by Minda Webber
"Relax. When he started griping about how much money he spent on the date—over a hundred dollars, I guess—I just shut him up."
"How?" Ricki asked, intrigued. She'd relaxed now that she knew Lucy hadn't been assaulted by the tax accountant.
"I wrote out a check for fifty dollars and shoved it in his face, although I had another place in mind initially," Lucy replied, a grin on her face.
"You didn't?" Ricki started laughing. "Did he take it?"
"He did," Lucy answered, her eyes alight with humor. "And what's more, he cashed it."
"What a troll."
"My thoughts exactly," Lucy remarked as she and Ricki giggled. "Now, tell me why we females date males?"
Ricki wiped the laughing tears from her eyes, remarking quite earnestly, "Oh, that's easy. There's no one else to date."
Chapter Five
Look Who's Talking
Glancing down at her watch, Lucy noted that she had ten minutes to spare before her show began. Moving behind a curtain, she peered at the stage. Two cauldron-conjuring witches were standing by a large black pot with wisps of smoke curling from it, dropping in bits of what looked like dried bat wings.
"Bon appétit," Lucy whispered, and her attention was drawn to two Lei-line warlocks who were standing nearby, their crystal-tipped wands in hand and somber expressions on their faces. Concealed behind the stage's pale black curtains, Lucy felt it was safe to inch closer, to try and hear what the warlocks were so urgently speaking about.
"Mon Dieu! Today you wouldn't believe what happened. Serena come by my house, you see, and upset she was. She had this scarf over her face, and when she pulled it off I got frightened, bad. She looks around seventy. Her skin's all wrinkled, and her eyes are sunken in her head," the first warlock was whispering to the other.
"You mean that pretty little Serena Stevens of the Broomstick coven? Isn't she married to your cousin Arthur?"
The first warlock nodded.
The second warlock said, "Has someone put an aging spell on her? Serena's only, what—twenty-nine or so?"
"Thirty-three. But it's bad news, mon ami. Bad and scary. No way did I detect any spell or curse," the first warlock confessed. His expression was grim. "Just Feu Follets—evil spirits."
The second man frowned. His Cajun friend was the top warlock in the southern states. If a spell had been cast, he should be able to detect it.
Lucy listened in sly amazement. What a fascinating problem. She did so love riddles, although she also felt terribly sorry for the poor woman who'd turned old before her time. Imagine—one day whistling "Dixie," and the next day you're Whistler's grandmother!
"But that's impossible. People don't age overnight," the second warlock exclaimed. "Not without a spell, and a spell for aging would only last a week or two. And an evil spell like this would leave a black magic stink."
Clasping his arm tightly, the first warlock hissed, "C'est assez—that's enough! They might hear, those attention-starved cauldron crones. Wouldn't they just love it—metis oui—to stick their warty old noses in our business? I can see the headlines: Cauldron-conjurers out-magic Lei-line warlock's family. No way would we be able to keep our wands up in public. Mon Dieu, the humiliation!"
The second man nodded thoughtfully. "You're right. Those cauldron crones are always big on publicity, what with their shiny black cauldrons and their eyes of newt. Just because their witch heritage relates them to MacBeth, Sleeping Beauty, and the Witches of Eastwick—that's no reason to go and act so magically superior."
"Pas de be'tises. No joke. Remember how they go on and on about the Salem witch trials, yes? So some were hanged, so what? They never hush their mouth about it. You'd think their witch ancestors were the only ones to suffer persecution. Burned at the stake, my ancestors were—which beats hanging any day of the week!"
Hmm, Lucy thought shrewdly. A case like this could bring a lot of attention to whoever solved it. This was a serious crime, with serious repercussions. Some nasty old monster couldn't just go around aging others with a snap of his fingers; there weren't enough old folks homes around! And what would it do to Social Security, which was on its last legs anyway?
Her grandmother had always said that a person's character determined her fate, and Lucy knew she was a character, so she would be safe. Besides, public safety would be served along with her own self-interest if she could help solve the crime. People would begin to see her show in a more serious light, and even the elite of the supernatural world would have to take notice, to pay her a little respect.
She grinned in anticipation. Finally, she had something she could sink her teeth into—and she wasn't even a vampire!
Glancing over at the two warlocks, she waited for more revelations, which she was glad were quick to come.
"Her aging is downright eerie, mon ami. Arthur is worry-sick, and Serena is complaining of hard hearing and wanting to eat supper at four in the afternoon. I tried every spell I knew to de-age her. Mais non, I couldn't. What's been done? Me, I don't know. But it's not black magic like I know. I'm at my warlock's end."
But Lucy wasn't. She firmly planted the names of Serena and Arthur Stevens in her mind. If she played her cards right, mortals and paranormals alike would soon see her as something more than a pretty face. Tomorrow she would go and visit the poor woman, then have a meeting with the oldest practitioner of black magic in New Orleans: Marvin Laveau, great-grandson to Marie Laveau, the voodoo queen to end all voodoo queens.
The two warlocks took a seat, and Lucy quickly patted her hair. The assistant producer of the show called out, "Four minutes till airtime."
Walking out from behind the curtains, Lucy took her place in the leather chair situated between the black leather sofas where the two warlocks and three witches were now seated. The segregated groups were shooting daggerlike looks between them, their hostility clear.
Lucy smiled at both groups and sat, hoping that open magical warfare wasn't about to erupt. There was not only her safety, but Moody's complaints about the repair bills to consider.
"Three minutes till airtime, Lucy," the assistant producer called out.
Turning her attention back to her guests, Lucy glanced down at her notes. "Now, I know we will all have a good time on the show today, and we will behave ourselves as befits adult warlocks and witches," she reminded them. "No casting spells or curses. No bewitching. And remember we have an audience, so no cursing. After all, we are prime time."
The two warlocks looked slightly affronted. "We know how to not cause trouble. After all, we're descended from noble stock—Merlin of Camelot!"
"Sorry," Lucy apologized.
"We come from noble stock also," one of the older witches retorted.
Before more could be said, Lucy cut everyone off. "I'm glad. That means this show will be quite a success with the dignity and aristocratic bearing you all will want to display on it."
Both sides seemed appeased, and they tried to outdo each other in their noble silence.
Lucy breathed a sigh of thankful relief. Today's show was going to be fine. There would be no problems, no chairs breaking, no egg on her face, no ghost sliming goo all over her Diordi pantsuit, nobody's pot of gold stolen, and no leprechaun curses flowing over her head. And most important of all, no reason for her boss to fire her tonight.
And things went fine for a bit. The show was dandy until one of the cauldron witches remarked that sometimes a wand was only a wand, and then only as good as the hand that held it, but that a cauldron was a cauldron.
The warlocks both shouted, "Mon Dieu! Isn't that just like the pot to call the kettle black?"
And the show went rapidly downhill from there, black magic, white magic and every other color flashing as well. Spells and stinky odors filled the air, and Lucy was hard-pressed to tell which witch had done what.
After thirty minutes of that, Lucy found a frog in her hair as the warlocks sent the things raining down on the cauldron-conjuring witches. The witches, not to be outdon
e, decided to conjure up cats, all manner of shapes and sizes, like a berserk Cat in the Hat book, felines appearing everywhere.
Lucy sighed in resignation. Yes, it was raining cats and frogs. Mr. Moody was going to be hopping mad about tonight's janitor bill. It seemed everybody wanted to rain on her parade.
Still, she had a lead to a better story.
Chapter Six
Marvin's Voodoo Room
The sun, a bright orange ball, was sinking slowly into the horizon as Lucy parked her car on Potion Ninety-nine Street, an ancient road settled directly in the center of the voodoo triangle, where most of the traiteurs, priests, and priestesses lived along with several witch covens. It was the day after the shower of frogs and cats, courtesy of those overly sensitive witches and warlocks.
Getting out of her car two houses down from Marvin Laveau's house, Lucy breathed deep, noting the air was heavy with the smell of wisteria and honeysuckle, along with the crisp odor of burnt milk—the scent of magic. Locking her car, she went back over her conservation with Serena Stevens.
Two hours earlier, she had convinced Serena to speak with her. It hadn't been easy. Serena hadn't wanted to see anybody, much less talk to anyone about her ordeal. But Serena had eventually shown Lucy a photograph taken four months earlier.
Lucy had been shocked, trying valiantly to hide her amazed revulsion. Serena had been a beautiful thirty-three-year-old witch, the picture of health and vitality. Now she was an old woman with liver spots everywhere, and all the wrinkle cream in the world couldn't help her now. Serena had aged forty years overnight. Or, to be more precise, Serena had aged after a kiss at the hands of a supernatural predator, a heinous creature who was apparently on the loose in the Big Easy, a monster who had to be stopped.
Serena had told Lucy that she and her warlock husband had been having some problems in their marriage, and that she had been going out bar-hopping with her friends for several weeks now. On her first girls night out, Serena had met a very handsome man with deep violet eyes and dark black hair he wore in a waist-length braid. He called himself DeLeon, and had a scar on his cheek that began under his left eye. Instead of taking away from his massive sex appeal, the mark only seemed to add to it.
At first Serena had thought the gorgeous male was a vampire, and since vampires and witches generally got along like a pot on boil, she had flirted mercilessly with him at the Overbite Bar. But the next night she'd had too much to drink, and she'd gone into the alleyway to share a passionate kiss with him.
The kiss had quickly swirled out of control. Serena had tried to break away, but DeLeon had held her fast. He had ripped off her panties and begun assaulting her, and she'd felt her heart beating so hard that she'd thought it was going to burst out of her chest. Her skin had started to burn, and the very essence of herself had started to fade into nothingness.
Fortunately, some college students had wandered into the alleyway to release some of the beer they'd downed, and the timely interruption had saved Serena's life. Unfortunately, the three drunks hadn't arrived in time to save her youth.
Lucy sighed. Pushing open Laveau's wrought-iron fence, she saw a few raindrops splatter on the crumbling sidewalk in front of her. She quickly stepped over a crack in the sidewalk where a large root had pushed its way through the cement. She didn't know what the new monster was that had attacked Serena, but she intended to find out. If Marvin didn't know what kind of monster could steal people's youth, then no one did.
Marvin Laveau had actually just been on her show about "Voodoo priests who fall in love with their dolls." The man might be crazy in love with his life-size doll, and he might be just plain crazy, but he was one of the world's oldest voodoo masters. He knew more in his little fingers about bad scary things than most people could dream up in their nightmares.
Walking up the steps to the large veranda, Lucy used the pentagram knocker. The door was answered on the second knock, and Lucy was led inside a large room and told to wait.
The room's windows had dangling glass beads and bones hanging in the place of curtains. Old books and sheafs of papers were nestled among the floor-length shelves, and the jars that covered every surface were filled with wiggly inhabitants or dried herbs. One jar appeared to be staring at her.
Lucy looked closer, and she gasped. Eyeballs filled the jar. Reading the label, she hit her forehead with her hand. "Of course! Eyes of newt." Picking it up, she studied it closer. "So that's what it looks like."
"Mais oui," Marvin Laveau said as he entered.
Lucy turned, pasting a smile on her face. "Thanks for seeing me on such short notice," she said.
Marvin was over eighty, with hair long silvered with age and eyes a startling emerald green. His skin was the color of burnt molasses, and his long life was reflected in the many lines of his austere face.
"Ma petite, you said it was important." Then, seating himself in a chair behind his rather impressive oak desk, he motioned for her to sit as well.
Lucy nodded her thanks, and reclined in a chair covered with a lace cloth directly in front of his desk.
"Ouch." Jumping back up, she reached under the heavy lace and pulled out a rubber chicken. She stared mutely at the rubber hen, a dumbstruck expression on her face. Then: "I thought you used real chickens in your ceremonies. Although… I do see how plastic ones would be better. No blood and no stink," she guessed.
Marvin's laughter filled the room, and he leaned back in his chair. The sound boomed everywhere.
Lucy frowned, putting the plastic chicken on his desk. Once again, she felt the butt of a joke.
"It's ma 'tite fille—my little girl. My granddaughter. It is her idea of a joke."
"I see," Lucy replied. She grinned. "I bet she's a handful."
"Oui." Still chuckling, Marvin added, "Ah, youth. It so often wasted on the young."
Which was a perfect opening, Lucy thought, and she began her tale about the young witch who was now old. She explained concisely and precisely the events that had led up to and followed Serena's rapid aging. Marvin listened quietly, his dark eyes going from warm laughter to grim concern. "Bon Dieu avoir pitie!" he said at last. The confusion must have shown on Lucy's face, because his next words translated, "Good God have mercy."
Lucy nodded. "You said a mouthful. Can you help me?"
"You want to know who or what could do this to someone?"
Lucy nodded again. "Do you know?"
Marvin frowned, then got to his feet and walked over to a bookshelf. Pulling down a weathered-looking book with yellowed pages, he flipped through. As he found what he was looking for, his frown deepened, carving deep black scowl lines in his forehead. He nodded to himself. "Mais oui. It is just as I thought."
"What?" Lucy asked in breathless anticipation.
"This is pure evil. Ancient evil," he said, his voice harsh with concern. "The monster you seek is called an incubus. A Ka incubus to be precise, one that feeds off a person's youth like vampires feed off blood."
"An incubus?" Lucy felt goose bumps up and down her arms, as if the universe was warning her away. "I've heard of incubi that feed off lust. But I thought they were extinct."
"Non. Not extinct, but very rare. And these are even more so. Few know about the Ka incubi. I had thought they were in the Big Sleep between worlds and shadows. But it appears that one is here in the Big Easy." Marvin shook his head. "Ma amie, this is very bad. Very bad magic."
Suddenly time seemed to slow, if only for a moment, and Lucy knew that she had crossed a line. She was nearing the dark side, hunting for this predator who stole a person's life-force. She could end up dead, or she could end up sixty-four, with lined skin and nobody to love her—and all in the next few days. Still, she wouldn't let the opportunity pass. Her mama didn't raise no fools.
Watching Lucy's reaction, Marvin nodded somberly, his green eyes fraught with some emotion Lucy didn't understand. An image of Serena thrust itself into her mind: Serena's misery, her lack of hope, the dying emotion and life in he
r eyes. "Can Serena ever get her youth back?" she found herself asking.
"Oui. If someone can capture the incubus fairly soon and submerge him in salt water for a day and night, then part of the life-force he has stolen will be given back to those whom he has robbed."
"How do you capture something like that?" Lucy asked.
Marvin stared at her. Then he explained how to capture an incubus with an ancient spell. It included chanting, some green powder, and unfortunately a dead chicken. Lucy had him write it down.
Before she left, Marvin warned her to be careful, and then he made her a protection gris-gris. It included some herbs, a small stone, and a few bones. The last ingredient, much to Lucy's disgust, was a small chicken foot.
Chickens, chickens, chickens. She hadn't liked the things since she was a girl, and had had to gather eggs in the henhouse on the small ranch her family owned in West Texas. She still had the tiny scars on her arms from chicken-pecking during her egg-gathering experiences. An irate chicken was damn mean—like an eighth-grade girl—and it pecked anyone who was stupid enough to go after its eggs. As Lucy got older, she'd given a wide berth to rampaging chickens, even going so far as to swear off fried chicken, her grandma's specialty. Now it seemed she was back in fowl territory.
Thanking Marvin sincerely for his help, she walked outside and fingered the gris-gris. Her thoughts were whirling around and around like a potter's wheel. She didn't really believe in lucky charms, but one couldn't hurt. Although, now she was stuck wearing a chicken's foot around her neck. At least it didn't peck and didn't stink. Her life, she mused wryly, was a feathery flap of a farce.
Chapter Seven
Hank Williams had it Right
Fingering the gris-gris that Marvin had given her earlier in the day, Lucy walked up the steps to the entrance of the Overbite Bar, DeLeon's supposed hangout. Marvin's and Serena's warnings echoed in her ear, ghostly whispers of dread. Still, Lucy knew that some stories had to be told. It didn't matter that danger lay hidden deep in the shadows, concealed behind smoke and mirrors; all that mattered was the story, and that she would be the one to expose the Ka incubus on her talk show. However, caution would be her word of the day. She didn't intend to go from being a talk show diva to queen of a nursing home all in one night.