Maggie Shayne: Mark of the Witch

Praise for the novels of

“A tasty, tension-packed read.”

— Publishers Weekly on Thicker Than Water

“Tense … frightening … a page-turner in the best sense.”

— RT Book Reviews on Colder Than Ice

“Mystery and danger abound in Darker Than Midnight , a fast-paced, chilling thrill read that will keep readers turning the pages long after bedtime … Suspense, mystery, danger and passion—no one does them better than Maggie Shayne.”

—R omance Reviews Today on Darker Than Midnight [winner of a Perfect 10 award]

“Maggie Shayne is better than chocolate. She satisfies every wicked craving.”

— New York Times bestselling author Suzanne Forster

“Shayne’s haunting tale is intricately woven … A moving mix of high suspense and romance, this haunting Halloween thriller will propel readers to bolt their doors at night.”

— Publishers Weekly on The Gingerbread Man

“[A] gripping story of small-town secrets. The suspense will keep you guessing. The characters will steal your heart.”

— New York Times bestselling author Lisa Gardner on The Gingerbread Man

“[A] crackerjack novel of romantic suspense.”

—RT Book Reviews on Kiss of the Shadow Man

Also by Maggie Shayne

Secrets of Shadow Falls

KISS ME, KILL ME

KILL ME AGAIN

KILLING ME SOFTLY

Wings in the Night

TWILIGHT FULFILLED*

TWILIGHT PROPHECY*

BLOODLINE

ANGEL’S PAIN

LOVER’S BITE

DEMON’S KISS

BLUE TWILIGHT

BEFORE BLUE TWILIGHT

EDGE OF TWILIGHT

RUN FROM TWILIGHT

EMBRACE THE TWILIGHT

TWILIGHT HUNGER

TWILIGHT VOWS

BORN IN TWILIGHT

BEYOND TWILIGHT

TWILIGHT ILLUSIONS

TWILIGHT MEMORIES

TWILIGHT PHANTASIES

*Children of Twilight

DARKER THAN MIDNIGHT

COLDER THAN ICE

THICKER THAN WATER

Look for Maggie Shayne’s next novel

DAUGHTER OF THE SPELLCASTER

available March 2013

Maggie Shayne

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Once in a lifetime, if you’re lucky, you’ll have a friend like my BFF Michele M. A friend you love so much that when you go out in public together, people mistake you for a couple. A friend you share Stevie Nicks concerts and road trips to the Grand Canyon with, even though it makes your men jealous. A friend who, when you crawl inside an empty crypt and everyone else is yelling “Ewwwww,” hushes them all and shouts “Hold still!” and takes your picture. Then she Photoshops your name on the outside of the tomb so you can use it in the back of your next book. A friend who will double-stick tape your boobs into your too-low-cut Romance Writers of America RITA ®Award gown on the big night while making you laugh so hard you nearly bust the zipper but forget your nervousness. A friend you would trust with your life—no, more than that: with the lives of your kids. That’s the kind of friend I have in my beautiful Michele.

Michele, you are the Thelma to my Louise and I love you more than chocolate.

The Portal Series (all of it) is dedicated to you.

I even put a treasure chest in it, sort of.

Dammit straight to hell, I was being sacrificed again .

I stood on the edge of a precipice, the hard ground under my bare feet already warming beneath the rising, scorching sun. The unblinking red-orange eye of an angry god rose slowly over distant desert sands, beyond endless dunes, watching as I paid for the sin of practicing magic without a license.

Just as I had been at every execution before, I was dressed in almost nothing. A white scrap of fabric tied at my hip, covering one leg and leaving the other bare below the knot. Another length of the same stuff was draped around my neck, crossed in front to cover each of my humongous boobs, and then tied behind to keep it there. My hands were tied behind my back. I wore no jewelry. Resentment rose up in me at the notion that Sindar, High Priest of Marduk, had stolen it. And then I wondered how I knew that.

This isn’t me. I mean, it feels like it’s me, but it can’t be me. She’s olive-skinned. She’s gorgeous. Her boobsare huge. I’m pale and blonde and too thin. No curves here. Not like those, anyway .

And yet it was me. I was there. On that cliff. In that body. No denying it.

There were two other women, dressed pretty much the same way I was, one standing on either side of me. I felt close to them. I loved them.

Three men stood behind us. I felt the one behind me, his hands, warm and trembling, resting softly on my back, low, near my waist, where the skin was bare. My back was screaming with pain I didn’t understand, but that man’s touch was good. Soothing. I tried to relish it, thinking it was the last time I would feel it or anything good. Ever.

I wanted to turn my head, to look back at him, to see his face, but somehow I could not convince my dream self to do that. It didn’t matter, though. I knew what he looked like. In my mind, I saw him clearly: his long black hair, his fine white tunic with a sash of scarlet, the fat gold torque around his corded neck. His arms were banded with steel and coated in fine dark hair. He was strong, and he had ebony eyes.

I didn’t need to see him, nor the poor, half-dead man being held captive by soldiers a bit farther away. He’d already been beaten bloody, but he was struggling to break free as they forced him to watch. I’d glimpsed his face as they’d marched us up the cliff, far from our city gates. He barely looked human. His own mother wouldn’t have known him.

And Sindar, the High Priest, he was there, too. I knew his face, as well. Eyes lined with kohl, lips darkened with the juices of rare desert berries. The rolls of fat at his neck, sporting layer upon layer of gold. His robes of the finest fabric, imported from the East. His belly so big that the golden cords of those robes had to be tied above the bulge, making him look like a mother about to give birth. I knew he was there, knew the secret lust in his eyes for what was about to happen to us. He was twisted, turned on by violence. Or maybe just by the rush of knowing he held the power of life and death in his hands.

I was going to have to kill him one day.

I tried to look at the other women, because, aside from the touch of those large male hands on my skin, they were the most interesting part of this whole thing. They had dark hair and dark eyes, just like I did. But as I looked at them, they changed, the way a reflection in still water will change when a stone is dropped into it. One briefly became a blue-eyed platinum blonde, the other a fiery redhead, modern women in modern clothes. It was brief, the illusion, and then the High Priest was speaking in some long-dead language, and the hands at my back began trembling harder than before—kneading my waist, I thought—and I closed my eyes in bittersweet anguish.