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Contents ( 44)
  1. KIM HARRISON
  2. A FISTFUL OF CHARMS
  3. Contents
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Sixteen
  20. Seventeen
  21. Eighteen
  22. Nineteen
  23. Twenty
  24. Twenty-one
  25. Twenty-two
  26. Twenty-three
  27. Twenty-four
  28. Twenty-five
  29. Twenty-six
  30. Twenty-seven
  31. Twenty-eight
  32. Twenty-nine
  33. Thirty
  34. Thirty-one
  35. Thirty-two
  36. Thirty-three
  37. Thirty-four
  38. Thirty-five
  39. Acknowledgments
  40. About the Author
  41. Frightfully good praise for KIM HARRISON’s previous Rachel Morgan novels
  42. Books by Kim Harrison
  43. Copyright
  44. About the Publisher

I tapped the pages, nervous. “You didn’t lose the bone statue with your fudge, did you?”

A smile curved over Jenks. “Nope.” Jax rose to the overhanging light as his dad went to his growing pile of bags beside the TV. I’d never seen a man who could outshop me, but Jenks was a master. I tried not to watch when he bent to shuffle about, striding quickly back to the kitchen with the twin boxes. He set them on the table, and pixy dust sifted over us while he opened them up. The first one was that god-awful carved totem, and leaving it to stare at me, he opened the second. “Not a scratch,” he said, green eyes giving away his satisfaction.

I picked up the wolf statue, feeling the weight and coldness of bone. It wasn’t a bad choice for moving the Were curse to. Focus going distant, I remembered Nick’s greed, and my eyes went to Jenks’s totem. “Hey, uh, has Nick seen this?” I said, indicating the wolf statue.

Jenks sniffed in disgust, leaning to balance his chair on two legs. “I haven’t shown it to him, but he’s probably pawed through my stuff.”

An idea was sifting through my mind, but I refused to feel guilty for not trusting Nick. “Hey, this is a really neat statue,” I said, setting down the wolf and picking up the totem. “Matalina is going to love it. I should have gotten one. It’d look great in Mr. Fish’s bowl.”

Jenks let the chair fall to four legs. “Mr. Fish’s bowl?” he said quizzically, and I darted a glance at the motel room door. Jenks’s expression went knowing, then angry; he might be interior-decorating challenged, but he was not a stupid man. “You’re worried about…”

I made a small noise, not wanting him to say aloud I was worried about Nick stealing the little wolf statue, so clearly the better choice for a demon curse. But they were both made out of bone, so…

“Yeah,” Jenks said suddenly, taking the totem from me and setting it in the middle of the table. “I’ll pick one up for you the next time I go out.”

There had only been the one in the case, but seeing his understanding, I took a slow breath and reached for my recipe. Pencil in hand, I bowed my head over it and tucked a curl behind an ear. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, and you can kiss your ass good-bye.

Thirty

Motions steady, I massaged my stuck index finger for the blood needed to invoke the last inertia-dampening spell. My finger was starting to hurt after all the charms I’d invoked. It wasn’t as if I could draw a vial of my blood and dole it out by eyedropper. If the blood didn’t come right from the body, the enzymes that quickened the spell would break down and the spell wouldn’t invoke. There were a lot of charms on the table, this second pair of inertia-dampening spells being a quick, guilty addition.