This Soul Magic. Michele Hauf
be rocking with the best of them soon enough. Did you ever figure out the cat food?”
“No, but perhaps there is a stray that visits on occasion?”
“I hope so. I love kitties. Though Salamander might be jealous if I went home smelling like another cat.” Sal was Vika’s cat, but since moving in with CJ, she’d left him behind. She never had been a cat person. “Let’s go.”
Outside, we slid into the white hearse I drove for our cleaning business. I’d stuck a sticker that read Jiffy Clean on the trunk years ago as a joke. It annoyed Vika.
Vika and I cleaned up dead paranormals such as slain werewolves, demons and the occasional newer vampire who didn’t completely ash at death. Couldn’t have the mortals seeing such nightmares lying about the city. Cleaning was Vika’s life. Since the rock-star thing would probably never happen and my small flower garden brought in a pitiful amount at the bazaar, I had to do something to earn a euro.
I drove down the street toward the witch’s bazaar, a place I visited every other Saturday to buy and sell spellcraft items, pick up pointers, and chatter with fellow witches.
“Do you have male friends?” Reichardt asked out of the blue.
“Of course I do. A life without men is dull and a little too clean. Why do you ask?”
“I have the feeling I should talk to a man,” he said. “To learn things that a woman can’t teach me.”
“Like what?” I asked cheerfully, excited he was asking for knowledge.
“Like how to get stronger, and how to treat a woman.”
“Best way to learn that is from the source. Trust me on that one.”
“What about how to sexually fulfill a woman?”
My neck grew hot yet my grin may have touched both ears. I met Reichardt’s sweetly wondering gaze in the rearview mirror. “Again, the source would be your best bet.”
He crossed his arms, uncomfortable with the suggestion. Hell, the guy could have used a male friend. Just because the best information came from the source didn’t mean it was easy to ask about the intimate stuff.
“You remember CJ, Vika’s guy?”
“Yes, Certainly Jones, the dark witch with the curious tattoos.”
“Mmm, I love a tattooed man.”
“Is that so?” Reichardt considered that one a moment. “But why is he dark?”
“He practices dark magic to balance the light, which is what Vika and I practice. Yin and yang. It’s a karma thing.”
“Karma is the universe, yes?”
“Exactly.”
“Do you think I could talk to CJ? No offense, Libby, but there are things that...come up.” He looked aside and was suddenly very interested in the door lock.
I recalled our embrace in the kitchen when he’d gotten an erection. If the guy wanted to learn how to use that, then perhaps it was time to call in Team Man.
“I’ll give CJ a call once we get to the bazaar. I’m sure he’d love to get together with you and talk man stuff.”
“Thank you. I don’t mind the cleaning tasks you’ve taught me, but I feel there are more manly things I should be learning. Like how to drive this vehicle. Shouldn’t the man drive the woman?”
“I can teach you how to drive. But let’s concentrate on getting your immediate needs met first.”
Like learning how to please a woman, I thought with a sneaky curl of lip. I’d have this guy eating out of my hands soon enough.
I pulled into a parking space and Reichardt got out and rushed around to my side. He opened the door, which had never once happened in my dating history. He already knew how to please a woman. What the man really needed was confidence and a sense of place in this realm.
* * *
The bazaar was indeed bizarre. I wandered the aisles in the small church basement—yes, the witches gathered in a former Catholic church. How about that for irony? And I did know irony, which pleased me into a grin as I passed a table featuring Charms to Devastate and Divulge.
The room was populated with all varieties, from normal-looking women and men to those sporting outrageous clothing and hair and a few with tattooed faces. I thought the one with the tiny wings at her back was a faery, but what would she be doing here?
“You want me to show you around?” Libby asked as she handed me a paper cup of coffee.
I loved coffee—it was like mead—and I guessed I might have drunk mead if I’d come from Above. Maybe?
“I think I’ll just take it all in, if that’s all right with you. Go and do what you must. I like watching you walk away from me.”
Blowing me a kiss, Libby sashayed down the aisle, her hips swaying and the fringes bouncing. She wiggled her torso in that sexy groove that made things on me very hard. I needed to talk to CJ soon. I wanted to get my hands all over that woman’s bounce, yet when I did, things came up. Things that felt great yet, I knew, required further research.
I strolled past a table that sold various vials of blood in all gradients of crimson. Werewolf blood, vampire blood, faery ichor, kitsune blood and black demon blood. Mermaid blood was a tint of green. What were the uses for such things? Did I really want to know?
Sipping the last of the coffee, I turned abruptly and bumped into a tall, thin woman clad in frumpy black with snow-white hair that fell like silk about her shoulders. She spun, revealing pointed teeth and a pale face, and hissed at me.
That hiss disturbed me so much I flinched and stepped back.
She tracked me backward until my shoulders hit the wall and a tendril of dried garlic bobbed at my head. When she stuck a finger in the air before my face I felt as if I’d been struck by invisible magic. Hell, who could know in a room full of witches?
“You’re different,” she said with a craggy voice that belonged buried under tangled tree roots. “Not the same as you once were.”
That summation was difficult not to question. “What do you know about me?”
“I see it. Your aura. It’s all colors. Never see that unless it’s an angel, don’t you know.”
I clamped my jaws shut before blurting out my truth. How she’d guessed such a thing was beyond me. Yet I supposed it wasn’t a big secret. Could those with paranormal proclivities see what I had once been?
“I can feel your yearning.”
“I—don’t yearn.” Yet, in fact, I did just that.
“You do. And for more than what men yearn for.”
“Is that so?” Because I’d learned that most men did yearn for the red sports car.
“You want what was once yours.”
Damned good guess. Did she also know I desired Libby? “And...just how would I get that? What was once mine.”
“Ha! Knew it.”
I leaned in closer, lifting the coffee cup beside my cheek to shield our conversation from anyone who might hear, though the room bustled and everyone was occupied with their own doings. “And what if I do yearn? Can you help me with that?”
“Nope.”
My shoulders deflated. Just as well.
“But I know someone who can. You go see her and she’ll read you and tell you if she can release the, uh...lingering power that dwells within you,” she said with dramatic flair.
“I have power?”
“I can see it blasting out of you like a heat wave, handsome.