Grave Mistake

The last thing any of us wanted was to give ammo to the mundanes…aka, those who didn’t believe in magic.

However, I didn’t want to hear the tale she’d just related. Several practitioners who’d come down on Lucien Dumond’s wrong side had disappeared. The rumour was that they’d decided to relocate, but darker whispers hinted that Lucien might have devised a more permanent solution to his problems.

Doing my best to shrug off Mazey’s comment, I said lightly, “He’s probably pissed off that I turned him down for another date,” then handed over my debit card. “Guy can’t take no for an answer.”

Which was not an exaggeration. Lucien Dumond was the leader of GLANG — the Greater Los Angeles Necromancers’ Guild — and attracted groupies like the Rolling Stones on a worldwide tour in the ’60s. Not that I’d been around to witness those sorts of shenanigans, of course, but still, I’d read a few stories.

Despite Lucien already having a slavishly devoted group of women — whom I tended to refer to as his harem — he was always on the prowl for fresh meat. Unfortunately, he’d decided I was precisely the meat he wanted a while back.

Mazey shook her head. “Selena, I don’t think this is something you should ignore. People say he wants to shut you down…by whatever means necessary.”

Again, I had to fight back a wave of unease. I’d been hearing a whisper of rumours along those lines for a few weeks already, but this was the first time anyone had come right out and told me to my face that I might be in actual danger, that Lucien might have decided it was time to get rid of the troublesome pebble in his shoe.

Trust Mazey to do the hard work. Since she wasn’t a practitioner, except to amuse herself, she hadn’t crossed the leader of GLANG and his band of lackeys.

I, on the other hand, was a “hedgewitch,” a phrase used to describe a practitioner who worked independently and had her way of approaching the arcane arts. My psychic abilities had come on early, and I’d trained myself, first from books I got at the library and ordered online, then later by watching YouTube videos to help fill in the gaps.