✨Chapter 1
Reg was surprised to find the door to Marian’s business, Psychic Beginnings, locked. As far as she knew, Marian kept regular hours, and was always at her storefront during the afternoon and evening, prime time for a psychic consultant. Reg preferred working at night, often staying up until dawn conducting seances and other psychic consultations. Midnight, the witching hour, was the best time to reach through the veil and contact those on the other side.
Also the time of day that people were the most vulnerable to suggestion, especially where it concerned ghostly and mystical happenings. It was a time-honored tradition to tell ghost stories and to invoke the spooky, scary, and macabre after dark.
A very profitable time of day for someone in Reg’s business.
But most of Marian’s business, in the small storefront on Main Street, took place in the late afternoon and early evening. By the time midnight rolled around, she was probably asleep in her bed.
Reg gave the knob another twist, as if she might have been mistaken the first time and the mechanism was just sticking. But no, it was locked. In the middle of the day when Marian should have been there.
Maybe she was sick or had needed to go out of town to visit a sick relative or attend a funeral, something that was last-minute, so she hadn’t had time to tell everyone.
Not that Marian was obligated to tell Reg what she was up to. While Reg had not gotten along with Marian when they had first met, wary of her rival in the psychic consultations business, she had come to respect Marian during her stay in Black Sands, and they had gradually fallen into a fledgling friendship.
And Marian had once helped Reg with a particularly stubborn problem involving spectral spiders.
Which was why Reg had hoped to meet with Marian today. A little problem that she figured fell within Marian’s psychic wheelhouse.
The doorknob was unusually warm in Reg’s hand. It must have been in the sun all afternoon and had absorbed a lot of heat. Reg let go and studied it.
She had never particularly noticed the doorknob before. A quick twist and she was into Marian’s space. Only this time, finding herself locked out, did she stop to look at it. It seemed to be made of old brass, tarnished and darkened around hand-carved ornamentation. Two curved swords or sabers crossed to form an X, surrounded by stars, curlicues, and symbols she didn’t recognize. Something that might have made sense to someone three hundred years ago. Or to the more modern witches of Black Sands.
Reg gathered her red box braids in both hands to push them back behind her shoulders while she leaned forward to scrutinize the carvings.
It was an old lock. Not hard to pick or, with her recently discovered telekinetic abilities, to manipulate mentally. But she didn’t want to break into Marian’s business. She wanted to talk to Marian. Getting inside her storefront while Marian was out wouldn’t do Reg a lick of good.
Sighing, she turned away from Marian’s storefront and headed toward The Crystal Bowl.
The restaurant Reg had first gone to the day she arrived in Black Sands was still her go-to place to eat. It was within walking distance of the guest cottage she rented from Sarah and welcoming to most of the very diverse races found within the small town.
Though they had barred Reg from service there at one point. Corvin had said they would get over it and forget about her heritage quickly enough, and he had been right. Within a few weeks, Reg had once again been able to patronize her favorite eatery without any opposition.
When she opened the door and walked into the warm restaurant, the aroma of roasted garlic and herbs washed over her and made her stomach growl. Reg headed straight for the bar. She boosted herself up on the stool and arranged her brightly colored skirt. Bill, a ghostly pale bartender, was on duty. He nodded and smiled at her. “What’ll it be?”
Reg was not normally opposed to a couple of drinks with dinner, but she’d felt like she was in a fog all day, and she worried that any amount of alcohol would send her into a stupor for the evening when she needed to be focused on her clients. She might be able to convince a client that her drifting off at the seance table was a trance but, to give her clients the best possible experience, she needed to be awake and alert.
“Start me with a Coke,” she suggested.
“Just Coke?”
Reg nodded. “Need to be clear-headed tonight.”
He raised his brows in disbelief but didn’t say anything. He went about pulling a chilled glass of Coke for her.
“Meeting someone tonight?”
“Well, I had planned to, but I don’t know now.”
He placed the glass in front of her. “Your favorite warlock?” he suggested.
Reg felt a flush of warmth spreading across her back and neck and knew that her least favorite warlock had just entered the room. Her mortal enemy and the only one who could get her heart pumping like that just by being close.
She turned her head and found Corvin there, as she had expected. Tall, dark, and handsome, with a long black cape around his shoulder. His small beard was impeccably trimmed, and he might have walked right off a movie set, cast for the role of the villainous warlock.
Corvin smiled at Reg, raising goosebumps all along her arms and neck. She gave a shiver and took a few swallows of the Coke, which did not give her the fortification she needed.
Corvin walked over to the bar and joined Reg uninvited, signaling to Bill for a tumbler of Jack Daniels.
“Regina,” he purred in greeting.
“I’m not in the mood today,” Reg warned.
“The mood for what?” Corvin countered, giving her an innocent look.
“This,” she made a gesture to take in the two of them together, “the whole flirtation and seduction thing. I just want to get something to eat. I have clients to deal with tonight. I don’t have time for a bunch of nonsense.”
“I see,” he murmured. “Well, that does present difficulties, doesn’t it?” He leaned closer, and she could smell the heady scent of roses as his pheromones washed over her.
“Corvin…” she growled a warning.
Bill placed a glass in front of Corvin, casting a solicitous glance at Reg. “You okay, Reg?”
She was fighting her attraction to Corvin, dizzy with his charms. It was obvious that she was tired. She would normally have been faster, able to raise a psychic shield against the effect of the pheromones and to reflect the heat he exuded back at him. She touched her temple, trying to concentrate and to raise the energy she needed to fight him off.
“Don’t let him…” she said vaguely. She couldn’t put her concern into words. Corvin would do everything within his power to get her out of the restaurant to somewhere private he could convince her to yield her powers.
It had happened once, before she had known anything about the curse he carried enabling or requiring him to consume the powers of others. When someone with Corvin’s affliction stripped the powers from a victim, he did not return them. But circumstances had required him to do just that in order to save Reg’s life, and he had.
Making him not only her enemy, but also her savior. Then and the many times since he had stepped in and assisted Reg in fighting another foe or giving her the energy boost she needed to protect or rescue others. Most recently, a pack of werewolves.
Of course, Reg had helped Corvin a handful of times as well. Having held the same powers and been in each other’s minds several times, Reg could not close the psychic connection between them fully. However much she wished to separate from Corvin and block him from reading any of her thoughts or feelings, it was impossible.
“Release her,” Bill ordered Corvin.
Corvin looked at Bill, his eyes cold. “You have no authority over me.”
“If you want to eat or drink in this restaurant, I do. Or you will be kicked out. Banned, if it continues.”
“I’m just having a drink with my friend. Reg does not object, do you, Reg?”
He held her gaze, smiling, wrapping the tendrils of his mind around her, tightening his grip, sneaking into the deeper crevices of her brain.
“You’re tired,” he observed. “What’s been going on? You’re not sleeping?”
Reg made an effort to push him out, with little effect.
“Release her,” Bill ordered again. “We will not tolerate this kind of dark power being used in this establishment.”
Corvin stared at Bill and, for a moment, Bill’s expression slackened as Corvin was able to use his influence on the bartender as well. With his attention briefly distracted from Reg, she was able to rally and raise a psychic shield against his intrusion, throwing him out of her mind as forcefully as possible.
Corvin gripped the bar for a moment as if he had lost his balance and might fall. He steadied himself and looked back at Reg, smiling. “Cat still has some claws.”
Reg covered a yawn. “Even when I’m tired,” she told him. She looked back at Bill. “Thanks.”
Bill studied Corvin for a moment longer, blinking slowly, then nodded and turned to serve someone else down the bar.
“Take care,” he warned Reg. “Do not let down your guard.”
✨Chapter 2
Shall we…?” Corvin suggested, nodding to the tables.
Reg was there to eat and so was Corvin. They might as well eat together, as long as Reg didn’t have any alcohol and stayed on top of her game. She wouldn’t give him another chance to sneak past her defenses.
“I suppose,” Reg agreed with a shrug.
Corvin shook his head, eyes glittering. “Such enthusiasm. Has our relationship become such a bore?”
It was not even close to being boring, but Reg enjoyed pulling Corvin’s chain. She covered a fake yawn. “Well… we have known each other for a couple of years now… maybe the magic has gone out of our relationship.” The fake yawn turned into a real one, which Reg tried unsuccessfully to repress. “Oh. I am tired,” she admitted.
“Why aren’t you sleeping?”
Reg made a motion to brush off this question. She did not want to discuss sleep or why she wasn’t sleeping. Dinner with Corvin would keep her awake and alert. A few cups of coffee would help. She was sure she would be fine once she got through her afternoon slump. Her evening clients would have no idea she wasn’t sleeping well.
A waitress came over and asked what they were drinking so she could keep them supplied. Neither Reg nor Corvin needed to look at the menus. They had been going to The Crystal Bowl for long enough to know what was on offer and what they liked. They placed their orders, and the waitress retreated to pass them on to the kitchen.
Reg let her eyes wander around the restaurant. She kept her shield up against intrusion from Corvin so he would not be able to enthrall her, but otherwise ignored him.
A woman came out of the ladies room to return to her table. An older woman with a green turban, glittering jewelry, pouchy eyes, and a drooping face. Marian. Reg had not been able to find her at work, but had been drawn to the restaurant to find her. Marian sat alone, scrolling on her phone.
Reg wondered if she should invite Marian to join them. She and Corvin were not there for a romantic date. Marian wouldn’t exactly be a third wheel. Corvin turned his head to see who Reg was looking at. He gave her a sour look.
“I don’t think we need to invite the old maid to join us.”
“She’s by herself. And don’t call her an old maid. She’s not that old.”
“Old enough to be your mother.”
“Well… maybe. But she’s not exactly ancient.”
“I would have thought that by now you would have figured out that in our world, chronological age has very little to do with anything,” Corvin pointed out.
Corvin, Sarah, and other magical practitioners Reg knew claimed to be centuries old. And then there were the immortals, who might be thousands of years old.
“So, how old is Marian?” Reg asked, “And who cares whether she is married or not? You’re not married.”
Though Corvin had been married several times, mostly to nonmagical partners who had therefore predeceased him long ago. And to a witch named Verity who had made herself into a powerful sorceress. But she was now gone as well.
“The point isn’t whether Marian is married or not. She has never been married, therefore making her an old maid. And worse than that, she acts like an old maid, and I don’t need to be around someone like that.”
“Are you afraid that she’ll try to snare you in matrimony? Or just be a downer?”
Corvin raised a brow. “I find neither one particularly palatable. I’m here to enjoy my meal, not endure it.”
While Marian’s face was naturally unhappy, Reg wasn’t sure that indicated her actual outlook. She seemed friendly enough when Reg would visit with her and didn’t spend her time bemoaning what a terrible life she had. She had recently adopted a new cat, which seemed to have lifted her spirits.
That sounded like something one might say about an old maid.
Reg picked up her glass and had a few swallows of Coke, then returned it to the ring of condensation on the table. She was marshaling arguments for why they should invite Marian to join them, even though she didn’t particularly want to. It just seemed cruel to sit there with Corvin while Marian languished in the corner by herself.
While she was thinking of why it was the right thing to do, another familiar figure entered the dining area.
He was even more handsome than Corvin, with close-cropped hair, a carefully trimmed goatee, and sparkling green eyes. October Phoenix. A man with a lupine nature. Reg smiled upon seeing him.
But October didn’t have eyes for her. Not even noticing Reg or Corvin, he headed straight across the dining room to Marian’s table.
Reg could feel Corvin laughing, though, when she looked at him, his face was smooth, with no hint of a smile.
“Well, then. Maybe our Maid Marian isn’t such a prude after all,” he told her.
“We don’t know anything about them or their relationship.” Reg watched October greet Marian and sit across the table from her. They did not kiss or hold hands. But they didn’t look like just casual friends, either. Was it possible they were related? Mother and son? Brother and sister? Distant cousins? Marian was not any kind of skin changer; maybe they were old friends. Or maybe October was simply there to consult with Marian. Perhaps he just wanted to put her skills as a psychic to work.
But if October wanted a psychic, why hadn’t he come to Reg? She knew that her skills were head and shoulders above Marian’s and was sure that October must have recognized that fact. He knew how she could communicate with the wolves telepathically. That she’d had the power it took to break the magical bonds that had held them prisoner. He had to know Reg’s psychic gifts were significantly stronger than Marian’s.
“You look like you swallowed a lemon.” Corvin looked at her over the top of his glass as he considered his drink and took another sip. “I thought you felt sorry for Marian.”
“I… I don’t feel anything for her.”
Certainly not jealousy.
Reg immediately scolded herself for thinking that. Who had said anything about jealousy? She had no reason to be jealous of Marian or the fact that October had joined her for dinner. Reg already had a dinner partner nearly as handsome as October.
“Nearly as handsome?” Corvin demanded.
Reg smirked and reestablished the psychic shield, trying to keep him from accessing any of her thoughts. “I thought you didn’t care about looks.”
“When did I ever say that? I put a lot of time into ensuring I am… presentable. If one is to go fishing, one must bait the hook.”
The thought of Corvin trawling for innocent young women who would have no idea how he could take their powers from them was repugnant, something that always made Reg feel physically sick. She grimaced and shook her head.
“So you like October?” Corvin asked. “How much do you know about him?”
“I know enough,” Reg asserted. “And it’s not like we’re dating. I just know him… from the business with Jake and the wolves. We’re… acquaintances. Maybe friends.”
“So he can date who he likes.”
Reg darted a look back at October and Marian. “You don’t think they’re really dating, do you?” Reg asked. “I mean…. Marian looks so much older than October.”
“And now we’re back at age again. I thought you were not concerned with age. You don’t know anything about either of their backgrounds. For all you know, October could be a hundred years older than Marian. What then? Then you wouldn’t mind them getting together?”
Reg shook her head, frowning. “I didn’t say that I wanted them to get together. Or not get together. I don’t care. I just think… it looks strange, that’s all.”
The waitress brought them their dinners and hovered for a moment to make sure that everything was in order and they didn’t need anything else. Corvin nodded and smiled before waving her off. Drunk with Corvin’s charms, the waitress stumbled away with stars in her eyes.
But there was no reason for concern if she didn’t have any powers. Corvin would not be interested in her.
Reg and Corvin were silent for a few minutes, digging in and appreciating their dinners. Reg looked over at October and Marian again.
“What do you think they’re talking about? Are they old friends? Or is it business?”
Corvin didn’t look at them. “You’re the psychic. And I thought you didn’t care.”
“I don’t. I’m just curious. They’re… an unusual match. I think it must be a business consultation.”
She knew it was bad form to read someone’s thoughts without their knowledge and permission, but she pushed her thoughts a little closer to Marian’s and October’s, hoping to get an idea of what they were thinking and feeling without intruding too much. October’s head went up and he looked around warily. He noticed Reg for the first time and acknowledged her with a smile and a nod. Then he returned to his conversation with Marian.
“That was reckless,” Corvin told her.
“I was just… wondering. I wasn’t pushing.”
“Yes. Of course. And how would your friends react if they knew you were trying to read them?”
“I wasn’t trying to read their minds. Just their… expressions and body language. Like I always have. I’m good at reading nonverbal cues.”
“That’s what the nonmagical world told you, but that isn’t necessarily the truth.”
“Well…” Reg tried to think of another argument or explanation for why she had been trying to read them. “I just don’t want anyone getting hurt.”
“From a business consultation?”
“I… what business is it of yours what I think or do? You’re not my partner or my boss. You don’t have any more right to know what I’m thinking than…”
“Than you do of knowing what Marian and October are discussing?”
“Just eat your fish,” Reg snapped.
She sipped her Coke and watched October in her peripheral vision for a few minutes. Everything seemed friendly between October and Marian.
She could almost convince herself of it. That they were just friends or business associates. But deep down in a hidden place inside her, she couldn’t help the green worm of jealousy that turned and twisted inside her.
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