by SM Reine
I rolled the wetted mixture of plants and sand in the rattlesnake skin. It was warm to my touch, almost electric. It reminded me of Abuelita. A comforting sensation. She’d always smelled like good cigars and whiskey, and her skin had felt like the sweet kiss of magic. I’d loved curling up in her lap while she cast the old magic, watching her spin smoke into shapes for my entertainment.
“This is your past,” she’d told me once, blowing a butterfly out of cigar smoke. I had been a small child at the time. The sight of it had made me clap and giggle. “And this is your future.” Another puff.
“What is it?” I’d asked, reaching up to grab for the coils of smoke.
“You’ll know,” she’d said.
Maybe it was my imagination, or the distortion of memories through time, but I was pretty sure she’d blown a smoke wolf at me.
I whispered an incantation with the snake skin between my palms. “Blessed Hecate, work your will. Show me the truth behind the veil. Show me where the card hails from.”
And then I opened the skin and scattered the sand on the face of The Devil.
Magic swelled within me, connecting me to the card. A coil of smoke rose from its image. It was almost as thick as when Abuelita had blown the smoke from her cigars, and it thrilled me to see the spell working.
It writhed, twisting into an arrow upthrust toward the sky, its base planted solidly on the center of the card.
That was how it froze.
I waited to see if it would change, but it remained still. My eyes tracked the path of the smoky arrow toward the roof. I hadn’t expected my spell to work miracles—I hadn’t expected it to work at all, actually—but I had hoped that it would form a shape that told me where it had come from.
Yet it pointed skyward. Not toward any city or individual who might have given it to me.
Somehow, I was more surprised that the arrow wasn’t pointing down to Hell.
Someone knocked on my front door and I lost my concentration. The spell snapped. Scrambling to my feet, I beat the smoke out of the air, stuffed The Devil in my back pocket, and tossed my duvet over the altar. Even I wasn’t sure why I was being so paranoid. It wasn’t like Pops had come down from Los Angeles to yell at me for casting magic.
I hoped for Cooper when I opened the door, but it was Tatiana, one of the Coyote Ranch girls. “You’ve got to open the bar,” she said, wringing her hands together.
I gave her the once-over. She was wearing a baggy skirt, a tank top, flip flops. Her sleek black hair was pulled back in a practical ponytail. She wasn’t wearing any makeup. “What’s wrong?”
“You’ve got to distract them,” Tatiana said. “Kelsie is sick. She took too much lethe.”
Lethe was one of the weirder drugs Johnny sold. It was a super-strong mix of stimulants and hallucinogens that was powerful enough to knock any supernatural creature on her ass for a night-long high. I’d seen the girls snorting it before. It made them happy, made the sex and alcohol better, made it so they could turn tricks all night long.
It could also kill a human woman if she took more than a few grains.
“Is she going to die?” I asked, my alarm climbing.
“I don’t know. But she can’t work, and Leanne is taking care of her, so I’m on my own.” She wrung her hands. “I can’t handle that many guys. They’re bored, Ofelia. You need to distract them or they’re going to become violent.”
Become violent? If the scuffles I’d been hearing over the last few nights weren’t violence, then I didn’t want to see what would happen once it got worse.
I was safe in my warded trailer. All I had to do was stay locked up until Gloria and Johnny came back, fixed the generator, and finished off the cage fights. The Ranch girls weren’t my problem. They stayed out of my bar, and I stayed out of their whorehouse.
But her pleading eyes made me waver.
A figure approaching my trailer caught my attention. He was obscured by the dust storm, but I could tell instantly that it was Cooper. Relief and arousal were a powerful mix. I grabbed the doorframe to keep myself standing.
“I want to help, Tatiana,” I said, and I was surprised to mean it. “There’s just no power in the bar. There isn’t much I can do to entertain them.”
“We’ve been using candles at the Ranch. You can have all of them. And I think we’ve got some camping lanterns, too. Battery-powered.” She gave a sheepish smile. “We have plenty of batteries.”
Cooper stopped at the bottom of the steps, and my breath stuck in my throat. His right eye was swollen shut. Someone had been beating on him. “Is there a problem here?”
Tatiana drew in on herself, as if unsure how to conduct herself around one of the bikers when she wasn’t in costume and on the job. She bit her fingernail and shook her head silently.
I touched her shoulder. “It’s okay. He’s not like the others.” The gratitude in Cooper’s eyes warmed me.
“Ofelia needs to open the bar,” Tatiana said in a small voice.
“Okay,” he said. “So we’ll open the bar.” Like it was such an easy thing to do. I never did night shifts without Gloria.
But Cooper was going to be there for me. I could see it in his face now. He was ready to work, just like he’d promised on the night of the cage fight.
Lonely as I was in Lobo Norte, I wasn’t alone.
At least for now.
IX
The bikers poured into my bar in droves. Tatiana was right. These were restless men in desperate need of entertainment. Most of them showed signs of having been in recent fights: black eyes and bloodstained shirts and cracked teeth. They clambered into the cage room, hanging off the sides of the bars,
I wasn’t sure if I was glad that the Fangs weren’t there.
Cooper served drinks while I stripped in the darkness, illuminated only by camping lanterns and the candles. We played music on a battery-powered tape cassette player that played mullet-rock from the eighties. It had no bass. It was still better than nothing.
With a hand locked on the pole, I kicked my legs up and swung a broad circle over the crowd. I gave them a good view of my legs, my abs, my ass. I wasn’t a particularly skinny woman, but I was solid muscle under my soft curves. I looked good, and I knew it.
I’d gone simple with my costume for the night. I was wearing a string bikini—basically just three triangles covering my nipples and cunt—with leather chaps borrowed from Cooper and a cowboy hat. But the men were cheering for me to take even that little cloth off. Demanding to see it all.
Glancing down at Cooper, I noticed that I had his full attention, even as he served drinks. He was good, I had to admit—almost as good at whipping out whiskey and beer as I was. And he was doing it while he stared at me. Silent. Hungry.
I wrapped an arm over my chest as I reached the other hand back to untie my bikini top, hips undulating in time with the music. The bikers screamed.
With a flick of my wrist, I tossed my top into the crowd. The flickering light played over my bare breasts, making my nipples look almost black against my creamy skin.
I dropped to my knees. Writhed on the counter. Callused, dirty hands shoved money in my chaps. One of the Wings got too grabby. He caught the side of my thong, snapped the elastic, and ripped them away. Then he tried to pull me off of the counter.
As with most things, I asked myself, What would Gloria do?
I snapped the heel of my boot into his face.
Like I said, I’ve got great muscles. My legs are the eighth wonder of the world. His nose snapped. The other men cackled as he fell back, mocking him for being beaten by a girl. He rounded on me, bleeding on his upper lip. It was hard to hear him over the others shouting, but I could read his lips. You bitch.
The touch of skin warmed my calf. I looked down to see that Cooper had wrapped a possessive hand around me. His voice, I could hear. My every sense was attuned to him. “Touch her and you’ll die.”
Heat pooled between my legs at his tone. Guess it should say something a
bout me that murder threats got me wet. It’s definitely not a good thing. But there was nothing sexier than the werewolf showing the other bikers that I belonged to him, marking his claim, making it clear to whom they would answer if they fucked with me.
The other guy backed down. That was hotter still.
Cooper reached up for me.
I stepped into his grip, and he lowered me slowly behind the bar. I felt every inch of his body on the way down. Every ridge of muscle, his hard belt buckle, the scrape of his jeans against my bare thighs.
He didn’t let me reach my feet. Cooper carried me into the back room.
“Someone has to watch the bar,” I protested.
The shelves rattled as he shoved me against them. “Nobody’ll fuck with the bar while I’m here.” He pushed his knee between my thighs, hitching me up against him. The denim rubbed against me. Dancing always got me kind of hot, but the feel of him pressing hard against my core made me become instantly wet.
I couldn’t argue with him any more, even if I’d wanted to. All that came out of me was a groan.
He covered my mouth with his, devouring the noise. “You’re so fucking hot when you dance,” he growled. He bit my bottom lip. Sucked it into his mouth, let it snap back. “The way you smell—I need to have you.”
Cooper fisted my cornrows and yanked hard enough to pull my head back. His teeth nibbled along the line of my jaw. Down my throat, to my collarbone, between my breasts. As he tasted me, he ground his thigh against my hot core. Rubbing us together. His erection was almost painful against my hip.
I wanted him. I’d never wanted anyone as much as I wanted him.
“Fuck me,” I gasped, digging my fingernails into the muscles of his back.
He shoved his middle finger inside of me.
“You’re so fucking wet,” Cooper growled from between my breasts, pumping slowly, dragging it out before pushing it in again.
My vision blurred. My head fell back.
It felt so good, but it wasn’t enough. I wanted all of him. Every hard inch. Cupping him through his jeans, I could tell that there were a lot of inches there to take. I’d been with a lot of guys before, enough that I didn’t bother counting, but none that took my breath away when I felt the size of them through their pants. Cooper was incredible all over.
I rubbed hard, stroking his length, trying to make him as insane as he made me. His breath went ragged on my neck. His finger lost rhythm.
“Come on,” I groaned. “Fuck me, Cooper.”
Glass shattered.
For a moment, we didn’t move. We remained locked together, my leg hooked around his hip, his fingers deep inside of me, pressing against my G spot.
Shouts rose from the bar.
Cooper gave a low, delicious chuckle and said, “I should stop them before they rip the bar apart.”
I whimpered as he withdrew. He kissed me again, hot and lingering, and then ripped himself away from me to stop the fight in the bar. It was getting worse—loud and rowdy with more shattering bottles. That was usually when Gloria rolled in with her stilettos and started crushing testicles. I wanted to see how Cooper handled it. I was certain he would be impressive to watch. Then maybe he could fuck me against the bar, high on the adrenaline of victory. Let the men watch.
But the back door opened and shut, and Tatiana stepped in.
“Thank goodness,” she said when she saw me. She was still in sweatpants. “You have to come.”
I struggled to remember how to breathe, much less get out coherent language. I glanced down at my mostly-naked body. Grabbed a shirt out of my locker, pulled it over my head. “What is it now?”
“I think Kelsie’s dying.”
I stuffed my purse full of ritual supplies before following Tatiana to the Coyote Ranch.
Lobo Norte was about as far from a big city as you could get, but I’d still never visited most of the buildings within our borders. My life was limited to the space between my bar and my trailer, plus the long hikes I took out into the foothills whenever the temperature was below a hundred degrees Fahrenheit. I didn’t go to the gas station. I didn’t go to The Lodge. And I definitely didn’t go to the Ranch.
Its interior was decorated like Hugh Hefner’s fantasy, if he’d only had about a hundred bucks instead of millions. The walls were plastered with animal print. The floor was peeling laminate with sixties-era shag rugs. The wet bar was padded on the outside. The rest of the furniture in the “lobby” was covered in plastic, from the couches to the wingback chairs. All incredibly classy.
There were three bedrooms in the double-wide. One for each girl. Tatiana led me to the one in the middle.
Leanne sat at the side of the bed—a large, round mattress with red velvet sheets—looking pale and worried under her caked-on makeup. She had a full face on even though the Ranch had no customers. Lipstick with dark eyeliner, winged mascara, blue eyeshadow all the way up to her eyebrows, dramatic contouring that failed to make her square face look feminine.
I couldn’t judge. I was the one wearing chaps and a cowboy hat.
My contouring was better, though.
Kelsie, resting in bed, was easily wearing just as much makeup as Leanne, but she looked far worse. It was like she had tried to prepare herself for the night with the lights turned off. Her lipstick was smeared. Her fake eyelashes weren’t attached in the right place. The concealer did nothing to hide the dark rings under her eyes. She writhed in a sweaty tangle of sheets, her shelf bra askew and stockings pushed down to her ankles. She didn’t look at me when I entered. She groaned, clenched her fists in the sheets, arched her back.
“Hey, Ofelia,” Leanne said. “How’s it going?” Like we were friends who hadn’t seen each other in a while rather than competition.
“I’m all right.” I glanced at Tatiana, who was hanging back in the door and chewing on her fingernails. “Too much lethe, you said?”
“Think so.”
Dropping my purse on the floor, I sat next to Kelsie and pulled her arm toward me. She barely reacted to my touch.
There were no needle marks on her veins. No bruising. No sign that she had been injecting. It was the easiest way to overdose on lethe—the nosebleeds usually got too bad to snort it to the point of danger.
The writhing didn’t look like a lethe overdose anyway. She should have been zonked out and loopy. Not in pain.
“Kelsie?” I asked softly, stroking her hand. “You hear me, girl?”
Her eyelashes fluttered, but she didn’t focus.
I untangled the sheets from around her and bared her skin. I didn’t see punctures on the insides of her thighs, between her fingers and toes, or behind her knees. None of the places that I used to shoot up in order to hide the marks from my brothers. As far as I could tell, Kelsie was clean.
Her bra looked uncomfortably tight, and she was laboring to breathe. I unhooked it. Pulled it off. And I gasped.
Leanne stood to get a better look. “What in the world?”
There were red handprints on the underside of her breasts, just barely hidden by her lacy lingerie. The fingers looked long and slender. The marks weren’t quite bruises—almost more like burns.
“Lordy,” Tatiana said. “One of the bikers?”
I had a hard time imagining what they could have done to her to cause marks like that. Grabbing her hard might have left fingerprint bruises, but these were near-perfect imprints of the entire hand, curving around her large nipples to cover most of the breast tissue. Plus, some manhandling wouldn’t leave her sickly.
“That’s not right,” Leanne said.
I had to agree. “We need more help. Johnny would know what to do.” I’d never missed him before, yet I would have given my favorite pair of boots to have him back right at that moment.
“Isn’t there anything you can do?” Tatiana asked.
I opened my mouth to tell her no. But then my eyes fell on the purse I’d dropped by the bed.
Abuelita hadn’t just taught me tracking spe
lls, wards, and kitchen witchery. She’d tried to teach me some healing spells, too. I’d never done all that well at them—healing magic was among the most difficult—but I knew how to string together a ritual. I could give it a try.
Reluctantly, I nodded. My mouth felt dry. “I’m going to need a few things.”
Tatiana perked up. “Whatever you want, I’ll go find it.”
I gave them a list. Tatiana and Leanne ran off to get supplies.
And I began casting a circle of power around Kelsie’s bed.
X
I wasn’t much for big, flashy spells, but my eldest brother, Domingo, had enjoyed casting incredibly complicated rituals. The kind of things that had gotten him into deep trouble, like spells that compelled everyone in a building to ignore him. He’d knocked over three 7-Elevens like that before the cops caught up with him and found him with all the stolen cigarettes.
The kind of trouble I got into wasn’t anything like Domingo’s, but I’d still learned a few things by watching him.
Like how to cast a heck of a circle of power.
I sprinkled salt in a line ringing Kelsie’s bed first, then grabbed candles from a box in the closet. They weren’t the kind I had in my trailer. They were the kind with edible wax that smelled like molten candy. They’d have to be good enough tonight—hopefully the spirits wouldn’t be too offended by all the glitter.
I set the first candle in the east next to a butter knife. Not exactly my usual athame, but I didn’t have anything better nearby. “I call upon the guardian of the watchtower of the east, spirit of air,” I said, uncomfortably aware of Leanne and Tatiana watching me from outside the circle. They were whispering to each other. I couldn’t tell what they were saying, or if they thought I was crazy. “Arise to empower this circle.”
Magic pulsed through me, making my fingertips tingle. The candle flame burned brighter and glinted on the silver blade of the knife.
I went to each of the other cardinal directions, using the elemental representations that the girls had brought me at each one: sand for the north, a second candle for south, a Solo cup of tap water for west.