Witch Fire Read Free

makeup. That unconsciousness about her appearance made her even more attractive.
    Jack swore again and started the engine.
    Mira was a nice woman, and that meant she wasn’t his kind of woman. He usually bedded women who were married and wanting short affairs on the side, or unattached women who were in it for a no-strings-attached good time. Jack stayed away from women like Mira Hoskins.
    Especially Mira Hoskins.
    He’d taken this job to discharge the debt he owed her. It had to stay professional.
    Anyway, she was his boss’s cousin. Monahan would have Jack’s head off for seducing her, and maybe not the one on his shoulders.

    M IRA STEPPED OUT THE BACK DOOR OF THE DINER after closing time. The cold night air snatched her breath away instantly, forcing her to pull the edges of her coat tighter. Mike’s was located right in the middle of Minneapolis, making the wind that raced through the corridor of buildings extra frigid. It whipped her skirt around her nylon-clad legs and numbed her calves. All the same, it was invigorating. She’d always loved the wind, even when it snatched the warmth from her lungs.
    She picked her way over the icy parking lot toward her beat-up Honda Accord and got in. The cold seat numbed her ass on contact and made Mira gasp. All she wanted was to get home, shower the greasy stink off her skin, and settle down with a TV dinner. She stuck the key in the ignition. She’d break out her vibrator tonight, too. Mr. Gorgeous had inspired her.
    The car took several tries to start, but soon the tires were crunching their way over the icy pavement, out onto the street and toward home.
    All the way to her apartment, the sense of being watched niggled at her. It was silly. She was in her car alone, after all. Unless the feeling came from being followed. She turned the radio up and tried to ignore her inexplicable paranoia, brushing it off as just her imagination, but that didn’t stop her from checking her rearview mirror every five seconds.
    She’d been having this feeling on and off for the last couple of weeks. It was ridiculous, of course. Nobody would be stalking her, nobody but Ben, maybe. But Ben probably didn’t care enough about her to invest that much time. After all, Ben had moved on to greener pastures and forgotten her. He was far too busy banging his new blonde, buxom girlfriend, Trixie, to bother with her anymore.
    Who the hell was named Trixie , anyway? It sounded like the name of a stripper, though Trixie was actually a physical therapist who’d moved down from Duluth a couple years ago. When Ben had hurt his knee last year, Trixie had spent a little “overtime” helping him recuperate. The poor baby had required extra TLC, it seemed.
    Mira blew out a hard breath that clouded white in the still-cold car. She wished Trixie better luck with Ben than she’d had. Ben wasn’t the type to stay faithful for long. She almost felt sorry for the other woman.
    But not too sorry.
    She murmured the twenty-fifth couplet of the Wiccan Rede to her empty car. “True in love forever be, lest thy lover’s false to thee.” Mira sighed. Ben had been incredibly false.
    She pulled into a spot not far from the entrance of her building on Randolph Avenue in nearby St. Paul. In order to feed her new fear, she made sure no other cars had pulled in behind her before she gathered her purse and made her way in, picking carefully over the barely cleared, snow-covered sidewalk.
    She headed through the front door of the old building and down a short flight of stairs. There were only two apartments in the basement and very little luxury. The stairs and walls were all made of unadorned concrete blocks and it smelled a bit musty. A sole light bulb hung from a chain above her head, casting shadows, as she unlocked her apartment door.
    Once inside, she took off her coat and kicked the heat up a notch. Walking into the kitchen, she reached into her apron pocket,