Page 1 of My Blind Date is a Warlock

PROLOGUE

JACOB

“Watch the fangs, will you, sweetheart?” I barked when the blonde vampire drinking from the vein at my neck nearly kneed me in the crotch in her bloodlust. Annoyed blood-red eyes peered down at me, eyebrows furrowed in a deep V.

“This is not working.” She sighed in frustration, her French accent thick. Pushing away from my half-naked body, she grabbed her blouse off the floor and put it back on. “No doubt your blood is the best I’ve had. Powerful warlocks always have the most potent, but, honey—” She reached for her bag and produced a silver-plated lighter with her initials on it and a slim cigarette and proceeded to light it up. “—what’s the use if you can’t even get it up? You know how my kind gets when we drink straight from the vein, you can’t have one without the other.” She glanced pointedly at my crotch, snarling at the obvious absence of any sign of arousal.

“Maybe if you knew what to do with those fangs, we’d both be having fun right now. At least you got a meal out of it. All I got is a torn throat,” I bit out and touched my hand to the fang punctures on my neck, healing them with a negligible use of magic. Giselle hissed at me, baring her fangs and her nails elongating into claw-like talons. I arched a brow, daring her to come at me. Just because she was almost immortal and damned near impossible to kill didn’t mean I couldn’t maim her in ways that would leave her crippled for years. Matter of fact, if I put some effort into it, I could kill her. The bloodsucker knew it and put her claws and fangs away.

“Don’t blame me for whatever’s going on with you. I have no idea why you can’t get it up, my lord warlock, but it has nothing to do with me.” She waved a hand in the general area of my crotch. “This is the second time in a row you’ve called on me and left me wanting. Me! I was a favorite courtesan of King Louis the Sixteenth, you know.”

I did not think it was possible to see a vampire turn red from rage, as most of them tended to look like pale marble statues, but two riotous spots of pink bloomed across Giselle’s cheeks. She continued with her rant.

“I suggest you lose my number if all you’re going to do is leave me hanging.” She curled her lip and took a huge puff of the cigarette. As far as I know, regular drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes did absolutely nothing for vamps, but they liked to partake for the fun of it, or for nostalgia’s sake, phantom memories from when they were still human.

“We’re done for the night. Get out of my room.”

“What about my money?” She crossed her arms, plumping up her ample cleavage, cigarette dangling from the side of the mouth. Clicking my tongue, I dug for my wallet in the back pocket of my jeans and tossed a couple of bucks at her before forcibly pushing her out of my room. Remnants of her cheap perfume and smoke remained in the air—nothing a simple cleansing spell couldn’t fix. A snap of my fingers and the hotel room smelled like lemons and sunshine, a scent I’d always associated with calm, happiness, and peace of mind, although I couldn’t tell you why. But not even drawing that crisp, citrusy scent deep into my lungs eased the weight on my shoulders. I couldn’t tell Giselle, but I knew what was wrong with me, and it was a problem I needed to fix.

Gemma Jones had hexed me, the witch! Some women keyed their exes’ cars or burned their clothes, but mine chose to render me impotent. For a second, I debated paying her back in kind, but I nixed the idea. I figured breaking her heart was all the pain she needed, and I was not so narcissistic that I would shy away from the fact that I had not been the best boyfriend. I should be glad that she chose to go with something so minor, considering I broke things off with her on her birthday. Poor thing had been expecting me to propose. Don’t know what gave her that idea, seeing as how I’d made it pretty clear that all I wanted was some no-strings-attached fun.

My phone blared from somewhere in my suite and I stifled a groan when I heard the personalized ringtone I used for my grandmother—the weight I was referring to a moment ago. I loved her to bits, but right now she was nothing more than an opinionated pain in my rear end who assumed I lived and breathed to follow her whims and orders like a slave. For a moment, I debated letting it go to voicemail, but the old bat would just keep on calling or resort to using a scrying mirror. The goddess knows I’m still carrying the scars from the last time she went that route and used my bedroom mirror for her witchy FaceTime. I hadn’t given her an update on my search for three days now, so she must have been chomping at the bit to know how my hunt was going.

“Rainbow, how are you this fine evening?” I answered after finding my phone under a pile of discarded clothes and old tomes.

“Jacob, you are not too old for me to take you over my knee and spank some respect into your behind. Call me Rainbow again and I’ll have you unable to sit for the next month. That is not a metaphor or euphemism, by the way.” My grandmother’s cranky voice was accompanied by the noises of pots banging and chatter in the background. Given the time difference between Paris and Boston, I guessed that she must have been preparing for that luncheon thing she’d told me about last week. “You’ve been avoiding me for three days, boy. I told you to keep me abreast of any developments. Where are you right now? You said it’s evening over there.”

I stepped out onto the balcony and stared out at the busy Parisian streets on a Friday evening. My hotel room offered a great view of the Seine River, and it was a breathtaking sight indeed. The calm waters reflected the fiery hues of the setting sun and it looked like there was a party on one of the cruise barges. I could hear the faint strains of string instruments and laughter carried by the cool breeze over the myriad of big city sounds.

“Paris. I got a lead about the journal. Apparently, Tiberius spent quite a bit of his youth out here. One of his contemporaries is still alive and still lives in the city—a witch by the name of Josephine Margaux. I thought she might know where great-great-grandfather stashed the book.” I tapped my finger on the balcony railing. I could have used a really stiff drink right about then, and a willing woman, but only one of those things was on the table for me until I could get rid of my little hex problem.

“And?”

“And nothing. Josephine has no recollection of the journal. She’s old as dirt, so we can’t rely on her memory, but I do have another lead. A book dealer by the name of Beverley Barnes. I shot her an email some time ago, telling her what I’m searching for and she said she’d look into it.”

Gran gasped on the other side. “We agreed not to bring outsiders in on this. It’s bad enough that your cousin is poking his nose in where it’s not wanted!”

“He’s your grandson too. Stop trying to pawn him off on me,” I teased, even though Daniel was no laughing matter. I needed to find my great-great-grandfather’s Book of Shadows before Daniel did and unleashed the worst kind of magic upon our family and the rest of the world.

Daniel had a superiority complex like you wouldn’t believe. He thought that witches and warlocks were the pinnacles of existence on Earth and that humans, vampires, werewolves, and every supernatural creature out there should be bending the knee to our kind. He wanted to expose our world to the mundanes and saw himself as some kind of Messiah figure who would lead us all into a new age. It was too bad that kin slaying was frowned upon or else I would have slipped some poison into Daniel’s favorite wine before he ruined us all. But then again, knowing my cousin, he would have just come back as a vengeful spirit and haunted me for eternity.

“Jacob, this is no laughing matter. You don’t even know this Beverley woman. What if she sees the kind of spells and rituals James recorded in that book over the years and decides to keep it for herself. Is she a witch? Have you run a background check on her?”

“Yes, she is a witch, a respected one from Mystic Cove. She comes highly recommended by a colleague from the college. He tells me she is one of the best and most reliable book dealers out there. And don’t worry too much about Daniel, Gran. There is a reason I’m the Buchanan heir and he’s not.”

“You’re older than he is, of course you’re the heir. But make no mistake, the moment you let your guard down or he scents blood in the water, your cousin will take you out and claim your title.”

“It won’t come to that. I’ll find the blasted journal and then we’ll find a way to deal with Daniel. I gotta go, Gran, I haven’t eaten anything since I woke and my stomach’s about to gnaw on itself,” I said, not wanting to drag out the conversation longer than necessary.

“Fine. Take care of yourself, kiddo. I love you.” I could hear the resignation in her sigh.

“Right back at ‘cha,” I replied and cut the call off. I stared out at the view for a few minutes, ruminating over this whole thing with Daniel and the Book of Shadows. How much longer was I going to travel from one place to the other searching for the book with my cousin snapping at my heels? I missed my job and my students, even if they could be royal pains. If my sabbatical went on much longer, I might not have a job waiting for me when I got back.

My stomach growling pushed me to go back inside and take a shower, washing off Giselle’s scent before going out for dinner. It felt too pathetic to have dinner all by myself in my hotel room, so I decided to go out and enjoy the best nightlife Paris had to offer. But, of course, my plans were derailed when I came out of the shower and found the email notification on my phone. A wide smile stretched across my face—Beverley Barnes had found what I was looking for.

“Mystic Cove, here I come.”

CHAPTER 1

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