INTRODUCTION
In the Shadows, there is death. A witch must always follow the Rede. If he turns his back on it, he will be met with darkness, with evil. For with great magic comes great responsibility.
~The Ayers Grimoire~
CHAPTER 1
My best friend has been bound to a Demon! A Demon! When she told me, I almost laughed. I mean, she was hysterical, and she looked sick. And then, while sitting at the library, she lost it. Really lost it, mumbling things no sane person would believe. Luckily for her, I don’t really consider myself sane. My visions have put me in the freak category. And I had seen Dayton bound by chains in a vision. Chains and blood ... Oh, my God! We’re both insane.
~Monroe’s Totally Wicked Book of Shadows~
“A witch, is a witch, is a witch, is a witch ...”
The screeching was causing a migraine, and I winced.
“They make special places for voices like yours, NeeCee.”
If I sounded irate, it was because I meant to sound that way.
My sixteen year-old cousin, Bernice Woodward Ayers, looked up from behind the checkout counter of her mother’s Southern Charms shop, a boutique of paranormal paraphernalia, and blinked at me owlishly.
“American Idol?” she asked hopefully.
I hated to burst her bubble, but she had enough problems without me raising her expectations.
“No,” I answered. “It’s called a pillow against the mouth.”
I was not being mean. Mean was her mother giving her the name Bernice Woodward. Sometimes it’s okay not to pass down a family name. Just saying. It’s why I called her NeeCee. Not much better than Bernice but definitely better.
Mean was her mother letting her pick out huge, gaudy brown frames for the glasses she wore now when they clashed badly with her long, strawberry blonde hair and thin face.
Mean was her mother telling her she was ready to join the Pierre de Lune Coven, which in English simply means moonstone. According to my aunt, moonstone sounded so much more romantic in French. But no matter how romantic it sounded, it didn’t change the fact that Bernice was not ready to cast spells. For one thing, anything she attempted didn’t just simply fail, it backfired. Seriously backfired.
“You’re one to talk, Roe,” Bernice grumbled as she flipped through a fashion magazine with all the gusto of a potato interested in being peeled.
NeeCee wasn’t a bad sort. She was just lonely. I think, in the long run, my aunt wanted a debutante for a daughter who liked wearing clothes from Alloy and Body Central, not an intellectual whose idea of fun was memorizing the herbs that came into the shop. It didn’t help that NeeCee didn’t have a magical talent yet either. Unless one counted accidentally changing red dye to blue.
“You’d look good in this, you know?” NeeCee said as she turned the magazine toward me.
The page was a collection of stretch jeans and belted tops. I cringed inwardly. I might tease Bernice for her differences, but I had plenty of my own.
Born Ellie Elizabeth Jacobs, I had changed my own name to Monroe as a child due to my affection for film star Marilyn Monroe. It was my mother’s fault really. Mom had a thing for black and white movies which had fed my love for all things vintage. Modern clothes could take a dive in the dirt and roll in it for all I cared. The baby blue knee-length dress and platforms I had on now was a clear indicator of my fashion sense. And that didn’t include the headband holding back my bobbed light blonde hair.
“You should tell your mom to trash that crap.”
My honesty tended to be brutal. Bernice rolled her eyes and turned the page back around.
“Having any luck with the grimoire?” Bernice asked, her gaze on the leather-bound book in my hands.
I sighed. Most of my mother’s family were Wiccans, and the Ayers grimoire was a massive tome filled with centuries of our family’s history, spells, recipes, experiments, talents ... you name it, but I was interested in only one thing. Demonology.
I was fifteen years-old when I had my first vision. It had been a waking dream of a distant cousin who had died two days later from an illness no one could explain. The vision had been vague, ambiguous enough I couldn’t offer any explanation of my own, and it had shaken me. It had been the beginning of my abilities.
A year later, I’d had another massive insight. This one had involved my best friend, Dayton Blainey. In the revelation, she had been covered in chains and blood. Within a week, her fanatically religious aunt had bound her to a blood-sucking hybrid Demon. And while Dayton’s story eventually worked itself out, I discovered something about myself through her journey. I had the uncanny ability of tapping into Demonic energy. I had even managed to craft amulets that could fend off Demonic possession. As handy as this was, it was also dangerous. Why? Demons now wanted me dead.
Hence the reason I now found myself in my aunt’s New Orleans shop, flipping through Ayers’ history, and being forced to live upstairs with said aunt and badly named cousin while the romantically dubbed Coven attempted to discover a way to sever my ties with Demonic powers. We weren’t having much luck. For one thing, we had yet to discover a spell or a witch with the power to strip me of my so-called curse.
Witches with real magical abilities are often misunderstood. We don’t always need spells. Certain objects, such as moonstones, can amplify magic, but we don’t require incantations unless what we need is outside the realm of our individual abilities. Our magic is all about control, learning how to manage whatever energy we were born with. Circles, magical objects, and spells were for the benefit of the Coven, for members who didn’t have powers but practiced Wicca, and for members who had magic but needed to use gifts they didn’t have.
“Can I see that?” NeeCee asked suddenly, and I looked up to find her standing over me, her hand outstretched, her gaze on the grimoire.
I narrowed my eyes. “Why?”
NeeCee sighed. “I think I know something that may help you.”
I felt myself start to panic and tamped it down. The only thing worse than dust (I’m a slight neat freak) was Bernice’s gift for inadvertently abusing magic.
“I don’t know— “
“Oh for God’s sake!” NeeCee said irritably before snatching the book out of my hand.
I tried grabbing for it and failed.
“NeeCee ...” I warned.
She ignored me, dancing around different glass displays, her eyes on the book. She was naturally clumsy, but inside a store she’d practically been born into, she had the grace of a gazelle. It worked against me.
She paused abruptly, twisting so that her stomach was against a display of dried herbs, her index finger moving down a page. The display between us was too thick for me to see the parchment clearly, and I started edging toward her, my heart beating fast.
“NeeCee ...” I warned again, my teeth gritted.
She grinned. “Look! It’s a reversal spell. This could help, you know. And it’s simple.”
She lifted a candle from a cabinet behind her and lit it. It was black.
Crap!
I blew the wick out.
“No!” I cried. “There is no way in hell I am letting you perform anything on me. Understand?”
Bernice frowned, her forehead creased. “You really have that little confidence in me?”
I could hear the hurt in her voice, and I felt a pang of sympathy. Truly I did, but I wasn’t about to let it affect my judgment.
“I have plenty of confidence in you, NeeCee, but these are old spells. They are unpredictable. Extremely unpredictable.”
Bernice lit the candle again and moved it behind her, her finger trailing the page. She turned, facing me.
“Quae mea tua sunt, tua mea sunt quid . . .” she proceeded stubbornly, her chin raised, her eyes large and confident behind her spectacles.
The words were Latin. I recognized them instantly and cringed, jumping onto the display case, my blue dress riding all the way up to my hip. At this point, I didn’t give a flip if a
customer came in right now and got an eye full of my black low-rise panties. I just wanted the dead blasted grimoire.
“NeeCee, no!” I shouted, just as the black candle behind her exploded, ebony wax falling onto the wooden surface around it.
I covered my face, but even though the blast sounded loud inside the store, there was no collateral damage. The only outwardly disturbing sign was a small, perfect wax circle made of six black spots on the worn wood around the scarlet glass candleholder. I winced. Bernice froze.
“NeeCee,” I whispered.
“Yeah?” she muttered.
I stared at the ruined workstation as the grimoire fell to the floor at Bernice’s feet. “That wasn’t a reversal spell.”
She didn’t answer me, but I knew as well as she that her Latin was weak. She was a pure genius with numbers and logical magic, but this ... this ...
“What—” she began.
I spun and faced her, my face a mask of rage.
“Which I have is yours, yours is mine ...” I translated, letting the words fade as NeeCee’s face lost color.
She knew what the words meant.
“Monroe,” she pleaded just as the door to the shop dinged.
We both looked up, our eyes landing on my aunt’s pink-clad back as she dragged in a box labeled “statues,” her breath ragged as she moved. It was a specialty order from a local witch with a talent in glass blowing and handmade pottery.
NeeCee looked back at me, her eyes beseeching.
“Monroe,” she begged.
Aunt Clara stood up, dusted her hands off on her pants, and exhaled, her blonde bangs lifting from her flushed face. My willowy aunt was a very, very good friend of color. Presently, her silky hair was offset by a pink pantsuit and dangling pink purse. A butterfly sewn on her buttoned-up top sparkled at me, taunting me in an “I dare you to stick your finger down your throat and gag” fashion. I was so not a pink fan. Personally, anything that resembles the color of Pepto Bismol should be reserved specifically for vomiting.
As soon as Clara’s gaze met ours, her eyes narrowed. “Everything okay in here girls?”
NeeCee scooted carefully in front of the candle, and I had to pinch myself on the leg to keep from bellowing about Bernice’s total magical ineptitude. It was a serious lesson in patience and fortitude.
“Just fine,” I mumbled.
If we couldn’t figure out how to reverse whatever damage NeeCee had caused with the grimoire’s spell, I was going to make sure she got taken through the ringer. Maybe even burned at the stake. Or hung. There were Hunters out there who still did that even now.
Aunt Clara used her foot to shove the box to the side of the door before moving toward us.
“Something tells me it’s best not to ask. If you two are fighting, work it out. I’ve got a meeting with Belle in ten minutes in the back.” Clara’s gaze moved to Bernice. “There are a few things that need to be unboxed and moved from the storage room upstairs.”
Bernice nodded, her face pale as her mother’s eyes moved to mine.
“Mind the store for a few minutes? I need to confer with the Coven, but I think I may have another formula we can try on you.”
I swallowed hard. “If you suggest eating any sort of weird, previously extinct animal remains, I will barf now and save you the trouble.”
My aunt glared at me, but she’d be lying if she said the brew she’d tried to make me drink the night before didn’t contain some sort of animal entrails. I’d flatly refused.
“This problem you have is daunting, Roe. At this point, we’ll try anything.”
Her words cut me. Calling me daunting was worse than calling me a freak or an anomaly. If I were a freak, I’d only be a danger to myself. I could handle that. Daunting in thesaurus terms is the same thing as scary, disheartening, intimidating, and overwhelming. I was daunting because my connection with Demons was a risk to my entire family. Handling that was out of the question.
Daunting was the reason why I chose not to argue as Aunt Clara gave me one final perusal before exiting through a door into the back. Compared to the store, the back rooms, used for rituals and readings, were large and mostly bare.
“Thank you,” NeeCee whispered as she quickly scraped the candle from the table, using her fingernails to pry off the six wax dots.
I pointed a finger at her face.
“Nah ah! Don’t you dare thank me, Bernice Woodward! Not until you go upstairs, start digging through the grimoire for the spell you did, and find a way to fix it. Until then, I’m having murderous thoughts that requires groveling not gratitude.”
NeeCee took me seriously, shoving the fallen grimoire under her arm as she scurried to a door that opened onto a set of wrought iron stairs. She paused only once, seemed to rethink whatever she planned to say, and then gently closed the door behind her. I was left alone in the shop, my thoughts whirring.
If Bernice had done the incantation I was sure she’d done, then we were in a hell of a lot of trouble. To begin with, my aunt wouldn’t need to be feeding me anymore so-called formulas. She would need to be feeding Bernice. Because if I was right, and I was almost certain I was, NeeCee had performed a power swap spell.
CHAPTER 2
A Demon. I’m still trying to process it all. My best friend and a Demon bound by blood. That should be bad enough, but now after meeting the Demon she’s bound to, I’ve discovered it gets worse. I can feel Demons. Really feel them. And it hurts. It feels worse than when I stuck my finger in a light socket when I was six (my brothers and their stupid dares). It makes me want to hide, to pretend there aren’t such things as monsters, but I’ve never been good at hiding. Whether I like it or not, I’m no longer just a witch. I’m a Demon lightning rod. And I’m pretty sure I’m not being overly dramatic.
~Monroe’s Totally Wicked Book of Shadows~
“I want him dead!” the woman yelled passionately and with dramatic, senseless gusto.
What’s with that, anyway? It was always dramatically and with a fanaticism I felt the situation never actually warranted. There must be some club somewhere committed to the overhaul of rich husbands. My aunt got some really messed up customers.
“Dead!” she repeated, my eyes crossing reflexively as she waved a grainy photograph frantically in front of my nose.
Oh geez! Get real! This called for backup—of the chocolate variety no doubt, and I reached inconspicuously for the bag full of Hershey’s kisses stuffed on the top shelf of the counter where I stood. Peeking quickly, I managed to get one snatched, unwrapped, and in my mouth before the photograph once again committed a hit and run with my face. This time, I grabbed for it just as it crashed with my nose.
“Your husband, I presume?” I asked, as I glanced at the smiling, flirtatious gentleman in the photo.
It was amazing how alike they all looked. Like the Stepford wives, only with the wrong equipment, if you know what I mean. And it was the usual scenario—middle-aged businessman, half hanging out of a luxury vehicle while smiling with promising ease at a figure just out of camera shot. Couldn’t people be more creative? I don’t know, throw a wrench in the mix somewhere. Maybe add a UFO or an alien or two.
“I want him dead!” the woman repeated.
I sighed sullenly around the chocolate piece of heaven tucked within my mouth.
“That much I get,” I muttered.
She was babbling now, on and on about some such nonsense, but I lost her somewhere between her first squeal and the big alligator tears. Dead. They always wanted them dead. Can anyone say life insurance? If I was promised a cut from every woman who’d entered this shop since I’d arrived two months ago with the same preoccupied “please kill him” statement, I’d be on my way to one very wealthy 18 year-old girl right now, living it up on some deserted, purchased island in the middle of nowhere with Paul Walker rubbing lotion into my back.
“Are you listening to me?” the woman asked suddenly, snapping me rudely from my self-absorbed day dream just as Paul was abou
t to lean over and …
“You do realize that committing murder, no matter how it is accomplished, is an illegal act, Mrs. … ummm …”
My sentence trailed off as I realized that somewhere within her monologue, I’d missed the introductions. She glared unobtrusively at my figure, taking in my somewhat tall stature, short blonde hair, and light blue eyes in a head to toe examination that left me feeling invaded. She should have seen me this morning. It had been much, much worse.
“Davidson. Mrs. Davidson. You’d be aware of that if you’d been listening,” she remarked, giving me a hard look. “And, yes, I am well aware of the law. My husband is, after all, a lawyer.”
I bit back a laugh. Weren’t they always? Doctors, lawyers, real estate magnates … it was always the same. I rolled my eyes before reaching behind me to grab the alternative I’d learned to use when dealing with scorned women, a small twinge of compassion filling me for the man it would eventually affect. And then I looked at Mrs. Davidson and lost all semblance of pity. Any man who’d marry this woman and then cheat on her in the first place deserved a wakeup call.
“Why not an alternative?” I asked smoothly, laying the strange looking doll on the countertop as Mrs. Davidson raised a brow.
Curses, Fates & Soul Mates Page 60
