by DC Thome
He propped his head on a hand. “Hunter let me, you know…”
I do, but you’re annoying me. “Fuck me?”
Spur’s eyes lit up. “You had the most intense climax I’ve ever given you—or any woman.”
“You’re saying it was all you.”
“You’re the one who, quote, ‘wasn’t there.’ Someone had to make it happen.”
“What about Hunter?”
“When I was done, he”—Spur pumped his free fist up and down—“all over your boobs. I told him you like that. You were ecstatic.”
He was right, I do like that. I’ve been told that I’m not necessarily supposed to. But my motto is “The more goop, the better.”
Turning away from him, I touched my breasts. “Did you like it when he did that?”
“It was hot. I don’t think I’ll ever get the image out of my head.”
I glanced at him over my shoulder. “Even when I’m four hundred and forty years old, and all shriveled, with a crooked nose and warts and green skin?”
“Um…sure.”
He looked surprised that I’d even brought up the notion of us being together for the long haul. Hell, I was surprised that I’d brought it up. Spur was a dependable juice producer, but I’d never considered him marriage material. In fact, I’d never considered any man marriage material. Marriage simply seemed unfair; too many men would be denied access to my Calabrian lusciousness. A day never went by without my thanking the Goddess for giving me bouncy C-cups and deadly hips. And through the years, not a small number of men had thanked her for the same reasons—plus my willingness to share, though I do admit that in each instance, I’d also gotten something out of the deal.
Warlocks are notoriously self-centered in the bedroom. Me-me-me all the time, so a lady has to work hard to get any level of fulfillment. They do have a few good characteristics, though: They’re horny and promiscuous and don’t complain much if you kick them to the curb. I meshed with Spur better than most of my past lovers, but deep down, I wasn’t thinking about the long term. He was just the least undesirable choice I’d found on Douchecanoe’s limited menu since I’d moved there a year before. I knew all along that it was just a matter of time until I’d get tired of his pork chop special and go looking for another diner.
He pulled me back onto my back and walked his fingers across my boobs, which was simultaneously hot and creepy, considering what he’d just told me about the night before and the fact that I hadn’t showered yet. My gaze drifted away from him to the alarm clock.
“Fuck!”
“I knew you’d come around.”
I lurched from the bed. “No—I mean, ‘Fuck,’ as in ‘Fuck, I have an appointment in fifteen minutes!’”
Fourteen minutes later, I emerged from the bathroom with my hair still wet from a hasty shower and wearing a slutty lacy black sleeveless top and miniskirt thinly disguised as business-appropriate with a curve-hugging blazer.
Spur looked up from his phone. “Hey, baby…now that’s what I’m—yeek!”
I shot a bolt of hot energy into the sheet that was draped over his lap. “You don’t get to call me ‘baby.’ Or hang around my house all day. If you’re still here when I get back, my aim will be a lot better.”
With a nod and a flick of my wrist, I transported to the hallway outside my office in the charming little Douchecanoe professional building.
I shook my head upon seeing the plaque on the door, which only aggravated my hangover. Not the head shaking part. The plaque itself: “Prudenzia La Strega, Marital Therapy.”
***
Okay, I can just hear you: This horny wench is a fucking marriage counselor? Or maybe I’m just hearing myself, because that’s exactly what I thought when I found out.
Technically, I’m a healer. Specifically a shifter healer or “whisperer,” which means shifters who are badly injured or sick depend on me to make them whole again. In my case, though, “whole” was a relative term, because while I could, say, magically glue a beaver’s severed tail back to its body, I’d inevitably glue it on backward. The tail would function normally, so every time the beaver wanted to give his buddies a slap warning, the tail would lift him into the air and belly flop the beaver into the water. Funny to see. Not so funny if you’re the beaver. And it wasn’t just a beaver thing. You don’t want to know the mayhem that ensues when you reconnect quills facing toward a hedgehog’s flesh instead of outward, the way Goddess intended.
Hey, I tried. For years. A head full of fire-red hair is the sign of a healer. A true healer, like every La Strega female dating back two thousand years. My hair is pitch black, with a few reddish streaks. The only girl born to my mother, I had big shoes to fill. Instead, I found myself wandering a road less traveled.
Not being able to find my special purpose led to a dreadful Goth period in which I moped a lot and lashed out at the world for any reason—and for no reason at all. The clothes were great—who doesn’t look hot wearing black lipstick, a waist cincher and a mesh halter? During this time, I became well-acquainted with sex and Black Magic cocktails—honey mixed with charcoal, beet juice, a spritz of lime and a shit-gallon of Sinister Purpose™ vodka. When my special purpose finally presented itself, I stopped moping and lashing, but I saw no need to give up booze and boys.
I say “presented itself” because my actual purpose turned out to be something that no one in their right mind would go looking for. My parents’ shitty marriage kept getting shittier as I passed from my sullen teen years to my Terrible Twenties. My dad moved out, and the main topic of conversation with my mom thereafter had to do with how much of a dick my dad was. But while my dad may have sucked as a husband, he was a decent father, so I liked him. I could tell that my mom, with her crimson locks, was disappointed in my pathetic healing abilities, but she worked hard not to show it. “I’m sure,” she’d say with a forced smile, “that someday what you do just might come in handy.” I now know that they both might have been more supportive of me if they hadn’t been so miserable themselves.
And then, one day the dam broke. It was at the party celebrating my cousin Angelica’s initiation into the Society of Healers, which was horrible to begin with and got even horribler by my parents breaking into a hell-shattering argument about whether the shrimp sauce was too spicy.
Drawing upon my experience as a lasher, I smashed my hors d’oeuvre plate on the edge of the table and laid into them. I mean, screaming and swearing and sweating gold magic sparks over how they’d better get their shit together. Mom’s face turned redder than her hair, and Dad stiffened up like a vampire at a minute to sunrise. When I finally shut the fuck up, no one at the party said a word—and neither Mom nor Dad took a breath—until they just fell into each other’s arms, for Goddess’ sake, sobbing and blubbering about how sorry they were and how they were going to make things up to each other.
And that was it. No one said anything to me about the tawdry display until a week later, when I got a visitation from the witch with the Kylie Minogue wardrobe, Queen Baba Yaga.
I slumped in a chair in my reconciled parents’ living room with my hand on my chin and my raven bangs covering my eyes and started thinking of ways I could insult the Frankensteinesque shoulder pads on her multicolored over-the-butt double-knit sweater.
“I understand that you’ve made a breakthrough,” she said.
You’re a dipshit. I twirled my hair.
“I heard about what happened at your cousin’s ceremony,” she said. “The ability to inspire magical couples—witches, shifters, ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and all the others—into treating each other with dignity and respect is something of great value.”
“Right,” I said. “What the world needs is someone who can berate and bully people into not being dicks.”
She had a little smile on her lips, but I think she was just trying not to laugh at me. “If that’s how you want to phrase it. How would you like a chance to see if you really have a special talent? You would start ou
t in a small place—after you’ve had some therapist training. And if it works out…”
I really wanted to say something about those shoulder pads, but what she was offering was better than anything else I had going. And so I said yes. Or maybe it was more like, “Why the fuck not?” Anyway, four years later I got this assignment in Douchecanoe, the boondocks to the boondocks.
And, to tell you the truth, I wasn’t at all under the impression that I’d done anything in the months since to distinguish myself.
Now here I was, trying to appear competent as the first clients of the day slouched into my office: A bridge troll and a banshee. Not a great combination, but I could see the attraction. He was short, hairy and Goddessawful ugly, but he was also steadily employed in the lucrative field of toll-taker. And with her red eyes, pointed teeth, gnarled hands and rotted green see-through dress, she was far easier on the eyes than your average female troll.
“You must be Mr. and Mrs. Gruff.”
I extended my hand, but they stared at it as if it were a poisonous snake.
The troll wiped his nose on his sleeve and said, “Name’s Billy G. Gruff. The missus is Ashley. Goes by her maiden name, Banshee. Ashley Banshee.”
“Okay. Billy and Ashley it is. Please, sit down.”
Ashley drifted across the room, her dress and impossibly long hair blowing in a steady breeze whose source I couldn’t determine. She settled at one end of the couch I’d gotten from a bankrupt funeral home during my Goth years—a high tufted-back banquette bench with demonic medieval-looking black wings protruding from the ends. Billy G. waddled to the opposite end and perched on the arm.
I sat across from them and smiled. “How can I help you?”
“We gotta problem,” he said.
“I figured as much,” I answered. “Would you like to take turns telling me, from your own perspective, what’s going on?”
“The problem,” he said, “is that we been married a hunnert and twenty-two years, and in all that time, she ain’t never spoke a civil word to me.”
I picked up a folder from the coffee table between us and leafed through the couple’s file. “Is that how you see it, Ashley?”
Her head jerked toward me, her eyes flared, and she opened her mouth. Out came the most horrifying shriek I’d ever heard. If you had a chalkboard as deep as the Grand Canyon and scraped it with the nails of ten thousand Freddy Krueger gloves, you’d produce a sound about one-tenth as awful as her voice. As she punctuated her accusations—or, at least, what I assumed were accusations—by pointing a finger with a ten-inch nail at her husband, my eyes nearly popped out of my head. My stomach clenched. The files spilled to the floor.
Billy G. looked at me and said, “Welcome to my world.”
I took a breath, recovered the files and straightened them until my composure returned. “Excuse me,” I said with a smile, “but I have to—Abigail, I know you’re here. And I know you heard that, so could you please give me a hand?”
Claws click-clacked briskly from behind my desk toward—and then right past—me as the ball of tangled white fur that served as my familiar slid across the terrazzo and smacked into the wall. As usual, Abigail simply shook off the collision and bounded toward me with her tongue lolling. The dog tag hanging from her collar jingled as she sat before me, panting and wagging her tail at a thousand whacks a minute.
Gruff the troll hopped up onto the back of the couch. “The hell is that thing?”
“This is my familiar, Abigail.”
“Abigail Barker,” she said in a know-it-all tone.
“She’s a cat,” I said, “albeit a goofy one.”
“I’m not a cat. Would a cat do this?” She turned to the troll. “Tell me to roll over.”
“Uh…roll over.”
Abigail rolled over. “See?”
“She’s gotta point,” Gruff said. “No cat would do that. That is definitely a dog.”
I gave my cat a gentle kick—just enough to get her to upright herself. “She’s also my translator. She understands all magical languages, including Banshee. Abigail, what did—”
“Abigail Barker.”
“Abigail Fucking Barker, you little shit, would you please—”
“She said he never listens.”
The troll dropped to the seat of couch and hopped around on the cushions. “How the hell is a man ’spose ta listen to that night and day, day and night for a hunnert and twenty-two years?”
I looked from Rumpelstiltskin to his better wraith. “Allow me to…” I snapped my fingers and a thick, battered tome hovered before me: The Healer’s Guide to Witches, Shifters and Other Magical Beings. “Good morning, guide,” I said. “Please turn to ‘banshees.’”
The pages flipped. I scanned the page the book had stopped on, then looked at the troll. “Billy,” I said, “you do know that your wife IS A FUCKING BANSHEE, RIGHT?”
Gruff stopped hopping. Ashley got paler. Abigail dropped to the floor and covered her ears with her paws.
“She is a banshee,” I continued. “Her fucking name is Banshee, for Goddess’ sake—and that shrieking—that’s what banshees do! You must’ve known that before you married her! I mean, HELLO!”
The troll’s eyes got big. “Well, yeah. When we was dating, I thought it was cute. But after a while…”
I got up and confronted him. “And when you were dating, were you short, hairy, nasty and foul-smelling?”
“Well, yeah. Of course.”
“And she accepted you for what you were?”
“I guess.”
“Then don’t you think you owe her the mutual courtesy to do the same?”
“I guess, if you put it that way.”
A soul-killing howl from—I’m guessing here—the pith of Ashley’s diaphragm forced me to clap my hand over my ears. “As for you,” I shouted, “I’m tired of listening to you, and I’ve only known you for, what, five fucking minutes! Goddess in a crotchless terry romper, that’s annoying. Dial it down a notch—or two or three, or even a hundred, for fuck out loud! It’s not gonna kill you.”
Gold sparks crackled from my fingertips, I was so mad. Figure it out, people! I crossed my arms and buried my hands against my body to avoid hurting anyone.
The howling stopped abruptly and the room was dead silent. This is always a tense moment, because even though it happens with every couple, I start to convince myself it’s a sign that my “special purpose” isn’t so special any more. But, then, Ashley sniffled and whimpered as greasy tears fell from her eyes. Billy G. skittered across the cushions and threw his arms around her.
“I’m sorry, baby.” He smoothed her hair; that weird wind kept blowing it out again, but he kept petting her. “I been under a lotta stress lately, what with all them consarned goats moving into the area.”
Ashley looked at him lovingly through the tears and uttered, in about the volume of a TV turned up to eleven during a shouting frenzy on a cable news show, a lilting wail that sounded kind of like tires screeching before two trucks smash into each other. They left clinging to each other without thanking me or even acknowledging my presence. For some reason, that always happens, too. I’ll send you the bill. I always think that because they never hear me say it anyway.
Maybe it has something to do with being in love.
Abigail jumped up on my leg and panted.
“Whatever she said,” I said, “it sure had an effect on him.”
“She said she’ll try to do better, that she only wants him to be happy. And that she’ll suck his teeny little trollapalooklet more.”
“Okay, I didn’t need to know that last part.”
“You asked.” Abigail jumped onto the couch. “Now scratch behind my ears.”
The gold sparks had ceased, so I sat next to her and did. “Another case closed, Abigail,” I said. “I don’t know how I do it.”
And I wasn’t kidding.
***
No sooner had the now-happy couple left than they were replaced by a frant
ic wall lizard. Actually, it was a shifter named Camille Leone in her animal form. It was unusual for shifters to come to my office without first transmuting into humans. She and her husband, Paul, had been among my first clients in Douchecanoe. They had seemed pretty content when they last left my office, but today, Camille was beside herself. Even though I couldn’t properly heal a shifter of a hangnail, I could still communicate with them in their animal forms through telepathy.
“Dr. Pru, you have to help me! It’s my husband. Something terrible has happened to him!”
“Is he hurt?”
“I think so.”
I put my hand on the floor and let Camille run into my palm. “You can’t tell?”
“Well, I couldn’t really ask him, since he’s not moving. Or breathing.”
Great Goddess with her panties on fire! “Why did you come to me and not Brigid? You know I’m a lousy healer.”
“I know.” She looked down. “But whatever happened, it was when we were…” She blushed and looked away.
“Were what?”
“In the throes of…conjugal—”
“You were having sex?”
She nodded.
“As humans, or lizards?”
“Does it matter?”
“I don’t know. Just seemed like something to ask.” I put Camille on my right shoulder and turned to Abigail. “Get ahold of that bitch—”
“Already on it,” she said.
I raised my left arm, invoked the Goddess, and teleported to what I feared would be the scene of a tragedy.
***
Camille and I materialized next to an ancient rock wall along a curvy, hilly country road outside Douchecanoe. The surrounding oaks blanketed the area in deep, cool shade. The soothing whisper of the leaves made it difficult to believe that something violent could ever occur here. But there was Camille’s husband, Paul the wall lizard, on his back in the grassy ditch.
Camille turned white when a crow flapped down from the top of the wall and poked its beak at Paul’s tiny body.
“Back off, bird!” I shrieked, and sent a jolt of lightning at his feet. “Take one nibble of that reptile and it’ll be your last meal!”