Hex Appeal by Linda Wisdom Page B

never was good with tears and those of a grieving mother with so much love in her heart were even harder. She crouched by the side of the chair, her hands resting lightly on the wooden arm.
    â€œMrs. Archer, do you truly understand what your son is now? That he isn’t the young man you raised?” she asked softly.
    The woman’s head bobbed up and down. “Ronnie was leaving his night class when he was attacked by a band of rogue vampires. He was such a good boy. He was taking advanced accounting courses. He called me a week after he died and said that he wasn’t really dead. He just had to tell me. He knew how hard I took his father’s death only a few years before that. But he wouldn’t tell me anything else.” She dabbed at her eyes again. Her tears streaked a trail through her face powder. “But he still sends me cards on my birthday and at Christmas. All I want is to see him one time. To know he’s all right. Someone at an occult shop I went to gave me Mr. Gregory’s name and said he could help me.”
    â€œAs I explained to you, Mrs. Archer, your son is no longer the young man you remember,” Nick said.
    Her sweet features hardened to a resolve Jazz could understand, even if she knew it wouldn’t work on Nick. Her Cossack vampire was too stubborn. “I realize he might not be like the vampires in movies and on TV, but I also know he wouldn’t be the monster so many are like. Present company excepted.” She flushed in embarrassment.
    Nick smiled. “No problem. But there’s also the question of your safety.”
    â€œI’ll sign anything you’d like absolving you of any liability; just, please, find him for me. Let me talk to him. Let me see he’s all right.”
    Nick and Jazz exchanged glances.
    She isn’t going to give up and better she hire you than someone who will take her money and do nothing or worse, try to claim any vampire they can dig up is her son. And I’m here if there’s a way I can help.
    He nodded, easily reading her thoughts. He still took a few minutes before responding to Mrs. Archer.
    â€œI can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to find your son.” He held up his hand to halt her expected protest. “Yes, you told me everything you know about him, but some of the groups move around. I will start going out tonight and see what I can find. But you have to understand that he also has to agree to see you in a place of my choosing and I will be present for the meeting. I won’t leave you alone with him.”
    Jazz rested her fingertips on the woman’s bare arm, feeling the tissue-thin skin under her touch. “It’s the best way if you really want to see him,” she murmured.
    â€œHe wouldn’t hurt me. I know that.”
    â€œMy kind are predators, Mrs. Archer.” Nick’s voice suddenly turned harsh. “When we are turned we leave our old lives behind. Many times without a second thought.”
    She looked from Nick to Jazz then back to Nick again. “If I agree to your terms, will you find my son for me?”
    Nick looked as if he wanted to still refuse, but Jazz silently willed him to say yes.
    He looked as if the words he was about to say weren’t the ones he wanted to say. “I will find him and see if he is willing to meet you.”
    After the woman left, Jazz returned to the hallway to retrieve her funnel cake and Diet Coke. A few words warmed up the cake and added ice to her Coke.
    â€œObviously Rex wasn’t on the boardwalk.” Nick slipped the check into his desk drawer and settled back in his chair.
    â€œâ€No, but his influence was there. No one wanted to talk to me about Willie.” She perched on the chair Mrs. Archer recently vacated. “Most of them are convinced the slippers ate him. Sure, they’re garbage disposals at best, but they’d never eat a Wereweasel. Even they have their