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  "Okay, maybe not the how," I said, "But the what?"

  "Fine,” Frank said “But you have to pour us another shot each."

  "Oh Gods, another shot?"

  "Yup. We just performed a damned miracle here tonight and we have to celebrate."

  Frank slid a bottle of Sambuca across to me. We had all enjoyed the spiced cider and bread—bread!—that the bottomless cauldron produced, but we were modern Witches, and modern Witches drink hard liqueur.

  "Alright," I said, proceeding to pour a trio of shots.

  "It's simple," Frank said, knocking back the shot like it was water, "I had never tried this before, but I was told that Magick, when performed in a circle, by a coven, was always way more powerful than the kind of Magick a Witch could produce on her own."

  I took my shot and felt it burn a path down my throat. "But you've invoked the spirit before, right?" I asked.

  "Yeah, but this was different," Frank said.

  "How?"

  "Because, Witch, we were invoking a seasonal spirit and asking it to lend us its power; not to just hang around and have shots with us."

  The word Witch was, for Frank, a play on the word Bitch. He used it as a term of endearment toward me and I kind of liked it. Like an in-joke, except this time I was in on it and not the butt of it. I felt like Frank and I had been paired up in the heavens and destined to meet and become friends. Two peas in one freaky little pod.

  Damien stood on his knees and reached into the cauldron with a plastic cup, but came up empty. The well had run dry. "That's it?" he asked.

  Frank shrugged. "I don't know how long the Magick lasts."

  "Can we do it again?" I asked.

  "We can, but we shouldn't."

  "Look at you, preaching restraint. I call hypocrite!"

  It was half a joke. Frank had come a long way in the last couple of months; I had helped him get clean off the heroin addiction and I was so proud of his achievement. But he still drank like a sailor and had a tendency to use Magick as often as he liked. Yet, for some reason, he would tell me off for being excessive.

  "If I'm a hypocrite then you're a home wrecker," Frank said, grinning like the Cheshire cat.

  I shoved Frank hard on the shoulder and he fell on the pillows.

  "Hey," Damien said, interrupting, "She didn't wreck anything."

  "Oh relax, Lancelot," Frank said as he straightened out again, "You're gonna have to get used to the way we operate. There's no need for knights in shining armor here. We’re all fucked up in some way."

  "It's okay," I said to Damien. I could tell he was wound up, so I poured him another shot. That should fix it, right? "Here," I said.

  Damien took the shot glass but didn't drink.

  "Anyway, as I was saying," Frank said, "You shouldn't just invoke the spirit. I made that mistake once on my own and it didn't work out well."

  "You haven't told me this story," I said, interested.

  Frank sighed. "Okay, so Nick and I—I've told you about my dick of an ex-boyfriend Nick, right?—anyway, we weren't having a fantastic time in the bedroom if you know what I mean. Monogamy tends to do that to a person after a while and it’ll get you too, mark my words. Anyway things weren't going great, so I had the fantastic idea of invoking a spirit of passion to our bedroom... to spice things up., you know?” Frank paused. “Have either of you ever invoked the spirit before?" he asked, veering off.

  "Intentionally?" I asked.

  "No, by accident. Of course intentionally, witch."

  A cold chill caressed my back. I hadn't told Frank about what I did to Kyle. In fact, Damien was the only soul I had ever told. I would tell him one day, but not today. "Then... no," I said.

  "Well, the incantation is tough,” Frank said, “I mean, like putting on contacts at one in the morning, drunk, while being simultaneously being fiddled with by a young Latino man kind of tough."

  I couldn't stop the giggle from falling out of my mouth.

  "So anyway,” he said, clearly annoyed at my interrupting his story. “I fucked up on the incantation and ended up inviting a Gremlin into my home."

  "A... Gremlin?" Damien asked, "Like, from the movie?"

  "It may as well have been. The little son of a bitch had a free for all, pissed all over my electrics and cut the power to half the neighborhood."

  "Wait," I said, throwing my hands up like I was stopping traffic. "Did you actually see this thing? What did it look like!"

  "See it? No honey. You don't see these things, but you know they're there. Like stalkers."

  "So how'd you know it was a Gremlin?"

  "Gremlins like to fuck with electronics. What else could it have been? Anyway, I'm bored of talking about that. Let's get another drink."

  I went for the bottle, but Damien stopped me. "Another one?" he asked.

  "Yeah, why not?" I said.

  "Because it's late. And we have class tomorrow."

  "Hush," I said, "I want to show you guys something anyhow."

  Damien's glass was full so I filled up mine and Frank's, although I thought there were four glasses instead of two, so I ended up making a mess of things and chuckling at my own shoddy bartending.

  "Damn,” Frank said, “You really can't handle your drink, can you?"

  How was he still sober? "Hush!” I said, “Okay, are you ready?"

  Frank and Damien shut up and waited for me to do whatever I was planning on doing. I had never tried this before and doing it drunk probably wasn’t the best idea I had ever had, but you only live once. So I lowered my mouth to the line of glasses, made a barrier with my hands to conceal them, and concentrated. Think, concentrate, fire-fire-fire. Blow. I took my hands away as I blew out a breath of air and as my breath touched the glasses tiny blue tongues of fire sprouted up.

  "Holy shit," Damien said, staring.

  "Look at that,” Frank said, “The girl's got Magick. I haven't seen a drunken Witch control her Magick like that before."

  "That's what happens when you practice... non-stop." I picked up my flaming shot. "Yeah, I have no life."

  "Alright, on three," Damien said, succumbing to one last drink. I guessed he was impressed, but Damien wasn’t the easiest person to read.

  I took the swig, groaned, and slammed the glass on the hardwood floor. Damien was right; that last shot was a bad idea. I had to be up in a few hours and I was asking for a hangover. But I hadn't had this much fun in weeks and it was about time I let my hair down and did something for no reason other than to enjoy it.

  "You know," Frank said, out of the blue, "You could cut the sexual tension in this room with a knife."

  "What?" I asked.

  "No, I like it,” he said, smirking smugly. “Gives this place a kind of shag pad feel."

  "That's because Amber had a three way with two of her friends up here a while back," Damien offered; and how gracious of him to volunteer that little tidbit, too.

  I slapped him hard on the arm. "I'll have you know, mister know-it-all, that it wasn't just a simple three-way—it was all part of a ritual."

  "A ritual, huh?" Frank asked, "My old boyfriend and I used to do rituals like those too, always looking for ways to make sex more satisfying. It wasn't, if you couldn't tell."

  I rolled my eyes.

  "Have you guys had sex in here yet?" Frank asked.

  Damien shook his head.

  "You should, otherwise all this energy is going to fall flaccid."

  Flaccid. I giggled again. I turned into a child when under the influence. Eliza would approve of my behavior, at least, even if Damien didn’t. I looked up at him and caught him staring at me, eyes glinting against the candlelight. Almost on instinct I bit my lower lip, and the warmth I felt earlier came rushing back.

  "On that note,” Frank said, “I need a smoke. And I think I'm gonna get the fuck out of here, too."

  The hour had crept past three AM without any of us realizing it. "Yeah, I have class tomorrow, or today, or whatever." I said.

  Frank ros
e to his feet with a strange kind of grace, seemingly unfazed by the amount of alcohol he had taken tonight. "Alright," he said, "I'll catch you two later."

  I nodded, and Frank meandered out sparing a moment to pat Damien on the shoulder as he left. Damien turned his gaze to me and stared at me from behind lazy eyelids. Gods, those eyelashes. They were like black fans sitting on top of sparkling gems. Why did he have to have better eyelashes than mine?

  "Are you okay?" he asked.

  We were in our own bubble now, alone. A cozy bubble full of candle light and warmth. "Yeah, I'm fine... why?” I said.

  "I don't know. I get the impression something's on your mind."

  He wasn't wrong. The whole night I had been gnawing at the memory of my encounter with the man who tried to kill me. I was like a dog still chewing on a bone she had had since she was a pup.

  "Just stuff," I said.

  "Do you want to talk about it?" he asked.

  "Not really."

  Damien leaned over me and with a light push nudged me to my back. I rested on my elbows and watched as he lifted my top and exposed my bare stomach. His lips descended like a feather falling from the sky, landing upon the scar in my abdomen from where the knife had gone through. It was a simple scar, a thin line of discolored, bumpy flesh, but I wore it with pride and loved the tingle-jolt which came with every kiss.

  I sighed, elated, and melted into the pillows, limp. Flaccid. Trembling under Damien's touch.

  My man.

  My gentle man.

  His lips found mine. I pulled the back of his neck closer to me, flicked his tongue with mine, bit his lower lip, and then broke the kiss. "We have class," I said, though my hips arched toward his.

  "You should have thought about that before you chose to wear such a low cut top for me."

  Damien plunged his tongue into my mouth. It didn't take long for him to start undressing me, and when his lips explored the landscape of my breasts and stomach I floated away to a cloud of drunken passion and desire. From up there I would be able to see him pleasing my aching womanhood with his tongue. I would be able to watch myself pull his shirt over his head and enjoy the taste and smell of his skin. There would be nothing and no one to stop me from enjoying the show going on beneath me.

  And when he entered me, and we rocked together, and the steady rhythm brought us both to a blissful orgasm, I would come back down to experience the intensity of it. To feel the warmth of him, taste the sweat on his shoulders, and exult in the pleasurable sensation that came from letting him fill me.

  I wouldn't get enough sleep, but that didn't matter. Nothing mattered but Damien.

  Nothing.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I stopped writing in my dream diary a few months ago, not long after my near death experience at the Ever Dark Mesa. It was as if the dream-tap stopped flowing one day and I had no way to fix the pipes. More often than not I would wake up in the dead of night in a cold sweat with the residue of a dream clinging to my mind like a warm breath on a cold window. But the window would clear just as quickly as it had been steamed, and I would be left with vague impressions, tastes, and sensations.

  Running. Knife. Magick. Fear. Stab. Bleed. Flying.

  These themes were always the same.

  I was no stranger to recurring dreams, but this felt somehow different and almost urgent. For a while I thought my near death experience had something to do with the dream block. The last dream I could remember with any clarity was the Raven—Lily—flying into the sunset. At least the dream was a sweet one. But sometimes I wished I wouldn't dream at all. Maybe the attack had left some kind of trauma in me after all.

  I fell awake without warning. It wasn't the smooth transfer from sleep into consciousness, but much more like falling and hitting the ground hard. My entire body shook from the impact. They say if you hit the ground in a dream where you're falling, you die. But what if you didn’t know what you had been dreaming about?

  The bedroom was still dark when I awoke, but daylight was breaking from beyond the window while swallows sang their morning song. The faint sound of distant cars and horns sailed on the back of the wind and kids chattered as their parents walked them to the nearby pre-school. Damien, fast asleep next to me, hadn't felt me catapult into the waking world.

  What time is it?

  I reached for my phone on the bedside table and the display read 8:37 am. Late. Class was due to start at 9. And to make matters worse, the sudden jerk for my phone had pulled a rush of blood into my head and elicited a dull throb. I pressed my fingers to my temples and closed my eyes, but the headache persisted.

  "I'm never drinking again", said everyone who had ever had a hangover.

  Damien stirred, and I turned to kiss him on the lips despite the pain in my head pan. His lips were soft and warm and I could still taste the Sambuca on him.

  "Hey," I said, "We're late."

  He groaned and shuffled on to his side without a word, but this half-assed acknowledgment meant he would be up in five minutes. Damien was good at waking up. Better than me. But he liked to snooze and, late or not, he would have his snooze.

  "I'm going to go shower," I said, kissing him again. And then I turned away to let my bare feet descend upon the warm carpet, standing upright and testing my balance before taking any steps. When I was confident that I wouldn’t fall over I hurried across my bedroom toward the adjoining bathroom—naked—and picked out a towel from the rack. The throbbing in my head persisted even as I stepped into the shower.

  Gods. Why did I drink so much?

  Temperance wasn't my favorite virtue. I would always tell myself to stop and attempt to put up some kind of mental resistance, but I could never manage to hold fast against the ravages of temptation. One more drink always turned to a few more, at least when I had company. I wasn't an alcoholic and didn't drink more than a glass or two in my own company, so I would justify my behavior by telling myself I didn't go out much, didn't drink much, and only did it when people were around. But maybe I was only being an enabler to myself, and if that was the case I deserved the headache I had been given.

  So, pain or no, I climbed into the bathtub and drew the curtain. It sucked that there wasn't enough time for a bath, but I enjoyed showers too. And as the warm water from the shower head washed the smell of alcohol and cigarettes from out of my copper hair—cigarette smoke being one of the less appealing side-effects of hanging out with Frank—I thought about the day ahead; the long day of class, having to go to work, and—urgh—sunlight.

  "What do I really have to do today?" I said to myself, enjoying the millions of tiny fingers massaging my scalp and back. "Go to school. Learn. Lunch. Lean some more... that's not so bad. But then I have to go to the bookstore and work. Gods-dammit. Maybe pills will help with the hangover?"

  As much as I enjoyed class the idea of leaving the house, facing the sun, and engaging in cognitive functions didn't agree with me. My head still felt several sizes too big, and the tasks waiting for me throughout the day started to look like mountains I had to scale with my bare hands, no pick-ax, and no safety rope. Pressure descended upon my neck and shoulders and prickles raced down my spine. I considered using Magick to clear the discomfort, but all I could hear was Frank’s voice in my head, scolding me.

  Ass.

  "Fuck!" I yelped and recoiled as the warm water falling from the shower transformed into icy crystals of pain! "What the hell?"

  My chest was heaving, my body freezing, and my head still throbbing. I reached through the stream of arctic ice water and shut the faucet off, rubbing my forearm to warm it up again. I learned, then, that being hit with ice cold water hurt as much as the water had been scalding hot. More, maybe!

  I peeled back the curtain and stepped out of the shower, naked and dripping, then grabbed the towel on the rack and ran it through my hair and over my shoulders. The bathroom door jiggled, as if someone had walked into it, but it didn't open. Did I even close it on the way in? I couldn't remember. But then
a cold feeling settled into my stomach and my extremities started to go numb.

  "Damien?" I called out.

  No one answered, but the door started to jiggle again and now the knob was turning too. I went for the door, grabbed the door knob to turn it open, but contact with the metal burned my hand. It was scalding hot! I withdrew and cradled my hand, staggering back a few steps. The jiggling stopped for a moment, but then it started again.

  Someone was trying to get in!

  "Damien!" I said.

  I watched the knob turn and turn and turn until, finally, the yielded and croaked open at a snail's pace. I backed up against the wall on the far side of the room, my heart hammering against my temples sending pulses of pain through my head. The door opened, but there was no one on the other side of it; only darkness.

  With my eyes shut, I concentrated and summoned the Goddess' light to protect me, but from the darkness of my bedroom a huge black mass came rushing toward me.

  It was blacker than night and had no features I could identify; a tall, writhing mass of ink spreading through the air like blood through water. I raised my arms and shook my head, screaming at the top of my lungs to keep the thing away.

  “No, no, no!” I said, and the shaking woke me up.

  I had my head propped up against the wall and I was still standing in the tub with lukewarm water cascading around me. My surroundings were still, but I yanked the curtain hard and fast and pulled it aside. The door to my bedroom was open, but I could see into the room and… no black mass, just the foot of an inert bed. My breathing relaxed. I bent over to pick up the bottle of shampoo and told myself it was only a dream.

  A daydream, sure, but still only a dream.

  But Damien’s sudden appearance when I straightened back up made me jerked so hard I dropped the bottle into the tub.

  “Hey,” he said, “Are you okay?”

  "Hi," I said, shaking. “Yes, I’m fine.” I wasn't, but I wasn’t about to tell him that.

  “Did you sleep okay?”