Love Charms

by Multiple

  “You mean Stacy?”

  “Yeah,” I corrected smoothly. “She got kinda grabby. But I told her I was all yours, Brooksy baby. Even in death, I’m all yours.”

  The ghost’s brow furrowed in confusion. “That born again psycho who always gives customers an earful about how great Jesus is?”

  “Yeah,” I said, shaking my head like it was the greatest tragedy ever conceived. “She had us all fooled.”

  I swayed as a rush of images bombarded me, a mad torrent of thoughts flowing from the ghost. He was picturing Candi and this Stacy doing some very unholy things.

  I glanced at the Mickey Mouse watch at my wrist. I only had five more minutes. If he didn’t spill soon, I’d have to wait until the next full moon to summon him again. Goodbye bonus. “So that’s why I came to this agency,” I continued, trying to get us back on track. “I saw their commercial while I was watching Lifetime the other night and decided I’d give them a call.”

  “Ah, okay.”

  “And I wouldn’t have bothered you if it wasn’t really important,” I added. “If I didn’t really need the money.”

  “Well, shit,” he said, crossing his arms. His face went serious as he took another step forward. He grimaced as his body hit the invisible wall that barred him from coming any further. “You haven’t blown through all the money, have you? My body’s not even cold.”

  “Of course not,” I said indignantly, giving him a pout. “Hell, I don’t even know where the money is.”

  “What?” he snapped, anger spreading across his face.

  I winced as his outburst rang in my ear. Imagine the emergency alert signal and fingernails against a chalkboard and multiply that by ten. For a guy that had only been six feet under for a little over two weeks, he was already packing quite a punch.

  “Ow,” I whined, nursing my ringing ears.

  “Sorry,” he said, his face softening. His penny loafers squished around the circle as he paced back and forth, lost in thought. “You went to Kenny, right?”

  “Yeah, I saw your lawyer,” I lied, nodding eagerly. “He told me the only way I’d get the money was if I’d…” I stopped, clasping my hand over my mouth. What the hell was I doing? We were never, ever supposed to mention outside mortals that ghosts could go shooting for.

  “That son of a BITCH!” the ghost roared, grinding his fists. He was imagining beating the guy to a bloody pulp. He was thinking about taking his fist and putting it right up—

  This is bad, I thought frantically, wringing my hands. The last necromancer who slipped up and name-dropped was tried and convicted for the murder in the Great Hall. She’d told the ghost that his brother had been sleeping with his wife. Instead of going back to the All, the place ghosts go when they die, the ghost pulled some strings and looked up his brother instead. The ghost haunted and hounded his brother until the poor guy finally ended it by putting a .45 in his mouth.

  I swallowed hard, making a mental note to Google the lawyer and make contact. If he had a visit from Casper the Unfriendly Ghost on my account, it was the least I could do. I didn’t want anyone’s blood or mental instability on my hands.

  But right now, I had more pressing issues. Not only was the ghost slamming me with images of all the horrible things he was planning for Kenny, his anger was affecting everything in the room. The two desks that sat at the corner shimmied and shook, the computers flickering on and off ominously. The old grandfather clock whirled like a washing machine, the pendulum swinging so rapidly I needed a Dramamine.

  “Calm down, honey bunny,” I urged, flashing him an uneasy smile. “I can’t add all this shit to my tab. I can barely afford rent. Without the money. Without you taking care of me.” I laid it on nice and thick. I could tell from the ghost’s eyes that he was no stranger to Candi employing the almighty guilt trip.

  “Sorry,” he said, his eyes on his feet. What was this power that this petite woman held over him? He kicked ass all the way to the top of his company, but in front of me now, he was two feet tall.

  “You know I never ask you for anything, right?” I said softly.

  He nodded. “I know. It was one of the things I loved about you.”

  I forced a smile. That would have been a lot sweeter if he wasn’t a two-timing douchebag who cheated on his wife of twenty years.

  “If I could go back-” He stopped. He didn’t need to finish. I’d heard this sad song a million times. The shoulda-coulda-wouldas. As romantic as he was attempting to be, I knew the truth. Just like every other ghost I’d come across in my line of work, he wanted to have his cake and eat it too.

  “I know, baby,” I said, crossing my arms. “You worked so hard all your life and you made so many sacrifices. You deserve to rest…and if I hadn’t lost my job, I wouldn’t even have bothered you.” I leaned in close, lowering my voice. “I just need a little something, just a bit to get me through.”

  He tapped his foot, mulling it over. “And you said Kenny didn’t give you the account numbers?”

  I shook my head slightly.

  He cracked his knuckles and let out a loud sigh that rattled everything that wasn’t nailed down. I’d been at this for almost an hour and I was no closer to getting the information now than when I first summoned him. Time to go to plan B.

  “You know what?” I said suddenly, smoothing down the front of my mini dress. “I shouldn’t have come. I’m a pretty girl, right? And I’m all alone now so…” I let a perfectly depressed sob escape from my lips before I continued. “I don’t have anything now that you’re gone. I just want to thank you for the little time we had, Brooksy.” I turned toward the exit, walking briskly but not too much so, hoping he didn’t call my bluff.

  “Wait!” he erupted behind me.

  I released the doorknob but didn’t turn around. I didn’t want to seem too eager.

  “Get a piece of paper,” he said finally, his voice resigned. “I’ll give you all the information you need.”

  I snatched a notepad and a pencil from a nearby desk. “Go ahead.”

  “I’m assuming if Kenny didn’t give you the info, he’s already drained the account.”

  “Probably,” I agreed. “But maybe you should give me that number too, just in case.”

  “Right,” he said, crossing his arms. “Okay, the number for the account I left for you is…”

  I scribbled down the information with a flourish, glancing at my watch. One more minute.

  “And if that one doesn’t work?” I said, batting my eyes.

  “I have one more account,” the ghost said, scratching his chin. “No one knows about it but me and the bank manager in the Caymans.”

  Jackpot, I thought excitedly. “Okay baby, I’m ready.”

  After I finished writing it down, I blew him a kiss. “Thanks so much.”

  “That’s more than enough,” he said with an edge to his voice. “5.5. I’m sure Melissa has already gotten her claws into the rest of my estate, so you’ll have to make do.”

  “Oh, I will,” I said, walking over to the door. Since he was already pretty powerful, I didn’t think my usual shtick was a good idea.

  Normally as my last hoorah I’d release my glamour and the guy or gal would realize they had been duped. Hilarity ensued.

  While the ghost certainly didn’t deserve any sort of peace, I figured no harm, no foul if he flitted back to the All thinking his small fortune was going to this chick instead of his very, very angry wife. Who was waiting in the lobby.

  “Adio-”

  I gasped as the door slammed open. His wife, Melissa Brooks, stood in the doorway, clutching a can of Morton’s.

  “Missy?” the ghost said, visibly shocked. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “5.5 million dollars?” she screeched, plowing past me. “You were gonna give that idiot whore 5.5 million dollars?!?”

  “OW!” the ghost bellowed as she hurled a stream of salt at him. I cringed as I watched the line bubble, leaving a red, oozing streak on his face. One
of the few old wives’ tales grounded in truth – salt is to ghosts as angry is to a woman scorned.

  “You stupid bitch!” he thundered, his eyes filling with hate. I felt the room begin to tremble and shake. There were only ten seconds left in the summoning, but that was more than enough time to do some serious damage. Brontes would kill me if he had to have the room reconstructed again.

  “Ego transporto vos tergum ut vorago!” I said, putting a bit of my will behind the words.

  The ghost flickered away, leaving only his wife and me. Melissa still stood beside the circle, her fingers still wrapped around the can of salt.

  “Bastard,” she muttered for good measure. She looked over at me, embarrassment coloring her fair face. “I-I’m sorry, Jade.”

  I shook my body, feeling the rest of the glamour wash away. I ruffled my stringy hair and gave her a halfhearted grin. “No need.” I extended the piece of paper. “You deserve it.”

  Thinking about the potential haunting I’d caused for a woman who was dressed in an outfit that cost as much as my rent for a whole year, I knew my words was far from the truth.

  Chapter Two

  Temptation is Good for the Soul

  I looked out at the quiet street and took a long drag from my cigarette. If you would have told me a year ago that I would stare at a Raleigh night with fondness, I wouldn’t have believed you.

  The maddening sound of where I grew up was a symphony of awesomeness – everything in New York is magnified in vibrant Technicolor, every street an adventure. Life in North Carolina moved slower, the crammed apartments replaced by fields and Bojangles, a very popular restaurant chain. But there was something charming about the South, personified by the caramel drawl of the locals. My oasis used to be Central Park in the wee hours of the morning…now I’d traded the park for the patio of my apartment.

  I tilted my head when I heard the familiar squeak of the patio door. I gripped the rail, biting my lip as my boyfriend’s scent flooded my nostrils. Jack Xavier Badeau – he always smelled like Harlequin romances say a man should – bittersweet, heavy, and strong.

  “Come back to bed,” he said behind me. I sighed contentedly as he wrapped his thick arms around me, pulling me close to his chest.

  I could still remember the first time I saw him at Royal Bean. His shoulder length blonde hair hung in waves, his chiseled jaw set in concentration. He looked like Sawyer from the TV series Lost, and I have to admit, my attraction was purely physical at first. I practically drooled all over myself imagining all the naughty things I wanted to do with him. On an island, in my bedroom, wherever.

  After a couple of nights out – old movies on the lawn outside the art museum, Italian at Bella Monica, CocoRosie at Cat’s Cradle, and grave hopping off Glenwood Avenue, I found myself wondering if my no dating rule was well founded. After all, I’d found an attractive, smart, well-adjusted man who made me want to pretty up and fight the new day. And the sex was, well, earth shattering.

  Then I realized that he always left before dawn. When I joked that my morning breath wasn’t that bad, he shut down completely. In spite of myself, I concocted all these theories. The most fantastical was that Jack was a super spy and broke all the rules by even being with me. The lamest was that Jack wasn’t a morning person and was worried his bad moods would turn me off.

  The truth was a little more alarming.

  When I kept suggesting meeting up for lunch or doing other daytime activities, he always got sick at the last minute or pumped out some other sorry excuse. Finally, I showed up at his apartment for lunch. Jack had already eaten…a preppy co-ed lying on his living room floor, drained of all her blood.

  Usually having a boyfriend that wanted to suck your blood would act as a kind of repellant or red flag of some sort, but one of the perks of being a necromancer is that my blood is poison to vampires.

  There’s a long drawn-out prophecy that kind of explains it, but mostly it’s because I communicate with the dead. During our first summoning, a necromancer has to ingest a large quantity of dead man’s blood. It acts a bridge connecting us with the All, or the underworld where spirits go when they kick the bucket.

  Unfortunately, my blood doesn’t guard me against werewolves, shifters, or a whole host of other supernatural creatures, but I try to appreciate the small things.

  At the moment, it was hard to appreciate much of anything. Yes, I was a couple of hundred dollars richer, but I felt a chill remembering the ghost’s power rippling through the room. During my first summoning that went wrong, the ghost, Sherry Jackson, threw a glass across the room. The one I summoned an hour ago almost shook the very foundation of the building.

  I let out a sigh, staring at the embers that burned from the tip of my cigarette. My hands still shook a bit. The ghost had really done a number on me. I finally answered Jack’s request. “I’m not really that sleepy. Sorry.”

  “You wanna talk about it?” Jack asked, his strong fingers tousling my hair. He knew I hated it, especially when it was freshly twisted, but it gave him a thrill to wind me up. And okay, maybe I liked to have my buttons pushed. Sometimes.

  “You think it would make it easier to talk about it?”

  “Not really.”

  “You’ll feel better,” he probed.

  “Not likely,” I said truthfully. “Unless you know a guy that could have a sit down with a ghost.”

  “Perhaps,” Jack said slyly. “Right now I’m more concerned about you, though.”

  “Are you, Dr. Badeau?” I said with a smirk. Back when he was a human, Jack was Jacques Xavier Badeau III. He studied medical arts in Montpellier, even working under Jean-Baptiste Denys for a time before forsaking an opportunity to work as the personal physician to the Crown after Denys stepped down due to accusations of malpractice. Before he met his maker a few days before his 25th birthday, he’d opted for a simple life in the Americas. Still, every now and then I’d catch his head in some medical journal, his eyes full of life and excitement.

  “Truth be told, as your personal physician, I require you to make love to me several times more before the sun rises,” he said with a grin.

  I turned to him then, batting my dark lashes at him flirtatiously. “Why, doctor! Are you sure such a vigorous regimen is warranted?”

  “Only one way to find out.” He tickled me then, his touch soft and hard on all the places he knew intimately. He stopped when he saw that my mind was elsewhere. “You’ve gotta talk to me, babe.”

  I’d been necromancing with NACA for almost a year now. At first I’d thought it was glamorous. I was paid in cash with very little effort on my part. I burned the oils, I walked in a circle, I said a few words in Latin, I got paid.

  And working for NACA had other perks – I had access to supernatural resources that I’d been barred from as a free agent. From having lattes with fairies to meeting a real live dragon, I’d seen fantastic and terrible things.

  But there are only so many times one can summon some greedy fat cat ghost for an equally greedy living relative. I mean, as pissed as Mrs. Brooks was, that couldn’t have been the first time she experienced how truly sleazy her husband was. And as far as money was concerned, while she may not have been able to lead the life that she’d grown accustomed to, everyday Americans were getting by on less.

  To make matters worse, I involved some other guy, essentially putting him in grave danger. What I’d done was sloppy, careless, and downright dangerous. And for what? A new pair of Converse and a fancy athame I’d been eyeballing? What was I becoming?

  “Any other night,” I said wearily, glancing away. “Just not tonight, Jack. Okay?”

  “I’m not trying to get inside your head, babe,” he said, wheeling me around to face him. “But you’ve been moody-”

  “I’m always moody,” I retorted.

  “Abnormally moody,” Jack elaborated. “And you haven’t slept in days.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said, blowing out a plume of smoke. “You and I took
that catnap just last night.”

  He pushed his hipster glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Human beings can’t survive on a half hour of sleep, Jade.”

  I shrugged, tying my coat with a flourish. “I’m 21. I’m in the prime of my life. Hell, when Mom was my age, she’d go weeks without sleeping and she turned out just fine.” As soon as the words came out, I knew how ridiculous they sounded. My mother only left her house to go grocery shopping and even then she was a nervous wreck.

  “Really?” Jack said, raising an eyebrow. “She’s fine, huh? This the same dysfunctional mom that you avoid like the plague?”

  I unwrapped myself from his arms and sank into a patio chair. “I don’t avoid my mother.”

  “Ah,” he breathed. “So your whole ‘Tell her I’m busy’ sign language thing you do every time she calls – you’re secretly communicating that you want to talk to her?”

  I gave him the finger.

  “Again?” he said with a smirk. “You sure you got another in you?”

  I chucked a plastic ashtray at him, shaking my head. “Why do I put up with you?”

  “Devilish good looks and free therapy,” he winked. “And I’m killer in the sack.” Which was mostly true. Before I could shoot back a snarky reply, he held up his hands, his green eyes softening. “Truce?”

  I chuckled, cocking my head at the chair beside me. “Pop a squat.”

  “So how was work?” he asked, stretching his lean arms above his head.

  “Riveting,” I said, stubbing out the last of my cigarette. I could still see the white-hot fury on Melissa Brooks’ face. I had a feeling that if it were possible to bring her husband back and kill him herself, she’d be game. “The wife doused the guy with salt. Pretty amusing.”

  “Ghosts always are,” he grinned. “How much did he stow away?”

  “5.5 mil.”

  “Holy shit,” he whistled. “And your cut?”

  “Significantly less than 5.5 million dollars,” I laughed. I had no idea how much my boss charged for consultations, and I didn’t have the cajones to ask.