Therefore, neither did Calvin. He loosened his tie slightly, but it didn’t help the feeling of constriction.
“Yes, my lady.” He stood behind her, ready to do her bidding. Her human servants, more fragile than he, kept their distance as their lady’s mind had slowly lost its purchase on the world over the years, her moods vacillating erratically as the dragon within her vied for control.
Following her shows wasn’t difficult work, especially Witching Wild, although there had been that one time Lady Fane had unknowingly crushed the bones of his hand in her excitement. He flexed and fisted it at the memory.
On the television, Judith jiggled the vial at the show’s host. “Prepared it myself.”
It was well known by viewers that anything brewed by her hand—while occasionally having some magical properties—rarely had its intended effect. But at least it was magic. Serena and Meg acted witchy for the cameras, chanting and whatnot, but so far they had no demonstrable ability. Most likely they were humans acting as if they did. True witches, Judith being the rare exception, kept their identities, bloodlines, and craft secret.
“It’s for clarity of mind.” Serena’s blue eyes glinted as if daring the host to refuse.
Some months ago, during the midseason Tell-All, he had badgered Judith about her break up with a club owner who had apparently only shown interest in her to get free publicity. The host had been trying to provoke an emotional reaction from Judith, and he’d gotten one—a verbal skewering from Meg and Serena.
The host made the mistake of taking the vial. “I’ll save it for later.”
But Meg wasn’t having it. “You put that in your pocket, and I’ll hex you.”
In spite of his restless mood, Calvin felt himself smiling as he watched. Meg couldn’t hex at all, but he was certain she could conjure something painful, if only with her sharp words. Bookish people had arsenals at their disposal.
The host flushed, his orange tan deepening to umber as his gaze trained beyond the scope of the Tell-All set, as if for assurance or direction. He must not have received the answer he’d wanted because he made a grimace of his Hollywood smile. His white teeth sparkled.
“Bottoms up.” He twisted out the cork and puckered up.
Ratings up, too, no doubt.
“Serves him right.” Lady Fane cackled, a low, ominous sound that made Calvin wonder if her human or dragon mind prevailed today. He could relate to the struggle. Distractions like Witching Wild were necessary to remain sane.
While the host valiantly tried to keep whatever had been in the bottle down, a mailbag was delivered via a smoky, theatrical poof! to a table in the middle of the set. The bag artfully spilled onto the table, and the host selected a few letters and passed them out to the cast members. It was the final segment where the witches took questions from the fans.
“My favorite part,” Judith said as she gave a friendly smile to the camera. She ran a finger under the envelope’s flap to break the seal. A small flash of blue, like static electricity, was just fading as she pulled her finger back, a thin line of blood visible as the camera went in for a close-up.
“Paper cut,” Judith said, laughing and holding up her finger.
Calvin frowned. A paper cut, yes…but something else, too, with that blue lightning.
“Cal! Cal! Did you see that?” Lady Fane asked.
Anyone with an eye for magic had seen it.
“Yes, my lady. I saw it.”
Lady Fane crawled off her divan on all fours—sometimes she forgot what form she was in—and clambered over the low table in front of her. She approached the screen where she sniffed, growled, and sniffed again. But televisions still weren’t able to transmit smell, not even if a dragon shifter demanded it.
“Surely there’s a spell or incantation you can do to heal it,” the host said to Judith. It came out as a spiteful challenge.
“Oh, yes.” Judith held her finger up and closed her eyes as if to channel her magic. “Will the powers that be…please bring me a bandage?”
The host’s expression soured.
Serena reached across the table, grabbed the envelope from Judith’s lap, and pulled out the letter. Her expression was unreadable as she handed it to Meg, whose gaze went hard.
The camera cut to a mesmerizing ruby red trickle that traveled from Judith’s paper cut to her palm.
Blood and magic were a dangerous combination for anyone.
Meg got up—and in the host’s way on live television—and took Judith under the arm. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
Lady Fane sniffed the screen again. “She’s going to die, Cal.”
“Yes, my lady.” The blue lightning had signaled the casting of a spell, and the letter had drawn blood, which had surely been its intention. Blood was the most potent form of magic there was.
Judith had been trying to learn her craft on the show; she seemed to know next to nothing about how to channel her natural abilities. Her family should’ve taught her, but it seemed they hadn’t. Very unusual. Regardless, her efforts had no doubt attracted the attention of parties antagonistic to either magic or her use of it in public. She’d been lucky no one had struck out at her before this.
“She’s my favorite!” Lady Fane said.
“Mine, too, my lady.” Anyone following the witches over their second season would know Judith was not a threat. And there had been that one time when she’d saved a child from being hit by a car. It was still in all the promos. What a damned shame.
The Tell-All cut to a montage of the dramatic high points of the season—Judith coaxing a flame from a candle without a match, Serena identifying a betrayal in the fashion design offices where she worked, and Meg flirting with a handsome author at a social event she’d helped plan.
“Let them know I won’t tolerate it,” Lady Fane said.
Calvin stared at her for a moment, surprised. Lately, his lady had been making many odd requests, but this was more unusual than the others. She wanted him to interfere with the television show?
Never mind. His lot was not to question but to carry out her orders. And for that young woman, Judith, just coming into her magic, he was glad to do it.
“Yes, my lady.” He set about to somehow contact the producers who had to have selected that specific letter for Judith to open—they wouldn’t leave any segment to chance. Whatever their plan, they would bow to the whims of Bloodkin Lady Evangeline Fane. Eight hundred years on Earth had given her that kind of influence, though as far as he knew, she’d never wielded it to save a witch.
Calvin held on to his lady’s mobile telephone as she’d smashed, pierced, and pulverized several others in frustration in the past. For a moment, he considered whom to contact. On her behalf, he occasionally touched base with studio execs to obtain movies before their release…but, no… He settled on Mr. Randolph, his lady’s personal contact within the Bloodkin Assembly, which was the organization that managed dragon shifter interactions among their own kind and with the public when they required anonymity.
Mr. Randolph answered on the first ring. “How may I serve?”
While he was in the middle of relaying Lady Fane’s orders, she spoke again. “You should go, Cal.”
Him? Leave her?
A pang of concern for the humans in her service made him hesitate. Then he set his reservations aside. They knew to whom and what they’d pledged to serve.
For the first time in a long time, the choking sensation eased, and he drew a deep, clear breath. The task was a welcome change of rhythm.
“I’ll get back to you,” he said to Randolph and ended the call.
“Find out who did it,” she said. “And make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Make sure. That would be complicated. Gaining the enduring cooperation of anyone required threats or money or favors.
“They want to kill my Judith?” Lady Fane harrumphed. “You kill them.”
Much easier.
The show had gone to a commercial. A wholesome-looki
ng woman shilled decadent ice cream, and his lady’s dagger-pupiled eyes were drawn to the dessert.
“As you wish, my lady.” He did some quick mental calculations. The sun had set a little more than two hours ago. As a dragon, his lady wasn’t subject to time. Humans portioned it into the hours, minutes, and seconds that comprised a day. A vampire’s time was half that, which meant he’d only have what was left of the night to accomplish the task. At dawn, Judith would be on her own.
“Don’t let her die,” Lady Fane repeated.
“Yes, my lady.”
The woman in the commercial went mmm over her ice cream, and Lady Fane’s lips mimicked the motion.
“Madame, may I take my leave?” He’d yet to be excused, and Judith, at that moment, was in peril.
She waved him away. “Yes, yes!”
He turned and strode toward the arched white doors, high and wide enough to accommodate a dragon’s bulk, his mind speeding ahead of him. During the drive, he would call Mr. Randolph again to make sure the producers would be ready to welcome him at the Witching Wild live set. The lead-in voiceover had said they were shooting in Boston, which was less than an hour away in nighttime traffic. If Mr. Randolph wasn’t immediately successful, Calvin could always kill whatever security stood in his way and extract Judith by force. If he was fast and lucky, she might just survive the night.
“Angel, wait,” Lady Fane called after him.
Angel was the nickname she had for him, his appearance the reason he’d been turned from man to vampire so that he would never die. Beauty could damn just as much as it saved.
Calvin turned. “My lady?”
She put a finger to her lips. “Could you get me some of those cookies before you go? The chocolate-covered ones?”
It seemed the commercial had awakened his lady’s sweet tooth.
Time was his most difficult obstacle, but as a dragon, and one swiftly losing touch with reality, Lady Fane had little appreciation for how it worked. Time could, for example, run out.
But it wasn’t his place to instruct her.
He bowed. “Of course.”
“Meg, it’s nothing.” But Judith allowed her friend and costar to shove her hand under the faucet and wash the blood away. Actually, there was an awful lot of blood for a paper cut. It should’ve been clotting by now, right?
“You never know.” Meg examined the finger. “It’s pretty deep. Does it hurt?”
“When you squeeze it like that, yeah,” Judith joked. But the fuss was appreciated, especially since she had that back-of-her-neck, deserted-parking-lot tingle as if someone menacing were right behind her; but all she could see in the mirror was the floor-to-ceiling white tile of the bathroom. She just wanted a bath and bed.
The on-set medic, Tony, appeared in the doorway. “I’ll take it from here, Meg.”
Judith leaned back and rolled her eyes at him. “It’s a paper cut. Just give me a bandage.”
Meg stepped outside, and for a second, Judith could see Andrea, one of the producers, out in the hallway, too, checking her watch and lifting her walkie to boss someone around. She probably needed them back on set already. They were live, after all.
Reading the letters from viewers was the last segment of the Tell-All. Then they had a three-month hiatus, during which Judith’s schedule was jam-packed with business meetings to launch her Bewitching cosmetics line. Never in a million years would she have thought she could go from being a jobless postgrad to a celebrity businesswoman, but she’d take it—and she’d work the opportunity for all it was worth.
“First, some antibiotic ointment,” Tony said as he turned her finger this way and that. “But I think you’ll live.”
“Tony says I’ll live,” Judith called out so Meg could hear.
Andrea appeared in the doorway. “You good to go?”
Tony was just putting tape over a wad of gauze so thick that viewers would think she’d nearly amputated the finger. On an envelope.
“Yep,” Judith said. “I don’t know where the letter went, though.”
“Serena has it. I need you three back in one minute. Thanks, Tony.” Andrea passed Serena and Meg as she headed back toward the set.
Serena was holding a sheet of creased white paper in her manicured fingers. She’d never get a paper cut on live television. Serena whispered in Meg’s ear, and they both looked at the page again and shook their heads.
“Ugh.” Not another creepy letter.
Tony paused. “Too tight?”
“Oh. No, sorry,” Judith said. “Groaning about something else.”
They got creepy letters all the time, along with marriage proposals, requests for donations—some really sad stories there—as well as pleas for curses, potions, and love charms. And then, of course, there was the hate mail and the notes saying they’d all be going to Hell. The producers usually weeded out most of those letters and had them read simple, humorous, or fun questions for the live shows.
“You’re all set,” Tony said.
She held up her finger and its ridiculously thick bandage. “Thanks.”
Tony’s eyes twinkled as he grabbed his case and left.
Judith moved into the hallway to join Meg and Serena and took the letter. The page contained a single, unfamiliar symbol. It looked like a backward S with the diagonals of an open triangle cutting through it. A straight line bisected both shapes. Could be creepy. Could be nothing.
“Looks witchy,” Judith said. Instinct told her it felt witchy, too.
Serena looked over at Meg, their researcher into all things arcane. “Do you know what it means?”
“Never seen it before,” Meg said, “but I don’t like it. If Andrea selected the letter for the live show, though, then she should know. Or at least she’ll know who it’s from.”
“I think it means drama.” Judith shrugged to get the chill off her neck. “Something to get a rise out of the Wild witches on national television.”
She looked down at the symbol again to find that blood had seeped through the page from the other side.
Eww.
She checked her finger; the blood had soaked through the middle of what had seemed like excessive bandaging. Apparently, it hadn’t been excessive enough.
“What the hell?” Serena stepped away from their trio and called down the hall, “Tony!”
It was Andrea who came toward them. “We need you back in position.”
Judith lifted her hand again.
“Can you hide it in your lap?” Andrea asked.
The blood splotch was widening before Judith’s eyes. “Um…it’s bleeding a lot. I don’t know what it’ll be like in five minutes.”
Andrea grimaced and turned. “Tony!” Judith glanced toward the set. Everyone was standing around waiting for her. The key grip was yelling at the boom guy—“Keep your dead cat out of the damn shot!”—while the camera operators looked at each other with vacant stares. Their tanned host was complaining loudly about suing if he had any side effects from the elixir. What a baby. Water with two drops of food coloring wouldn’t hurt anyone.
“You two go.” Andrea waved Serena and Meg toward the set while she frowned at Judith. “Did you hit an artery or something?”
“I don’t think there are arteries in fingers,” she said as she examined the blood seeping through the gauze. “But maybe.”
Andrea was listening to her headset instead of Judith, so Judith held up the page with the symbol in front of her producer’s face. She had to know something about it, or it wouldn’t have been used on a live episode.
Andrea made pouty duck lips at her—yeah, guilty—while whoever was in her ear finished talking. When Andrea’s gaze sharpened, Judith knew her attention was back on her.
“Look,” Andrea said, “if you three aren’t going to steal one another’s boyfriends, or cast spells on each other, or get drunk and flip tables, or have an occasional nip slip—”
“Yeah, yeah.” Judith had heard this argument before. Friends were boring. Frie
nds made for bad TV. Friends were ratings poison.
Andrea lifted and opened her hands as if pitching an idea. “The letter is the start of a little mystery. We’re going to put the symbol on the website after the show. Get a little viewer participation going.”
“But the season is over.” And they usually ran plot twists like this by the three of them first.
“The letter is why viewers will tune back in come fall. Now let Tony have another look at your finger. You have thirty seconds to fix it and get back on set.”
An hour later, Judith sat in her dressing room, her elbow propped on the cluttered hair and makeup table, her finger held up in the air above her heart, per Tony’s instructions. The third bandage was soaking through after they’d thought they had finally gotten it to stop. The cut stung a little. Nothing terrible, but the bleeding was getting seriously weird, and she still couldn’t shake the warning tingle on the back of her neck.
They’d filmed the last segment without her while Tony had attempted to glue her cut shut. The glue hadn’t taken. Apparently, she’d be answering viewer mail online at a later date. No rest for the wicked. And now the whole group congregated in her room, trying to figure out what to do.
Tony smiled. “Maybe a short trip to the hospital?”
“Overkill,” Andrea said.
Serena had her hands on her hips. “Maybe if you’d tell us what that symbol means and who sent the—”
“The letter has nothing to do with it,” Andrea told the room.
A couple of the other producers leaned against the wall, and Mike, one of the grips, was noshing on a sandwich while watching the argument play out like an episode of the show. Really, someone should’ve been shooting.
Andrea waved her walkie toward Judith. “Since when are you a diva? It’s a paper cut for chrissakes!”
A diva? Her? Judith took it as a compliment. She aspired to be a diva. Divas got stuff done. She, in contrast, had no idea what was going on with the weird paper cut, the even weirder symbol, and the internal danger alert she was trying to suppress.
“We should get the envelope analyzed,” Serena said. “Maybe there’s a chemical on the paper that prevents clotting or something.”
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