Spells (Bayou Magic 2)

“Motherfucker,” Cash spits out, pissed as hell. “I was twenty yards away. He dumped this one right under my nose.”

“Under all our noses,” Lucien says as he steps gingerly around the corpse, careful not to touch anything, and helps me off the ground. “Are you hurt?”

“Just my hand.” I show him the scrapes, and he lightly brushes his thumb over the flesh, leaving it as good as new when he’s finished.

“How did you—?”

“Practice,” he murmurs before kissing my forehead. “Lots of practice, a stór mo chroí.”

Cash is already on the phone to call for help.

Brielle and Daphne take the trash I brought outside to the dumpster.

Esme’s standing by the door, watching with wide eyes.

“What’s on your hand?” I ask her. It’s red.

Blood red.

My goddess, is Esme possessed by Horace?

“Oh, it’s food coloring,” she says, waving me off. “From the hot chocolate.”

I nod, but I’m not convinced. This body wasn’t here earlier. Esme went to the bathroom, and when I came back here, I literally fell over a dead man.

Sirens fill the air, and I know we’re in for a long night.

“You guys should go home,” I say to my sisters and Esme.

“Not yet,” Cash adds. “We’re going to have to take statements. It won’t be too bad because I was here.”

“You couldn’t have stopped this.” Brielle takes his hand, trying to reason with him.

“It’s my fucking job to stop this,” he says, shaking his head. “Right under my damn nose. He’s an arrogant son of a bitch.”Chapter Twenty-TwoLucienIt’s imperative that I hide my grimoire. I feel him growing impatient, and I know the time approaches when we will have to fight him.

My wife is in bed with our daughter, Sabrina, snuggled up at her breast. The baby hasn’t been feeling well, so Millie has been bringing her to our bed for comfort.

What she doesn’t know is that having both of my girls with me brings me comfort, as well.

Tarot, Millie’s familiar, is curled up at the end of the bed and opens one eye when I get up and walk across the room.

“Keep them safe,” I whisper to her. “I’ll be back.”

I retrieve my book of spells, the one that’s been handed down to me for generations, and carry it down the stairs and into the library.

There is no better place to hide a book than amongst hundreds of other books.

I climb the ladder and clear a row of leather-bound fiction novels from the shelf, push on a panel, and grin when I see the hiding space open. I push my grimoire inside, then return the novels to their places, covering it up.

I ease my way down the ladder and head back up the stairs, where I see the girls haven’t even moved. Tarot yawns in greeting, then spins in a circle and falls fast asleep.

I slip back between the covers and kiss the baby’s head. Millie shifts and smiles at me in the glow of the one candle I lit when I awoke.

“Are you all right, beloved?”

“Of course. I was just checking on something.”

She closes her eyes. Did you hide it?

I smile. Millicent and I don’t have secrets. Yes. In the library.

Good.

I brush my thumb across her forehead and lie awake for a long while, watching them both sleep dreamlessly.

I wake slowly with the dream still at the forefront of my mind. I remember almost everything from my previous lifetimes, but this is a new revelation. I check on Millie, who’s sleeping soundly next to me.

With the moon almost full, I don’t need any additional light to see as I ease out of bed and pull on some shorts.

Sanguine is curled up at the foot of the bed and opens one eye.

“Keep her safe,” I whisper as I silently walk out of the room and downstairs to the library.

I flip on the light and stare up. The bookshelves are full of books. In my dream, I’d climbed up to the second shelf from the top.

“Let’s give it a try,” I murmur and roll the ladder to the right place, then climb. When I reach the right row, I start pulling down books. I quickly flip through them to make sure nothing has been stashed between the pages and then let them fall to the rug below. But when I’ve uncovered the entire shelf, there is no panel.

“Damn.”

I know the dream was real. Maybe this room was remodeled since then, and the book I hid is long gone. I sigh and rub my hand over my face, and then pound my fist on the shelf in frustration.

A panel shifts.

Holy shit, it was painted over.

I push on it, and the panel opens. Inside is my grimoire.

I pull it out and descend the ladder, then sit in one of the chairs and open the cover.

1821 is written at the top of the page. I know that I was not born during that time, but my great-grandmother was. At least, my great-grandmother from that particular lifetime.