by Linda Wisdom
Jazz uttered a short laugh. “Except you didn’t forgive him, did you? Instead you got even by killing yourself in his brand new T-Bird and cursing your spirit to stay in that damn passenger seat for eternity, and damning me with your presence in the process,” she pointed out.
“Oh honey, Nicky isn’t like Harold, damn his cheating soul. He really cares for you. Why if I were five years younger I’d show you what it takes to keep a real man.”
Jazz shook her head. Thanks to Irma, she felt her equilibrium returning. “You know what, Irma? Since you adore Nick so much, why don’t you go haunt his car? Why, you would be the perfect pair. You’re both dead!”
Irma narrowed her eyes and lifted her hand, a lit cigarette balanced between her fingers. “This is exactly why you can’t keep a boyfriend.”
Piloting the sleek black limousine up the narrow two-lane winding canyon road devoid of all street-lights wasn’t easy, but it was nothing Jazz hadn’t done before. While she enjoyed the funky town of Sierra Madre that lay nestled in the foothills, she didn’t enjoy this part of the journey or the destination. The only good thing about having to concentrate on the winding road was that she couldn’t think about Nikolai Gregorivich, correction, Nick Gregory.
On either side of the road small houses were set against the mountains, the dwellings boasting elaborate stained glass windows alive with jewel tones and homey plants hanging from rafters set over the doorways. While many of the residents here were known for sneering at the establishment back in the sixties, the rustic façades of their homes now hid expensive art and designer furniture inside. And every driveway seemed to boast a high-end Mercedes, BMW, or Porsche. She continued driving until she reached the end of the road. She parked in front of a series of stone steps leading up to a rounded earth-house that Bilbo Baggins would have envied. She climbed out and went around to stand next to the rear passenger door. One trip up the steep steps had cured Jazz of ever climbing them again. They were, simply put, hazardous to anything without built-in cloven hooves or something equally billy-goat-like, or perhaps sucker-footed since they could stick to the stones. High-fashion stiletto heels—however much the client liked them—were an absolute no-no on Foulshadow’s steps or she’d be falling on her ass.
Not that she had to even honk the horn or wait long for him anyway. This particular client always seemed to know exactly when she arrived.
As she stood there she again felt the pull of the waxing moon. She was glad she would be heading for Moonstone Lake soon. She needed the chance to spend time with her witch sisters and center herself. She sensed parts of her world were ready to turn upside down and she feared she would need more strength than ever to handle it.
She tipped her head back and noticed the other-worldly lights drifting out from the half-moon shaped windows in the dwelling.
“Why do I feel as if the dirt used to build that place was not originally from the good ole U. S. of A.?” she muttered.
A portion of the base of the hill rolled upward like a garage door and her client moved toward her on short spindly legs that seemed to allow him to glide more than walk. The opening slid shut behind him with the same low hum of magick.
Jazz kept her features impassive. The last thing she wanted Tyge Foulshadow to know was just how much she detested him. She sensed he would enjoy her disgust more than any form of fear she might display. Whenever she was forced to spend time with this creature she felt the dark power of an ancient and dangerous magick seep out of his skin the same way a gelatinous substance seeped from his pores. But his magick’s origin eluded her. It was more like a tainted odor than the comfort offered by the magick within her. She had a strong feeling that there was more to Tyge Foulshadow than met the eye. She couldn’t stand him, but she never wanted to find herself on his bad side. She was positive he would be a very formidable enemy if he chose to be. There was no doubt there was an exceptionally sinister side to the creature, which was why she made certain to keep her loathing for him well hidden.
“Prompt as always, my beautiful Jazz.” Tyge Foulshadow’s voice was more an echo inside her head than any sound coming from the tiny round dark hole that was his mouth.
Even without streetlights, Jazz could see him clearly as if his skin was illuminated from the inside.
She privately described the barely five-foot-tall creature as Jabba the Hutt with legs. Tyge’s immense teardrop shaped body was covered with oozing grayish green skin that resembled million-year-old algae. As he moved toward her, multi-colored bursts of noxious gas burst out of his rear end. She mentally damned Dweezil for refusing to allow her to wear a gas mask when dealing with his biggest client. While the gas was dangerous to some and lethal to many, her kind only ended up with a mild nausea and headache. To her regret, Tyge had taken a shine to her after the first time she drove him. After that night he requested her as his driver every time he went out. And every time Jazz refused, Dweezil offered her more money. If she weren’t so greedy at times, she’d have an easier time turning him down.
Tyge had tried to hire her away from Dweezil to work full-time as his personal driver. The money may have been tempting, but working for the smelly creature was not. Dealing with him once or twice a month was her limit.
“You look gorgeous tonight, my Jazz,” Tyge’s voice rumbled in his chest, as he held out his short, pudgy, long, three-fingered arms as if to embrace her.
Jazz deftly sidestepped his maneuver by opening the door for him. No way she wanted those suction-tipped fingers anywhere near her skin.
He glided to a stop by the door. Eyes the color of anthracite swept over her with a thoroughness that Jazz feared meant he could see clear to her bare skin. She steeled herself not to retch when his long purplish-black tongue appeared to wet non-existent lips. Venomous hot-pink gas shot out of his ass exuding a smell strong enough to instantly kill any vegetation unlucky enough to grow within one hundred feet. It took some time for Jazz to figure out that hot-pink meant the creature was slightly aroused. She was just glad it had never grown darker than a pale-red. If she ever saw a dark-ruby shade, she would zap that ugly bastard right on its slimy ass. She kept her gaze determinedly planted on his ugly face. She was soooo glad she hadn’t eaten before picking him up. Just being around him was enough to make her lose her dinner.
What she did for the almighty dollar.
“According to your itinerary you want to go to Klub Konfuzion,” she said, keeping her features impassive. Yep, she was going to seriously gag if he didn’t get in the car right now.
“That is correct. I also hope you will be available to drive me to a private party to be held at Clive Reeves’ mansion ten days hence.” His face shifted into a smile. Or what his kind might call a smile.
It was all Jazz could do not to flinch. Clive Reeves … after all these years, then twice in one day—and his was a name she never cared to hear again. And now he’s haunting her all the time, damn him.
She still had nightmares from that hellish night back in 1932. She had crossed a line that night that, by rights, should have extinguished her life. Only the mercy of the Witches’ High Council had saved her body even if her spirit had never felt fully recovered.
She wanted to give Tyge an instant, outright “no,” but she thought better of it.
There were less direct, much wiser ways to handle things with certain of Dweezil’s top clients, and for once she would use her head, pause, think, and not merely react to the moment. She knew Dweezil would throw a fit when she gave him a flat-out refusal to Tyge’s request, but she didn’t care. Just because it was the son living there instead of the father, damn his soul to the Underworld, she wasn’t crossing that property line for all the gold in the world. Let Dweezil do the driving. Let him go home with a toxic wardrobe for once.
“You would have to speak with Dweezil about that,” she said instead. Like D, Tyge didn’t appreciate the word no. She was a witch with a strong instinct for survival, and she had no idea exactly what powers Master Foulsha
dow possessed. For all she knew that noxious gas could turn into something truly nasty if he got riled—as if he wasn’t disgusting enough already. But no matter what, the last place she was going was Clive Reeves’ mansion.
He inclined his head. “Of course. I will speak to him on the morrow.”
She had no doubt that he would. Luckily, he chose that moment to enter the car. She closed the door firmly after him. Once behind the wheel, she turned on the special air filtration system that released Tyge’s colorful deadly gas into the atmosphere without harming the driver or turning it into an even nastier form of smog. She was grateful that meant the privacy panel always remained closed. The idea of any form of physical contact with the oozing ugly creature sent her stomach into a tailspin.
Even with the privacy panel up she could hear the high-pitched wailing sounds of Tyge’s favorite music and the muted rise and fall of his voice as he chattered away on his cell phone.
“There is no way I can believe he has even one friend to talk to,” she muttered, making her way down the narrow road to the freeway.
Traffic was on her side as she headed for San Pedro’s warehouse district down by the docks. During the day the wharf was alive with stevedores loading and unloading the ships that lined up at the port and filled the surrounding warehouses with their goods. The buildings that remained empty and dark during the day teemed with another kind of life at nightfall. They were home to the underground clubs that catered to an exclusive clientele who preferred to live on the edgier side of life. Jazz knew it wasn’t just the vampires that enjoyed going out after sunset. But no human with a desire to live beyond that night dared venture into this area.
She resisted an urge to snarl at the creatures lingering outside the club’s entrance as she climbed out of the car. The pungent mixture of dead fish, salt air, and diesel fuel burned her nose and eyes. But she knew she would take these smells over what was inside the club any night of the week. Her coat rippled around her body as she moved to the rear of the car and opened the door. Tyge slid out and waddled in his awkward glide close enough that she had to hold her breath to avoid the lingering odor on his skin.
Tyge’s eyes glittered with a dark luminance as he stared at her under the red and yellow lights that lined the flat roof of the building. It was the club’s only decoration. Jazz knew the symbols surrounding the heavy-duty door were a combination of the club’s name and protection wards so no unsuspecting human could accidentally wander in.
“Perhaps you would care to come inside. I can assure you that you would be treated as my most honored guest.” His tongue, the color of fresh eggplant, again appeared.
Did he just catch a fly or was he trying to taste her skin? Eeuuww either way!
“I’m sorry, but I can’t.” No, she wasn’t sorry at all, but hey, she knew how to lie with the best of them. She refused to spend an extra second with Tyge if she didn’t have to. “Dweezil has a strict non-fraternization rule where the clients are concerned.” She already knew he didn’t have any such rule. Dweezil believed in doing whatever was necessary to keep the client happy and damn his employees’ sensibilities. Some drivers didn’t care what they had to do to keep the client happy and pick up big tips. Jazz was a hell of a lot more discriminating.
Tyge smiled as if he knew she didn’t speak the truth, but he was willing to forgive her transgression. For now. “If you would only be willing to take the time to truly get to know me. I know that we would spawn beautiful offspring together, my lovely Jazz. I could give you riches you can only imagine. I have much to offer a beauty like you.”
She felt her smile tremble on her lips, then lost her hard-won control. “I would rather eat dead rotting flesh,” she replied, her disgust winning out over her fear of insulting him.
His eyes lit up at her words and bright-red gas literally crawled up his back making the dead fish scent of the wharves smell like French perfume. “You do not know my kind as well as you pretend to, my sexy Jazz. You just spoke of our most popular aphrodisiac.” He glided toward the entrance where the burly ogre standing in front of the door nodded him through while others waiting in line snarled and growled their displeasure. One look from the ogre shut them up.
Nursing a stress headache, Jazz moved the limousine to the rear section of the parking lot and backed into a slot so that she was facing out. She privately thought of the music pumping out of the club as a combination of ear-bleeding electric punk with a smidge of New Age thrown in for respectability. She pulled a portable DVD player out of its case and popped in one of her favorite movies. She settled back in the soft leather seat and inserted her ear buds. She knew she would have more room if she went into the back of the car, but no way would she punish herself that way. As it was, her evening would end in a long hot shower she called extreme decontamination while her clothing would go into the biohazard materials bag kept on hand for these occasions.
She sighed. “I should have brought popcorn.”
The movie couldn’t hold her attention for long, though, since Nick was still on her mind. For a moment she wished Irma were here with her to provide a distraction from her scattered thoughts. She reconsidered the idea quickly. Irma’s presence would mean cigarette smoke, whining about Tyge and his smells, and constant chatter about what she should do to bed Nick … nope. She could definitely live with her own ill-timed reflections for a few hours more.
She’d actually reached the six-month mark since she last thought about Nick. It was a milestone for her. Was it too much to ask that a few more decades pass before she ran into him again? She could eliminate curses with the snap of her fingers, but no spell could eliminate the vampire from her thoughts and, if she was honest with herself, her heart.
She didn’t understand why he had sought her out. Her reputation had been hard-earned over the years as a high-quality curse eliminator. She didn’t have the investigating skills Nick had. She met with the client, gauged the depth of the curse, figured out what it would take to get rid of it and zapped it back to wherever it came from. Then she collected her fee and went on.
Now this.
She didn’t think he was using his reports of missing vampires as a ruse to see her again—especially not since they were showing up on Krebsie’s radar, too. For one, Nick was too direct in his dealings with everyone. For two, refer to number one. She stared at the small flickering screen and tried desperately to let the movie take her thoughts away. But even Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman’s magick was flat tonight.
Six
Nick sensed magickal turmoil in the air the moment he rang the doorbell and the door opened with a creak worthy of a Halloween haunted house.
“Forget it, D. I am not working tonight no matter how much money you offer! I’m sick, damn it! All I want to do is stay home and suffer.”
Nick followed the raspy voice toward the rear of the house and found Jazz in the kitchen standing over a steaming black iron pot on the stove with another pot set on a back burner. He inhaled the scents of ginger root, licorice root, and astragalus with lemon. He stood there for a moment enjoying the sight of his sexy witch looking less than attractive and doing something domestic. Purple cotton sleep pants echoed the amethyst winking at him from her ankle bracelet while the long-sleeved t-shirt sported a colorful pattern of Tootsie Roll Pops. Her hair was pulled up into a messy ponytail with ends sticking out every which way. And if he wasn’t mistaken her nose rivaled Rudolph’s on Christmas Eve. She sneezed and the contents of the pot on the back burner immediately bubbled up over the edge.
“At least that one did some good,” she muttered, grabbing a dishcloth and mopping up the mess. “Damn thing would have taken another five minutes to boil. Not fair I can’t do this in the microwave.”
“Good evening.”
Jazz spun around and collapsed against the counter. “Oh damn. Oh shit.” Her expression warned him she was going to be less than receptive tonight. “I did say tonight, didn’t I? Fine, come in. Just don’t expect me to be ent
ertaining.” She quickly whipped a tissue from her sleeve as a sneeze overtook her. A piece of toast promptly flew out of the toaster and across the room. If he hadn’t had preternatural reflexes, it would have smacked him right in the face. “This really isn’t a good time,” she muttered, wiping her nose.
Witches didn’t get sick often, but when they did it was with a magickal vengeance, and provided entertainment to boot. He was fully prepared to sit back and take in the show.
“On the contrary, this might work in my favor.” He noted the filled coffee pot and helped himself. While he couldn’t assimilate mortal food, he could drink liquids, and coffee was his favorite. He knew Jazz’s coffee would be the way he liked it. Hot and strong. He glanced at the black and gold mug and chuckled as he read aloud, “Vampires are a ghoul’s best fiend.”
“It was a Christmas gift.” She poured the contents of the first pot into a mug that read Witchful Thinking. She leaned her hip against the counter as she sipped the hot liquid. When she lifted her head her eyes were as red as her nose.
“You little shits!”
Nick’s head whipped around at the sound of a man’s fury-filled voice, but Jazz didn’t turn a hair.
“Oh dear, what have they done now?” she murmured with a soft sigh. She looked up at Nick. “Now you’ll see the life I lead and why it would simply be wrong for me to turn myself into some big bad witch just to help you with your missing vampire problem when there are days there’s so much going on around here.”
High-pitched squeals and noisy chatter reached the kitchen at the same time two bunny slippers dashed across the floor. In the wink of an eye, they slid themselves onto Jazz’s feet.
“Do you know what those furry little bastards did?” A red-faced Krebs raced into the room, skidding to a stop when he realized Jazz wasn’t alone.