They reached the end of the line—twice. Each time, the streetcar tracks ended, the driver would flip the shiny wood bench seats in the opposite direction. They'd pay a dollar twenty-five and continue on their way.
Dante laughed out loud when she described the young girl who'd bought a love potion for her two turtles.
"I didn't have the heart to tell her she had two boy turtles."
"Well what's wrong with that?" he asked.
"She wanted babies."
"Ah," he said, delighting in it. "I can see where that could be a challenge."
She grinned up at him, radiant.
For the first time, Amie understood just why her mother could want a relationship like this. She couldn't remember a time when she felt so good. Dante brought out the best in her. It was invigorating and electrifying, and addicting if she wasn't careful. Luckily, Amie was always careful.
He toyed with a curl of hair at her nape. "Speaking of creatures, tell me about Isoke."
She gave him a sideways glance. "He's a pain in the rear, that's for sure."
"Watch it," she heard a faint voice from the roof.
"And he has supersonic Kongamato hearing."
His claws dug through the metal roof. "Aye mambo! They have spotted me!"
Amie clutched the edge of the window as Isoke shot up into the sky.
"By Ghede's ghost!"
"At least he's gotten away," Dante said, as a confused group of tourists ranted to a nearby police officer and pointed toward the empty blue sky.
Amie leaned back against the bench. "He'd better behave." She'd grown more accustomed to that Kongamato than she'd like to admit. He was, in essence, the last of her family. "I've only had him since the holidays," she said. "He came to live with me after my mother passed."
"Is your father still with you?" Dante asked.
Amie gave a brittle laugh. "My mom didn't even know who my dad was. She wasn't what you'd call picky." She paused, swaying against him as the streetcar rattled over the tracks. He waited, as if he understood she needed time to gather her thoughts. He really was a gentleman.
She took a deep breath and let it out. "Mom dated. A lot." Amie frowned hard, remembering. "If she didn't go for a loser, she went for a drunk. If they weren't stealing our grocery money, they were cheating on her. Every one of them crushed her on the way out the door."
It had hurt so bad to watch it happen, over and over again. Every time her mother wept, Amie had lost a piece of herself too.
She stared at the window, focusing on the breeze.
Dante watched her carefully. "You are afraid of dating men like that."
"Of course not," she said, shaking off his concern. "I'd never do that to myself." She let out a small sigh. "If you'd have seen how she looked when one of them left—like he'd stolen a part of her."
Dante drew her into the crook of his arm. "Love can tear us apart."
"I know," she said, letting her head rest against his shoulder. She had watched her mom give until she had nothing left. "I still can't believe she's gone."
Dante nodded and held her closer. Here he'd been trying to get her to understand him, when what he'd really needed to do was listen.
He kissed Amie on top of the head. A small gesture, meant for comfort and nothing more. Still, she pulled away from him, her eyes red around the edges.
"I'm certainly not going to go through that."
He fought the urge to close the distance between them. "I know."
She shook her head. "I'm sorry, Dante. I know you think you love me and that we're supposed to be together, but I'm not the kind of girl who falls in love. It's just not in me." She wiped at her eyes, but not before he saw the start of a tear. "I'm sorry."
He felt it then, the weight of her resolve—and her despair.
"I'm sorry too," he said, letting the full measure of her declaration settle around him.
He should have been angry. He wanted to be the kind of man to take that love from her. But he wasn’t.
She'd called him. She owed it to him. Still, Dante would not demand what she couldn't give, what she couldn't understand.
"You'll meet someone else. You’ll have another chance," she said, her back against the hard bench, looking out the window as he settled his arm on the seat back behind her.
He didn't respond. It would do no good to explain. He didn't want her pity, or any half-hearted attempts at love.
They rattled down Carrollton, past the restaurants, old houses, and a small cemetery. It was nearing the dinner hour, and most of the tourists had abandoned the trolley for the restaurants. And still, they rode.
He drew into himself, to the point where it startled him when she spoke. "You were a ghost for two hundred years."
Dante nodded, knowing it would be personal. They were beyond the polite stage.
She watched him for a few seconds. "Why did you stay? Did you have a bad life?"
He spied an older couple cuddling on one of the balconies overlooking the street. "Bad? No. Just incomplete."
She tilted her head toward him. "How so?"
Dante looked away from her, out into traffic. Perhaps sharing secrets wasn't such a wise idea.
"What was your wife's name?" She touched his arm.
He didn't respond. After two hundred years, it still hurt to think about it. This was going to be harder than he'd thought.
"Did she have something to do with your death?"
"No," he said much too quickly.
"I think she did," Amie said quietly.
The kicker was, she was right. He'd eat his eyeballs before he'd admit it to her, but still he couldn't help but remember.
Sophia. Beautiful, treacherous Sophia.
Everyone in his large family had found someone to love them—his five sisters, his parents, his grandparents. Going to a family gathering could be downright depressing.
You'll find someone.
She's out there.
Yes, Sophia had been out there. But she never loved him back.
He followed Amie's gaze to where he'd been absently stroking his ring finger. Damn.
"Did you get shot for her too?" Her expression darkened, "You did." She gasped. "I can see the blue in your aura."
He felt the insane urge to cover up his aura, which was as useless as it was impossible. "I didn't know voodoo mambos believed in that."
She hadn't taken her eyes off him. "I do."
Well hadn't he hit the jackpot? "Yes, I was shot," he ground out.
She closed her hand over his. "Why?"
If she really wanted to hear, he'd tell her. Maybe then she'd be sorry she'd asked.
He took a deep breath and let it out. "I loved my wife with all my heart," he said. Why did Amie have to look at him like that? Like she cared? He swallowed down his pride and admitted the ugly truth. "Sophia did not feel the same."
"You can't possibly know—"
"I found her in bed with another man."
"Oh."
Dante gritted his teeth at the reminder. "I challenged that man, as we did back then. He shot me here," he said, running his finger over the puckered scar above his right eye. "I was dead. She married him."
"I'm sorry," Amie said on an exhale.
He didn't want her sympathy.
The past was the past. Sophie had moved on a long time ago. She'd joined her lover in the afterlife.
Dante looked down at Amie, glad to see the sympathy gone from her eyes.
"And you never left."
"No." It would be hard to spend eternity as the odd man out. He'd met Marie Laveau in the cemetery. She understood him. He told her how he wanted, needed a second chance. That's when she told him about that rare kind of voodoo. She'd said he had to be chosen to come back. That there would be much love behind that calling.
He had to believe that.
He’d appeared in dreams to his aunt, a believer. She’d had the resurrection symbol etched onto his tomb.
"You waited all that time?" He c
ould see Amie’s surprise. Strange.
"Who wouldn't wait for real love?" There was no choice in that, no doubt or deciding. "I couldn't leave if there was a chance," he ran his fingers along her arm, tangled his hand in hers. "I still can't."
He leaned down and touched his lips to hers. A soft taste, simple and pure. A kiss worthy of her. She sighed against him and deepened their kiss. He touched the back of her neck and drew her closer. She was trembling as he pulled away.
"I don't know what to say," she whispered.
"Mi corazon." He wrapped his uninjured arm around her, holding her close as the streetcar rattled down the tracks.
He supposed neither of them had a reason to trust. But since when was love reasonable?
Dante smiled down at her. She felt good against him, solid. "My family would have loved you."
A shy smile teased her lips. "You really think so?"
"Without a doubt." He certainly did. Dante let his gaze linger on the gates of Tulane University.
He loved her. She was smart. She was funny. She was good.
There was no sense fighting it. It was only natural. Love magic had called him to her.
His chest tightened. He only hoped he hadn't fallen for another woman who couldn't love him back. At least this time, he didn't have to stay.
"Dante?" She looked up at him with those big brown eyes.
"Yes," he said, careful to mask his emotions.
She snuggled against him. "Let's ride again."
That evening, as they reached the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River, Dante let himself tumble to the soft ground. He could feel himself tiring quicker than before. The spell had worn thin.
He lay in the grass with his arm around her, watching the endless flow of the river. He knew she feared loss. He did too. There was nothing so awful as to lose the one you love. But that did not mean she should stop feeling. If she did that, she would be as dead as he once was.
Dante refused to let her hide.
If he couldn’t be with her, then maybe he could teach her this at least.
He touched her at the waist, his lips skimming hers. "I’m glad you let yourself have fun with me.”
She drew back, her fingers tracing the outline of his face. "Me, too.”
“Remember that feeling,” he urged. Maybe she’d find it again someday. He wished that for her.
She looked at him imploringly, as if she wanted to say something else. But she held back.
He felt his hand twitch against her waist.
More than anything, love had to be a choice.
He kissed her and drew her to her feet in the soft grass. The night had cooled somewhat and a slight breeze had found her hair. He closed his eyes at the sensation of her pressed up against him. "Let's go home."
"Mmmm…yes," she said, hands trailing down his back. "And this time, don't worry."
A riverboat horn sounded in the distance.
"No?" he asked, nipping her lips.
She gave him one last kiss and then leaned her cheek against his chest. "I won't lead you on," she said. "I promise."
He nodded, even though a part of him had just split in half.
Hadn't he said he wanted all of her or nothing at all?
Fatigue crept up on him with bone-wearying tendrils.
At least he had her for one more day.
Chapter 9
He’d grown worse by the time they arrived home. She'd seen signs of it all day. His hand would shake slightly as he held her. His eye would twitch, but then be fine. Dante had ignored it, or maybe he didn't realize what was happening. It worried her.
"I think I can help you," she said, reaching for her voodoo reference guides as he sank, bone weary, into the La-Z-Boy.
He leaned back, his profile clean and strong, even as he began to lose his grip on life. "What I need isn't in a book," he said, his eyes widening slightly as he held his hand out in front of him. His pinkie and the two fingers next to it had begun to twitch.
"Um hmm, and who's the voodoo mamb—" She stopped short. His left foot had begun to jerk uncontrollably. Amie gripped the book tightly. This was worse than she thought.
Dante followed her gaze before leaning his head back, spent.
He was being far too calm about this. "What aren't you telling me? Have you seen this happen before?"
"Once," he said, not looking at her, "about seventy years ago."
"And?" She didn't have time for him to hold back on this.
"It didn't end well."
Her stomach tightened.
"I'm not going to lose you," she told him, and herself.
She grabbed two more books off the shelf and plopped down on the floor. The answer had to be here…somewhere. She scrambled through the index of the first book, her mind racing until she forced herself to take a step back and focus. Think. So the spell was wearing off. Well, she'd cast it and she could fix it.
Amie reached back to the bookshelf. Heart pounding, she dumped all of her zombie books on the floor around her. The answer had to be in one of them.
Seven books later, her head pounded. Worse, she wasn't any closer to a solution. None of her spell books talked about reanimating an already animated zombie. It was as if she had missed a crucial step.
"Where's the pink book?" she asked. The entire left half of his body twitched uncontrollably. Could he even hear her anymore? She forced her voice to remain even. "You know. The one you had out on the table yesterday. My mom's pink book."
"With the cookbooks," he mumbled, not even opening his eyes.
Well, no wonder she hadn't seen it. She hurried into the kitchen and found it next to her mother's old Betty Crocker Homemaker's Guide.
She turned back to find him trying to stand.
"Dante!" She rushed to him.
He reached out to her for a moment, before his entire arm dropped lifelessly to his side.
"Just…hang on." She helped him back into the chair. Blood soaked through the bandage on his arm. "You need another one," she said, thankful to focus on something as mundane as a gunshot wound.
As for the rest, Amie didn't know what she was going to do.
She'd just gotten Dante back into the chair when she heard the alarm beep downstairs.
Isoke!
The alarm gave a low bong sound as it rejected whatever code he'd dialed in. Typical. Still, her heart lightened. She'd welcome Isoke and a dozen dead rats if he could just tell her what had gone wrong with Dante. The Kongamato may not know how to string a set of numbers together, but he had eight generations' worth of practical voodoo.
Amie rushed downstairs, dashed through her shop and threw open the storage room door.
"Yak!" Isoke jumped backward and stumbled into a flowerpot. His beak flew open and he dropped the large black rat he'd been carrying. "Kipofu! You have ruined the surprise."
Amie let out a shriek as the live rodent ran straight for her. "Get it out of here!" Luckily, the rat turned on a dime. It dashed under the Kongamato's spread feet and out into the night.
"Quickly," Amie said, ushering him inside.
The Kongamato flapped his wings as he maneuvered sideways through the door. "What's the rush?" Isoke grumbled, folding his wings and waddling past Amie. "I'm ignoring all of my instincts letting that resplendent creature go."
She closed the door behind him. "It's not important right now. I need your help."
Worry clouded his features as he read the look on her face. "What have you done?"
Amie chewed her lip. Would he even want her with Dante if he knew the truth? She'd hate to see Isoke if he was trying to discourage a romance. "I summoned a zombie," she admitted.
There. She said it. She was a failure as a voodoo mambo and as a human being. She'd called a man from the dead and if she wasn't careful, she was going to kill him again.
Isoke's mouth dropped open, showing a double row of razor sharp teeth. In the strangled silence, two red scales pinged to the floor.
Oh no. "Are you alrig
ht?"
The feathers on the top of his head shook, along with the rest of him. "Have you been smoking mlima leaves?" he barked. "Of course I am not alright. I leave you with a nice healthy man and you call up a zombie."
Amie took a breath. "The nice man is the zombie," she confessed.
The Kongamato looked puzzled for a moment, then broke into a grin. "Ah! Well, why didn't you say so? This is fine." He puffed out his chest. "This is wonderful!"
"No, it's not," she said, leading Isoke toward the stairs. "He's sick. The spell is wearing off."
"I've never heard of such a thing," he said, following. "Then again, your line does not have the best luck with men."
Yeah, well it was worse than that.
"Hurry." She urged Isoke through the door upstairs.
Dante lay on the recliner. He looked like death. His eyes were sunken behind dark circles. His skin had gone pasty and his entire left hand twitched uncontrollably.
"It was an accident," she insisted, crouching close and taking his hand. "I woke him as part of a love spell." But now? She'd never touch him again if that's what it took to save him.
Isoke landed on the arm of the recliner and leaned forward to inspect Dante. He was shaking badly. Blood trickled from under his bandage.
She'd thought she wanted love, but she didn't. Not this way.
Isoke looked at Amie as if he blamed her too. "Something is very wrong. I have seen soul mates raised. It is a beautiful thing. This is not."
"I know." Amie touched her hand to Dante's forehead. It was cold. He shivered, and she wanted to curl up in his lap and cry.
He was going to be taken from her forever. There would be no one else. She couldn't handle it. Besides, she knew there would never be another man like him.
Isoke leaned his head against her. "It is powerful magic to bring back the dead. You must need him very much."
Needing was one thing. Having was quite another. "I'll leave him alone forever if you can help me fix him."
She swore she'd never follow in her mother's footsteps and she wouldn't. It was going to be safe and boring from here on out.
Isoke drew away from her. "I'm sorry," he said, "there is no spell for reanimating a zombie. And if he dies again, he is truly and forever dead."
Alphas for the Holidays Page 78