Life's a Witch

by Val St. Crowe

  “I think it’s good to stay put,” said Willoughby. “Unless, of course, you don’t want to continue this spell.”

  “I want to continue,” I said. “Nothing is going to make me stop.”

  Willoughby pressed his lips together. Then he nodded. “All right, then. Let’s see what you’ve brought me.”

  We got out the mop-things.

  Willoughby carefully took them out and set them in a little basin of water that had some smooth, round rocks in it. The mop-things twined the bottoms of themselves around the rocks right away.

  “Only four?” said Willoughby.

  “Yeah, that’s all we could find before we were attacked,” said Logan. “Afterward, we just wanted to get out of there.”

  “Understandable,” said Willoughby. “Well, we’ll hope this is enough.”

  “What’s our next move?” I said.

  “We need to turn these into hybrids like you were. They need to draw in dragon magic to make them strong and powerful. The easiest way for that would be to use vampire blood.”

  “Vampire blood?” I said. “Not dragon blood?”

  “No, the vampires have both human and dragon within them. They’re already hybrids,” said Willoughby. “So, that will be the most advantageous. We need to feed the vampire blood to these creatures. They’ll suck it up like water.”

  I tapped my chin. “I don’t know any vampires. How about you, Logan?”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I slumped in the passenger seat of Logan’s car. “I don’t get it. Where would he have gone?”

  “People like that aren’t big on putting down roots,” said Logan from the driver’s seat. We were driving back from going out to visit the drake dice dealer that we’d always gone to for dragon blood. We thought that he would know someone who’d be willing to part with their blood for money. But he was gone. He didn’t live there anymore, and he hadn’t left a forwarding address.

  “So,” I said. “Where are we going to get vampire blood?”

  “I do sort of know a vampire,” said Logan. “A friend. But he lives in Sea City.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “This another one of Clarke’s exes?”

  “No, he’s a cop,” said Logan.

  “Oh, even worse,” I said. “Like a cop vampire is going to—there are vampire cops? Is that common?”

  Logan laughed. “Okay, maybe not in the backwoods where you’re from, because there’s not a lot of magical creatures out there at all. But in Sea City, magical creatures capital of the world, yeah, there’s magical creatures doing practically any job you can think of. This vampire I’m thinking of, his name’s Lachlan. But that’s pretty far away from the school, and Willoughby just said it was better for you to stay there if at all possible.”

  I snorted. “What are we going to do? Order up a vampire to deliver himself to my dorm?”

  “No, I don’t think that would work,” said Logan. “But let’s think it through, consider all our options, and then if we haven’t come up with anything by tomorrow—”

  “I’m going to call Reid.”

  “Really? Why Reid?”

  “Well, I would ask Tatum, but she’s not speaking to me,” I said. “And Estelle will be home, so if I call Reid, I’ll get both of them. I mean, I don’t know who else to ask. I would think you would have all kinds of vampire connections.”

  “Not close by,” he said. “I’ve met my share of vampires, but I’ve always been on the move. Besides, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but a lot of times, they’re dicks.”

  I laughed. I got out my phone and selected Reid’s number.

  “You think Reid will answer his phone? He’s been taking this breakup with Tatum pretty hard, hasn’t he?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I don’t know. Maybe he won’t.” I put the phone to my ear. It was dialing.

  “He wouldn’t let me into his stupid Studio 54 party unless I was dressed like John Travolta or something.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know if that was because he’s depressed,” I said.

  “You think it’s because he still doesn’t like me?”

  I laughed. “No, I think it’s because he takes that shit way too seriously. He likes you.” I eyed him. “Do you like him?”

  Logan shrugged, gripping the steering wheel. “You know, he’s okay.”

  I laughed again.

  “Petra,” said Reid’s voice on the phone. “How is my favorite dead girl?”

  “Never call me that again,” I said.

  “Sorry.” He laughed. “What can I do for you?”

  “Do you know any vampires?”

  “Like as close, personal friends? No, not really.”

  “Well, do you know where some are? Ones that would allow us to pay them for some of their blood?”

  “Okay, that is the weirdest request I’ve ever heard,” said Reid.

  “It’s for the spell to make me human again,” I said. “Just… do you?”

  “Actually, I might,” said Reid. “But it’s not going to be cheap. Luckily for you, I am totally willing to bankroll this little excursion. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  “What excursion?” I said. “Is it far?”

  “No, it’s inside the city limits,” said Reid. “Where are you? You want to go now?”

  I turned to Logan. “He knows someplace we can go. Should we do it now?”

  “Who are you talking to?” said Reid.

  “Logan,” I said. “We’re driving back from trying to find that drake that always sold us dragon blood.”

  “Oh, you’re in a car?” said Reid. “Come pick me up.”

  *

  Reid, being a jackass, would not tell us where we were going. Instead, he sat in the back seat and chortled, giving Logan directions about where to turn and saying that this was going to be awesome.

  Personally, I had my doubts.

  He was taking us to the nasty part of town. Honestly, most parts of town around here were pretty good, but our town was just big enough to have a bit of a nasty section. We’d come from the outskirts of it, when we’d gone looking for that drake, but we hadn’t found him.

  “Turn here,” Reid said.

  “Reid, where are we going?” I said.

  We rounded a corner and a big sign came into view. It was attached to the top of the building ahead of us and it was surrounded by bright, blinking lights. It had a silhouette of a woman with her head thrown back. It said, Vixens.

  “A strip club?” I said.

  Reid giggled. “Vampire Vixens.”

  I groaned.

  Logan cleared his throat. “Vampire strippers?”

  I glared at Logan. “Oh, don’t tell me that you think this is a great idea?”

  “I didn’t say anything like that,” said Logan. “I didn’t say a word.”

  Reid was still giggling.

  I covered my head with my hands. “I can’t go into a strip club. That’s just… weird. Women do not go into strip clubs.”

  “Sure they do,” said Reid. “I have taken girls to strippers before, and it’s a hell of an aphrodisiac.”

  I snorted. “For you.” I squared my shoulders. “And I don’t see how it could even turn you on anyway, because how could you look at those girls and not feel sorry for them? They have to have gone through horrible things in their lives to make them take off their clothes for perfect strangers.”

  “They’re vampires, Petra,” said Reid. “They’re not victims.”

  “Whatever,” I said. “Why any self-respecting vampire would—”

  “For the blood,” said Logan.

  “I hear it’s better straight from the vein,” said Reid. “This place, they’re strippers, they’re hookers, whatever. They don’t mind what you want to do to them as long as you let them have a taste.” He tapped his neck.

  I gave him a horrified look. “You sound like you speak from experience.”

  “No,” said Reid. “I mean, I’ve been here. I’ve looked. I’ve put dollar bi
lls in garters. I never let them bite me. I don’t pay for sex. Not even with blood. I don’t need to do that.”

  Logan coughed. “Can we stop talking about your sex life?” He turned into the parking lot next to the building and pulled the car into a spot.

  I had to admit, the place was not packed. The lot wasn’t huge, anyway. It could only hold maybe thirty cars. All around it, three-and four-story buildings stretched up into the night sky. Graffiti adorned the sides of the buildings. Fast food cups and plastic shopping bags were strewn across the parking lot. Like I said, nasty part of town.

  “No, I’m saying that I didn’t have sex with the vampire hookers,” said Reid.

  “Right,” Logan muttered, “and the human men who wander in here? How many of them get compelled into it?”

  “Eew,” I said.

  “Vampires are dicks,” said Logan. “Even if they don’t have them.”

  “That’s a totally prejudiced thing to say,” said Reid.

  “Not all vampires,” said Logan. “Just… you shouldn’t trust people right off who want to drink your blood. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “None of us can be compelled,” I said. “We should be fine. We’re here for their blood.”

  “I thought you didn’t want to go in,” said Logan.

  “I don’t.” Okay, maybe I was a little curious. I’d never been in a strip club before. What would it be like? I chewed on my lip. “You know, maybe they are still victims. Maybe they have vampire pimps who are, like, beating them up and withholding blood, and maybe we need to be rescuing them or something.”

  Neither Logan nor Reid said anything.

  I turned around to look at Reid. “You just don’t want to think that it’s sordid and awful because it turns you on.”

  “Can we not talk about Reid in that way?” Logan’s nostrils flared.

  I turned to Logan. “And you, you’re just thinking about Cunningham.”

  Logan turned away from me and looked out the window.

  It was quiet.

  “Is Cunningham the one who, uh, compelled you to have a threesome?” said Reid.

  Logan opened the door to the car and got out.

  I winced. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “Probably not,” said Reid. “You know, that vampire totally emasculated him, and then you bring it up, and it makes it worse.”

  “Thanks, yeah, I realize that.” I studied my knuckles.

  We were quiet.

  Reid leaned up between the seats. “Hey, Petra, it’s maybe not that easy to label, whether people are victims or not? You know, when you were choosing to sleep with random guys all the time, you didn’t think you were doing anything bad to yourself, but later on, you decided to stop, right? So, you can’t just rescue people. Sometimes people have to rescue themselves.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I probably shouldn’t have brought that up, should I?” said Reid in a soft voice.

  “Whatever,” I said. “You don’t take advantage of people while they’re in the process of rescuing themselves.”

  “Fine,” said Reid. “I will do my best not to look at any of the naked vampires.”

  I gritted my teeth. Sometimes, I wanted to strangle him.

  Logan opened the front door of the car and leaned inside. “You guys coming?”

  I guessed so. I mean, I didn’t think a vampire cop in Sea City was going to help us. I opened the door and got out.

  Reid got out too.

  Then we all stood in the parking lot, looking at the door to the strip club, which wasn’t a hell of a lot to look at. The big neon sign was one thing, but the front of the building was just as graffiti-covered and trashed as the rest of the place. There was a sign on the door that said Vixens, but it had been tagged with graffiti too.

  Yeah, okay. So, we were doing this. I took a deep breath.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Estelle

  Estelle had been working late in the library. She was taking a class on magical history, and she had been working on some research for a project she was doing, which involved recreating some of the early mage spells. She found the entire subject fascinating. They only had fragmentary evidence, but it was possible that dragon shifters were actually the creations of mages, just like gargoyles.

  She wasn’t going to be recreating any kind of spell like that. Dragon sacrifice was outlawed, and it was required for any sort of creation on that scale. But she was going to be working on mutating insects, if she could get it right.

  Her professor had greenlit the project, but told her not to be disappointed when it didn’t work. No one knew exactly what those early mages had done, and no one had been able to repeat it. Also, if she were successful, she would have to destroy her creations, since the magic seemed to alter DNA and the magical traits were passed down from generation to generation. She couldn’t start a strain of magical ants—it might have disastrous consequences.

  She turned a bend in the steps and below her, on the landing, someone was opening the door to the stairwell.

  Oh.

  It was Fox.

  She stopped short. She should just stay here, go around the bend, hide. It would be easier than seeing him. Every encounter between them was horribly awkward these days. After seeing him the other night, she’d been unable to meet his gaze when she saw him in class the following morning. For his part, he didn’t acknowledge her either.

  That was the best way, she thought. Simply to ignore each other. It hurt, but it was more painful to try to resist it all.

  She had tried to talk herself out of even being attracted to him. Had told herself that she only wanted him because the forbidden nature of it made it so much more exciting. That if that forbidden aspect had been removed, there would be nothing there.

  Except she knew it wasn’t true. When they’d met, nothing had been forbidden, and that was when she had fallen for him. She was at the mercy of this awful allure now because of that original attraction, not because of the complications that had arisen since.

  But Fox looked up and saw her.

  She swallowed. Then, awkwardly, she raised a hand and waved. “Hi.”

  “Estelle,” said Fox.

  “I was in the library doing research for my magical history class and I just saw you and I was going to hide, but then you looked up and…”

  His jaw worked.

  She blushed. God, she sounded like a babbling idiot.

  “You don’t have to hide from me,” he said, and his voice had taken on a jagged quality.

  Something about the way he sounded went through her, undoing her. She had to brace herself against the wall for balance. And yet, even though she felt off-center, she was moving, something inside her was pulling her toward him, as if there was a magnet in her belly. She came down the steps, leaning against the wall.

  He didn’t move. He just watched her.

  Finally, she was on the landing with him and there was only a few feet of space between their bodies.

  He cleared his throat. “You, um, you just missed Logan and Petra. They were gathering materials for the spell to turn Petra human.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Too bad. If they’d been here, it would have been…”

  “Easier,” he murmured.

  She nodded.

  They stared at each other, and the air started to feel full of that electricity again, like it always did, and Estelle hated that. She wished it wouldn’t. She wished she could be around him without feeling so affected. So ruffled. She pointed to the next set of steps. “I’ll just go down here.” And she jerked forward.

  But she brushed against him when she went past. She could swear she didn’t mean it. That she had tried to avoid it.

  His arm snaked around her waist, pulling her against him.

  Her breath caught in her throat. She gazed up into his eyes, her lips parting.

  “We can’t keep doing this,” said Fox.

  “No, I realize,” she said.

&
nbsp; And then he was kissing her.

  Her eyes slammed shut and she was assailed by sweet sensations. Kissing him was amazing. She was lost to it.

  His lips on her jaw. His voice was a dark rasp. “There are things… things you don’t know about me.”

  She gasped. “No, we don’t know each other very well at all.”

  He pulled back, grasping her by the shoulders. “I mean… bad things. Things you wouldn’t like.”

  She furrowed her brow. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not…” His fingers dug into her shoulders. “I’m not a good man, Estelle. You don’t want to get mixed up with me. You need to stay away.”

  “Fox…”

  He kissed her again. Hard.

  She was swept up in it, and it was a violent churning storm again, so good but also terrifying. Was there darkness here? Had there always been darkness? Was that what had drawn her to him in the first place?

  He rested his forehead against hers. “This is wrong,” he breathed, and then he pushed her away and ran up the stairs away from her. Like something was chasing him.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  When we got to the door to Vixens, there was a little glowing doorbell that we had to push. When we did, there was a buzzing noise, and then we were able to open the door.

  We were greeted by the sounds of bass-heavy club music. Inside, it was dimly lit. There was nothing much to see inside except a carpet-covered ramp that led into the club.

  Immediately inside was a woman wearing lingerie, a corset with garters attached to hose. She had platinum blond hair and she was wearing lots of makeup. She was chewing gum. She grinned at us. “Hey y’all,” she drawled. “Got ID?”

  “Sure,” said Reid, digging his wallet out of his back pocket.

  That was when I realized that Reid and Logan were doing their best not to look at the lingerie-clad woman. I, on the other hand, was full-on ogling her.

  She winked at me. “How are you?”

  I recoiled a bit. Why was she flirting with me?

  Then I thought it through. Assuming that I had come here for fun with two guys, they would probably really enjoy watching me cozy up to some half-naked chick. It was all part of the sales pitch.