Black Magic Woman

  This book was donated to Demonoid.me Public Library by semi enjoy

  To Beth.

  Because even though it took me twenty-some-odd years to realize I actually like having a sister, I now know I had a good one all along.

  Dear Reader,

  I have a confession to make: When I set out to write my first novel (the story that started its life as the e-book Fantasy Fix and later became One Bite with a Stranger ), that was all I intended to do. You see, I had this idea for a story about a group of friends who wanted to help each other fulfill their romantic fantasies, and I thought it would be a hoot if one of those friends had a fantasy that should logically be impossible to fulfill—like a fantasy about meeting a smart, sexy, dominating vampire. So that was the story I told, and I honestly meant for it to end there.

  I certainly never imagined that I would end up writing more than five books about the original group of women in One Bite . I owe the continuation of the world of the Others utterly to all of you. Without your encouragement, your letters and e-mails, your words at book signings, and your willingness to read about my Others, these books would never have existed; however, after nearly eight years and thirteen books (fourteen, including this one!) even I have to admit that this world of mine has gotten a tiny bit complicated; nay, even confusing.

  A lot of that comes from the fact that six of those fourteen stories were originally published as e-books, but were later edited, rewritten, and released as paperbacks, but only after several new stories (ones that take place later in the timeline of this world) had hit the scene. For instance, remember One Bite with a Stranger ? That book was originally released in 2003 as the first novel featuring the Others, but it wasn’t published by St. Martin’s Press as a paperback until 2008, well after books like Wolf at the Door (2006) and She’s No Faerie Princess (2006) had advanced the timeline of the world of the Others by several years.

  I swear, I didn’t do this to confuse anyone. But let me try to clear things up now by telling you what the proper order of the Novels of the Others should be, in terms of the chronological order of the events in the books:

  One Bite with a Stranger ( aka Fantasy Fix)

  Big Bad Wolf ( aka Fur Factor)

  Prince Charming Doesn’t Live Here ( aka Faer Fetched)

  Black Magic Woman (this book)

  Not Your Ordinary Faerie Tale (Fighting Faer)

  A brand-new novel (title to come)

  Fur for All

  Fur Play

  Wolf at the Door

  She’s No Faerie Princess

  The Demon You Know

  Howl at the Moon

  Walk on the Wild Side

  You’re So Vein

  Born to Be Wild

  That’s it. I promise.

  And yet …

  I can hear you saying, “But, Christine, you’re trying to confuse us again! I’ve never heard of Not Your Ordinary Faerie Tale , and I’ve looked everywhere for copies of Fighting Faer , Fur for All , and Fur Play , and I can’t find them anywhere.”

  The problem here is one of compromise. In an ideal world, I’d love to release each book in the order it appears on this page, but there are two problems with that: first, I can’t go back in time and fix the publication order that’s already happened; and second, if I released all of the old stories as paperbacks in the order in which they first appeared as e-books, some of you out there would be cursing my name for not writing anything new for you to read (and I really hate it when you get mad at me). By staggering publication so that you get one new original book, then a reworked version of a familiar story, and then another original book, I’m trying to give everyone a little something to look forward to. If I’m failing miserably, maybe I’ll at least get points for effort!

  You may notice that while this book is being published in 2011, I’ve made a conscious effort to fit the events into my timeline so that they do, in fact, occur directly after the events of the book published immediately before it ( Prince Charming Doesn’t Live Here ). This will hold true for the next several books in this series. After Black Magic Woman will come the new and improved version of Fighting Faer , now titled Not Your Ordinary Faerie Tale , and the events in that book will take place immediately after the ones in these pages, followed by the events in a brand-new story, then Fur for All , and then Fur Play . If I’ve just confused you again, look back at the list above. I promise that list is chronologically correct and will not change.

  From now on, I’m a reformed author and all my books will contain events that take place in the same order in which the books are published.

  Unless I delve into time travel, but that’s another matter entirely …

  With much love and sincere thanks,

  —Christine

  xoxo

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Dear Reader

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Epilogue

  St. Martin’s Paperbacks Titles By Christine Warren

  Praise for New York Times bestselling author Christine Warren

  Copyright

  One

  So now you know. Suffice it to say, you’ll never look at the world the same way again.

  —A Human Handbook to the Others, Author’s Foreword

  Daphanie Carter had witnessed a lot of interesting things over the course of the last forty-eight hours, not the least of which had been her baby sister’s wedding less than five hours ago. However, the sight of a small, chubby red hand reaching out from under an elegantly draped reception table and groping among the cutlery really had to take the cake. Or in this case, the diet soda, which the hand curled around and began to ease slowly through the obstacle course of discarded dinnerware.

  Daphanie blinked, but the hand was still there and making remarkable progress. Considering all the cutlery, porcelain, and glassware it had to avoid, the hand and the soda were cooking. And that was when it occurred to Daphanie that maybe the hand of fate came in a variety of shapes and sizes.

  And colors.

  It took less than ten seconds of fascinated observation before her curiosity overcame her. Casting a furtive glance around to be sure the rest of the guests were too preoccupied with each other to notice what she was doing, Daphanie reached for the bottom of the tablecloth and lifted it so she could duck underneath. Her silk maid-of-honor dress slid easily across the antique carpet as she settled herself cross-legged in the dim light of the little cavern. Directly in front of her, the owner of the red hand started and snatched the hand and the captured prize back so fast that the diet soda inside ricocheted right out of the glass and onto his demonic little face.

  “Harpy’s tits!” the little creature cursed, wiping the sticky liquid from his face. Daphanie watched as he lifted the end of an incredibly long and currently dripping mustache to his lips and sucked out the moisture.

  “ Baghk! Diet cola! How do you humans drink that poison?”

  “It’s an acquired taste,” Daphanie murmured,
her fascinated gaze taking in the sight before her.

  Standing less than three feet tall—probably more like two and a half, since he didn’t even have to crouch to keep from hitting his head on the table above them—the creature with the dislike of diet sodas looked like nothing so much as a comic-book rendition of a devil. He had dark red skin, marked here and there with black moles, and hair the color of coal, which he wore in a short, spiky Mohawk positioned precisely between the tips of his two pointy ears. The hairstyle stopped where his forehead started, or more precisely, just shy of the two stubby black horns that sprouted there, as if he’d just walked out of a painting of a mythological faun. He also sported the Fu Manchu mustache that grew long enough to tuck into his belt, had he been wearing one. Instead, he appeared to be decked out in a pair of toddler’s OshKosh denim overalls with the cuffs turned up over his tiny cloven hooves. The garment had apparently been altered further to allow for the pointed red tail Daphanie could see lashing behind him. All in all, he constituted the most amazing thing she had seen in a pretty amazing few days since her return to New York.

  “I’d rather acquire a root beer,” he grumbled. “Doesn’t anyone drink root beer anymore?”

  “Sure.” Daphanie stared at his face, finally noticing the little silver ring that pierced the end of his nose. It flapped a bit while he talked, making her grin. Seriously, the last couple of days were blowing her mind. In a good way. Hadn’t she been longing for something interesting to happen lately? Right before Danice had called to announce her engagement and add to the chorus urging her to move back to New York from her most recent home in Pennsylvania. “I mean, I don’t know if anyone at this table does, but I assume that there are people who do.”

  “Swamp rats.”

  Daphanie grinned. In addition to his entertaining looks, this little guy had quite a way with expletives. His appearance had also gone a long way toward reassuring her that her sister, her family, and she had not all completely lost their minds.

  When she’d arrived in Manhattan on Wednesday, just a few days before Danice’s scheduled wedding, she’d expected a warm welcome from her parents and her baby sister. She’d expected to finally get to meet the man who had swept Niecie off her feet. She’d even expected to get caught up on all the family news and gossip that she’d missed since the last time they had gotten together. After all, when the stars aligned like they had to urge her to move back to the city, Daphanie liked to take the hint. What she hadn’t expected had been the news that the Carters’ mixed-race family was about to become mixed-species, because her baby sister’s fiancé was not quite … well, human.

  McIntyre Callahan, or Mac, as he’d informed her with a million-watt smile, turned out to be a lovely man, in more ways than one. He had the fair good looks of a Hollywood dreamboat and the body of a leanly muscled action star. Honestly, the man was more beautiful than any human being had a right to be, which was confirmed when they sat Daphanie down and explained that Mac wasn’t entirely a human being.

  He was half Fae, as her sister had termed it, the son of a human father and a Fae mother—what Daphanie would previously have thought of as a “fairy,” and honestly still tended to. Looking at the highly masculine and utterly besotted man with his arm curled around Danice’s shoulders, “fairy” had been the last description to come to Daphanie’s mind, but she’d taken their word for it. She had also taken their word on a whole list of other things that threatened to blow her mind and leave her little more than a vacant-eyed, drooling, babbling mental sponge cake on the day of her sister’s wedding. Having expected the mild adventure of an introduction to Mac’s family and close friends, instead she’d received an introduction to the world of the Others.

  Talk about being careful what you wished for.

  That was what Mac and Niecie called them: The Others. It meant, as Daphanie soon learned, the collection of nonhuman beings who lived and worked in the midst of human society. They could be your neighbor or your friend, the woman who manicured your nails or the man who fixed your leaky toilet. Some were highly placed political or corporate officials, and some were sanitation workers or public servants. The Others had always been there and would always be there, she discovered, and some of them were the creatures of late-night B-rated horror movies.

  Missy, Danice’s quiet, kindergarten-teaching friend with the sweet face and soft manner, had married a werewolf last year, Niecie revealed. Missy had even given birth to a werewolf baby (who had not been born with fur, Daphanie had been assured). Reggie, one of Niecie’s other friends, had not only married a vampire, but she’d allowed herself to be turned into a vampire as well.

  And those revelations had been only the tip of the iceberg. For three days, Daphanie’s head had been spinning as she tried to take in the fact that everything she’d ever thought was true about the world around her was really only a veneer of truth. Underneath the glossy, everyday surface moved an entirely new and unfamiliar world into which she’d just received a secondhand invitation. It was enough to blow a girl’s mind.

  Daphanie’s mind, however, wasn’t blown; it was intrigued.

  She marveled at the possibilities. Wouldn’t it explain a lot, she thought, if her college sculpture professor had actually been some sort of were-bear? It would certainly provide good reasons for his bushy beard and terrible temper during the winters. And how much sense would it make to learn that the girl she had hated from the sorority next door had been an actual as well as a metaphorical bloodsucker? Somehow, all of it just seemed to make sense. It was as if she’d subconsciously suspected this all along, and someone had only needed to point out the truth for everything to fall into place.

  The most surprising part, Daphanie had quickly realized, was that most of the Others she had been introduced to had been so unexpectedly … normal. Except for his extraordinary good looks, Mac could have been any other man on the street, and Reggie might look a little paler than she remembered, but Daphanie hadn’t detected even the slightest glimpse of fang. Really, it had all been almost disappointing. She had expected to look around her and feel like a veil had suddenly been lifted and now she could see the world for what it really was, but it turned out that the unveiled world looked pretty much exactly like the veiled one had.

  At least, until now. This little guy was an entirely new experience.

  Daphanie refocused on the little red creature before her and grinned. “I don’t think we met before, but I’m Daphanie Carter. I’m Danice’s sister. Are you a friend of Niecie’s or Mac’s?”

  He took her hand warily and shook quickly. His skin felt warm and rough but not really any different from human skin. “I, uh, I know both of ’em,” he ventured. “Name’s Quigley.”

  “Quigley,” Danice repeated, deciding it suited him somehow. “It’s very nice to meet you, but I do have to ask what you’re doing lurking under the tables instead of sitting at one.”

  “Um, I like to keep a low profile. You know, not stir things up too much. Get everyone all excited.”

  Watching the way his glowing-coal eyes darted from side to side as he said that gave Daphanie the tiniest clue that his answer might not encompass his entire reason for attending the reception in hiding.

  “So you crashed, huh? If you know both of the happy couple, why didn’t you get an invitation like everyone else?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know!” Quigley’s chin jutted out at a belligerent angle. “Alls I can say is, it’s a fine way to thank a dude after he puts his own hide in trouble to save yer life. Some people just got no idea of gratitude, I can tell ya.”

  Daphanie blinked. “You saved a life? Whose life? Mac’s, or Niecie’s?”

  “Either/or. It was a tense situation.”

  “What situation? Danice didn’t tell me anything about her life recently being in danger. Why was my baby sister’s life in danger?”

  Quigley must have noticed a suspiciously militant gleam in Daphanie’s eye, because he quickly shifted his feet and darte
d his glance to the side. Daphanie couldn’t help it, though. She’d been protecting and taking care of her little sister since the day their parents had brought Niecie home from the hospital. Old habits, and all that.

  “It wasn’t that bad,” the little creature hurried to assure her, twisting one end of his mustache around his chubby finger. “I mean, it all worked out, right? No harm, no foul. Hazard of doing business and all that.” He laughed nervously.

  “But why was Niecie in a dangerous situation to begi—”

  “So, did ya come in from out of town or something?” Quigley cut her off with an enthusiastically jovial tone. He rocked forward on his hooves and pasted a toothy smile on his face. Somehow, the fact that his teeth were more pointed and fangy than normal human teeth didn’t diminish the effect in the least. “I can’t recall Danice mentioning she had a sister here in the city.”

  Daphanie’s eyes narrowed. “She doesn’t. I’ve been away for years now. I just came back this week. Does the situation you saved my sister from have anything to do with the reason why you’re lurking under dinner tables instead of mingling with the rest of the wedding guests?”

  “Ah, that explains it. Yup, I figured if Danice had a sister in New York, she’da mentioned it by now. I was just sayin’ to myself, ‘Quigley, if this is Danice’s sister, I bet she musta been living someplace pretty far away up until now or you’da heard about her before this.’ Yessir.”

  The creature’s burning, beady eyes darted this way and that, looking everywhere but at Daphanie’s face. She could almost swear she saw little drops of sweat collecting on the skin at the base of his horns. She had him backed into some kind of corner without even having seen the walls coming. She couldn’t think of any other reason for his nervous twitching. The question was, what had him so tied up in knots, and should Daphanie try to squeeze him for information, or take pity on the poor thing?