Seduced By Your Spell

In book stores February 24th, 2009

A Romantic Times Top Pick!! 

½

"SEDUCED BY YOUR SPELL is a wild ride through the streets of London where people are not who they seem to be; spells and magic are the order of the day, and love is being pushed away by two very needy souls. Mystery surrounds Jasper, as well as the ladies of Lavender House, but it also dominates the real reason why the girls are disappearing off the streets. There are some heated fantasy scenes between Jasper and Maddie, and a few real encounters which will have readers fanning themselves!

Readers of Lois Greiman will enjoy her latest passionate, adventurous novel. Don't miss SEDUCED BY YOUR SPELL."

--Jani Brooks, Romance Reviews Today

"Greiman grips readers with a tale of witches caught in a maelstrom of violence and passion. The pages fly by, sexual tension--both real and fantasized-- rises and surprise after surprise lead to the finale.. Greiman is a storyteller extraordinaire."
-- Kathe Robin

Chapter 1

“Lady Redcomb.” Lord Weatherby greeted Madeline with an affable smile, both hands extended, palms up.
Madeline Fallon smiled back and refrained from doing anything nasty. After all, she was only a witch in the most technical sense of the word. In actuality, she had always been quite a nice person. Soft spoken, gentle, and well-mannered. But what had that foolish tolerance gained her?
“You look most ravishing tonight,” Weatherby said and lifting her hands, brushed his lips across her knuckles.
Madeline smiled with demure femininity. Truthfully though, she was fully aware that she looked ravishing. She had looked ravishing since the day she had popped from the womb, perfectly coifed and immaculately groomed. Or so her sister was wont to say.
It was simply that Madeline failed to care.
Delicately waving her fan, she gazed, limpid eyed, over its lacy top at her admirer. He was probably not an unattractive fellow. Tall, wealthy and confident, Lord Weatherby was a man to draw a woman’s attention. Unfortunately, she was not drawn. Indeed, she wished quite desperately that he would go away. Wished, in fact, that she could skim her gaze across the cavernous ballroom in a fool-hearty attempt to find the one man she must ignore.

“Lord Weatherby,” Madeline fluttered her fan and gave him her most beguiling smile. “You flatter me.”
“Not at all.” He preened a smile and leaned a half an inch closer. “You are, very possibly, the most ravishing woman in this room.”
Madeline blushed modestly and allowed herself a fleeting glance to the left, but Jasper Reeves had not yet arrived at Lady Sedum’s annual ball. Indeed, he was probably doing what he did best: scheming like a mad Frenchman, and all the while planning to give the most harrowing missions to other members of the coven. Faye perhaps. Or Shaleena.
Madeline stifled a snarl of frustration. Snarling was, presumably, considered somewhat uncouth at posh soirees.
“And therefore the most sought after,” added Weatherby.
“Hardly that, my lord,” Madeline demurred, remembering her companion’s presence and raising the frilly fan to cover her peaked chin. Just the carefully-pigmented bow of her full upper lip would show. Which made her wonder who the genius was who decided women should carry fans. The lacy accessories were quite indispensable, able to hide a hundred emotions while conveying just as many. Or, in a pinch, they made decent weapons if delivered with panache and
a reasonable amount of force to a man’s exposed trachea. Then again, if handled properly--
Weatherby moved a little closer, brushing her knuckles with his. “Indeed, when I am near you I can think of little else but how you would look,” His eyes gleamed. “Au naturel.”
Madeline caught her breath audibly and opened her eyes wide as if embarrassed.
But annoyance would more adequately describe her feelings. Dammit. Had the conversation slithered so far in that lascivious direction? If she wished to avoid his attentions, which she most certainly did, despite the fact that she fully intended to become quite scandalous, she was going to have to pay better attention, or employ the fan. The idea was irritatingly tempting, but she only fluttered her would-be weapon with lady-like precision.
“My Lord, I am quite shocked!” she said and glanced to the right, looking for someone more suitable with which to become outrageous. She hated to delay any longer; she had already wasted too much time pining over someone she would never have, someone who would never return her affections. But surely she could find someone more appealing than Weatherby to begin her life as an easy lady-bird.
Her companion laughed. The sound rumbled through the vast, buzzing chamber.
“Are you indeed? Tell me, my lady, how long were you wed?”
It was time to move on, Madeline realized, before the conversation became any more involved, before he inquired about other issues she had no intention of addressing.. Lowering her eyes, she made certain she looked soft and feminine and mournful. It was a fair performance, considering her dearly departed husband had never actually existed.
“I fear my sweet William succumbed to consumption well before his time,” she murmured.
Weatherby shifted his hand up her arm. It was bare. Madeline didn’t favor the long, kid gloves oft worn by the ladies of the ton, for she was a tactile creature, able to ‘feel’ as much as she could see.
Lord Weatherby, she mused, ‘felt’ irritating.
“It is rumored,” He gave her a smoldering look, designed, she assumed, to make her smolder. “, that your bridegroom died before the two of you were truly,” He twirled a finger into a ringlet that had been designed to look as if it had somehow accidentally escaped the confinement that so artfully captured the others. “Joined.”
Madeline managed another modest blush, letting it pinken her cheeks but not her ears. She had heard the rumors, of course. Indeed, she had initiated most of them herself. Few things were, after all, what they seemed. The idea that she was British, for instance. Or the ridiculous notion that she was normal,or wished to be.
Indeed, she would give much to possess her sister’s dynamic powers. But while Ella had been gifted with seemingly infinite abilities, Madeline had been granted little more than a visage that drew men like fruit flies. A parade of foolish dandies that must be brushed away at every turn.
And all the while she had worked like a conniving mule to achieve even a modicum of what Ella could do in her sleep. But perhaps that was changing.
“I’ve embarrassed you,” Weatherby said, and raising his hand, brushed his knuckles, seemingly inadvertently, across her nipple en route to her inflamed face. “My apologies.” His tone was raspy. “I had no wish to make you uncomfortable. Indeed,” He stroked her cheek. “I’ve a desire to make you so much more than comfortable.” He raised a manly brow. “Ecstatic even.”
Madeline refrained from laughing. Why did men forever believe sex was what every woman secretly desired above all else? It was a ridiculous notion. True, she herself had never actually experienced connubial bliss. Or bliss of any other sort come to that, unless one considered the relationship a woman could engender with a truly fine chocolate. Regardless, she tended to believe the male of the species was wont to overemphasize the act of copulation. It was, after all, only one of many bodily functions, several which could be relatively enjoyable if--
But in that instant Madeline felt a too-familiar flash of electricity and knew in that place where she kept her powers that Jasper Reeves had arrived. Something stirred restlessly inside of her. Something feral and impatient and sharp. Something she herself had awakened. But she controlled her erratic heartbeat and allowed herself a momentary glance toward the door.
Lord Gallo stood solemn and silent, dressed to perfection in white breeches and
a charcoal tailcoat that hugged his tight waist like a lover’s embrace. He was not a particularly tall man, but his careful, military bearing made one forget that fact. And though most were unaware that he possessed the hard thighs and muscled chest more oft found on a street fighter than a pampered peer of the realm, there was something about him that turned heads and caused feverish whispers. His aged-whisky eyes seemed older than his years demanded, and his hair, dark and curling, brushed lovingly across the dusky hue of his southern-clime skin.
Madeline felt a little breathless at the sight of him, but she eased her gaze away, pushing it smoothly back to Weatherby. “My Lord, you are quite bold,” she murmured and felt Reeves’ attention fall softly on her face. He was watching her, she realized, but knew far better than to think the cool-headed director of Les Chausettes would show interest. Still, she couldn’t seem to put him out of her mind, her dreams. Why was that? she wondered. She could have her choice of men. Indeed, she intended to do just that, for Les Chausettes had made her not only wealthy, but titled and learned as well.
“Too bold?” Weatherby asked, and with his hand hidden between their bodies, swept his knuckles across her nipple again. She stifled a dark flush of irritation. “Or not bold enough?”
“My Lord!” she gasped and stepped abruptly back. It was then that she felt the electricity again. A bright flash of something from Reeves. But she knew better than to mistake it for any sort of personal interest. One must not forget that he was the guardian of Les Chausettes, paid to keep the sisters productive and safe. After most of a decade with the coven, however, Madeline no longer wished for safety. Not from the world, and not from him. But he had made his disinterest abundantly clear, and since she was not totally without pride, she would not badger him, would not beg for his attentions like a fishwife hawking her wares.
No. She had finally learned her lesson; she would find another. Many others perhaps. Men who adored her, who showered her with attention, with gifts, with praise. Maybe even men who made her laugh.
After all these years she was finally over Reeves. Done with him. Through pining and dreaming and fantasizing.
So what would be the harm in toying with him she wondered, and against her better judgment, indeed against her own principles, she crafted a shadowy image and quietly slipped it into Reeves’ mind. It was vague, misty. The faintest suggestion of Weatherby and her together. Unclothed and, She sensed Reeves moving toward her and stifled a smile. Oh, it wasn’t as if he wanted her for himself. Hardly that. But the idea of one of his carefully trained Chausettes flaunting herself made him all but--
“My Lady! Thank heavens I’ve found you!”
Her thoughts were torn asunder as a man tugged at her sleeve.
She turned, startled to find Bertram Wendell at her elbow. He bobbed a greeting, but his florid face was not glowing with friendly bonhomie as it always did when he chided her for wearing her dancing slippers too thin. As it did when he bent over his workbench, plying his trade.
“Mr. Wendell,” she said, shocked by the worry on his face, by the sweat that soaked his simple tunic. He crunched his tattered slouch hat fretfully in his hands, looking old and harried amidst the foolish foppery of the ton.
“Who is this?” Weatherby demanded.
But Madeline didn’t turn toward him, though the cobbler dashed a worried glance toward the other.
“Mr. Wendell,” She brought his attention back to her and reached for his hand. Feelings struck her like lightning: terror, dread, worry as sharp as a blade. “Whatever is amiss?”
His eyes, deep and dark, turned back to her. “It’s my Marie!”
“Marie! No!” If asked, Maddy couldn’t have explained exactly how she knew what had happened. But she felt the panic, sensed the horror. Or maybe, maybe she saw the story in the old man’s eyes. “How long has she been gone?”
“She failed to return home last night,” he rasped.
“Where-”
“Good heavens!” Weatherby’s tone was rife with annoyance. “Why are you bothering the lady with your troubles, man?” he asked, but in that instant Jasper Reeves arrived at her side.
“Lady Redcomb,” he said and sketched a bow. His costume was immaculate, his expression impassive, but Madeline had no time to play at elegance.
“Mr. Wendell’s daughter has gone missing,” she said.
For one sparkling moment their gazes met, but Jasper shifted his smoothly away, settling on the cobbler. “Missing?” His tone was cadenced, just short of bored. “Surely not.”
“Aye,” Bertram said. “She drove the dog cart to Islington the morning past. I had no wish to send her alone, but she assured me all would be well. She laughed at my worries. Said,” He winced, remembering. “Said a well-turned ankle could do as much as a tankard to improve the tanner’s--”
“How old is the chit?” Weatherby asked.
Bertram sent him a hunted glance. “Barely eight and ten. I knew better than to let her go alone, but when she smiles I cannot seem to--”
“A pretty miss, then?” Weatherby said.
Bertram crushed his hapless hat again. “She’s got her mother’s dimples.” He said the words with a quiet reverence that seemed to steal the very breath from the room, but when Reeves spoke, his tone was unaffected.
“I assume you’ve notified the proper authorities.”
The old man rushed his gaze from one face to another. “In truth, the news seemed of little interest to them.”
“Which is as it should be,” Weatherby said. “The girl probably spent the night in some,”
Madeline flashed her gaze to him and he caught himself.
“friend’s home,” he finished, but his tone suggested more.
Bertram shook his head vehemently. “She wouldn’t allow me to worry so.
She’s headstrong, aye. But she knows I can’t live,” He paused, his voice cracking, his eyes imploring Madeline again. “I thought perhaps you could help, my lady.”
“Lady Redcomb?” Weatherby laughed. “Whatever made you think such a thing?”
“Surely the authorities will come to your assist once they realize the seriousness of the situation,” Jasper said, but Maddy turned her attention on him, letting her emotions storm through, letting him feel the truth.
“Bertram is a friend,” she said.
Jasper held her gaze for an elongated instant, then gave her a carefully patronizing smile and turned smoothly toward Weatherby.
“Well, perhaps woman’s intuition is just the thing that is needed here.”
“Lord Weatherby, it is said you’ve a fair team of bays to carry your phaeton.”
The baron raised his brow and his ire in gentlemanly unison. “Fair? To whom have you been speaking? Some inebriated houseboy who has never laid eyes on a horse in his life?”
Reeves gave him a jaded glance as he made his way toward the buffet table.
“Sir Exter seems to believe your beasts capable of matching his sorrels if the former were well rested.”
“Sir Exter wouldn’t know a thoroughbred from a thimble if he--” Weatherby began, but Madeline tugged Bertram away from the fray, urging him to a quiet corner of the room.
“Lord Gallo is correct. The authorities will surely--” she began, but
Bertram held up a leathery hand.
“I am not a wealthy man, my lady,” he said. His eyes were a pale, winter blue, set deep in a face seared by years and troubles. “But what I have I offer you.”
She felt his pain in the pit of her being. Felt it like an ulcer, mirroring the agony she had felt not so many years before when Ella had been taken. Taken and tortured.
But even from this distance she could sense Jasper’s disapproval. Les
Chausettes did not choose their own missions. Their tasks were appointed by some unknown committee. Indeed, no one outside the secretive commission could know of their powers. It was their foremost rule, set in stone, cemented in tragedy.
Yet here was this man, a good man, an honest man. A man who had known more than his share of sorrows. He stood before her, his soul as tattered as his hat, begging for help. But she dare not admit her gifts. Dare not compromise her coven.
“I fear I can do nothing for you,” she said. “You must return home.
Surely by morning she will have--”
“She’s my life,” he said. “The very air I breathe.” His voice was
quiet, almost drowned in the intensity of his feelings.
Madeline felt herself wince, but steeled her resolve. She couldn’t take the risk. For her own sake as well as for the others. “I know she is, Bertram.”
Her tone sounded trite and worthless to her own ears, but she continued on, a wintery shadow of the woman she wished to be. “She will surely return though.
I am certain of--”
“Something dreadful has happened.” His voice was low and deep, shivering across her senses like a eerie note on a silent night.
And he was right. She knew it, felt it, but she laid her hand on his arm, placating, lying. “All will be well. You’ll see. But if she does not return by--”
“She has always admired you,” he said and straightened slightly so that he exceeded her height by a few scant inches. His hands looked large and red, bisected by a thousand dark, wayward lines as he squeezed his hat harder. His balding pate shown in the golden lamplight.
Madeline’s chest hurt.
“Said you were not like the other fine ladies who stopped by our shop. Said you had a heart as lovely as your countenance.”
“Mr. Wendell,” She felt breathless, lost. “I cannot--”
“You can,” he said, and suddenly she realized the truth.
He knew what she was. Knew, and asked anyway.
 

Coming in 2009

Faeries Gone Wild

• Coming June 2009 written with New York Times bestselling author Mary Janice Davidson and with authors Michele Hauf and Leandra Logan 

MARYJANICE DAVIDSON “Tall, Dark and Not So Faery”

Scarlett is not your typical pint-sized faery. At six feet, four inches tall, she’s an unlikely candidate for a match made in heaven. But when she ventures to Cannon Falls, Minnesota, on royal orders to survey its extraordinary residents, she stumbles upon the one man who just may measure up to size…

LOIS GREIMAN “Pixie Lust”

William Timber is a cutthroat developer who refuses to let a few trees come between him and his next million. But when Avalina—a sparkling faery charged to protect all things green—comes to town, William is forced to choose between life as he knows it and the unknown reaches of his heart.

MICHELE HAUF “Dust Me, Baby, One More Time”

A librarian by day and a tooth faery by night, Sidney has absolutely no time to find Mr. Right. Until she flies smack dab into sexy, sun-bronzed Dart Sand, a man who makes her wings a-flutter…and whose allure could get her banished from the Mortal Realm.

LEANDRA LOGAN “A Little Bit Faery”

Tia is mystified when she strikes out on the Luna faery singles scene, in spite of her hourglass curves and vivacious charm. Then she takes off for Manhattan and lands on the doorstep of a steamy firefighter who sets her soul on fire—and shares a strong connection to her secret past.

One Hot Mess

• Chrissy McMullen's 5th adventure coming March 24th 2009 

Review
“Sexy…sassy…An entertaining series.” —Mystery Scene

“For the Janet Evanovich fans who are craving a protagonist similar to Stephanie Plum.” —CurledUp.com


In southern California it’s raining crime—and psychologist Christina McMullen could use an umbrella. Her clients are crazy, her on-again-off-again relationship with LAPD lieutenant Jack Rivera has just started heating up again, and now Rivera’s womanizing dad has come calling—asking Chrissy to investigate a mysterious death that might haunt his next campaign: for president of the United States. Soon Chrissy is investigating not one “accidental” death, but two—until she stumbles on a trail of bodies littering Senator Rivera’s distinguished career. As she untangles a web of high-stakes lies, Chrissy believes that she’s found the secret to a serial killer’s underground campaign. The killer has a list, a motive, and the perfect disguise—the only question is: who’s next?

Relax and Read Zone