Grave Mistake Read online

  I tried to keep the accusation out of my voice as I remarked, “Well, that could’ve gone better.”

  Another of those dismissive hand waves. “Oh, it went fine. I think he likes you.”

  “I kind of doubt that.”

  She chuckled. “Oh, but I know Cal, and you don’t. He’s not the type to give compliments if they’re not justified. I can tell he’s impressed with the store.” Her voice lowered, and she added, “He’s single, in case you were wondering.”

  “I wasn’t,” I said crisply, even though that was a flat-out lie.

  “Mm-hmm.” Apparently, Josie wasn’t buying it, either. “Never married. I don’t know why. I guess he was just waiting for the right girl to come along.”

  Having delivered that remark, she sent me a knowing glance and then headed off toward the refreshment table as well, although — to my relief — she didn’t approach Calvin Standingbear, but instead stopped to talk to a couple around her own age, although they weren’t nearly as flamboyant.

  A woman I didn’t know was waiting at the counter, a crystal-embedded healing candle in one hand, so I hurried over to take care of her purchase. Several other people followed after that, including a pair of girls who looked as though they were probably still in high school. With much giggling, they bought a deck of moon oracle cards and a few of my smaller, less expensive crystals, and I wondered how serious they intended to be about their purchases.

  But at least they’d served as a useful distraction, and by the time I was done taking care of them, I looked up to find that Calvin Standingbear had already left the building. I couldn’t quite prevent the stab of disappointment that went through me when I realized he was gone, even though I tried to tell myself it was kind of silly to be upset that he hadn’t hung around. Even if he had any interest in me — and I had no reason to believe he did — an open house at a New Age store with a few dozen people milling around wasn’t exactly the best setup for an intimate conversation.

  Hazel Marr came over to the counter, greenish eyes glinting with amusement. “I see you met the resident stud.”

  “What?” I asked, trying to play dumb.

  She crossed her arms with a jingle of silver bangle bracelets. When she wasn’t dressed in old jeans and a paint-spattered T-shirt, she could give me a run for the money in the bohemian wardrobe department. Tonight she was wearing a tie-dyed tank dress with a bright pink cardigan on top. “Calvin Standingbear. You were looking at him like a Weight Watchers junkie might stare at a piece of chocolate cake.”

  So much for trying to act nonchalant. “Was I that obvious?”

  “Probably not to everyone,” she replied, obviously trying to take pity on me. “But I’ve felt that same expression on my own face, so I suppose that made it easy to recognize.”

  “Did you ever go out with him?”

  “Calvin? No.” She laughed, a rueful little chuckle that couldn’t quite hide her disappointment at the situation. “The San Ramon Apache keep to themselves. I mean, they come to town to do their shopping or to go out to eat or have a drink, but they don’t mingle much. I’m not a Globe native, but I’ve lived here for seven years now, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard of any of them dating or marrying one of us honkies.”

  “‘Honkies’?” I repeated.

  Hazel grinned. “Well, whatever Native Americans call us white folks. Anyway, I’m pretty sure Calvin’s a lost cause, but that doesn’t mean I don’t try to get an eyeful whenever he crosses my path. Looking never hurt anyone.”

  No…unless your brain started manufacturing all sorts of unlikely scenarios as a result of that so-called “looking.” I wondered what the hell Josie had been thinking by being so transparent in her introductions. During one of our conversations, she’d told me that she was born and raised in Globe, that her family had been there for generations, so it wasn’t as if she didn’t already know about the standoffish behavior of the San Ramon tribe. Had she somehow thought a witch from L.A. might have a chance where none of the local women had?

  Again, not the sort of conversation I wanted to have in that kind of crowd. I filed my questions away for later and said, “I guess I’ll join you in looking. So far, I haven’t seen a lot of prospects in this town.”

  Hazel still appeared more amused than anything, so I guessed she wasn’t too disappointed by the lack of local dating prospects. “No, if you were looking for hookups, you would’ve done a lot better to stay in L.A.” Her expression turned speculative. “What made you choose Globe?”

  There it was. I knew she’d been pondering that question ever since she came over to the shop the first time to give me an estimate for the ceiling murals. Of course, she’d been too polite to come out and ask, but I was sure almost everyone had been wondering the same thing. I’d told Josie that I was tired of Los Angeles and wanted to get out of the big city to someplace where I could see the sky and get some fresh air, but Globe still seemed like an odd choice. Someone with my interests would’ve done better to move to the New Age haven of Sedona, or even the Verde Valley, which got a lot of tourists because of the wine industry there.

  Obviously, I couldn’t tell Hazel that I’d ended up in the out-of-the-way mining town because both my pendulum and my Tarot cards had guided me there. Or maybe I could. I’d already gone full woo-woo for everyone to see, so it wasn’t as if she’d be terribly surprised by such a revelation.

  “The universe guided me here,” I said, and to my relief, she smiled and took a sip of Walmart merlot.

  “I guess a lot of us can say that about where we’ve ended up,” she replied. “I knew I wanted to be someplace that wasn’t touristy, but I wanted a town that was in the mountains, where I’d find something to paint every day.”

  Well, she’d definitely found it in Globe. Our surroundings weren’t as breathtaking as what you’d find in Sedona or Flagstaff — or at least, what I assumed you’d find, based on the photos I’d seen — but mountains rose up in almost every direction, and you didn’t have to drive very far to find some truly breathtaking vistas.

  “Of course,” she went on, “almost any mountain looks good to me, since I grew up in Iowa. Not much more than hills there.”

  I’d never been to the Midwest, but I still knew she wasn’t saying anything more than the truth. Inwardly, I thanked the universe for sending me to a place that had an interesting landscape. After spending my entire life in Southern California, where mountains and hills ranged almost everywhere you looked, I knew I would have felt as though something was missing if I’d ended up in Iowa or Kansas or Oklahoma.

  We chatted a bit more, and made plans to meet for lunch the next day at Olamendi’s, the Mexican restaurant down the street. Hazel headed off to talk to Bryan and Kris, the guys who ran the coffee shop, and I found myself thankful as well that our paths had crossed. Maybe I didn’t have many romantic prospects in sleepy little Globe, but at least I’d made a friend, which was more than I’d had back in L.A. People I was friendly with, sure, but no one to get together with and have lunch or a cup of coffee.

  I sold some more things after that — crystals and oils and some books, even a few of the embroidered skirts from India I’d ordered to see if anyone would be interested in the kind of clothing you couldn’t get at the local Walmart — and eventually, eight o’clock swung around and it was time to shut everything down. Josie asked if I wanted her to stay and help clean up, but as there wasn’t that much to do, I thanked her but said that wasn’t necessary.

  Because everyone had been tidy and had disposed of their used cups and napkins and plates in the recycling bin I’d set out, there wasn’t much for me to do except gather up the uneaten food and set it on the bottom step so I could take it upstairs and put it in the refrigerator when I was done locking up. A pause to transfer that night’s earnings into the little pouch the local Wells Fargo had supplied, and I was just about ready to call it a night.

  The bells on the door jingled, and I glanced up, thinking that maybe someone had left
a personal belonging behind and had come to retrieve it. But that possibility didn’t quite seem right, since I hadn’t found anything as I was tidying the store.

  Then my eyes met those of the man who’d just entered the shop, and my heart dropped to somewhere roughly around my feet.

  “Hello, Selena,” said Lucien Dumond.

  5

  Lucien’s Luck

  Since I only stared at him in silence, my mouth dry, he moved a little farther into the store, an unpleasant smile playing on his thin lips. I hadn’t seen him for more than six months, and so maybe that was part of the reason he looked so horribly, terribly out of place in my pretty shop with the soothing deep blue on the walls and Hazel’s intricately painted constellations on the ceiling. His shaved scalp gleamed under the glow of the sconces on the walls, and the silver Scorpio symbol he wore around his throat glittered with each step he took.

  “Does this silence mean you’re surprised to see me?”

  “I — ” Get it together, Selena, I scolded myself. He’s on your ground — ground you’ve purified and blessed and warded.

  Although honestly, I had to wonder how good those wards actually were, since they obviously hadn’t been able to prevent Lucien from entering the store.

  “What are you doing here, Lucien?” I asked, glad that I sounded brisk and no-nonsense, and not frightened at all. Then again, the bold tone in my voice was probably due to the glass of merlot I’d finished fifteen minutes earlier rather than any true courage on my part.

  His smile only widened. “Why, I wanted to see you. I don’t think that was very fair, the way you just up and left L.A. without telling anyone.” A long pause, during which his deep-set eyes, half shadowed under his sparse brows, seemed to glitter with secret amusement. “Or rather, without telling anyone except your mother. Good thing she was so open to passing on what she knew.”

  “If you hurt her — ” I began, fury and fear building in me in equal measures. My mother tended to trust everyone she met, which made her a perfect target for someone like Lucien Dumond.

  He put his hands on his hips. As usual, he wore black from head to toe — a black button-up shirt, black jeans, black biker boots. Heavy silver rings shone from all his fingers, and tribal tattoos peeked out from under his rolled-up cuffs and on his neck where the open collar of his shirt revealed them. Even in L.A., he attracted attention, but in Globe, he would stick out like a crow in a flock of canaries.

  “Of course I didn’t hurt her,” he said, now sounding wounded. “Why would I hurt someone who was so willing to give me the information I needed? No, she told me that you wanted a change of scenery and had moved to Arizona. She didn’t have your exact address — it seems you told her you’d give her that later on — but once I knew your destination, it wasn’t that hard to determine exactly where you’d ended up.”

  I reflected that I needed to tell my mother not to go spilling my secrets to every random guy who called asking for information. Then I realized there wasn’t much point in asking her to be careful. She’d agree and tell me she was sorry, and then she’d be right back at it again. I loved my mother, but sometimes her lack of caution drove me right up a wall.

  “So, now you’re here,” I remarked, doing my best to sound bored and unconcerned. “Again I have to ask, what do you want?”

  The expression of false affability he’d been wearing abruptly vanished. “You didn’t ask permission to leave.”

  “I what?” I said, not sure I’d heard him correctly…or at least thinking that I couldn’t have possibly heard him correctly. “Since when do I have to ask permission of you to do anything?”

  His eyes narrowed, turning to slits. Tone silky, he replied, “As head of GLANG, I am in charge of all magical practitioners in the L.A. area. You’re a magical practitioner, aren’t you?”

  “I’m a hedgewitch,” I shot back, matching him glare for glare. “I don’t work for anyone, I don’t answer to anyone. Including you.”

  “How sweet that you think you have an opinion in the matter,” he said, apparently not at all perturbed by the death stare I’d turned on him. That is, I hoped it was a death stare. Since more than once I’d been asked if I was the spokesmodel for a popular game show, I had a feeling that the borderline perky looks I’d inherited from my mother weren’t doing me any favors. Maybe it had been a mistake to give myself bangs. “I am the strongest magical practitioner in the Los Angeles basin. That means I call the shots.”

  What a load of garbage. I wanted to tell Lucien that it didn’t matter what kind of rules he made up in his diseased brain; I wasn’t beholden to him…or to anyone else, for that matter.

  Unfortunately, he was telling the truth about one thing. He was a much stronger magic worker than I could ever hope to be, partly because he didn’t care if he cut corners or performed rituals that severely affected his karma.

  And then there was the dirty little secret he’d been hiding from his followers and acolytes, something none of them had apparently picked up on but which I’d sensed the moment I met him.

  Part of the reason he was so strong was that he used dark spells to tap into the powers of the people he kept around him. As far as I could tell, none of them had been able to sense what he was up to, but I’d felt it right away when we first crossed paths, had almost been able to see the energy moving from them into his body.

  It was an incredible perversion of the craft, but I knew Lucien didn’t give a damn about that. No, all he wanted was to draw more people to him, to surround himself with those who could feed the spells he created to keep his rich and powerful clientele happy. And if you got in the way of those spells, or did anything that might make someone think he wasn’t quite on the up and up, then he had absolutely no compunction about squashing you like a bug.

  I wasn’t about to tell him that I’d learned what he was hiding, of course. The man was dangerous enough on his own; I didn’t want to think how he’d react if he knew I’d discovered what he was up to.

  Time to try a different tack. “I’d think you’d want to be rid of me, considering the way I poached that one client of yours.”

  Of course, I hadn’t really poached her — she’d come to me of her own volition — but I figured I wasn’t above buttering up Lucien Dumond if it meant I could get him out of my life that much quicker.

  His lips thinned almost to nonexistence. “Oh, but you cut her loose, so I suppose that transgression can be forgiven.” A pause, and then the annoyance vanished from his face, and he smiled again, this time the open, friendly smile he probably used on his clients. For all I knew, it worked. The man wasn’t attractive in a conventional way, but he did have a certain perverse charm. “And Selena, I never wanted to get rid of you. I wanted you to work with me…to be with me.”

  Personally, I would rather have gone to bed with a rattlesnake, but I knew I couldn’t let my disgust show. I didn’t know how I was going to get rid of him, and yet I all too clearly understood that informing him I would never be with him in the way he wanted was a recipe for disaster. Men like Lucien Dumond didn’t like being told no.

  “I’m not really a fan of being part of a harem,” I said lightly. “Doesn’t work with my lifestyle.”

  He shrugged. “I can get rid of all of them,” he replied. A snap of his fingers, followed by, “Just like that.”

  “How very self-sacrificing,” I said.

  Once again, his eyes narrowed. “You’re worth more than all of them put together. But if you combined your powers with mine…we could move worlds.”

  Was that a leer on his face? Judging by the way his gaze moved downward to take in the slight hint of cleavage my embroidered shirt revealed, I had to guess it probably was. Disgust curdled in my stomach, but once again, I told myself I had to play it cool.

  “I’m not really interested in moving worlds,” I told him, then stepped over to a display of crystal and gemstone spheres in various shapes and sizes and colors. After adjusting one minutely, I looked over my shou
lder. He hadn’t moved, but instead watched me with those gimlet eyes. “To be perfectly honest, I’d been thinking about getting out of L.A. for a while. This opportunity came up, so I took it. Maybe I should have let you know, but I didn’t think it would be that big a deal.”

  “It is a big deal,” he said. “A very big deal.”

  Great. Clearly, Lucien wasn’t going to take any of my excuses as a reason to leave me alone. I found myself wishing that the store had one of those panic buttons under the counter, the kind they pushed at the bank to summon the cops when a robbery was in progress. Even if I’d had one, though, it wouldn’t have summoned Calvin Standingbear, since he wasn’t a member of the Globe P.D.

  Too bad. It would have been amusing to watch Calvin pound Lucien into the ground like a tent stake.

  Not that he would have gotten that far, I realized soberly. Calvin probably had a good five inches and twenty pounds on Lucien, but he didn’t have magic at his disposal, which made all the difference. Lucien could have drawn enough of Calvin’s life force to make himself stronger and his opponent weaker, and Calvin would never be able to figure out why he hadn’t been able to best someone he should have physically outmatched.

  “Look,” I replied, trying not to sound too desperate, “it’s been a long day, and I’m tired. Why don’t we meet for breakfast tomorrow and discuss this further then?”

  For a moment, he didn’t reply, only continued to survey me out of those narrowed eyes, as if he was trying to determine what kind of game I was playing. And really, I wasn’t playing anything. I knew we’d only keep going back and forth over the same ground, and I was tired. Not that I thought meeting for breakfast would change anything, but, if nothing else, it would give me more time to think and formulate a plan.

  Since the silence was growing uncomfortable, I added, “You are staying somewhere around here, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” he said shortly. “Athene and I got an Airbnb here in town.”