Hoodoo Woman (Roxie Mathis Book 3) Read Free Page A

they might have found a slave on the family tree and couldn’t accept the fact. Amused and disturbed. This part of the country had a uniquely horrific history that could be hard for a modern Southerner to make peace with. Some kept trying desperately to relive it for reasons beyond my understanding. Some, like myself, pretty much ignored it until forced otherwise.
    The Civil War, slavery, and the woman he lost were not things Daniel liked to talk about. Nor were any of the other various wars he’d fought in or his earliest years as a vampire. Nowadays he enjoyed the beautiful but absurd antebellum home in which he lived just outside of town, going on the occasional ghost-evicting job with me, and karaoke nights like this. He was well adapted to modern life but there was a strain of something deeper and darker in him I thought had little to do with being a vampire and more to do with the world in which he grew up. On plenty of karaoke nights he belted out off-key versions of Conway Twitty, Kenny Rogers, and Porter Waggoner. The man had an abiding love of classic country. It suited the goofball side he was comfortable showing me. Tonight, though, he showed something else.
    Daniel’s voice was quiet, rather than its usual bluster when he sang. Like whispering a dark tale in a candlelit room, a story of secrets and ambiguity. He brought the raucous bar to a standstill with Ode To Billie Joe , the stage lights giving him an otherworldly glow. For once he didn’t holler out of tune and off key, didn’t exaggerate the Southern accent that lingered after more than a century. He needed no vampire mind powers to mesmerize the crowd, just his voice and the song. He transcended the song’s literal story, taking its late-in-the-day shadows and pulling them into an eldritch dusk. Closing his eyes every time Billie Joe jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge, did he see those things from his past he never spoke of? Faces he’d outlived unnaturally by decades?
    I had a few secrets of my own but Daniel kept an ocean hidden beneath his placid surface that not even my supernatural vision could discern.
    The song ended. He took a bow, the applause bringing a smile to his face. A guarded smile, though, literally. His fangs were hidden. I lost sight of him as he walked off stage and the next person entered the spotlight to torture the bar with a Carrie Underwood number.
    Shelby Conrad flipped her sleek dark ponytail over her shoulder and toyed with the straw in her soda. “So, does he ever drink straight from the vein?”
    I nearly choked on a pretzel. “That’s not something we really get into.”
    “Why not?”
    “It’s kind of personal, don’t you think?” I knew he kept himself supplied with black market blood bags but I was pretty sure he went out hunting sometimes. He’d told me once he never killed innocents, his demeanor insisting there would be no further discussion. Then later I found out he kept tabs on the local sex offender registry and I didn’t want to know anymore.
    “I was just curious.”
    “Did you ask him?”
    “He said it was none of my business.” She sipped her drink.
    I pushed the bowl of pretzels away and reached for my iced tea. “I guess that means it’s none of your business, then.” I dug my cellphone out of my bag to check the time. “You heard from Blake? He’s really late.”
    Daniel dropped gracefully into the seat between us, a beer in one hand and a shot glass in the other. Normally he preferred mixed drinks with a little blood added, but that didn’t really work well in public. “So what’d y’all think? I was in a Bobbie Gentry mood but I couldn’t decide between Ode To Billie Joe or Fancy . I went with Ode To Billie Joe . Did I make the right choice?”
    Shelby said, “It was better than that shit you were singing last week.”
    Daniel wagged his finger in her face. “Don’t you talk about George Jones like that. The man was a titan of country music.”
    She slapped at him. “Get