Black Magic Woman

by Christine Warren

  —A Human Handbook to the Others, Chapter Thirteen

  Daphanie felt as if someone had just ignited her forge and laid her out over the heated coals. If the building’s sprinkler system were to go off and douse her at any second, she wouldn’t even blink, but she suspected she might give off steam.

  Come to think of it, she was surprised she wasn’t doing that already. Or maybe she was. No way was she going to tear her lips from Asher’s long enough to open her eyes and check. Her mama hadn’t raised that particular brand of stupid.

  The man kissed like a god. Eros, naturally. Or maybe like a devil, because the thoughts he put in her mind with his hard, hot mouth and his warm, strong hands weren’t about angels and church choirs; they made her think of dark, humid nights, tangled silk sheets, and the kind of pleasure that made a woman call out to God all the way down the long descent into the inferno.

  He didn’t just kiss. The word implied a neat and civilized pressing of lips to lips, a temporary joining marked by pleasure and simple contentment. None of that bore even the slightest resemblance to what Daphanie experienced in that moment.

  She felt consumed, devoured, trapped by the power of firm hands and intoxicating pleasure. His fingers gripped her only lightly at the nape, more of a caress than a restraint, and his palm against her back urged and encouraged instead of detaining or forcing. The power that held her in place had little to do with physical force and everything to do with desire.

  Daphanie hadn’t expected the kiss, but if she were to be honest with herself, she would have to admit she’d wanted it almost from the first instant those silver-gold eyes had locked with hers. She almost suspected she’d been waiting for it most of her life.

  Fate.

  All her life, Daphanie had believed in the power of the universe to guide people toward their destinies. It had guided her into art, into travel, and now into the arms of this man. Who was she to argue with that kind of fortune, when this fortune felt so good?

  She lifted herself onto her tiptoes, throwing herself into the kiss with all the exuberance of a cliff diver streaking toward clear, blue water. Like the ocean, he enveloped her. She felt almost as if she were drowning, but she couldn’t care. What was breathing compared to the once-in-a-lifetime power of this kiss?

  The beat of her heart pounded in her ears, quickened by his touch, heavy, insistent …

  … and coming from the other side of the studio door.

  Head spinning, Daphanie tore herself away from Asher’s embrace and turned to face the door, staring in confusion at the smooth steel surface.

  “Geez, Daph, don’t you ever answer doors anymore?” Corinne called from the hallway. “Let me the hell in!”

  Beside her, Asher cursed, sharp and low, and she really couldn’t disagree with the sentiment. Although she had to admit that the kiss had been headed in only one direction, and without a bed—or even a clean floor—anywhere around, someone would have ended up cursing even more violently sooner or later.

  A residual shiver raced across her skin and Daphanie almost laughed. Okay, sooner, then.

  “Daph?”

  His face cast in grim lines, Asher stepped past Daphanie and yanked open the studio door. On the other side, Corinne stood frozen, her hand raised and curled in a fist in preparation for another vigorous knock.

  “Am I interrupting something?”

  “You’ll have to ask Daphanie,” the Guardian snarled, turning away to stalk back to the far end of the studio. “Just think of me as another piece of furniture. I brought a book.”

  Daphanie made a sound of frustration. For the first time since Saturday night, she’d gotten a rise out of Asher that didn’t involve him yelling at her for wanting to get away from him. In fact, this particular reaction had been all about closeness. Until Corinne had interrupted.

  “Your timing sucks,” she grumbled under her breath, slumping against the end of her worktable and crossing her arms grumpily over her chest. She glared at Asher’s form, perched on a stool at the other end of the studio, a book in his hand and a scowl on his face. He appeared to be ignoring them. Nevertheless, she hoped she’d spoken softly enough not to be overheard.

  A sly grin played around the edges of the reporter’s mouth. “I’m starting to understand that you might think so. Do you want me to come back later?”

  Daphanie glared. “I think it’s a little late for that.”

  Corinne laughed and leaned closer. Her voice dropped conspiratorially. “I’m more than happy to apologize. I won’t even argue if you decide you need retribution at some point. But you have to tell me one thing … How did he taste?”

  Flames shot up the side of Daphanie’s neck and bloomed in her cheeks. “What?” she stuttered. “What the hell are you talking about? How the hell would I know? Why would you even ask a question like that?”

  “Because I’m a reporter, honey. It’s my job to ask questions. And because either that man just kissed the starch out of your panties, or a hive full of killer bees buzzed through here and stung you directly on the lips. Now which one was it?”

  Not even willpower could keep Daphanie’s knees from buckling as she remembered the power of that kiss.

  “God, Rinne, I think he sucked my brain right out of my head,” she whispered, fighting the urge to lay said appendage down on the table and savor the coolness of the wood against her overheated skin.

  “Oooh, I’m jealous. I haven’t had a kiss like that in … years.” Corinne sighed. “I’m so sorry I interrupted. Want to punch me?”

  “Yes.”

  The reporter laughed. “All right, anywhere but the face. Come on. I know I deserve it.”

  “Give me a minute to get my strength back.”

  Corinne’s eyes widened. “Wow. That good, huh?”

  “You have no idea.”

  She couldn’t, because Daphanie herself could barely grasp the significance of that single, stolen moment. It felt as if her world had tilted and settled into a new alignment. All she could really say was that something inside her had shifted.

  But had Asher felt anything similar?

  She had to fight not to stare at him across the room. Since she’d just instigated an argument over him doing exactly that to her, it seemed uncouth. Besides, her overloaded mind and senses needed some time to settle down, and staring at his fine body and handsome features wouldn’t do much to aid that effort. Better to focus on Corinne and touch base with reality again.

  “Whattaya got?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Don’t tell me you interrupted for nothing,” Daphanie groaned. “Please say you had a reason for schlepping out here on this particular morning?”

  “Oh, right.” Corinne laid a hand on her folder as if assuring herself it was still where she’d left it. “You have any place to sit in here?”

  “Gimme a sec.”

  Her friend waited patiently while Daphanie poked her head into several open crates until she found what she looked for. She returned a second later with two tall, metal stools that made up for in fire resistance what they lacked in style, beauty, and comfort. She arranged them at one end of the carpenter’s table, half facing each other around a blunted corner.

  “Voilà,” she said, sliding onto one of the seats and focusing on her companion. “Now tell me what’s going on. I thought we agreed to postpone the interview for your paper until I got a little more settled in.”

  Corinne took her own seat and slid her papers closer. She appeared to be guarding them like a holy relic, and Daphanie felt a faint stirring of curiosity.

  “We did,” Corinne agreed, waving a dismissive hand. “I’m not worried about that. But our powwow over at Vircolac the other day made me curious. A reporter’s besetting sin is curiosity.”

  Daphanie just lifted an eyebrow. She’d heard a lot about Corinne’s sins from her sister, and she didn’t think curiosity would even rank in the top ten. From what Danice had said, Rinne was a woman who liked men, tequila, and adventure.
Not necessarily in that order.

  “I’ve done a couple of articles on witches and psychics in my time,” the woman continued, her expression shifting to something intent and glittery as she warmed to her subject. “So I was surprised when this D’Abo guy didn’t really ring any bells for me. I know at least the names of most of the so-called magicians the bunko squad likes to target on a regular basis.”

  “And D’Abo isn’t one of those names?”

  “No, which made me even more curious, so I decided to do a little investigating.”

  “I thought Graham and Rafe were looking into D’Abo.”

  “They are,” Asher confirmed.

  Hearing his voice come from over her shoulder made Daphanie jump. She’d been trying so hard to focus on Corinne that she hadn’t even noticed when he left his perch across the room and joined them at the table.

  He took in her glare and shrugged. “If you’re speaking of D’Abo, I wish to hear what you have learned.”

  “Asher’s right,” Corinne confirmed, “Graham and Rafe are looking into things, but they’re going to be looking at this from a perspective of whether or not you need to worry about him—what kind of powers does he have, how strong is he, how often in the past has he been known to swear revenge on people and has he ever followed up on it … Those kinds of things.”

  “But you didn’t look at that? That was kind of the info I thought would help me out.”

  “It will, but I wanted to know who D’Abo is. Where did he come from? If he’s supposedly so powerful, why isn’t he more well-known? Does he have enemies? And if so, how healthy are they?”

  Daphanie considered all that and nodded. “Sort of a ‘know thy enemy’ thing, then.”

  Corinne nodded. “And thy enemy’s enemies.”

  “So what did you find out?”

  The woman’s eyes lit up as she flipped open her folder. “Oh, all sorts of juicy little tidbits.” She flipped through a couple of pages and slid out a copy of a black-and-white newspaper photograph featuring a beaming Charles D’Abo flanked on either side by a city councilman and the mayor of New York. “Is this the idiot from the nightclub?”

  Daphanie nodded. “That’s him. Is he actually friends with the mayor?”

  Corinne snorted. “As if. From what I can tell, D’Abo doesn’t have that kind of juice in this city. I think this was just a lucky break for him at a fund-raiser for the neighborhood where his business is located. He was standing in the right place at the right time to get some attention.”

  “Hmm. He seems to have quite a talent for that,” Daphanie observed.

  “Bitter,” Corinne teased, setting aside the photo and pulling out several pages of photocopied newspaper clippings. “Now this is the stuff I found interesting. I definitely wanted to get a look at D’Abo’s temple, or whatever you call the place where witch doctors do their voodoo.”

  “A hounfort, ” Asher said.

  “What?”

  “It’s called a hounfort, ” he repeated. “The ritual space for the congregation.”

  “Oh, right. Well, I wanted to check out his hounfort, if that’s really the right name for a former tavern, brothel, and drugstore that now sells charms, potions, and bad incense out the front door while bringing live chickens, the occasional goat, and regular parades of worshippers in the back.”

  “Chickens and goats?”

  “Illegally, of course, but D’Abo is apparently one of the minority of voodoo practitioners in Manhattan who still adhere to the old traditions of the occasional animal sacrifice.”

  “Yuck.”

  “Yeah, I have to agree on that one. Apparently, it’s something they don’t do in front of the ‘tourists,’ so I haven’t been able to find anyone yet who’ll talk about those rituals, but I was able to dig up some info about the more public ones.”

  “And?”

  “And they sound pretty standard from what I can tell. Not that I’m any kind of expert on voodoo,” Corinne said. “Attendees have a feast, make offerings to the gods or loa they intend to honor for the evening, then there’s a whole bunch of drumming and dancing intended to invoke the spirits to join the party. The goal is for one of the spirits, at some point in the evening, to take temporary possession of one of the dancers. They call it ‘being ridden.’ Then the spirit can be asked for advice or favors or blessings or whatever. Different spirits have different personalities and demands that have to be met before they’ll appear, so things can vary a bit around the same theme.”

  In the back of her mind, Daphanie could swear she heard drums, beating out the strange, familiar rhythm of her dreams.

  She shook her head to clear it and looked at Asher. “I thought you said whatever D’Abo practiced was some kind of bastardized form of the standard voodoo or Afro-Caribbean religious thing.”

  “From the few people I’ve talked to so far, I’m pretty sure parts of it are,” Corinne agreed, “but those parts are the ones involving the animals and the stuff not many people want to talk about.”

  “Oh.” A wave of frustrated disappointment swept over Daphanie. Everywhere she went looking for answers these days, it seemed like she only wound up finding more questions.

  “Wait,” Corinne said, suppressed excitement coloring her voice. “I haven’t gotten to the interesting part yet.”

  “What’s the interesting part?” Asher demanded.

  “Well, you made D’Abo out to be such an egotist that I expected to dig up lots of stories about how he’d struggled his way out of poverty to build his spiritual empire by the sweat of his brow. Even if it was all a bunch of hokey, it’s still what I expected to hear.”

  “He was ‘born a poor black child’?”

  Corinne nodded. “Exactly. But that’s not what I found. As it turns out, D’Abo didn’t so much build anything as he inherited it. Not from his parents, or anything like that, but from the people he studied voodoo with. The temple D’Abo supposedly controls has existed in New York since 1797.”

  That took Daphanie by surprise. She’d expected the same story Corinne had, all about struggle and sacrifice and building his army of followers from the ground up. After all, it made a guy sound more like a guru if he collected his acolytes based on the power of his words and his personality than if he’d just inherited them from the guy who came before him.

  “I didn’t think Manhattan had a big nineteenth-century voodoo cult,” she said mildly.

  “We didn’t. We only had one voodoo priestess, who was apparently a transplant from New Orleans.”

  “Well, of course she was.”

  “Yeah, D’Abo’s temple apparently sprang up around her. He’s just the latest head honcho.”

  Asher nodded. “I think I remember hearing something to that effect.”

  “So does that mean I don’t have to take him seriously?” Daphanie asked. “I mean, if he’s more of a figurehead than an actual big, bad muckety-muck—”

  “No so fast, grasshopper. Let’s not jump to conclusions.”

  Daphanie battled back her impatience, but she employed not much grace while doing so. “Let’s not string along our friends, either.”

  “Sorry.” Corinne flashed an unrepentant grin, but sobered quickly. “I’m not ready to dismiss the guy quite yet, especially not until Graham and De Santos report back. He might not have founded his little army of darkness, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he lacks the power to lead it. Besides, I’ve been thinking about that dream of yours.”

  Daphanie didn’t bother to ask which one. She’d only ever told Corinne about one dream, the one she’d had in the exact the same detail every night this week. She hadn’t mentioned that to Asher yet. She didn’t even like thinking about the dreams, let alone talking about them.

  Asher frowned. “What about Daphanie’s dream?”

  “I’m not sure. It’s just stuck with me, is all, and the more research I’ve done this week, the more I’ve started to think that it sounds awfully like an accurate description of one of the c
eremonies at D’Abo’s temple.”

  Frowning, Daphanie examined the thoughtful look on her friend’s face. “What do you mean? I’m fairly certain that the place in the dream didn’t feel like the inside of a building. It didn’t even feel like I was in the city. It was more like being out in the middle of nowhere. You know, all crickets and crackling fires. There was no feeling of walls around it. More like … I don’t know, a tent.”

  “Well, I don’t know either.” Corinne shrugged. “I’m just telling you that the more I read about D’Abo, the more I felt like I was reading someone else’s account of your dream.”

  “So, what? You think this guy is somehow … controlling my dreams?” She felt Asher lay a warm hand on her shoulder and found herself leaning toward him, absorbing the comfort.

  “I think that’s unlikely,” he murmured, his tone soothing. “If D’Abo had that ability, I imagine he would already have sought some greater action than just the dreams. He would have influenced you in some other way, and I see no evidence of that.”

  Corinne huffed out a brief sigh. “I’ve gotta say, I’m relieved to hear that. In circumstances like this—meaning anything having to do with the Others—I get a little suspicious about stuff. I don’t know what D’Abo is capable of. Magic is still almost as new to me as it is to you. But if Asher says you’re okay, I’m going to take his word for it. Still, if I were you, I just think I’d keep my eyes open.”

  Daphanie pulled a face. “Even when I’m asleep.”

  Asher squeezed her shoulder reassuringly. “Don’t worry. That’s my job, remember? I’ll make certain nothing happens to you. Trust me.”

  Daphanie nodded, then found herself going very still inside her own mind. She did trust him. The knowledge hit her like a sledgehammer to the forebrain, but it was there, solid, instant, and undeniable. She trusted Asher completely. After just a few short days of sitting in his glowering presence and wishing him to Hades, something inside her had decided to acknowledge that she felt safe with him. She knew in her core that he would never do anything to harm her and would, in fact, do everything in his power to protect her.