Corpse Curses

by Jen Ponce

  I made a face and carried the boxes over to the counter, Alice on my heels. “My grandmother’s man.”

  “Your grandma has a man?”

  “‘Always grandmother, never grandma, granny, or any other vulgarity.’” I snipped the ribbon on the first box and found a pair of expensive heels. The other box held a helluva lot of gauzy material. I pulled it out and Alice gasped.

  “Oh, my crow. It’s a Fabian Santini!”

  I curled my lip, not wanting to like it, but liking it all the same. Black tulle covered black silk. A note on it told me the phrase to whisper and when I did, red sparkles flared. It was a dress designed to show off magical power. As half a witch, I was intrinsically magical, but this dress wouldn’t dance to my witch blood. It would only sparkle and shine with concentration—which was particularly hard to hold while doing other things like dancing and eating canapes. She wanted to show me off to whatever Lodge bigwig she’d invited to her home and she was expecting me to be worthy of showing off. “This is ridiculous,” I said. I didn’t want to go to the damned party. I wanted to go home, strip naked, and pray for the demons to pay me another visit. A sex visit because I was ready to jump a doorknob.

  “It’s gorgeous. Your grandmother must love you.”

  I snorted and opened the card attached to the dress box. Inside all that elegant, creamy paper, my grandmother wrote, “You will come to my party.” I showed Alice. “If I don’t, she’ll probably hex me. She’s not exactly grandmotherly. More like crazy.”

  Alice tittered, but her envious eyes were on the dress.

  “Tell you what, when I’m done with tonight, this thing is yours.”

  “What? No! I couldn’t accept that. It’s too—”

  “Much for me,” I finished for her. “I’d rather you had it. You’ll look gorgeous in it and you can impress your girlfriend.”

  “Oh, she would just die. Just. Die.” She fingered the material then hugged me enthusiastically. “Thank you.”

  I trudged home after my shift and took a short, cold shower because I was still horny as fuck and now I wouldn’t be home to receive visitors. I knew Grandmother’s soiree would last into the night and probably through morning and she’d expect me to be there for all of it.

  I could have not shown up, but Grandmother was my entrance into the magi world. She was rich, she was respected, and our family had been members of the Conventus Lodge for years and years. If I ignored her, she’d make my life miserable and the next time I needed into a particular venue or information about one of the top tier Lodge members, she’d remind me I was a jerk that didn’t deserve her help.

  Damn it.

  I put my hair up in a sleek chignon, making sure the line between my white hair and my black hair was perfect, my bangs coming to a sharp-edged point on my forehead. I swiped on black shadow and red lipstick, then put the dress over my head. The fabric was perfection. It slid over my nipples, making them hard, slid over my belly, my thighs, my bruised ass and I shivered, remembering Lux’s hands on me, imagining Grey’s. I wanted them both so bad and here I was heading to my grandmother’s where there wouldn’t be a sexy demon to be found. Life was so not fair.

  The shoes were just as comfortable as the dress, and I hated that I loved the expensive feel of them both. Rich people were so lucky, getting to buy lovely shit like this.

  Yeah, I know, I could’ve been a rich people too if I wanted to kowtow to my grandmother. But I wouldn’t let that rigid old woman tell me what to do for a closet full of thousand-dollar dresses and sexy-ass shoes.

  I grabbed a small red clutch and headed out the door, sighing when a black car pulled up to the curb and Dempsey got out. “What are you doing? I was going to take a cab.” I liked doing things that embarrassed or annoyed my grandmother and showing up at her house in a taxi was one of those things.

  He opened the back door and waited, face expressionless, until I got in.

  I settled into the seat like an obedient little granddaughter, while in my head I was picturing Lux and Grey boinking each other on my bed … and then boinking me, because I’d damn well better be involved next time. I was still wound up and horny as hell, so it was dumb of me to continuously think back to last night’s entertainment, but I couldn’t help myself. It had been so hot. And it had been for me.

  I leaned forward in my seat and stared at Dempsey in the rearview. “Has my grandmother ever screwed anyone back here, Dempsey? All this space, I’ll be she—hey, I’m just asking a question,” I said as the privacy divider ascended and clicked shut on my words.

  Sighing, I sat back and wished I was home, wished I was out hunting, wished I was doing just about anything but heading to a magi party. There would be bucket loads of pretension, sarcasm, and backstabbing, and, of course, a lot of sniffing and looking down on each other. On me. They loved looking down on me and saying things like, ‘It’s a shame, really, what happened to your mother,’ as if falling in love with a witch was worse than death.

  As soon as the car pulled up in front of the house, I slipped out. If he wasn’t even going to pretend to be nice, I wasn’t going to pretend to be civilized. I left the door hanging open as I ascended the stairs. Magic curled over the columns out front, lighting up the facade in elegant gold flowers. The stairs glowed as I stepped on them, the air scented with the smell of the ocean—it was an elaborate display of Grandmother’s power. She was trying to impress someone very important then.

  I wished I’d brought my hexed knife. I could have gotten someone alone and divested them of their demon.

  Damn.

  The entryway was filled with magic. It pricked at my skin and reminded me I was supposed to be showing off too. With a muttered imprecation, I whispered the spell and then concentrated on locking it into place. If I slipped, people would notice and word would get back to my grandmother.

  This was going to be a long night.

  Although Alice would have thought me insane, I honestly didn’t like Grandmother’s home. I’d grown up here, at least until she’d kicked us all out the night Grandfather died. The night she accused me of killing him. By accident, of course, but I remembered the utter hate on her face as she’d screamed at six-year-old me. The house, I thought, was garish in its insistence that a powerful magus lived here. My preferred domicile would be an eighth of the size of the Marchand Estates and the decorations would consist of blacklight posters and sex chairs. Oh! And naked statues.

  I touched the penis of the one I passed by in the hall. The one thing Grandmother had that I envied.

  “Korrinthe, so good of you to come.” Minerva Marchand was an elegant woman, or so she had them write in the society columns about her. Tall, on the too-thin side, and rather pointy, she was the epitome of a rich widow. When I got close, she air-kissed me and smiled through me the way rich bitches did when they were pretty sure they could catch poverty from you.

  “Thanks, Grandma,” I said, enjoying the way the lines around her mouth deepened when I said it. My eyes dipped to the medallion she wore around her neck. The crystal there was deep blue, and I wondered if the colors meant anything or if it was random. I wondered if she’d tell me, but probably not, not since there was a demon in there fueling her magic. “Thanks for the dress.”

  She looked me up and down, working on finding a fault. “You shouldn’t have worn that makeup.”

  “I know. Why am I here?”

  Her eyes widened slightly. “Because of what you did to your grandfather.” She’d already turned away to wave at someone across the room so she didn’t see my flinch.

  She would hold that over my head forever, wouldn’t she?

  “Stand up straight,” she hissed, then her voice went all syrupy as she said, “Why Adam, so good of you to come. Where’s that dear father of yours?”

  Adam? I stiffened as he approached, and my grandmother gave him a warmer reception than she had me. With his rich boy’s smile, he said, “He’s around here somewhere, harassing Everette Lardington over Lodge busi
ness.”

  Grandmother laughed as if this were the funniest thing she’d ever heard. “Everette needs to be harassed. He’s a bit of an idiot.”

  “No arguments from me.” His eyes settled on me and it was my grandmother’s turn to stiffen. “Korri. Good to see you after so long.”

  Ah, so he was keeping our meeting yesterday a secret. Why? He probably thought he would do me this favor and then expect one in return later. “So long? We just had coffee together yesterday,” I said, all innocence, and now it was his turn to stiffen.

  So much stiffness and no cock to be had. Damn shame.

  My grandmother’s face was suffused with suspicion. “Yesterday? Korri, you didn’t tell me you’d spoken with Adam yesterday.”

  “Yes, well, you and I haven’t exactly spoken since yesterday, Grandmother.” I held out my hand and he shook it, sending some power into it like the petulant rich boy he was. I could have shoved power back, but I didn’t want to play his game. “Nice to see you again.”

  His gaze wandered over my body in a way I might have welcomed coming from anyone else.

  “Where did you meet?” my grandmother asked, clearly not willing to let it slide.

  “Dongos.” Dongos was a down and dirty bar in Hell’s Mudroom, complete with strippers of all genders. It was a fun, if violent, place.

  My grandmother’s lips pruned. “Windhavens don’t frequent such places, my dear. Neither do Marchands.” She said it with such disgust, as if she couldn’t think of anything worse than rubbing elbows with witches. How the Hell had the magi become so bigoted? Why was it such a terrible thing to be a witch? They’d taken everything from them and still they hated the very mention of a witch bar.

  “I do believe your granddaughter is giving you a hard time, Mrs. Marchand.” A smile played on his lips. “And I’ve been to Dongos once, with a friend. It was … eye-opening.”

  My eyebrows rose as my grandmother said, “Don’t feed into her tomfoolery. It encourages her.”

  He smiled conspiratorially at me as if we were somehow on the same side. Maybe he thought we were, that he was helping me out by siding with me against my grandmother. I would almost hate to be the one to tell him she was matchmaking, Hell-bent on marrying off her rebel granddaughter so I wouldn’t be an embarrassment to her anymore.

  As if.

  “Korrinthe, please take Adam on a tour of the estate while I attend to my guests.” She gestured, and Adam obediently took my arm. “Good.”

  “Do you really want a tour of this place?” I asked, extricating myself from his grasp as soon as we were out of grandmother’s periphery.

  “From such an intriguing woman? Yes, of course.” His smile was charming, I suppose, if you liked too-white teeth and smarminess.

  “Does that work?”

  He looked puzzled. “I beg your pardon?”

  “The whole Mr. Perfect routine.” I waved vaguely at his form. “Do you have on a ‘well-groomed’ charm or something?”

  He laughed and, to my surprise, he pulled the pinky ring off his finger. He didn’t look like a dog, by any means. In fact, he looked better, more down to earth. “Yes, I do.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged and slipped the ring into his pocket. His eyebrows were bushier, his teeth weren’t blinding, and his hair was a little bit shaggy. He even had some scruff on his face that made him look … kind of hot.

  Okay, now I knew Grey and Lux had fucked up leaving me un-fucked. Here I was thinking the Grand High Exorcist was something more than just an evil asshole in an expensive suit.

  “I guess it’s easier to be what they expect me to be.”

  “They who? Your family?”

  “Yes. And my fellow Conventus Magi.” He took me in again, from my hair to my shoes. “Isn’t that what you were doing but in reverse yesterday? Defying expectations?”

  My heartbeat sped, though I tried hard to look nonchalant. What had I been doing there all dressed down? “My hair makes me stand out and there are days when I just don’t want to deal with people. People tend to want things from Minerva Marchand’s granddaughter.” It sounded true because it was. I did get tired of people seeing my hair and recognizing me, wanting to ingratiate themselves with her by sucking up to me. “So you’re telling me you wear that stupid ring because people expect you to be perfect?”

  “It’s a disguise like your wig and contact. People see what they want to see. Is it wrong to give it to them to make things go more smoothly?”

  We’d made it to the west wing and walked down the long hall where Marchand portraits hung. My mama’s wasn’t here because Grandmother had disowned her. I’d found where she’d had it stored and taken it a few years ago. It hung in my daddy’s front room in his ratty little apartment with a frame that cost more than two months of his rent. ‘It doesn’t look like her, except for that smile, Korri, baby,’ he’d said when we sat looking at it after I’d put the nails in the wall. ‘Her smile lit her up from the inside out.’

  I’d always wondered why my grandmother hadn’t been able to see that beauty in her own daughter.

  Adam stopped in front of the portrait of my grandmother and grandfather, painted when they’d been married only three years. My grandmother was a beautiful, if cold, woman. My grandfather a dapper young man with an ornery grin. My mama had gotten that from him, that and an appreciation of the small things in life. Before my grandfather died, my grandmother was different. Still rich and snobby, but she’d been able to view relationships as more than just a means to an end. The night my grandfather died, that side of her also died, at least according to my daddy. Despite my parent’s protests to the contrary, I felt responsible for his death even though I’d been six at the time—which was probably the real reason I let her summon me the way she did.

  “You’re awfully quiet.”

  I blinked up at him. “Sorry. Anyway, here’s the long line of the Marchands. Exciting, aren’t they?”

  “Well, they managed to produce a woman like you.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “What are you playing at?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” He looked genuinely confused, which annoyed me for some reason.

  “Yeah, I think you do.”

  He stuffed his hands in his pockets, making him look even less like the asshole Conventus Magus he was. “Minerva asked me to court you.”

  I scoffed. “And you’re toeing the line because why?”

  He shrugged. “It’s rather old fashioned, but Conventus families do it all the time.”

  “Do what? Arrange marriages like it’s two centuries ago? Court me? Did you actually fucking say court me?”

  Again, that brief flash of anger I saw yesterday flitted across his face and was gone. “Her idea. But after seeing you yesterday in your disguise, I admit I was intrigued. I wanted to talk with you again. So I agreed to come to her party.”

  “My grandmother is under the impression that I am going to pretend like my parents don’t exist, that my daddy doesn’t exist. She thinks if she waves enough money or influence or whatever under my nose that I’ll suddenly reform, conform, and join the Lodge.”

  He tipped his head, all curiosity now. “And you don’t want that? You don’t want the power that comes with it?”

  I told myself not to look at his medallion. “No.”

  “That confirms it,” he said, completely throwing me off.

  “Confirms what?”

  “I was pretty certain you were the most interesting female I’d talked with in a long time. Now I know I was right.”

  I threw my hands in the air. He wasn’t supposed to be intrigued by me. He was the fucking Grand High Exorcist. He fucking had an enslaved demon hanging around his neck and if I were stronger, he’d be on my hit list. To kill. “You’re ridiculous.”

  “And you’re beautiful.” He brushed his finger along my jaw, pushing magic into his touch so it tingled along my skin.

  I opened my mouth to tell him to fuck off when I remembered my conve
rsation with Poppy at the bus station. Telling him to fuck off wouldn’t get me where I needed to be. I mean, the Grand High Exorcist was interested in me. My grandmother had asked him to court me, for fuck’s sake … and he’d agreed. He’d at least come to her home to talk with me. Because I was interesting.

  I wouldn’t have had access to him under normal circumstances, but if he was courting me … if he was dating me …

  When he leaned in, I didn’t pull away. When his lips touched mine, I tipped my head up and kissed him in return. Nothing like I’d offered Lux, Hell no. A chaste fucking kiss for the Grand High Exorcist. Then I pulled away because the woman he thought I was would pull away. “I’m not that interesting,” I said, pushing just the right amount of annoyance into the words.

  He chuckled, his grin pure entitled male. “Oh, you don’t know how interesting you are.”

  “There aren’t any rich bitches dangling their scented pussies in your face that tempt you?” The words came out before I could stop them and the look on his face delighted me, even as I worried I’d gone too far. His surprised bark of laughter told me I hadn’t.

  “You do have a way with words.”

  “I’m what happens when money isn’t a temptation.” Okay, I loved the fucking shoes I was wearing, but aside from that, money wouldn’t make me forget all my principles.

  “Is that so?”

  I shrugged.

  Voices down the hall signaled our privacy would soon be interrupted, my grandmother’s strident conversation a hint for us to stop doing whatever it was she thought we might be doing.

  His hand slid into his pants pocket and he paused, not slipping the ring back on yet. “I want to see you again. Say yes.”

  No, I thought. Ew. Never. “When?”

  His smile made him seem almost normal for an asshole.

  Did mine make me seem almost normal for a killer?

  He handed me his phone. “Your number.”

  I grimaced inwardly, vowing to get a new number tomorrow so I could keep my life and him separate. I tapped in my details and handed it back.

  He leaned in for another kiss, then slipped on the ring as my grandmother and her friend came around the corner.