away. There was no telling what the small building once was, but it had to be magical in some way, and I wasn’t talking about the spell stretching across that hole, ready to kill anyone that walked through. Even now, when tourists should’ve been gathered around to marvel at something plucked right out of history, no one ambled by, preferring the winery’s gardens up the hill a ways. Even though there was no swirling magic traveling over the walls, clearly non-magical people still couldn’t see the dank, moss-covered stone in bright and sunny Northern California.
“You’re not the kind of girl who only wants a conversation,” the man said, and his hip slowly popped out in a suggestive way.
“You’ve pegged me.” I shrugged. “Usually I’d prefer to bust your head open just to prove it was hollow, but for you, I’ll make an exception.”
“What’ve we got here?” Emery said as he paused on my left, able to see into the regular space through the crumbling doorway, parts of it twice the size it should be.
“This place feels…wrong,” Penny said, on my other side. The two of them were the strongest mages in the world, able to take care of all things spell related. They’d have to get to work because I’d never seen the kind of spell draped across the opening at the back, but from what I could feel, it was a doozy. Whoever put it there had no shortage of power.
Usually only Penny accompanied me on the bounty hunter gigs, picking up the slack and giving me a little comic relief when she got into mischief and then blasted her way out. But given the nature of the situation, I thought the dual-mage team might be needed. Now I was glad for it.
“What’s the story with that spell he’s about to swan-dive through? Can you take it down?” I asked, resting my hand on my beat-up leather pouch encircling my waist. It was where I kept my odds and ends, like spell-filled casings, or their empty counterparts for when I had to pretend to do magic, a few throwing stars for when I wanted to up my cool factor, and a random stink bomb I would definitely use someday.
“Oh, this?” The man lazily lifted his hand to the side as though about to model the magic behind him. His hips, seemingly with a will of their own, slowly drifted to the other side. I wondered how he didn’t pull something. “This is just a centuries-old death trap that’ll free me from this luscious body and allow me to seek out my master in the underworld. I have some juicy gossip for him.” He winked at me, his thin lips pulling wide in a sickly smile. “Those children won’t be able to tear it down—it was constructed when people in this world actually knew how to weave spells. You, however…”
Warning flared through me. He knew more than he should, that was clear. He could unravel all the secrets I was desperately trying to keep under wraps. The gossip he had clearly involved me.
“Okay, first…” I ran my gaze down his bulbous stomach, fighting for freedom in that shiny cheap leather—or maybe it was pleather?—with hair sticking out of the low neckline, crawling up his chest and reaching for his jaw. There was no doubt it curled around to his back, probably ran his length, and collected on his butt. The bulge of his thighs dwarfed the bulge between them, and there was simply no reason for the gangly toes to be exposed in a pair of pink, sparkly flip-flops.
“That body isn’t the sex machine you clearly hoped it was. Don’t incubi generally go for a body that’ll actually get laid?”
“I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of this body.” He ran his thick fingers through his matted chest hair. “You have to know what to say, that’s all, and be open to the types of people who want to climb aboard.”
“Did you say you’ll wax for them? Because other than that, there really are no words.”
“Let me take you for a spin. You’ll change your mind.”
I grimaced. “You don’t have the equipment for the job, bub. Let’s talk about that gossip. What do you know?”
Wisps of magic curled through the air from behind me; the mages moved closer together, trying to come up with something that might take the spell down. I could rip it down in a minute, my magic able to dissolve it away, but no way would