* * *
I owned and managed the Sun Dance Pier. Locals called it “The Boogie” but on the license it’s ‘Boogie Beach Crab Shack.’ At sixteen, I started waiting tables, then moved to the bar. Now, I was way past that, but I looked hot and saw the whole situation, so I’ve been the owner/manager for the last ten years. People with the sight, the true sight, were hard to find. To be fair, I could have made a good living in Cassadaga, a town an hour away that catered to psychics and healers, the edge eyes and the full seers, but I enjoyed the sea, even the darker sides, so I played this hand. The longevity wasn’t promising, the last manager didn’t make it to fifty-five, but who knew. Well, somebody in Cassadaga did, but I didn’t plan to ask.
* * *
Heavy steps struck the pier, announcing Poseidon, who sported a long white-blond mane, a speedo, and my resultant inner wince. God complex, personified. Why he wouldn’t wear board shorts was beyond me.
* * *
“Patra! Still seeking Cleo?” His roar of laughter foretold of a lengthy night of mismanaged alchemy.
* * *
“Welcome back, Sea King, looking for your usual?”
* * *
“Indeed I am, and a side of beauties,” his wink made me smile.
* * *
“Just because we painted the town before doesn’t mean I’m on the menu tonight, but several merwomen are here. Go charm them; they’re in the mood to party.”
* * *
“On it.” With a squelch he walked toward the door and it shimmered, letting him access the magic pub.
* * *
I suppose the backstory would help. Boogie Beach was the lost soul of Florida’s beaches. Decent surf without the draw of Daytona, although we got their overflow, nor the intellectual panache of Cocoa and the Space Coast. Boogie, or Boogey as my magical patrons called it, had the distinction of being on, as in right the exact hell ON, the line between reality and extraordinary. I ran a pub on the doorway to everything. Shifters, witches, merpeople, the Greek contingent, you name it. If it drank, it showed up and I could see it. That’s my entire skill set. Finite. I couldn’t magic my way out of a tough spot. Wits and crossed fingers were my complete arsenal. For the most part, it’s an honor to be seen as belonging to both worlds, but magic was both light and dark. Someday, I’ll run into the wrong entity, and that’ll be it. In a nutshell, that’s why I didn’t have a kid. It’s not a risk I’d run, because darkness seized opportunities, had no boundaries, or gave any fucks, flying or otherwise. The sight was mutual; I saw them, they saw me. Ergo, running this life solo. Fewer people got hurt and I’m screwed no matter what.
* * *
C’est la vie.
* * *
“Patra! Ever find Cleo?” Pook’s giggle lapsed into a snort.
* * *
“Jeez, Pook, you need new material,” Bingo flapped his wings and leaned his beak forward to touch my cheek in what passed for a pelican kiss.
* * *
“Are you joining us tonight?” I grinned, winking at Bingo.
* * *
Pook and Bingo were pelican shifters, and often stayed past closing’s edge, therefore stuck in the real world until the next new or full moon. Beach bums at heart, they rolled in both spaces with ease, just letting things flow.
* * *
“Hoo-man, we can’t miss October, Patra. It’s the frigging best!” Pook flapped and shifted into a scruffy longhair with a missing tooth.
* * *
Bingo jumped from the railing, shifting into a tall skinny guy with a growing pot belly. I gave him a look.
* * *
“Are there fish left in the sea? I’d guess you’re not missing many.”
* * *
“This?” Long thin fingers patted his protruding gut. “Your beer. Fish is clean eating, Patra.”
* * *
The pair walked along the dock and the door shimmered again. Show time. The magicals crossed throughout the night, but I was sole proprietor of the magical side of the bar. On the ordinary side, my staff kept the tourists, locals, and the lost ones fed and watered, the rest was on me.
* * *
Two-thirds of the way along the pier the building stood, with two doorways. One was the cat-three rated glass hurricane double door, and the other could have originated on an ornate ship from 300 years ago. It’s grimy with the salt of centuries and won’t open unless the palm placed against it held a magical signature. I found it by accident at sixteen. Curious, I walked through and damn near pissed my shorts. Billy, the previous manager, glared and crooked his finger.
* * *
“My office.”
* * *
Panicked, I nodded, backing out the way I came, sure he’d fire me, and why not, I was hallucinating.
* * *
Billy gave me a long, considering look. “Can you see the door?”
* * *
“The wooden one?” I squeaked.
* * *
He sighed and leaned back. “I’m sorry, kiddo. I truly am.”
* * *
That began the job training to end all training. Until I turned eighteen, I worked in the non-magical dining room, but spent an hour before or after each shift studying with Billy. He kept a book in his office that smelled of the bottom of the sea. My assignment was to read it and answer Billy’s queries. It took two years before I never missed a question.
* * *
“You forget anything, you could perish,” he said, eyes serious and sad. “But, you will lead a life denied most, and make excellent money. Just expect to die young. Live in the moment, Cleopatra. You’ll have fewer of them.”
* * *
On the day I passed his test, he plunked me into the real bar and coached me on mixing drinks, watching for theft, and running a tight, stocked pub. I was eighteen, the whole thing was illegal as hell, but the authorities never asked questions.
* * *
“Oh, I know a witch or seven,” Billy said, when I questioned the illegality.
* * *
At twenty-one he shifted me to the magic side and taught me alchemy, how to make cocktails that would kill me if I drank them, and toughened up my thin skin. Magical drunk people tended toward loud and bawdy, and their idea of anything goes was not for the faint of heart. I learned, and in time, got good. For four years, Billy and I ran a secret bar, and it was orgasmic fun.
* * *
The ‘October of The Vapors’ changed everything. A late season hurricane coincided with a full moon. It was the damned trifecta of dark. Humanity experienced catastrophic damage, the winds destroyed buildings and landmarks; the sea flowed across the beach to the road, and the fury loosened the Vapors into the human world.
* * *
Vapors dwelled in the space between the planes and crossed under specific circumstances. They were dark. As in profound misery dark. Plus, they were hard as hell to vanquish once they showed up and started ruining everything.
* * *
The pier withstood the storm, thanks to the witches, but appeared damaged enough to not call attention to that fact. Billy ran the magic pub and made money, which I spent repairing the human side, prepping to re-open. Busy days, full of contractors and vendors, got the kitchen back in action and the roof restored.
* * *
“The Boogie is ready,” Billy told me that night as we reviewed the work, signed occupancy permit in hand. “You can open tomorrow.”
* * *
That conversation will stay with me until I die. Being young, I assumed he meant the restaurant. Busy with the human piece I never considered the Vapors, but Billy was under siege to keep the magic bar from blowing out with darkness. He never said it, but I believe, out of love, he kept them from me. They murdered him in the baneful middle of the night, threading their blackness through his pores as his shrieks covered the beach. A witch stopped his heart in mercy. She told me the story long after the shock faded and the resultant war pushed the damned Vapors back across the
line. But that night, oblivious, I slept in my little house a few blocks away, the last innocent sleep.
* * *
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Other Books by Winnie Winkle
To Walk in the World: Twin Tales of Inception
Unpacking life’s chaos and circles isn’t always a choice.
Before breaking, she considered the edge of normal an ideal — cluttered with the screw-ups who couldn't handle life. Now she’s engaged in a bonkers conversation with her heart and mind as she and her mental miscreants scrabble through a facetious struggle to figure out life after loss.
She soon discovers leaping from ‘normal’s cliff’ is a sloppy free-fall of rebirth loaded with cosmic oddities and ludicrous miscues. Standing on her edge, she wonders whether living beyond the boundaries is worth the cost of stepping off the abyss into the unknown. She’s about to find out.
Discover what happens in this unique, insightful story about when your mind breaks and you have to learn the true meaning of living.
Visit https://wwinkle.com/to-walk-in-the-world/ for reviews and buying info.
Messing Up Magic: Messing Up Magic Book 1
There’s always a price to pay…
For Haseya, that price means a life of celibacy. A Navajo Skinwalker Witch, her gift of healing forbids her from loving a man intent on pain and destruction.
For Zayn, the price means a life of anger and loneliness. A Djinn, he is torn by the need to seek vengeance.
Zayn will do anything to protect Haseya. When hostile aliens searching for shifters arrive in Magic, New Mexico, he is willing to unleash any force to save the woman he loves and the town that needs him—but will the price of protecting those he loves drive a wedge between him and the beautiful witch he is destined to love forever?
Visit https://wwinkle.com/messing-up-magic-book-1-2/ for reviews and buying info.
Swimming for Air: Messing Up Magic Book 2
A lie meant to protect her could lead to her destruction...
Sylvia’s brother, Theo, reveals the unimaginable—their parents were anything but human. Her half-brother may be a dragon, but Sylvia has inherited both their parents’ magic. Her life was already complicated; now the sudden appearance of a handsome, haughty Djinn with anger management issues doubles the tension. She is both drawn to and repulsed by Rafi, which is adding to her confusion.
Rafi is shaken when he meets the sweet and sexy Sylvia. How can he—a sworn hater of humanity—be attracted to a human?! He can’t shake the power she has over him or his raging desire for her. As he struggles, determined to win Sylvia and become her forever lover, his own magical brother’s growing madness and violence threatens to overwhelm them all.
Sylvia learns there’s a spell covering her, one meant to protect her and hide her magic. She struggles to break the protecting enchantment so she can fight, alongside her brother, against the pestilence that is coming. Is Rafi on their side, or will the fidelity of brotherhood bind him to evil?
Facing a master of magic, Sylvia knows her steadfast belief in the human heart and harmony within the forces of the earth isn’t much use. As she races to find the answer to unlocking her magic, she can’t help wondering if their love—connecting Rafi’s wind and her water—can find balance and be enough to protect them and those they love from a force intent on their destruction.
Visit https://wwinkle.com/swimming-for-air-messing-up-magic-book-2/ for reviews and buying info.
Raining Magic: Messing Up Magic Book 3
Their spirits are free… but their town is under siege.
Tashi, a dazzling firebird-moon elf, packs a lot of magical power in her punch. Her discovery that Magic, New Mexico is in trouble sends her winging to the town with a dire warning of doom. It also sets her on a collision course with a super hot warlock.
Zac takes one look and knows he has to have Tashi. He’s spent a lifetime turning away from his dark side; now he’s ready to capture this little free-spirited hedonist living her life in wild abandon. Feisty and fearless, she belongs to no one. Zac is determined to make Tashi his, regardless of the cost.
Tashi and Zac face three different enemies, each resolved to steal away or destroy the town’s magical residents. In a battle of wits, unusual spells, and bewitching ingenuity, Tashi and Zac’s future together depends on the resilience of love in a world out of kilter. They take their stand against allies once considered friends, a cruel alien race bent on their enslavement, and a vengeful Djinn with a god complex.
In a life flipped upside down, what could go right?
Visit https://wwinkle.com/raining-magic-messing-up-magic-book-3/ for reviews and buying info.
Broke in Magic: Broke in Magic Book 1
If she killed him, it’d be worth it.
After his car breaks down in Magic, New Mexico, Jasper touches Melia’s fingertips... and she knocks him out cold. He awakens in a red, raging lust, determined to get with her. There’s one little snag, but it’s a doozy. His demon daddy plans to turn him darker than Hades. Holding the line with Jasper are his two best friends, who think running is the answer.
Melia, a gorgeous, ethereal Muse and a badass balancer of evil, is equally struck by lust’s lightning. She’ll take Jasper out, but in her heart, she’d rather be taken by this sexy, clueless warlock. If Jasper explodes from the protections his witch mother cast to hide him from his magic, Melia has no choice but to kill him. Used to working alone, she makes an unlikely alliance, desperate to keep Jasper in the light, in her life, and take him as her fated forever lover.
Will Big Daddy and his demon minions prevail, forcing Melia to shred her own heart and kill the man she believes is her one true love? Can Jasper survive his birthright fate? A raging chase across the New Mexican desert turns into a good vs evil free-for-all, forcing each to respond to the internal questions of balance, darkness, and love’s light.
Visit https://wwinkle.com/broke-in-magic-book-1/ for reviews and buying info.
Harpy Gumbo: Broke in Magic Book 2
Evil has already destroyed her heart — now it wants to ruin the world.
Trini is built for murder. A harpy who escaped a lifetime of abuse, she struggles with everything and her fight or flight instincts leave blood and tears in her wake.
Wellie is pulled in a direction he never expects — to Trini’s spirit. He searches to find her, convinced that she is the one for him. Whether he can survive her is another matter.
Deep in the center of New Orleans the intersection of real and magical worlds is hidden — a portal now under attack by dark forces. The Vapors are determined to upend the balance between light and dark. Their plot will force the portal to open, but there is one problem — Trini holds the key. The course of humanity hinges on Trini’s ability to overcome her past. Standing at the edge of another Dark Ages, Wellie is willing to die to protect Trini. The question is — is Trini willing to let go and live for him?
Visit https://wwinkle.com/harpy-gumbo-broke-in-magic-book-2/ for reviews and buying info.
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