Wicked Charms by Janet Evanovich Page B

meet you at the house.”
    “I might be home late,” I said. “I need to put together a menu for Ammon’s party. And I should get a head start on the baking.”

CHAPTER TWELVE
    Glo locked the shop door at four o’clock, hung the CLOSED sign in the window, and joined Clara and me in the back.
    “I’ve been doing research on demons,” Glo said, watching me roll out piecrust for the tarts. “I have a couple excellent anti-demon spells. We don’t want to be caught short without protection.”
    “I pretty much don’t believe in demons,” I said.
    “I believe in everything,” Glo said. “I’m a free-range believer. I even found some tests we can do on Ammon to prove his demonicness.”
    “I can’t see Ammon submitting to demon testing.”
    “Exactly, so I found a spell that will make him cooperative. It’s foolproof. I’m going to stop in at the Exotica Shoppe after work and get the ingredients.” Glo looked at the piecrust. “How many tarts do you have to make?”

    “Four hundred.”
    “Yowza. That’s a lot of tarts.”
    “I’ll make four different fillings. Plus I’ll have four large cookie trays, four large trays of miniature cupcakes, and a bananas Foster station.”
    “I can’t wait,” Glo said. “I love parties. I promised Broom he could come. I hope that’s okay.”
    “Sure. He can help sweep up afterward.”
    Glo left, and Clara packed up and left a half hour later. I stayed until five. I stored my tart shells, shoved my party menu into my tote bag, cut the lights, and locked up. I had my hand on the door handle of my car when I heard rustling behind me. I turned and saw Hatchet rushing at me. His eyes were crazy wide, his hair stuck out every which way, and his damp tights looked mostly dry but droopy. He had his sword in his hand.
    “Bitch wench!” he yelled at me. “How dare thee dunk Hatchet? Thee art a cowardly sow to attack Hatchet from behind. Prepare to have Hatchet smite thee!”
    Crap! I wrenched the door open, jumped into the car, slammed the door shut, and punched the lock button. Hatchet brought the blade of the sword down hard on the roof of the car and recoiled from the impact. I cranked the engine and roared away with Hatchet running after me. I lost him after a block and a half. My heartbeat returned to normal after three blocks. Lucky for Hatchet, he didn’t actually get to smite me, because Wulf wouldn’t have been happy. And ugly things can happen when Wulf isn’t happy.

    I walked into my house twenty minutes later. Diesel and Carl were already there. Cat was keeping his eye on them.
    “What’s new?” Diesel asked.
    “Had an incident with Hatchet. He tried to smite me, but I was too fast for him. What’s new with you?”
    “I have to pull the plug on someone on the West Coast, but I want to do a show-and-tell for you first.”
    “Pull the plug? Is that like whacking someone?”
    “No. ‘Whacking’ would imply death. This is more like cutting off someone’s electricity because they didn’t pay their bill.”
    I thought this was a conversation I didn’t want to pursue. Sometimes you don’t want to know too much.
    We all went into the kitchen.
    “Can you cook at all?” I asked Diesel.
    “I can scramble an egg, make a sandwich, and open a beer bottle. I leave the fancy stuff to other people.”
    I was obviously one of those people who made the fancy stuff, so I pulled a couple chicken breasts and a bunch of root vegetables out of the fridge.
    “How serious was the Hatchet incident?” Diesel asked.

    “Hard to say. Serious enough to get my heart rate up. As it was, he put a big scratch in my car. Not that it matters.”
    “Do you know what caused him to attack you?”
    “I sort of knocked him off the launch and into the bay earlier today, and I think it ruined his hairdo.”
    Diesel grinned. “Nice.”
    I washed the vegetables and set them on the counter to chop. “So we’re one coin fragment and a map away from finding the stone. All that