LITMIR.BIZ

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her family had faded, or perhaps been buried under the glittering lie of her new lifestyle. Eventually the Aberdeen funds had slowed to a trickle. She’d been a spendthrift, and her “trustworthy” accountant had been overly liberal with his fees. The result was that she’d suddenly reached a point where it was either go broke or stop and take stock of her situation.

      She took stock. Not a pretty sight.

      Working her family connections and party-girl past, she’d landed the job at the Times, only to realize that she’d locked herself into a role she’d already been playing for too long. Fortunately she was good at it, even without the old trappings. Only Kathryn and a few close friends had an inkling that there was more to Zoe than her bright, flashy surface…and far less to her trust fund.

      Today Zoe couldn’t keep up the facade. She put her head in her hands. “I ran across old family friends at the symphony benefit. We, uh, caught up over champagne.”

      In fact, it had been the prospect of admitting to the couple that she’d spent the years since the elder Aberdeens’ deaths traveling, partying and running through the family money like gas through an SUV, that had sent her straight to the bubbly. She’d always lacked intestinal fortitude.

      “That must have been nice.” Kathryn’s face said she knew otherwise.

      “I’m certain you did well,” Ethan contributed to humor her along.

      Zoe grimaced. What a disappointment she’d be to her beloved Mummy and Pop and pompous old Rags if they could see her now, employed as a second-rate gossip columnist and often flat broke because she’d pledged to make do on her meager salary to protect the remaining trust fund.

      “I’m not quite the raging success they expected,” she admitted. The couple had been kind but noticeably taken aback by her chosen profession.

      “Stuffy snobs,” Ethan said. “Never mind.” He dropped a hand on Zoe’s bare shoulder the way her pop used to, both encouraging and proud, while she’d bent over her textbooks as a dorky, bespectacled fifteen-year-old studying for her college entrance exams.

      That version of Zoe Aberdeen was as long gone as her family.

      Ethan, the incorrigible flirt, gave her a teasing brush of his fingers before moving off. “I ought to be on my way before we draw attention from the tower.”

      The managing editor presided over the lesser columnists and reporters from a spacious second-floor corner glass office with a mezzanine that overlooked the newsroom. Editors like Kathryn had been granted similar but smaller offices on the exterior rim of the ground floor. Zoe’s space was at the approximate center of the room, a magnet for anyone in need of chocolate, a dirty joke or a bit of juicy gossip.

      Kathryn gripped the steel edge of the cubicle wall. “What’s that you’ve got?”

      Zoe looked down. Clasped to her chest was one of the many lucky charms that cluttered the desk, a folk art figurine. She must have picked it up for reassurance. “It’s that voodoo doll I bought in the Gaslamp Quarter weeks ago.”

      “I remember. The day we discovered the lust potion.” Kathryn came around the partition, steering an unoccupied desk chair so she could sit knee to knee inside Zoe’s cubicle. “It’s an ugly old thing, isn’t it?”

      “I kind of like her.” The pocket-size voodoo doll wasn’t as crude as some. Mayan symbols had been carved into the figure’s bulbous body.

      Kathryn turned the doll over with long, deft fingers. “Solid ebony. Where do you stick the pins?”

      Zoe raised her brows. “Thinking of cursing someone?”

      The book editor shrugged. Her relationship with Coyote Sullivan had veered wildly between adversarial and erotic for the past month or so. But ever since her return from a recent vacation that was supposed to be solo, she’d been glowing, and not only because of the newly acquired tan.

      Nope, Zoe knew a mama-got-sex glow when she saw one, even on such an uncharacteristic place as Kath’s face. Which made her wonder just how effective one small filched sample of lust potion could possibly be.

      “I don’t believe this is a voodoo doll at all,” Kathryn said, handing it over. “With such massive breasts, perhaps it’s meant to be a fertility symbol?”

      Zoe threw up her hands, refusing the doll. “Perish the thought.” She had a reputation to maintain, one where marriage and babies were the very last things she should desire.

      “I don’t want it either.” Kathryn set the doll on the desk. “Especially after the lust potion turned out to be…” She shook her head, saying no more.

      Zoe thought the purported lust potion was a fascinating topic. “Especially after the potion made you and Coyote do the horizontal rumba until you were both howling at the moon?”

      “It didn’t make us. Or at least we don’t know for certain that it did.” Kathryn didn’t bother to hide a satisfied smile. “Nor were we always horizontal.”

      Zoe chuckled. “So you’re saying that you made a conscious decision to engage in an affair so hot it’s capable of burning down the Times building?”

      Kathryn’s eyes twinkled. “Please restrict the hyperbole to your column.”

      “This isn’t for my column.” Zoe wrote about local celebrities, society debs and the forays of Hollywood bigwigs who’d drifted south to engage in San Diego’s laid-back lifestyle. In other words, fluff and flattery. “I’m thinking of doing an investigative piece.”

      “On the potion?”

      Zoe’s headache was subsiding, so she risked a nod. “Balam K’am-bi,” she intoned. “The lust potion of the gods.”

      Kathryn chimed in. “From deep in the heart of the Yucatan…”

      “Comes this elixir…”

      “That brings the world’s greatest sexual experience…” Kathryn pinkened at the word sexual.

      “To the person who dares to use it,” Zoe finished. Although they treated their belief in the lust potion as a joke, a folly, Kath had confessed that the effect on her had been too real to discount.

      Zoe intended to find out why.

      A while back, she, Kathryn and Ethan had been wandering the Gaslamp district during their lunch break, noshing and joshing, when they’d found a funky tourist trap called Jag’s on one of the side streets. They had heard rumors about a sleazy little man selling a knockoff lust potion to the tourists while dealing the genuine, very pricey concoction to a select upper-crust clientele. The shopkeeper had given them a spiel about the origins of Balam K’am-bi, promising hot sex, multiple orgasms, yada yada, which none of them had believed. Then.

      A police cruiser had been pulling up to the shop as the trio was leaving. Later Zoe had discovered that a vial of Balam K’am-bi had been planted in her bag. Surmising that Jag had done so to remove the evidence from his possession, Ethan had volunteered to bring the lust potion to the cops for analysis. The official police response had been underwhelming.

      The incident might have ended there if Kathryn hadn’t later admitted to retaining a small sample of the potion for her own experimentation. An explosive, completely out-of-character experimentation, judging by the bits and pieces Zoe had gleaned about Kathryn’s hot-cha-cha relationship with Coyote Sullivan.

      Even so, Zoe remained doubtful. She’d sensed an attraction between Kathryn and Coyote long before the venture to Jag’s. Their affair was not unexpected.

      Kath’s loss of inhibition could also be explained. The power of suggestion and all that.

      But something was going on. Jag wouldn’t have slipped the potion into Zoe’s bag if the vial had contained a harmless liquid. Considering the heightening of physical sensation some users had reported, she suspected the potion contained an illegal extract. Perhaps one that produced a tingling warmth similar

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