Red House (26 page)
Authors: Sonya Clark
“Which is?” I had a feeling this was going to be good.
“Enchanted sex toys.”
Boy, I wasn’t wrong. A fit of giggles overtook me.
“You laugh but it’s guaranteed to be recession-proof. And just think of the repeat customers, once the spell wears off and that vibrator’s not giving them the best orgasms of their lives anymore. Not only will they buy again they’ll be sure and select overnight shipping.”
“And how does one enchant a sex toy?”
He drew me into his lap. “You’ll have to help me with that.” He nibbled a line down my neck while one hand stroked the inside of my thigh and the other tangled in my hair. “I’m gonna teach you everything there is to know about sex magic.”
Grinning, I said, “I always was a good student.”
Chapter 22
The next couple of weeks kept me very busy. Under cover of darkness, Blake and I returned to the cemetery. I buried the bottle trap at the foot of the tree where Jody died. My blood would help keep Haschall trapped for quite some time but eventually the magic would wane. Heavy wards around that section of forest would keep him secured. I’d have to find out if Ray found himself a witch or if I’d have to come back periodically to strengthen the wards myself.
Shelby and I, with Blake’s help, rid Maple Hill of its old Civil War era ghost and sent the house’s guardian on to her final rest. Well, on to rest anyway. I was on the fence about questions of the finality of death and the possibility of an afterlife. Whichever the case, Ester had more than earned a time of repose.
I joined a number of local Pagans and practitioners for a healing rite to soothe the land after the tumult of the spring flood. Time would tell if it helped the land and all its restless spirits, but it did seem to be good for the people who participated. Shelby went with me, and at the last minute so did Blake.
My favorite thing about having Shelby around was that she quickly developed a habit of calling Daniel “old man.” It made him turn several shades of pink, a sight that never failed to give me a good case of the giggles.
Julia wrote me a check for triple my fee and best of all, introduced me to a friend who ran a mobile home dealership. It looked like I was going to have to tussle with the insurance company to get my house rebuilt so I decided to get a gently used mobile home for the time being. A single wide trailer with all working appliances, a bedroom on each end, and a Jacuzzi in the huge master bath, it also had kitchen cabinets that were beat to hell and hideous orange and yellow carpet in the living room. That weird narrow layout of a trailer would be hard to get used to but I didn’t care. I was living on my own again, and on my own land.
Blake never made noise about moving in with me, and for that I was glad. He found an apartment of his own. We were taking sure-footed steps to coupledom but neither one of us was the type to live together too quick.
I began to consider a new sideline business, selling hoodoo supplies through an internet storefront. Mail order sales had long been a part of the root doctor tradition. There were plenty of others online already. I thought I might could make a go of it, having plenty of recipes and spells of both Rozella’s and my own. I might even name the business after my late teacher.
All in all, things went really well in the weeks following that night in Maple Hill. That should have been my first clue a bomb was about to get dropped in my lap.
Sitting in my new kitchen one night with a three ring notepad half full of ideas for this new venture, I realized I’d rarely been alone for the past two or three weeks. My only company was the hum of the refrigerator and the buzz of a cricket. It was nearly midnight and I had a meeting with a potential client in the morning. Still, I didn’t feel ready for sleep. Restless energy pinged like a leaky faucet. I kept getting out of my chair and checking the driveway expectantly but no one ever showed. My phone stayed silent. Not so much as a spam email in my inbox. Nevertheless, I couldn’t shake the feeling I was about to get a visitor.
Eyes heavy and tired, I finally gave up after an hour and prepared for bed. Every little noise made me jump. I was still getting used to the trailer and all its differences from my old house. As I lay down the scents hit me–stale smoke and cheap whiskey, warm bodies and something frying in oil. Then came the music. It took me a moment to place the song, an old uncensored version of
Stack-O-Lee
.
I didn’t see him until I lay my glasses on the nightstand. Too shocked to even scream, I froze with my heart thudding in my throat. Whereas he had first appeared to me in shades of insubstantial gray, now he appeared more like an antique sepia photograph brought to half-life. I recognized him by the curl of dark hair that brushed his shoulders, the sharp bone structure, the darkness of his eyes. Mostly I recognized the sense of him, the taste of whiskey he brought to the back of my throat, the shadow of chaos that ran under the surface of things like fast moving rapids.
The night I’d seen his likeness in the mirror, the day I’d watched him light a cigarette and felt him stroke my cheek, and the day I’d called on magic to save myself from drowning–those were the moments I’d met him before.
“Who are you?”
He gazed at me, silent and unmoving.
“Can you speak?” I sat up in the bed.
He took an audible breath, glanced to the left, then looked back at me. “Yes.”
Shit, shit, shit. “Who are you? Please tell me.”
He took his time answering. “That’s not the right question.” He had a deep, rough voice and shit, he seemed to be getting more solid all the time.
“What is the right question?”
“You’ll have to figure that out.” He stepped forward and sat on the edge of the bed. I scrambled backward into the headboard. The fact that this whatever could sink his weight into a mattress, leaving a dent there just like a live person, sped up my heart rate and had me clutching the pillow. He was between me and any kind of charm I might use against him. And how in the hell did he get past my protective warding?
“You invited me,” he said, answering my thought.
“Oh no, I did not. I would remember inviting a spirit into my home and I did not invite you.” Except maybe I had, on the day I nearly drowned. I’d been thinking about that since it happened, wondering what kind of ripple effect that powerful and desperate bit of magic might have had. Because everything has an equal and opposite reaction, and a witch just had to hope what she did didn’t kill her.
“I’m not going to hurt you, Roxie.” He spread a hand big enough to palm a basketball on the quilt. His voice smoothed out, like after that first shot or two of booze and it starts going down easier.
I drew my knees up in front of my chest and wrapped my arms around my legs. “Then what are you going to do?”
“Whatever you need of me. That’s what you conjured me for, to give you aid.” There was a sweetness to his tone that almost made me forget how deeply freaky the whole situation was for about half a second.
“Well, thank you for that but I no longer require your services.” It never hurts to be polite to strange spirits powerful enough to just waltz right into your warded home. “You may go.”
For a moment he looked hurt, which frightened me, then he grinned, which scared the ever loving hell out of me. “I don’t think I will.”
“But–’’
He stood. Not only did he seem more solid, he looked taller now, six-four at least. Great, just what every girl wants–tall, dark, and looming sneaking into her bedroom at night.
“You need me. That’s why you conjured me and I will not neglect you, Roxie.”
“No, see–’’
“You can’t send me away. I’m part of you. Part of what’s yours.”
That made banishing sound like a potential lobotomy. It was beginning to sink in that I had really, truly, seriously done it this time. “Look–”
With a shocking suddenness his countenance changed to anger and something else, his voice sharp and flat. “I don’t like him. Not one bit.”
I swallowed. “Who?”
“Billy Lyon’s no good. Everyone knows that.”
“Wait, what?”
“Your man’s no good. No good at all. He’s got a piece of evil in him that can’t be cut out. Not even with a knife like mine.”
He meant Blake. Oh, fucking hell, he meant Blake. “You don’t go near him. He is not to be hurt, you understand me? You hurt him, I don’t care what it takes, I’ll send you back where you came from.”
The smell of smoke got stronger. He exhaled loudly. “Do you bind me to your word?”
“Hell yeah, I bind you to my word.” A look of triumph deepened the sepia tones of his face. The son of a bitch just trapped me. “Wait just a damn minute.”
“I accept your binding, witch. Call on me whenever you have need of me.” He stepped toward the door, beginning to fade around the edges. Even so, the menace in his voice was unmistakable. “I’ll do as you say and leave your man be. But if he ever hurts you, I’ll put nine bullets in his motherfucking chest.”
He disappeared, leaving a trace of smoke and whiskey in his wake.
Holy. Shit.
I conjured that creature. I really did it, whether I meant to or not. I conjured something I didn’t know how to get rid of and the irony made me want to break things. I thought of all the moments I’d felt his presence without realizing what I was sensing. Then I began to consider other moments. The smoke and whiskey I’d used in the binding spell on Haschall, had that acted as a call to this entity for aid? Had he helped me with that? And the love spell that we thought dissipated into nothing, had it found another, unintended, target? This business of him being a part of me, what did that mean?
Referring to Blake as “Billy Lyons” told me two things. One, those two needed to stay far apart. Two, whatever this thing was it had my taste for the blues.
Well, at least I knew what to call my new spirit familiar, supernatural assistant, invisible frenemy, whatever the hell he was. Stack.
Other Lyrical Books By Sonya Clark
Mojo Queen
The Mojo Series Book 1
Bring On The Night
About Sonya Clark
Sonya Clark writes at a desk equipped with High John the Conqueror root and a mojo hand. She has worshipped at the mother church of country music, traveled the back roads of the blues highway, been to the crossroads at midnight, and though she’s never cooked up a mess of polk salad, she has been to Graceland four times. She lives with her family in Tennessee.
Sonya’s Website
www.sonyaclark.net
Sonya’s Email
Red House
9781616504250
Copyright © 2012, Sonya Clark
Edited by Antonia Tiranth
Book design by Lyrical Press, Inc.
Cover Art by
First Lyrical Press, Inc. electronic publication: December 2012
Lyrical Press, Incorporated
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE:
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.
Published in the United States of America by Lyrical Press, Incorporated
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