Black Magic Woman

by Christine Warren

  Cursing under her breath, Daphanie braced a shaking hand against cool wooden molding and pushed herself down the hall to the living room. She could feel herself listing back and forth like a drunk, shoulders bumping into the walls, as she headed toward the sound of voices. Or more particularly, the sound of one voice, deep and low, as it rumbled reassurances at her visitor. The visitor she should have been up to greet.

  It took three times as long as it should have to walk the twenty-odd feet, and by the time Daphanie staggered into the living room, Corinne had a look on her face that proclaimed her about sixty seconds away from calling 911.

  “Your friend here was just telling me that you’re fine, just sleeping, and that I shouldn’t worry or scream ‘fire’ at the top of my lungs to bring the entire building running.” Corinne spoke to Daphanie, but she kept her eyes on the figure directly in front of her. A towering, forcefully male figure that Daphanie had hoped against hope was just another character in her strange nightmares. No such luck.

  “But I thought I’d just check with you before I took his word for it,” Corinne continued. “Are you okay, Daphanie?”

  As she asked the question, she shifted her gaze down and found Daphanie where she had stopped to lean heavily against the back of the sofa.

  “Holy crap, Daph! What’s the matter? Are you hurt? What did he do to you?” Corinne dropped two large paper bags just inside the apartment entryway and shoved past Asher’s physical barricade with the determination of a mama bear. She grabbed her friend by the shoulders, her eyes searching for some sign of injury. “My God, you look like hell!”

  Daphanie managed a shaky laugh and used a trembling hand to push her disordered hair back out of her face. “Thanks. That’s just what a girl likes to hear first thing in the morning.”

  “I mean it. Tell me what happened. Did he rape you? Drug you? What?” Even as she peppered Daphanie with questions, Corinne’s hand was already pulling her cell phone out of her pocket and flipping it open. “I’m calling 911. Run if you want to, you bastard, but I’ve seen your face, and I’ve got friends on the force. The cops will hunt you down like the dog you are. And I’ll be right there with them.”

  Reaching a hand out, Daphanie managed to flip the cell closed before Corinne could complete the call. “No, don’t. I’m fine. Asher didn’t hurt me. I don’t need the police. It’s not—There’s nothing wrong with me.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Really,” Asher confirmed, shutting the apartment door and turning to face his accuser, who still watched him with unveiled suspicion. “Daphanie is unharmed, as I told you. In fact, as I’ve taken her under my protection, I can very confidently assure you of that fact, as well as of the fact that she will remain so.”

  “Taken her under your protection?” Corinne repeated, her voice a mixture of incredulity and disdain. “What are you, the papal see? Daphanie, who the hell is this guy?”

  The urge to laugh welled up again. Daphanie might even have given in to it, if she hadn’t sensed the sharp note of hysteria behind it. Instead, she groaned. “That’s … a really long story.”

  “Well, I’m really curious.”

  Daphanie sighed. She still felt odd, as if the last vestiges of the dream fog lingered like cobwebs in the back of her mind. But at least she remembered herself now, and Corinne and Niecie and the rest of her family. She remembered the wedding yesterday and the unfortunate incident afterward and the fact that this was Danice and Mac’s apartment. They had persuaded her to stay here while they were off on their honeymoon and the place she’d leased for herself was being repaired and repainted. She also remembered her granite-faced, diamond-hard-headed bodyguard.

  “Come in and sit down.” Daphanie gestured toward the sofa, turning herself toward the kitchen. “But I need caffeine for this. Let me put on a pot of coffee.”

  “Don’t bother. I brought coffee. And breakfast.” Corinne retrieved her parcels and herded the other woman with the tenacity of a border collie into the sitting area in the middle of the loft’s great room. “Of course, I only brought two cups,” she added, shooting another glare in Asher’s direction.

  His expression remained stoic. “I don’t drink coffee. I’ll make myself tea.”

  Daphanie watched him retreat to the kitchen and search out the bright red tea kettle. She admitted to herself that she’d harbored a secret hope that he had been just another figment of her subconscious imagination, conjured up along with the fire and the drums of her dreams. Not only would that have meant she’d dreamed up her very own—stunningly hot—guardian angel, but it would have signified that the whole nasty incident at the nightclub had never happened. If she had her way, a bad dream would explain everything.

  Of course, she hadn’t had her way since before setting foot in that club last night. She certainly hadn’t had her way during the argument outside of it, nor during the trip home, during which she’d been shadowed by the man currently bustling around her sister’s kitchen as if he owned the place. Her way would have involved ditching Asher’s hovering presence on the curb with the cab, or at the very least in the lobby of the building. She’d certainly tried to make that happen, just as she’d tried to leave him in the elevator, then at the door to the loft, but the dratted man had just bulldozed his way into the apartment until Daphanie felt as flat as newly leveled concrete.

  She couldn’t decide what drove her crazier—the way Asher Grayson, self-proclaimed bodyguard and hero-of-the-hour, seemed to get his way through sheer force of will and a complete disregard for the opinions of others; or the way that, despite all her protests and the absolute oddity of being herded and managed by a total stranger, she had never felt the slightest twinge of fear that he meant to do anything other than protect her.

  Normally, if a strange man insisted on following her from a club, to her building, and up into her apartment, she’d have had the cops on speed dial before he formed the intent for any of it, let alone before he laid claim to pillows from the spare room and stretched out on the sofa. She’d grown up in Brooklyn, for God’s sake; she wasn’t some naïve little girl from someplace where no one locked their doors. She locked her door, set an alarm, and took self-defense classes to boot. She didn’t trust the average person any further than she could thrown him, but something inside her instinctively trusted Asher.

  It made no sense, even less sense than her instant attraction to him. At least that could be blamed on chemistry. Chemistry and the fact that the man had the face of a warrior and the body of a god. Even now, after the arguments and the intrusion and the takeover of her last fourteen hours, she could appreciate that the form inside those battered jeans raised her temperature more than a couple of degrees.

  “Just give me the word, Daph,” Corinne hissed, jerking Daphanie’s attention back to her visitor. She had leaned close under the cover of emptying the bags of bagels and beverages onto the coffee table. “I have my cell right here. I can have the cops here before that bastard knows what hit him.”

  “No. Corinne, really, no,” she repeated, injecting some firmness in her tone this time. “I’m fine. Asher isn’t holding me hostage. I just had this really … weird dream.”

  “Are you sure? Because you really don’t look like yourself, you know.”

  Daphanie laughed again, helplessly. “Yeah, that’s the thing that was weird. In the dream, I wasn’t myself. I swear I was someone else entirely.”

  Corinne paused, looking surprised and confused. “Who?”

  “I haven’t the foggiest idea.” And she meant that literally. “Lord, you must think I’m insane. First you show up and find a strange man answering Niecie’s door instead of me, then I stumble out of the bedroom, probably looking like I just escaped from my mad attacker. I’m surprised you haven’t given up on the police and called an ambulance to take me straight to Bellevue.”

  “I still haven’t ruled it out.”

  Daphanie caught her glaring at Asher’s back again and sighed. “Let’s clear this up
again. Frankly, I haven’t got the energy today to try to convince a bunch of strangers of my sanity. It’s going to be hard enough with you.”

  “I must discourage you from going anywhere today.” Asher stepped into the sitting area, a steaming mug in his hand and a politely implacable expression on his face. “After the events of last night, it would be wisest to remain at home and out of sight, to give the situation time to defuse itself.”

  “What situation? And who the hell asked you anything?” Corinne snapped, visibly bristling.

  “Corinne, take it easy. It’s okay. Asher means well—”

  “Maybe I’d believe that if one of you explained what he means to begin with.”

  Asher lifted the mug to his lips and eyed Daphanie over the rim. “Would you care to do the honors? I believe I’d enjoy hearing your take on the … situation.”

  Daphanie cast him a dark look—a lot like those Corinne had been sporting all morning—before she turned back to her friend and drew a fortifying breath. “I left the reception early last night.”

  “Your sister’s wedding reception?” Corinne looked nonplussed. “Why?”

  Daphanie leaned forward and buried her face in her hands, scrubbing for a moment before she answered. “That’s, like, a really long story.”

  “I’ll let you know when I need a bathroom break.”

  Corinne’s expression offered no quarter. Daphanie glanced at Asher, but all he did was lean one hip against the end of the sectional and sip his tea. She was on her own.

  “I’ve been trying to take the whole Others thing in stride, but I guess it shook me up more than I wanted to admit,” she explained. Saying that felt like admitting to some great sin, simultaneously a relief and a wrench of shame. “Danice told me that you all found out about it before Reggie even got married. That was at least a year ago, but I had all this sprung on me this week. Whatever promise the Others made Niecie make about keeping them a secret, she damned well took it seriously. And she usually tells me everything. But about this, not a word. It left me feeling totally out of the loop. I came here expecting to hear wedding details and cute new-couple stories, and instead I hear that the world as I know it wasn’t really the way I knew it at all.”

  “Honey, that’s how we all felt at first,” Corinne said, laying her hand over Daphanie’s and squeezing sympathetically. “You should get Reggie to tell you the story about when we first figured out Dmitri was a vampire and decided it was up to us to save her from his evil clutches. She still won’t let us live that down.”

  “But that’s the thing.” Daphanie knew she wasn’t explaining this well, but she struggled to find the words to convey the complex mix of emotions that had swirled through her over the last few days—confusion, disbelief, fear, excitement, betrayal, curiosity. “You all found out together, and you had someone there to explain things to you. You had Reggie and Dmitri, and then Missy and Graham. And now Danice and Mac. But Niecie told me in all the crazy lead-up to the wedding, and now she’s gone on her honeymoon, so she can’t be here to show me the ropes.”

  “Well, I’m probably not the best one to ask,” Corinne said, “because I’m on the outside looking in myself. But Reggie and Missy would be happy to help you out, and anything they don’t know, their hubbies will. Dmitri and Graham and their friends practically run the Others in Manhattan.”

  “I actually got a head start on that last night. Getting things explained, I mean. That’s where Asher comes in.”

  “Oh, goodie. I was hoping we’d get to that part of the story.”

  “I went to a club called Lurk. I met someone at the reception. An Other. And while we were talking, he said that Vircolac is kind of like an Others country club—only the rich and famous hang out there. He said the real Others would be more likely to be at Lurk.”

  “‘He’?” Corinne’s eyes narrowed. “ ‘He’ told you that? Who the hell is ‘he,’ Daphanie?”

  “His name is Quigley. He was at the reception trying to scam from the dinner and avoid being seen by my sister. He said he knew her, but she might be mad at him at the moment. I think he called himself some kind of imp—”

  “An imp of Satan!” The woman jumped to her feet and set her coffee aside with a thump. “Daph, Quigley isn’t just any imp. He’s the imp who led your sister and Mac into Faerie and then abandoned them to be taken captive by the King’s Guard. He nearly got them killed.”

  The fist in her stomach began aiming heavy punches at her sternum. “What are you talking about? Niecie never said anything about almost being killed, or about being taken captive by anyone. What the hell didn’t she tell me?”

  “Apparently a whole bunch of things, but that’s something we can deal with later. Right now, I think you need to tell me what happened last night. Everything that happened last night.”

  And here she had really hoped to forget it. All of it.

  “Da-aph…”

  With a sigh, Daphanie launched into the story, beginning with her first spotting the chubby red hand on top of the table next to hers and ending with waking up to find Corinne at the door and the distinctly grumpy guy with wings still lurking in her sister’s apartment. As she spoke, the angry, guarded expression on the other woman’s face gradually melted, settling into one of mingled disbelief and grudging respect.

  She nodded at Asher. “I guess this means I should apologize for threatening you with the cops. You had plenty of time to hurt Daph if that was what you were after, and the TV is still here, so…”

  Asher acknowledged the graceless apology with a nod and ignored the rest. “No one owes me thanks. I am a Guardian; Daphanie is human. Protecting humans in danger is my job.”

  In the bright light of day, Daphanie couldn’t decide how she felt about being referred to as this man’s “job,” but it didn’t feel a whole lot better than it had felt the night before.

  “Feel free to give notice anytime,” she grumbled. “I didn’t ask for your ‘protection’ and since I don’t see the jerk from last night hiding behind the drapes, I think we can assume that I’m safe now.”

  Asher set down his teacup with great deliberation and leveled those silver-gold eyes on her with serious displeasure. “I was afraid after listening to your version of last night’s incident that you weren’t taking this seriously enough, and now I’m certain of it. Just because you’ve been removed from D’Abo’s presence doesn’t mean you’re any safer than you were inside that nightclub.”

  “How do you figure? Unless you’re planning to curse me this time.”

  Corinne made a strangled sound, but Daphanie was too busy watching Asher’s jaw clench to see what might be the matter with her friend.

  “I am stronger than temptation, Ms. Carter. I am also a Guardian, and therefore the only thing at the moment standing between you and a serious magical threat.”

  “Um, I’d like to get back to the serious magical threat thing in a minute,” Corinne said, raising her hand tentatively even as she interrupted the conversation. “You might have picked this up from us talking earlier, but neither Daph nor I are what you would call experts in Others identification. So would you mind explaining exactly what a Guardian is, first off?”

  Asher shifted his gaze from one woman to the other and sighed. “In the simplest terms, we are a group of defenders whose job it is to protect humans from harm at the hands of the Others. If a human does violence against a human, that’s what the police are for. If an Other attacks an Other, the Council of Others can take appropriate action. But humans are so much weaker than the Others, at such a disadvantage against beings who can use magic or enhanced strength and senses to harm them, that the Guardians were created to … balance the scales, as it were.”

  “So are you human or an Other?” Corinne demanded.

  “What good would I be if I were merely another human?” Asher scoffed. “Guardians are our own race, created by the first Watcher and bred since then for the sole purpose of continuing our mission.”

  The m
an hated explaining himself. It showed clearly in his expression, which Daphanie watched as intently as she listened to his words. She couldn’t get over how a face could be simultaneously so blankly grim and yet so easy for her to read. Maybe it wasn’t really his expression she was reading, she decided. Maybe it was those changeable silver-gold eyes.

  “Oh, right. Daphanie mentioned the wings. I suppose that should have answered the human question, but I guess I’m a little unclear on exactly how you’re going to protect her. Or from what.”

  Daphanie saw a flicker of anger in Asher’s metallic eyes and reached out a hand as if she could grab Corinne and yank her back from the precipice. But Corinne was a reporter. She alternately scaled and leaped from precipices for a living.

  “I see Daphanie is not the only one who fails to take this seriously.”

  Corinne shrugged. “I guess I just don’t see what the big deal is. So she got into an argument with this D’Abo guy at the club. You broke it up, he said he wouldn’t hurt her, and everyone walked away. It sounds to me as if Daphanie was right in thinking you overreacted.”

  “Is that so?” Asher’s voice had turned silky. Somehow it made Daphanie wary, especially when he turned to her and arched one imperious brow. “Daphanie, you mentioned earlier that you had an odd, unsettling dream last night. Why don’t you tell us about it.”

  There wasn’t a hint of question in his tone; it was all polite command.

  “What does her dream have to do with—”

  Asher cut her off and gestured for Daphanie to go on. She wished he hadn’t. In fact, she wished she could forget the dream altogether. The coffee and conversation had all but wiped the last of the cobwebs from her mind. Just thinking about the dream made her feel somehow muddled again, as if the fog might begin to creep back with the memory.

  “It was just … weird,” she began reluctantly. “I’ve never had a dream like this before, where I really felt like I wasn’t myself. I mean, I’ve had dreams where I wasn’t really me. You know, where I was playing some other sort of character or in some nonsensical situation, but I’ve never had a dream before where I felt like I did in this one. I really felt like someone else, right down to my bones. The thoughts, the feelings, the way of looking at the world. They were all just … foreign. Not me at all.”