Hexed

were gone, I beckoned to Cassandra with a stiff finger. She followed me upstairs, her fair hair perfect in its French braid, her silk suit crisp. A far cry from me with my black hair, jeans, cropped top, and motorcycle boots now coated with blood. I probably looked like a murder victim, except that I was still up and running around.
    Fremont stood in the bathroom where I’d left him. His arms were folded, his eyes closed, and he rocked back and forth.
    “Fremont,” I said in alarm.
    He opened his eyes but kept rocking, his face drawn in terror.
    “Stop it,” I said. “It’s just a little blood projection. Some witch is messing with us, that’s all. Or maybe Sheriff Jones hired a sorcerer to drive me out of town. I wouldn’t put it past him.”
    Fremont drew a shaking breath. “You shouldn’t joke about dire portents, Janet.”
    I grabbed the glass cleaner and paper towels Juana had left in her cart. “ This is how I deal with dire portents.”
    Fortunately for me, the cleaner cut right through the blood. I wiped away the words, the paper towels squeaking against the glass.
    “Mirror, mirror, on the wall,” I whispered to it. “Who the hell did this?”
    “Beats me, honey bun. That was scary .”
    So helpful. I finished with the mirror and started on the rest of the bathroom. The other two wandered out to the bedroom, tracking blood on the carpet. Fremont sat on the bed, dazed, his bloodstained coveralls planted on the quilt one of my aunts had made. Cassandra gazed out the window at the distant mountains in silence.
    “Cassandra?” I asked, continuing to spray and wipe. I at least was one hell of a bathroom cleaner. My grandmother, who’d raised me, had been a stickler for cleanliness, and she’d trained me how to scrub at an early age.
    Cassandra turned to me, and I stopped in mid-swipe. Her face was pale with fear, my always cool, always contained manager-receptionist looking like she wanted to be sick.
    “You all right?” I asked her.
    Cassandra shook her head. “I’m sorry, Janet.” She gave me another look of anguish and ran out of the room.
     
    I HANDED FREMONT the rags and told him to keep wiping. I caught up to Cassandra on the stairs, but she wouldn’t look at me, wouldn’t talk.
    I’d never seen her like this, my unflappable manager who’d managed luxury hotels in California and who ran this place better than I ever could. I ordered her to accompany me into the saloon, which wasn’t open yet, and tell me what she knew.
    We entered the saloon to see a broad-shouldered biker with black hair leaning over the bar to help himself to a beer. He took one look at me covered in blood, slammed down the mug, and rushed me. I found myself lifted in arms like hard steel, and I gazed into the blue eyes that had looked back at me the night I’d first lain with a man.
    “What the hell happened?” he demanded.
    Mick’s fire magic tingled through me, searching for injuries and ready to heal them. Because I was unhurt, my body started to respond the way it wanted to, with desire.
    “I’m fine,” I said swiftly. “The blood isn’t mine.”
    Would Mick set me on my feet and let me go? No, he slid his big hands along my back and pulled me closer. “I felt it in the wards. Something got in.”
    He wanted to shift, to fight. Mick was a dragon, a giant black beast with black and silver eyes and a wingspan that rivaled a 747’s. As a human, his dragon essence was contained in the dragon tattoos that wound down his bare arms and in the fire tattoo that stretched across the small of his back.
    “I was about to ask Cassandra all about it,” I said.
    Cassandra had seated herself dejectedly at one of the empty tables. I’d restored the saloon to its original Wild West glory, complete with tin ceiling, varnished bar, and wide mirror on the wall. The magic mirror had shattered in its frame one night, the product of one of my harrowing adventures, but the fact that it was broken hadn’t dimmed either its magic or, unfortunately, its personality.
    “I’m sensing a wicked imbalance in the force, sweet cheeks,” it said. “Micky, maybe you should get naked in case you have to shift.”
    I envied the way Mick could utterly ignore the thing. To Mick, the mirror was simply a powerful talisman, good to have on hand, and the fact that it kept up nonstop sexual suggestions rarely bothered him. Mick and I had awakened it from dormancy one night while working some Tantric magic, which meant that the