Blood mingled with dirt as it oozed down Lucy’s arm. She didn’t notice the broken scab as she brushed a grimy hand across her sweat soaked forehead, leaving a smudge of mud behind. The pain was negligible. Lucy had more important things to think about.
      The casual observer might have suggested that Lucy was unhappy. The casual observer didn’t know the half of it.
      Violently, Lucy picked up her discarded shovel and stalked toward her clover green pickup truck. She jammed the metal into the pile of mulch that sat on the bed and pitched the smelly black stuff at her garden with all of the force she could muster.
      Whipchord muscles bulged under the effort and Lucy, bloody, muddy and bruised, looked nothing like the most powerful – the only – sorceress in Neith. She wore a stained white tank top with wide straps and didn’t care that it was drenched with sweat. Her cut-off shorts had a hole in the denim big enough to show whoever cared to know the color of her underwear.
      She spread mulch around the base of an oak sapling with more force than finesse. If her mother hadn’t been a Donovan, she would be dead.
      Lucy swore violently. She could sense the reporter coming down the drive. Not needing much effort to plaster on her fiercest scowl, she turned. She didn’t bother to put down the shovel and she didn’t deign to speak first.
      Hesitant in a way that is not the usual wont of the paparazzi, the little reporter slowed down as he approached. Now that he was here, now that he had found her, he was suddenly unsure of what to do. “Mrs. Belhor?”
      She didn’t acknowledge him.
      He rushed on.
      A camera flashed.
      Lucy missed the paparazzo’s first words as rage flowed through her sinews. “If you print that picture,” she said through gritted teeth. “I will turn you into a frog.”
      The pure malevolence in her voice overrode the reporter’s spiel and brought him to a stuttering halt. “…married to a demon?”
      “This is private property.”
      He had faced down serial killers, cornered alpha werewolves, and invaded the innermost sanctums of vampire hunters – men not known for their propensity for inviting strangers to tea. He paled. Sorceresses were a different kettle of fish entirely. Still, he didn’t flee.
      “You won’t call the police,” he hazarded. He had done his homework. “You hate the attention.”
      Her upper lip twisted. She was not in a good mood. “I don’t need the police,” she sneered. “I don’t even need magic.” She whistled.
      A pack of hellhounds answered her call.
      The reporter suddenly wasn’t sure that sticking around for an interview was such a great idea. He had plenty of material for an adequate article already.
      Big black dogs with fiery red eyes and flammable saliva harried the reporter and the cameraman as they fled the scene. They were well trained. No one was hurt.
      Lucy chuckled to herself at the irony – the hellhounds hadn’t even come from her “demon” husband. They’d been bred by a cousin.
      “Well, that’s an appropriate cap to a @^$ty day,” she muttered. “Being married to a demon has its drawbacks.”
      Her lips quirked into a sudden grin. There were perks, too.
      She had the bite marks on her arse to prove it.

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