Page 1 of Wicked Love
Chapter One
Melasina
Irubbed my face, yelping as my hands ground against my eyes. They were gritty, and it hurt. I kept my eyes shut for a moment, not wanting to open them, not wanting to see. I knew, even before I looked, what I was going to find.
Dirt.
Not just dirt, but broken nails, filthy hands, and an odor that could have only come from one place.
A grave.
Inhaling deeply, I could smell the particular scent of what my mom used to call eau de cemetery. Grave dirt was sometimes required for spells, and my mom wasn’t afraid to work with it. Not like most of the witches in our coven.
Which had been her downfall.
At the moment, I didn’t have time to think about my mom. I needed to focus on my own situation. I opened my eyes to see exactly what I’d expected, although my nails looked worse than anticipated.
The annual ball was tonight, and this was how my nails looked? I might as well put a sign on myself that said ‘Grave robber extraordinaire’ and be done with it. Turn myself in and get ready to move.
Shit. I needed a manicure. Like, immediately. I’d been waking up like this on and off for the past three weeks, and about half the time, I had dirt under my nails, and a funky smell all over my hands. I added ‘manicure’ to my mental list of things to get done today.
None of my dithering addressed the problem—mainly, what was I doing at night that I ended up with hands like this in the morning? Also, where was I going? Because I’d woken up with my shoes still on a couple of times. Finally, why couldn’t I remember?
All things I had no answer for. I could ask my dad, but after my mom died—well, was exiled and then went away and died—he was pretty much absent, so he had even less idea about me than I did. He certainly wouldn’t know about this. Dad was from a family of witches, just as Mom was. But when Mom was exposed for being a necromancer, when she left New Orleans alone because he wouldn’t leave, wouldn’t do that to himself or me, he closed the door on his witch side.
I wasn’t sure he’d done either of us a favor.
He always encouraged me, from a distance, to be part of the covens, to be a witch. I wondered if it wouldn’t have been better for both of us to move away, where no one knew of us. Because there was no way we’d ever be anything other than the Cormiers with a necromancer in the family. At least not for another one hundred years, and even then, it would be passed down as part of the legend of members of our coven. But after fourteen years, this was home. For better or worse.
And I loved my home. I loved the city, even with the floods, and the messes, and all the tourists. I loved the houses, the feel, the music, the architecture—I loved it all. I wasn’t going anywhere, despite my occasionally daydreaming about going somewhere where no one knew who I was.
I rolled my eyes at my dithering. None of it solved my problem at this moment. It was merely delaying the inevitable.
As I turned my hands over, I could see scratches on the palms underneath the dirt. Hurrying from bed, I went to the sink in the bathroom and began scrubbing my hands with the nail brush I’d gotten for just this purpose. The soap stung all the little cuts. I ignored it and scrubbed harder. Once my hands were clean, I took the hottest shower known to man.
But the smell wouldn’t go away.
There was nothing I could do about this right now. I got myself together and pretended I hadn’t woken up with dirty hands again. At some point, I was going to need to figure this out, but I didn’t have a clue as to how. I could ask someone to help me find the memories, but that would mean involving another person in this. If I’d been doing something wrong, I didn’t want anyone to know.
I’d learned the lesson of my mother well.
Just as I was ready to head out the door to do my grocery shopping before I got to work, I heard yelling from the laundry room out back. I had a tiny courtyard at the back of my cottage, and the little shed in the corner was connected to the house via a breezeway. I didn’t mind the weather, but I hated doing laundry in the rain. You could never tell when it was going to rain in New Orleans. I’d had the breezeway built after I bought the house and got caught toting my clothes inside during a downpour.
“What the hell,” I muttered. There shouldn’t be anyone in my backyard, much less the laundry room. I raced through the kitchen and breezeway, heart pounding, to find the door to the laundry room unlatched.
Shit. I didn’t have my baseball bat, or pepper spray—wait. Iwasa witch. I could justify magic on a non-magic person if they were attacking me. I could also have their memory wiped. OK. I could do this. I took a breath and kicked open the door.
On my black and white lozenge tiled floor, next to my washing machine, lay two bodies. Obviously long dead, and wow, did they smell.
“Oh, my Goddess,” I breathed. What in the name of Hecate were bodies doing in my laundry room? Who had put them there?
A thought struck me. “No,” I whispered. “No, it can’t be.”
“It’s about time you came out here,” a voice said. “Leaving me out here like this! I deserve better.”
I spun around, hands out, protective spells at the ready.
The voice laughed, the ancient cackle of an old, old woman. “That won’t help you a bit,chéri. I am already quite dead.”
