Angie Fox: Gentlemen Prefer Voodoo

Amie’s jaw slackened as he lifted the stone away, opening the grave. She wasn’t going to ask. She just stared at the gaping hole that led into the crypt.

She wrapped her arms around her as an unwelcome chill seeped through her. She’d called up a man from the dead. Amie could never have imagined she’d had that kind of power. She was shocked. She was awed.

And she was scared to death.

If her ancestors could only see her now.

Amie’s fingernails dug into her arms. Please help me fix this .

A cloud moved over the moon and the cemetery plunged into even deeper darkness. She fought to ignore the churning in her stomach and was almost glad for the shadows as the zombie crawled back inside his grave.

Scraping sounds echoed from inside the vault as Amie set her bag on the concrete path and unloaded her supplies. This will all be over soon.

Please let this be over soon.

Everything was too dark and too scary and too…dead.

She had to make this right.

Amie quickly lit the black candles and rubbed their sides with the grave dust he’d left on her arms when he touched her. She sprinkled Florida water over everything.

“How’s it going?” she asked in a rough whisper, forcing her voice to remain even. She needed to focus her power, but she’d have a hard time concentrating knowing the zombie could pop out of his grave at any moment.

A frustrated sigh echoed from the tomb. “I’m having trouble finding it. It’s dark. There are many fragile things on all sides.”

Yeah, like bones.

Amie adjusted her candles, one in front of her and one behind. Their flames created twin oases of orange light. If she did this right, he’d be just another pile of bones.

She closed her eyes and focused her power.

Earth to earth. Dust to dust.

She felt her life force well up inside of her. Amie took her Lisa Simpson keychain and held it over the flame in front of her, watching the plastic smoke and curl.

“I give of my magic,” she whispered. “I give of myself. To let this man go back to ground.”

Amie removed the ring she’d woven and dug her fingers into it, separating the black and red strands.

“We are not connected. We are not bound. As it began, so does it end.”

She felt the power stir inside her.

She stood slowly.

She almost had him.

Amie approached him from behind, her fingers burrowing into the pocket of her skirt for the two dirty paper hearts she had unearthed from the planter outside her door. She ripped them in half and sprinkled them over the only part of him she could see—a muscular calf and a very large foot. The magic shot off orange sparks where it touched him.

Such a waste , she thought as she willed him back down, into the ground, to the earth.

“Ow!” He banged against something inside the tomb and came out rubbing his head. He brushed the torn hearts away like they were fireplace embers.

“What is this?” He saw her supplies and his eyes went narrow. “Are you trying to kill me?”

Amie’s breath hitched. She really didn’t want to watch this—watch him turn from a fine man to dust and bones. Her heart tugged.

In his own deluded way, the creature had loved her.

She held her breath. Waiting for the collapse. This was her doing. Her mistake. She owed it to him to watch him go back to ground. As if forcing her to witness what she’d done, the moon chose that moment to emerge from behind the cloud. It shone full once more on the man Amie had condemned.

Amie waited for the end.

And waited…

And waited.

Instead of crumbling to powder, he straightened and stood over her, looking gorgeous and unkempt with a smudge of dirt along his cheek.

Amie stared at him.

Damn the man. He should have been dead. She couldn’t mess this up too. She chewed her lip as she ran through her spell in her mind. She’d done it correctly.

So why was he still here?

“I ask you again”—he took a powerful step toward her—“my love.” He ground out each word as she took three steps back, scattering her candles across the pavement, “Are you trying to kill me?”

Amie froze. She dug her fingernails into her palms as dread blanketed her. She was trapped. In a cemetery. With the undead. A second later, she snapped.

It was too overwhelming, too intimidating, and frankly—too absurd. “Of course I tried to kill you,” she said, her voice an octave higher than it should have been. “What am I saying? I’m not killing you. You’re already dead! You see your name on that tombstone? I do. Dante Montenegro. Dead.”

He gave a mirthless laugh. “What does that have to do with anything?”

He had to be kidding. “It has everything to do with—everything. I can’t marry a dead man.”

“Ah!” he said, the twinkle back in his eye. “Every couple has issues they need to work out.”

“Work out?” Amie stammered. “No.” Out of the question.

He leaned against his tombstone, clearly amused.

Anger rocketed through her. “Oh is this fun for you? Well, this is not fun. This is wrong. This is unnatural. You are deceased, demised, buried for goodness sake!”

The zombie hitched his thumbs under the waistband of his borrowed pants. “Not anymore.”

Of all the cocky…“That is completely beside the point.”

“Your bag is on fire.”

“Ohhh!” Amie rushed to where one of the scattered candles had ignited her mother’s hemp sack. She stomped out the blaze.

If he thought this was the end of their conversation, then maybe he’d been reanimated without a brain.

“Don’t you understand?” she said, refusing to even spare a glance at the smoldering remains of the bag. “This is one giant horrible mistake. I’m not kissing you. I’m not picturing you naked.” Where had that come from? Never mind. Amie plowed forward. “I’m not marrying you, so you might as well admit that your usefulness has ended and you can rest in peace.”

Fury rolled off him in waves. “You called me,” he said, as the night breeze scattered the torn hearts down the narrow path. “You burned a resurrection symbol into my grave.”

“I didn’t know,” she said, her hope for an easy answer spinning into oblivion with those hearts. Even if she chased them down, she’d never be able to recover enough pieces to perform the spell again.

What would it matter anyway? It hadn’t worked. Everything in her tidy little world was hopelessly, horribly out of control. And here he stood, all gorgeous and dead, expecting her to accept that. She just couldn’t do it. She raised her chin. “I thought I wanted you, but obviously not you .”

He stalked up to her, close enough to kiss. “Listen, sweetheart. It’s not my problem that you don’t know what you want.”

He strode past her and took the last lit candle.

“Hey! Give that back!”

“Come and get it, darling,” he said, ducking back into the tomb.

Amie wanted to bang her own head against the nearest vault. What kind of a zombie-killing fiancée was she if the zombie started taking her spell ingredients? And she couldn’t imagine what she was going to do now that her spell hadn’t worked. Now that he knew she wanted to kill him. She’d have to find another way to put him down and, frankly, that might be tough.

He eased back out of the grave, looking triumphant, a gold wedding ring in hand.

“You’re married?” she gaped. She shouldn’t have felt betrayed, but she did.

“I was.” He placed the candle on the ground and made a move to slip the ring onto his finger. “Now look. It will not fit anymore.”

The ring seemed to resist as he drew it over his finger. It stopped less than an inch down, refusing to go farther.