What Voodoo Do You Do? Read online

  Nodding, I headed toward the door. “You know how to get in touch?”

  “I do.”

  Mavis and I didn’t speak until we got outside. The long, perfect form lounging against my car straightened and walked toward us as we stopped beside Mavis’s shiny new SUV. Gren cocked his head, his dark brown eyes narrowing. “You look exhausted.”

  I didn’t deny it. “There’s a lot of coffee in my near future.”

  Mavis patted my arm. “I’ll call Bev and have her bring donuts.”

  I pulled her into a hug. “Thanks for your help, mom.”

  She held me tight, squeezing harder than a woman in her sixties should have been able to. But, I’d recently learned that Mavis wasn’t human. She and her daughter, my sister of the heart, were witches. And I was learning that witches were a unique and powerful bunch. When she pulled away, her smile was sad. “You know this is going to get real ugly, real fast, right?”

  I frowned, wanting to ask for more details, but knowing it didn’t make sense to go into it without the rest of my council there. “Not really. I don’t know anything about demons. But I’m expecting that you all are going to enlighten me.”

  With a nod and a tired smile at Gren, she climbed into her cute SUV and drove out of the lot.

  I turned to my sexy savior. “Well, here we go again,” I said, a smile curving my lips. I might be dumber than a shirt made of hair, but there was a tiny part of me that was excited for what was coming. Things had been strangely quiet in Rome for nearly a month. And while the hiatus had given me time to work on the church remodel, I’d missed the thrill of adventure and nearly daily brushes with death my seating had offered.

  Yeah, I know. Dumb as hair.

  Before that seating, which was kind of the training and testing phases of becoming a Lares all wrapped up in one cluster curse of an event, I hadn’t known I had a magical legacy. Or even that magic existed.

  Barely a month later, I was fighting demons.

  Curse, curse, swear!

  “Yes, here we go again,” Gren agreed.

  “You want a ride home?” I wasn’t exactly sure where “home” was for Gren. He usually just kind of walked into or out of the shadows around the church.

  “Unless you want to fly on Air Lungren?” He raised his brows, waggling them suggestively.

  I laughed, shaking my head. “Right now, I’m almost too tired to drive. Unless you’ve got a saddle for your back, I doubt I could stay aboard.”

  He stepped closer, and the air darkened behind him, the impression of enormous, dark wings lifting above his head. He touched my chin, lifting it so he could look me in the eyes. “I would never let you fall, Aggy.”

  Too late.

  I was pretty sure I’d already fallen into a puddle of goo at his feet. “Uh…” I slammed my lips shut and swallowed hard. “Ah…”

  Gren lowered his head, and I forgot to breathe. His soft lips found my skin, burning a brand on one of my super-heated cheeks. “I’ll see you at home.”

  Then, with a swish of the wings that seemed to be nothing more than shadow, he was gone.

  “Dang!” I said, laughing at myself. “I should have taken that flight. Maybe there would have been a layover somewhere spicy and hot.”

  That thought kept me warm and awake during the short drive home.

  4

  A Magic Much Like Rancid Oil

  “Tell me about this vortex,” I instructed my team. We were seated in the former sanctuary, which I’d transformed into a beautiful living space with clusters of comfortable seating and tons of plants in front of the stunning focus area of floor-to-ceiling arched windows. The brightly-hued rugs Bev had helped me pick out pulled each seating area together and warmed the oak plank flooring, creating a vibrant visual experience that never failed to bring a smile to my face when I walked into the room.

  The space was also a perfect spot for me to meet with the twelve members of my council. There was plenty of seating and room for all of us. Though Reverend Dodson, being a ghost, didn’t really need seating, and the bat and the raven didn’t need furniture either if they ever both showed up at the same time, which hadn’t happened yet.

  Lately, Wraith, the black cat that had decided she wanted to be part of our little party, joined the meetings too, much to Monty’s delight. He loved having a friend to play with. Though, in fairness, the play was kind of one-sided. Monty did zoomies around the sleek feline, bounced and barked, and generally made a nuisance of himself, and Wraith bathed herself, ignoring him.

  The black cat had just turned up one night, draped over a tombstone in the church’s small cemetery. I’d begun feeding her not too long after that because…well…I couldn’t seem to help myself. And she’d wandered into the kitchen through Monty’s new dog door not too long after that.

  Wraith had been keeping watch over the place since that day, really more of a bodyguard than a pet. But I was pretty sure she was warming up to us.

  Sort of.

  Maybe?

  It’s really hard to tell with a cat.

  Lungren stood in front of the window alcove, staring out at the grounds. I watched him standing there, wondering what he was thinking about so hard. Also, my gaze might have drifted, once or twice, to one of his better features. (I was referring to his broad, muscular back, potty brain.)

  “The vortex has been there through millennia,” Ferral, my advocate, told me. His tone, which was clipped and snotty as usual, made the statement sound like scolding for my ignorance. “It’s been inactive for decades.”

  I turned to look into his too-handsome face, focusing my hazel gaze on his dark silver one. As usual, Ferral’s shoulder-length wavy blond hair was unbound, his muscular form covered in a perfectly tailored suit. The current version was black, over a starched white button-down shirt that was open at his muscular throat. He seemed to favor a dark gray suit generally but wasn’t afraid to mix it up with black or navy on occasion.

  He was a real party animal like that.

  “What could have happened to activate it?” Bev asked, frowning.

  Reverend Dodson shrugged his shoulders, which looked nearly corporeal since he was standing in a shadowed corner. “The last time this happened, a coven of witches had been trying to call a demon through blood magic.” He slid his kind brown gaze to me. “Does anyone at Golden Years Senior Home know how to perform that type of magic?”

  “I’m not sure. I know of two women living at the senior home who came from Louisiana. I guess there could be more. I’m pretty sure that one of them has voodoo in her background. I’m not sure about Molly.”

  “Molly’s the one who’s been possessed?” Bev asked.

  “Shadee, the night nurse, wasn’t sure about that,” I said. “Shadee’s mother was a voodoo queen in New Orleans. I assume she knows about dark magic too. It would be hard to grow up around voodoo without picking some things up about its darker side.”

  “How well do you know this night nurse?” Trish asked. Sitting in her favorite chair, she’d tucked a sock-covered foot under her leg while tapping the toe of her other foot on the rug.

  As usual, Trish was dressed in a well-worn denim shirt over a tee-shirt and heavy work jeans. She’d removed her work belt and dusty boots when I’d summoned her from the room where she was in the process of constructing my candle shop.

  The pretty contractor had baby-soft blonde hair and vivid green eyes that crinkled in the corners. When she wasn’t working as my contractor, she was an ancient fairy warrior of the Unseelie branch. She was also part of the same coven Mavis and Bev belonged to. Apparently, her magic was compatible with theirs. I suspected the “coven” was mostly an excuse to drink wine and eat. But I could be wrong.

  “Not well. I know Molly better. Why?”

  “I was just wondering if she was comfortable with her magic.”

  I shook my head to show I didn’t understand what she was asking me.

  “Does she embrace her heritage? Or seem embarrassed by it?” B
ev clarified. She tugged off an elastic ponytail holder and resmoothed her straight blonde hair into a short pony at the back of her head. With a few quick, practiced twists, she secured the shoulder-length bob and sat forward, elbows on knees.

  “I don’t know. But I’ll find out.” I sighed. “We need to close that vortex before it affects others like Molly.”

  “Tell us about the vortex,” Luke asked. The wolf shifter had dark brown hair and golden-brown eyes. His square jaw always sported sexy stubble. I realized I’d never asked him what he did for a living, but I suspected it was something to do with construction. He’d done some work with Trish in the past.

  Taking a deep breath, I expelled it in a rush. I sat back on the couch and tucked my feet underneath me. “You know those cheap little wooden wells they sell in garden centers for people to stick in their yards?”

  Their heads bobbed in unison.

  “It’s in one of those.”

  Silence met my admission, along with a few stunned looks.

  “Seriously?” Trish asked.

  “Seriously,” I agreed. “Weird, huh?” Then I remembered Monty’s frantic contribution to the battle and amended my description. “At least, it used to be in the well. I’m afraid Monty shoved the well over. It’s probably all over the ground now.”

  Mavis shook her head. “It doesn’t work that way, Aggy. That stupid well bobbed right back up after a few minutes. The vortex was still inside.”

  “For now,” a deep voice said from the front of the room. We all turned to look at Gren, whose intoxicating face had turned my way. “That vortex is not only active, but it’s dynamic.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “It means it’s growing,” Niele said. The gnome’s thick features folded into an unhappy look. He ran short, wide fingers through his frizzy silver hair and pursed his lips. “That’s really bad news,” he said.

  I was happy to see he was wearing the moss undies Bev had made him. I’d discovered the hard way when moving into the church that, although gnomes were excellent gardeners, they liked to do their gardening in the buff. Unfortunately, Niele had no patience for most fabrics and had resisted covering his stick and berries until my brilliant sister created the moss underwear for him.

  “You’ve felt something?” Ferral asked the gnome.

  “I have,” Niele agreed. “The layers of the earth are shifting, making way for something. I was nearly lost to the changes this morning. I assume that’s the vortex pushing its way upward.”

  “Wait,” I held up a hand to stop them. “We saw the vortex. It’s already on the surface.”

  Ferral shook his head. “No. You saw a questing branch. Nothing more.”

  I opened my mouth to ask, but Trish spoke before I could. “An active vortex has hundreds of, for lack of a better word, feelers. It sends them out on a continual basis, looking for a path to the surface.”

  “Once it reaches the surface,” Bev added, “this particular vortex will become a Hellmouth, providing direct access to the creatures of the demonic plane.”

  I swallowed hard. “What creates the path?” I fought a shudder as ice crawled along my spine.

  “Magic,” Gren said. “The darkest kind of magic.” His gaze found mine, tiny lines creasing the smooth skin between his eyes. “Somebody in that place used blood magic, Aggy. And we can’t close the vortex or save your friend until we find out who it was and stop them. Hopefully, we’re not already too late.”

  The front door opened and slammed closed. Already keyed up after Gren’s dire announcement, I twitched violently at the sound. I glanced through the wide doorway to the foyer and saw a familiar but unexpected face. A straight bob of midnight hair brushed the teen’s narrow shoulders, and a slender gold nose ring pierced her small nose. Wanda’s dark brown eyes stared back at me, their contours exaggerated with thick lines of black eyeliner.

  As usual, the teen was dressed all in black. Midnight-hued skinny jeans covered her too-slender legs like leggings beneath an oversized black tee-shirt with a silver pentacle on the front.

  She looked at me in surprise and I blinked back.

  It was only noon. Much earlier than she usually arrived at my house. A fact that was made starker by the fact that Wanda couldn’t control her visits to the church. The teen was the victim of a groundhog day type spell, which was placed on her by witches, judging from Wanda’s recounting of the event.

  She’d once told me the spell seemed to occasionally suffer from glitches, and I guessed her early arrival might be one of those. “Just in time,” I told her, motioning her into the room. “We were discussing our latest crisis.”

  The teen slunk reluctantly into the room, dropping into a chair set apart from the others and looking suitably morose for her goth-like presentation. When everyone looked at her, she made herself small and tried to become one with the tea roses in the upholstery. “Dudes!”

  Mavis grinned. Bev laughed. The men looked confused.

  “We’re just surprised to see you so early in the day,” I told her.

  Wanda generally popped in at dinner time and left within a couple of hours. Her early appearance made me wonder if Bev and Mavis’s attempts to remove the spell tying her to the repetitive behavior were having an effect.

  The girl shrugged. “Whatever.”

  We stared at her a beat longer, waiting for her to finish the sentence. We were disappointed in that expectation.

  “Okay, then,” I said. “We have an open vortex at the senior home outside of Rome. Do you have anything to contribute to the conversation on how to shut it down?” I really didn’t expect her to, but the kid surprised me on a regular basis.

  Wanda sat up straighter, a look I’d seen before sliding over the bored expression she’d been nurturing. “Vortex?” She frowned.

  I watched her expressive face turn thoughtful as she considered my question. I didn’t know nearly enough about Wanda since she didn’t like to talk about herself or her situation. It had been like pulling teeth just to get the story of how she was spelled out of her. But I was starting to recognize two things. First, she was wicked smart. And second, she had magic. It wasn’t a type of magic I’d ever heard of before, but it was very useful magic. She knew stuff. Random, strange stuff. About the magical world.

  “The last vortex opening in this area was around nineteen-thirty-seven. It ate the entire downtown, and a mile in every direction before the current Lares managed to shut it down.”

  My throat threatened to seize up at her words. An experienced Lares had nearly been unable to stop it? I was toast. “Yikes!” I said, panic flaring.

  She ignored me, seemingly lost in her thoughts. “But the vortex was the least of it.”

  I felt my eyes go wide.

  “Demons flooded from the Hellmouth and found hosts among the townspeople. Before the Lares and his council realized what was happening, the hosts had killed many of the remaining townspeople.”

  My head dropped into my hands, which felt cold as ice against my fevered brow. Curse, curse, swear, swear!

  “What opened it?” Mavis asked, her gaze sliding worriedly toward me. I wasn’t sure if she was concerned that I was about to roll into the fetal position and drool on myself or because of Wanda’s news.

  Either way lay calamity.

  “A local coven let itself be swayed into playing with blood magic by a powerful warlock who was the brother of one of the coven sisters. They thought he was just going to summon a low-level demon and then send it back. An exercise in stretching their wings, magically speaking. But he had bigger plans. He wanted the vortex open. And, once it was open, he killed the coven sisters who’d helped him open it.”

  Bev swore softly. “With only a few exceptions, a vortex that’s been magically opened can only be closed by those who opened it. And even that’s not a guarantee.”

  Wanda nodded. “His actions ensured the vortex would stay open for a long time.”

  I thought of the summons that had aler
ted me in the wee hours of the morning. “Why wasn’t the Lares warned what was happening?”

  Wanda slid me a look I couldn’t interpret. “He was warned that something was happening. But one of his council members was killed within the hour and, either the Lares believed that was what the warning pertained to, or he just got sidetracked by grief. The history is unclear on that point.”

  Both her non-Wanda-like delivery of the information, with nary a “dude” in the bunch, and her mention of “history” reinforced my perception that Wanda’s magic was tied somehow to magical records.

  I thought about her words, a feeling of unease sliding through me. It just wasn’t jiving for me. I’d had a few nebulous warnings since taking my place as Lares of Rome, Indiana. But the important ones sent me directly to the problem. Or maybe I was just getting better at reading the warnings. I wasn’t sure, and that bothered me.

  “How did the Lares eventually close the vortex?” Ferral asked.

  Leave it to the grumpy advocate to get right to the root of the issue.

  Wanda threw me a look that made me uncomfortable. It was a look I wasn’t used to seeing on her young face. Dread, possibly mixed with unhappiness.

  “What is it?” Gren asked.

  Wanda fidgeted with a string on her tee, her gaze avoiding mine.

  “Wanda?” I nudged.

  She expelled a gust of air. “There has to be another way.”

  “What?” Niele asked, shifting on his chair.

  She finally slid her gaze to me, and the impact of that look made me rear back. My heart was pounding so hard and fast in my chest, I was afraid I might pass out. “Just tell me,” I said. My voice was barely above a whisper.

  Licking her lips, Wanda finally said. “He threw himself into the vortex and sealed it from the inside with his magic.”

  5

  The Weak Succumb to Powerful Fates