Black Magic Bayou

Chapter One

I awoke Tuesday morning to a shirtless werewolf mowing my lawn.

I could think of worse wake-up calls.

Wilder Shaw was pacing the length of my small yard, the whirring buzz of the mower drowning out the sound of birdcall. My initial annoyance over being pulled from my sheets after my restless sleep vanished when I looked out my living room window and got a load of the view.

Forgoing coffee, I plopped on my sofa, tugging my light robe around me, and perched my chin on my hands so I could watch the show.

Wilder had the build of a man who worked hard for a living. He was a mechanic and had the toned arms and muscular upper body that went along with dragging heavy car parts around. There was a reason the smell of motor oil got me hot and bothered these days, and I was looking at it.

His dark blond, almost brown hair was damp with sweat and brushed back from his forehead. It usually stood in soft spikes, but he’d evidently been working harder than his styling products this morning.

Across the street, Mrs. Bloom, my thirty-something stay-at-home-mom neighbor, had come to a full stop, gripping the handlebars of her stroller. She must have thought no one else could see her because she was watching the Wilder Shaw Yard Work show with her mouth hanging open ever so slightly and naked hunger in her eyes.

I feel you, girl.

Wilder, sensing someone’s gaze on him, turned and gave her a friendly wave. Morning, Deb, he called out.

She flushed visibly, waved back, and hurried on.

At the base of the driveway another onlooker had paused to take in the display, only this one was more familiar to both Wilder and me, since we’d both grown up alongside her.

Magnolia Laurent was standing next to my Dodge Dart, two cups of coffee in her hands and a desperate, heated, uncomfortable expression on her face. It appeared she was just this moment realizing what a certifiable hottie Wilder had turned into.

I’d have to ask him to keep his shirt on or run the risk of creating mad riots of women on my front lawn. Not that I could blame them one bit.

Yet I was the one keeping him at arm’s length.

Wilder spotted Magnolia and gave her a similarly warm greeting as he had Mrs. Bloom before he returned to mowing.

I should get a bigger yard.

I knocked on the glass of the front window, drawing Mags’s attention and inadvertently Wilder’s along with it. He gave me a wink, such a loaded gesture, but one that told me I’d been thoroughly busted for spying on him while he worked.

This was, of course, all part of his master plan to make himself so irresistible I had no choice but to cave and fall headfirst into bed with him.

Damn if it wasn’t working, but I was resisting hard.

Magnolia jerked at the sound of my rapping, looking just as guilty as Deb had, then hurried up the drive to the side-door entrance into my bungalow.

My house was eight hundred square feet of modest, cheerful living space. My uncle, Callum McQueen, was King of the South, ruler of all the werewolves in the southern states, and he was loaded. It drove him crazy that I refused to let him buy me a nicer house.

It’s not befitting someone of your status, he’d complained.

Princess, was what he meant. Alpha now too.

I was one of the single most powerful werewolves in the country, and I was living in a tiny one bedroom on Cambronne Street. But I wouldn’t budge. It was bad enough my money came from him to begin with, though at least now I felt like I was earning it with my Alpha role. I’d be damned if I let him move me into some plush mega-mansion where I’d live all by myself and hate every second of it.

This was home. I’d picked this place on my own, when my only request had been enough freedom to go to school at Tulane. Now school was on hold, normal life was drifting further and further from my grasp, and the one thing I had left that made me feel even vaguely human was this house. My house.

I’d stay here until they pried the key from my cold, dead hands, thank you very much.

Mags knocked on the door, and I was there a moment later to usher her in. She was still casting distracted glances towards the front lawn as she held my coffee out to me.

Bless you. I took the warm paper cup gratefully, breathing deep the smell of roasted beans and alertness. The first sip was too hot, but I gulped it back with immediate joy.

How do you get anything done? She shut the door behind her.

It was autumn, and the air had started to take on hints of winter, chillier breezes and a dampness that left a shiver behind. This being New Orleans it would never get proper freezing, but after the overwhelming humidity of summer, the change in temperature was apparent.

Mags wore a Fair Isle sweater with a beautiful pattern in burnt orange and yellow. Her white-blonde hair had been meticulously straightened and hung past her shoulders, pushed back from her forehead by a slim tortoiseshell headband.

Ever since I’d asked Callum to have her moved into the city to be my assistant, she had totally blossomed. I’d known Magnolia most of my life, and for much of that time her domineering mother, Amelia, had beaten the girl down like a bug under her heel. Magnolia was a born beta. She’d be a follower all her life—it was her role in the pack. But away from our home in St. Francisville, she’d become an altogether different person.

Now, instead of slinking away in shadows, she lit up every room she entered. She made jokes and laughed, and didn’t try to hide herself from notice. It was half the reason I’d made sure she was included in my agreement with Callum. I’d claimed it was because I wanted someone familiar from home, but in all honesty I just wanted to save her.

St. Francisville was by no means a bad place to grow up or live. It had its own kind of homey feel, and I loved to spend time there, but my experience was different from Magnolia’s. I’d grown up loved, respected, cared for. Her own mother, probably disappointed to have such a beta child, had nearly crippled the girl with self-doubt.

Not here, though.

We moved back into the living room and sat side by side on the couch, turning so our knees touched and we could both watch Wilder work.

Seriously though, she said, "how do you get anything done with that going on ten feet away?" She waved a hand in his general direction.

You get used to it, I lied.

Mags wasn’t buying it. The only way you get used to seeing something like that is if you’re blind. She sipped more of her coffee then let out a beleaguered sigh. Which makes me coming this morning that much worse, because I need to drag you away.

Magnolia had taken her offer of becoming my assistant very seriously. I’d only meant it as an excuse to get her away, but now she had turned into the first line of contact for all things pack related in New Orleans. She figured out what was most important and what warranted my attention as Alpha, and let the rest either sort itself out or found alternative measures of resolution.

As it turned out, having her was a huge benefit, because it meant my phone wasn’t ringing at all hours of the night. Hers was, but she didn’t seem to mind.

She also brought me coffee every morning, bless her heart.

What happened? I held my cup close to my lips, enjoying the warmth billowing off it but afraid to take a sip unless I needed to reply to something.

Bit of a fight. Some of the boys are in police custody.

She was downplaying it of course. Werewolves in jail was a disaster. Especially my werewolves. I was shocked Callum wasn’t already calling to scream at me over this.

Given the tenuous state of human-werewolf relations in America at the moment, the last thing we needed for the Southern pack was a breaking news story about our people being violent menaces. Sure, nothing had actually changed. This was just masculine aggression and boys being dumbasses. But because wolves were involved, suddenly it was a political disaster waiting to happen.

I was off the couch before she could continue, my coffee clutched in one hand while I pulled my robe off with the other. I was going to need a lot more caffeine, and also some pants.

And my day had started so well.

Chapter Two

Wilder was on our heels before Mags got the passenger door open.

He was busy tugging a threadbare white shirt over his head, giving me a great view of his taut abs and slightly too low cargo pants. A thin trail of dark hair ran between his bellybutton and his—

Where are we going? he asked.

With a mind this dirty? Straight to hell.

He grabbed a flannel button-down shirt off the hood of my car and slipped it on over his tee. I knew perfectly well there was no sense in telling him he couldn’t join us. He was already opening the back door and dropping himself into the backseat like it was completely normal. And in a way, it had become normal. Where Mags had become my de facto assistant, Wilder had become my self-appointed bodyguard.

If telling my uncle I didn’t want him to buy me a bigger house was hard, telling Wilder I didn’t need a bodyguard was impossible.

It didn’t help that during the time I’d known him I had been the target of an assassin and almost murdered by an anti-werewolf zealot. Good thing I hadn’t told him about the time I nearly died in a collapsing building in New York. Probably best he didn’t know danger had always been drawn to me like a moth to the flame, or I might have a werewolf sleeping on my couch every night.

I could think of a few other places for him to sleep.

Protecting me was the real reason he’d been out mowing my lawn. It was the reason he’d helped paint my house over the summer, and fixed my fence, and was constantly working on my car. He wasn’t wooing me with his manly skills. He was finding excuses to be near me so he could keep both eyes on me.

Wooing me was just a bonus.

I couldn’t complain too much. My house had never looked better, and my car no longer showed me a different warning light every week.

I could do without the hovering and concern over my life, however.

Nothing makes you feel less safe than other people worrying about your safety. Plus, it was kind of a horny-times buzzkill to realize Wilder was constantly thinking about guarding my body rather than getting all up in it.

I sighed to myself, starting the Dart as Mags climbed in. Guess I’d look more official this way, with my own little entourage. And all the good Alphas had bodyguards, didn’t they? It gave the outward impression I respected my life and its value to the pack.

There was so much about this system I had to learn still. The plan had always been for my twin brother, Ben, to take Callum’s place as king. But now here I was, Alpha of New Orleans, and Ben was back in St. Francisville with no title beyond that of prince. I knew it pissed him off, but there wasn’t much I could do to change our situations. Callum’s decisions were final, and too damn bad if anyone got hurt in the process.

I think Uncle Callum might have been out in the woods too long, among the wolves and away from people. It made him a wonderful leader for werewolves, but he seemed to have lost the ability to understand human emotions and motivation and that werewolves still had all those human foibles.

Ben, in his own way, was very similar. Perhaps that was why Callum had chosen me over my brother, especially now when being an alpha required so much time in the public eye.

There was a chance I might never understand my uncle’s motivations, however, and I was okay with that.

I guided us through the streets of New Orleans, with Magnolia offering navigation and Wilder staying stoic and quiet in the back. When we pulled up to an unremarkable street outside a dive bar in Treme where my pack mates were being held, I sat for a moment, staring at the old brick building that had weathered a thousand storms and was still standing.

You can do this.

And I would do this. I had to prove to Callum he hadn’t royally fucked up—no pun intended—by putting a twenty-one-year-old princess in charge of one of the most visible packs in the country.

Before getting out of the car, I gratefully noted an absence of press. We were off to a good start if the camera crews hadn’t arrived yet. Maybe there was still a chance I could keep this one close to my chest and handle things quietly before they blew up.

Plainclothes officers and some uniforms were milling around the sidewalk, and a few cruisers and unmarked cars were parked along the street. Police tape blocked a nearby alley and the front of the bar from public access.

I noticed there was a coroner’s van but no ambulance, which didn’t bode well. No one at the scene seemed to be in any particular kind of rush, as if there wasn’t any urgency to the situation.

We got out of the car and approached the police tape, where a young woman in a uniform was standing. She let out a yawn, barely paying attention to her guard position, since there were no busybody bystanders nearby.

Hello? I waved.

She glanced up, her long black bangs hanging directly in her eyes. I put her age at about twenty. Considering the dark purple bags and ashen skin tone, I was betting she was just wrapping up her overnight shift and didn’t get to see much daylight on her normal rotation.

Can I help you? Her fingers hovered over her side arm but didn’t undo the clip. Little jumpy. She gave the three of us a look like we were a distraction she wasn’t willing to give much time to.

I glanced over at Magnolia, who had more of the necessary details than I did, feeling vaguely stupid for not getting more information before we arrived.

We’re here for Emmett Hardy and Mason Terrell, she supplied.

Are you their lawyers? the officer asked, bored again.

I’m their Alpha. Now it was my turn to jump in.

Oh. She paled for a moment, then rebounded by giving me a dubious expression. Really?

Ugh, this crap. Yes.

No offense, but you look more like a college girlfriend trying to use the Alpha legal loophole to get access.

Uh, offense taken, lady. Wilder stiffened next to me, and Mags might have been ready to shift right there and tear the girl’s head off. Personally, I wasn’t any more impressed with the treatment than either of them, but the fact of the matter was, I was only twenty-one. I resembled a college student because four months ago I’d been one.

But I was also a motherfucking Alpha, and I wasn’t going to be talked down to in front of my subordinates.

Can I speak to someone in charge? Or if you’d prefer I can call your captain and let him know you didn’t provide me access to my pack members upon request.

Now she went extra pale as the realization sank in I hadn’t been lying. With that one demand, she knew I was exactly who I claimed, and I was also about to repeat her insult to her boss.

The c-captain isn’t at work yet.

I can wait. I need to get his number anyway, I replied coldly, pulling my cell phone from my bag. I had no desire to call the captain, and I knew she didn’t want me to either, but I had to let her know how serious I was so she would put up a reasonable counteroffer. The officer wanted me out of her face, and I wanted my wolves. We had to be able to find a common middle ground that didn’t cost her her job.

She glanced over her shoulder, as if hoping someone would appear and miraculously save her. Spotting someone who fit the bill, she said, One of the detectives in charge of supernatural offenses for the precinct is still here. Would you like to speak to him?

I bristled at the idea that supernatural offenses was the name of a department, as if werewolves and vampires were extra offensive somehow, but I didn’t bother complaining about it. She was human, and at this point I’d made her so uncomfortable she was willing to let me speak to someone with authority. I’d take it.

Please.

She waved to a man exiting the alley. Detective Perry, can you come here for a minute?

I heard him mutter, What fucking now? under his breath.

Werewolf hearing was super fun sometimes.

When he spoke at a volume we were meant to hear, he said, What is it? I’m just about to head back to the station.

There’s a gir…a woman here about those two werewolves in custody.

A lawyer? His gaze brushed over me, but the question was for the officer and not me, so I didn’t answer.

But seriously, way to bury the lede, lady.

Actually, she says she’s the Alpha of New Orleans. She had trouble keeping the incredulity out of her voice as she stared at me.

Whatever.

The bedraggled but handsome detective in his early thirties came to stand next to her on the opposite side of the tape from us. His shirt and auburn hair were equally rumpled, and it looked as if he hadn’t shaved in several days. The dark circles beneath his bright blue eyes matched those of the young officer. Not a lot of sleeping going on around these parts. He pulled a pair of dark-framed glasses from his shirt pocket and slipped them on, obscuring the signs of exhaustion. The lenses were smudged and in desperate need of cleaning.

I wanted to put this whole man into a washing machine on the delicate cycle and help him sort himself out.

Eugenia McQueen? the man asked, giving me a wary once-over, like he was hoping he’d picked the right woman. To be fair, Mags did have a more regal first-glance appearance to the human eye. To a werewolf, though, there’d be no mistaking who was the leader here. My power would dwarf both hers and Wilder’s. A wolf with its eyes closed would have no problem figuring out which one of us to bow to, even in human form.

I offered my hand to the adorably human detective. Please call me Genie.

Aren’t we supposed to call you Your Highness or something? The detective wasn’t trying to be a jerk—I could tell from his tone—but the question was still annoying. The news broadcasts, loving a chance to mix royal-watching with the supernatural, insisted on using my full title. Her Royal Highness Eugenia McQueen, Alpha of New Orleans, Heir to the Southern Pack.

It was a mouthful, to say the least.

I felt, more than saw, Wilder smirking next to me. Apart from outsiders who didn’t know better and formal gatherings where tradition was essential, Wilder was the only one who called me Princess and got away with it.

Genie is fine.

He shook my hand, having settled on what my name was. Detective Bryce Perry.

His skin was dry and faintly rough, but his handshake was firm. I liked it when men didn’t shy away from a good grip with me. Truth be told, I was the one who had to hold back, lest I accidentally crush someone’s fingers. When alphas met each other it was like a contest to see who could shake hardest and longest. I’d seen two particularly stubborn men go an hour once before one yielded, on the verge of losing a finger to lack of circulation.

You’re in charge of the supernatural cases? I asked.

Perry gave a curt nod and pushed his thick copper-tinged hair back from his face, making him look five years younger in an instant. Yeah, I’m on the night beat and Detective Mercer does the day shift. Guess I’m keeping this one though. He smiled apologetically when he saw my confused expression. This one was a bit… Well. It’s been a long night.

I could win a who has had the longest night contest without even getting into the super-grim stories, but Detective Perry was obviously exhausted, and I just wanted to know my wolves were okay.

He lifted the police tape and indicated we should follow him as he headed in the direction of the weather-beaten bar. I met your sister once, he said, making friendly conversation as we walked. She’s something else.

The way he said it, much like the way he’d fumbled over my title, told me a lot about him. For one, he wasn’t entirely comfortable with this new world of shapeshifters and vampires. I couldn’t blame him. It was a lot to swallow. But the other thing it told me was that Bryce Perry wasn’t put off by powerful women. When he referred to my sister, Secret, as something else, his tone was more awestruck, reverent even.

She had that effect on people.

Where did you meet Secret? I asked, eager for any tidbits. She and I had a standing biweekly Skype date, but I still loved to know what was going on with her professionally. She was one-third of an FBI task force in charge of mediating human and supernatural relationships.

All law enforcement assigned to supe-specific departments had to take mandatory training in DC last year. She was leading a couple workshops.

I had a hard time imagining Secret in a classroom teaching cops and marshals about different classifications of supernatural beings and why someone should never, ever call a werewolf a bitch. She wasn’t the most patient woman in the world, and she had a zero-tolerance policy for bullshit. Come to think of it, I’d have given my left arm to sit in on one of those training seminars. I’d have to email her and ask for a drop-in pass for a future one.

I