Angie Fox: Gentlemen Prefer Voodoo

Huge.

Her grandmother had told stories of voodoo mambos calling zombies, mostly to work in the fields at harvest. One particularly powerful voodoo queen asked for a bodyguard and gained a mobster with a price on his head. Little Mickey was killed (again) as soon as he set foot in New Orleans. It was considered gutsy to call a zombie. Rarer if one came, and even though zombies looked—and acted—like their human selves, to her knowledge no one had ever tried to date one.

Zombies lingered until they’d completed their task, and then they returned to their graves.

Well, she didn’t want this love zombie to do anything for her—or to her. She had to put him back and end this mess.

What she needed was a zombie neutralizing spell.

She’d have to look it up, but right off the bat, she knew she needed Florida water. She glanced at the bottle under her arm. Check. She’d need a pair of black candles…

Amie took two candles from the display next to the counter. While he browsed the books for sale, she grabbed a hemp bag off the hook behind the counter, tossing the ingredients inside.

She’d need grave dust. She looked her zombie up and down, from his strong jaw to his wide toes. “I think we have that covered.”

“Ah, The Complete Illustrated Kama Sutra .” The blue of his eyes deepened as he gave her a smoky look.

Desire tangled in her stomach. She ignored it because, well, it was just plain ridiculous. The kiss was amazing, before she knew what he was, but she certainly hadn’t asked for this. Amie stomped up to him with her hand out. “Give it back.”

He grinned. “The spine is creased.” He flipped through the pages. “Right here. Do you look at this book sometimes?”

The next time Isoke had any great ideas about finding her a man, she’d tie his beak shut with a fire hose.

He examined the Moon position. “Now that looks interesting,” he said, his fingers splayed wide over a couple having a lot more fun that Amie ever had. She felt the heat rise to her cheeks.

“Stop it. We’re not doing the Kama Sutra. We’re not going to fall in love. I don’t even know you.”

“You will be my true love,” he said, as if he was informing her of the weather or how the Hornets had played the night before. “I can prove it.”

“How?” Amie asked, not sure she wanted to know.

He closed the book and placed it back on the shelf, seeming to forget about the Moon, the Lotus, and the rest of the positions she couldn’t quite get out of her head. “Come. You will go with me back to my grave.” He took her hands in his and kissed her on the top of the head.

Amie yanked her hands back and wiped them on her nightgown, ignoring his frown. His touch would have felt good, if she hadn’t known what he was.

“You know what?” Amie said, as she let a plan of her own take shape. “That’s a good idea. Let’s go see where you were buried.” She really didn’t want to put him back to earth right here in the storage room. There was the matter of the body. She couldn’t just carry it down Canal Street and back to the cemetery. But if she could follow him back to his grave, it would be like zombie express delivery.

His face lit up. “Fantastic. No one has visited my grave since the Roosevelt administration.”

“But you have to wait right here while I get ready, okay?”

“Absolutely, my dear.” He resumed his assault on her bookcase, one hand at his waist holding his silk wrapper closed.

She paused on the bottom step. “I’ll also find you something to wear.”

Amie almost asked him what he wanted to show her at his grave, but stopped herself. She didn’t want to be any more involved in his undead life than she had to be. Besides, she’d put him down as soon as they arrived. “Be back soon,” she said, taking the steep stairs as fast as she could manage.

“During that time, do you mind if I remove a few geraniums from the pot outside? We’ll be passing my grandmother’s vault on the way in.”

“Knock yourself out,” Amie called. She’d prefer her zombie outside anyway.

Amie dashed into the library and found her spell book. She flopped it on the kitchen table. “Zombie…zombie care, zombie feeding, zombie summoning…

On rare occasions, zombies can be called with a spell in order to assist with a task.

Ah, so that’s what her love life had come down to. Great. Evidently, his task had been to kiss her silly.

A zombie will deteriorate and die again once it has fulfilled its purpose or once the voodoo mambo no longer requires its services.

Well, Amie didn’t require his services. And she certainly wasn’t going to let him fulfill his purpose—not if he thought it meant marrying her.

She flipped through the book again and pressed her finger to a final entry, “zombie termination.” She made a mental list of the ingredients she needed before shoving the book in her bag. Digging through her kitchen drawers, she found a flashlight and a box of matches.

Amie caught her reflection in the hand decorated mirror above her kitchen sink. Her black hair frizzed about her face and her eyes were wide with shock.

“If you get out of this,” she told herself, “you will never wish for another date. Because this is what happens.” Men were trouble every time.

And undead men were worse.

Amie blew out a breath. She didn’t have time to be feeling sorry for herself.

In less than a minute, she’d changed into a long orange skirt and a yellow top. She pulled on her barely used tennis shoes, grabbed him a pair of sweat pants, and headed down for the shop.

“Hi.”

“Ga!” She clutched her chest and pitched forward. She fell the last three steps and directly into his arms. He was warm, strong.

She lurched away. “What are you doing? You were supposed to be outside.” He didn’t feel dead. She remembered what it felt like to have his arms wrapped around her. And his kiss had been downright electrifying. Didn’t matter. He was dead.

He eased a lock of hair behind her ear. “Here I am, bursting into your home, ready to marry you tomorrow.” He raised a brow. “Or tonight if you know a priest.” When she couldn’t quite move her mouth to respond, he continued. “It occurred to me that we haven’t been properly introduced.”

Every cell in her body screamed for her to close the distance between them. Feeling his arms around her reminded her too much of how it had felt when he kissed her. That’s what she got for making him her first kiss in nine years. Damn the man.

He was clearly wrong in more ways than one. She refused to marry a dead man, or kiss him again. She didn’t even want to talk to him.

Amie took a deep breath. She made a mistake and she’d fix it. He was going back into the ground.

“I don’t need to know your name,” she said, inching past his massive form and plucking an extra cleaning rag from under the counter. She’d be glad to have it if things got messy.

“My name is Dante Montenegro,” he said, bowing slightly, his accent even more pronounced.

Okay, well good. At least she knew what grave they needed to find.

“Put these on.” She handed him a pair of her largest sweatpants, the kind with the string tie.

He held them up. “Canary yellow?”

“Deal with it.”

He ignored her sarcasm like the gentleman he was. “Actually, I used to own a pair of breeches in this very shade.”

His civility was making her uncomfortable. “Okay, well just put them on,” she said, turning away. She did not need to see him undressed again. Plus, she needed one more thing from the shop.

She had to find something of hers that she could burn, dust to dust, ashes to ashes. It should be small, so she could carry it. It had to have been in the presence of magic. “Preferably something I’ve owned for years,” she said to herself, as the perfect sacrifice came to mind. She hated to lose the Lisa Simpson keychain she had looped over the corner of her register, but desperate times called for desperate measures.