by Tara Quan
Filling his lungs, he summoned his best Joss impression. “If you don’t leave right this instant, I’m calling the cops. What you’re doing is harassment.”
His ex’s leather-clad companion blustered forward. “Don’t talk to Iva that way.” He lifted his giant fist and attempted a cartoonish circling motion.
Why was it that arch nemeses always acquired dimwitted peons—ones who looked like they ate nails for breakfast and spent their days pumping iron?
Luka weighed his options. As much as he wanted to vent his frustration and anger on the poor man, he’d rather avoid damaging his hands. He needed his fingers in good working condition, for professional and personal reasons.
His life wasn’t an action movie. Multiple alternatives to fisticuffs existed, the safe word one among them. “Red!” he bellowed.
The petite Asian dungeon monitor from earlier rushed in. He compared her diminutive height to that of both Ivanna and Biker Dude. Attempting to keep annoyance from coloring his voice, he asked, “Why don’t you call some backup?”
The DM ignored his advice, placed one hand on her hip, and wagged a dainty finger at her much larger adversaries. “Ma’am. Sir. This booth is private. The curtains were drawn, I’d posted a Do Not Disturb sign, and it’s extremely rude to interrupt aftercare. Please come with me, or I’ll be forced to elevate the issue.”
As threats went, the chirpy staff member came close to hitting rock bottom. Ivanna snorted, and her oversized helper prowled toward the less-than-intimidating figure of authority. “I don’t give a fuck. Run along, little girl, before I hurt you.”
The DM craned her head back, underlining her physical disadvantage. “If you attack me, the club will definitely put both of you on our blacklist, which we sometimes share with other establishments. Please apologize to Master Luka and his sub then return to the public area.”
Her would-be attacker responded with a low growl. Sighing, Luka flexed his fingers. Fate seemed intent on bruising his knuckles. “Look, man. I don’t want a fight. All I want is to be left alone. Scat.”
Ivanna chose this moment to kick the waterworks up a notch. “You’re my fiancé, and you forced me to watch you have sex with another woman.” She launched herself at him. He lifted his hands to fend off the advance. His palms landed on her naked tits.
He was a man, one holding melon-sized balls of temptation. His brain blanked for a few seconds before he shifted his grip to her shoulders and tried to fend her off. She countered by slobbering on his neck and rubbing her boobs on his chest.
“Gah.” He scampered back until his butt met the seat next to Naomi, who had managed to untangle from the blanket, detach her furry mitts, and lace up her top.
When he cowered next to his surprisingly composed sub, she lifted an eyebrow. “Need help?”
Grabbing her upper arm, he pulled her in front of him like a human shield. Poking his head out above hers, he glared at Ivanna. It took less effort than he expected to focus on her face instead of her breasts. “Get away from me. I’ve moved on. You should, too.”
“You love me. This one. She is nothing.” Ivanna attempted to pat Naomi’s cheek. She jumped back upon impact with his sub’s clawed swipe. Sensing a potential catfight, Luka froze. He had no idea how to handle one upset woman, let alone two.
Best to side with the party he planned on sleeping with tonight. He circled his arms around Naomi’s waist in a blatant display of possession. “Can’t you see we’re together?” When she didn’t correct his claim, he smiled. As awkward as the situation was, it came with certain perks.
He returned his attention to his ex. “Please, for the love of all that is holy, drill this through your head. I didn’t break off our engagement, have my friend sue your ass into bankruptcy, and avoid you like the plague as a ploy for attention. I seriously do not love you anymore.”
When Ivanna responded by leaning forward and jiggling her chest, Naomi huffed. “Luka, take your paws off me. I can’t move this way.” She stabbed her finger into Ivanna’s cleavage. “And you. Get your damn boobs out of my face, or I’ll— Holy shit! Kim, watch out!”
Reminded of the wimpiest potential damsel in distress, Luka leapt to his feet, his attention snapping to the possible altercation between Mr. Dom Wannabe and the dungeon monitor.
His jaw dropped as the DM pivoted on one foot, forcing Biker Dude’s giant fist to glance off her shoulder. Rolling her eyes, she swung her forearms in a series of ninja-like half-moons. With a circular twist Luka could never dream of replicating, she captured Biker Dude’s giant hand, folded it inward, and tucked his wrist in the crook of her armpit. When she bent her knees and brought him down, the grown man squealed.
Beaming Luka a huge grin, the DM pointed at her captive. “You saw him attack first, right?”
His mouth wide open, Luka sifted through his recent recollections and settled upon a white lie. “You bet.”
The person he’d intended to defend winked, kicked out her assailant’s legs, and stomped on his balls. “Which makes this self-defense.”
Clutching his crotch, Biker Dude howled. “Iva. Help. Me.”
Ivanna glanced at the man on the floor, the gathering crowd, the approaching club staff, the cell phone that had somehow materialized in Naomi’s hand then back at Luka. He guessed her next move long before she sprinted toward the exit, leaving her hired muscle behind.
Luka crossed his fingers they’d seen the last of each other. If not, tonight’s events should help his case for a restraining order. Coughing to hide a laugh, he glanced at Naomi. “It’s a bit crowded in here. Why don’t I book us a room?”
Rising to her feet, she straightened her dress before hooking her arm around his elbow. “Nah. I think it’s past time we explored the rest of this club.”
Like magic, his erection returned to full attention. If he weren’t already in love with his dog sitter, her teasing laugh as she dragged him toward the bar would have sealed the deal.
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Fireworks at Midnight by Tara Quan
Chapter One
Dulcina Gato hated few things more than going through the day without coffee.
After she got her high school diploma and landed a minimum-wage job, she rode the independence high and turned down her parents’ allowance. When she made the mistake of spending her precious paychecks on a bachelor’s degree, she downgraded from Starbucks flavored lattes to less-than-adequate espresso shots. After spending years in online and night classes to earn a piece of paper that hadn’t increased her income by a single cent, she went on a descending spiral past donut-store drip to land at the bottom of the caffeine rabbit hole, fast-food chain budget brews. Even this luxury went the way of the dodo when she had the bright idea of quitting her dead-end day job to turn her jewelry-making hobby into a small business.
The ten-dollar coffee maker she’d bought at a flea market had long since died a slow and torturous death, and all she had left to keep her going at 7:00 a.m. on New Year’s Eve was an instant cup of Joe. She stared at her orange mug through the grease-stained translucent door of the circa-1980s microwave, wondering why it took so long to heat up water. As soon as she got her hands on the money Flowers Forever had raked in over the Christmas shopping season, she’d invest in one of those electric kettles.
Her vision hazed. Through fluttering lashes, an overlay of smoke and flames flashed over the worn laminate counter. Starting from behind the appliance, a black smear snaked up the peeling wallpaper to reach the dirt-encrusted popcorn ceiling.
Shaking her head to dispel the burst of foresight, she yawned. Shit. How fucking inconvenient. She glanced down at her torso, too sleepy to remember what she’d pulled on last night when she got out of the shower. Bright-blue nighttime shorts and a matching tank top might not be ideal for greeting a cavalry of firemen. Washington, D.C.’s prolonged arctic winter had turned her once-tanned skin a sallow yellow, which acquired a sickly sheen whe
n paired with her clothes’ clashing aqua. Considering she’d scheduled her next beach vacation in ten years, she needed to avoid cold hues for the foreseeable future.
If push came to shove, she should have enough time to pull on something more flattering and run a brush through her hair. Upsides of the shoulder-length schoolgirl bob included the ten-dollar price tag and extreme low maintenance. Since highlights grew out faster than she could save up money, she eschewed artificial color in favor of her natural drab brown. She hadn’t been born with her sister’s brains, and lack of scholarships meant she came out of the undergraduate rip-off with a mountain of student loans.
Growing up had turned out to be a huge bummer. The year’s end came with an insane amount of incidental expenses for the fledgling company she’d started with Shelley Dupree, her best friend since pre-kindergarten. While she and her business partner could legally buy alcohol at long last, affording any seemed out of their reach. Paying next year’s fee for their website, which she’d put off until the previous evening, had almost netted them bank overdraft fees. No way could they get a new microwave in the foreseeable future.
“Shells,” she bellowed. “The kitchen is about to catch on fire.”
Her short-legged pal bounded in less than a minute later. Wearing a pink sweatshirt and matching pajama bottoms, the petite twenty-one-year-old earth mage could pass for a high schooler. Leaves and flower petals dusted her chestnut hair; dirt smudged her flushed café au lait cheeks. “Sweets, I swear to God—if this is your idea of a joke, I’ll bury you.”
Dulcina preferred the nickname Sweets to the name her parents had bestowed upon her in an unfortunate moment of nostalgia—the single reason she could come up with to explain why both she and her sister had such distinctly Spanish names. And while her sibling’s Catalina got shortened to a neutral Cat, Sweets’ legal name always ended up as some permutation of Douche, Dull-Chai, or China. “Why are you so grumpy?”
Shelley placed her hands on the lush hips Sweets had been green-eyed about since they’d turned thirteen. “I’m in the middle of harvesting blooms. If we leave them out too long, they’ll be useless.”
As always, Shelley had woken before dawn to mess around in the greenhouse they maintained in the backyard. The tropical flowers the witch’s elemental powers kept alive would soon be dried, coated in several layers of resin, and fitted with silver findings. Once done, they sold the jewelry online and at their stall in the Sunday market in Georgetown.
Though they both loved the work, the start-up phase came with more expenses than profit. Placing one elbow on the peeling counter, Sweets stared at the coffee she’d never drink. “I saw it happen. This piece of crap is going to fry.”
Few people knew about her foresight. To help keep it a secret, Shelley accepted attribution for all premonitions they disclosed. Her ancient supernatural bloodline made the emergence of a weak secondary power plausible, and her privileged status as an elemental witch allowed her to keep the Mage’s Council at arm’s length. “Well this sucks. How long do we have?”
“You know how short the fuse is on visions. Plain old vibes gives us a few days, but when I see things happen in Technicolor, the goose is almost cooked.”
Moving closer and bending down to squint at the old appliance, Shelley suggested, “Should we turn it off? Unplug it and stuff?”
Sweets canted her head. “If it’s an electrical thing, wouldn’t touching it zap us?” She looked down at her bare feet. “So being ‘grounded’?” She used her fingers to form air quotes. “Is that when you’re wearing shoes or not wearing shoes?”
Scrunching her nose, Shelley shrugged. “I don’t know. And are we supposed to be grounded before we touch the outlet, or the other away round?”
Sweets narrowed her eyes at the humming hunk of metal. “How can you not know this, Ms. Smarty-Pants? You’ve got a science degree.” At times, she questioned the veracity of their standardized test scores. According to the numbers, Shelley had scored a tenth of a percentile below genius while Sweets fell smack dab in the lower half of average.
“In biology, not electrical engineering.” Shelley sniffed the air. “I smell something burning.”
Sweets filled her lungs. “Me, too. It should have pinged already, and the dial isn’t turning.”
“Can’t you unplug it with your mind, or, I don’t know, dematerialize it?” An elemental mage, Shelley had the ability to control one thing—the earth. They both agreed this might be the most useless form of magic imaginable. As her friend’s familiar, Sweets could process that raw energy and turn it into more useful spells, including telekinesis, teleportation, illusion, and enchantments. Since she hadn’t applied herself much to the study of magic, her actual abilities didn’t extend far beyond moving stuff around with her mind.
One minor problem prevented the plug’s safe evacuation. “I’m out of juice. I haven’t turned into a cat in two weeks.”
“Well, the visions haven’t stopped. Didn’t I tell you going cold turkey would bite us in the ass?” Shelley loved few things in life more than saying, I told you so.
Foreseeing bad shit came hand in hand with the compulsion to do something about it. While Sweets had managed to wiggle out of each sticky situation, she didn’t want to push her luck. She processed leaked power best by assuming her familiar form. Since she and Shelley didn’t have the most compatible energy profiles, they shared little magic while she stayed human. As an experiment, she’d sworn off her feline persona in hopes that the premonitions would cease. But while every single other ability petered into nonexistence, the one she wanted to purge continued to plague her day and night.
She huffed out a breath and admitted defeat. “Fine. Hold on.” With a pop, she turned into a plain coffee-colored cat. None of the good genes had been left by the time she came around. Not only did she have nondescript brown hair and eyes, a body with more angles than curves, and a rare power that painted a giant red bull’s-eye on her back, her animal alter ego couldn’t be less memorable.
As soon as sleek silky fur covered her skin, raw energy poured into her—more than she’d expected. If she didn’t know better, she’d have guessed another elemental mage was close by, one who shared more synergy with her than Shelley. The charge built at an exponential rate. A few more seconds and—
Flames erupted from the back of the microwave. Scampering to hide behind her friend’s legs, she focused on the burning metal box and lifted it into the air. The power cord swept forward, upending the canisters lining the wall. Digging her claws into linoleum, she yanked the plug out of the socket with a telekinetic pull.
Suspended in the middle of the kitchen where the fire couldn’t spread to the walls or ceiling, the old appliance continued to release a steady stream of pungent black smoke. Loud, high-pitched beeps filled the small room and threatened to burst Sweets’ oversensitive feline eardrums. Needing to concentrate on keeping the darn thing up, she swatted Shelley’s ankle with her tail in an attempt to urge the witch into action. Talk about being useless in a crisis.
Shelley looked down at her. “Where’s the fire extinguisher?”
Come to think of it, that particular item might have fallen under the useful-but-not-necessary category when she came up with their list of things to buy. Pawing her face in shame, she meowed. Witches and familiars communicated on a cerebral level somewhere between telepathy and miming.
“I thought so.” Covering her mouth with an arm, Shelley began to cough. “Let me think. What are the chances that thing is all metal?”
Sweets turned her head from side to side in the most emphatic no she could achieve as a cat. In theory, Shelley should control all solids originating from the ground, which included plants, minerals, sand, and therefore their metal and glass derivatives. Petroleum fell into a gray area in the elemental Venn diagram between earth and fire, and the presence of plastic in any item messed up Shelley’s already unpredictable mojo. While the witch’s powers gave her a supernaturally green thumb, her actual
ability to manipulate metal seemed to miss more often than it hit, leading time and again to catastrophic consequences.
Sweets lifted her front paw to shield her eyes while meowing an inarticulate plea. Ignoring the protest, her friend squared her shoulders and raised her hands. As she wiggled her fingers in a weird, creepy pattern, the rectangular box crumpled to form a ball, closing the flames within. Smoke continued to puff out, but the fire soon smoldered.
Okay, perhaps the witch deserved more credit. Before the notion took root, the ball exploded, sending shrapnel in all directions. Hissing, Sweets halted their progress with a telekinetic blast, freezing them in the air a split second before sharp metal hit her friend’s face. Using more magic than she thought she possessed, she forced the shards to drift to the floor.
Her lungs burning, she shifted back to human form. Pointing to the back entrance, she hacked, “Need. Air. Move.”
Wearing a guilty expression, Shelley blocked her ears with her hands and ran to open the door, her fluffy slippers making squishy sounds as she covered the distance. “Where’s the smoke detector?”
Sweets slumped onto the linoleum floor with a tired groan. Magic was draining work. “This is your grandmother’s old house.”
She flopped onto her back and closed her eyes. When her head started to pound from the continuing squeals, she drew a fortifying breath and tried to summon the energy to get up. Before she gathered enough motivation, a gust of wind blew through the kitchen, pushing the thick, pungent smoke outside. By the time her eyes stopped watering, sweet-smelling, pristine air filled the small room. Aside from the scorched metallic mess, all signs of smoke dissipated.
She didn’t need visual confirmation to be certain which wind mage had reconditioned the environs and provided the source of her extra energy. Forcing her lids open, she met the dark, judgmental gaze of a familiar mahogany-skinned warlock. Standing by the kitchen entrance with his head grazing the sill, Mikal Knight lifted his long arm to pound at a piece of round white plastic above the wood frame. A few seconds later, the electronic wail stopped.