Free Halfway Dead by Terry Maggert Page A

interesting tattoos that ranged up and down her left arm in a brilliant spray of colors; there were leaves, a vine, and berries in their autumn hues. It was an arresting display, made more interesting by the fact that it gave men and women alike an excuse to examine her more closely. Anna is not a shy, retiring blossom. The girl who began as a cute but pudgy brunette became something like a Balinese dancer, her frame muscular and erotic, and frankly, I was a bit disgusted that I hadn’t thought of it first. Anna took excellent care of her new body by smoking and drinking soda all day. She really was a dedicated athlete. When she wasn’t standing in front of the diner chugging the remains of her current can of pop, she was flicking a cigarette butt away with the kind of civic disdain that only really hot girls can get away with. Then, she would invariably enter the diner, smile at me, and sit down to eat three pancakes, eggs over light on top, and a side of syrup to dunk the whole mess into. Oh, and coffee. A bucket, if we had it, but a constant refill would work, too.
    I should probably mention that I’m almost certain Anna is a wood nymph or some other truly exotic creature. There are elements of her life that simply don’t add up, but I haven’t had an occasion to pin her down in conversation and ask her, rather pointedly, if she’s a creature of myth and legend, or just gifted with incredibly good genes. Yes, I’m a bit jealous. I don’t know how she maintains a winter tan, I don’t know how she eats . . . well, everything, and I cannot fathom why, of all things, she decided that the hula hoop was the key to her newfound legendary hotness. It’s a mystery.
    By the time I personally delivered Anna’s usual to her, she was on her third cup of coffee, chatting amiably with a bewildered older tourist who looked like he’d been thunderstruck. She was asking him a question about the pattern on his shirt—a hideous, but kitschy cool array of fish, canoes, and crossed paddles. I listened to him reply that he’d owned the shirt since 1967, and it was most likely polyester, but he couldn’t be sure. Anna cheerfully leaned over and lifted the well-worn tag from the collar to investigate, unintentionally giving the man a close-up view of her pert breasts. It was all quite a bit to take for the senior citizen, but he smiled in a bemused kind of way, sensing that Anna was just possessed with a relentless curiosity rather than being flirtatious.
    “And before you ask, young lady, I purchased it in Dayton, Ohio, and no, the store doesn’t exist. It burned down in the late 70s, well before you arrived on this planet.” His grin was a touch smug, but friendly, and he unconsciously straightened his collar with a delicacy that told me he liked his shirt just a little bit more now that Anna had fussed over it.
    As I slid the plate before her, I ventured a not-so-subtle question while the moment was right. “Yes, Anna, surely you must have been born in the 1990s, how could you possibly know such vintage clothing?”
    She wrinkled her nose in a nice try kind of gesture and began eating the pancakes like she’d just been released from a hunger strike.
    “Hmmph.” I raised a brow, pointed at her with mild threat, and went back to the kitchen. I’d grill her at some later time, but now I was certain she was magical in nature. I still said smart money was on her being a wood nymph, but I was open to other possibilities.
    My witchmark serves a couple of purposes. The first is the hair that grows from the scar. Every color is represented, and I use the individual strands as critical components of my offensive spells. I also use the hair when I need to bind something to myself. It’s more boring than it sounds, but after you’ve lost your house keys for the millionth time, you learn that magic can be put to work in unimaginative but useful ways. The second thing my witchmark does is act as a sort of early warning system.