Martin flinched. Jazz did not flick an eyelash, but she wondered how a man reputed to be a driving force in the television industry could fail to connect her unexpected appearance at his front door with the return of his curse. A curse she"d effectively eliminated-until the sleaze tried to cheat her.
"Maybe she came back," Jazz said, "because you were a bad boy."
Martin looked wary. "I don"t know what you mean."
"You know exactly what I mean. You stopped payment on the check you gave me." Jazz stepped into the foyer, plucked from her pocket the check with its giant red Stop Payment stamped across the surface and waved it under Martin"s nose. "Not a smart way to do business. Especially with a witch."
"I wouldn"t do that!" Martin cried, aghast. "It must have been my wife who ordered the stop payment!"
"Oh, that"s right! Blame it on my sweet, precious Lenore!" Doreen"s voice cried out. "You are such a worm, Martin Reynolds! You won"t even take responsibility for your own mistakes."
"Don"t be shy, Doreen." Jazz said. "Please join us."
She waved a hand at the closest wall and Doreen"s features-high forehead, hawklike nose, and sharp chin-bulged out of the stucco. Her sightless eyes zeroed in on Martin and he shrieked.
"Did you think you could get rid of me so easily, you slime?"
"You miserable b.i.t.c.h!" Martin threw his highball gla.s.s at the wall.
Before it could explode in a shower of gla.s.s splinters. Jazz flicked her fingers again. The gla.s.s floated down to stand neatly on a nearby table, and Doreen"s face instantly shifted to the boldly splashed oil painting over the fireplace. Jazz thought it might be a Pica.s.so; a real one.
"What a cheap painting," Doreen sneered. "Bought this at one of those starving artist sales, didn"t you?"
"What the f.u.c.k are you doing?" Martin screamed at Jazz and flung a pointing finger at the fireplace. "That"s a Pica.s.so!"
"I told you what would happen if you stiffed me, Martin." Jazz shrugged. "I told you the curse would come back tenfold."
"All right, you win." Martin pulled out a handkerchief and mopped his perspiring brow. "I"ll write you another check. Anything to get rid of that miserable old b.i.t.c.h."
"Ah, ah, ah, no B words, and no more checks. Now it"s cash." Jazz held out her hand. "Five thousand dollars, please."
"Five grand?" Martin howled. "Our deal was for five hundred."
Jazz smiled. "That was before you cheated me out of my fee, Martin."
"I don"t keep that kind of cash here at home."
"Yes, you do. There"s twenty-five large in the safe in your office," Jazz said. "The safe your wife knows nothing about. Would you like me to open it for you? I can from here, you know."
"No," Martin snarled, spinning on his heel toward the back of the house. "You wait right here."
"The first number is four!" Jazz called after him, always ready to help.
Then she grinned and headed for the kitchen. A handful of chocolate chip cookies lay scattered on the countertop where Doreen"s angry face distorted one side of the cookie jar sitting in the center of the counter.
"Good grief, Doreen. You blew your top." Jazz picked up the lid and helped herself to a cookie from the jar. One bite urged her to take a second one. She could never resist chocolate chip.
"I told her he was no good, but did she listen to me? No," Doreen seethed. "She should"ve divorced him before the network started canceling his shows. And I"m sure he"s hiding money in off-sh.o.r.e banks."
"Too late now." Jazz gave Doreen"s Gingerbread Girl decorated lid a sympathetic pat. "Lenore will have to figure that out on her own."
Martin stalked into the kitchen and thrust a packet of bills at Jazz. "Here. Now get rid of the old b.i.t.c.h."
"No name calling, Martin." Jazz moved her fingertips over the money, counting it by touch to make sure the bills totaled five-thousand. Fool witch once, shame on you. Fool witch twice, oozing sores and an eternal rash in private areas.
It was all there. She tucked the cash into the inside pocket of her jacket, glanced at the scowling cookie jar and said, "Be gone."
Doreen"s face vanished as Jazz"s final word lingered in the air. Martin blinked and his mouth fell open.
"That"s it?" He glared at Jazz. "You say two f.u.c.king words and she"s gone? No fancy fireworks or arcane rhymes? No waving a wand around?"
"You"ve been in television too long, Martin." Jazz opened a drawer, pulled out a meat hammer and smashed the cookie jar to smithereens.
"What have you done?" Martin screamed, clutching at his hair. "My wife treasured that d.a.m.n thing!"
"Blame it on the maid," Jazz said. "Or find one just like it on eBay."
Martin moaned and wiped a hand over his face. His stress etched on his face was warring with his Botox job. "Lenore is going to kill me when she gets home."
"Had to be done, Martin. The cookie jar carried the curse. Now you need to bury the pieces. And you have to bury each piece separately, at least three feet apart. Be sure you say, "Be gone," over each one as you cover it with dirt."
Martin gaped at her. "There"s a million pieces here!"
"Hm, not that many. Maybe only a thousand, but you"d better get started right away, hadn"t you?" Jazz turned to leave, paused in the kitchen doorway and looked back at Martin, staring at the shattered cookie jar. "One more thing, Martin."
"What?" he asked, not bothering to look at her.
"It"s never good to cheat people. It only messes up your karma."
When Jazz climbed into the T-Bird, Irma quickly extinguished her forbidden cigarette. "Lands sake, I could hear screaming all the way out here. What did you make this one do?"
"I broke the cookie jar and told him he had to bury each piece at least three feet apart. Good thing he has a lot of property because he"s going to need it." Jazz started the engine, sneezed from the cigarette smoke lingering in the car, and pulled the money Martin had given her out of her jacket. "And I charged him five thousand dollars."
"Don"t tell me." Irma held up one white-gloved hand. "You"re going to give every penny of it to the Save the Witches Fund."
"These are weird times for witches, Irma. I wish the Fund had been around years ago when my sisters and I needed a hand." Jazz pulled away from the curb. "It"s not like I need the money. I make enough driving for Dweezil."
"Oh, yes. All Creatures Limo Service." Irma made a face. "I"m sure your mother would be so proud that you grew up to be a taxi driver."
"Stuff it, Irma," Jazz snapped and headed for the freeway.
"I swear, curse elimination always puts you in a bad mood, so let me guess." Irma sniffed, staring up at the freeway signs that whipped past. "We"re going to see that alcoholic."
"Nooo," Jazz said. "I am going to see my friend Murphy. You are going to sit in the car, which you"ve been doing for the last ..." Jazz did the math in her head, "fifty-odd years."
"Then let me go in with you sometimes when you do your work," Irma said. "I could help, you know."
"I eliminate curses, Irma, not add to them," Jazz said with a laugh. "You haven"t been able to leave the car in fifty years as it is. Plus what would you do in there? Find a bed sheet and wander around flapping your arms?"
"If you gave me a chance, you could find out just what I could do."
Irma stuck her nose in the air and turned her head to look out the side window. A cigarette smoldered between her white-gloved fingers. Jazz had never been able to figure out how a fifty-year-old ghost managed to obtain Lucky Strikes on a regular basis.
Twenty minutes later, Jazz whipped the T-Bird into a parking spot in front of Murphy"s Pub. The one-story weathered building near the waterfront had a faded, gilt-lettered sign over the door. No ambiance here. She could hear tinny music coming from the nearby pier, where the amus.e.m.e.nt park"s Ferris wheel glittered with multi-colored lights.
"This is a No Parking zone," Irma announced, a fresh Lucky Strike appearing between her fingers. She sighed and made it disappear when Jazz shot her a warning look.
"Relax, Irma." Jazz pushed her door open. "I"m not lucky enough to have you towed away to a nasty, dirty impound lot." Instead of using a car alarm, she set an illusion spell that allowed anyone without magickal sight to see the car only as a rusting Pontiac instead of the snazzy T-Bird. And anyone who happened to stumble past the spell and still try to steal the car would be in for a nasty surprise. When it last happened in 1980, the hysterical car thief babbled on about the car being filled with snakes. No wonder the police thought he was flying high on drugs.
Fiddles playing Morrison"s Jig engulfed Jazz as she stepped inside the pub. The music swept her back in time to the little Irish village where she was born. Memories were so strong, she swore she could almost smell peat burning on the hearth. Seven hundred years ago there had been no pubs, but there were meeting places for the men to gather, drink ale and brag. She was the little girl sent to fetch Da home, cuffed for her efforts as often as not. She shook off the memory as Murphy caught her eye and raised his hand in greeting. She returned the gesture and wove her way between the maze of tables and chairs. The patrons of Murphy"s Pub cheerfully ignored the statewide restaurant smoking ban. The two local cops sitting at the end of the bar weren"t about to enforce the law when they each had a cigarette in their hands.
"Don"t you look like a hot and s.e.xy lady of the night?" Murphy said as she slid into her usual place near the beer taps. He pushed a basket of pretzels toward her and rested his elbows on the bar"s surface.
"Thank you, kind sir," Jazz said, letting a hint of Old Ireland creep into her voice.
"So tell me, darlin", you have any whips and chains hiding under that sc.r.a.p of a jacket?" He leaned across the s.p.a.ce between them as if to get a better look.
She picked up the mug and sipped the warm, yeasty ale with a grateful sigh. "You"re such a flatterer, Murphy. Is that why the boys in blue are showing up here instead of heading over to one of their usual hangouts?"
His gaze momentarily shifted toward the cops, then came back to Jazz. "Some vamps have come up missing lately, so they"re checking all the bars in the area. I told them vamps don"t tend to come in here. We don"t serve the right kind of refreshment." He chuckled.
"I bet they chose this place because they knew no vamp would come in here. They just wanted a place where they could kick back and drink," she replied, picking up a handful of pretzels and munching away. In seconds the basket was empty. Murphy replaced it with a filled one.
"They"ve sure been doing that." He winked at Jazz. "And what brings you to my establishment wearing a hot outfit like that?"
"Getting even with a client who tried to cheat me out of my fee."
"One of Dweezil"s clients or a cursed client?"
"Cursed," she replied.
"The world was saner before creatures came out of the woodwork," Murphy muttered, nodding acknowledgement at someone"s shout for another Guinness. "And according to the boys in blue at the end of the bar, a lot safer."
"But not as exciting." Jazz winked back. "Live and let live, Murphy." She started to say more when she felt a faint stroke of cold trail across the back of her neck. She lifted the mug to her lips and tilted her head back just enough to look in the gilt edged mirror behind the bar. That"s when she saw him, sitting at the rear corner table, ready to intercept her gaze in the mirror. Proof positive that a vampire without a reflection is nothing more than an old Bela Lugosi tale.
Nikolai Gregorivich. Tall, dark, and arrogant. Eyes the color of the Irish Sea. Features cold as ice. And a vampire.
Jazz had not seen him in over thirty years. What was he doing here?
White-hot anger settled deep inside and flowed through her veins like lava.
Focus, Jazz, focus.
What in Fate"s sake was he doing here? Why wasn"t he hanging out at The Crypt down in the warehouse district? There the undead found everything from O Positive to A Negative on tap.
He sure as h.e.l.l wasn"t here to see her. Maybe he was here for the same reason as the two mortal cops were. Nikolai worked as an investigator and enforcer for a vampire security agency. From experience, Jazz knew that vampire cops and mortal cops in the same place didn"t always play well together, even if Nikolai seemed to get along better with mortal law enforcement than most of his kind did. A quick glance at the end of the bar a.s.sured her the two cops had no idea a vampire was even in the bar.
"Uh, Jazz."
She tore her eyes away from the mirror and saw the mug of ale bubbling in her hand-bubbling like, well, like a witch"s cauldron.
"Is there something wrong?" Murphy asked, raising an eyebrow.
Jazz snuffed her temper and smiled, watching the bubbles recede. "Not a thing."
He frowned as he wiped up the liquid and then glanced up at a rumbling sound overhead. "What was that?"
"Probably a low-flying jet," she lied, dialing her temper back a few more notches. At this rate, she"d be sent to witchy anger management. She pushed the mug away. She knew any ale that reached her stomach now would only turn sour. "It"s been a long night. I think I"ll head on home, Murphy."
"It"s not that late," he said with a hint of invitation in his voice.
She smiled and shook her head as she pulled out a twenty and left it on the bar, ignoring Murphy"s attempt to push it back toward her. She turned away and headed for the door.
Another boom of thunder rattled the windows as she reached the exit.
"d.a.m.n it," Jazz muttered, hurrying outside before her witchy tantrum drew the two cops" attention. "And d.a.m.n him for invading my territory."
Hex Appeal
Chapter One.
"You shall pay, Nick Gregory. This I vow. You shall suffer and scream for a mercy I shall deny you." Jazz"s parted lips trailed across Nick"s collarbone. She ran the tip of her tongue up the taut lines of his throat while her fingers danced their way down his abs following the line of crisp hair lower still.
"Mercy," Nick whispered as her fingers wrapped around his erection. He lay naked on his bed, legs slightly spread to accommodate Jazz"s bare thigh draped over his.
"But we"ve just begun, darling," she purred, nipping his earlobe just hard enough to cause him to jump in response, then soothed the bite with her tongue. "You must lie there very still while I have my way with you."
"Feel free to do what you will-soon enough it will be my turn." He lowered his voice to a husky growl that made promises she knew he would keep. Her body quivered in antic.i.p.ation.
But for now, it was her turn and she intended to make the most of it.
Leaning back, she admired the view. Sheer male beauty stretched out beside her. Nick had kept himself in excellent physical condition in life and, as a member of the undead, his well-honed body would never deteriorate. She tangled her fingers in the light dusting of dark brown hair on his chest. She knew many women admired a hair-free chest, but she liked to see a bit there, as long as the man didn"t look as if he needed a good chest waxing. No, Nick"s was just right. Surrendering to temptation, she lowered her head to nibble on a dark brown nipple that peeked out among the hair. It peaked to a hard nub and brought another groan to his lips.
"Wuss," she teased, dividing her attention between both nipples, alternating with tiny nips of her teeth and soothing licks of her tongue. She glanced up under the cover of her lashes. "Why no nipple rings? So many vamps love them as bling."
Nick made a face. "Not my style. Makes me think it would be too easy to loop a chain through it. Make me a slave."
"Hmmmm," she giggled and hummed as she mouthed her way down to his navel. "The picture that conjures up ..."