Magic and Mayhem: A Collection of 21 Fantasy Novels

by Jasmine Walt

“What? Do you or don’t you have any clothes to change into?” she huffed.

  “As a matter of fact…wait here.” He slipped down a dark alleyway.

  Chia waited, thinking about Hung Durand, wondering how she’d ever manage to get the wily bastard. What’s he doing here anyway? The last time we had contact, he assured me I’d never see him again. And I assured him, if I ever saw him again, he would be a dead man.

  Her panties grew wet in protest to her bold declaration. Like his name, the guy was hot, hung, and sexy as hell. They’d almost had sex a time or ten ago. Okay, last time. Okay, every time I see him we almost have sex. She gritted her teeth as her inner truth-telling continued to taunt her. You want him, dead, remember, dead? Disgusted with herself, she blew out a gust of breath.

  A few minutes later, Cecil strode out of the alleyway, wearing grubby jeans, a whitish color wool fisherman’s sweater, and winter boots that had seen better days. Strips of duct tape wound around one of the boots to keep the sole from flopping like a circus clown shoe.

  “Where’d you get those clothes?”

  “Down the way.” He stabbed his thumb toward the alley. “I try to keep spares around town when I go on the prowl. Snag them from the Goodwill drop-off before they get put into the store. You never know what can happen in the night.” He winked.

  “Are you ever going to grow up?”

  The look he gave her—like she needed her head checked—almost made her laugh.

  She gawked at his scruffy appearance lit by a lantern shaped streetlight. Two days beard stubble, messy brown hair, mischievous pale blue eyes, he’d be attractive if he made the effort. “You ever get laid looking like that?”

  He barked out a laugh, his eyes twinkling. “Are you propositioning me?”

  “Ew, no.” She brushed aside his comment and tromped toward the coffee shop.

  “What do you mean you’d have to relive your past?” he asked, referring to her earlier statement about her ghosts, pushing aside his bushy mop of hair.

  “You want to go here or across the street?” Chia asked him, pointing to the two rival coffee shops in town, ignoring the question. His query bordered on personal, something she was loath to share with anyone. These ghosts represented her most shameful, horrific actions in this lifetime. The only way she’d ever get rid of them was to deal with the act, apologize to the person or persons involved, and with her luck, have to do community service or penance or some such.

  She’d decided long ago to keep her secrets, deny her transgressions, and live with the pesky things. She stared at her red sneakers, desperate to not have to answer. “Man, my feet are freezing. It’s warm for this time of year, but it must be, what, seventeen degrees? Twenty? Are you cold? You don’t have a jacket.”

  “Me? Nah, my husky spirit keeps me warm as toast. You should try me sometime.” He leered at her. “I’m better than a bonfire.”

  “No, thanks. You’ve shown me what you’ve got by humping my leg.” She shuddered.

  “Hey! That was instinct at play. When I’m in dog form, I can’t control my actions. I’m an unneutered male,” he added, as if that explained everything. “Jeez.” Appearing offended, he swung open the door to his chosen café, Sunshine Sally’s, for her to enter.

  They strolled toward the counter. A wood fire blazed in the gigantic fireplace. Logs snapped and crackled. Dead deer, bison, elk, and moose stared blankly into space from their perches on the wall. Antlers arranged as chandeliers hung over the heads of patrons. Chia had once threatened to hang human bones in the café, too, “in keeping with the spirit of death in here.” They’d only laughed at her, affectionately calling her a soft-headed liberal. She didn’t consider herself affiliated with any political party—she simply didn’t like dead things on display. Let them rest in peace and dignity.

  She waved and nodded at the patrons, mostly fishermen and guys who worked at the boatyard. Two stern looking fellows she didn’t recognize sat in the far corner. They looked up as she strode through, then leaned in close to one another and began to talk, taking sneaky glances in her direction. Who the hell are you? She scrutinized them for a moment, thinking them transient fishermen. A few hung-over revelers from the night before, their eyes bloodshot and faces yellowish and waxy from drink, clutched mugs of coffee like lifelines. “You might want to head home and sleep it off, boys.” She tapped their table with her knuckles.

  “With you?” one of them said. “I’m in.”

  They all guffawed.

  “Sorry, my dance card’s full.” Sort of…okay, not really.

  She scoffed and started to swish by them, when one of them said, “She’s got her eye on the rebel bounty hunter.”

  “Yeah, Hung Durand,” another said, making a lewd gesture with his hand. “I hear he’s back.”

  She whirled to face the table. “The only thing I want from that rat bastard is a clean shot right between the eyes.” She held an imaginary rifle, aimed, and fired, making a loud sound.

  The ghosts, startled from their slumber, shot to the ceiling. Recovering, they drifted back and settled around her calves and thighs.

  She shook her leg, trying to dislodge them, momentarily forgetting no one besides Cecil could see them. They’d probably wonder what the hell she needed to shake her leg for. Goddamn pests.

  “Yeah, right,” the first one said, and they all laughed. “Is that your bounty hunter dance? Needs some work.”

  “You’ll see,” she said, confidently, striding away from them.

  When she and Cecil had taken space at the counter, she whispered, “What am I going to do? He’s eluded me for years.”

  “It’s about to turn into a bigger problem, honey,” said Fawn, the friendly, chubby waitress who worked the counter in the morning. “Love the pink streaks in your hair, by the way. Against your dark hair, they make you look edible, like a dark chocolate cupcake with pink frosting.”

  “I’d like a nibble,” Cecil said.

  “No, no and hell no.” Chia rolled her eyes. “Thanks, Fawn.”

  The two men sitting in the corner stood and sauntered toward the counter. As they passed by her back, their voices grew louder.

  “Yep, I hear new leadership is coming to Charming,” one of them said.

  “About time,” the other remarked. He jabbed her back with his elbow.

  “Hey! Watch yourself!” Chia snapped.

  The men ignored her.

  “Who the hell are they? And what are they talking about ‘new leadership’?” Chia’s face furrowed into a frown. She glanced at the TV screen. The logo of Lemming News blared from the corner like a beacon. Hate that news show, she thought. A picture of her face blipped across the screen. “Hey! Why am I on the news?”

  Fawn picked up the remote and switched the channel.

  “Turn that back on. I want to see.”

  “I’m trying to tell you.” She poured them each a cup of coffee and slid the cream and sugar their way. “Like I was saying. Back to your problem. Like your job?”

  A chill spread along her scalp, even though it must be ninety in here from the blazing fire. “What do you mean? I love this job. I’m good at it. I manage the shape shifters, the vamps, all the supes like no one else. Maintain peace among the strange and stranger. I keep the town running like a good fishing trawler. I can’t imagine doing anything else.”

  “That’s what I thought. Then you’d better find Hung Durand and improve your reputation in the community.”

  Chia bristled. “My reputation is fine.”

  “Not if you don’t catch the bounty hunter. Not this time. Some folks is grumbling about him. He’s nothing but a nuisance. A fine piece of eye candy, but a nuisance nonetheless.”

  “Whatever. He’s all right.” Chia swept her hand through the air. She tried to ignore Cecil’s stare and her own raging hormones, screaming, He’s the hottest male in Alaska! “What are you looking at?” she said to Cecil, feigning indifference.

  “Someone else has got Hung in his sigh
ts,” Fawn said.

  “Who’s that?”

  Fawn placed her palms on the wood top, leaning toward them conspiratorially. “Red Mountainbear.” She enunciated each word like revealing a sacred secret.

  “That guy from upstate? Near Fairbanks? With the reputation as a blowhard?”

  “That’s the one.” Fawn’s head bobbed up and down. “That’s his news show I switched off. The one with your picture.”

  Chia’s eyes narrowed. “What about him? What does he have to do with me?”

  “He’s coming to town and he wants your job. He’s determined to show he’s a better man. He wants Hung’s head on a platter, and he’s just the hunter who can do it.”

  2

  Chia drove her black Jeep Commander 4-wheel drive SUV up the narrow road to her log cabin home at such a furious clip, her ghosts clung to the back bumper rather than be in the car with her. “It’s a good place for you,” she yelled out the window. “You should try it more often!”

  Knowing better, but not caring, she slammed on the brakes and felt a surge of satisfaction at losing control of the truck as it skidded along the icy driveway. She cranked the steering wheel at the last minute, causing the SUV to lurch and spin before coming to a stop inches shy of her barn, millimeters from colliding with her snowplow. Her ghosts scattered throughout the yard, flung like rolls of toilet paper. She leapt out of the truck and said, “And you thought yourselves safe. Ha!”

  They pried themselves from tree trunks, pulled free from snowbanks. Bunching together, they regrouped and swirled around her head in a lazy circle, like buzzards.

  The sun had barely started its morning hellos. It winked on the distant glacier oozing through the split between the mountains. The glacier appeared like a static flow, pouring on the frozen lake at the base of the ice field.

  Chia already had a massive headache. Fawn had given her the skinny on the discontent of a few town fringe dwellers who wanted her gone. They were an angry hive of denizens who liked nobody, her even less, and made trouble wherever they went. She called them the Cretin Clan, but not to their faces.

  The ringleader, Dick Nighthawk, had always had it in for her. Now, having organized his stupid crew of assholes at the request of Red Mountainbear, and recruiting a few more, he intended on ridding the town of Charming of their manager—namely her.

  He thought he and Red would then be in charge of town. According to Fawn, he probably didn’t know Red all that well—if he did, he’d know Red was merely using him to gain access to town politics and get his way. Red Mountainbear, a man with opinions to spare, never shared responsibilities.

  She pushed open her massive timber front door to her rustic home and yelped. Hanging from the ceiling, naked, wrapped like a butterfly cocoon in clear packing tape and his toes stuck in the shafts of her winter boots, hung Dillon, her last night’s playmate.

  “My boots!” Chia exclaimed. “Where did you find them?”

  Her TV blared. She raced over and switched it off, after seeing her face next to a photo of Red Mountainbear with the headline, Trouble in Charming - Has the Charm Worn Off? “Disgusting,” she muttered. “No, Lemming News, no charm has been lost.” She turned her attention to Dillon.

  A strip of duct tape had been plastered to his mouth, catching a few locks of his ebony hair in the process. His lean arms, also wound together with duct tape at the wrists, stretched to breaking, hooked over her forged iron chandelier.

  Her surprised silver-gray eyes met his angry brown ones. “What the hell happened?”

  He mumbled through the duct tape, kicking his bound legs, causing her boots to fly free.

  “Okay, okay, you can’t tell me through a taped mouth.” She eyed the room for a way to get him down. At five foot, weighing a mere ninety-nine pounds, she wouldn’t be much help to her six foot something cocoon of a lover. She strode toward a side table, catching sight of a note taped to the bottom of one of her boots. “What’s this?” She crouched to retrieve it, peeling it away from the sole.

  Someone locked my coffin…again. Who could it be? I’m in the hall closet, pissed. You’re going to pay. Oh – you know how you couldn’t find your dumb boots? They were in the closet where they’re supposed to be. Yours, Demonio Julius Alexander.

  “Always a kidder, my roommate.” She laughed nervously. Not having any idea she’d be called out of the house to look for Hung Durand, she’d meant to play a prank on the vampire, her newish roommate, known around town as D’Raynged.

  He was supposed to slink in the house at the very last minute, as usual, bloated with blood and gorged on sex, find his basement coffin locked, and promise her a favor for unlocking it before sunlight blasted through the egress windows, hit his skin and sizzled him.

  Yeah, it was extortion, but what the heck? He yipped and snipped at her messes and chaos in the house, and it was her house. He deserved to be toyed with. Now she’d managed to piss him off and she’d be the one owing favors. Lots of them from the sound of it.

  Dillon’s angry swings of protest, causing the chandelier to creak and squeak, caught her attention.

  “Hold on, hold on.” She pushed and tugged the heavy, solid wood side table until his toes touched. Then, realizing no way in hell could she reach his wrists, she pushed over a sturdy wooden dining chair. She hefted it, nearly losing her balance.

  Dillon made some smothered pissed off noise.

  “Chill out, I’m trying.” She positioned it next to him, climbed on and realized she forgot to get scissors or a knife. “Oops! One more second, Dillon.”

  He mumbled something unintelligible, but she thought it sounded angry.

  She climbed from the chair, slid from the table, and rushed to the cozy little kitchen, complete with a huge six burner range and industrial dishwasher—her grandma used to feed the loggers. She rummaged around in her junk drawer for a box cutter. “Ah ha!” she said, wielding the cutter, and headed back to the front room. “Now, don’t move. We both don’t want me to slip and slice the veins in your wrist.”

  His eyebrows launched skyward.

  “I know, right? Bad for both of us. Hold still.” She stretched tall, and carefully, slowly, slid the sharp edge through the sticky gray and white tape.

  His arms flew free and, as his legs were still bound, he fell from the table onto the timber floor, landing with a thud and an inarticulate curse. He wrenched the tape free from his mouth, causing an angry red stripe to form on his cheeks. “What the hell kind of roommate do you have here, Chia? I awoke, heard someone banging around the front room, so I got up, got your rifle, and pointed it at him.”

  Chia cringed, thinking a bullet would have only made him more pissed.

  “I thought he was an intruder,” Dillon said, ripping the packing tape from his legs with rage-filled movements. His dark hair clung to the tape, leaving smooth red striped skin behind in a kind of candy-striped effect. “Only he said he lived here and wondered where you’d gone off to. Said he couldn’t find the key to his room and you probably had it. I told him to calm down, you probably had town business to attend to. The guy went ballistic. Fucking hell! As quick as lighting, he had me trussed up, hanging here like a slab of meat in a meat locker.”

  “Yeah, he gets a bit anxious when he can’t get into his, uh, his room.” She didn’t dare tell him his room happened to be a coffin. And no way would she mention his status as a vamp. Part of her efficacy as the town manager came from making sure the humans didn’t learn of their supernatural neighbors.

  Sure, long-timers knew or suspected they lived next to supernatural beings. But newcomers, like Dillon--up here to get in on the herring run in March, once he was done with the late winter Pacific Cod plunder--were kept in the dark as long as possible. It simply wasn’t discussed.

  The supes didn’t care, they did what they were told—as long as they were left alone to party and play, or engage in territorial disputes and general mayhem, they were cool about anything she said. Chia had to spin stories like you wouldn�
��t believe to make such things sound normal. Sometimes she felt like nothing more than a zookeeper.

  “Anxious? Anxious? This is anxious.” He climbed off the floor and scurried around the room like he was nervous or fretful. “Your roommate came fucking unglued.” He leapt from sofa to recliner, waving his arms like a mad chimpanzee.

  Why do you think they call him D’Raynged? she thought, chewing her lower lip.

  He stalked into her bedroom and marched out, clothes in hand. “This has been fun, but…”

  “Where you going?” she asked, worried. A new playmate, he’d done her right in the pleasure department last night. She didn’t want to part on bad terms.

  “Anywhere but here. You’re in a mess of trouble from the sound of the news. I want no part of it.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Only bullshit about you losing a grip on reality, and Red Mountainbear feeling the need to step in and give the land back to the people it belonged to.”

  “Losing a grip on reality? Me? Oh, dear. He wants to take it away from the…” She started to say shifters but caught herself. Dillon didn’t need any more alarming news.

  He stormed toward the door, realized he wore no clothes and tape still clung to parts of his body.

  “Can I help?” Chia asked, inching toward him

  “No!” he shouted. He ripped the tape from his genitals and chest, cursing and shouting. When finished, he crumpled the tape into a wad and pitched it across the room. He yanked on his trousers and strode from the house, bare-chested and bare-footed.

  Chia quickly snagged his sturdy boots off the floor, holding them in the air from the front landing. “What about your boots?”

  He whirled, stomped toward her, snatched the boots, and whirled away, yelling over his shoulder, “I’ll call you…maybe. Probably not.”

  As he sped away in his Chevy Tahoe, Chia sighed. Her head dropped to stare at her grandma’s worn welcome mat, bearing the words Loggers Welcome. “He was fun. I guess this is one of the job hazards of being manager of a strange little town and having an unpredictable roommate.”