Читать книгу Any Way You Want It - Kathy Love - Страница 7

“That is what you are offering the most famous and powerful voodoo priestess in New Orleans?” Maggie glanced at her friend Erika, then back to the cracked, weathered tomb, then to the items cradled in her palm.

“I just scratched Xs into her final resting place, I can’t imagine she’ll mind these.”

“She doesn’t mind the Xs,” Maggie’s other friend, Jo, said, skimming the voodoo book she’d bought at one of the strange little shops along Dumaine Street. “They symbolize your three requests.”

“I get three?” Maggie managed to ask seriously. “Just like with a genie?”

“Genies don’t exist,” Erika stated, as if the very idea was so ludicrous she couldn’t believe Maggie had even mentioned it. So Maggie didn’t bother to point out they apparently believed in the wish-granting powers of a voodoo queen, who’d died sometime over a hundred years ago.

Maggie looked back to the tomb, which was covered in Xs and other symbols designed to communicate with the long-dead woman laid to rest inside. Obviously others believed too, but Maggie couldn’t help feeling it was all a little silly. Still, she had made the Xs. So she wasn’t completely dismissing the idea, was she?

“Erika’s right,” Jo said, glancing up from the book long enough to raise a disdainful brow at the objects in Maggie’s cupped hand. “Marie Laveau expects something better than that. It says she expects items that are personal to the one making the request; an offering that has the giver’s energy attached to it.”

Maggie stared at her usually sensible friend. They were talking about a dead woman, weren’t they? As far as Maggie knew, the dead really didn’t expect much at all, but she decided not to mention that to her suddenly very superstitious friends.

“Well, there’s nothing personal about those,” Erika stated, eyeing Maggie’s choice of offerings with a grimace.

“Well, they’re all I’ve got. Marie can take them or leave them.”

Both of her friends frowned at Maggie’s cavalier attitude. If Maggie wasn’t mistaken, they also appeared a bit nervous, as if they expected Marie to unseal her tomb, march up to them, and start complaining in person. Or maybe worse. What did dead voodoo queens do when they got an gift they didn’t like?

Maggie looked down at the items in her palm. Maybe she should rethink all this. She laughed slightly that she was actually worrying, too—although she had to admit her chuckle sounding a little strained, even to her.

Maggie could understand Erika’s reaction to all this. She was more open to the idea of magic and ghosts and other paranormal phenomena. But Jo? Maggie never would have guessed her sensible friend would buy into this.

“You two are taking this all way too seriously,” Maggie said as she stepped forward to place the offering beside a vase of now wilted, but obviously once beautiful, and probably expensive, flowers.

“I would at least leave the ChapStick,” Erika said, just as Maggie would have placed the offering beside the others.

Maggie glanced back to them. Erika nibbled her bottom lip, eyeing the tomb worriedly. Jo didn’t look up from the book, but did nod in agreement.

Maggie shook her head. “What does Marie Laveau need my ChapStick for? I’m not suffering dry and cracked lips for a dead woman. I’m leaving these,” Maggie said, deciding then and there she wasn’t going along with this any more than she already had. She dropped her gift onto the cracked step of the tomb. “I’m pretty sure Marie will be fine with this.”

Again her friends cocked doubtful eyebrows. Then all three friends stared down at the offering—two sugar-coated pecans—covered with a fine smattering of lint.

“Weren’t you the one who said they were delicious and addictive—the veritable crack of the nut world?” Maggie asked Erika, suddenly feeling the need to defend her decision.

“They are—but not after they’ve been floating around the bottom of your pocketbook.”

“They’re only a little worse for wear.” Maggie realized her own voice sounded noticeably doubtful now. Great, the superstitious duo were getting to her.

“Well, you’ve already left them,” Jo said with a resigned sigh. She snapped the book shut. “Make your wishes.”

“And make them something exciting,” Erika said, then added, “and naughty.”

Maggie frowned at her friends. “Who are you two? And what have you done with my normal friends?”

“Oh, please, you always knew we were freaks. Just make your wish—before she realizes what a crappy offering you left her,” Erika said.

“Make the wish you want,” Jo said, shades of the sensible friend returning—sort of. She was still talking about the wish as if it was going to actually happen.

Maggie shook her head, amused and exasperated all at once. But then she closed her eyes and concentrated. She didn’t even know what she wanted for a wish. On the off chance it did work, what would she want?

Her thoughts drifted back to why she was here in New Orleans. She was trying desperately to forget the past six months. So what would help her do that?

“Wish for a gorgeous man and a hot, sexy fling,” Erika said, from close to Maggie’s right shoulder. Maggie’s eyes popped open and she shot her friend a shocked look.

“Erika!”

“It’s a good wish,” Erika said.

And Jo gave her a halfhearted shrug, as if she would like to deny it, but just couldn’t.

Did she really seem that much in need of a good roll in the hay? She decided she probably did. She made a face at her friends, then closed her eyes again, attempting to think of something more realistic, more obtainable. And not so…well, frankly, ridiculous.

But Erika’s suggestion kept popping back into her head like the repeating chorus of a pop song, irritating yet oddly compelling.

A hot fling. Yeah, like that was ever going to happen. To her.

She squeezed her eyes shut even tighter. What did she really want?

A strange, nebulous image of some man appeared in her head. Great, now that the idea had been planted, she was even getting images of the man she’d want to have a fling with. Yikes.

Ah, what the hell. It wasn’t like Marie Laveau’s spirit or whatever was going to rise from the grave and grant her wish anyway. And if by some miraculous twist of spiritual fate she should meet a gorgeous guy who wanted to have a hot, sexy fling—with her, which would never happen—it would certainly prove Marie Laveau was fine with lint-covered pecans. Or that she had quite a sense of humor.