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Here was hoping the ritual tonight wouldn’t create any more issues for me.
I had plenty enough as it was.
Chapter Twenty
Ezekiel’s was a few blocks away from the French Quarter, close enough to the action to get some foot traffic, but far enough removed it didn’t scare away the locals.
It had been Delphine—Cain’s girlfriend and my friend—who had shown me the place after I moved to New Orleans. She had a knack for knowing where all the best shops in town were, and that meant everything from cupcakes to grits to voodoo dolls.
Ezekiel’s was the best.
It was a squat one-story box surrounded by taller buildings, all tightly packed together like concrete sardines, on a street that looked more like a place you’d get robbed at knifepoint than go shopping in.
Wilder parked the motorcycle in front, and I did a quick protection incantation around the bike to make sure no one walked off with our helmets. Sure beat carrying them around with us.
A line of salt was spread in front of the door, and we carefully stepped over it, being sure not to disrupt a single crystal. I’d walked around to the back at one point to confirm a suspicion, and knew for a fact there were salt lines at the door and on the window ledges back there as well, so it wasn’t just a show for the tourists. The owners wanted to keep things out that didn’t belong.
Since we were able to cross the threshold I knew they weren’t concerned about werewolves, which was nice. But it did make me wonder what precisely those salt wards were meant to barricade on the street.
I hadn’t yet brought it up to Ez or his wife, Augusta. Maybe someday I’d find out, but on the other hand, maybe I was better off not knowing. Sometimes a mystery was more comforting than the truth.
A bell chimed overhead as we passed through the inner door and into the shop proper. The temperature immediately went up almost ten degrees, and Wilder shed his jacket before we were even three feet inside. He was wearing the sweater I’d loaned him, and it fit so perfectly he might as well have been born wearing it. The outline of his shoulder blades through the fitted knit fabric was enough to drive a girl wild.
Maybe I should ask Ez for a libido-dampening charm.
Doubt it would work. One little smirk from Wilder and I’d be climbing across furniture to get another taste of him. I had it bad, and our romp last night had only demonstrated what I’d been denying myself all these months. Now that I knew how good he could be, I didn’t want to stop.
Solve a murder. Exorcise a demon. Then you can have sex for a week.
It was important to have goals.
“Genie,” Augusta greeted brightly. She’d emerged from a room at the back of the shop, a beaded curtain jangling in her wake. She was wipin
g her hands on a small towel, making me wonder what we’d interrupted by popping in. “It’s been a few weeks. We’ve missed you.”
There was a brief, wonderful period at the beginning of my term as Alpha where my life had achieved an almost normal routine. Coming to Ezekiel’s every Wednesday morning had been a part of that. I didn’t need things weekly, but I made sure to only get the one or two items I had an immediate call for, so I’d have an excuse to return the next week for something different.
The shop made me feel warm and welcome, and it was like having a direct connection to my years with Memere. Working with magic was kind of a natural high, and the places and people who reminded me of that feeling held a special spot in my heart.
Perhaps that was why Santiago knocked me so off balance, because what he represented was something meaningful to me and not anything to do with him in particular.
Yeah right, Genie, keep telling yourself that.
One thing at a time. I was here for a memory spell, and I’d need a fair number of things not available behind the normal counter.
“Hey, Gus. Do you think Ez might be able to take me downstairs?”
She stopped wiping her hands, then peeked back over her shoulder into the room she’d just exited. “Oh, doll, I’m not sure. He’s sort of in the middle of something. You should have called.”
“I know, and I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”
Gus pursed her lips thoughtfully, then raised one finger at us and went back through the curtain, the beads clacking in a happy chorus of wooden noise. Low voices sounded in the depths of the building, and I tuned them out so as not to eavesdrop on their conversation. Both voices, her feminine and his low, masculine rumble, were calm and hushed. Neither sounded annoyed by my request.
A minute later Ezekiel came through the curtain without Gus. He was also drying his hands.
Ez was a big man. Just under seven feet tall and weighing in at at least three hundred pounds. He was bulky, but in a muscular way, not fat, and with his bushy black beard he reminded me of the bizarre offspring of a bear and a lumberjack.
“Genie, nice to see you.” His voice boomed warmly, making me feel like he was genuinely pleased I was here.
