Mojo Queen

  Back Cover Copy

  Hoodoo and high magic are on a collision course.

  Roxanne Mathis isn't like everyone else. Not only can she see auras and spectral entities, she can mix herbs and roots for spells to do good or ill. She can even light a candle without the benefit of a match. But when she’s hired to exorcise a demon from a young girl, she discovers the limits of her powers.

  With her vampire cousin at her side and a sexy sorcerer chasing her on the rebound, Roxie sets out to send that evil entity back to where she came from.

  Nothing is as it seems and Roxie’s in over her head. It’s not going to be enough for her to just be a paranormal investigator and old school root worker--to defeat this demon, she’s going to have to be the Mojo Queen.

  Content Warning: Language, violence, dark magic, dangerous hoodoo, and a night with a sexy sorcerer.

  Highlight

  The others joined in, supplying their own calls for the demon’s eviction. Her face twisted with rage. Levi let his bat fall to the floor, opened the bottle of holy water and tossed it at her. Seth threw more salt. She began to sizzle and smoke and scream, a little tornado of pain and fury trapped in a circle. Our chants became louder in an attempt to drown out her screams. A stray thought ran through my brain--this might actually work--then she did something I didn’t anticipate, or even consider possible.

  She leapt across the circle’s boundary.

  Shock tore a curse out of me and I grabbed the nearest kid. “Run!”

  Mojo Queen

  9781616502713

  Copyright © 2011, Sonya Clark

  Edited by Nerine Dorman

  Book design by Lyrical Press, Inc.

  Cover Art by Renee Rocco

  First Lyrical Press, Inc. electronic publication: May, 2011

  Lyrical Press, Incorporated

  17 Ludlow Street

  Staten Island, New York 10312

  http://www.lyricalpress.com

  eBooks are not transferable. All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the publisher’s permission.

  PUBLISHER'S NOTE:

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  Published in the United States of America by Lyrical Press, Incorporated

  Dedication

  For Joey, always

  Acknowledgements

  This book would never have been finished without my fabulous editor Nerine Dorman. The original story was stuck in a ditch by the side of the wrong road, but Nerine showed me a way to get it back on the right road and turn it into something I could be proud of. Thank you so much Nerine!

  Chapter 1

  I could feel the presence of spirits as soon as I crossed the threshold, a heaviness to the air, a tingling on the back of my neck. Telltale tracks of blood seeping out the walls also served as a big clue.

  “Roxanne.” My cousin, Daniel Rambin, stood in the doorway holding a box and my messenger bag. Technically he wasn’t my cousin, actually my ancestor, but it was easier to tell people we were cousins.

  I turned to help him bring in our supplies. The living room was taken up mostly with a sectional, coffee table, and television, all super-sized. I started unpacking our stuff on the coffee table.

  “The blood’s not real.” Daniel stood in the middle of the living room, examining the wall. Of medium height with a slim athletic build, blue eyes and dark blond hair, a penchant for jeans and flannel shirts, he didn’t look like what he was.

  “Ectoplasm?”

  “That’s what it smells like.”

  I glanced up from setting out the supplies. “Ectoplasm has a smell?”

  He shrugged. “Everything has a smell.” A hint of amusement shaded his voice.

  I concentrated on what I was doing to help me get in the right frame of mind. Using the coffee table as an altar of sorts, I laid everything out, starting with incense. Next a white candle to represent this family and their home. I dressed it with oil and placed it on the table alongside a chunk of angelica root. Around that I emptied a packet of powder, ground-up herbs and roots, in a circle. On top of the circle I placed seven purple candles, also dressed with oil, to represent forces of protection. A black candle to signify the trouble plaguing this house came next, undressed and outside the circle. I wrote troublesome ghosts nine times on a small piece of paper, placing the black candle on top of it. Pouring a spice jar full of graveyard dirt onto a small cheap porcelain saucer, I placed the saucer next to the black candle.

  The lights started flickering. First a lamp in the corner then the recessed pod lights, one at a time. “They know we’re here,” I said.

  Daniel gave me a look. “They?”

  I nodded. “We’re definitely in the plural here.” I walked to the kitchen, surveying the countertops. They were clear, as I’d requested. Good. I didn’t need a toaster thrown at my head, or knives from a knife block. A paranormal investigator only needs a ghost to discover the fun to be had with a knife block once before telling clients to get the things out of the house before an eviction starts. “Okay. Let’s start mapping.”

  “Is there a basement or attic?”

  “No, but we will need to make sure we get the garage.” Unlike that one time…

  We started at the front door and walked through every room clockwise, making sure we knew the layout and the location of every closet. I didn’t draw a physical map but I liked to have a walk-through before getting down to business. The place wasn’t big enough to be called a McMansion. It was a standard boxy subdivision house with a crappy floor plan, lots of neutral colors, toys for small children and Thomas Kinkaid on the walls. It had taken a lot for these nice conservative Stepford Borg to call someone like me. As we walked through the house I started to open my senses further, slowly. Like taking your time to get the radio dial on the right frequency and volume, so you don’t get blasted with feedback. Not the best explanation for it, I know, but it was the best I could come up with when I tried explaining it to people. Basically, by going slowly I could make sure I didn’t get overloaded, which was a damn good thing in this house. I was picking up waves of anger, a big swirling froth of it, but there was more underneath. A great sadness tugged at me, even stronger than the anger. They weren’t haunting this place for kicks.

  Back at the starting point, I sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the coffee table, my hands flat on the carpet. I closed my eyes, slowed my breathing, reaching with my senses through the plain brown carpet and the cheap subflooring, drilling a hole through the layer of negative energy wrapped around the house, straight to the earth underneath. I was long past needing a chant to help ground and center myself. Now it was automatic as breathing. Energy built inside me in a slow, steady rising cone. I exhaled, opening my eyes in time to see the cloud of my breath. The temperature had dropped.

  Daniel knelt on the opposite side of the table, his lighter in one hand. He hadn’t done this with me very many times, but he knew his part. His mouth curled in a grim smile. “Ready?”

  I nodded. I produced my own lighter and lit the candles--first the purple, then the white, then the
black--as Daniel took care of the incense.

  “We petition for the protection of this family and ask that their home be rid of troublesome ghosts.” A clear calm voice, a voice of authority, just as I’d been taught, even if I had to fake it. I picked up the black candle and placed the paper in the dish of graveyard dirt. Setting the paper on fire, I said, “Intruders, be gone from this house.”

  Protection spell started and statement of intention completed, now it was time for the actual eviction. We turned our attention to the rest of the supplies. A small black-lacquered tray held a white round three-inch pillar candle, a smudge stick of white sage incense and a small brass bell. That was for Daniel. For me waited a bowl, a bottle of rainwater and a container of salt. I poured water in the bowl, added a generous amount of salt and stirred it with my fingers. I stood and started toward the door. Daniel lit the candle then the sage.

  I stood in front of the door for a moment, the bowl of saltwater in my left hand. A gilt mirror hung on the wall closest to the door, next to a coat rack. I caught my own reflection in the mirror. Tipping my head down, I looked over the tops of my glasses. Faint blue light seemed to swirl around me, several shades of blue but mostly a dark indigo. It turned my green eyes the color of swamp mud and gave my auburn hair punkish highlights.

  I don’t necessarily have to take my glasses off to see a person’s aura. Using my glasses as a filter is something I trained myself to do, and taking them off was part of my ritual of focusing my concentration so I can see the auric field. We’re all made up of energy. Electromagnetic energy is what forms the etheric, first layer of energy surrounding our bodies. When you hear someone talk about being able to “see” a person’s aura, this is the energy field they’re talking about. It’s an ebbing, flowing shimmer of light and color radiating several inches out from the physical body.

  Reading an aura means interpreting what all those colors mean. The colors can refer to a person’s physical health, their personality, their emotional state. Different “readers” might see different colors. What’s red to me might look orange to someone else, but our interpretation will pretty much be the same. It’s a little like reading tarot cards, more about intuition than hard-and-fast rules.

  There are some things that seem fairly universal in my experience. If a color is more of a glow, it’s positive. If it has more of a smoky look to it, it’s a negative emotion. There’s a difference between seeing the aura of a person and catching sight of a ghost’s aura. It’s about like trying to catch soap bubbles and keep them intact, and I do have to take my glasses off for that. I folded them closed, setting the bowl on the floor long enough to get the glasses in their case and the case back in the pocket of my hoodie. One last glance at Daniel to make sure he was ready then I turned to face the door.

  I dipped my fingers in the bowl and splashed salt water around the door frame. Speaking in a clear, loud voice, I said, “You are not welcome here, and you need to leave.”

  The bell rang behind me. I stepped out of Daniel’s way so he could pass the incense around the door then I repeated myself. “You are not welcome here, and you need to leave.” Not a plea, not a threat either, just a clear statement.

  We went through every room in the house like this, clockwise, paying special attention to corners, windows, doorways, and closets, and not forgetting the garage. Holy water as announcement, a bell to get their attention, incense to carry the message and cleanse the place, followed by my simple commandment to leave. Not flashy but it generally gets the job done. Not that they don’t fight back. Oh hell yeah, they can fight back, and the ones in this house were starting to.

  Every light bulb we passed exploded, tiny pieces catching in my hair. Everything not nailed down began to tremble, knickknacks sliding off shelves. The temperature continued to drop and the air pressure pushed against the inside of my head painfully. As we reached the back of the house, the voices started. Nothing so distinct as words, more like murky ripples of sound rising and falling. And, like what I’d sensed earlier, anger and pain and sadness. Unintelligible shouts, crying moans.

  I’m near-sighted, so I didn’t have too much trouble in the close confines. My auric vision, as Daniel called it, wasn’t picking up much of anything but faint residue from the family who lived here, brief splashes of color, overlaid with a dark, smoky haze.

  I kept repeating my command for the ghosts to leave, trying to watch for changes in that haze, evidence the banishing was working, or not.

  As we entered one of the children’s rooms I got a big not upside the head. I cried out in surprise more than pain, though it certainly hurt.

  Daniel picked up what hit me, holding it up for me to examine before tossing it back on the floor. “Toy truck,” he said. “At least it’s not one of the big old metal ones.”

  I rubbed the side of my head then went back to sprinkling salt water. “You are not welcome here.” My voice sounded more forceful now. “And you need to leave!”

  The bedroom door slammed shut. Toy soldiers and children’s books became missiles aimed at our heads. Curtains and blinds in the room’s only window shook, snapping at me as I tried to spread my salt water. Toy cars zipped out from under the bed, nearly tripping Daniel. The indistinct screaming became louder, more focused around us, as if we were surrounded by invisible forces, which, actually, we were. Except I could see them; pockets of swirling gray haze, appearing and disappearing throughout the room. I spotted some of it by the bed again, right before it was lifted off the floor and flung at Daniel.

  It caught him square in the back and knocked him down, his head cracking against a corner of a chest of drawers, the tray and its implements lost in the mess. With luck the candle was snuffed. A bright splash of blood shone through the auric murk and that small cone of energy in me expanded. It twisted through me and out of me, until I could see a wave of yellow crash into the gray haze. “Get out!”

  My body jerked, sending the bowl of salt water to the floor. I dropped to my knees, placing my palms flat on the ground, reaching for something to hold on to while my head spun so much I thought I might vomit. Ground and center, ground and center, pretend you’re a tree with roots and shit that never works.

  Something cold came close to my face, so close I wasn’t sure if it was touching my skin. I raised my eyes from the floor, looking deep into the gray. No faces, no forms, but definitely a presence. I spoke to that presence, but without shouting this time.

  “This is not your home.” My voice was barely above a whisper. “You need to leave. You can leave. You’re free to go.” I sat back on my haunches, glancing around at the smoke-like ribbons curling around the room. “You’re free to go. You’re free.” I kept repeating it until it was almost a chant.

  The spinning in my head slowed to a crawl as I watched them leave, energy dissolving into emptiness. The temperature returned to normal with a rush. I fumbled my glasses out and put them on, hands shaking. I felt exhausted, much more so than after a normal ghost eviction. My guess was it had to do with all that energy I’d used.

  Daniel sat up, dabbing at his forehead with his fingers. The cut was deep enough to need stitches, if he were human, but since he was a vampire, the torn skin had already begun to knit, blood soaking back into his flesh. It grossed me out a little but fascinated me at the same time.

  “Did I just get my ass handed to me by a ghost?”

  I shrugged. “Kinda, yeah.”

  He came to his feet, taking my hands to pull me up. “I can honestly say that’s a new one for me.”

  “Cool.” I offered him a weak grin. “Something you can blog about.”

  He laughed, but got serious again real quick. “So what was that?”

  “I did some research on the property. The land, I mean. I know the house is just a couple of years old, but sometimes spirits will hang around a piece of land.” I started to pick through the toy debris for our supplies. “There was a plantation here, before the Civil War. Right where this house and a few of the nei
ghbors are now was the slave cemetery. I thought that might have something to do with the haunting.”

  He nodded. “That’s why you kept using the word free. Okay, I get that. But what I meant was what did you do? I can’t see things the way you can, but I can feel it when somebody cracks open a can of magic whoop ass. I didn’t know you could do that.”

  I didn’t say anything for a long moment. He was talking about the yellow light, of course, the energy that had come out of me and knocked those angry ghosts around like a strike through bowling pins. Not just knocked them around, but subdued them enough to finally listen to me. I didn’t say anything, because I didn’t know what to say. I hadn’t known I could do that, or how I did it, or if I could do it again. His surprise had nothing on my shock.

  The home owner came to my rescue and kept me from having to answer by flinging the door to his son’s room open and greeting us with a baseball bat held high. “I know you said to wait outside but it sounded like World War Three breaking out.” The poor guy looked terrified, but I had to give him props for being brave enough to come back in.

  I held out my hands in a relaxed gesture. “It’s okay, Mr. Newman. It’s all over now.”

  He lowered the bat, eyes cutting back and forth between us. “You mean, uh, the house is, uh, clean?”

  I gave him my best don’t worry, I’m a professional smile. “Yes sir, it is.”

  His shoulders slumped. “Oh, that’s…that’s great. That is so great.” He took in the chaotic condition of his child’s room then noticed the blood on Daniel’s shirt. “Hey, are you okay?”

  Daniel gave him a dazzling smile and a little bit of vampy mind fog. “I’m fine, just fine. Sorry about the mess.”

  Mr. Newman seemed to forget where he was for a moment, a bland smile on his face. Then he shook his head and looked at me. “Uh, the Toomeys.”

  I gave him a questioning look.