LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter 1

      Lissa Clearmont looked around her aunt Callista’s shop—her shop now—torn between both affection and dismay. The purple string lights hanging all around the ceiling cast a spooky light on the eclectic inventory of Callista’s Curiosities of the Magical and Macabre. An inventory that was hers to replenish and grow now, ideally by embracing the inner weirdo she’d spent years doing her best to deny.

      Until last month her world had been thoroughly cleaned out of both the magical and the macabre. But then her peculiar aunt called to announce that she’d had a vision and was going to die any day. And, oh, by the way, she’d willed everything she owned, including her wacky store in New Orleans, to her favorite niece.

      She hadn’t taken Auntie Callista seriously at first, but the woman had been adamant that the end was near and she had to get her affairs in order immediately. The curiosity shop was infamous within the Clearmont clan, which was populated by generations of rational, logical, scientific souls who saw anything having to with the unexplained, prophetic, occult—or heaven forbid, magic—to be rubbish of the first water. The family grudgingly gave Callista credit for managing to sell her crystals, tarot cards, talismans, spells and palm readings to a gullible public and making what was, by all accounts, a decent living at it. But their patience for her eccentricities ended there.

      Lissa, named loosely after her aunt, had been the only family member to take Callista’s startling announcement of her forthcoming demise seriously. She’d questioned her aunt in alarm over any diagnoses or heretofore unknown health issues, and Callista had responded firmly that she was in the bloom of fine health. Nonetheless, the spirits had spoken, and she was about to die. Of course, Callista had snorted at the mere mention of visiting a traditional medical doctor.

      If only her aunt had been more specific about how she’d expected to die and why. Maybe then Lissa wouldn’t have this nagging feeling that something was very wrong with the circumstances of Callista’s abrupt death two days after that phone call.

      Frustrated, Lissa turned off the bronze lamp by the antique cash register, pausing for a moment to admire the deep rose silk shade with its beaded fringe and black lace edging. It was a pretty little thing in spite of its uselessness at actually emitting light. She trailed her fingertips wistfully through the cool fringe.

      Sometimes she felt like the little lamp. Pretty and useless. The only thing in life she was good at was the one thing she was determined to leave behind in this cross-country move to New Orleans. Not that her parents hadn’t tried to suppress her talent for years before now. In fact, they’d done everything in their power shy of trying to pray it away to eliminate her gift for seeing past and future events, and, worse, seeing into people’s souls.

      She’d kept the shop open late tonight for a coven of witches who’d come in to buy supplies for an upcoming Imbolc ritual. The holiday coincided with a full moon this year, and they were planning to throw a big shindig to celebrate the conjunction. The group couldn’t agree quickly on anything, and they’d lingered a full hour after her usual closing time at seven o’clock. She barely had time to rush out and grab some cat food for Mr. Jackson, Callista’s entirely cliché black cat, before the convenience store two blocks away closed for the night.

      The women had just left in a joyous cluster, taking with them their noise and laughter and leaving her alone. Worse, night had fallen while the customers browsed the shop. To say that the store turned creepy after dark would be like saying the sun was hot. She peered into the dim corners and to the back of dark shelves in an effort to find the source of her unease. Yet again, she failed to spot whatever it was that made her so blasted nervous. It was as if she was being watched by some foreign, and possibly malevolent, force.

      Shuddering a little, she wrapped herself in her favorite vintage wool coat, locked the iron grillwork over the glass door behind her and hurried away from the store into the bowels of the night. It was a sorry thing when a dark, deserted street in a dodgy neighborhood in a sometimes violent city felt safer to her than her own store did. Aunt Callista would have told her to do some sort of exorcism or cleaning ritual to the curiosity shop and see if she could improve the place’s vibe. A white sage smudge probably wouldn’t be enough. No, a full spell, complete with a ritual circle, libations, candles—

      Stop whispering into my brain, Aunt Callista! You’re gone. I’ll make my own decisions. She didn’t do that kind of woo-woo stuff anymore. Immersing herself in the mystical world had cost her too much. Brought her too much pain. No more. Henceforth, she would live life as a normal, mundane human being.

      A warning vibrated somewhere in the back of her mind, and she scoffed at it. Nope. She didn’t pay attention to baseless intuitions and vibes anymore. She could handle life entirely on her own. The powers that be could just get over it.

      Something big slammed into her from behind as a hand slapped over her mouth, yanking her back against what turned out to be a powerful body. “Don’t fight. Don’t make a sound, or else I’ll mess you up right here.”

      Son of a— Stupid warning intuition had to go and be right, didn’t it? But then panic and terror rolled through her, and all else disappeared in the face of certainty that this man was intent on doing something terrible to her.

      The voice vibrated with malice. Urgency. Accent: local. Smell: cigarette smoke and cheap strip club. This assailant clearly planned to harm her or worse.

      His plan roared through her mind, projected so loudly he might as well have spoken the words. He was going to drag her into an abandoned space—big, open, drafty like a warehouse of some kind—tear off her clothes, beat her up, cow her into submission and then do unspeakable things to her before finally strangling her.

      She fought then. For her life. With all the violence and desperation her five-foot-two frame could muster. Which wasn’t enough, of course. But she gave it her best shot. Her attacker merely tightened his arms around her in a vise that crushed her ribs and made breathing nigh unto impossible, and then he waited out the expenditure of her remaining oxygen. This obviously wasn’t the first time the man had done this.

      An image of another girl’s face, bloody, scared and pleading for her life, flashed into Lissa’s head. She froze, arrested momentarily by the image, memorizing the face carefully.

      Lifting her slight frame mostly off her feet, the man dragged her backward toward an alley even darker than the street they currently wrestled on. If only he would take his hand away from her mouth and nose and let her draw a proper breath. Then she could scream. Or fight some more. Or do something to save herself.

      She felt herself dropping into a state of shock. This must be what it was like to be a gazelle in the moments after a lioness caught its neck in her mighty jaws and crunched into it. Paralysis first and then blessedly numbing shock. The gazelle wouldn’t even be aware of its bleeding muscles being ripped away by razor-sharp teeth, its living organs being torn from its warm belly. There would be just the shock. The blessed, detached, distant awareness of encroaching death.

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