Page 83 of Under Daddy's Spell

It took only a minute to retrieve it from her office. When she set it on the table between them, Angie pulled her hands away as if it might bite her.

“That looks ancient, not to mention pretty darn scary.”

“It’s over 250 years old,” Tessa told her. Without bothering to wash her hands—she didn’t care at this point—she flipped through the pages, searching for a section on undoing spells.

“I saw this movie once. In it, the spell book looked like it was bound in leather, like that one, but it turned out to be human skin.”

Tessa stopped, and her head came up slowly. “I thought you were here for me.”

“I am, hon. Always.”

“Telling me about horror movie plots isn’t helping.”

“I wouldn’t call it horror, exactly—”

“Angie!” she snapped.

“Oh, right... Sorry.”

Tessa returned to her search, but, without a table of contents or an index, she couldn’t find anything that would help her undo what she had done.

Finally, she threw up her hands. “Idiots must have put this together. How did they ever expect anyone to find what they need? What am I going to do, Ang?”

“I don’t know, but I know someone who might.”

“Who?”

“My Cajun wife. Let me make a quick call.”

Dejected, and on the verge of tears, Tessa waited. What choice did she have? She at least had to try because otherwise she would always wonder. Worse, if it had worked, and magic had incited the change in him, what if it wore off in a week or a month or years from now, after she’d already given him her heart?

She couldn’t take that risk.

“Although this is against my better judgment,” Angie said upon her return. “There is a woman in town. She goes by Madame Lucinda. She’s a... I don’t exactly know what she is. Some say she's a witch, others say a psychic. Most call her a fake. But she’s known throughout the city as a purveyor of the occult and all things mystical. According to Delphina, they have featured her shop on a lot of those supernatural shows on cable.”

“Where is it?”

“The French Quarter. Where else?”

Scooping up the book, Tessa was out of the bar and on her way to her office before Angie finished her sentence.

“Be careful,” her friend called after her.

“Why, is she dangerous?” she asked without slowing.

“No, but in your current state of mind, you might be.”

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