Martin Greenberg: Crime Spells

“Yep. What you see isn’t what you get, necessarily.”

He laughed again. “I don’t rob houses. My ambition is a little bigger than that, but I do okay. As you noticed when you spotted my cash box. How much did you take, by the way?”

“Two bills from each stack.”

“Smart. I like bright women.”

“Why are you-what-?”

“Well, I’ve been watching you for a while, Darla. Far as I can tell, you and I are the only two of our kind. I’d propose a… partnership.”

“Partnership?”

“Well, more than that, maybe. I mean, you are gorgeous and careful and clever, but there there are some advantages to what we can do together. Between the two of us, we could do bigger and better things than either of us can do alone. Imagine how much easier it would be be if we could be a couple that looked like anybody we wanted?”

She considered it. Yes. That would be something.

“Plus, there are some other perks.”

He shimmered and turned into a studly young movie star that Darla much admired.

“Or maybe… this?” He morphed into another young man, this one a match to a well-known rock star.

“We have a world of choice to offer each other, don’t we?” He shimmered again and reclaimed St. Johns. “Not that I think I would get bored with you as you stand. You are stunning, you know, but you also have a kind of variety to offer no other woman does.”

She smiled back at him. “Even though I stole your money?”

“Because you stole my money. What do you think?”

She found herself nodding. Yes. There was an attraction, no question, and if she got tired of looking at him?

Well, he could fix that in an instant.

Because nobody was immune to Glamor…

Ilsa J. Bick is a psychiatrist as well as the author of award-winning stories, e-books, and novellas and bestselling novels set in the Star Trek and MechWarrior: Dark Age universes. The Jason Saunders companion story, “The Key,” first appeared on SCIFI.Com (http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/originals/originals_archive/bick3/bick31.html) and was selected as a Distinguished Mystery Story in The Best American Mystery Stories, 2005 , edited by Joyce Carol Oates. She is currently at work on the paranormal thriller Satan’s Skin and an as-yet untitled paranormal featuring the continuing adventures of Detective Jason Saunders and Dr. Sarah Wylde. She lives in Wisconsin with her family and other assorted vermin.

Randall N. Bills has worked as the line developer and continuity editor for the Classic BattleTech / MechWarrior universe for ten years. In addition to writing eight novels set in this universe, he’s led the publication of over fifty products. He’s also published in the Star Fleet Corps of Engineers: Aftermath anthology, as well as a new line of young adult fiction under the Adventure Boys brand. He lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife, three children, and a snake, and when he’s not writing or developing rules, he’s playing board games with friends and family, listening to music, reading, or blowing things up on the Xbox.

Once there was a guy named Joe Edwards who really wanted to write. He followed his stories to the page, and here he is now. When he’s not writing, Edwards raises Irish wolfhounds and restores antique shotguns somewhere in the Rocky Mountain states.

Robert T. Jeschonek has written science fiction and fantasy stories for Postscripts , Abyss & Apex , Loyalhanna Review , and other publications. His Star Trek fiction has appeared in New Frontier: No Limits, S.C.E.: The Cleanup, Voyager: Distant Shores , and Strange New Worlds, volumes III, V, and VI. His story “Our Million-Year Mission” won the grand prize in the Strange New Worlds VI contest. Robert has also written for War , Commercial Suicide, Dead by Dawn Quarterly , and other comic books. Visit him on line at www.robertjeschonek.com.

Jay Lake lives in Portland, Oregon, where he works on numerous writing and editing projects. His recent novels are Madness of Flowers from Night Shade Books and Escapement from Tor Books. Jay is the winner of the 2004 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer and a multiple nominee for the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards. Jay can be reached through his blog at jlake.com.

Steven Mohan, Jr., lives in Pueblo, Colorado, with his wife and three children and, surprisingly, no cats. When not writing he works as a manufacturing engineer. His fiction has appeared in Interzone , Polyphony , and Paradox , among other places. His short stories have won honorable mention in The Year’s Best Science Fiction and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror .

Devon Monk lives in Oregon with her husband, two sons, and a dog named Mojo. Her first novel, Magic to the Bone , is out now, and her short stories can be found in a variety of genre magazines and anthologies, including Rotten Relations , Maiden, Matron, Crone , Fantasy Gone Wrong, Year’s Best Fantasy #2 , and Better Off Undead . When not writing, she is either drinking coffee, knitting toys, or wondering why the dog is looking at her so strangely. For more on Devon, go to www.devonmonk.com.

Peter Orullian has recently been published in other fine DAW anthologies, as well as Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show . For grocery money, he works at Microsoft in the Xbox division. And while he desperately hopes to make a living writing, his other abiding passion is music; Peter recently returned from a European tour with a successful hard rock band. He has a New York agent currently shopping one of his novels, which he hopes allows him to retire from Microsoft and sing and write until everything bleeds.

Steve Perry has written scores of novels, animated teleplays, and short stories, along with a couple of spec movie scripts. A number of his books have appeared on the New York Times Bestseller list, and he is the coauthor, with Michael Reaves, of the recent block-buster Star Wars novel Death Star .

Mike Resnick is, according to Locus , the all-time leading short fiction award winner, living or dead, in science fiction history. He is the author of more than fifty novels, almost two hundred stories, and two screenplays, and he has edited close to fifty anthologies. He has won five Hugos, a Nebula, and other major awards in the USA, France, Japan, Spain, Croatia, and Poland. His work has been translated into twenty-two languages.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch has sold novels in several different genres under many different names. Her most current Rusch novel is Duplicate Effort: A Retrieval Artist Novel . The Retrieval Artist novels are stand-alone mysteries set in a science fiction world. She’s won the Endeavor Award for that series. Her writing has received dozens of award nominations as well as several actual awards, from science fiction’s Hugo to the Prix Imagainare, a French fantasy award for best short fiction. She lives and works on the Oregon Coast.

Jason Schmetzer’s work has appeared in both print and electronic form, most recently in short fiction for Catalyst Game Labs. He’s been writing for more than ten years and holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in Creative Writing and Fiction. When he’s not writing, he teaches Composition and Creative Writing at Ivy Tech State Community College. He lives with his daughter Nora in southern Indiana.