Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble Read online

  “It seems funny that witches would bother themselves with inflation.” I was pleased just to have an avenue of conversation that wasn’t a threatening one. Although I burned with the need to touch him, if talking about inflation would prolong the sight of him in his boxers, so be it.

  “Who makes these rules and who enforces them?”

  “The rules have been around for as long as I can remember. They’re within the charter of the witches, the creed by which we run our lives. And, as far as someone enforcing them, we do have our own police force of sorts—something more akin to your idea of a hit man. Needless-to-say, we don’t challenge them.”

  “Going back to the jobs you were discussing…” I said, not wanting to think about warlock hit men.

  “Right. Well, there are a couple of jobs that have come my way. I’m just trying to decide if you are ready yet.”

  I couldn’t keep the surprise from my face. When he’d started talking about jobs, I hadn’t even considered that I might be involved. I guess it was a stupid oversight on my part. There had been that whole conversation we’d had at Bella’s party where Rand had said I was now working for him. I’m not sure what I’d been expecting.

  “I’m supposed to do the jobs with you?”

  Rand laughed and his dimples usurped his face, painting a glorious picture. “Well, of course, that’s the point of me hiring you, you realize?”

  I nodded absemindedly. With his unshaven face, dancing eyes and beautiful smile, my legs were the consistency of soggy cereal. I was surprised I was even still standing. God, did I have it bad.

  “Oh yeah, I guess that makes sense. What are the jobs?”

  “The first job is breaking a spell that was put on a demon…”

  I was ripped right out of my pity party. “Wait just a second! Demons?”

  Rand ignored my outburst and placed a hand on my shoulder. Although he meant to be calming, all it did was send a jolt through me that lodged right in my lower stomach. I lacked the ability to respond.

  “The second is placing a spell on someone’s neighbor,” Rand continued.

  Finally, I was able to find my voice. It helped that he’d stepped away and taken his hand with him. “That sounds easy enough…”

  “The third job is reanimating a dead werewolf,” he finished and eyed me speculatively.

  “And let me guess which one pays the most…” I started, angst bleeding through my voice.

  “You can imagine which I’m most tempted to accept? After all, we do need to test your acumen for bringing creatures back, don’t we?”

  A rhetorical question if ever I’d heard one.

  I sighed as I thought of the daunting task ahead. “How do we know this is something I can even do again? Maybe it was just a fluke.”

  Rand shrugged. “Could be, and I’ve warned the client as much, but they still want to give it a go. They’ve agreed to pay half the money up front and if you aren’t able to reanimate the wolf, we’re still able to keep the deposit…and I’ll give it to you, either way.”

  Rand was generous.

  “Are werewolves dangerous?” I asked with a frown.

  “They can be, but that’s why you’ll have me,” he answered with a smug smile.

  Generous and arrogant.

  TEN

  It seems nothing is ever as you expect.

  “They’re the werewolves?” I whispered to Rand, my attention falling on the pack who looked like a bunch of scraggly humans—longish hair, shabby outfits and a generally nomadic appearance. They were about as ferocious and terrifying as the pixies I’d seen in Rand’s garden.

  Rand didn’t respond but led me to a chair near the blazing hearth of his dining room. The wolves assembled themselves around his imposing twenty-person dining table and reminded me like a bun bunch of homeless people awaiting Thanksgiving dinner. I felt like the turkey as they watched me walk across the floor, their intense eyes unblinking. I forced a smile on my lips.

  “Hi, I’m Jolie.”

  All different ages, there were three women and five men but, apparently, the actual pack was much larger and they were the chosen eight. If they were the chosen, I hated to see the rest of the troop.

  I’d say they tended to have a bit more hair than humans did and Rand explained their hair grows at three times the rate a human’s does. Any hairdresser would consider a werewolf to be a cash cow.

  Before I had a chance to take my seat, I was surrounded.

  “So nice to meet you,” a woman with an American accent and flame red hair said.

  She patted my arm expectantly.

  I was a little taken aback by the contact. “Oh, okay thanks…” I started.

  A man patted me on the back, shaking his head in what I thought was wonder. “Incredible powers you have.” He sounded American too. I guess these werewolves were from the States. They sure had traveled a long way.

  It was my turn to shake my head. “Well, I’m not sure you should expect too much…”

  “Absolutely amazing,” someone who looked like Jerry Garcia added.

  They continued to fuss and buzz about me as if I were a great messiah. I hoped I’d not disappoint them as I had every doubt concerning my ability to bring back their leader. For one thing, we weren’t even at the locale where he’d met his fate. Rand thought my powers strong enough that it wouldn’t matter but, to me, it sounded like it was fated for failure.

  And to make this enormous task even more impossible? There was no ghost. How I was to reanimate a dead wolf when there was no ghost, and we weren’t anywhere near the place where he’d died, was beyond me. Rand wasn’t so pessimistic and seemed to think if we had an article of clothing or something of a personal nature, we might be able to get enough “essence”, as he called it, to bring the wolf back.

  About their dead leader, his name was Trent, and he’d been killed by a rival werewolf pack about four months ago. It seemed he was the be-all-end-all of pack leaders as the small group couldn’t elect a decent vice-werewolf to take his place and instead, decided to reanimate him.

  The wolves, not wanting to miss any part of the performance, decided that Rand and I should sit on top of the table, in the middle of everyone, so they could see what was going on. After Rand assisted me to the tabletop, I sat cross-legged when one of the wolves shoved a t-shirt in my hand.

  “It was Trent’s,” the man offered with a hasty nod.

  I faced Rand.

  “Shall we?” he asked and reached for my hands.

  Before I closed my eyes, I hazarded a glimpse at Christa who gave me the thumbs up. She would serve as interpreter to the werewolf pack, explaining everything I did.

  I closed my eyes and focused on the shirt. The image of a man popped into my head, and air caught in my throat. I could only assume it was Trent. The quickness of the vision shocked me. I was accustomed to having to wait, focus, and wait some more until any inkling of a vision would come. Now, I merely closed my eyes and Trent was before me. The fairy lessons must’ve been paying off!

  Trent was not quite what I’d imagine a werewolf to be—he didn’t at all resemble his pack although he did have a plethora of dark hair atop his head. He was dressed in a suit and looked just like your average, run of the mill businessman—neither tall nor short.

  He was of a good age to be a pack leader, maybe in his mid thirties. He was broad and stocky as you’d envisage a werewolf to be, and attractive with wide set brown eyes, high cheekbones and a full mouth. He had a generous nose—some might even say it was big. He smelled of men’s aftershave.

  How he was the leader of the ragtag group was beyond me. They looked as if they were one-step from homelessness but Trent was a suave, and for all intents and purposes, debonair businessman.

  His cell phone went off, and it wasn’t one of those annoying ringtones. You know the ones that attempt to sound like a good song, but in the world of phone rings, sound more like the soundtrack to Pong or maybe Pac Man.

  He answered it with a te
rse “hello” and the voice on the other end was a woman thanking him for “the other night.” He was quick to hang up, and I figured he was a womanizer. I wondered if she was also a wolf. The more I thought about it, the more I wondered if maybe she was sitting around the table tonight—maybe his ladylove was Big Red?

  Trent must’ve died in or near his work because suddenly I was in an office. He plopped his briefcase on the seat next to him and began listening to his messages. Halfway through the first message, he brought his head up and seemed to be studying the door. After deciding a door couldn’t be so engaging, I realized he’d caught the scent of something. He paused and looked like someone stuck in freeze frame—one foot before the other as if he were about to walk away, but no motion accompanied the attempt. His nose was in the air, like he was trying to discern what the smell could be.

  Once in motion, he followed the scent to a cupboard in the corner of his office. He opened the door and growled. He tore from the office so quickly, I had to sprint to keep up with him.

  I never did find out what was in the cupboard.

  As I followed him downstairs and outside, he darted into an alley behind the office building. I rushed around the corner, and was hit with the foulest of all smells. Is there ever a nice smelling alleyway? Forcing my attention from something that smelled cross between old fish and vinegar, I found a wolf standing before me.

  Werewolves are nothing like movies depict them. They’re bigger than your average wolf and brawnier, think the wolf’s larger and bigger cousin. But they don’t have any of that Hollywood horror that you usually think of when you hear “werewolf”—no salivating from te mouth, or walking on two feet (with ridiculously muscular legs) and no flaming red eyes.

  Steeling my resolve, I took a hesitant step forward. Trent, the wolf, raised his back and growled, his canines glistening. A black wolf appeared out of nowhere, and my breath caught in my throat. The other wolf growled at Trent, his hackles raised. I watched, transfixed, as the two wolves lunged at one another.

  They were something to be reckoned with, that’s for sure. Lots of growling and grunting and gnashing of teeth. They nipped at one another, but it didn’t look as if either was doing any permanent damage…maybe just some bald spots here and there. But I didn’t want to mislead myself—Trent had to die somehow and soon—it just didn’t look like this wolf was going to be the bearer of that death sentence. No sooner did the thought cross my mind then a man stepped from a hidden corner in the alley, a gun aimed at Trent. The other wolf seemed to understand some hidden cue and disengaged himself as the human fired.

  I needed to interfere somehow with the moment Trent died in order to bring him back. I had nothing to go on other than what had happened when I’d brought Jack back, so I just dived in front of Trent and grabbed a tuft of his fur. Immediately, that same intense light that had visited me when I’d reanimated Jack, blinded me. I couldn’t keep my eyes open against it. Whereas the faintest humming of energy had surged through me when touching Jack, I now felt a stream of electricity, like I’d been hit by lightning. It tore through me, from head to toe, and then stopped. Before I had the chance to feel any sort of relief, I could feel my own energy separating from me, a part of myself pulling away from me. Suddenly panicked, I screamed but the feeling was already gone.

  I groaned when I felt my cheek hitting something hard and unyielding. Opening my eyes, I realized it was the table I’d been sitting on. I looked up and found Rand leaning over me, his brows drawn in concern.

  “She’s coming out of her vision,” Christa said in explanation as the wolves around the table nodded enthusiastically. She reminded me of a docent giving a bunch of kids a tour of a museum.

  “Is he here?” I asked, feeling drunk. It took me a second to shake off the reaction.

  “She wants to know if your leader is here,” Christa said as she eyed each of the wolves.

  “He’s not here,” Rand said and shook his head.

  I turned to the others to find their expressions crestfallen. I forced myself upright. I couldn’t understand it. “I did exactly the same thing I did before, Rand.”

  He shook his head and looked at Trent’s shirt in my hand. “Maybe there just wasn’t enough to go on,” he said.

  “There just wasn’t enough to go on,” Christa repeated, shaking her head. She was driving me nuts.

  Rand took my hand, his grip strong and warm. I gave him a wavering smile in thanks as he helped me down from the table.

  I had failed.

  But I wouldn’t let my despair show. Smoothing my hands down my jeans, I thought frantically of what to say, my attention traveling over the wary group. How did one begin to apologize for not being able to reanimate their pack leader?

  That’s when I saw him—just beyond our small group, standing in the doorframe of the dining room. He started limping toward us, looking like he’d just been to hell and back. The lamplight hit his familiar features and I gasped, throwing my hand over my mouth. It probably didn’t look good for the powerful reanimator to be surprised with her own success, but oh, well.

  “Trent!” Red called out—yeah she was definitely the one on the answering machine. At her call, they were all on their feet, knocking their chairs this way and that in order to tend to their recovered leader.

  The dead wolf was back, but he didn’t look happy.

  “What the hell…” Trent started. Luckily someone nearby had the wherewithal to hand him a towel with which he covered his nudity.

  “What happened?” he asked, pushing the throng of his followers away from him.

  I took a step back, right into Rand’s hard body. His arm went around my shoulder and chest, pulling me into him as if instinctively protecting me.

  A very enthusiastic bottle-blond approached Trent, a huge smile on her face. “We hired the witch to bring you back.”

  His attention sought the “witch” and landed on me when his people gestured in my direction. “You, come here,” he said and motioned toward me. His accent sounded faintly American, but with hints of something else.

  I took a step forward, but Rand’s arm tightened around me, pulling me back. He sidestepped me, being careful to keep a decent distance between Trent and me.

  “Your pack hired us to reanimate you,” Rand began before I had a chance to say boo.

  Trent nodded, never taking his eyes from mine. “I see,” he said and continued to study me. “I’ve never heard of this being possible, you must be some witch.”

  I said nothing, but shrugged as Rand took over.

  “It seems we’ve done the job you asked of us. If you’d please provide the remainder of the balance, you can be on your way.”

  One of the minions neared us and fumbled with his wallet, giving me ample opportunity to invade Rand’s thoughts. That was pretty rude of you. Usually you’re the poster boy for English manners. If you’re so keen to get rid of them, why invite them here in the first place?

  Rand didn’t look up from watching the younger man sort through his wallet, dropping receipts and sticks of gum.

  Rude or not, I had no choice but inviting them here. Wolves can’t be trusted and I’ve reinforced Pelham Manor with a protection spell. We’re safer dealing with them here than we would be in public.

  The scruffy young man finally found a money order and handed it to Rand. I thought it funny that a werewolf would bother himself with something as human and silly as a money order, but there it was. Rand took the proffered check and folded it, putting it in the breast pocket of his long-sleeved shirt. I had to stifle the smile threatening my lips as the young man returned to his pack—he looked like Ron Howard and was as intimidating.

  Sometimes Rand was just ridiculous.

  “Witch,” I turned to see Trent take a few steps toward us. “Thank you.”

  I said nothing, but nodded and watched Trent turn and lead the rag tag group out of the dining room. Christa and I followed Rand to the balcony and watched them shuffle down the staircase and exi
t through the front door. They looked like they were on a field trip—all single file.

  “So, this time you just touched his fur?” Christa asked.

  I nodded and retreated back into the dining room, Christa beside me. “Yes, I think that’s the crucial part—I must make physical contact at the time of said creature’s death.”

  “Do you know how you’re able to do it yet?” Christa asked.

  I shook my head. “No idea. The same thing happened to me this time only five times stronger. Like I got hit by lightning or something.”

  I took a seat at the table, watching Christa take one opposite me. Rand leaned against the wall behind Christa and eyed me.

  “Interesting,” he noted and strummed his fingers along his chin as if in deep thought. “Probably because werewolves are creatures of Underworld. Jack was just a human.”

  “Could be,” I said. But it was all conjecture. I didn’t imagine I’d ever really learn how I was capable of bringing creatures back. I guess I was now keeping company with Stonehenge, the Egyptian pyramids…hmm, what else has never been explained? Ah, every episode of Lost.

  “You did a good job, Jolie,” Rand said.

  I just smiled and dropped my gaze—I’ve never really mastered the whole being good at taking compliments thing. I’m probably better at taking criticisms.

  “Were you scared?” Christa asked with wide eyes.

  “No, not really,” I said, thinking to myself that otherworldly creatures had a bad rap. I had no idea what demons were like, but now that I’d met some werewolves, I could honestly say they weren’t half-bad. They seemed to love one another and balance successful careers (if Trent was any indication). And as for vampires, Sinjin was all I had to go on there. And in a word, he was just scrumptious.

  “They didn’t look like werewolves you see in the movies,” Christa said, cocking her head as if trying to bring to mind a werewolf you see in the movies.

  “More like a regular wolf, but bigger and burlier,” Rand finished.

  “So, what did you think of the leader?” Christa asked with raised brows and I knee’d found Trent attractive. Come to think of it, he seemed just her type—burly and entirely masculine.