement, with a job that kept him working and traveling 24/7.
Their backup rushed in and put the cuffs on Number 3, who moaned and whimpered as he was dragged away.
“Not very impressive for a so-called drug lord. Especially one who must have a death wish to play with the Winter Fae lords and Ice,” Zane said, shaking his head, as they followed Number 3 out of the dingy Chicago warehouse that had been home to a fairly substantial Ice-processing operation until just about five minutes earlier.
Ice was the massively hallucinogenic drug that some enterprising criminals were manufacturing, using water from the cold, clear mountain springs in Winter Fae territory. The drug was a mild party enhancement to anyone with Fae blood. For humans and shape shifters, it was the most powerful drug ever invented—it made meth look like baby aspirin—and the trafficking in it was worth billions. When the Fae caught intruders in their territory, though, death and dismemberment—and not in that order--followed shortly thereafter.
Ice was a ticket to torture in a tiny plastic baggie. It had the nasty habit of killing at least a quarter of its addicts in particularly horrible ways: seizures that went on for hours, bleeding out, loss of all neurological function and control. For some reason, that didn’t stop any of the fools from using.
“I don’t get anything about any of this. Why they’d defy the Winter lords--who are seriously bad ass dudes—to steal the stuff, why anybody would use it when they could die miserably…why jelly donuts exist.” Damon scowled. “Who the hell wants jelly in a donut?”
Zane laughed. “Dancing Donuts get your order wrong again? I wondered why you were in such a foul mood this morning. Usually a take-down puts a smile even on your grouchy mug.”
They headed out of the warehouse and into the parking lot, which had been transformed since the op went down from an empty, weed-infested patch of gravel to a space filled with cop cars, evidence pick-up vans, FBI sedans, and an SUV that probably chauffeured the mayor and/or the chief of police around. The reporters were showing up, too. The TV station vans were shuffling for access at the edge of the lot already.
Made sense. All the politicians were going to want to get in on this one. Bagging the local head distributor and an estimated twenty-five million dollars’ worth of Ice was going to be major news, and everybody would want a piece.
All Damon wanted was to get out of there before somebody shoved a camera in his face.
“You’re gone,” Zane said, sighing. “Leaving me to deal with this--"
A crack ripped through the air—the kind of sound that caused even lion shifters to want to dive for cover. Nothing else sounded like a high-powered rifle.
Instead, Damon leapt into the air, shifting mid-leap into his lion form, desperate to put himself between the bullet and his partner. When the freight train slammed into his shoulder, he knew he’d succeeded. The velocity of the hit knocked him to the ground just long enough for him to bounce back up, snarl at Zane to get his ass to cover, and head for the outside stairs to the roof.
Whoever was up there shooting had better be prepared to die.
Ignoring the shouting coming from the cops on the ground and the pain in his shoulder with equal determination, Damon raced up the rickety stairs that barely clung to the side of the old building, not landing on any step long enough for it to decide it couldn’t carry the load of a quarter ton of seriously pissed-off lion. The creaking sounds were ominous enough, though, to give him the passing thought that the staircase might not hold on his way down.
He sure as hell didn’t want to die when his last bite of food on the planet had been a damn jelly donut.
Screw it. They could chopper him out.
He hit the roof in a flat-out run, but the sniper must have seen him coming, because he was crouched in the corner of the roof, braced against two walls, and aiming the rifle at Damon’s face.
Before the man could get off a shot, Damon leapt into the air with the preternatural speed and power that was a gift of shapeshifter magic. No mere lion could have moved so fast that he was a blur in the shooter’s eye.
No lion could have leapt fifty feet across the rooftop in the span of a single heartbeat.
But Damon could—and did—do both.
He smashed the sniper’s body down to the concrete and then broke the rifle in half with one bite of his powerful jaws. It took every ounce of control in his body to keep from doing the same to the shooter.
Instead, he stalked around the man’s prone and trembling body and roared out his fury.
In his peripheral vision, he saw Zane rushing across the roof toward him.
“Time to back off the puny human, Damon. I know you’re ready to rip his head off at the neck, but we need to interrogate him first.”
The shooter made a moaning sound at the word “first,” as Zane had no doubt intended. It was enough to help
Damon calm down, which his wily partner had also probably intended.
When the shooter dared a glance at him, Damon snarled, showing all of his teeth, and the man turned pale.
“I won’t talk!”
Zane looked at the shooter, and then at Damon, and then he laughed. “Yes, you will. They always do. Ten minutes alone with a lion…you’ll be begging us to listen to you talk.”
Damon snarled again, but this time from pain. The shoulder was burning, which meant the bullet was still in there. The very fine Ulfberht .338 Lapua Magnum--that he’d reduced to expensive kindling. He needed a few minutes alone to focus, so he could force it out of his muscle.
He’d worry about that later, because –
Oh, hell.
He had to deal with it now.
He had a plane to catch.
While agents took the sniper down off the roof, Damon closed his eyes and pushed; every muscle straining to rid his body of the foreign object. After about thirty long, painful seconds, the bullet popped out of his shoulder and hit the floor.
“Bonus! Evidence,” Zane said, using tiny tongs and an evidence bag to secure the bullet. “Good kitty.”
Damon bared his teeth at his smartass partner before transforming back to human. “One of these days, you’re going to seriously piss me off.”
Zane just laughed, and headed for the ladder. “Yeah, whatever. I already figured out that my black ass is safer with you than without you. Nice try on the intimidation, though. Definite six out of ten.”
“Like you need me to feel safe. You make half the suspects piss their pants just from catching a glimpse of you,” Damon told his Oxford-educated partner, who had the brains of a rocket scientist and the muscles of a body builder. “One of these days you’ll give me a ten on something, and I’ll pass out from the shock.”
“One of these days, maybe. But right now you need to catch that plane to go play big, bad lion in the middle of the scary conclave of pretty, pretty garden witches,” Zane said, doing a fake shudder, his eyes widening as he mocked his partner.
