KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

       http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

      CONTENTS

      LOVE POTION #9

       by JoAnn Ross

      MIDNIGHT PLANE TO GEORGIA

       by E.C. Sheedy

      FALL FROM GRACE

       by Jill Shalvis

      LOVE POTION

       #9

      JoAnn Ross

      One

      A full moon rode high in the southern sky, casting an unearthly white light over the Lowcountry, illuminating the woman who moved through the marsh with the sleek grace of a swamp panther.

      The thick air, pregnant with the disparate scents of salt, decaying Spartina grass, and night-blooming jasmine, dripped with moisture.

      Herons glided on wide blue wings while an alligator slid silently across water the color of burgundy wine. Fireflies glowed amidst the branches of old growth cypress, which stood like silent sentinels over the watery world, silvery moss draped over their limbs like feather boas discarded by ghostly belles.

      Bullfrogs croaked; cicadas whirred; somewhere in the dark a lonely owl hooted for a mate.

      The familiar scents of the southern Georgia marsh reached deep into the woman’s soul; the night music stirred the wildness that dwelt in her heart. It was music from an ancient time, a time when primitive man trembled with fear against the unseen denizens of the dark.

      A time when her people ruled with wisdom and power.

      A time of magic.

      Her hooded black cape blended into the shadows as she made her way through the swirling mists of fog. Upon reaching the sacred grove of live oak she knelt and plunged her hands into the inky water. When she brought them out again, her long, slender fingers glowed with green, phosphorescent ghostfire.

      Sparks fell back into the water, like a shower of stars, as she lifted her hands—palms turned upward toward the midnight velvet sky—offering a blessing to her mother, the moon.

      Her exquisite face bathed in a shimmering light, the woman began chanting the words taught to her while she was still in her cradle. Words from before time passed down from woman to woman through the generations, words that flowed warmly through her veins, along with the blood that made her who she was.

      What she was.

      A witch.

      After completing her invocation, she untied the hooded cape and let it fall to the ground. A zephyr blowing in from the nearby Atlantic caught her freed hair, whipping it into a wild jet black froth around her face. The black bodysuit she wore beneath the cape fit like a second skin, revealing every lush curve. Black leather boots, polished to a glassy sheen, encased her legs to midthigh, while a metal breastplate shaped her breasts into two glistening cones.

      A silver amulet, dating back to medieval times and suspended from a hammered silver chain, nestled between her gloriously voluptuous, magnolia white breasts.

      She took a small vial from the amulet. The scented oil—which she’d blended herself on Midsummer Night’s Eve—was a dark and sultry concoction of scarlet rose petals, black dahlia, belladonna, dragon’s blood, and, of course, wolfsbane. Best known for its properties of protection against werewolves, few were aware that Medea had embraced the selfsame deadly plant in her many works of vengeance.

      She sprinkled the pungent oil over the rowan branches she’d gathered earlier and stacked in a circle of white angel wing seashells.

      With the powers of midnight vibrating through her, the woman known as Morganna held her hands out over the wood, causing it to ignite in a sudden whoosh of wind and flame.

      Closing her eyes, she concentrated on the faces of her life-sworn enemies, those who would use the darkness of the night to cloak their wicked ways.

      She envisioned them melting like candle wax amidst the dancing flames. Felt the fire crackle in the very marrow of her bones. Heard their agonized, bloodcurdling screams. A lethal heat suffused her, fire flashed along her every nerve; suffering the evildoers’ every torment, the witch swayed.

      But she did not flinch. Nor did she cry out.

      Any spellmaker who dealt in the dark side did not escape such acts unscathed, but given that her fate was both preordained and inescapable, Morganna bore her pain in silence.

      And when it was finally completed, when a cooling, benevolent rain began to fall to drench the scorching flames, she lifted her pale white arms again and offered a prayer of thanksgiving to the goddess moon for having allowed her to survive.

      “It is done.”

      Then, drained from the torturous burdens she’d willingly undertaken, Morganna, Mistress of the Night, folded to the damp ground and surrendered to the darkness.

      Two

      “I cannot believe you allow garbage like this comic book in your shop.”

      Roxi Dupree, owner of Hex Appeal, glanced up from stirring crushed lavender into a love spell potpourri at the book the older woman was holding up between two fingers, as if afraid of contamination.

      “It’s actually a graphic novel.” She sprinkled a handful of scarlet rose petals over the mixture. “And I like Morganna.”

      “She works the dark arts.”

      Roxi shrugged and refrained from pointing out that the Morganna stories were, after all, fiction. Fiction she’d grown up devouring. Stories that had fed a young girl’s imagination.

      Another thing she’d only ever shared with one person—her best friend Emma—was that Morganna had been a childhood role model. Oh, Roxi hadn’t grown up to turn cheating boyfriends into toads (though there had been one or two who deserved it), or burn alive wicked people who harmed children, but she had taken Morganna’s independent spirit to heart.

      “All of us, witch or not, have our dark and light sides.” Given that patience was not her strong suit, Roxi had to work at the mild tone. “Isn’t all life about striving for balance between the two?”

      “That may be,” the older woman reluctantly allowed, even as her narrow face remained as pinched as a prune that had been left to dry too long in the sun. She tossed the book back onto the shelf.

      “But Morganna, Mistress of the Night, certainly doesn’t spend a great deal of time on the light side,” she sniffed. “She’s an angry, vengeful creature who embarks on a crusade of blood and brimstone in every book.”

      Roxi found it interesting that a woman who’d proclaim the popular Morganna stories garbage seemed to be so familiar with the stories.

      “Not exactly brimstone,” she murmured, thinking how that very word played into detractors’ misguided view of pagans as devil worshipers. “And that particular crusade, by the way, is against undead spirits of the underworld who have infiltrated the bodies of humans.”

      Wiry wisps of steel gray hair surrounded the woman’s frowning face. Her thin lips firmed as she skimmed a finger around the rim of a hammered silver chalice. “That couldn’t possibly happen.”

      Closed-minded old biddy. “There are those who don’t believe it’s possible to draw down the moon, either.”

      The