Hex Appeal (P.N. Elrod) (Kitty Norville 4.60)

“Company for what?”

“Holly’s Balm,” he said. “You own it, and I just got the first check for agreeing to let this company sell it. All I got to do is give ’em the recipe, and they’ll hire on the potions witches to do it. Us included. Should make us a tidy sum in paychecks, plus this signing bonus for you.”

Oh, there was a check. He held it in front of me.

That was a lot of zeroes. Six of them, with a respectably large single digit in front of them.

“Andy—I can’t take all this…”

“It’s only half,” he said. “The other half’s gone to Detective Prieto’s family. They won’t want for nothing, I promise you that. And—and to the families of them girls. I sent it without signing the note.” A quiet, shy smile spread over his lips. “Did good this time, didn’t I?”

I took the check, put it and the papers aside, and kissed him, long and sweet. He tasted like the potion, like every good thing that had ever happened in the world and nothing bad.

“Yes,” I said. “You did good.”

The potion was called Holly’s Balm, but the fact was … he was all the balm I’d ever need.

* * *

Author’s Bio:

Rachel Caine is the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of the Morganville Vampires series, the Weather Warden series, the Outcast Season series, and the new Revivalist series. She lives and works in Fort Worth, Texas. Her website is www.rachelcaine.com.

SNOW JOB

by CAROLE NELSON DOUGLAS

Everyone wondered why a Sin City bigwig like Christophe performed twice nightly as “Cocaine” with his own rock band at his Inferno Hotel venue. That was like “the Donald” leading a fifties doo-wop group nightly at the Trump Las Vegas, although that very thought was more shuddersome than a pack of feral zombies invading a tea party.

Everyone was dying to know, in a 2013 Vegas packed with supernatural moguls, just what flavor of paranormal the Seven Deadly Sins’ lead singer, Christophe, aka Cocaine, aka Snow, was. Rumor whispered that he was an albino vampire, but Snow maintained that was way off base.

Except for the albino part, obviously.

One night between shows, the rock-star mogul stepped firmly out of character.

“Get me Delilah Street,” Snow told his security chief, Grizelle, even though he knew that the formidable shapeshifter hated Delilah Street almost as much as Delilah Street claimed to hate him.

“You’ve never asked me to provide you with a woman before,” Grizelle observed.

“I’m not asking now. She’s a paranormal investigator.”

“She’s a self-advertised paranormal investigator. I find her annoying. I thought you did, too.”

His colorless lips sketched the shadow of a smile. “I do.”

“She’s a

bloody amateur,” Grizelle went on, “and she’s the Cadaver Kid’s girlfriend, or hadn’t you noticed?”

“She’s going to be my bloody amateur next. And, Grizelle, I notice everything, including when you’re jealous.”

“Jealous? Who’s got your back with tooth and claw?”

“You do.”

His pale hand stroked the top of her gleaming ebony hair, which was styled into shoulder-length braids. She was a tall, handsome woman with watered-silk skin, a moiré pattern of black and deepest gray that outshone her emerald green silk sheath dress and metal-heeled gladiator sandals.

As Grizelle leaned into his fond gesture, her moiré skin sprouted black-and-white fur, and the green gown dwindled into the concentrated gleam of feline irises. Now that Grizelle had shifted into a huge black-striped white tiger, her platter-sized paws rested on the broad shoulders of Snow’s white leather jumpsuit, and her emerald eyes were slitted with devotion as one furred cheek rubbed her scent on him.