Читать книгу Bad Boys Southern Style - JoAnn Ross - Страница 6

“I cannot believe you allow garbage like this comic book in your shop.”

Roxi Dupree, owner of Hex Appeal, glanced up from stirring crushed lavender into a love spell potpourri at the book the older woman was holding up between two fingers, as if afraid of contamination.

“It’s actually a graphic novel.” She sprinkled a handful of scarlet rose petals over the mixture. “And I like Morganna.”

“She works the dark arts.”

Roxi shrugged and refrained from pointing out that the Morganna stories were, after all, fiction. Fiction she’d grown up devouring. Stories that had fed a young girl’s imagination.

Another thing she’d only ever shared with one person—her best friend Emma—was that Morganna had been a childhood role model. Oh, Roxi hadn’t grown up to turn cheating boyfriends into toads (though there had been one or two who deserved it), or burn alive wicked people who harmed children, but she had taken Morganna’s independent spirit to heart.

“All of us, witch or not, have our dark and light sides.” Given that patience was not her strong suit, Roxi had to work at the mild tone. “Isn’t all life about striving for balance between the two?”

“That may be,” the older woman reluctantly allowed, even as her narrow face remained as pinched as a prune that had been left to dry too long in the sun. She tossed the book back onto the shelf.

“But Morganna, Mistress of the Night, certainly doesn’t spend a great deal of time on the light side,” she sniffed. “She’s an angry, vengeful creature who embarks on a crusade of blood and brimstone in every book.”

Roxi found it interesting that a woman who’d proclaim the popular Morganna stories garbage seemed to be so familiar with the stories.

“Not exactly brimstone,” she murmured, thinking how that very word played into detractors’ misguided view of pagans as devil worshipers. “And that particular crusade, by the way, is against undead spirits of the underworld who have infiltrated the bodies of humans.”

Wiry wisps of steel gray hair surrounded the woman’s frowning face. Her thin lips firmed as she skimmed a finger around the rim of a hammered silver chalice. “That couldn’t possibly happen.”

Closed-minded old biddy. “There are those who don’t believe it’s possible to draw down the moon, either.”

The mention of the ancient rite brought to mind last night’s x-rated dream where she’d been in the sacred grove drawing down the moon when a stranger, clad all in black, had appeared from the shadows and fiercely ravished her beneath the midnight sky. Just remembering the way his teeth had tormented her nipples was enough to have heat pooling between her thighs.

“She gives witches a bad name.”

Martha Corey’s grim accusation had Roxi reluctantly dragging her mind from her dream of a wild, midnight sexual tryst back to their conversation.

“I believe witches had a PR problem long before Morganna came on the scene.” The Spanish Inquisition and the Salem hangings were two that came immediately to mind.

The woman abandoned the chalice, moving on to the iron cauldron Roxi had filled with fragrant purple and white lilacs for Beltane. “Did you hear that some Hollywood hotshot director is going to make a movie based on the comic books?”

“Graphic novels,” Roxi repeated. Her frustrated sigh ruffled her dark bangs. “And yes, I believe I heard something about that.”

Not only had she heard, Emma’s husband, Gabriel Broussard—a former hometown bad boy who’d been named Sexiest Man Alive—was going to costar in the movie as Damien, a rival witch who just also happened to be Morganna’s lover.

Actually, the dark and dangerous male witch was the reason she’d begun reading the Morganna stories. He’d certainly fueled fantasies of an entirely different sort. Ones she hadn’t even understood at the time. Now that she thought about it, the man in her dream resembled Damien with his ebony hair and piercing blue eyes.

“I also read in People magazine that it’s going to be filmed right here in Savannah.”

“Imagine that.” Having not seen Emma and Gabriel since their wedding six months earlier, Roxi had been looking forward to them coming to Savannah while Gabe was on location.

“Naturally, the coven is planning demonstrations.”

Oh, hell. This was all she needed. Hex Appeal had only been open a few months. She’d established the original shop in Louisiana, but after Katrina blew the building away, Roxi had decided that as tragic as Katrina turned out to be, in her case the ill wind had offered an opportunity to spread her wings beyond Blue Bayou, the provincial Cajun community in which she’d spent the first twenty-five years of her life. Savannah, with its haunted and magical undercurrents, had seemed the logical choice.

“Well, that should certainly liven things up.”

Practically biting her tongue in half, Roxi took a pink candle she’d made last night down from the shelf, infusing the wax with essential oils of lavender and ginger. Both powerful love forces by themselves, recent studies had shown that the combined scent of lavender and pumpkin pie increased blood flow to the penis by forty percent.

The spell she was packaging for her customer might technically be a love spell, but any woman, witch or not, knew that lust was the fast way to get any male’s attention.

That idea had her unruly mind flashing back to the way her dream lover had feasted on her hot and needy body.

“Of course you’ll be there.”

“Be where?” In her mind his roving mouth had clamped hungrily over her breast and his wicked hand was creating havoc between her legs.

“At the demonstration.”

“The demonstration?” Roxi repeated absently, trying to keep her mind in the here and now while her body, which was on the verge of melting into a hot puddle of need, desperately kept returning to last night.

She placed the small linen bag containing the potpourri into the opening of a conch shell she’d picked up on the beach just last week.

“We’re creating our schedule now.” Martha radiated impatience; a dark, muddied red aura of seething anger surrounded her. “The plan is to disrupt shooting so if those damn movie people insist on making their anti-witch propoganda, they’ll at least have to move to another city.”

“Perhaps Salem.”

“That would be more suitable.”

Given that the irony had flown right over the older woman’s head, Roxi tried again. “Why don’t you just cast some go away spells?”

Although he was now a married man, Roxi suspected that once the local witches got a look at Gabriel Broussard up close and in person, they wouldn’t be in such a hurry to send him away.

“We plan to.” Martha had moved onto a group of unicorns, lifting up a crystal one to check the price sticker underneath. “The demonstrations are merely our backup plan.”

“Don’t you think you’re jumping the gun just a bit?” Once again, Roxi tried to remind herself that patience was a virtue. “Perhaps if you were to read the script—”

A sharp chin shot up. Faded blue eyes turned as stormy as her aura. “I don’t need to read any script to know that we’d hate it. As any true witch would.”

Ah. Here it was. What she’d been waiting for. The challenging of her credentials, which somehow managed to come up in the conversation whenever the old witch visited the shop. Just because Roxi chose to be a solitary witch, rather than join Martha’s illustrious coven, she was considered suspect.

Fortunately, not every Lowcountry witch was as closed minded as their high priestess, or Hex Appeal would have had to close its doors after the first week.

“We’re having a planning meeting tomorrow evening at my home,” the elderly witch said. “I know the others will be pleased to have you join us.”

With that, she left the shop like a schooner at full sail. Without buying anything. She never did. Which was just as well, because she’d undoubtedly declare anything from Hex Appeal faulty since it wasn’t sold by a “real” witch.

Sighing, Roxi rearranged the remaining unicorns to make up for the one that had walked out of the shop in Martha’s oversized straw bag.

The old woman wasn’t really a thief. At least not if her niece, who routinely paid her kleptomaniac aunt’s monthly bills from shopkeepers all over town, could be believed. But she was definitely a trial.