Magic in Her Touch

by Kate McLay

  He put two hands on her shoulders and held her at arm's length, "Look at you, all dressed up. How come I never get the fancy treatment?"

  Darby used a gentle push of magic to make him take a step back, and stuck her tongue out at him. "You won't even give me free beer, you're lucky I put on shoes."

  "If I gave you beer, I'd never make a profit and they'd kick me out of this place," said Daniel.

  "Whatever, you big baby. Now, what were they doing to deserve me?" She looked behind Daniel to see if she could spot the men he wanted her to take care of.

  Daniel nodded towards the pool table where three young men stood. Each of them wore polo shirts ranging from neon green to sky blue. All collars were popped. She hated them already.

  "I'll destroy them on principle, but have they done anything to deserve it?" she asked grinning and gleeful at the prospect.

  Daniel opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted by one of the guys whooping loudly and crushing the beer can against the felt of the table, letting the remainder spill and stain. "It's been like that for an hour."

  Darby nodded and gave his shoulder a quick squeeze before heading over to meet her new friends.

  The one in the green with spiky blond hair seemed to be the leader. He held a stick and focused so intently on the table that he didn’t notice her approach. His two friends watched him, one studying the young man and the other studying the table. There was no clear shot from his angle, no matter if he were aiming for stripes or solids. He struck the cue ball and Darby leaned over the edge of the table and picked it up as it rolled.

  "What the hell? This is my fucking game, you bitch." The leader straightened and held the cue at his side, not quite aiming it at her, but ready to threaten if necessary.

  Darby tossed the ball from hand to hand, feeling the weight each time it landed. "This is my table," she grinned.

  "We paid for it," said the one in blue. His hair was longer, nearly touching his shoulders, and he smelled oppressively of that body spray teenage boys loved to use.

  "$.50? That's hardly worth anything." They all bristled when she tossed the ball high enough to hit the ceiling and nearly didn't catch it before it hit the ground.

  The leader spoke again, "Listen, little girl, why don't you go back to your boyfriend and let the men play our game?"

  The third man, wearing a yellow polo brighter than the sun, his head shaved, moved to join the other two on one side of the table. Darby slipped her fingers out of sight of the men and flicked them, biting the inside of her cheek when the man in yellow tripped. It was petty to use magic like that, but worth it.

  "Twenty bucks a shot. If I win, I keep the table. You win, I'll give you another hundred bucks. Sound good?" Darby could see that none of the guys thought she could take them. She set the cue ball down on the table roughly where she'd picked it up.

  She grabbed another cue and pointed at her target ball, the yellow three. "Corner pocket," she said. She lined up her shot and hit the cue ball with a resounding crack. The ball rolled across the green felt surface until it struck the blue ball. She couldn't hit the yellow ball directly – the solid blue hit the striped blue, which hit the yellow at an awkward angle. But it worked, and the yellow ball hit the edge of the wall in the corner pocket.

  For a moment she thought the ball wouldn't go in and she twitched her fingers, priming her magic. But after a pregnant second it tipped over the edge into the pocket.

  Darby straightened and smiled at her opponents.

  The leader scowled at her, reached into his pocket and grabbed a crumpled bill. He slammed it down on the table and said, "It's on."

  She didn't even try to keep the grin off her face, but pointed her cue at another ball and called the shot. This time, Darby didn't sink it. She and the three men traded shots for several minutes, each strike accentuated with a quip or barb. She learned that their names were Stephen, Mikey, and Chad. Stephen was the leader.

  After the boys were comfortably up by nearly $100, Darby got down to business. There were still enough balls on the table for her to make a tidy profit, and she was sure that she would be challenged to double or nothing the moment she won. She sank the first shot easily, and a second shortly after. The third was tricky and she thought she would need to use her magic, but a little old-fashioned luck let her sink it.

  The fourth shot was impossible.

  At least, it was impossible for a human who wasn't a professional billiards player.

  Darby's fingers tingled with magic, the power was nearly electric, but it wasn't visible to the naked eye. She let her eyes roam over the table, mapping out exactly where she wanted her ball to go. She breathed in deeply and took the shot.

  The cue ball struck the opposite wall before ricocheting and hitting the solid yellow. It then hit three other balls in quick succession well before striking her target, the green striped ball. Each of her opponents was cursing as that green ball made it ever-closer to the pocket. But at the last moment, Darby sensed some sort of unknown magic and her ball stopped short, practically hanging off the table.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Only after she'd driven away from her family home, did Mina realize that her mother had never given her instructions on where to meet her supposed mate. She didn't even consider turning around to find out. She had done her duty, and that was that. But if this request was indicative of things to come, Mina doubted she would stay in town long.

  Mina had heard of this bar before, but she had been too young to go there herself the last time she lived in town. It wasn't much to look at, though the mix of patrons was fun. Even when she lived in Hong Kong, the most magically diverse city in the world, it was rare to see witches, shapeshifters, and a whole host of other beasties mingling freely. Especially with no magical safeguards to ensure the peace.

  It was early yet, and Mina found a table near the bar in the corner of the room. The best seat in the house for people watching. She sipped on a craft beer that the bartender recommended, and watched three grown men become more and more tense near the pool tables. The one in green held a pool stick so tightly that she thought it would snap in two, and the one in blue seemed torn between walking away and putting a comforting hand on him.

  The men stepped aside and let a woman approach the table. Her long brown hair was held back in a ponytail, but she blew her bangs out of her eyes rather than pin them back. If not for the clear hostility between the men and that woman, Mina would have assumed that she was on a date with one of them. She wore a tight black dress that was barely long enough to cover her ass when she bent over to take her shot. Mina leaned forward and admired the curve of her legs, grateful for the woman's taste in clothing. She even spotted a high heel.

  Mina was downright dowdy in comparison. Her flannel shirt had been a bright red when she first bought it, but after so many years it had faded to something between red and pink. Her jeans fit, and she pretended that the holes in them were stylish. Due to her bike helmet, her blonde hair was in a state of perpetual flatness.

  She was so caught up admiring the woman that she almost didn't sense the spark of magic coming from her. Like Mina, that woman was a witch. And an unethical one at that. She was cheating the men in their pool game.

  Though Mina was new here, she wasn't afraid to step on the toes of the powers that be. She was powerful enough to take on anyone in this bar twice over, and since she already planned to leave town soon she had nothing to lose.

  Mina pictured a pool table in her mind. She used a flick of magic to cover each pocket, making it impossible for anyone to sink a shot. This little spell would affect everyone at the four pool tables, but Mina didn't care. She only needed to keep the barrier up long enough to stop the witch from cheating.

  A weak strand of magic brushed against hers. Normally unfamiliar magic would feel unpleasant, at best like fitting her hand into a too-tight glove, at worst like the feeling when her leg unexpectedly went to sleep. This was different. Mina's magic wanted to stretch out
and rub up against this woman's power, not to absorb it or to fight her, but to bask in the delicious pleasure it elicited.

  Mina's magic had never melded with anyone else's like this. But in a blink the feeling was gone, their magic separate again. The woman at the pool table straightened, her spine rigid. She cast a furtive glance around the room, her eyes barely passing over Mina's table before moving.

  The three men laughed and the woman tightened her grip on her stick. For a moment, Mina thought she would hit one of them with it, but she controlled herself and stepped back from the table let one of the men shoot. He must have missed his shot with no magical interference, because the brunette was back for another shot in seconds. She bent back over the table and lined up her shot, but when one of the men stood directly behind her, Mina couldn’t see anymore.

  She didn't need to.

  Things went deadly silent for five seconds and the next thing she knew, the woman had the man in the blue shirt flat against the table with the pool stick against his throat. After that, everything happened quickly. The man in green pulled her back and tried to take a swing, but the woman dodged his blow and ducked behind him. The fight was on.

  Mina was out of her seat and across the room in the blink of an eye. Three on one were terrible odds, even for a cheater. She felt the other woman's magic brush against her once more as if to test whether she was friend or foe, and Mina let her own magic wrap around the woman in a brief, gentle caress. In the moment it had taken Mina to cross the bar, the men had once again gained the upper hand, pinning the woman to the pool table. Now one held her with the tip of the pool stick jabbed into her throat. But the woman understood exactly what the brush of Mina's magic meant.

  She tipped back her head and laughed, the sound only half choked by the pool stick. The men never had a chance.

  Mina didn't believe in fighting fair, not like this, not when there were no rules. She flipped her magic out at one of the men, tripping him up and watching him fall to the floor. For the one who had the lady pinned, she didn't need power to stop him, only strength. She hooked an arm under his armpit and spun, knocking his feet out from under him while she flipped him over her hip.

  Mina kept him down with the knee firmly planted in his side. From his whimper, she knew it was painful. When neither of the other men attacked her, she knew the fight was over. The brunette woman came to stand beside her and gave her shoulder a quick squeeze of thanks before crouching over the man.

  "I was trying to let you off easy, but dickheads like you never get that. If either of us see you here again you're going to hurt a lot more than you do now. Do you understand?" Mina tried valiantly not to be turned on by the threat and the steel in the brunette woman's voice. The effort was futile.

  But the man they held down was terrified. He jerked his head up and down and blinked his eyes to keep tears from falling. At the woman's signal, Mina let him up and all three men scampered away, leaving enough money to more than cover the cost of their drinks.

  The brunette offered her a hand up and smiled. "Thanks for that," she said. "Can I buy you a drink?"

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Given the choice between the well-behaved witch debutante that had stood her up and the powerful woman standing next to her, Darby saw no competition. They were nearly the same height, though the woman had an inch or so on Darby. Her hair was short and blonde and her eyes a deep, secretive blue, lashes sinfully long. She wore a flannel shirt and tight jeans that cupped her ass. Her feet could've done serious damage in the combat boots she wore. Those douchebags were lucky that she had only used magic and her fists. The light glinted off the woman’s shiny red lips and it was all Darby could do to stop herself from stealing a kiss.

  Oh yes, this was much better than some shitty blind date.

  They got their drinks and settled at the woman's table. "I haven't seen you around here before. Are you new in town?"

  The woman smiled and took a sip of beer. "It's my second time around."

  "Really?" Lewistown was small enough that Darby should have met her before, and the supernatural community was even smaller. "Did you go to Central?" She had been out of high school for more than 10 years, but they looked like they were the same age. If she had met her since then, she couldn't think of a better place than that.

  "No, I went to Harrison Prep." The woman's voice held an apologetic twinge. They both knew the animosity between the public and the private school.

  Darby whistled, "I didn't know they let girls like you into the Prep. What brings you back home?"

  The woman shrugged and picked up a mozzarella stick, "I missed the food." She smiled and took a bite and set the uneaten half down.

  Darby laughed and didn't press for more. Everyone was entitled to their secrets. "So, do you have a name?"

  "It is Mina. What about you?"

  "Darby."

  "Like with horses?

  Darby rolled her eyes. Twenty-nine years and people still thought her name was weird. "DAR-by," she emphasized. "Not DER-by. I can't believe someone named after Dracula is making fun of my name."

  Mina lifted up her hands and waggled her fingers in Darby's face, "Vell," she spoke like Bela Lugosi, "I vant to suck your blud!"

  They both laughed and Darby snatched one of Mina's hands out of the air. Their eyes held for a long second while Darby traced the edges of Mina's fingers with her thumb. "My magic has never reacted like that before. And that was a hell of trick you pulled." Darby couldn’t have done it. But it would take a particularly powerful and skilled witch to manipulate a single ball on the pool table with no clear line of sight. "How did you do it? And why?"

  "I sort of blocked all of the pockets on all of the tables for a second." Mina was sheepish, and a delightful splash of color pinked her pale cheeks.

  "Holy crap, if you hadn’t cost me 50 bucks I'd be a hell of a lot more impressed." It was easier to do something like that then to do what Darby thought, but it spoke to an ingenuity that few possessed.

  "As to why," said Mina, "I don’t like to see people taken advantage of. Even when they deserve it." Her voice held an edge of danger, of challenge, as if she expected Darby to fight her on it.

  Darby almost tried to defend herself. She almost said that Daniel had called her and asked for her help, but she could see that Mina wouldn’t care, that it didn't matter. "Fair's fair," she shrugged

  Mina relaxed into her chair with a smile, "Though I must say it was goddamn satisfying to lay the beat down on them. I'm not opposed to a bit of righteous justice."

  Darby smiled. That smile broadened when she felt the brush of Mina's magic against her own.

  "I've been around the world," said Mina, "And I've done a lot of magic. But this is completely new." Her magic was a warm caress against Darby's own. It was almost physical, but if she had to pinpoint where she felt it, it would be impossible. When Darby tried to focus the pleasure that this magic evoked within her, it darted away, not disappearing, but manifesting elsewhere.

  Darby sent a whisper of her own power to glide up against Mina's. The other woman sucked in a breath and her pupils dilated, black nearly eradicating brown.

  It was like being drunk, being high, or that shuddering feeling of falling in love. Their magic weaved together, invisible to the naked eye.

  "My place isn't far from here," said Mina. "Do you want to go back there and see what else we can do with this?"

  Darby squeezed Mina's fingers in her own. "I wasn't born yesterday, you know."

  Mina picked up their joined hands and touched Darby's fingertips to her lips, "Good."

  Darby threw a few dollars down on the table and followed Mina out of the bar, their hands entwined. Normally, she would've taken a moment to say goodbye to Daniel, but given the circumstances he would understand. And if he didn't, she really didn't care right now.

  They barely made it out the door and into the alleyway before Mina had Darby against the wall with her lips brushing against hers. Darby reached out and cupped
Mina's cheek, her thumb gently caressing the soft, warm flesh. For all the desire surging within them, the kiss was gentle. Mina's lips were soft, her tongue playful as it danced against Darby's own.

  A barking dog interrupted them and they broke apart with a laugh. "I'm beginning to think that you have ulterior motives," said Darby.

  Mina brushed a strand of hair out of Darby's face and tucked it behind her ear. "Are there any other kind?"

  Rather than answer her, Darby called on a wisp of magic and leaned forward. "What happens if I do this?" She asked, capturing Mina's lips and brushing her magic against the other woman's. It was just like it was in the bar, and yet more. The sensation of their lips brushing against each other ricocheted off the magic and rebounded, somehow amplifying everything. Darby's nipples tightened and she could feel herself growing wet. Everything was heat, desire, pleasure. And that was only from a kiss.

  "Now you're giving me all sorts of ideas," Mina said, kissing along the edge of Darby's jaw.

  Darby tilted her head to give Mina better access. "I'm a muse," she confessed.

  She whimpered a little when Mina pulled away. Mina grabbed her hand and led her back down the main street. They walked less than a block before Mina stopped once more. "My place is right upstairs, are you coming?" There was a challenge in her gaze.

  "I better be."

  Mina's eyes narrowed, but after a moment her expression broke and she snickered. "That was bad."

  Darby closed the space between them and brushed her lips against Mina's, "I'm just getting started."

  Mina unlocked the door and led them up the narrow staircase to a door with cracked green paint that led into a small apartment. Thoughts of seduction were temporarily put on hold when Darby caught sight of the small curio cabinet next to a threadbare brown couch. A gold good luck cat sat next to a small Greek bust. There were four shelves to the cabinet, and each was covered in more than a dozen knickknacks from all around the world. "Where did you get all of these things?" asked Darby.