Black Magic Woman

by Christine Warren

  Daphanie gave a growl of her own, this one fueled mostly by frustration. “So what do I do? Sit around and wait to see if something worse happens? Go knock on D’Abo’s door and demand he give me my scrap of fabric back? What?”

  Surprise flickered across Erica’s expression. “D’Abo? Charles D’Abo? Is that who threatened you?”

  Daphanie nodded. “Why?”

  The older woman shook her head. “I’m simply surprised to hear that. He is not one I would immediately have guessed would cause trouble for someone like you, especially considering those you number among your friends. He’s widely viewed as more cow—er, more cautious than that.”

  “Well, I doubt he knew who my friends were when I spilled a glass of root beer on him.”

  “Is that what started all this?” Erica sounded bemused.

  “As close as I can figure.”

  “Odd. Oh, not that D’Abo would make a fuss over something so trivial,” she assured her, “but that he would cling to it for so long. I wouldn’t have guessed him to have that long of an attention span.”

  “I guess I made an impression.”

  “I would say so.”

  “The question stands, though,” Daphanie persisted. “You’ve said the curse is already on me, so I have to figure out a way to get rid of it. Or at least keep it from making me do the wacky.”

  Asher touched her hand with his. “I will be with you at all times. You will never be alone, never be left unprotected. I’ll watch over you as you sleep, if that’s what it takes.”

  Daphanie rolled her eyes. “Fat lot of good that’s going to do. You can’t beat up a curse, Asher. Whatever is affecting me isn’t something that will care if I have a live-in bodyguard. It needs to be removed.”

  “Of course it does, but I’m afraid that removing the curse is not within my power.” Regret filled Erica’s tone, but somehow, that failed to make Daphanie feel any better. “Voodoo curses are tricky, and definitely not part of my area of expertise.”

  “Who do we need to talk to, then, to get the curse removed?”

  Asher’s fingers curled around Daphanie’s and squeezed with gentle reassurance. He asked the question automatically, as if there were no question that he was in this with her, that there was a “we” fighting this thing, not just a “her.” Her heart clenched again, but this time the feeling didn’t stem from fear. In fact, it might have even caused her a flutter of nerves. But in a good way.

  “I’m afraid that the surest way to remove a voodoo curse is to confront the priest who laid it.” Erica’s expression filled with sympathy, and Daphanie had to bite back a curse.

  Wasn’t that just the way of things?

  “Right, because I’m sure that the people who like to lay curses are always just happy as hosannas to remove them when asked politely.”

  “I didn’t say it was simple. I said it was sure.”

  Asher squeezed her hand, cutting her off from speaking again. “If that is what needs to be done, then that’s what we’ll do.”

  He looked down at Daphanie, and she could see that in spite of his customarily austere expression, his eyes watched her softly. With this man, she realized, the truth was always in the eyes.

  “The sun is rising even as we speak,” he said, raising his head to glance out the window where the sky had indeed begun to pinken with morning light. “You need to get some more sleep, but later today, we will go and beard the lion in his den. Apparently, he did not understand when I told him that I had taken you under my protection. I believe it is time to enlighten him further.”

  When spoken in that silky, menacing tone, the term “enlighten” took on an entirely new meaning, one Daphanie suspected might involve a great deal of pain.

  “You’ll take me to D’Abo’s temple?” she asked. He might have used a plural pronoun, but in Daphanie’s experience, when alpha males used the term “we,” it was always better to confirm they hadn’t been speaking with the royal “we.”

  He hesitated. “You are under my protection, Daphanie Carter. It is my duty to take you wherever you need to go.”

  As answers went, that one made perfect logical sense.

  So why did it leave Daphanie feeling so entirely unsatisfied?

  Ten

  In the human world, the term “alpha male” is often used to refer to a man with a certain sense of arrogance, machismo, and natural command. In the world of the Others, alpha is a formal title reserved for the male head of a Lupine pack.

  Of course, that doesn’t mean certain Other men don’t have plenty of arrogance, machismo, and command of their own.

  —A Human Handbook to the Others, Chapter Three

  Asher spent most of the morning feeling restless and dissatisfied. While Missy had finally prevailed upon Daphanie to get a couple more hours of sleep—mainly by having Erica Frederics dose her with a potion guaranteed to keep her from dreaming—he had been left at loose ends, with nothing to do but watch the clock and twiddle his damned thumbs.

  “For the sake of the bloody moon, Grayson, if you don’t stop that infernal pacing, I’m going to have your liver for lunch.”

  Asher turned to the Silverback alpha, who sat sprawled in a battered armchair lazily flipping through the channels on a wide-screen television, and glowered. “You had lunch an hour ago.”

  “Yeah, but I’m a fan of alliteration, and ‘lunch’ and ‘liver’ both start with l. ”

  “What about dinner?”

  “The only body part I could think of that starts with d is ‘dick,’ and there’s no way in hell I’m going to threaten to eat any man’s dick.”

  Asher resumed pacing.

  Graham growled. “Seriously, dude. You’re driving me nuts. If you’re just going to spend the damned day dying to get your hands on D’Abo, why don’t you go get it over with? I’ll even ride shotgun. Anything to get you out of my damned house.”

  Asher paused for a moment, then continued pacing toward the far side of the room. “I promised Daphanie,” he mumbled.

  Graham lifted a hand to his ear. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I promised Daphanie I’d take her with me,” Asher bit out, fixing the alpha with the dirtiest look he could manage. “I can’t go without her.”

  “Ohhh.” Graham smirked, drawing out the word and embuing it with worlds of meaning, all of them snide. “You promised the little human girl you’d do whatever she asked you to. Now I understand.” He held up one finger, like a maître d’, and adopted a snooty tone of voice. “Pussywhipped, party of one, your table is now available.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Very eloquently put.” The alpha continued to grin at him. “I didn’t think you Guardians were allowed to get involved with humans.”

  “I’m not involved with Daphanie,” Asher protested with a growl. “But there aren’t any laws against it.”

  “Ahhhh, so you checked !”

  “Asshole.”

  “Puppy.”

  “I’m not involved with D—with the human.” Asher caught himself and tried to infuse his voice with conviction. All the conviction the rest of him lacked. “I don’t get involved with humans. I protect them; it’s my job. Which is why I know that they’re too ignorant and too fragile for any other kind of relationship.”

  Graham nodded, pursing his lips around a smile. “Yeah, I know. I told myself the same thing before I met Missy. Hell, after I met her, too. Right up until I realized she smelled just like warm, ripe peaches.”

  “She smells like myrrh,” Asher murmured before he could catch himself.

  Graham pretended not to hear. “I mean, I’m the first to admit that part of Lupine culture can seem … primitive to outsiders. We’re not exactly sweet, fluffy lapdogs, after all. I knew perfectly well that no human woman would be strong enough to deal with our traditions. I mean, can you imagine a human woman running through the woods on a mate hunt? She’d be dead meat.”

  “Exactly.” Asher nodded in agreement. A Lupine mate hunt was notori
ously savage. In it, all the unmated members of the pack gathered in a rural or wooded setting and at a predetermined signal, the female would flee, leaving the males to give chase. When a male caught his chosen partner, he would mount her and take her right there, cementing their bond as a mated pair in the most primitive way possible. The idea of a human woman in that situation didn’t even bear consideration.

  Until Asher glanced over and saw the grin threatening to split the alpha’s face in two.

  Wait a minute. Hadn’t he heard a rumor that Missy Winters had been forced to run in a mate hunt before she married Graham because of some sort of challenge to his authority over the pack? She had apparently made it through just fine.

  Asher cursed. “This is an entirely different situation.”

  “Right.” Graham nodded. “I mean, Melissa was a sweet, innocent kindergarten teacher who had spent her whole life putting other people before herself when I met her. How could your independent little Amazon of a blacksmith ever live up to that kind of feminine ferocity?”

  “I hate you,” Asher muttered.

  “Back atcha, my brother.”

  “It is a different situation. No insult intended, but you’re Lupine and your wife is human. The difference in your expected life spans is negligible. When Daphanie was born, I had already celebrated my five hundred and twelfth birthday.”

  “You should meet a friend of mine,” Graham suggested. “You might have heard of him? His name is Dmitri Vidâme. His wife is a real firecracker. Not to mention being just shy of a millennium his junior.”

  “You can’t use that comparison. A vampire has the option of offering immortality to his mate. I can’t make Daphanie a Guardian. It doesn’t work like that.”

  “No, it doesn’t. But does that mean it can’t work at all?”

  “Can you think of a way it would?”

  Graham threw up his hands. “Look, it’s not my job to find a way for the two of you to be together. I’ve got enough on my plate without adding ‘matchmaker to the Others’ to my résumé. All I’m saying is that it’s ridiculous to pretend you’re not in love with the woman just because that would make your life easier.”

  “I never said I was in love with her.”

  “You never said you have balls, either, but I thought that was a pretty obvious one.”

  Very few things in this world irritated Asher more than arguing with someone who possessed the unmitigated gall to be right.

  The question now was, as Graham would likely put it, what the hell did Asher intend to do about it?

  * * *

  Clearly Asher intended to spend the day pissing her off, Daphanie decided. By the time they left the Winters’ house, she had noticed that he seemed to have a talent for it.

  “I want to go home,” she had repeated at least twenty times while they had discussed plans for the day. “I refuse to confront D’Abo wearing borrowed clothes.”

  “What’s wrong with your clothes? They look fine to me.”

  Daphanie had glanced down at herself, at the baggy gray sweatpants that refused to stay up above her hip bones despite repeated tightening of the drawstring at the waist, and the virulent green T-shirt with the huge, yellow smiley face placed strategically across her tits. Although since the damned shirt was so tight on her, the smiley face’s expression had strayed disconcertingly close to a leer.

  “Fine in what sense?” she’d demanded.

  “Fine in the sense that they keep you covered and protected from the elements. What the hell else are clothes supposed to do?”

  She had rolled her eyes. “God, you are such a man.”

  He had stared at her impassively.

  She’d tried again. “Look, while I’m grateful to Missy that she was able to provide me with anything at all to wear, these are not the clothes I would choose to have on when I confront the man who’s trying to kill me.” To be honest, she wouldn’t have worn those clothes to confront so much as a mirror. She’d heard lots of stories about Missy’s store of emergency clothes, but she had never been told those clothes were donated by people with such a mean streak.

  “Why does it matter what the hell you’re wearing? You’re going to an occult store, not a fashion show.”

  “And no one will take me seriously if I show up looking like a blind ragpicker!”

  While she couldn’t claim that Asher had ever quite grasped her point, he had at least given in. But he did manage to sulk during the entire cab ride to Mac and Niecie’s apartment.

  In a manly sort of way, of course.

  He followed her from the cab into the lobby of the building, or maybe stalked after her would be a more appropriate description. She supposed she should be grateful he restrained himself from stomping.

  She wished to God she could understand the man, but she’d never met anyone more baffling in her entire life. Part of her wondered if it had more to do with him not being human, or not being a woman.

  He simply baffled her. One moment he was treating her like a burden, an onerous chore he couldn’t wait to see finished and off his hands, and the next he was cradling her against his chest and roaring out a demand that the alpha of the Silverback Clan do something to save her from some sort of evil curse. At least, that was how Missy had described it.

  Daphanie had seen for herself, though, how one moment he could look at her as if she were a buzzing insect he longed to swat, and the next minute, his eyes could blaze with concern. Or desire. Earlier that morning, during that predawn conversation, he had squeezed her hand tenderly and looked ready to battle the entire world on her behalf, but since she had joined him in Missy and Graham’s TV room after waking for the second time, he’d been staring at her as if trying to decide in which of a thousand different ways he would finally choose to be rid of her.

  Was it too much to ask for a little consistency?

  All Daphanie could say for sure was that if fate really had brought them together, it had a pretty sick sense of humor. Why bring together two people so obviously not meant to be together?

  Well, if she were honest, Daphanie had to admit she wouldn’t object to the idea of having Asher Grayson as her lover. What sane woman would? The man was hot enough to singe her retinas, and only a dead woman could have missed the jolt of electricity that passed between them every time they touched. The chemistry clearly worked. What worried Daphanie wasn’t the chemistry.

  It was her heart.

  She knew instinctively that Asher Grayson could break it without even half trying. In fact, she very deliberately refused to look inside that pesky little organ for fear she would learn it was already too late for her. Just because she had always believed in love at first sight didn’t mean she could afford to have it happen to her. Especially not now.

  Her mind remained on her six-foot-plus problem as she led him off the elevator and down the hall to Niecie’s apartment, so it took her a full minute of standing in front of the shattered door with her key out and ready before the reality of what she was looking at sank in. When it did, her stomach turned over.

  “Oh, my God,” she breathed, taking an instinctive step back.

  Asher lifted her bodily and set her aside, cursing softly as he placed himself between her and the ransacked apartment. “Wait here,” he snarled, placing a palm in the center of her chest for emphasis.

  Daphanie didn’t think she could have moved if she’d tried.

  She stood frozen, watching in numb horror as Asher made an efficient sweep of the apartment. Daphanie could see that the great room was empty, but Asher checked closets and cabinets, under furniture and down the hall where the bedrooms and bathrooms were located separately from the main space. When he returned, his face looked hard and grim and Daphanie wished she could feel the same. She was too busy being horrified.

  “They’re gone. Probably long gone,” Asher said, the corners of his mouth drawn straight and tight. “Come inside. You need to look around, see if anything’s missing.”

  She shook her head and
remained where she was. “How could I tell? They’re not my things. They’re Niecie’s.” Horror gave way to guilt. “Oh, my God, what am I going to tell Niecie? She was doing me a favor, letting me stay here, and now look what’s happened! How am I going to tell her?”

  Asher stepped back out of the apartment and took her hand, squeezing gently. “This isn’t your fault,” he insisted, his voice low and reassuring. “Your sister will understand that.”

  “Not my fault?” Her voice sounded hollow and incredulous, just like she felt. “Of course it’s my fault! Why else would someone do this? I mean, it’s obvious this wasn’t a robbery. The television is still here, all the stereo and computer equipment. Hell, Mac must have thousands of dollars’ worth of gadgets and surveillance equipment here that he uses in his business … Whoever was here wasn’t looking to fund a drug score.”

  “You don’t—”

  “He was looking for me.”

  She felt Asher stiffen beside her. He said nothing, but she knew she was right. This had been done to hurt her, not her sister. Niecie was the innocent party, the injured one, and Daphanie would have to live with the fact that this had only happened because of her.

  Asher drew her forward gently. “You have to go in and check. Daphanie. You need to tell me if anything is missing.”

  She dug her heels in and shook her head. “I told you, how would I know?”

  He remained gentle but implacable. “You need to check.”

  Reluctantly, she unlocked her knees and allowed Asher to lead her into the chaos.

  The intruders had done a thorough job. Every drawer and cabinet had been emptied, every table and chair overturned. The cushions had been yanked from the sofa and tossed aside, some of them with huge holes rent into the fabric. Papers had been scattered and shredded, picture frames and pottery smashed, dishes broken.

  Daphanie choked back a hysterical laugh. “It doesn’t even look like they were trying to find anything. It just looks like they wanted to destroy it.”