by Ann Macela
Table of Contents
Title Page
Awards and accolades for THE OLDEST KIND OF MAGIC by Ann Macela:
Praise
Dedication
Copyright Page
Acknowledgements
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER-ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER-SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Teaser chapter
Awards and accolades for THE OLDEST KIND OF MAGIC by Ann Macela:
• The Heart of Denver Romance Writers 2006 Aspen Gold Winner for Best Paranormal Romance.
• Second Place for the Romance Writers Ink More Than Magic 2006 Contest for the Paranormal Category.
• Honorable Mention in the Paranormal Category of the Write Touch 2006 Contest of Wisconsin Romance Writers.
• Third Place for Best First Book in the 2006 Beacon First Coast Romance Writers Contest.
• Second Place, Mainstream/Single Title category—Texas Gold, East Texas RWA.
• Finalist, Cover Art—Anne Bonney, Ancient City Romance Writers.
• Finalist, Paranormal category—Published Laurie Contest, Smoky Mountain Romance Writers.
“Bravo, Ms. Macela, you have a hit on your hands and this should be an award-winning year for you! This author is a voice that can not be denied—her first published paranormal novel is distinctly defined, with refreshingly sharp nuances! . . . This is a phenomenal paranormal story that you must read! This comes with the highest recommendation from the reviewer. IT IS A PERFECT FIVE HEARTS —the story screams more sequels and this reviewer can not wait to get her hands on those!”
—The Romance Studio
“. . . Ann Macela has crafted an enjoyable, magical romance with an uniquely fresh premise and interesting characters.”
—Affaire de Coeur
FOUR AND A HALF HEARTS!
“THE OLDEST KIND OF MAGIC, Ms. Macela’s debut novel, was an absolute delight to read. From the moment the reader starts this gem it is almost impossible to set it aside.”
—Love Romances
DEDICATION:
To my critique group: Mary Jane, Rita, Victoria, Laura, Sherry, Noirin, and Jan. This book would not have been as good as it is without your generous help, astute critique, and unflagging support.
Published 2007 by Medallion Press, Inc.
The MEDALLION PRESS LOGO is a registered tradmark of Medallion Press, Inc.
If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment from this “stripped book.”
Copyright © 2007 by Ann Macela
Cover Illustration by James Tampa
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Typeset in Adobe Garamond Pro
Printed in the United States of America
10-digit ISBN: 1-9338361-6-4
13-digit ISBN: 978-1933836-16-4
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
Many thanks to my critique group; to Paula and Helen, good friends and great readers; to sisters-in-law Connie, Laraine, Elaine, and Barb and nieces Megan and Caryn for their reading at the “beta” level. Thanks also to Windy City RWA, RWA Online, and especially to JoAnn Ross and her group, for their encouragement and support.
And, as usual, to my very own “Blue Mage” and computer wizard, Paul, without whom I couldn’t have produced a word and who is always ready to be my “research assistant” and helper in spellcasting.
PROLOGUE
Floating along on a bed of rainbow colors, he’d never felt so pleased or comfortable or happy or smug in his life. In a few minutes, his soul mate would be there, and they’d come together in their First Mating.
He was ready. More than ready, his body told him.
Where was she? Why wasn’t she there yet?
He stood up and began to pace. The colors of his bed swirled and coalesced into the walls, floor, and ceiling of a room. A door appeared on the far side. It opened.
Through the door walked his dream woman. Tall, blond, gorgeous, built.
Oh, yes, built.
But clothed. More than merely clothed. Dressed in what appeared to be a suit of armor right out of the Middle Ages. Complete with some sort of round helmet in her hand. It looked like a basketball.
What the hell was going on? She was supposed to mate with him, not fight. She was supposed to be naked like he was. How could they mate with that metal between them?
“Why are you wearing that ridiculous getup?” he asked.
She looked at him like he was crazy—or like she was totally surprised to see him there at all. Maybe she hadn’t heard him. She turned, as if to leave.
He shouted, “Where are you going?” His voice seemed to come out in a whisper.
She glared at him, ran her eyes up and down his body. That only served to excite him more, and his erection grew to painful proportions and throbbed to match his increasing heartbeat.
He reached for her, but she retreated a step. Held up her hand like a traffic cop. “Stop!”
He couldn’t move. He’d run into an invisible wall.
“No,” she said. She put the helmet contraption on her head, lowered the visor, turned, and stalked out the door, slamming it behind her.
“No!” he yelled.
“Noooo!” he groaned as he realized his soul mate—the only woman in the world for him—had left, abandoned him, denied their connection.
“Noooooo,” he whimpered as the enormity of her action hit him in his magic center, and he doubled over in pain. Without a soul mate, he was doomed to live alone and lonely forever.
“No,” he snarled as he thrashed in his bed, finally waking himself enough to come to his senses.
He sat up, panting and sweating like he’d just played a fast quarter on the court. His chest ached as if somebody had punched him. And he felt horribly, totally sad and abandoned.
He concentrated on breathing until his body was back to normal.
What a nightmare. Where had it come from? He never had bad dreams, much less anything like that . . . disaster.
He must have been spending too much time around his sister and her new husband. All their soul-mate togetherness must have rubbed off on him. Reminded him he might meet his mate soon
.
Not that he wanted to. He was only thirty-four and wasn’t ready to settle down. He had at least a couple more years of glorious bachelorhood. The dream was just a manifestation of his wanting to get his latest job going and over with.
Why, then, did he feel so wasted? So alone? So lost?
Like a bad hangover, the feeling of utter devastation followed him into the shower, and he had to concentrate on programming spells before it went away.
CHAPTER-ONE
“Are you accusing me of hacking into our system, Herb?” Francie Stevens looked her boss straight in the eye while dismay warred with outrage in her mind. How could he think such a thing about her, that she would be a party to such an act? And against the company she worked for?
She grasped the edge of the conference table between them, ready either to push back from it or to propel herself across it at her accuser, but she wasn’t sure which.
“Not at all, Francie.” Herb Greenwood, vice president for information technology at Brazos Chemical, made placating gestures with his hands. “Don’t jump to any conclusions. Just calm down and we’ll explain. Bear with us, okay?”
Francie struggled to control herself. This news was the last thing she expected. She told herself to follow Herb’s advice and calm down, but to listen very, very carefully to what was being said. She wasn’t going to be a fall guy or a scapegoat for anybody. She pushed her glasses up on her nose and nodded stiffly, but didn’t relax her posture. “Okay.”
Herb waved a hand at the man sitting on Francie’s right. “As I was saying, thanks to Clay Morgan here, we’ve discovered someone’s been invading our computer system for a couple of weeks. Clay installed a program that tracked the guy back to his computer. That computer turned out to be your desktop at home. We know you’re not the one doing the hacking.”
“But how?” she asked. “How can someone be using it without my knowing? Nobody’s broken in. I’d certainly notice something like that.” She glanced at the two flanking her on each side, Morgan to her right and Daria Benthausen, Clay’s sister and fellow consultant, on her left, then looked back at Herb. “How do I prove I’m innocent?”
“We already know you are. You don’t have to prove anything.” Her boss ran a hand through his thinning brown hair and turned his bright blue eyes on Morgan. “You explain, Clay. You were running the operation.”
Francie concentrated on the consultant. Herb had hustled them all into seats at the table after she came into his office, and she had not really studied the man when they were introduced.
So this was the famous Clay Morgan. She had heard of him, but never met him: the man reputed to work magic on computers. Francie didn’t know about his effect on computers, but he certainly had one on women. Even she, immune though she was to good-looking, charming men and armored behind her clothes and her glasses, could feel the potency of his masculinity. No wonder Laura, the system administrator, had practically swooned over him when she relayed the tale of how quickly he had fixed the network and one of the servers after an electrical disaster last year. No wonder rumors swirled of his reputation with women—which included his never dating one for very long.
Tall, dark, and handsome, indeed, with coal-black hair and an action-movie hero’s firm chin and jaw, although the small hook in his nose saved him from being beautiful. Six foot five if he was an inch—one of the rare men to whom she would literally have to raise her eyes.
She reminded herself again of her immunity to such men. Not that he was trying to be charming; at the moment he appeared positively grim, but with an overlay of confidence . . . and perhaps arrogance. She’d always liked self-confidence in a person, male or female, but arrogance was a turnoff. Especially arrogance based on good looks coming from genetics, not hard work. She wondered if he really lived up to his “computer wizard” fame.
If she had to be honest—as she tried to be to herself, at least—there was something about him that called to her, stirred up her insides. She’d probably been listening too much to Tamara and her pronouncements about Francie’s need for a fling and some romance. But she couldn’t stop from fidgeting under the intent gaze from his pale gray—no, silver—eyes. She shivered and shifted in her chair. His gaze as sharp and hard as a sterling-silver blade, he was staring at her as though he could see into her soul.
“We’ve had you under surveillance, Francie. Herb was certain you were not the hacker, but I thought it better to put someone on a watch first to discover what was really going on.”
His words cut through her anguish and anger, and she looked at him with a feeling somewhere between horror and fury. “You actually had someone following me?” The fact that she had never noticed added a layer of dread to the mixture of reactions scrambling in her brain.
“Yes. It’s a good thing we did, because it cleared you of any suspicion,” Clay answered, his tone cool and certain—as if he had all the answers to her questions.
Francie clenched her fists on the table to keep them from shaking. She took a deep breath and forced herself to focus on the words, “cleared of any suspicion.” Relief and curiosity pushed her anger aside—but only slightly. She couldn’t help sniping at the man who lounged in his chair with such total self-assurance. “Well, I’m very happy to hear my innocence has been proven to your satisfaction, Mr. Morgan.” She turned to Herb. “Look, I need some straight answers. What is going on? Did you suspect me, too?”
“No, I swear to God, Francie . . .” Herb began.
“Francie.” From Francie’s other side, Daria interrupted and put her hand on top of Francie’s clenched one. “It’s okay,” she said calmly.
Francie turned her gaze to the consultant and knew immediately Daria was going to help with this strange situation. The small woman with dark curly hair and bright green eyes was on her side. A light flicker from somewhere caused her to blink for a second, but then the men seemed to fade into the background as Francie focused on Daria’s next words.
“Herb believed in you all along,” Daria said. “We used surveillance to see if there was anyone who might have access to your computer when you weren’t home. Last Wednesday night when you went to your party . . .?”
“My book club.” Francie nodded.
Daria nodded also. “While you were there, someone entered your apartment and used your computer to access our system. He ran right into Clay’s trap. When the operators reported the hacker’s attempt to log in, Clay sent the investigator following you back to your place. Through the window, the investigator saw a man sitting at your computer. He followed the man when he left. We know who he is. We know you didn’t have anything to do with the hacking.”
A real wave of relief washed over Francie, and she closed her eyes for a moment to take a deep breath. She opened them again and asked, “Who was it?”
“Kevin Brenner, Tamara Lewis’s boyfriend,” Daria replied.
“Kevin? Kevin!” Disgust surged through Francie at the revelation. She pushed her chair back and almost rose before accepting the statement as the truth and falling back into the seat. “Oh, ick, to even imagine Kevin in my apartment, going through my things.”
Just saying the words left an awful taste in her mouth, and she scraped her tongue over her teeth as if she could remove both it and the idea. Then several impressions clicked in her brain. “He looks at me sometimes with a weird expression, as if he knows all my secrets and has a big one of his own.” She shuddered in revulsion and hugged herself. Kevin had broken into her home, but . . . “How on earth did he get in?”
“Francie, he had a key,” Daria said softly. “How could he have gotten it?”
“Tamara’s my best friend and lives across the courtyard. She has my key and I have hers so we can water each other’s plants and bring in the mail if one of us is traveling. He must have stolen it from her.”
Francie thought about her friend a few moments, then swung her gaze around the table, settling on Herb. “Look, I can’t believe Tamara is mixed up in this. We
’ve been friends for a long time, ever since we were room-mates at UT. We’re like sisters, and I can guarantee her computer skills consist of word processing, spreadsheets, and accounting applications. She doesn’t have a dishonest bone in her body. There’s no way, no way at all, she could be hacking or be an accomplice to Kevin.”
That statement raised another problem in her mind, and she couldn’t help blurting out, “I have to tell her. Oh, my God, she’s going to be devastated to find this out about Kevin. What if she’s really serious about him? She hasn’t said so, but . . .”
“Francie, we can’t tell her,” Daria said. “Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“Because we have a plan to find out what Brenner is after, and we’d like you to help us with it,” Herb said. “We don’t know if he’s working on his own, or if he’s doing it for his employer. He works for NatChem, did you know that?”
“Our competitor? No, he never told me, and I didn’t ask. Tamara just said he was in sales, a manager, I think, but he never discussed business with me.” She clenched and unclenched her fists to lessen her seething tension. All she could think was, That putrid son of a . . .
“Will you help us, Francie?” Herb asked.
Francie blinked at Herb’s question, then sat back in her chair and crossed her arms. She frowned at him for a moment while she contemplated his question. You bet she’d help. She’d do whatever it took to get back at the slimeball. She’d like to punch him in the nose. She’d like to see him roast in hell. She’d like to . . . Stop, she commanded herself. Throwing a hissy fit in front of her boss would not help the situation. With an effort, she grabbed hold of her roller-coastering emotions and couched her answer in calmer tones. “Certainly. What do you want me to do?”
