Page 1 of Bewitched By the Djinn (The Bewitching Hour #8)

Chapter

One

I’m haggling with Ernie over the price of a seventeenth-century music box when an antique lamp in the glass case under my elbows starts singing.

I glance down, skin prickling.

What the hell?

The lamp keeps singing, a siren song winding its way through my veins, the melody pounding a drumbeat in my blood.

Mine .

My limbs freeze. I can’t drag my eyes away from the lamp. This isn’t how my magic works. I have to set the intention first. I need an image, a clue, something the object touched or was near. Only then does the magic engage, like a well-trained bloodhound.

But this?

This lamp is calling to me out of nowhere. No prep, no plan. Just raw, uninvited, full-volume magic.

What does it mean?

“...and I’m not selling for less than that. I may as well toss it in the garbage.” Ernie’s gravelly voice breaks through my flustered shock.

I breathe slowly in and out through my nose. Play it cool, Cassie. “Can I see this lamp?” I tap on the counter with a finger, super calm, like I’m not ready to punch through the glass and grab it.

Ernie arches one of his caterpillar eyebrows. “Are we done with the music box already?”

“No, I just want to see this too.”

“Really?” He frowns so hard his salt-and-pepper mustache twitches.

On the surface, this is a basic Victorian-style lamp you could find in any dusty antique shop from here to Poughkeepsie. But Ernie doesn’t know what I know.

He doesn’t have a single drop of magic in his blood, poor guy. Just your normal copper, iron, and forceful opinions.

“Let me see it, Ernie.” I wave him along before the siren song turns into a scream.

“All right, all right, where’d I put the damn keys.” He scratches his chin—gray bristles rasping like sandpaper—then rummages behind the counter. “Moira! Where are the keys to the case?”

A voice screeches from the back, “In the drawer!”

“I looked in the drawer, they’re not in the drawer!”

“Are you looking in the one next to the one on the right? It should be on the left!”

Their domestic drama is usually the highlight of my week. But today? I’m one eye twitch away from smashing the case with a decorative ashtray.

I need. That. Lamp.

“Ah—here we go.” Ernie holds up a key and squints at it like he’s trying to decipher ancient runes. After approximately four million years, he sticks it into the lock and pulls the lamp out with all the reverence of someone passing over a microwaved burrito.

He plops it in front of me.

I pick it up as casually as I can, though my insides are doing cartwheels. My hands tingle instantly. This thing is stuffed with magic. Overflowing with it.

It looks unassuming enough. A dual-light Victorian lamp with faded yellow glass and hand-painted roses curling along the domes. Dusty. Delicate. Harmless looking.

But it’s like it’s alive. The energy filling it is almost human. But that’s impossible.

My fingers wrap around the bronze base, and I’m not entirely sure I can put it back down. It hums in my grip.

I have to have it.

It’s mine .

I shake my head, trying to jostle the word loose.

What is wrong with me?

Focus. I need to play it cool, or Ernie’s going to charge me an arm, a leg, and my future firstborn. I need enough left over from this music box sale to buy groceries and chip away at Jackie’s latest ER bill.

I tap the side of the lamp, feigning mild interest. “When did it come in?” I was here last week and it wasn’t, I’m sure of it.

“Yesterday.”

I can’t drag my eyes away from it. “Who brought it in?”

He clears his throat. “Why does that matter?”

I guess it doesn’t. “How much?”

He shrugs. “One hundred.”

“I’ll give you fifty.”

“Seventy-five.”

I frown. “Sixty.”

“Seventy,” he fires.

A shrill voice calls from the back, “Dammit, let the girl have it, Ernie! Stop being such a cheap bastard!”

“No one asked you!” he shouts over his shoulder. Then he scowls at me, but it’s half-hearted. He waves a hand. “Fine. You want the music box still?”

Oh, right. I had nearly forgotten why I was here, to get the music box for my client for less than a grand so I can turn a neat profit. “Yes.”

“I’ll give you both, music box and the lamp, for seven hundred.”

Bless you, Moira.

That’s what I was willing to pay for the music box anyway. I’d been trying to talk him down to five bills, but if he’s throwing in the lamp? “Deal.”

We shake on it.

Ten minutes later I’m walking home with my bag of goods, winding through the quieter arteries in the French Quarter, right off Chartres.

Even here, blocks from the noise and chaos of Bourbon Street, art galleries and bars are opening their doors, blues and jazz music spilling out onto the darkening street.

The sky looms above, a swollen gray slab of clouds.

A balcony overhead is draped with fake spiderwebs. A giant skeleton leans out over the street, wearing a pirate hat and eye patch.

Once upon a time, Halloween was my favorite holiday. Now, it’s just another line item in a budget already screaming for mercy. Find costumes for two tiny humans who change their mind hourly.

I quicken my pace, cutting through a gathering of people reading a menu outside of a restaurant.

After dinner I’ll get a chance to take a closer look at the lamp. It will be late, but it’s not like I sleep anyway.

I should talk to Mimi about it. She’s been around the magical block so many times she’s worn a groove into it. But... I am not sure I can share it yet. The thought makes me physically ill.

Why? What is wrong with me?

I need to understand why it’s calling to me. The urge to yank it out of my bag and plop down on the dirty sidewalk for a look is nearly overwhelming.

Footsteps echo behind me. Slow. Then faster.

I glance back, my grip tightening on the bag. My other hand slips into my pocket, fingers closing around the key fob with the pepper spray.

The wind picks up, sending an empty Pat O’Brien’s hurricane cup skittering across the pavement like a drunken ghost crab. No one’s there.

I hug my sweater tighter and keep moving, a little faster now. Only two blocks from home.

The footsteps return. Closer.

Okay. Nope.

I spin around, pepper spray in hand.

Nothing. The street is empty.

First the lamp sings to me like a magical Disney trap, now I’m getting phantom stalked?

Unlike my brother Kevin, our own little ghost whisperer, I don’t do the dead. Thank the stars my magic’s limited to finding things. Or being found by them, apparently.

I stretch out my senses, sending a ripple of magic down the street like a fog, sweeping across sidewalks, up lampposts, curling around the buildings.

Come out, come out, wherever you are.

There are people inside the buildings, inanimate objects littering every corner, but not a soul is in my immediate vicinity out here on the street.

Except there is something.

A shadow?

But not a shadow. It’s alive. But not human.

I try to get a read on it, wrap around the shape of it in my mind, but it’s slippery. Wrong. Not a person. Not an animal. More of a magical echo of something. A shadow with teeth.

The hairs on my arms stand up. Cold trickles down my spine.

Leave. Now.

The instinct is sharp and certain, and I don’t question it. I learned long ago to trust my gut. My grip tightens on the pepper spray, and I clutch my bag like it’s a shield.

Then I turn and run.