Something Witchy (Mystics & Mayhem)

by AJ Myers

  I knew he was telling the truth because Mrs. Stella had said that to me more times than I could count. Every time I broke down and went on a date, the girls at the coffee shop took bets on whether or not the guy would make it to the second round. Mrs. Stella had made a fortune betting against them.

  “What about the other stuff?” I demanded, thinking it was time for me to change the subject back to his stalkerish tendencies. “How did you know what kind of shampoo I use and what color my toothbrush is and what kind of make-up I wear?”

  “I do my homework when something interests me,” he said, his eyes going all warm and soft. “And you definitely interest me.”

  “Just how long have you been stalking me?” I demanded, refusing to call it anything else, frowning at him. Interesting to him, indeed. He’d already told me how interesting I was to him. I didn’t need a recap. “There’s no way you learned all that in one day.”

  “I’ve been in Moonlight for almost a month,” he said, looking away from my shocked expression. “I went there looking for someone. I never meant to stay, but every time I tried to leave I couldn’t.”

  “Yeah, but why stalk me?” I asked, not understanding.

  “I couldn’t help myself,” he said, an impish grin erasing the haunted expression that had started to creep over his handsome features. “Now, if you don’t have any other questions—”

  “I do, actually,” I interrupted. I had about five zillion questions, in fact, but there was one in particular that was driving me crazy. Blushing, I muttered, “How did you know my bra size, Nathan?”

  “Okay, I admit I cheated on that one,” he said, standing and grinning down at me. “I checked the label in the one you wore to bed.”

  I gulped even as my cheeks caught fire. He had checked the label in my… Oh, hell.

  “You have very soft skin, did you know that?” he murmured with a look that said he was remembering how soft it was very well. “I could have spent the entire night running my fingers up and down your spine just to feel it. It’s like warm silk, your skin.”

  Holy shit! I thought as a wave of something hot and tingly and muscle weakening swept through me at those words coupled with the look he was giving me. I literally had to lean against the windowsill to keep my legs from going out and dumping me in the floor.

  I had to give it to him. He might be a player, but he was good.

  “Do you molest girls in their sleep often?” I wanted to snap at him, but apparently my body had other ideas. My voice came out all husky and soft and my entire face went up in flames…along with the rest of me.

  “No, I don’t usually have to resort to that. But you’re a bit of a hard case, aren’t you?” The glint of amusement in his eyes told me he’d gotten the reaction he’d been looking for. “Now, eat your donut and let’s get out of here before I decide to try my luck while you’re awake.”

  Yeah, like I was really going to be able to eat with those stupid mutant butterflies turning cartwheels in my stomach. Leaving the donut right where it was, I walked over to the bed and started cramming my new temporary wardrobe back into the bags. I heard Nathan sigh again, but he didn’t press the issue. Within five minutes, we were walking down the stairs to the lobby.

  We were pushing through the big double doors when I got the strangest feeling someone was watching me. I stopped and looked around me, trying to figure out where it was coming from, but there was no one in the parking lot but me and Nathan.

  “What’s wrong?” Nathan asked, frowning when he saw my tense expression.

  “Nothing,” I said, shaking my head even as I continued to search for what was making me feel so anxious. “Let’s just get out of here. I don’t feel so good all of a sudden.”

  I had barely taken a step toward Nathan’s car when I felt a wave of vertigo and the world started to swirl around me. I felt myself tilting and knew I was going to fall, but there was nothing there to catch me.

  Just before I fell over, I felt my back pressed against something hard and scratchy. When my eyes flew open, I found that the hotel parking lot had disappeared. Instead, I was standing on a stage, a floodlight shining right in my face, and my hands were tied to something behind me. I pulled at them, desperate to get free, but the ropes had no give whatsoever.

  Get out! Get out now! my internal danger alarm screamed. I knew I was in deep shit, but no matter how hard I pulled at the ropes binding me, I couldn’t get them to come loose.

  I felt that sensation of being watched again, and my eyes darted around, taking in the dull shine of the stage I was rooted to in the brilliant glare of the spotlight. Jerking my head left and right, I saw nobody and nothing in the shadows. Looking up toward the scaffolding overhead, I caught my first sight of what I was tied to. It was some kind of prop, a tree in full fall color. But whoever was watching me was nowhere to be seen.

  That meant whatever was watching me was doing so from behind the floodlight…and I couldn’t see them. That didn’t stop me from trying, though. Narrowing my eyes to slits, I peered directly into that light.

  “Who’s out there?” I yelled, wincing at the tremor in my voice.

  “Ember, Ember, Ember,” a smooth, familiar voice crooned in answer. “You’ve been a very bad girl, Ember.”

  “Jack?” I gasped as my muscles clenched in fear.

  “Ah, so you remember me?” he said, a petulant note in his voice.

  “What the hell is going on here?” I demanded, pulling harder at the ropes tying my hands to the post behind me as he stepped into the glaring light that had made me the star of my own waking nightmare. His face was hidden, but that silhouette was unmistakable. “Where is the real Jack?”

  “Your friend is gone, sweetie,” he said, chuckling.

  “Then bring him back!” I cried out as a river of rage and sadness pooled in my chest. Because I knew, even before the demon version of my friend spoke, that he couldn’t.

  “No can do,” he said, actually laughing. “You don’t come back from where old Jack’s gone.”

  He walked closer and I started to make out his features. Never in my life had I seen anyone look so inhumanly cold. His broad shoulders filled my vision, and I swear I saw the outline of a pair of creepy, bat-looking wings against the light blinding me. I blinked and they disappeared, but I knew I had seen them.

  “He’s dead?” I gasped. “Are you telling me my friend is dead?”

  “For all intents and purposes, yes.”

  I glared at him even as the tears in my eyes overflowed, remembering the Jack I had known and cared about. The memory that really stuck out for me was the day we met. We had only been nine. Jack’s family had just moved to town, and he had gotten on the wrong side of the school bully. Blake had run the asshole off while Kim and I picked Jack up and dusted him off. I’d even wiped the blood off his lip with my sleeve. We’d been friends ever since.

  And now that guy I’d cared about was gone.

  “Why?” I hissed despite the tears on my cheeks. I could mourn for Jack later. First, I had to save myself. “Why are you doing this? What the hell do you want from me?”

  “I want you return to Moonlight, Ember,” he said, the chill in his voice causing me to shiver as he came to a stop a few feet in front of me. “You will tell that bloodsucking parasite that you want nothing to do with him and you will come back to me. You will give yourself to me, body and soul…”

  “And if I don’t?” I interrupted, trying to sound brave when inside I was screaming for someone, anyone, to help me.

  “Oh, I think you already know the answer to that,” Jack said. “You should pay attention to your dreams, Ember. They’re so…educational.”

  I heard the scratch of the match only a second before the smell of burning sulfur reached my nostrils, sending me into a full-fledged panic that was so intense I couldn’t even think. Then, with a flick of his wrist, Jack threw the match at my feet. A ring of fire erupted around me and I pressed myself back as close to the prop I was tied to as I
could get without actually becoming part of it in an effort to get away from those flames. But it just kept creeping closer, and I couldn’t escape it.

  I screamed as the leg of my jeans caught fire, the searing pain of the flames more unbearable than I had ever imagined they would be.

  It’s not real. Nathan’s voice in my mind kept me from going completely catatonic in terror. I grasped at that voice, tried to make it real, but the fire continued to scorch my skin and I knew I was going to die. Come back to me, baby. Don’t let him win. Come on, Em. Come back.

  “This was just a warning, Ember,” Jack said at the same time, smiling at the flames creeping up my leg. “You will obey me, submit to me, or this will be your fate. I’ll be seeing you again soon, my love.”

  And then, just like that, I was back in the parking lot with Nathan. He was kneeling on the ground, holding me, and I was trembling convulsively in his arms. My leg was burning like I had really caught fire, and I could smell the nauseating odor of burnt flesh where there should have been nothing but fresh, chilly morning air.

  “Em?” Nathan whispered, looking worried, as my eyes sought and found his and he saw the all-out terror in them. “Ember, are you all right?”

  “Leg…burns…” I forced out, keeping my teeth clenched so I wouldn’t scream. “H-he…burned m-me.”

  With an almost sick look, he leaned over and started to pull the leg of my jeans up. The second the soft denim started to slide across my skin, I let out a shriek of agony that would have woken the dead. And right there, where the fire had burned through my jeans in my sick little vision, was a terrible burn. It literally looked like someone had held my leg over a roaring fire. Nathan looked at it for a second, swallowing hard, then turned horrified eyes back to mine.

  “I have to get you out of here,” he said, scooping me up quickly and turning toward the car. “He’s here, Em.”

  “H-how do you know?” I whimpered.

  In answer, he stopped and nodded his head toward his car. I felt my heart stutter to a stop and my breath freeze in my chest when I saw the message scrawled across the windshield. The bright red letters looked like they were bleeding as the paint dripped down the glass.

  Game on, bloodsucker.

  Falling for the Fanged

  Nathan drove like a bat out of hell for an hour, then pulled over at a small gas station in the middle of nowhere. I’m sure the gas station attendant thought he was as crazy as I did when he went in and bought every single bottle of nail polish remover the dinky little place had on the shelf.

  I realized what he was doing, though, when he proceeded to pour one bottle after another across the windshield. I could see his lips moving when he grabbed the squeegee out of the windshield washer container and started scrubbing the paint off and figured he was probably grumbling about the fact that Jack had messed with his ‘pretty toy’.

  The car, not me.

  When he went back inside the store instead of getting in the car, I took a deep, shaky breath and started rolling my pants up to check the damage to my leg again. I shouldn’t have done that. My stomach clenched up painfully, and I had to swallow hard against the wave of nausea that rolled through me as I stared at my ruined skin. It looked like a rare steak, the outer edges red and blistered and the center of the burn oozing and black.

  When Nathan came back to the car with a bag full of stuff and what looked like the gas station’s first aid kit tucked under his arm, I was crying again. This time out of self-pity.

  “Are you in pain, Em?” Nathan said, immediately reaching for me when he saw the tears streaming down my cheeks.

  I should have, but I didn’t fight him when he pulled me across the console and into his lap. Instead, I just tucked my face against his chest and bawled all over him. I didn’t even have it in me to worry about getting snot on him.

  “It’s okay, Em,” he crooned, rocking me like a child while I cried.

  “N-no it’s n-not,” I sobbed, wiping my nose on the sleeve of my shirt. I looked like I had been half deep fried. In what world was that okay? “I need to go to the hospital. Look at my leg!”

  “I know it looks bad, but it’s just a flesh wound, Em,” he said, causing me to look at him like he was nuts. He winced. “I’ll take care of it, don’t worry.”

  Pressing a kiss to my forehead, Nathan set about trying to make me feel better—physically if not mentally. I watched as his long fingers gently rubbed burn cream over my leg before wrapping it in a thick layer of gauze. It really didn’t do much for the burning agony making me wonder if my leg wasn’t still in flames, but his touch distracted me enough that I didn’t mind.

  I looked up to thank him, and the words stuck in my throat. The way he was looking down at me was so beautiful that I felt tears burning my eyes again. He reached up and gently wiped the tears lingering on my cheeks away with the pad of his thumb. Without my permission, my eyes dropped to his lips, and I found myself remembering my dreams.

  “We should get going,” Nathan murmured, tearing me out of my fantasies. He lifted me out of his lap and back into my seat, and I felt like I’d been abandoned.

  “Here, this will help a little with the pain,” he continued, not quite meeting my eyes when I turned to look at him. He was holding out a packet of ibuprofen and an ice-cold bottle of water. I took them without commenting.

  “How did he do that?” I asked as Nathan got us back on the road, pretending he hadn’t just lured me into his seductive little web only to reject me again. At least he hadn’t been cruel about it this time. That was a silver lining, right?

  I couldn’t figure him out. One minute, he was all sweet and seductive. The next, he was cold and remote. He could set my hormones to raging with a look, but he pushed me away every time I thought about giving in to them. He kept changing the game on me and I didn’t know which way to turn because of it.

  “I don’t know, and that worries me,” he answered, his eyebrows drawing down in a frown. “I thought I had his game down, but he’s picked up some new tricks since last time.”

  Last time? Oh, right. The amazing cat woman who kept dying and coming back so she could get more enlightened about how much the world sucked. The way things were looking, I was going to get to ask her if she was getting any closer to figuring it out very soon. Nathan wasn’t going to take me home, and Jack or the demon or whoever was running the show wasn’t going to take no for an answer. If I had any doubts about that, all I had to do was look down at my burning, throbbing leg.

  I shuddered at the thought of another round of burning at the stake and opted for staring out the window at the landscape flying by in a multi-colored blur. Fall was my favorite time of year. I loved watching as the trees traded in their deep green wardrobes for shades of red, rust, and gold as Mother Nature did her thing, liked the chill in the air. But, suddenly, all I saw when I looked at them was that sinister stage and the tree I’d been tied to. All I could think about was how totally screwed I was.

  And Jack. Now that I was safe, the loss of my friend hit me hard. Had it hurt, when the demon killed him? Had it been quick or slow and agonizing? I hoped it had been quick. The idea that he had suffered was too much for me to bear.

  “Was what he said true? Is my friend dead?” I asked Nathan as fresh tears started sliding down my cheeks.

  “Yeah, Em, I’m afraid he is,” he said sadly, wincing when I started to really break down. “I’m sorry, baby. I truly am.”

  “Why is this happening to me?” I asked between sobs. “What did I ever do to attract a demon?”

  Instead of answering me, Nathan just reached for my hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. I clung to him, trying to make myself accept the unacceptable. That demon was after me. Jack was dead because of me.

  “Ember, listen to me,” Nathan said softly, hearing the thoughts going through my mind. “Baby, this isn’t your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong.” When I didn’t agree with him, he took my chin in a gentle grip and turned my face so I had to look
at him. His heartbroken look was the perfect reflection of the way I felt when he almost whispered, “It’s not your fault, Em. It’s not.”

  I was afraid we were going to have to agree to disagree on that one, but I nodded to make him happy. With another sad smile, he let go of my chin and turned his eyes back to the road. I watched him for a second, wondering about him. Who was he really? Figuring I was probably never going to know, I turned to stare blankly out the window again.

  “You know, I’m not being very fair,” Nathan said after the first hour of uncomfortable silence between us. I leveled a pointed ‘You think?’ look at him, and he gave me a sheepish smile. “I know a lot about you, but all you know about me is that I’m a vampire and a piss-poor kidnapper.”

  “And a pervert,” I supplied, biting my lip so I wouldn’t smile when he laughed softly. “Oh, and a stalker.”

  “Aren’t you even a little curious about me?” he teased, holding his thumb and forefinger up with just a breath of space between them. “Come on, Em. You know you have questions. I’ve never met a human that wasn’t curious about the undead.”

  Oh, I was curious about him, but it wasn’t because he was a vampire. It was so much more than that. I’m not sure why, but I wanted to be able to get into his head the way he’d gotten into mine. Since I wasn’t a mind reader, the only way I was going to manage that was to take him up on his offer to play Twenty Questions.

  I put some serious thought into my first question, but there were so many that I couldn’t decide which one to pick. I wanted to know everything about him. I wanted to know how old he was, where he was from, how he had come to be a vampire. I wanted to hear about the things he had seen and done.

  “I’m four hundred and twelve years old, as of last month,” he said, plucking the question out of my mind when I finally decided to start simple and go with that one. “I was born Nathaniel Pierre Ashley Chevalier, the youngest son of a French nobleman—which put me about half a step above the peasants in my father’s opinion. I didn’t mind, though, because it meant he ignored me most of the time, giving me a lot more freedom than my brothers and sisters had.”