Chapter 1
“You can’t honestly tell me that you’re going to help Frankie Firewalker find her soul mate, are you?”
I ignored my mother while I sat in the kitchen of the magical house that happened to have a mind of its own. Literally. I stirred sugar into a cup of coffee, mainly because I knew it was bad for me and what I really needed at this moment was something bad for me, as often bad things made me feel better.
At least sugar made me feel better. Some of the time. Like when I was stressed or when my mother was staring at me with a look of absolute disgust in her eyes.
I stirred to avoid looking at Mama, who I knew was angry with me regarding the whole Frankie Firewalker situation.
Frankie Firewalker, who’d walked right into a wedding, caught the bouquet and asked me to match her.
Frankie Firewalker, my mother’s arch nemesis supposedly, and a woman who’d been matched with a certain vampire.
“Charming Calhoun,” Mama said sharply. “Are you listening to me?”
I picked up the sugar dispenser—it was the kind they have in diners with the little silver flap on top. I tipped it over and let a long stream of the glittery white powder fall right on into my coffee.
“Charming, would you like some coffee with your sugar?”
My great-aunt Rose placed an empty cup near mine. If Rose Nylund from the TV show The Golden Girls had actually been a real person, that would be my great-aunt. Every word out of her mouth sounded exactly like the TV Rose.
Like it did now. “I, for one, would like coffee with my sugar. Charming has the right idea. After that wedding I could use a little pick-me-up.”
I continued to ignore my mother and focused on filling Rose’s cup with the sweetener.
“Pig likes sugar, too.” Rose fluffed her white hair. “Maybe you can give her some.”
I finally broke my silence. “You can’t give a pig sugar. That can’t be good for her.”
Pig, of the small potbellied variety, pranced in, practically smiling. She snorted in delight, as if sugar was the greatest invention since sliced bread.
I glared at her. “You’re not getting sugar.”
My mother rapped her knuckles on the table. “Charming, are you going to answer my question? You’re not seriously thinking about matching Frankie Firewalker, are you?”
I sighed and raked my fingers down my face. “What choice do I have? Frankie appeared at a very high-profile wedding. Then she caught the bouquet.”
Mama snorted. “With magic. She caught it by using magic.”
“That’s for sure,” Rose said. “What other forty-year-old woman out there was even close to catching the bouquet? No one. Only Frankie. I think the reason she caught it was because she used the magic in her groin.”
I shot Mama a confused look. Not once, not ever, had I heard of groin magic. Surely Rose was making that up.
Mama cleared her throat. “Rose, what are you talking about? Groin magic?”
“Oh, you know, where your real female power comes from.” She waved a hand in front of her. “Your groin magic.”
I shook my head. If there was one thing that Rose thought way too much about, it was her groin and post-menopausal hormones.
“Anyway, since you asked, Mama, the answer is yes, I’m going to match Frankie Firewalker. I was hired by the town of Witch’s Forge to help folks find their soul mates. Frankie has three potential matches in town.”
Mama sucked air. “Three?” she said in disbelief. “You’ve got to be joking. I’ve never heard of anyone having three. Rose, have you ever heard of that?”
“Well, I could have matched with five men.” Rose twirled one of her short white curls around her finger, seeming to delight in the conversation. “Not that I used a matchmaker. I didn’t need one. Not with my harem situation going on.”
“Okay!” I quickly interrupted. I wasn’t interested in hearing anything about a male harem and Rose. “Frankie has three potential matches. I saw them when I touched her.”
Mama picked up her empty coffee mug and pointed toward the sink. The cup zipped into the basin, the water turned on, and a dishrag lifted and washed it.
“You’ll want to add soap,” Mama said to the magical objects.
The dishrag wrapped around a squeeze bottle of soap and squirted a few drops into the cup.
Satisfied, Mama turned back to me. “You need to hand Frankie the list of names and tell her to meet the men in her own free time. There’s no reason for her to stay here, in this town.”
I smirked. Now the claws came out. She hated Frankie.
But that wasn’t what bothered me right now. I didn’t particularly want Frankie staying either, but it had nothing to do with Mama.
It had to do with a certain vampire, one I was slowly growing feelings for.
I know in the past I’d disliked Thorne. I hadn’t trust him, not in the least. But something had changed between us and I’d softened toward him. My heart had unlocked, and I found that I wanted to get to know him better.
Not that we’d had any time to get to know each other. We hadn’t. Not at all. But as soon as an opportunity opened for us, Frankie had appeared at a wedding for a witch and wizard I’d successfully matched, and demanded I touch her hand to find her soul mate.
Which I did.
The odds that she would have more than one match were 534,788 to 1. The odds that one of her matches would be Thorne Blackwood were even higher, 1,243,433 to 1. That’s what I’d calculated at least. I never thought that Thorne would match to an older woman.
Well, she wasn’t technically older than Thorne. Thorne being a vampire and all meant he was probably pretty old. I didn’t know how old, but I knew he was older than Frankie.
Anyway, Frankie had three possible matches, and since I was an honest matchmaker, it was my responsibility to bring all three of them to her.
I sighed and sipped my coffee. I grimaced. It was definitely overloaded with sugar.
“So what are you going to do, Charming?” Mama asked.
I drummed my fingers on the countertop. “I’m going to do what Frankie asked. We’re putting on a dating game show, and Thorne is invited to participate.”
“He’ll never do it.” Mama sniffed. “What self-respecting vampire would demean himself by going on a dating game? One that all of town could see, anyway?”
I shrugged. “I mean, maybe he won’t, but I have to try. It’s my moral obligation.”
“Please, Charming,” Mama said, her voice dripping with disdain. “Are you really going to hand over a man you have feelings for to Frankie Firewalker?”
I scoffed. “What makes you think I have feelings for him?”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m not dead, daughter. I have eyes and I can see.”
“Oh, and I can feel the molecules in the air when the two of y’all are near one another,” Rose added. “The air is charged with energy.”
For once, I didn’t argue with Rose’s crazy statement. I didn’t need her to explain what sort of energy because I already knew it was the tense, angsty kind.
I rose from my chair. “I have to do my job. If Thorne is her match, then that’s what the truth is. I can’t lie. I have a moral responsibility.”
“To Frankie Firewalker?” Mama scoffed. “You must be joking.”
I sucked my teeth. “Would you care to tell me why you hate her so much?”
“I don’t hate her,” she said coldly.
Mama flipped her long red hair over one shoulder. Mama looked much younger than her years. She had taken great care of herself, keeping her skin out of the sun, eating healthy food and drinking plenty of water. She looked to be in her forties even though she was well into her fifties.
But you didn’t hear that from me.
“That’s not what you told me,” Rose countered to Mama. “You said if there was one person on this planet that you hated, it was Frankie Firewalker.”
Mama bristled. “Why I don’t like that woman is my business and mine alone. Charming, you would do well to stay out of her way. Way out of her way. If she gets wind that you have a thing for Thorne and he’s her soul mate, I can guarantee that Frankie will do whatever she can to steal him out from under your nose.”
The whole situation put knots the size of eggs in my stomach. It was true, I didn’t want Thorne to be anywhere near Frankie, but I didn’t feel right lying about who someone’s match might be.
I glanced at my watch. “I’ve got to go.” I gulped down the rest of my sugar coffee. “I’m late for a meeting.”
“With whom?” Mama said.
“With the mayor. Frankie wants this whole dating-game thing to go down, and the mayor is all about it. She thinks it’ll be the biggest spectacle that Witch’s Forge has ever seen. She’s probably right.”
“Don’t say we didn’t warn you when this whole thing backfires in your face.”
I shot Mama a scathing look. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“You’re welcome,” she said brightly.
I grabbed my purse. Broom met me in the hallway, sweeping the path clear of dirt.
“Thanks, Broom.”
I shouldered my bag and opened the door, my stomach twisting the whole time.
A dark shadow fell over me. I glanced up. My breath caught in the back of my throat.
“Charming.”
Thorne’s voice sent a shiver straight to my core. My gaze slowly swept from the ground to Thorne’s thick thighs, his tapered waist and wide shoulders to the brown and golden highlighted hair that brushed his shoulders. My gaze stopped floating when it reached his silvery eyes.
Anger flashed in them, and my stomach twisted.
“What’s this I hear that I’ve been invited to take part in a dating game?”
I quickly shut the door behind me so that my family wouldn’t hear. One whiff that the vampire was nearby and both Rose and Mama would be at the door, sniffing around to see what was going on.
With a bright smile plastered on my face, I said, “Oh, you know. It’s just a matching game. See if you could possibly be a soul mate for Frankie Firewalker.”
Thorne scowled so fiercely I nearly trembled. If there was one thing that man could do, it was make my knees quake.
“I don’t need a matchmaker. I’m capable of making my own decisions about who I date, thank you.”
My purse slipped down my arm. Thorne’s gaze trailed to a naked patch of skin at my neck. I scratched the spot where I’d once been attacked by a vampire and lived.
Anytime I thought about that night when I was young, it irked me. Irritated by Thorne’s bad attitude, I brushed past him.
“I’m responsible for bringing Frankie all her possible matches.”
The mayor’s office was within walking distance, so I ignored my car resting on the street.
“I don’t want to be considered for this. Take me off the list,” he demanded.
“That’s not up to me. There are three of y’all—you, Tex Tye and Watts Pugh. I don’t have any control over the possible matches. My job is to deliver the men. That’s all.”
“Seems sexist,” he said.
“It’s only a game show. Haven’t you ever seen one of the old ones? You know from the seventies and eighties when one woman picked between three possible men to go on a date with? Same concept,” I said haughtily.
He took me by the elbow and tugged until I stopped to face him. Fire flashed bright and hot in his eyes. “I’m telling you I don’t want to be considered.”
My hackles rose. I had already explained this. Why couldn’t the vampire just accept what I’d told him?
“And I’m telling you it’s not my decision,” I snapped. “This is my job. My job, Thorne. And if I don’t do what the mayor hired me to, I will be fired and out of that job.” I crossed my arms. “I don’t know about you, but I need to eat. What lets me eat is getting paid,”
He growled in response. Very nice.
Not at all.
I glared at him. “No one says you have to fall in love with her.”
His eyes narrowed. “Who’s talking about love?”
“I’m a matchmaker, Thorne. What do you think I do all day long? Eat lollipops and annoy vampires?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I think you do.”
We stared at each other, neither one of us willing to back down. Thorne exhaled and glanced at the ground. His weight shifted right and left as he seemed to be debating something.
“You know, Charming—” The sound of my name on his lips made a fissure of electricity bolt down my spine. “I don’t want to do this because I had other plans.”
I threw my arms up. “What other plans? Date a vampire princess? Whisk her away to your castle?”
He chuckled, his eyes for the first time holding warmth—real warmth in them. “You would like that, wouldn’t you? It would feed all your preconceived notions about me.”
“No comment.”
Thorne shook his head. “No, that’s not what I meant. What I was going to say was that I had hoped—”
The door to the mayor’s office opened, and Winnifred Dixon stood in the frame. The plump mayor wore a dress suit with a white silk shirt. Her lips were painted bright red, and she placed a hand on her hip impatiently.
“Thorne! Charming! Get in here. We need to discuss the details of the dating game. Frankie’s here as well. Y’all come on in.”
I shot Thorne a victorious look. Not that I wanted to win this, but there were situations I wasn’t in control of—like this one.
Thorne sighed before pointing a finger at me. “We’re not finished discussing this.”
I smirked. “I can’t wait until we do.”
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