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Synopsis

In the heart of Ohio, Jessie Shimmer is caught up in hot, magic-drenched passion with her roguish lover, Cooper Marron, who is teaching her how to tap her supernatural powers. When they try to break a drought by calling down a rainstorm, a hellish portal opens and Cooper is ripped from this world, leaving Jessie fighting for her life against a vicious demon that's been unleashed.

In the aftermath, Jessie, who knows so little about her own true nature, is branded an outlaw. She must survive by her wits and with the help of her familiar, a ferret named Palimpsest. Stalked by malevolent enemies, Jessie is determined to find out what happened to Cooper. But when she moves heaven and earth to find her man, she'll be shocked by what she discovers-and by what she must ultimately do to save them all.

Excerpt

Chapter One

A Simple Storm - Calling

Cooper woke me up before the nightmare did. He caught me square in the shin with a jerking kick and I bolted up, my heart hammering like a small demon trying to break through my rib cage. Already the dream had slipped from my mind, leaving nothing behind but my wrecked nerves. Cooper twitched and ground his teeth. Sweat plastered his curly black hair against his forehead, and his tattooed arms shook as he crushed the pillow against his chest. I wanted to hold him close, wake him up. I hated seeing the man I loved in that kind of pain. It didn't matter that he was the teacher and I, his apprentice. But I knew he'd lash out at anyone near him when he came out of the dream. So I wiped the sweat out of my eyes and scooted away from him on the bed.

"Cooper," I called. My throat felt like it was lined with steel wool, and I could taste pennies where I'd bitten the inside of my lip. "Wake up."

No response.

My heart was slowing, finally, but my hands still shook as I wiped my eyes again. I'd never had nightmares before I started sleeping with Cooper. The first couple of times we'd both gotten bad dreams the same night, I dismissed it as coincidence. But after a dozen nights? It was pretty clear that the terror I saw in his fractured sleep mirrored the terror fading inside my own head.

We were having the same damn nightmare . . . and lately I was having it whether I was sleeping beside him or not.

He writhed and groaned.

Cooper's white fox terrier, Smoky, was cowering under my computer desk, whining. The dog was giving me a scared look: Wake him up before something bad happens. I'd seen the dog take on creatures ten times his seventeen pounds when he thought his master was in danger; he'd once torn the ear off an ogreish no- neck who was preparing to brain Cooper with a tire iron in a bar parking lot. But when the nightmare came on, fierce little Smoky was helpless.

I could hear the rustling of my six- month- old ferret racing around in his cage in the corner.

What's going on inside your head? I wondered, staring down at Cooper.

I slid off the bed, took a deep breath, and let loose a shout that shook the floor: "Cooper!"

He jerked awake, arms windmilling, punching the air, kicking the sheet off the bed. "No, I won't, I won't, get away from me -"

"Cooper, calm down! You're okay, you're okay."

"What? Where - where am I?" he gasped, staring around in the dimness.

"In our apartment. Remember?" I climbed back onto the bed and crawled to him across the twisted bedclothes.

"J-jessie?" he stammered, his eyes finally seeming to focus. "Oh man am I glad to see you."

He caught me in a strong hug and kissed me.

His naked skin was slick with sweat, and beneath his usual pleasantly garlicky smell was the faint, sharp odor of brimstone. Smoky padded out from under the desk and hopped up onto the bed.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"Yeah. Think so. Dream can't really hurt me, right? I can't even remember what it was all about." He laughed ner vous ly and patted Smoky's smooth head. "Serves me right for falling asleep when I didn't need to."

"You almost never get enough sleep. You go till you finally pass out from sheer exhaustion. Then you get REM rebound and a worse nightmare than you'd have gotten otherwise."

I chose to ignore the little voice inside my head reminding me that I, too, had been going without sleep.

When things got bad, I'd been taking sleeping pills to blunt the dreams. But not very often; the drugs left me groggy and stupid the next day.

"Hmm, much sense you make, young Jedi," he said. "But sensible man I am not."

He stretched, his spine popping. I couldn't help but admire the play of muscles across his lean torso. He was thirty- eight but easily passed for thirty; there wasn't an ounce of fat on him. Some dumb relationship calculator I'd found online - the kind that divides your age by two and adds seven years and tells you that's the youn gest you can date - said that I wasn't old enough for him.

I know I'm immature in some ways, but inside me there's a cranky old lady yelling at the damn kids to get off her lawn. She's been there awhile. I've decided to call her Mabel.

When I was a teenager, most of the other girls got on my very last nerve - all the stuff they obsessed over just seemed stupid and trivial to me. I mean, seriously, who gives a shit about what shade of eye shadow to wear to a pep rally? I'd rather skip the whole thing and read a book. I thought Ohio State would be better than high school, but mostly it was just bigger.

Maybe I'd have felt different about things if my mom hadn't died when I was eleven. After she was gone, there was nobody around to make me feel particularly excited about makeup and shoe shopping. I started the existential angst early, started feeling like I was way older than the other kids, and that never got better. The day I turned twenty- three, I felt ancient, even with Cooper there to celebrate with me.

Cooper, on the other hand, is nothing if not bubbling with youthful energy. He could be fifty and would still be hotter than half the twentysomething guys I've met. Of course, most of the guys I've seen at OSU would only have six- packs if they bought them at the 7- Eleven. And the boys I've dated didn't have Cooper's brains, or his heart, or his guts. And his southerly anatomy isn't too shabby, either. Top that with him being the real thing when it comes to magic . . . well, whoever made the relationship calculator can kiss my rosy pink butt.

"What time is it?" he asked.

"A little past nine - the sun's just gone down." Cooper rubbed his face and scratched his chin through his short dark goatee. "How's the sky?"

"Dry. The nearest cloud is in Indiana, I think."

"Well, then it's time for us to earn our rent money." He reached over the side of the bed to retrieve his jeans. "Three thousand from the farmers for a nice little rainstorm - not a bad payment for a night's work, huh?"

The doorbell rang downstairs.

"I'll get it," Cooper said, slipping on his Levi's. He thumped downstairs. I peeled off my sweatsoaked T-shirt and pan ties, tossed them in the hamper, then started digging through the dresser for some fresh clothes. Everything in there was a hopeless jumble, but at least it was clean. A year back, Cooper pissed off a sylph and she nixed all his house cleaning charms; it took us forever to get our laundry mojo working again. As curses go that one was pretty minor - probably the faery equivalent of writing on your face in Sharpie marker while you're passed out - but there are few things more embarrassing to a modern witch or wizard than being forced to use a Laundromat.

I heard the front door creak open, and then our neighbor's cheerful greeting: "Hey, man, everything okay over here? I heard someone holler."

"Hey, Bo," replied Cooper. "Yeah, we're fine, sorry if we disturbed you."

"Oh, ain't nothing, just makin' sure you folks is okay," Bo replied. "Miz Sanchez brought me some of her tamales earlier 'cause I fixed her tire, and she told me to make sure you folks got a couple dozen." I heard a paper grocery bag rattle open. "Hey, these smell great," said Cooper. "That was really nice of her."

"She's real grateful for what you two done for her little girl."

I clearly remembered the afternoon Mrs. Sanchez was running from door to door, panicked to near incoherence because her six- year- old daughter had disappeared from the apartment complex's pool. Cooper knew enough Spanish to ask for one of the girl's dolls. After that it was easy enough to go back to the privacy of our apartment and cast a spell to track the kid's spirit to the other side of the complex. We found the little girl in a run- down garden apartment. Thankfully, she was okay; the creepy old pedophile who rented the place hadn't done anything more than feed her ice cream.

Once the girl was safe with her mother - and no one the wiser that we'd used magic to find her - I called the cops on my cell phone while Cooper impressed upon the old man that he was never, ever to go near a child again. The old guy was so frightened by Cooper that he practically raced to the police cruiser like jail was going to be some kind of safe haven.

Copyright © 2009 by Lucy A. Snyder

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