Janet Evanovich: Wicked Appetite

“No,” Clara said.

“Well, for one thing, I have a scar on my forehead that looks like a lightning bolt. Just like Harry Potter.”

Clara and I examined Glo’s forehead.

“I guess it could look a little like a lightning bolt,” Clara said. “How did you get it?”

“I crashed into the coffee table when I was six years old.”

“I don’t know if that qualifies,” Clara said.

Glo ran her finger along the scar. “An evil spirit could have pushed me.”

Clara and I rolled our eyes.

“And then there was that time I told you I saw a green aura around Mrs. Norbert,” Glo said. “And a week later, she hit the jackpot at Foxwoods.”

“That’s true,” Clara said. “I remember.”

“Anyway, this is big,” Glo said, pulling a weather-beaten, leather-bound book out of her tote bag. “This book called me into the shop. I was meant to have this book.”

Clara and I looked over Glo’s shoulder at the book. The leather was cracked with age; hard to tell if the aging was man-made or natural. The front cover was hand-tooled, with scrollwork that bloomed into flowers and leaves and tiny dragons. The book was secured with a hammered-metal clasp.

Glo slipped the clasp and opened the book to an elaborately inked frontispiece. On the page facing the frontispiece someone had written in perfect old world penmanship Ripple’s Book of Spells.

“Who’s Ripple?” Clara wanted to know.

“No one in the store knew,” Glo said. “But the book is dated June 1692. That was right in the middle of the Salem witch trials.”

“Turn it over and see if it says ‘Made in China’ on the back cover,” Clara said.

Glo looked at Clara. “You, of all people, shouldn’t be so cynical about this book. Everyone knows the Dazzles aren’t normal.”

I was new to this. I’d moved to Marblehead five months ago and wasn’t up to speed in the rumor department.

“How so?” I asked.

Glo dropped her voice to a whisper. “The Dazzles have always had special abilities. I heard some of them could fly.”

I cut my eyes to Clara. “Can you fly?”

“Not without a plane.”

Glo thumbed through a couple pages in the book. “I bet I can find a flying spell in here.”

“How about finding a working spell,” Clara said. “There are six trays of cookies that need to be transferred to the display case.”

I turned to go back to the kitchen and slammed into over six feet of hard muscle and bad attitude. He reached out to steady me, and I sucked in some air.

“Jeez Louise,” I said. “Where the heck did you come from?”

“Bangkok. Not that it matters.” He looked around. “I’m in Dazzle’s, right?”

We all nodded, taking him in. His hair was thick and dark blond, somewhere between wind-blown, just woke up, and untamable. His skin was beach bum tan. His eyebrows were fierce and darker than his hair. His eyes were brown and assessing. His posture was confident. His body language was intimidating. His boots were dusty. His jeans were on their last legs but molded nicely to all the good parts. His navy T-shirt was splashed with flour from my chef coat.

He glanced down at his shirt and brushed at the flour. “I’m looking for Elizabeth Tucker.”

It was my second encounter of the day with a big, sort of scary man, and I was on guard.

“That’s me,” I told him, taking a protective step back.

He gave me the once-over. “Figures.”

I didn’t think figures sounded entirely complimentary. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He blew out a sigh. “It means you’re going to be trouble.” He looked around. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”

“We can talk here.”

“I don’t think so.”

I folded my arms across my chest and narrowed my eyes.

“Lady, I haven’t got a lot of patience right now,” he said. “Mostly, I just want to get on with it. Cut me a break and come outside where we can talk in private.”

“No way.”

He grabbed my wrist, yanked me to the door, and Glo and Clara rushed at him.

“I’m dialing 911,” Glo said, cell phone in hand.

“As if that would help,” he said to Glo. “Put the phone down and stay. This’ll only take a minute.”

He whisked me out of the shop, and we stood on the sidewalk, blinking in the sun’s glare.

“What?” I asked.

“I’m looking for a guy. His name is Gerwulf Grimoire. Wulf, for short. My height, shoulder-length black hair, pale skin, evil.”

“Evil?”

“Yeah. Have you seen him?”

“Maybe. He didn’t give his name.”

I inadvertently looked down at the fingertip burn on my hand. The scruffy guy’s eyes followed mine and he gave his head a small shake.

“Wulf’s work,” he said.

He reached under my coat, unclipped my cell phone from my jeans waistband, and punched some numbers in.

“Hey!” I said. “What are you doing?”

“I’m giving you my number. Call me if you see Wulf.”

“Who are you?”

He smiled down at me, and when he smiled, his teeth were white and perfect, crinkle lines appeared at the corners of his eyes, and my heart did a little flip in my chest. “I’m Diesel,” he said. “I’ll catch up with you later.”

He crossed the street and disappeared behind a van stopped at a light. When the traffic moved, he was gone.

“Whoa,” Glo said when I returned to the shop. “That’s the most amazing hunk of raw testosterone I’ve ever seen. What was that about?”

“He’s looking for a guy named Gerwulf Grimoire. He thought I might have run across him.”

“And?” Glo asked.

“I have.”

“It sounds like a warlock name,” Glo said.

“You’ve got to stop watching Bewitched reruns,” Clara told her. “The only warlocks in Salem are paid actors in the Salem Witch Museum.”

As the chief cupcake and assorted pastries maker at the bakery, I’m early in and early out. I left Dazzle’s at twelve-thirty and pointed my car south on Lafayette Street. I was driving a tan Chevy sedan. The age and model escape me, but needless to say it wasn’t new, it wasn’t expensive, and it was no longer pretty. There was a dent in the left rear quarter panel and a scrape running almost the length of the car on the right side. Aside from that, it was almost perfect. I crossed the bridge taking me into Marblehead, Lafayette turned into Pleasant Street, and from Pleasant I wound around until I came to Weatherby Street.

Great Aunt Ophelia’s house is a little saltbox dating back to 1740. It sits on a high rise of ground chockablock with other historic houses, and the back windows look down the hill at the flotilla of pleasure boats moored in Marblehead Harbor. The clapboards are gray, the trim is white, and there are two onion lamps on either side of the red front door. Somewhere in the late 1800s, a couple rooms were added. There were several more renovations and patch-up jobs after that, more or less bringing the house into the twentieth century. The ceilings are low, and the floors are wide plank pine and a little lopsided. Probably, I should have the foundation shored up, but it was going to have to wait for an infusion of money.

I parked at the curb and let myself into the house. I gave a squeak of surprise at seeing Diesel, boots off, sprawled on my living room couch.

“I’ve got a gun,” I said to him. “And I’m not afraid to use it.”

“Honey, you haven’t got a gun. And if you did have a gun, you probably wouldn’t know how to make it go bang.”

“Well, okay, but I have a chef’s knife, and I could carve you up like a Thanksgiving turkey.”

“ That I believe.”

I was standing with one hand on the doorknob, ready to bolt and run for help. “How did you get in here?”