Jinx High: A Diana Tregarde Investigation

Fay Harper looks like any other teenage girl—any other Queen Bee, that is. She’s blond, and beautiful, and very, very popular—the kind of popular that attracts boys like honey. Fay and her gang take a lot of risks, but so far they’ve managed to get away with everything. It’s as if they are magically protected. Summoned to Tulsa by an old friend whose son has fallen in with Fay’s crowd, Diana Tregarde, practicing witch and successful romance novelist, quickly finds herself in hot water. The new girl at school, Monica Carlin, has come under sorcerous attack, but Diana cannot identify, or stop, the power-wielder. To make matters worse, there is an ancient being sleeping under Tulsa, a being who might be woken by the magic battles taking place in the city. What will happen then, even Diana cannot predict.

Locus on Children of the Night

“A very enjoyable thriller with a sense of humor."

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One Buffie Gentry pounded the steering wheel of her brand-new Miata, and cursed—though what she really felt like doing was crying her eyes out like a little kid. It couldn’t have stalled. Daddy had just picked it up today. There was nothing wrong with anything, it had a full tank of gas— But it had died way out here on 101st, and now it wasn’t responding at all. And this was a spooky place to get stranded past midnight. You might as well be in West Texas instead of less than twenty miles from downtown Tulsa. There wasn’t anything out here but cows and cicadas, mysterious shadows, and an awful lot of dark. Visions of the Rainy-day Rapist and the Southside Strangler kept popping into her head, making her look over her shoulder as she tried to get the damn car started one more time. No luck. And now the tears did come; she sobbed in what she told herself was frustration but felt more like fear. God, this is like the classic slasher-movie setup, girl stuck out on a deserted road at three a.m.—next thing I’ll see is a guy in a hockey mask— She shivered and told herself not to be stupid. There was a gas station not a half mile behind her—it was closed, but there was a phone there. She could call the auto club. That was why Daddy had a gold card with them. Resolutely—though it took every bit of courage she had—she left the protection of the car and started the long trudge back toward the Kerr/McGee station. But she kept seeing things out of the corner of her eye, things that vanished when she looked straight at them, and before long she wasn’t walking, she was running. She’d never been so grateful to see a gas station in her life. She fumbled the last quarter out of her purse—this was one of those phones where you couldn’t use a charge card, and you had to put a quarter into it even to call 911. She was just glad she hadn’t dumped all her change, back at the mall, when Fay Harper had sneered at her for putting cash in the liver-transplant box. Fay had made her so damn mad—just because she’d beaten the senior out on the Teenage America finals, that was no reason for Fay to imply she’d gotten that far by sleeping with one of the judges— Well, neither of them made it to the regionals, so there. Buffie just wished Fay hadn’t said what she did, when Buffie had retorted with the truth nobody ever said out loud. “You should know, Fay Harper. You get everything you want by sleeping around and passing out nose candy.” And Fay had said something horrible, whispered it in Buffie’s ear. So horrible Buffie couldn’t remember exactly what it was—just some kind of threat. Or promise. Because it had ended with—“And when you see what’s coming for you, remember I sent it.” Buffie shoved her coin into the slot with hands that shook so hard she could hardly dial the number, and prayed for a quick answer. “God damn it.” Sharon LeeMar looked at the phone resentfully. It would ring, now, when she’d just gotten a new coat of polish on her nails. It was probably nothing; some drunk, like last night, wanting the auto club to pull the car out of the ditch where he’d put it. Or some stupid kid who’d missed her ride home from some rich-bitch party, and wanted them to provide her with one. Well, there was a way around that. It wasn’t like she hadn’t done it before. She hit the button with her elbow. “Big A Auto Club,” she said. “Will you hold?” And before the caller could say a word, she hit the hang-up button. Buffie stared at the phone in gut-wrenching shock, unable to believe she was hearing a dial tone. “No—” she whispered, a panic that she knew was irrational starting to take over. “No, you can’t—” She scrabbled desperately in her purse, hoping for one more quarter. Nothing. With a sob, she upended the whole thing on the pavement, pawing through a tangled mess of makeup, jewelry, credit cards, and odd bits of paper, praying for a quarter, a dime, anything— Then she heard the sound; a kind of growl. And looked up. And the scream died in her throat before she could utter it. “What?” Derek Kestrel half closed his lids against the wind that was drying his eyes, and gathered breath for another bellow. “I said,” Deke yelled, trying to make himself audible over the bellow of the TransAm’s engine and the painfully howling guitars of Motley Crüe, “I can’t hear you!” Fay Harper shook her head, her blond shag whipping wildly about her cheekbones. Her hair looked like spun frost under the fluorescent streetlamps, her pale skin glowed in the moonlight, and her eyes were turned to crimson embers by the reflections from the panel lights. “I can’t hear you!” she screamed back, turning the volume up another notch until the TransAm’s floor panels shook from the bass. Deke sighed and gave up, leaning back into the padded headrest of his seat. It was custom-leather upholstered, of course, in deep burgundy to match the rest of the car; Fay Harper was never seen in less than the very best. Nothing was going to compete with those speakers. Nothing natural, anyway. A B-52 at full throttle, maybe. Hanging out with Fay was hazardous to the eardrums. He wished now he’d brought earplugs or something. First had been the concert, front-row seats, now it was Fay’s ass-kicking stereo; he was going to be deaf before the night was over. Then again, hanging out with Fay Harper was hazardous to a lot more than the eardrums. The TransAm tore down Memorial, Fay daring anything to pull into her path. Deke squinted against the headlights of the oncoming cars, assessed his blood-alcohol level by how fuzzy they looked, and came up with an answer the Parental Unit wouldn’t like. It was a good thing his dad couldn’t see him now. Hell, it was a good thing his dad hadn’t seen the concert! While Deke hadn’t shared anything but the bottle Fay’d brought, grass had been the mildest of the recreational pharmaceuticals making the rounds tonight. Funny. Dad may have been a wild-eyed hippie back when he was Deke’s age, but he didn’t know the half of what went on these days. Deke said the word “concert,” and he could almost see nostalgic visions of Woodstock drifting through his dad’s mind in a sunshine-golden, artistically backlit haze. The Summer of Love. Peace, pop. Like, it’s a happening. Oh, wow. He laughed out loud, and Fay gave him a funny look, then cranked the stereo up the last notch. His whole body throbbed and vibrated with the song. He could feel the amplifier overheating— Or maybe the heat he felt was the effect of her hand sliding up his leg. There was a drunken howl from the back seat, and Sandy Foster, football bohunk extraordinaire, leaned forward and handed them both cold beers, after throwing his own empty through the open T-top. “Kick ass, Fay!” he shouted, as Fay gave him a smile that dazzled in the hellfire glow from the instrument panel, and a long, wet kiss in exchange for the beer. She never once took her foot off the gas, but she never swerved, and she hadn’t missed a light yet. There was a flash of headlights in the left lane as a couple of hopped-up metal-heads in a chop-top Couga

About the Author

Mercedes Lackey began writing fiction while working for American Airlines. In addition to her many novels, she has written lyrics for and recorded several albums of fiction folk songs, which have been distributed through Firebird Arts & Music. Lackey's longest-running series, beginning with Arrows of the Queen, details the adventures of the Heralds of Valdemar. Lackey's other series include Bardic Voices; the Elementals; the Halfblood Chronicles (first volume: The Elvenbane); Elves on the Road, which includes Tor's Burning Water and its sequels; and the Obsidian Trilogy, also published by Tor, which begins with The Outstretched Shadow.Lackey often teams up with both her fellow masters of fantasy, such as Andre Norton and Anne McCaffrey, and talented newer writers Rosemary Edghill. Married to artist and sometime co-author Larry Dixon, Lackey, who was born in Chicago, lives near Tulsa, Oklahoma.

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