Hell and Hexes

by Dunbar, Debra

  I’d need to talk to Cassie. I knew if I did the technical side of the charms, she could power them for me, but I’d been reluctant to admit I was having this problem. She was hovering over me as it was, fussing about whether I was healed enough to be off her couch, out of her house, and back to work yet or not. Admitting this would make her want to haul me back to her house to take care of me. And admitting my fears of this being permanent would be worse. I didn’t want my sisters to think me broken. I didn’t want them feeling as if they had to spend their lives taking care of me. I didn’t want anyone feeling sorry for me, talking about their abilities in hushed tones, not wanting me to feel bad over not being able to work magic any more.

  Rubbing my hands over my face, I took a deep breath and decided to take another quick nap. I headed back to my bedroom and set the alarm on my phone, knowing I’d need to keep my second nap to under a few hours so I had time to get up and ready everything for tonight’s game.

  And with my mind on my lack of magic and Monday’s mediation with the werewolves, I fell into a fitful sleep.

  Chapter 10

  Sylvie

  “Roll for initiative,” I said.

  Immediately the sound of dice on my wooden table drowned out the background classic rock. This was the other me, the one my clients and my family didn’t ever see. I’d gotten into role playing games, or RPGs, in college and missed them so much that two years ago I’d started a game of my own. Due to the variety of supernatural beings in Accident, I’d needed to develop my own rules and ended up running a mashed-up version of Dungeons and Dragons, Warhammer, Call of Cthulhu, and RuneQuest.

  “Dang it!” John the Cyclops shouted. “My dice are cursed. Someone cursed my dice.”

  “No one cursed your dice, John,” I told him. “Trust me, I could tell.”

  He eyed me. With his one eye. “If I paid you, could you charm them? So I can roll better?”

  That was greeted with howls of protest from the other players.

  “No spelled dice,” I reminded him. “And that includes mine, too. We’re here to have fun, John. There are no bad rolls.” I looked over at his dice. “Well, at least in initiative, there are no bad rolls.”

  “Everyone is going to be dead before I can use my scroll,” he complained. “Can I switch with someone else and go in their place instead?”

  Being a game master was like being God, and I certainly had the ability to grant that request. But I chose not to.

  “Sorry, John.”

  “Dude, just chill. Wait your turn. It’s not like you have to save us or anything.” Smoke curled from Fernando’s nostrils. The dragon was in human form right now because he just didn’t fit in my dining room or at my table as a giant winged reptile.

  Fernando had been through three characters this campaign because he couldn’t seem to understand that his human fighter, or half-elf, or human paranormal historian couldn’t fly, or spit fire, or eat an entire army. We were working on this inability to see the world from others’ eyes, but in the meantime, we’d rolled up a robot fighter that was a bit more able to withstand Fernando’s impulsive actions.

  “Flora, you’re up,” I told the Valkyrie.

  She grinned, her teeth covered with sharpened gold caps. Her metallic wings shivered, their serrated edges nearly slicing the upholstery on my chair. “I grab the wand out of the chest and…”

  Everyone held their breath.

  “Throw it at the alien.”

  Everyone released their breath. We’d all assumed Flora was going to use the wand without any idea what sort of spells or curses it might hold or break it in half and release a nuclear blast of magical energy, or slip it in her pocket and make a run for it. A Valkyrie playing a human mage/thief didn’t make for the most reliable member of our adventuring party.

  Actually, none of them were very reliable when it came to teamwork.

  My gaming buddies were a cyclops, a dragon, a Valkyrie, a pixie, a vampire, a nymph, and a dryad. Not the dryad that was our sheriff, but his sister. The woman was an absolute blast to play with and was trying to get her friend, a bunny shifter, to join the group. Evidently this bunny shifter lived outside the wards in the human world and in typical bunny shifter fashion, was nervous about venturing into a town with so many supernatural beings who might find her to be a delicious treat.

  Of course we’d protect her, but that vow didn’t do much to reassure a bunny shifter.

  I rolled my percentile dice. “The wand bounces off the alien. Bob, you’re up.”

  Bob was the vampire. Yep, Bob. Most vampires in town had elegant, old-world names, but Bob was Bob. I was pretty sure that wasn’t his original name since he was roughly five hundred years old, but if that’s what he wanted us to call him, then I was good with that.

  “I pull my revolver and shoot.” Bob rolled his dice and grimaced. “Eight.”

  “Yeah…no. Better luck aiming next time. Trapper?”

  The pixie hovered above the table, his wings vibrating like a hummingbird’s. “Spit.”

  I blinked. “Spit…...?”

  “Spit, spit.” He lowered himself to the table, eyeing his character sheet. “I’ve got that amulet of cobrafication from last year and I’m finally gonna use it.”

  Shit. I’d totally forgotten about that. Never doubt that a pixie would pull some crap out of a bag of holding from a campaign years ago and use it. They were worse than dragons when it came to hoarding.

  I rolled my dice and sighed. “The spit hits. The alien howls and dark holes appear along his green-skinned chest. Ebony, you’re next.”

  The dryad squirmed in her chair. “I swing my sword with all the might of my ginormous biceps. Did I mention I have ginormous biceps? And six-pack abs?”

  John rolled his eyes…. eye. “Yes. Several times.”

  Ebony ignored him and rolled. “Twelve. Plus my bonuses.”

  “Miss.” Everyone gasped at that, realizing how formidable their alien opponent truly was. “The alien opens his mouth and screams. The ground shakes, and everyone takes two points of damage and a negative one to their constitution.”

  There was a knock on the door, and I pushed back my chair. “Pizza’s here. Let’s take a break, and we’ll resume once we all get a slice.”

  I headed for the door, hoping that it wasn’t that poor blond guy that Lamira’s Pizzeria seemed to send every week. Lamira’s had the best wood-fired pizza, and they had the roasted red pepper topping that Trapper particularly enjoyed, but they were outside of the town wards and they were owned and operated solely by humans. Their delivery crew did include one coyote shifter, but for some reason he never got our orders. This poor blond human dude seemed to always be the unlucky guy who brought our pizza. Every time I opened the door and he got an eyeful of my friends, he’d freak out. I’d tip him big, and he'd practically throw the pizzas at me before racing for his car. As soon as he crossed the wards, he’d forget all about the pixie, Valkyrie, cyclops and other interesting beings in my living room, but I felt guilty about putting him through that every single week. Did repeated exposure to the magic of the wards do something to his brain? I really worried about that and probably should ask Bronwyn the next time I saw her.

  I flung open the door, but instead of a human or a coyote shifter, the being at my doorway holding five pizza boxes was Eshu.

  “You’re working for Lamira’s Pizzeria now?” I asked as I ushered him in.

  “Nah. I saw the guy out front and figured I’d make the delivery for him.”

  My eyes narrowed with suspicion as he plopped the pizza boxes on my kitchen island and lifted the lids. “Please tell me you paid him. And tipped him.”

  “I’m told he won’t remember it after crossing the wards,” Eshu said with the most cheerful voice in the world.

  I scowled and pulled out my phone, frantically making a payment on the app and adding in a tip. “Eshu, his boss will expect him to come back with cash. And tips are a major part of his income. That’s not cool.
”

  The demon-not-demon tilted his head, eyeing me with a puzzled expression.

  “Here, Sylvie.” Ebony handed me a ten. “This is my share.”

  The others also handed me cash, and I decided that it probably was a good idea to pay this all online and just have everyone chip in. Who knew what that poor delivery guy remembered after heading back out of town? I didn’t want him getting in trouble because he couldn’t remember how much we gave him or where the credit card copies were.

  “Hey, man. I’m Fernando.” The dragon reached out a beefy hand to shake Eshu’s.

  “Eshu. Sylvie is my couch-witch, so if any of you are planning on sleeping with her tonight, I’m letting you know you’ll have to fight me first.”

  I felt my face heat up, but everyone in the room roared with laughter.

  “Not like I haven’t tried.” Rio winked at me. Nymphs loved having sex with men, but it was women who they had lasting relationships with. And no, Rio had never hit on me. I was pretty sure I wasn’t her type and that she was just messing with Eshu right now.

  John laughed. “You do know she’s a Perkins witch, right? She’ll curse you to the ends of the earth if you screw her over. And if that’s not enough, her sister will burn your pants off. That witch has got a fierce temper.”

  “Oh, stop.” Bob shook his head. “This man, or whatever he is, should join our game. We could use someone new in the party. And, it’s about time Sylvie had an admirer. She’s pretty, for a witch.”

  Not the smoothest compliment I’d ever had, but I took it. “It’s game night and sometimes we go to midnight,” I told Eshu. “You’re welcome to stay, or you could always come back after we’re done.”

  Although I wasn’t sure how energetic I’d be after we wrapped up. This was night three that Eshu had sought me out, and I hated to have this be night three that I was too tired to do more than fall asleep on the couch five minutes after he’d gotten here.

  Eshu turned and the intensity of his gaze startled me. “I would enjoy staying, meeting your friends, and playing your game with you, but I don’t want to interfere with your plans. If you would rather I come back, I will.”

  I felt as if something shifted between us. This wasn’t just a booty call for him. He wanted to stay, hang out, game with us. I’d been assuming he was a total player and would want to keep what was between the two of us light and casual. Clearly, I’d been wrong.

  It was up to me. Did I want things light and casual? I could tell him to come back later and set the terms for our relationship as friends with benefits, or I could ask him to stay and…what? Would that make him my boyfriend? Is that what I wanted?

  “I can stand outside your door and wait for hours, maybe peering in the windows at you on occasion, just so I can catch a glimpse of your beauty,” he said, still with that intense expression on his face that countered his teasing tone.

  “That’s weird, Eshu.” I laughed. Then I made a decision. “Stay. Hang with us. Eat pizza. We’ve got white garlic with roasted red pepper, four-cheese deep dish, meat-meat-meat, mushroom/spinach/gorgonzola, and double anchovy. What would you like?”

  “What’s he eating?” Eshu looked over at Bob.

  The vampire held up a go-cup with a lid. “Liquid diet.”

  “I’ll do the double anchovy,” Eshu said.

  “Bold choice, my friend,” I teased him. “Rio’s the only one who normally likes the fish pizza.”

  The nymph shrugged. “What can I say? I’ve tried shrimp, crab meat, lobster, and salmon, but nothing beats anchovies. That salty brine…that little crunch….”

  I shuddered but put a huge slice on a paper plate and handed it to the demon.

  “Are you joining the game?” Trapper fluttered up near Eshu’s face, barely keeping aloft with his giant slice of pizza in hand. “We’re smack in the middle of a battle with an alien right now, but maybe you can play an NPC until Sylvie can bring you in.”

  “I can totally add you in that if you really want to play.” I figured he was silly and quirky enough to enjoy this sort of thing and to fit in with my diverse bunch of players.

  Eshu shrugged, taking a bite of the pizza. “Sure. I can play and stare at you adoringly all evening, imagining you naked and under me, and—”

  “How about we stop at staring adoringly?” I interrupted him. “I’ve got a bard side character that’s about to join in, so you can play him if you want.”

  The demon nodded enthusiastically as he ate his slice of pizza.

  We all walked back to my table. Eshu pulled a seat up next to me and did proceed to stare adoringly at me as we finished the battle with the alien. When we were done, Fernando’s character was near death, but alive—which was a huge improvement over previous games. As the players searched the treasure chest further, they found a key, and at the back of the room, they found a cage with a man inside—a man who’d clearly not eaten well or bathed in a very long time.

  “I let him out,” Ebony announced.

  “I hold my nose because he stinks,” Trapper complained, actually pinching his nose.

  “I see if he’s fuckable,” Rio said, eyeing Eshu as if she was in fact evaluating that very thing.

  “You’re playing a half-ogre warrior, Rio,” I told her. “Not a nymph.”

  “Half-ogre warriors screw.” She licked her lips. “And this half-ogre warrior likes what she sees.”

  I rolled my eyes then listened as the rest searched the room, patted down the dude in the cage, healed each other, and guarded the entrance. When they were done, I told them night was approaching and they all decided to make camp in that spot, setting up guard shifts and pulling a makeshift dinner from their packs. I’d slid Eshu a character sheet, which he’d glanced at briefly before scooting his chair closer to mine and putting his warm hand on my thigh. I tried to concentrate on the game, completely aware of his fingers massaging my leg through my pants, moving slowly upward into the danger zone.

  “I see if any arrows or arrow heads are salvageable,” John the Cyclops told me.

  “I eat, then take first shift at guarding the entrance, but stay in the shadows so I’m not a target with the fire at my back,” Flora the Valkyrie said.

  “I put my belongings on the floor then lie on top of them so no one can steal them. Then I go to sleep,” Fernando the dragon said.

  “I’m going to sing,” Eshu announced.

  We all turned to stare at him. “What?” I asked.

  “Sing.” He shrugged. “It says on the paper I’m a bard, so I assume I’m supposed to sing all the time.”

  “Well, not all the time,” I told him. “You sing as a profession. No one here is paying you. And you’re malnourished and dirty. And you just got released from a cage where you’ve been kept by an alien for two weeks.”

  He shrugged. “Sounds like the perfect segue for a song to me.”

  Without further warning, he broke into an extremely bawdy, off-key ditty about a laundress and some crusaders, where the holy land was clearly a badly disguised metaphor for the woman’s hoo-hoo. You could have heard a frickin’ pin drop. And when he was done with the song, we stared at him for a moment, stunned. Then Bob, the vampire, applauded.

  “I’m totally fucking this guy,” Rio announced.

  Something lit up inside me, fierce and full of a sense of ownership. I felt magic crackle around my skin a way I hadn’t experienced for two weeks.

  “You’re not ‘fucking’ him,” I told Rio in the sort of voice that would frost over hell itself.

  Her eyebrows shot up and she raised her hands. “Okay. No problem, Sylvie. Not poaching at all. We nymphs know better than to do that. What’s owned is owned.”

  “Sorry. If Sylvie isn’t open to that sort of thing, then no can do,” Eshu told the nymph. “I’m trying to get into this witch’s pants, and it seems to be a full-time endeavor, so I doubt I’d have time for side hanky-panky either way.”

  “I’ve been through the crusades, and that’s totally how it
was,” Bob declared, still fixated on Eshu’s song. “Soldiers screwing their way through Europe on a papal-approved vacation. Don’t get me wrong, I was thrilled. It was like a buffet on my doorstep. Actually, it was like one of those sushi places where the food goes by your table on little conveyor belts and you just grab what you want. I miss that.”

  Trapper rolled his eyes. “It’s not like you have any problem getting blood. Or tail. Everyone gets horny over vampires. Everyone. Try being twelve inches.”

  Rio snickered. “I’ll take that twelve inches, big boy.”

  “I’d suffocate,” the pixie shot back. “I’m not a dildo with wings, you know.”

  “Can we keep playing?” Flora complained. “Not that this isn’t an enlightening discussion or anything, but I’m guarding an entrance here and I want to know if anything is sneaking up on us, not about Bob and the crusades-buffet, or Trapper’s size insecurity.”

  We got back to the game, Flora effectively alerting the party about a toxic creeping night slime, and Fernando and Eshu using fire to keep the slime away. At sunrise, the party moved on with Eshu’s character in tow. In real life, it was ten o’clock at night. Normally we’d play on past midnight, but I was feeling tired, worried that I’d pushed myself too far so soon after my death and resurrection. So, I wrapped up, letting everyone know that I intended on continuing with the game next week. My friends collected their supplies, grabbing some pizza to go, and telling Eshu that they hoped he’d join our game on a permanent basis.

  This sucked. The energy and libido I’d had earlier were on a serious downslide. I’d been determined to take Eshu to bed the next time I saw him, but now that he was right here in my house, my heart and genitals were ready, but the rest of my body was thinking it was time to go to bed and actually sleep.