Black Magic Woman Read Online Free Page A

chorus of Oh, shit.
    Of all the gin joints in all the world  …
    Asher knew in an instant that the woman spelled trouble. How could she help it? She was undoubtedly human, she was undoubtedly out of place, and she was undoubtedly accompanied by a greater imp who looked more than vaguely familiar to the overworked Guardian.
    Damn, there went his vacation.
    The woman walked into the club with the excited air and wide eyes of a first-time tourist in Times Square. Her head turned constantly as she struggled to take in her surroundings, devouring the experience in huge, ravenous gulps. And frankly, even a sip would have a more worldly soul than her good and drunk. To humans, the world of the Others could prove as intoxicating as Appalachian moonshine, and very few of them seemed to understand how to hold their liquor. It went to their heads, and inevitably something bad happened.
    The kind of thing Asher’s long-standing oaths left him duty-bound to deal with.
    Wasn’t that just a kick in the pants?
    His grip tightened around his drink as he watched the incongruous pair weave their way through the crowd toward the end of the room where he sat. They made quite a picture together, the short, red imp only visible when they moved between tables—since his head barely cleared them—or when the crowd shifted to show glimpses of his denim and Mohawk between some club patron’s legs. The woman’s movements were a lot easier to follow, partly because she stood at least three feet taller than the imp and partly because she had the sort of look that caught the eye.
    Okay, that caught a man’s eye.
    Dressed in a perfectly ordinary pair of jeans and some sort of thin-strapped top that shimmied and shimmered when she moved, the woman still managed to stand out from the other club-goers. She even managed to stand out from the Other club-goers, including the ones designed by nature to catch the eye.
    First of all, her humanity practically glowed. It was part of what made a Guardian, to be able to identify an individual’s species—especially when it came to humans—instantly, even surrounded by crowds of Others denser than this one. You had to be able to recognize a member of a species before you could expect to protect it, right? But this woman didn’t just look human; she radiated humanity, like light, from her pores. He could only hope no one else noticed the aura, since to a certain breed of Others it would speak not just of innocence and ignorance, but of vulnerability. Asher didn’t have trouble at all picturing a fiend eager to feast on all that vibrant energy, or a vamp unable to resist the urge to sink hard fangs into the long, elegant curve of her neck—
    He caught himself on the edge of doing a little drooling of his own. Not that it wouldn’t make sense. He was, after all, a man, as well as a Guardian, and the human still moving toward him was a very attractive woman. He could (at least pretend to) view that objectively. He swept a long glance over her, impassively taking in everything from the bronze-polished toenails peeping out from the ends of her strappy, sexy sandals, to the dusky skin and surprisingly toned muscles revealed by her flirty top, to the exotic tilt of her eyes and the thick fall of jet-black hair that tumbled from a high, tight ponytail. She was stunning, both sleek and curved, lush and slender, with her aura of energy and humanity simply adding to the magnetic pull he felt.
    That had to be the explanation. She was just a gorgeous woman. He couldn’t help but react to her, especially when he tried to remember the last time he’d managed a date, he assured himself. It was perfectly natural.
    What wasn’t natural, however, was seeing her here, mingling with the rowdy and inhuman crowd at Lurk on a Saturday night as the clock wound down toward the witching hour. The woman was out of her element, and if she wasn’t careful, she’d find that out soon. Probably the hard way.
    Asher lifted his mug,