Bewitched, Blooded and Bewildered Read Online Free PDF Page B

didn’t fault him for it—my cats wouldn’t have done it either.
    I indulged him with more petting, even though I was pretty sure he’d cut off all my circulation, and I glanced at the top hat on the coffee table. Some undead asshole was trying to scare me with a cheesy warning. The Devil was easy to figure out. The man and the woman on the card are chained to the devil, just like Lex and I are tied to my evil vampire overlord. Stupid Harrison. He was probably off partying with his apprentice, snacking on bimbos, and living the vampire high life. The Ten of Swords wasn’t a cheerful card either, depicting a poor dead bastard with all ten blades jammed into his corpse. Real subtle. With my cards missing, I was going to have to buy a new deck to replace them or consider picking new ones out of the deck I already had. I’d worry about that later, after I acquired painkillers.
    I nudged Bubba away and he thudded to the floor, wagging his tail. He followed as I limped toward the bathroom in search of aspirin. Magic was great, but sometimes you needed better living through chemistry. I popped some extra-strength pills and headed into the study. My tiny, cheap computer desk was shoved awkwardly into a corner, like a clearance item at IKEA. I checked my calendar to make sure there weren’t any conflicts with the pummeling at the next full moon. Nothing planned yet, and it would be after Thanksgiving. Maybe it would be the last throwdown. Maybe Zach had proven he was willing to send the competition straight to hell, and they would back off when he killed this Gregori guy too.
    Nah.
    The vamps would keep coming until he was dead. They liked him fine enough when he just hosted expensive parties, but they couldn’t let one of Laura’s boy toys have a real position of power. Hell, they’d been pissed when Laura’d had a position of power.
    I skimmed through a few e-mails. Most were spam, but Mac had sent me an update on Simon’s progress, or lack thereof, in finding me a cure for the Zach plague. Poor Mac, trapped in Casa Dracula. He seemed okay with the idea of signing up for chronicler training, but it wasn’t like he’d really had a choice in the matter. During the process of being kidnapped and used for leverage against me, Mac had been declared dead. He couldn’t go back to business as usual, so he’d joined the Order of St. Jerome. I wasn’t thrilled at the idea of my best buddy becoming a vampire librarian, but he was head over heels in love with Simon’s library. I fired off a quick reply to give him the highlights of the evening and to let him know I was still alive, and then I headed to the kitchen. I needed mass amounts of comfort food to fuel the healing process.
    From the rumble of bass through the floor, I knew Lex was still in the gym, damaging his hearing with angry music, but I found his sister Marie in the kitchen making a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. There was a new shiner poking out from behind her cotton-candy-pink bangs, and I hoped that whatever idiot had been stupid enough to take a swing at her was dead, because if not, Lex would murder the culprit when he saw it.
    “Rough night?” I asked.
    “Yeah. You too?” Marie quirked a brow, which had also been dyed pink. At least I assumed it was dye. She might have a spell that did it.
    “I lived. Lex continues to want to punch through Harrison’s face. We’re about par for the course.”
    She snickered, shaking her head, and I started looking for something to munch on. I needed something substantial, but was craving cookies. I settled on a bowl of sugary cereal instead.
    “Did you send any bad guys to magician jail tonight?” I pointed my spoon in the direction of her black eye.
    Like the rest of her family, Marie was a guardian. She’d been reassigned from her post in Denver to fill the spot Lex vacated when he became my Oberon. Until she found a place of her own, she was staying with us. In theory I didn’t mind it, but in practice we