Me and You and a Ghost Named Boo

by Selene Charles

  She glanced up, startled, but it was a look only he would’ve noticed since it crossed her features in a blaze before once more smoothing out into a sultry confidence.

  “Talix Rose Thorn.” Scarlett dipped her head in greeting, honoring him by using his full name.

  The androgynous fae nodded in greeting, but a tightness to his body and features said he was being polite only out of protocol.

  “Stories cost,” Helen said, and suddenly Mercer didn’t trust the breathless lilt of her tone.

  Scarlett shrugged. “I’ll pay.”

  Mercer stood up, shaking his head, but it was already too late.

  “Good, then you, the lumberjack, Talix, and I are going to find a room and have us a little chat.”

  “Done.” Scarlett palmed the bar top, and Mercer groaned.

  Chapter 13

  Scarlett

  I eyed Talix curiously, wondering what the ruby-haired Green Man might want to do to me and why in the world he didn’t balk after Helen had ordered he come.

  Oddly calm despite a situation that could become the weirdest sex orgy in the history of ever, I hugged my arms to my chest and waited to see what was to come. This was some freaky deaky stuff, even for me, and I’d seen some strange shit in my time.

  The room wasn’t decorated like many of Diane’s other romp rooms. It had only a pallet with a massive white mattress on it, white walls, and fluorescent lighting. Nothing at all about the place would make anyone want to get down and do the dirty tango. It sort of inspired feelings of going to the doctor’s office as a kid, knowing it was shot day and you were due for seven all at once.

  Mercer’s body heat was radiating against my back, and suddenly I understood why I was so calm. It was him. He was using his wolfy powers on me, something only a powerful Alpha could share with someone not of his kind. His calming presence hadn’t worked on me quite so well in the past, so he was definitely getting stronger.

  My lips tugged down when Talix entered a moment later, tightly holding the transparent glass cage housing Helen.

  I was getting anxious. I liked Helen and thought she was super hot—for a head, anyway—but I really wasn’t sure I was ready for whatever was about to happen. Staring at the both of them with a cautious but inquisitive gaze, I shrugged. “So a head, a vampire, shifter, and fae walk into a bar and—”

  “Calm your tits, sweets,” Helen purred. “Don’t tell me you haven’t ever wondered what it was that I actually did with my ‘friends.’” She winked and glanced over at the Green Man. “Talix, bar the door.”

  Talix, who’d not been any sort of a puppy with me, set her down with an obvious air of reverence that caused my brows to dip in curiosity. Were those two a thing, and if so... how?

  Like, seriously, how in the world could Helen do anything?

  Yeah, I had always been a little curious, but not enough to really venture into the unknown. If I hadn’t been desperate to learn more about vampires, I might have chickened out.

  Turning, Talix placed his palm against the lock, and suddenly a bright golden glow emanated from within his entire body before sinking into the four-inch-thick steel door.

  “Good. Now, no one can enter who’s not a friend.”

  “Not a friend?” Mercer growled behind me, stepping up until he stood at the periphery of my vision. “What is this, exactly?”

  “A romp room, obviously.” Talix finally spoke up, his voice deeper and more full-bodied than one might expect from his delicate frame.

  The Green Man was of average height for his kind, roughly six-three, give or take an inch, with shorn ruby-red hair that swept messily into his ice-blue eyes, as well as a set of lips that caused my own to tingle as I remembered the one and only time I’d gifted him tongue for shadow and stealth. Basically, I’d kissed the stuffing out of him, and he’d given me a fae gift in return.

  However, it was a teeny tiny little fact that I’d maybe, sort of broken my oath to him—not because I’d set out to do it, though. James had placed us both in a screwed-up situation, and I’d gotten us out of it as best I could.

  Fae weren’t exactly a forgiving bunch, though.

  Shoving my hands into my pockets, I waited for the other shoe to drop. Veilers rarely gave out something for nothin’.

  “Obviously.” Mercer snorted. “Now, can we cut out the fucking mind games, and someone tell us what we came to learn?”

  Talix set Helen down in the center of the mattress. Again, his movements were deferential and gentle, and I honestly couldn’t understand it. Helen was gorgeous, yes, but she wasn’t fae. Right? I mean, fae only really care for other fae. However, all I had to do was think of Blue, and I knew that wasn’t true.

  Talix lifted Helen’s glass lid, and I threw my hands up immediately, taking an involuntary step back. I so didn’t want to know how Helen got it on. Suddenly, that was crystal clear to me.

  “Whoa. Whoa. Helen, what are you doing?”

  Her silver eyes, always so lively, had become intensely serious. “You wish answers, vampire, and I am here to give them. But all answers come with a cost. And you said you were willing to pay them. Have you forgotten so soon?”

  Immediately, my eyes shot to Mercer’s and his right back to me. He looked as confused as I felt.

  “What?” Merc snarled, shaking his head and grabbing a fistful of my gown, as though he meant to physically haul my ass out of there if things took a turn for the peculiar. I hated to say it, but I was pretty sure we’d not only crossed the line, we’d freaking pole-vaulted over it.

  I was about to possibly have sex with a head. I really needed to analyze my priorities in life.

  I wasn’t even aware of the fact that the shifting fabric had revealed my black silk bra until I caught Talix ogling me. I already knew I was one of the fae’s weaknesses. Very little was as addictive to a fae as a full-blooded Et Prochrae—the beautiful ones. Our beauty wasn’t in our looks so much as in our siren’s call. That was a weapon in my arsenal I’d exploited a time or two, and I wouldn’t deny it. Tonight, that was the only thing I really had going for me. Mercer’s calming power stopped working about the same time Talix had sealed us in.

  “If you want your answers, then release her, shifter. Your time will come, but for now, I only require my Green Man and Scarlett.”

  “Your Green Man?” I whispered. “Wait. What’s going on here, Helen?” Nothing was making any sort of sense. “All I want to know is—”

  She laughed, and the sound was jarring and shivered with ripples of white-hot power. What in the hell was Helen, really? I’d always thought human before, but I was suddenly thinking a big, fat nope. No head should be doing what she was.

  “I know why you’re here,” she said. “So let us get on with this, shall we?”

  I glanced down at Mercer’s hand, still holding my dress fast. “Merc, it’s okay.”

  He didn’t like the situation. That much was obvious. One didn’t have to know him as I did to see that clearly, so I was really surprised when, with a clipped nod, he let me go and took a small step back. His jaw was clenched tight, but I could read the trust in his eyes.

  More grateful than he could’ve imagined at his willingness to go against his obvious discomfort, I turned back around and spread my arms in a gesture of capitulation.

  “Talix,” Helen immediately prompted.

  The Green Man nodded before quickly disrobing. Looking at the room and the way he’d positioned Helen’s jar, I quickly wondered whether something more than just sex for questions was about to take place. Something seemed almost ritualistic about the setup.

  No sooner had he stepped out of his pants and tossed them aside than vines slithered up through the floor—the smooth, marble floor, where no cracks at all had existed before.

  Even though I understood the fae to an extent, a part of their affinity toward nature still awed me even after many years. The vines soon budded with roses the color of deepest blood, and thorns appeared, the size of a man’s palm.
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  The vines twisted up around Talix’s calves, long thighs, and slender waist before creeping up to finally pause at the base of his neck, then they wound downward until they covered each of his fingers, ending in delicate little roses at each nail tip.

  Beneath his feet, a buttery yellow glow flowed outward from the soles of his feet, spreading like a ripple in a pond until I also stood inside its swell. I trembled at the feel of his power. It was warmth, light, and energy.

  Talix was a Green Man, meaning he commanded dawn, birth, spring—life.

  Suddenly, I knew what to do. I felt the command whispering through me. I slipped off my heels, kicking them to the side.

  Mercer growled in the back of his throat but didn’t utter a word.

  Helen shook her head. “Be thee well, shifter.”

  Her words bathed the room in a peaceful glow, quieting Mercer instantly, and I knew he understood as I did. Great magick was at work.

  Next came my gown. I was zipped in the back and would’ve looked awkward trying to take it off, but—

  Suddenly, a strong pair of hands were on me, one resting on my shoulder as the other slowly worked the zipper down. Cool air brushed against my sensitized skin, causing my nipples to point up painfully. Mercer’s hands were hot and hard as they brushed at the fabric, causing the cocktail dress to cascade like black shadow down around my ankles.

  I wasn’t normally an exhibitionist, but I felt Talix’s magick pulse through the room in powerful waves, and my body burned, itching with desire and need. Holding his hands out toward me, Talix’s frosty eyes burned with lust and need. He could not taste of my blood, nor I of his—if we did, we’d both burn up from the inside out, and death would not come easily or quickly to either of us—but my body craved the touch of his magickal flesh. The feeling of touching a charged-up fae couldn’t be described. It had nothing to do with love or lust, but desire—a white-hot, desperate need that made me feel both alive and close to death.

  I was burning with fever and running on pure adrenaline at the same time. Nothing in the world was quite like it.

  My hand slipped into his, and the moment it did, the thorns embedded themselves deep into me. I hissed as tiny beads of black blood welled up. I was all but dry at that point, but the vines were greedily taking what was left.

  “A blood price must be paid,” Helen said in a voice grown deep and raw with power.

  Having carnivorous thorns suck on me should have hurt far more than it did. It was a prickling annoyance but little more than that.

  The blooms on Talix’s fingernails spiraled open, looking healthier and broader. The room filled with their perfume, and Talix grinned.

  “I have kept your secret, vampire,” Talix whispered low and for my ears only, “and so now you shall keep mine.”

  My secret could only be the fact that he knew James and I had been the ones to breach Diane’s security all those months before, but I couldn’t imagine what secret he might mean. I opened my mouth to ask him, but he swooped in, sucking on my bottom lip with the expertise of a royal courtesan.

  My reaction was immediate and swift. The room was pumped full of so much sexual energy that I imploded in his arms, reaching orgasm so violently and unexpectedly that stars exploded behind my eyes. Talix moaned, sliding his tongue deeply against my own, tasting and supping at my nerve-delicate flesh.

  In the back of my mind, I heard Mercer’s own moan and knew he was not unaffected by the magick the Green Man and I were creating.

  I sank deeper into the oblivion of that dark magick, digging my claws into his wrists, smelling the sharp, exquisite tang of his blood. My mouth grew parched, my stomach ached for a taste, and the knowledge that I could have none of him only made the desperation keener and more brutal.

  Then Talix scraped his fangs against the wet seam of my mouth, and I whimpered, ready to explode into another wave of orgasm, growing frustrated and angry and resentful because I needed his blood.

  His own touch burned deeper and harder, and I could sense his own frustration at being denied that which he wished most.

  We were powder kegs ready to ignite, and just as I reached the pinnacle of frenzy, when I was ready to defy anything and anyone to suck from the fae’s neck, he reached over my shoulder and yanked almost violently on something behind me.

  Mercer stumbled into me, and I didn’t stop to think. I simply reacted. Breaking from Talix’s kiss, I twisted and in one smooth motion sank my fangs deep into Mercer’s vein at his neck.

  He sucked in a sharp breath, rumbling deeply and trembling in my arms as I pulled from his life’s blood.

  Mercer was a powerful shifter and could have denied me, but I knew he wanted me to feed on him. I felt it in the way he caged his arms around me, pinning me tightly to his side so that I could feast my fill of him.

  He was an explosion of power to my senses, an ancient source of power that raced like charged bolts of lightning through my desiccated veins, waking me up from the inside out, heating me through, and shoving through my heart like violent surges of electricity.

  My heart began to beat powerfully within me.

  Thump.

  Thump.

  Thump.

  My brain flooded with endorphins. An animalistic sound spilled off my tongue as I practically crawled up his yielding body to drink until my stomach distended with the fullness of him.

  I could feel weakness begin to wind through him, knowing in a corner of my mind I was taking too much, and though I was wild with want and need, I’d almost killed Mercer once with my lust for blood. I’d promised myself I would never hurt him again.

  Fighting my own natural instinct to consume, I shoved him quickly away. Blood stained the front of his dark jacket, and the coppery scent of it drove me wild with need and desire.

  His skin was pale, flushed, but he still retained the glow of vigor. I’d not taken too much.

  Lust burned through his gaze, and though he was panting for breath, he took a step toward me.

  “No!” I held my hand out to him. “Just... just stay there until I get my demon leashed. I can’t hurt you, Merc. Not again.”

  His nostrils flared, but he did as I asked.

  Talix, on the other hand, moved around him and said, “Give me your jacket. Now.”

  Mercer didn’t question the command, and I only looked on in curiosity as he wiggled out of it. Merc was a big man, so slipping free took quite a bit of tugging and pulling. Once he did, he handed it to Talix, who quickly snapped it open and laid the bloodied portion of it over Helen’s jar.

  The second he did, a wave of light exploded like a beam throughout the room, and I stared in awed wonder as a woman more lovely than anything in all the worlds stepped out from it.

  She was a woman built of the stars and cosmic dust. Her limbs were long and elegant, her form without equal—a woman not of flesh but of light and radiance. Extending a starry hand toward Talix, she emerged a complete woman, and I lost all my words.

  Her hair was the golden wash of a setting sun, and it blazed around her shoulders. On the crown of her head sat a wreath of laurel. Silver eyes flashed with intelligence and something so ancient that it was primordial.

  “Helen, who—”

  Holding up a star-dusted hand, she shook her head. Then, still clinging tightly to Talix’s hand, she chanted in a tongue I’d never heard before.

  As she did, the room started to transform. At first, it budded with the growth of new life, delicate shoots of grass and saplings, but quickly they grew and matured. No longer were we standing in a whitewashed room but in an exotic land lush with trees and life the likes of which I’d never seen before.

  “Why are we in faerie?” Mercer asked, and I started, turning to look at him.

  Faerie? As in faerie lands?

  Trees, alive with dancing flame, twisted long golden branches into the sky. Birds gleaming like liquid magma streaked across the skies. Fog rolled over our feet, and the sky was a shade of lavender blue that would be
hard to replicate in any medium.

  We were definitely not in Kansas anymore.

  So why were we here?

  I glanced down. I was still only in a bra and undies. Swell. “Helen, where are we? Why are we here?”

  She smiled, and the laurel wreath upon her head burned with rays of sunlight. Turning on her heel, she moved, saying nothing. Talix followed close behind. Mercer grabbed my hand, and without either of us saying a word, we followed also.

  The deeper we walked into the woods, the more my thoughts ran away from me. Had they brought us here to murder us? To silence us? Was it because of what’d happened with the Queen’s darkness a few months ago?

  Talix finally spoke up. “In this form, in these lands, Helen is unable to speak in a tongue you’d recognize. It is the curse, you see. But we have been waiting a long time for you, Scarlett Smith.”

  “What?” Mercer snapped, stopping me from walking on with a punishing grip on my hand. “I demand we go no farther until you tell us why it is that you’ve brought Scarlett here.”

  Helen turned, eyeing Mercer sternly.

  “If we wanted her, we could have brought her here without you. That we included you was a mercy, shifter.” Talix snarled, and the monumental trees around us groaned, raising the hairs on my arms.

  Never underestimate the delicacy of a fae, they’ve got fangs and they know how to use them. Even a fully matured shifter didn’t usually want to tangle with one unless given no other choice. Mercer’s nostrils flared, and I knew my silly, brutish male wouldn’t hesitate even a second. He looked ready to slap a ho. Placing my palm against his chest, I gave him a small shake.

  “Look at me,” I said.

  After another second, he finally did, a wolfish whine rumbling up his throat. My heart broke at seeing the wolf in his eyes looking desperate and anxious. Wolves were creatures of nature, yes, but they also had a limited understanding of the workings of magick. Even I was at a loss, but I didn’t believe Helen—or Talix, for that matter—meant either of us harm.