Love Spell Page 3

  She frowned. “Jane won’t leave your apartment unmonitored. Going back there is asking for trouble.”

  Clint shrugged. “I know. I’ll find another place to stay for a day or two. Maybe some roach motel. Funny thing, though, they kind of expect payment even if you share the bed with the rats. Let’s just go back, run in, grab my stuff, and run out. Deal?”

  Her frown deepened. “Clint, I’ll foot the bill. You can pay me back when it’s safe to get your wallet.”

  He sighed. “When do you think it’ll be ‘safe’?”

  She thought for a moment. “I’ll get back to you. For now, let’s book you at a hotel. I’ll run surveillance on your apartment later tonight.”

  “How you getting in?” he asked.

  Wordlessly, Molly climbed into her car. Clint sighed again, and got in as well. In a moment, they were off.

  “Look, Molly,” he said as they pulled onto Alhambra Street, “this hasn’t been the best Monday I’ve ever had. Frankly, it’s been a bit freaky. And you? I know we haven’t really seen each other much in the last six years, but this isn’t the Molly I remember. Since I answered your questions—”

  “Partially.”

  “—I think I’m due a few answers myself.”

  Without taking her eyes from the road, she asked, “What do you want to know?”

  “Well, let’s think about it. You come out of nowhere to save me; you drive better than Jeff Gordon; you don’t even flinch when your best friend fills your car full of lead. Mysteriously, despite the hail of gunfire, you escape without even a single flat tire. Heck, for all I know, this Beemer’s probably sporting tailpipe smokescreen emitters, rocket launchers, and machine guns in the headlights.”

  “There are no machine guns.”

  Clint threw his hands up. “What’s that supposed to mean? I feel like I woke up trapped inside a James Bond movie.”

  “Bond is fiction. I’m not.”

  He exhaled. “How about you just tell me what brings you back to town? Aside from Holly’s reunion party. Last I heard from you, you were headed east for school. I barely even got to say goodbye.”

  “Virginia,” she replied. “Lovely place. I came back for business.”

  He arched an eyebrow. “What do you do these days?”

  She stopped for a red light and locked eyes with him. “If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”

  He laughed. “No, seriously.”

  No answer. The light changed and they moved on.

  A half an hour later they were standing in the lobby of the first reasonably decent hotel they could find, wrapping up the check-in process. The place was mid-range—not the Ritz Carlton by any stretch, but thankfully uninfested. Clint leaned casually on the check-in desk, scanning the breakfast buffet in the room annexed to the lobby. A few, older patrons spared him some scowls, but each looked away when he responded with a smirk and a wave.

  “Here’s your room key, sir,” the girl behind the desk said with an awkward smile. Her eyes traveled quickly down the length of his torso and she blushed. Suddenly, her computer seemed to become very interesting to her. Clint gave the girl the once over. Probably second-year college kid; he’d been there only a few years back. Almost attractive, but there was something not quite right with her nose. No temptation at all. He took the key card with a nod, and turned to Molly.

  “You’re going to dress me, now, yes?” He didn’t mind being shirtless in public, but knowing that his valuables were unguarded in his apartment, and wishing for even a pair of flip-flops, he felt strangely naked.

  She raised an eyebrow. “My taste in men’s fashion is terrible,” Molly replied. “Ask your sister. You’ll have to arrange for your own clothing.”

  “Right. With all this money sitting here in my pocket. C’mon. Let’s hit my place.” He thought he heard a small gasp from the clerk.

  Get over it, little girl, he thought. You’re not my type anyway.

  Molly shook her head. “Stay put. I’ll call your room when things are ready.”

  Clint realized she wasn’t going to budge. Time for some special tactics. Start with the long sigh of acquiescence. Follow up with puppy dog eyes. As expected, Molly wasn’t baiting. Move to step three of three. “Fine. But make it quick, okay?”

  She nodded once before eying him strangely for a few seconds. Then, she turned and left. Clint discretely followed her, and waited until he was sure she had actually driven away. Lucky for him, Molly wasn’t his only acquaintance with a vehicle. A simple phone call should solve his problems. Clint returned to the desk clerk, who quickly looked up, and then back down, her face reddening again.

  “Where’s your Internet access?” he asked her. “Do you have a courtesy phone? Oh, and can I borrow your shirt?”

  FOUR

  Clint had no intention of becoming a witch. It was nice, however, that some local members of the Moon Grove Coven were willing to pick him up from a random hotel and give him a ride on nothing more than a phone call. He’d technically become a member of their group two months ago when he first started seriously hunting for the batty old woman who’d cursed him. It made sense to hunt for a possible witch by talking to others who claimed to practice magic. Though none of the covens he’d contacted knew of any witches by the name “Aunt Fey,” they were all astonishingly friendly if, he thought, bizarre. Tons nicer than McCarthy or those folks in Salem would have been, that was for sure.

  So it was that Clint found himself in the back seat of a black, ’85 Cadillac, riding toward his studio apartment. Seated next to him was a raven-haired girl about his age, dressed in classic Gothic attire. She’d introduced herself as “Lovita,” and sat uncomfortably close, nearly gagging him with her overpowering fragrance of lavender and several spices he couldn’t identify. In the front seat, a skater (“Codename Crowfire!” the kid had said) who looked like he was skipping school today was bouncing on the springy seat, and commenting on every person they drove past. Sancho, the driver—a man who apparently never got the memo that the ’60s had ended, or the other memo about the virtues of showering— encouraged “Crowfire” with continual smiling and occasional replies.

  “Brother Clint,” Lovita said, leaning even closer, “we’d love to have you join us for the Moon Festival this evening. Tonight, I get to be the Goddess. I know you haven’t been initiated yet, but we could do that this afternoon, and then you could play the part of the Horned God, consort of the Goddess.”

  A visual of Clint wearing a fake pair of horns, and stripped to the waist, blood smeared across his face and chest, popped into his mind. It was almost funny. The prospect of being Lovita’s “Horned God,” however, was sobering enough to kill the humor.

  “I left my horns at home, this morning. I guess that means I’m not horn… ed… enough. Maybe next full moon?”

  Sancho chuckled. Lovita looked crestfallen, but perked up almost immediately. “I know! I can craft horns for you! I’ll have them waiting, and you can try them on after your initiation. Oh, it will be sublime!” she said, reaching out as if to touch his arm.

  Clint jerked the limb away hastily, flattening himself against his door. “Ah… you probably don’t want to touch me.”

  Lovita blinked. “I’m sorry. I had no intention of invading your personal space. Did I offend you?”

  Clint chewed his lip. “No, no. I’m, um… contagious. You wouldn’t want what I’ve got.”

  Sancho glanced in the rear view mirror. “We share everything here, brother. Sickness and health—all part of life. Besides, Lovita’s real good with sick people. Let her help you.”

  “I’ll take my chances,” Clint replied.

  Lovita sat back demurely, and eyed Clint for a moment. “You don’t look ill, Brother Clint. But then, not all illnesses manifest themselves openly. Is it a sickness of the heart, perhaps? Or the mind?”

  Clint gave the Gothic girl a serious look. “How much experience have you had with mental illness, Lovita?”

  Lovita smiled in retur
n. “Oodles!”

  He nodded, face still straight. “Exactly what I thought.”

  From the shotgun seat, Crowfire shouted, “That man in the Forty-Niners cap just took a massive bite of pistachio ice cream!”

  Clint glanced heavenward in response.

  “You see,” Lovita said, without missing a beat, “I took up witchcraft because my favorite aunt was a nurse. I watched her heal so many people, and thought, ‘I wish I could do that.’ Alas, I couldn’t afford a formal education. For months, I felt that my dream had shattered under the heel of Corporate American greed.”

  Clint blinked. “Did you just say ‘alas’?”

  “Then,” Lovita continued, as if Clint hadn’t spoken, “during the worst bout of headaches I’ve ever had, a classmate pulled me aside and showed me the real power—power to help and to heal! She whisked my headache away as if so much dust on a shelf, and she were the feather duster! She told me another girl at school had hexed me, but that I could learn not only to defend myself, but to shield and heal others. My dream burst back into glorious life, like a phoenix of hope from the ashes of despair!”

  Clint spared her an incredulous look. “We had a little Shakespeare for breakfast, didn’t we, Lovita?”

  Outside, the outskirts of Pittsburg, California rolled by. Clint did some quick figuring and concluded he’d have more than enough time to retrieve his personal effects and make it back to the hotel long before Molly would check up on him. Perfect.

  Lovita went on. “Ever since then, I’ve been a traveling healer, using my craft to restore people to balanced health, and to relieve the curses placed upon them.”

  Clint perked up immediately. “You can remove curses?”

  She blinked twice. “Of course. I’m still in training, but I’m working on curse removal as my specialty.”

  Clint pumped an arm. “Yes! I mean, that’s… very nice to hear, Lovita. Can you, ah, remove curses from anyone?”

  “If I can’t, the other sisters can assist me. Why?”

  “So, let’s pretend,” Clint said slowly, “that this… sickness I have is actually a curse.”

  “Curse and illness are merely different aspects of the same thing—imbalances of the soul,” she responded with a tone that sounded too much like a telephone sales rep.

  “Dude, you should see what happens when my wife gets imbalanced,” Sancho cut in.

  Clint ignored the driver. “Right. Details. Let me cut to the chase: what would it take to get my, er,… illness-slash-curse removed?”

  Lovita grinned from ear to ear. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  During the eleven minutes it took the black Cadillac to reach Trillian Oaks, Lovita sketched out the rather frightening generalities of what she insisted would be necessary to free Clint from his malady. He seriously wondered if the risks were worth it. Even after all he’d been through, he still was more than a little skeptical about anything even resembling “magic.” Yet he reasoned that his only real recourse was to fight fire with fire.

  As Sancho eased into a visitor’s parking stall, Clint pointed to his building. “That’s my place. I’ll be in and out before you can say ‘eye of newt.’”

  Lovita frowned. “But I don’t ever use eye of—”

  “Whoa!” Crowfire cut in. “The Chinese chick with the nine-millimeter is hot!” His face was pasted against the window, and his tongue was sliding around on the glass.

  Clint’s heart sank. No way. Her car isn’t even here. Can’t be her. He followed the kid’s gaze, but saw nothing. “Where did you say you saw this ‘hot chick,’ Crowfried?”

  The kid giggled stupidly, and gestured at a dumpster in front of Clint’s place. “That’s ‘Crowfire.’ And she’s super well hidden, but totally worth finding.”

  Clint peered out the window. After long moments of intense scanning, his eyes confirmed his fears. Jane was crouched, pistol in hand, eyes surveying the area, and frequently glancing toward the front door of Clint’s building.

  “Unbelievable,” he muttered, slouching back in his seat. Jane hadn’t seriously staked out his place for three hours, had she? Her position gave her a good line-of-sight on any entrance Clint would take to get into his place—even if he tried getting back in through the bathroom. And yet he needed his belongings. At least a few of them. What he also needed was a plan to get by her. He doubted Jane could be fooled by a diversion, but…

  “Hey, Crowboy?” Clint said. “You a fan of breaking and entering?”

  The kid returned not five minutes later bearing Clint’s wallet, keys, phone, shirt and his sandals. All the comforts of home. Crowfire handed the items to Clint, who palmed the kid five bucks for his help, and the four of them were on their way again.

  Clint sighed in relief, only to tense again as he realized Lovita was apparently unfazed by his warning of being “contagious.”

  “You’ve never seen a guy use a teenager to rob his own place before, Lovita?”

  She shook her head. “It’s not that, Brother Clint. It’s… it’s that I was wondering about the curse you bear.”

  Clint turned to look out his window. “What about it?”

  “Well,” she began, “how did you come by it? It seems very much as if you ran across someone who chose the left hand path.”

  Clint blinked. “I didn’t ask her political affiliation, sorry.”

  Sancho laughed again. “Left hand, man. Not left wing. Two paths—left hand, and right hand. Since you’re new, you might know the terms better as ‘black magic’ and ‘white magic.’ Right hand is white magic. That’s where we go.”

  Clint nodded. “Well, considering that I’m new to magic in general, I can’t really say. I don’t think the curse was meant to harm. That seems to be an unintended side effect.”

  “I see,” Lovita said, thoughtfully. “But this has caused an imbalance in your life, yes? It has brought you to harm?”

  Clint’s strained tendons already answered yes, but he nodded anyway.

  “Well, then, no matter the intent, the rede was violated. Please join us at tonight’s sabbat. Even if I can’t remove this curse alone, there will be other sisters there who are better trained in the healing and cleansing arts. They’re certain to help.”

  “Thrilled,” Clint said. He didn’t for a moment believe it would work, but hey, what was the harm in trying?

  Later that night, Clint found himself parked on a tiny corner of a couch in Sancho’s living room. The smell of incense blended with homemade bread, ozone from electrical equipment, and a not-quite-faint scent of cat urine. The carpet looked old, but was surprisingly clean, and still plush despite Clint’s expectations. Likewise, the couch he sat on was remarkably modern, though the loveseat could have belonged to his parents. The handful of paintings on the wall were of undecided origin, but conveyed a universally abstract theme with dark leanings. Was that image really a man being knifed in the stomach, or was it actually a cow jumping over a red moon? Even Picasso was easier to figure out. Clint stopped trying, and surveyed the small gathering instead.

  Lovita teetered dangerously nearby on the edge of the couch cushion next to him. Crowboy leaned against the opposite wall, munching on an apple and making his usual, random comments. Sancho was in the kitchen with his wife, supposedly getting the feast ready. A hefty brunette in her fifties fussed about in the center of the room, her awkwardly short skirt flapping with every swivel of her wide hips as she turned this way and that in her efforts. Clint decided to call her “Big Girl.”

  Big girl was arguing softly with a shorter, rail-thin lady sporting cropped, blond hair streaked with a gray that matched her dress. Clint couldn’t make out the exact details of their argument, but he caught snippets about the rug they were standing on—a rug that dominated Sancho’s small living room—and other comments about a chalice and the silver dagger in the middle of the rug.

  A quartet of colorful candles stood guard over the massive carpet; he wasn’t sure he wanted to know what those were for. In fac
t, he wasn’t exactly certain he wanted to be present for some crazy magic ritual. His curse notwithstanding, he still couldn’t bring himself to trust anything purporting to be supernatural. And yet, what was one more piece of weirdness in his life if it could fix this problem?

  So he stayed.

  Sancho and a plump Hispanic woman with a matronly smile and bearing emerged from the kitchen with trays of food: fresh fruits, pastries, sliced cheese and meats. All too normal. Clint blinked in surprise, and took a pastry when they brought the tray to him.

  Sancho winked at him. “Not what you expected, was it?”

  Clint shrugged. “Not sure what to expect. I guess I thought a goat would somehow be involved.”

  The older man chuckled. “Witches are people too. Besides, I do it mostly for my wife. Keeps her happy. She likes to believe, so I play along.”

  Clint smiled at that, and grabbed some cheese. “Thanks.”

  Big Girl stood up suddenly, and clapped her hands. The smile on her face suggested she’d won whatever argument she’d been in. “Well, now,” she said cheerfully, “shall we get started? I believe we have a few items of business to take care of before the festivities.”

  At that, Sancho and his rotund wife took positions on the loveseat. The wiry lady who’d been arguing with the brunette moved pointedly to opposite side of the room from her rival. Her face spoke volumes.

  “Thank you,” the Big Girl said. “Since we have a new brother with us tonight, I think we ought to start with some brief introductions. After that, we’ll deal with chapter housekeeping issues, and then continue.

  “Sister Lovita,” and she smiled at the young woman, who beamed in return, “has asked that we help our new brother here by removing a curse from him. She thinks it will be a sign of good faith, further inducing him to desire our company and share his presence with us. I understand that some of you,” and she shot a sidelong glance toward the thin witch, “believe that we should only help those who have been properly initiated. But I think that we should help all mankind, regardless of whether they’ve chosen to subscribe to the mysteries.” The smaller lady frowned deeply, and looked away.