Wicked Souls Read Online Free Page B

various euphemisms, the word what had been substituted in our lexicon for certain cuss
words in keeping with Father Leonard’s no-cuss missive. I typically
forgot to use it, but Keisha was almost religious in her commitment
to stay cuss-free. Sometimes it made for interesting
conversations.
    “Geronimo will be back,” I said. “He’s
totally enamored with you. For now anyway.”
    “His name is Pedro, and he’s interested in
voodoo. I was going to give him lessons.”
    Uh, huh. Right. “His name is Geronimo
Martinez. He calls himself Pedro, because he’s embarrassed that his
first name is Geronimo. He’s an Episcopalian, still lives at home
with his mother, and has strung along six different girlfriends
over the past eight months.”
    Keisha’s face hardened. “You ran a
background check on him?”
    “Someone had to. You’re a little slow on the
uptake. And it wasn’t a background check. I looked at his Facebook
page.”
    Her face softened and her gaze dropped to
the floor. Disappointment oozed from her pores. “Satan’s balls. This is what I get when I look for a nice guy.”
    New descriptive terms had replaced Keisha’s
tried and true favorite cusses as well. This one particularly
bothered me, due to the fact I had intimate knowledge of the body
parts in question and their owner. Today I let the term slide.
    Since Adam had come along and made me happy,
Keisha had dropped her endless supply of bad boys and tried to find
a nice guy too. So far every nice guy she’d fallen for had turned
out to have a big L plastered on his forehead.
    I shrugged off my coat and pointed toward my
office door. “We need to talk.”
    The skeleton-head earrings hanging from her
ears bobbed as her dark brown eyes jerked up to meet mine. “Oh,
God. Now what?”
    On my way past her, I put an arm around her
shoulder and guided her toward the office. “Did you really think I
wouldn’t find out?”
    Her already big eyes grew to the size of
quarters. “You know?”
    “You’re the only witch in Eden powerful
enough to have done it. But why?”
    “I’m slow on the uptake?” Her voice was
thick with sarcasm. “Why do you think I did it? For you.”
    I faced Keisha from across my desk. “I
appreciate it, whatever it is, but it’s backfired.”
    “Huh?”
    I spilled the details for the third time
that morning and watched the corners of her full lips turn down as
she listened to my story. Her brows drew down as well, but
confusion darkened her eyes. When I finished, she stared at the top
of the desk as if that would help her understand what had
happened.
    Apparently it didn’t. “All I did was light a
candle and say a prayer for you. For God to stop all those crazy
biblical characters coming back to Earth expecting you to fix their
problems.” She eyed me with a look that said she still didn’t
understand how her actions had backfired. “Father Leonard told me
it might help.”
    Now I was the one confused. “You went to the
church?”
    She nodded and braids, beads and earrings
swung forward. “Seemed like the best place to get the Big Guy’s
attention.”
    Contrary to popular belief, voodoo and the
Catholic Church have a lot in common. Keisha entering a church of
any faith, however, was about as likely as Lucifer taking up the
cross and singing hymns. “You did that for me?”
    “Leo and I had a priest-to-priestess chat,
and we agreed on one thing: you needed all the help you could
get.”
    No wonder my life had been calm since
Christmas. With Keisha and Father Leonard both working their
respective magics on me, I was being protected by saints as well as
spirits. “You didn’t cast a spell on Gabriel?”
    Keisha sniffed. “I wouldn’t waste my time on
him.” A wicked gleam came into her eyes and she leaned forward. “But I sure would like to know who did and what kind of spell it
was.”
    “You and me both.”
    We smiled at each other across the desk, for
some reason caught up in the idea that a witch could cause