Dark and Deadly: Eight Bad Boys of Paranormal Romance (22 page)

Sue Cardinal might dress like a hippie, but there was pure steel underneath the deceptively sweet face, waist-length white hair, long, brightly colored skirt and dozens of bangle bracelets. 

“We fixed him! He never even realized anything happened to him.” Rose protested, turning the heat off under the pot and placing a lid on it to trap the aroma inside. The
last
thing she needed around her house was more sparkling conversation.

“Marigold Rose Cardinal, what have I taught you? With great power comes great responsibility,” her mother said, untying the red-and-white checked apron she insisted on wearing whenever they mixed spells and potions.

Rose threw her hands in the air. “That's Spiderman. We're witches. And
don't
call me Marigold.”

“It's your name. Also, I don't care. I phoned them, they're coming, and that's that.” Her mother stalked out the kitchen door, chin held high and an air of injured righteousness surrounding her like the dozens of butterflies that usually flocked to her in the garden.

Rose closed her eyes and counted to ten, then to twenty, before giving it up as hopeless and cleaning up the kitchen. The bright, airy room was her favorite in the entire cottage, which was saying a lot since she loved every single room. She'd painted the walls a sunny yellow with bright white accents and trim, and her sparklingly shiny copper pots shone from the open shelving on one wall.

Her house was tiny, but it was had been all hers for nearly a year now, and after twenty-three years of living with her mom and three sisters, it felt like a paradise. True, a path connected her house to her mom's, where her younger sisters still lived, but it was across the acre of their shared kitchen garden. Right now, during a lovely late spring in Ohio, the garden was blooming so wildly that travelling between houses was almost like crossing a jungle.

“You aren't much like a jaguar, though, are you, Bob?” she asked her black and white cat as he padded into the room, probably from her bedroom, where he'd been napping earlier.

He meowed at her and jumped up on to the cushioned window seat so he could survey his kingdom. She always thought he must have had a little bit of cat royalty in his background, from his regal carriage and “you may pet me now, peasant” attitude, but he, like the house, was all hers. He'd shown up one night on her porch in a rainstorm, tiny and bedraggled, and he'd been hers ever since. Or she'd been his. You could never tell, with cats.

Her youngest sister burst into the house, slamming the door against the wall.

“Astrid, I asked you not to do that,” Rose said, without any real hope that her bubbly sister would pay any attention this time, either.

“They got Ninja,” Astrid said, wiping tears off her face with the sleeve of her white peasant blouse. Astrid was the only one of them who’d inherited their mother’s sense of style and, at fifteen and long, lanky, and gorgeous, she wore it well.

“We’ll help Ninja, honey,” Rose said soothingly. “We fixed the paperboy. It’s all good.”

She wiped her hands on a towel, retrieved a slender glass vial from its position in the refrigerator next to eleven more just like it, and followed her sister outside to rescue the dog.

She stopped on her porch and took a deep breath, unable to resist the wonderful scents of flowers and herbs coming from the garden. Her mother was a garden witch--derogatorily referred to by some as a kitchen witch--and her powers came from spells and potions made from plants. 

Rose and her sisters had inherited the same magic, but each of them had something a little extra, as well. In Rose, it was the ability to discover a person’s deepest desire within five minutes of being in his or her presence. 

Not everyone appreciated this gift; especially since she’d often blurted out her magically acquired knowledge in public when she was a child. Plus, sometimes the knowledge was a surprise even to the person whose desire it was.

That usually turned out badly.

“Rose! Are you coming?” Astrid’s voice rang out from behind the small stand of blooming apple trees. “Watch out for the mean one by the tomatoes.”

Rose kept an eye out for any strange movement as she headed for Astrid, but the nasty little beasts had learned to watch out for her after she’d thrown an itching spell at the one chasing Bob.

She rounded the corner of the path and found her sister kneeling on the ground beneath a tree, her arms around a tiny stone statue of a pug.

Astrid turned her tearstained face up to Rose. “You have to help my sweet Ninja.”

Rose grinned at the sight of the dog, frozen in mid-bark, his tiny pug ears standing straight up. 

“I’ve got it, Astrid. Now stand back.” She uncorked the vial and shook the sparkling pink liquid on the statue’s head after her sister moved out of the way, and they both watched as Astrid’s black pug puppy transformed from a stone statue back into his roly-poly self, apparently no worse for wear. 

“Honey, please keep him out of the garden until we deal with this,” Rose said, trying to be stern but unable to resist smiling as her sister covered the pup’s silky head with kisses.

Astrid promised and ran back to their mother’s house, carrying Ninja. Rose watched her and then sighed and turned around to go back to her kitchen and check on her new conversation potion. Their neighbor’s son Connor, a very sweet computer nerd and recent college grad who wanted to use it for job interviews, would be stopping by at four to pick it up.

When she reached the cottage, she automatically glanced into the window at Bob and then stumbled to a stop. Her cat, frozen in mid-stretch, had been turned into a stone statue.

Damn garden pests. Why couldn’t they get grub beetles or snails, like the typical gardener? Oh, no. Never anything ordinary for the Cardinal witches.

They had to get a freaking basilisk infestation.

Alejandro turned the standard-issue sedan right on Wildflower Lane, mentally running through a checklist of the equipment and ammo in the trunk. He and Mac were loaded for bear--or basilisk, to be precise--and yet he still wondered why the regional office in Columbus had assigned two rookie field officers to handle something so incredibly dangerous. He said as much to Mac.

“They know we can handle it,” Mac said confidently. Alejandro’s partner stared out the window at the tree-lined street with its immaculate lawns and careful landscaping. “It’s like a different planet, isn’t it?” 

Alejandro made a noncommittal noise. Mac had grown up in Vegas, so he was used to desert scenery. Alejandro had been born and raised in a remote village in Guatemala, isolated by vampires from technology or progress, so every place he went in the U.S. felt like a different planet. The computer lab at the academy had been a wondrous revelation, and he’d spent all of his spare time catching up to his American classmates.

Except in weapons training and vampire tactics classes. There, most of his classmates had been forced to work hard to catch up to
him
.

“That’s it. 8121 Wildflower Lane,” Mac said. “The one set back from the street.”

Alejandro pulled in to the driveway while he automatically scanned the area for danger or signs of disturbances. 

“Seems like a basilisk would have done more damage,” he said. “Or there’d at least be a lot of running and screaming.”

“Maybe it ate everyone and moved on,” Mac suggested, grinning. “We can go get some lunch and then take the rest of the day off.”

Alejandro rolled his eyes. “We’d still have to spend all afternoon writing up the paperwork.”

P-Ops was as bad as its parent agency, the FBI, when it came to paperwork. Alejandro’s typing was slow, and working on the many reports that came with the job was his least favorite part of his new career. Probably always would be.

They got out of the car and looked around. Alejandro had only taken a single step toward the front door of the small house when a woman who looked like sunshine walked out, and his entire world shifted on its axis.

She wasn’t beautiful or even conventionally pretty, and he wasn’t even sure what it was about her that had knocked him on his figurative ass. This woman—she was somehow unique. Her hair was a silky fall of golden blond, but her athletic figure was neither model-thin nor lusciously curved. Her face was captivating, though—something about the combination of her individual features packed a punch right to his gut. Maybe her lips, or the strength in her bone structure. Maybe her eyes.

Her eyes
.

They were so blue that he almost couldn’t believe they were real, and they were snapping with fire, impatience, or annoyance. He couldn’t decipher her emotion from her eyes alone—hell, he was lucky if he ever understood
anything
about women--but something about her made him want to spend hours trying.

It took him another beat to realize that her lips were pressed together in a firm line. When she put her hands on her hips—gently rounded hips that clearly had been made for a man to hold--even he, blinded by the most immediate case of raging lust he’d ever felt, could see that she was angry about something.

He tried to focus on the job. He told himself that she’d probably have a terrible personality. He reminded himself that she was a witch, and then it hit him. She projected a sense of power—a feeling of barely leashed magic—that somehow had transformed her into the most fascinating woman he’d ever seen. Maybe it was a spell? She was a witch, after all, and he had never reacted like this before.

His libido didn’t care about the
why
. It just wanted to get her naked, which was damn stupid under the circumstances and therefore made him suspicious.

“So. You must be the P-Ops guys. Let me guess; you’re from the government and you’re here to help?” Sarcasm and something else, maybe annoyance, coated her words, but her voice was musical and so sexy that he wanted to hear her talk all night long.

Well. Maybe not
all
night. 

She was breathing hard, and Alejandro tried not to notice the way her breasts pressed against her shirt. He was a professional agent, damn it, not a horny kid. He fumbled for his badge, but Mac beat him to it.

Mac moved around the car, holding out his hand. “Mac Henson and Alejandro Vasquez, ma’am. You have a basilisk problem?”

Right. The basilisk. Alejandro snapped into action and opened the trunk of the car. He pulled out a shotgun, extra ammo, and a helmet with a darkened visor to protect himself from the basilisk’s deadly gaze.

“Where is it? Is anybody injured? Any fatalities?” he asked, heading back toward the house.

The woman’s mouth twitched, and he could have sworn he saw a smile curve her lips, but it was gone so fast that maybe he’d imagined it. “I’m Rose Cardinal. Are you sure you’re ready for this? That might not be enough protection.”

Alejandro’s gaze snapped to Mac, who strode back to the trunk to suit up. 

“We’re ready, ma’am,” Alejandro said, his confidence in his skills and training overriding his tongue-tied fumbling. She must have put a spell on him. He’d never reacted to a woman at first glance like this before. Not even to Maria.

“Are you presently casting any spells?” he asked bluntly. Surely that much charisma had to be helped along by magical glamour.

She laughed out loud this time. “No, officer, I’m not bewitching you in any way. Don’t you have some kind of magic meter?”

He did, in fact, have a dial on his agency-issued watch that reacted with different colored lights in the presence of magic. He’d forgotten about it, like an idiot. He glanced down at it and saw that the dials remained dark. No magic detected whatsoever.

“It’s agent, not officer,” he said. “But you can call me Alejandro.”

“Call me Rose,” she responded, and an intriguing hint of pink appeared on her cheeks. 

Before he could say anything else, she turned and went back into the house, motioning to them to follow.

“You may as well come through here. I’ll call my mother, since she was the one who was so hot to get you people on the job,” she called back over her shoulder. 

Hot
was an unfortunate word for her to use when he was staring at her lushly rounded ass. He could feel his internal temperature ratchet up to about a thousand degrees, and he blew out a deep breath.

Back to business. No staring at the civilian’s ass.

He followed Rose into the house, determinedly looking at the back of her head. He glanced back to see that Mac was headed around the corner, signaling that he’d meet Alejandro on the other side. There was no way the basilisk was indoors and, anyway, the woman who’d filed the report had stated that its location was in the garden. 

The house was warm and inviting and gave him clues to its owner’s personality. A soft cream color covered the walls, which were bare except for a stunning art piece made of glass and aged wood that hung behind the bright scarlet couch. Books were scattered across a brass trunk that served as a coffee table. Framed photos were arranged in groupings on most available flat surfaces; the majority of them featured a variety of blond women who must be related to Rose, although a few were of various cats and dogs. 

He took all of that in during the few seconds it took him to cross the room, and then he followed Rose to her kitchen, noting that she hastily closed a door halfway down the hall. The door opposite to the closed one held a small room lined with walls of books. The other one must be her bedroom.

He shoved the idea of Rose in her bed, all that glorious hair streaming across the pillows, out of his mind and watched as she crossed the room to a window seat, where an oddly arched statue of a cat stood.

“Alejandro, meet Bob,” Rose said, and he quickly looked around the room, only to confirm that nobody was there.

“Bob? Who is Bob?”

“Bob is my cat,” she said, that quicksilver grin again crossing her face and then vanishing. “The basilisks got him just after I rescued Ninja.”

“The basilisk attacked your cat after you rescued a ninja?” he repeated slowly, realizing he’d been right. There was no way a woman this beautiful could have a personality to match her looks.