Dedication
This one’s for Random, who introduced me to the pleasures and perils of Trickster.
Chapter One
“She’s the one, Tag—the one from my dreams.” Paul’s discreet gesture might have been imperceptible to someone else, but Taggart followed it with the ease of a long-time partner.
The small Asian woman Paul pointed out was dressed in a style somewhere between scruffy undergraduate and street person: faded, overlong jeans worn to shreds at the hem from dragging on the ground, a shabby rust-colored sweatshirt, hiking boots. Somehow, though, she managed to look elegant in that drab outfit. The shirt’s color accented her clear skin and the wild russet streaks in her sleek black hair. Her face was stunning, and she carried herself as if she wore silk and cashmere instead of rags.
Or maybe like she was wearing nothing at all. She wasn’t showing a lot of skin and everything looked too big for her, disguising her slender figure, but Tag had no problem at all imagining her naked.
Naked and riding him while he sucked Paul’s cock. Naked and sandwiched between the two of them, taking them both at once. Even naked and companionably snuggling, because it seemed to Tag that if the Powers were going to all the trouble of pointing out an incredibly hot woman in need of help that could come only from red magic—sex magic—They might have more in mind than an arcane quick fix.
He shivered sensually. Damn, he had to stop fantasizing about these scenarios before he really got started. He wouldn’t get to assist his husband with this tempting piece of red magic, because his husband wouldn’t be doing it. Husband was the key word. Paul was the true-dreamer who’d seen the unfortunate being in need of strong red magic to lift her curse, but one of his single relatives would have to lift it. The Donovans, Paul’s powerful witch family, were sticklers for monogamy once you married.
More’s the pity. Paul and Tag were both bi. In their pasts, they’d each enjoyed threesomes with the right combination of girl and/or guy. But once Paul’s magic danced for Tag, proving he was the right partner on a magical level as well as all others, Paul had been cut off from other lovers.
And, by extension, so was Tag. He’d always been happily poly, as fox duals were inclined to be, but Paul was worth the sacrifice. A red witch who loved you made everyone else seem dull in comparison—and besides, Tag loved Paul more than he’d ever imagined loving anyone, and if it took monogamy to keep Paul, so be it.
Still, a fox could daydream, and this lady was worth dreaming about.
Instinctively, his nostrils flared—sniffing the air, letting his fox-self get an impression of the woman through his human-appearing wordside form.
They were across the street from her, walking casually hand in hand—Powers bless Portland, Oregon’s artsy little heart!—but the wind was in his favor. He sniffed the air, trying to tease her fragrance from the myriad smells of a side street in the city.
Tag’s heart sank. Damn, they’d be stuck in Portland awhile longer and, while Portland wasn’t bad as cities went, he wanted to be home. “She’s not the one you dreamed about,” he whispered. “She’s human.”
Paul stopped him, drew him in as if to kiss him, but turned them both so the woman stayed in Tag’s line of sight. “See it my way,” he whispered, and pulled Tag in through the connection Tag thought of as being mated, and Paul, in his witchy way, called a silvery etheric cord linking their souls.
That was one of Paul’s gifts, a gift rare enough that his family didn’t even know what to call it, and those damn Donovans had names for everything: Paul could share his witch-sight with his partner.
The world went wonky. Colors shifted as if Tag was seeing through a night scope. Details of the 21st century faded—parked cars became transparent unless they had living beings inside them—but things previously invisible before leaped into focus. A ghost-child in 19th-century clothes played jacks on the stoop of a brownstone, oblivious to the modern inhabitant grabbing her mail, and a tiny pixie-like being waved from a curb planting in front of a store. Auras surrounded anything living, though Tag couldn’t have said what they meant.
The Asian hottie’s silver and russet aura was blotched with black and a sickly fuchsia. The ugly blotches must be the curse Paul had foreseen, the curse she needed red magic to lift.
She had a fox tail.
No, make that three fox tails.
Tag blinked, trying not to be visibly astonished at something passersby couldn’t see. “Trickster’s balls and boobies,” he muttered under his breath.
What was she? She wasn’t human, but she sure as Powers wasn’t dual, not with three tails, not smelling the almost-human way she did.
“She’s a kitsune, a Japanese fox spirit,” Paul whispered, answering Tag’s question before he asked it. He supposed his puzzlement had been obvious, but it didn’t hurt that Paul was a minor telepath. “Very old, very powerful—I don’t think they’re mortal. Only she’s damaged somehow.”
Soft fur tickled the inside of his skin. Curiosity and a touch of wary arousal mingled. The fox inside him stretched, looked out through the wordside’s eyes.
Tag felt his eyes shift toward something that wouldn’t pass for human.
The part of him that Paul had been trying to drum some sense into thought about pulling his eyes back to normal. Unlikely anyone would notice on a busy city street, but the Agency got antsy about the dumbest things. The Agency, the government department that enforced the often discriminatory laws regulating magic-users and non-human Differents, was nervous about pissing off Donovans these days, ever since one of Paul’s cousins helped crack open one of their nastier covert operations. For that reason alone, Tag figured they’d jump all over a semi-legitimate excuse to take a Donovan down hard.
The part of him that was fox chuffed, a fox’s version of laughter. Freaking out the normies was fun.
But they had business to attend to.
“So,” he whispered to his husband, “if that’s our mark, what do we do now?”
“We wait. Let’s get a cup of coffee in that café. She will come to us. If not right now, then soon.”
Chapter Two
The being who currently called herself Akane Moritomo froze.
The hair on the back of her neck prickled, not entirely unpleasantly.
Someone recognized her for what she was. The curse had left her with that pathetically small power, to know such things.
No one had recognized her in decades. Even trapped in this form, she’d occasionally be spotted in Japan. But never in America.
This time, she had been.
Cautiously, pretending she was retying her boot, she scanned the people around her, looking for someone who was not the ordinary human he or she appeared to be.
The Agency?
Her heart raced, though once she would have scoffed at mortals trying to capture her. If the Agency discovered she was a non-human Different passing for human, even though she’d taken care to do no harm in this form, she might be deported back to Japan. The shame of that would be unendurable. The confinement beforehand would be worse.
She’d die inside. But trapped in human form, she couldn’t even will her own fading as a kitsune should when her heart was broken.
Something caught the sharper senses that still simmered below the dull human form. Someone in the outdoor café was not what they appeared. Might be Agency. Might be a potential ally. In either case, it was worth checking out. These days she might not be able to perceive more than, say, a half-trained mortal witch, but any information was better than operating blind.
It wasn’t the dreadlocked student bent over her books or the old couple sharing a piece of cake. She turned her attention to the two young men holding hands at a table off to the side.
For a seco
nd, she studied them with her merely human senses, appreciating the view. One was tall and elegantly lean and so blue-eyed she could make it out from across the street, his dark hair worn long and loose, waving past his shoulders in a sweep most women would envy. The other was shorter and solidly built, broad shouldered, with a collar-length, red ponytail and a warm smile. Not for her, not from the way they seemed to shut out the street and its noise to be together in their own world. She knew better now. But their sheer beauty made her shiver.
Beauty didn’t prove a thing. Masao and Hiro had been beautiful too, and look where that had gotten her.
She turned her other senses, hampered though they were, on the handsome couple.
Maybe it was a good thing they didn’t work as well as they ought to. After so long in the human world, using human senses, she had to blink, protecting her eyes against the blinding glare of power from the dark-haired one. It poured off him in streams of healing white, herbalist green, psychic blue and the vivid crimson of sex magic.
Nothing dark, though. No demon taint or hint of blood magic on that one. Just strong, well-trained, positive power. The few times she’d met a witch in America, their magic was weak, wild, disordered, or tainted with impure practices. She’d known there were powerful witch families in America, but, as in Japan, they kept to themselves and came forward only when they felt there was need.
Had her need for release finally called out to one of them?
His power certainly called to her. He might have the knowledge to free her after two hundred years of suffering. It was unlikely—after all, the conditions of her curse were stringent and specific—but if anyone would know how to get around them, it would be a strong, well-trained witch with powerful red magic.
And if he didn’t have a clue? At this point in her unwanted mortal life, Akane would take what fun she could get, and chatting with a handsome man would brighten her day.
Even if he was holding hands with another handsome man, which meant he was off-limits.
She crossed the street without looking, shrugging off the squeal of brakes and the “Hey, watch it!” from a bike messenger who barely missed her.
It was only when she got closer that she sensed what his partner was.
Fox.
Not like her. He had the sweet, hot, alluring smell of mortality on him as much as any human, and besides, there were no males of her kind. A dual-natured one, with a fox who walked inside his human appearance, waiting to come out to play.
Until you lie with a male of your kind, Hiro had said when he’d cursed her. There were no male kitsune. But perhaps coupled with the other’s powerful magics, the fox dual would do.
Akane knew the Japanese forms for petitioning a powerful wielder of magic, an elegant, subtle dance like much in Japanese culture both human and Different. This young country, though, favored directness.
All her instincts told her to bow, but she’d been in America long enough to know better. Instead, she walked over to the handsome witch. Making herself look at him instead of the equally attractive fox, she said, “Please. I need your help.”
It was the fox who answered, though, with a winning smile and a hint of the southeastern states in his accent. “We thought you’d never ask, darlin’. Paul and I have been looking for you for weeks now. He dreamed of you for a few months before that, but it took a while to narrow down where you might be. And I don’t know about you, Ms. Foxy Lady, but I am past ready to get out of this city.” He twitched, a twitch she recognized all too well. The fur beneath his human appearance wanted out, and his fox-nature was restless among tall buildings and concrete.
“I’m Paul Donovan,” the dark-haired one said simply. “I’m a witch and a true-dreamer. I’ve been dreaming of you since sometime after Midsummer.” When she’d moved to the area, led by her own dreams of release. “And you are a kitsune who has a serious problem that can be solved only by sex magic. From the look of your aura, I’d say it’s a sorcerous curse.”
“I’m trapped in human form. Have been for two hundred years.” She realized her voice was barely audible. After all this time, the curse was still a cause for shame. She’d brought it on herself, after all. But she’d learned her lesson. “Please. I need my own body back. I’ve almost lost hope.”
Paul smiled reassuringly. It lit up his blue eyes like sun on the ocean. “Sex magic is a Donovan specialty, as is healing—and removing a curse that’s tormented you for so long is definitely healing. I’d like to take you home with us and see what we can do to get you back to your proper form.”
She nodded, stunned by how much he already knew and even more so by his confidence. He must have been sure she was the right woman, because the things he was saying would get a man into all kinds of trouble if she hadn’t truly been a kitsune who needed witchy help.
He reached out, took her hand. His grip was strong, although his hands were smooth, belonging to a man who used his brains more often than his brawn.
Inari protect her, he was a beautiful man.
He ran his fingers lightly over her palm, and raw red magic coursed through the mere touch. Akane clenched a little. She didn’t dare look, but she was sure her erect nipples must be clearly visible under the ugly shirt.
While her blood was still racing, he slipped his hand away and moved it under the table. She suspected it was on his lover’s thigh. Still, it would seem Paul was not unattracted.
Even a gloriously handsome sex-witch couldn’t put that much sensuality into a minor caress if there wasn’t some real interest.
The redhead chuckled and held out his hand in turn.
When she took it, he raised her hand to his lips and kissed it, an old-fashioned, gentlemanly gesture—or it would have been if he hadn’t held her gaze so intimately as he did it. “Delighted to meet you,” he said, the honey in his voice laced with smoke and bourbon. “I’m Taggart Ross-Donovan, the witch’s chauffeur, muscle, designated rogue, and husband.” He looked up and down her body in a most appreciative way, as if he saw through the ugly clothes to the body underneath—and perhaps through that body to her real one.
“Akane.” No need to bother with the last name. They’d know it was assumed, that she had come into existence centuries before the custom of surnames had. “And you’re a fox.”
“Why, thank you, miss,” Tag said, spreading the southern accent even thicker—and letting his eyes shift to the beady black of a true fox to make it clear he knew exactly what she meant.
“And with that,” Paul said, leaving a twenty-dollar bill for their coffees, “we should go. Cities are a poor spot for my magic and misery for Tag. I can’t imagine they’re better for you.”
Chapter Three
If she’d been the young human woman whose form she was forced to wear, Akane supposed she would have been stupid to get into a car with two strange men and head off through the mountains toward a wild, remote spot on the coast. Even if one of them claimed to be a Donovan, a name that practically defined good witch in the Western world, they might be lying.
She’d seen the clean light of the witch’s power, though.
She’d seen the fox inside the other’s skin.
They might be able help her.
And that let her not only get into the car without trepidation, but fall asleep before they left the Portland city limits.
Fall properly asleep, which she hadn’t been able to do since her dreams had prompted her to make her way—on foot, by bus and by hitchhiking—from the wilds of Idaho as far as Portland. There she’d known she was close to whatever was compelling her on, but she couldn’t sleep well enough to dream and get clearer instruction. She’d run out of money quickly in the city, and she’d been living rough ever since. In her natural state, not needing to sleep or eat except for the sheer pleasure of it, it would have been easy enough, even in the concrete mazes of Portland, but it had been an exhausting, debilitating time for her human body.
Half-wild, she’d never been able to sleep around strangers
or even lovers, but somehow she was able to sleep in that car, with two men she’d just met. Perhaps, she thought as she realized as she was drifting off, Paul put a sleep spell, or at least a spell of peace, on her.
In any case, she slept until Paul opened the door and gently touched her arm. “Wake up, sleeping beauty. We’re home.”
Home was a rambling Victorian extravaganza that looked like it might have been a resort sometime around 1900. A cedar-shingled main building grayed by the ocean wind, with turrets and odd porches and a style best described as comfortably eccentric, a number of outbuildings ranging from huts to small cottages. She glimpsed standing stones in the distance, and those bright silk strips tied to the trees had to be an offering to spirits. She heard the ocean and caught glimpses of it through the trees. She bet a quick walk down one of the wide paths she saw would take her to a rocky beach.
Half a dozen small, hybrid cars and one fifteen-passenger van, all shades of green, were in the parking lot. It was a rare clear day in Oregon, and the Donovan extended family was outside taking advantage of it. Children shrieked and yelled at play, taking time to wave at the new arrivals without too much interest. Several people chanted somewhere out of sight, and she caught bits of distant conversation. To Akane’s relief, though, they reached the main house without running into any adults. She was so disheveled, and these clothes—all she’d been able to beg at a thrift shop when the clothes she’d worn to Portland became too dirty to bear—were filthy and had been ugly even when they were clean. Maybe she’d be able to get a bath and see if Paul could find someone to loan her clothes before she met anyone.
That hope failed as soon as Paul opened the door. Two women, a young one with Paul’s height and coloring and an elderly one whose face was a mass of wrinkles and freckles, descended on them with a look of purpose.
“Lord and Lady, Paul, it’s a good thing you project loud enough to read through the damn mountains,” the young one said, handing him a key. “I’ve set up the blue cabin for your new friend. The main house is a bit overwhelming, even for those of us who are used to the ruckus.”
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