by Amie Gibbons
I could take energy?
Like Carvi could?
“Carvi,” I whispered, knowing he’d hear me even through the noise pouring around the street, “what am I?”
“I honestly don’t know, but I’d look into my lineage if I were you, because only some demons, vampires, the fairy, and gods can do what you and I do.”
I sucked in a breath.
“Let’s go do it then,” I said, closing my eyes.
I pictured Carolyn’s driver’s license picture, the woman who’d left Stewart. That sweet man who honestly just wanted his wife to be happy.
What kind of woman would cry rape if it weren’t true?
How broken must she be to have seen making love to her husband on their wedding night that way?
Flash.
The woman with the dyed blond hair danced in a sea of people, rubbing up against a man she didn’t know.
That was a far cry from the innocent who’d waited til her wedding night.
Maybe she was doing what I had done?
Trying to be slutty to minimize the impact.
The vision stretched out, showing the name of the place.
Buddy Bill’s Karaoke Bar.
I knew it well.
Couldn’t be a singer in Nashville without knowing all the karaoke places, even the hole in the wall ones that weren’t really known for much more than fun.
If you wanted to be discovered, you went to Lonnie’s. If you wanted to party with your friends, sing karaoke without anyone judging you for not being a good singer, you went to one of fifty bars with karaoke throughout Nashville.
I opened my eyes.
“Buddy Bill’s,” I said, pointing down towards second.
“Very good, lea,” Carvi said. “You didn’t even need my help.
“See, I’m teachable,” I said.
“Oh, I know that. And once we work through your issues and I am no longer playing therapist, I’m going to teach you a few more things.”
I just grinned up at him.
The sidewalks were so crowded we had to wade through them.
Or, rather, we would’ve if Carvi wasn’t Carvi.
He stared a path through the crowds, moving them with the sheer force of his mind.
People moved and he went. I grabbed the back of his shirt like a child and followed close, the crowds closing in behind us.
“Like parting the Red Sea,” Carvi said, half yelling over the music and the noise of tens of thousands of party goers.
“Were you there for that?” I asked.
He turned his head and grinned before going back to bowling through the crowds.
Why did I think that was a yes?
No, wait, he’d gotten him and Milo out before the rest of their people were freed from Egypt.
If the whole story about the Jews gaining freedom like that was true in the first place.
He’d never told me if that’d actually happened or not.
Bill’s was at the corner of Broadway and Second, and I smiled.
When I’d been accepted and first drove up to check out Vandy with Mama and my older brother Mark, we’d gone to downtown on a Friday night, to get the feel for the place.
Mama fell in love, said the place was oozing with inspiration and energy. She’d gone home and written her next bestseller in two weeks.
Maybe that’s where I got the energy drawing thing from.
After all, Mama turned energy, places, people, experiences, food and drink into books, and she claimed certain things energized her like no other.
Maybe there was more to that than just bein’ creative.
Huh.
We hit Bill’s. Since it was one of the smaller, less touristy places, there was no line.
I showed my ID to the door guy.
Carvi just stared at him and he gulped and got out of the way.
The music blasted and the person up on stage singin’ wasn’t very good, hurting my ears.
I didn’t know how a vamp with sensitive ears was handling the sheer level of noise.
“You can block it out, lea,” Carvi said in my mind. “Focus, you can dull the noise level around you.”
“How?” I thought back.
“Focus on doing it. The only thing holding you back is you. Just know that you can.”
I focused on the room. I couldn’t see much over the heads of the crowd in front of me except for the side of the stage and one giant speaker facing me.
I focused on it, imagining it turning down in my ears, something blocking it specifically so I could hear everything else.
And the noise went down.
“Wow,” I said out loud. “That is…”
“The mind is an amazing thing,” Carvi said in a normal level. “You’d be shocked what you can do when you put your mind to it.”
“Like what?” I said.
“You think it, it can happen,” he said. “People have imagined holes into alternate realities, entire beings into existence, and yes, even healed the dead. You never know.”
“The mind is infinite?” I asked, grinning. “I’ve read that on a fortune cookie.”
“Don’t underestimate eastern philosophy,” he said. “It has captured a great deal of the mystical side of things that the western beliefs have pushed out. Yogis can control their bodies to an extent that would be magic if you didn’t understand the biology.” He cleared his throat. “You know where she is in here?”
I closed my eyes, picturing the average height woman with the medium dyed blond hair and big blue eyes. She was pretty in a more cute than beautiful kinda way and she was really photogenic.
She had a chin dimple and her eyes sparkled when she smiled.
She seemed like the kinda girl I’d want to be friends with if she hadn’t also been the type to go nuts on her ex.
I had a flash, not even really a vision, just knowledge, that she was on the other side of the stage and further back, maybe halfway to the bar in the small joint.
I told Carvi and he stared at the crowd, moving them with his mind even though they were so tightly packed I couldn’t figure out how he got them to back up.
And I followed him again.
I needed to learn how to do that.
If it really was all in the mind, did that mean I could learn how to do that too?
Was there any limit to what anyone could do if they put their mind to it?
Wow, it really was a night for deep thoughts and self-reflection, wasn’t it?
Yep.
Carvi’s back went straight, body language switching from ‘get the hell outta my way,’ to ‘target acquired,’ in about a second.
He snorted, pausing and tossing his head back, laughing so big and booming he drew looks from the people around us even over the music.
“Carvi?” I asked, inching around him, pressing close to slide by the person dancing right there, a thin margin keeping him from bumping into Carvi.
“She’s got…” He laughed, bending over and pointing forward.
I looked over.
Carolyn danced with her back pressed up against a tall man dressed like a vampire.
I held down a snort.
She was in an outfit nearly as skimpy as mine. Red with a hood in the back I glimpsed as the man spun her before pulling her close again.
Red Riding Hood, apparently?
They grinded like teenagers without a chaperon.
Not really what I was picturing for a woman who waited til she was twenty-four and married to have sex.
“Look at her, lea,” Carvi managed to get out. “Oh dear, that poor girl. No wonder.”
I stared at her, focusing my mental energy.
Lights flashed on, making the club fade out.
Energy flowed around us like colorful lines on a screen saver, flowing between people, constantly moving, disappearing and reforming, and some just hanging in the air.
And a thick line poured from her dance partner into Carolyn.
“I don’t get
it,” I said, shaking my head.
The lines didn’t go away.
“She was raised a good little Southern Baptist who believed sex was for marriage, and she’s a siren!” Carvi burst. “Her parents probably both had the recessive gene so they didn’t know, and she got the whole damn thing. And that desire and drive to feed her power clashes with the religious thing saying sex is wrong. That’s why she’s acting crazy!”
He burst out laughing again.
I glared at him.
That poor girl.
It wasn’t funny!
She was probably going through hell with those warring voices in her head.
The lines vanished as I smacked Carvi’s arm and he snorted, jerking his chin and marching forward.
She looked up, paling as Carvi stared her in the eyes.
He looked up at the guy behind her and jerked his head.
The guy let her go, put his hands up and backed away, quickly turning and making a beeline for the bathrooms in the hall next to the bar.
“We need to talk,” Carvi said, staring her down.
She licked her lips and nodded.
We followed Carvi to the back hall and past the bathrooms to a door marked employees only.
Carvi opened it and swept his arm in front of him, bowing to us.
Carolyn walked in and I followed. Carvi closed the door behind us.
The small office was a lot like Len’s at his club, big desk with papers all over it, two chairs in front of that, shelves with various books on everything from running a business to accounting to mixed drinks.
The room was obviously soundproofed because the only thing I could hear was the pounding from the bass outside the room.
Carvi nodded at the chair and Carolyn sat down, staring at him with big eyes.
“What are you?” she asked as he leaned against the desk in front of her.
I walked over and grabbed the edge of the desk, lifting myself up and perching on the edge of it.
“I’m a vampire, and half demon,” he said.
“And you.” He met her eyes, pausing like he was letting her brain catch up to all this. “You, my lovely little woman, are a siren.”
She jerked back like she’d been slapped.
“That’s insane,” she said, standing.
“Sit. Down,” Carvi said.
She did.
“You are a dance siren, it means you attract men and draw energy out of men, and the way you do this is through dancing. I’m also guessing it clashes with your rather religious upbringing and that has created a bit of a dual personality in you. It is affecting you badly, and you need to reconcile the two halves before they destroy each other.”
Her mouth worked.
“Carvi,” I said, “we may want to start with something a little easier.” I looked at her. “I’m Ariana. Magic’s real. For one, I have visions.”
I wasn’t about to say I was psychic after what happened last time.
Though if one assassin put some kind of alert on those words, who knows what else they put an alert on?
For all I knew, they put an alert on my name!
It wasn’t exactly a common one.
Crap on a cracker!
But no one popped up.
“And Carvi is a vampire,” I continued. “And before that, he was a half demon human. He’s got a lot of power, and, from what I can see, so do you.”
She searched my face. “I always felt different.” Her voice was light, pretty, kind of weak, like she was scared of attracting too much attention.
Like a woman who grew up being told her sexuality was a bad thing when all her instincts screamed at her to use it to feed herself.
And I thought I had issues?
“I’m not even sure how to explain this to you,” I said. “I barely am getting into all this magic stuff and I’ve had my powers for over two years now.”
“When I was a teenager, I felt… things I was taught you don’t feel if you’re a good girl,” she said, eyes jerking between us. “You’re telling me there’s a reason for that?”
“Well, the reason for it is because you were raised by religious people who decided their religion was more important than your mental wellbeing,” Carvi said. “Carolyn, your instincts have been telling you since puberty that you need to draw energy from men. And they told you to do that by movement, dancing, sex. You suppressed that side. You were told it was wrong. And the psychological problems you have, it’s due to that.”
She looked down.
And burst into tears.
“Oh dear,” I said.
I didn’t really know her. And I didn’t feel a kinship with her like I did with AB.
Was it okay for me to hug her?
Carvi leaned down and hugged her.
Wow.
He was not the same man who’d told me earlier tonight that a few dead humans were nothin’ to him.
What had changed?
Carvi let her go and she sniffed.
“There’s a reason?” she asked. “There’s a reason I feel like this?”
He nodded. “You’d be surprised how common this is. People have their upbringing telling them desire is wrong, they have a high sex drive, either through biology or magic, and they are shamed into hiding it or suppressing it, usually to the detriment of mind and body, not to mention their souls.”
“How… how do I fix me?” she asked.
He sighed. “Therapy. Probably with one who understands magic.”
Huh. Idea.
“I actually have an idea, if we manage to fix all this,” I said.
Carvi looked at me.
I shrugged. “If we get the guys back, Thomas might be a good person to help people with magical issues like this. You know, if he’s not being a butthead about it.”
Carvi frowned and nodded. “That’s not a bad idea.” He turned back to Carolyn. “That does lead us to why we’re here though. Now, I want you to listen, do not panic, we actually do have a plan for bringing him back that may work.”
Her eyes widened.
“Your soon to be ex-husband Stewart was murdered today,” Carvi said, voice still gentle.
Her mouth fell open and worked like she was trying to argue but no sounds would come out.
“He was killed by a ghost, one that is targeting men who took a woman’s virginity in a way she viewed as bad. The spell that sicced this ghost on these men also trapped them in limbo. That’s actually a good thing, because it means if we can fix the damage to their bodies, if we can get enough power to do that, and if we can tie the souls back to the bodies before Halloween night is over and at the same time the souls are released from limbo, we have a chance of saving them.”
She just stared.
The silence stretched.
“Did I explain that enough for you to understand?” he asked her after a long time.
“I… I think so,” she said. “This is all so… but at the same time, it fits. You know? I always felt there was something wrong with me.”
“No,” I said. “You have a power, that’s all. There’s nothing wrong with you. You thinkin’ that way is what caused you to be all schizo in the first place.”
“I have a power that feeds on lust,” she said. “I… I knew that. I felt it before. I just, thought I could beat it.”
“Okay, a lot of therapy,” Carvi said. “You do realize there’s nothing wrong with that, right? Sex is fun. Sex is good. I’m going to suggest you start repeating that in the mirror until you believe it.”
Her eyes widened.
“I’m betting your medical issues come from you not really believing that even while you feel it,” Carvi said. “You have a cognitive dissonance that you can’t resolve, so you have made yourself unable to do the thing your body tells you that you need to.”
She just stared.
He grinned and shrugged. “Though, technically there’s a lot more to be done that you could feed off of and really enjoy. Something tells me a girl like you would
like anal.”
She blanched, making a gagging sound.
“Oh!” Carvi said. “So uptight. I love it. I feed off of lust and sex, Carolyn. More so than you. You’re just a siren, you have a gene that makes you want to use movement to draw on energies, to feed yourself, to feel good. It’s just something that you like. I was born a creature of sex and lust, the child of a demon that was the epitome of it.”
Her breath caught.
“You have a foot in the water of lust,” Carvi said. “I am the loch ness monster of it.”
“What did you do?” she asked, breathy.
“I embraced it,” he said. “I was raised in an age of free fucking and the strongest wins. I learned to be the strongest. And after that, I learned to be the best. And I took. Caligula committed atrocities trying to appease me with his depravity and I laughed at him because he didn’t understand I was the joy of sex, not the side that revels in the depravity some feel in it. I did things that would give you nightmares. And I did them proudly, because everyone I did them with enjoyed them. Begged for them.”
He stared her in the eyes.
“I can tell you this right now,” he said. “Sex is not a sin. God really does not care what you do with your body if you are not using your power to hurt people. If you are a cad who cons a woman into bed, then that’s bad, sure, because it’s hurting her by whatever lie you told. But if you are bringing a man who wants you to bed, you feed on him and he enjoys it, I can tell you God is in that act. He is not against it.”
I did a double take.
Carolyn looked half disgusted.
That sounded wrong to me too.
But why?
Because everything I was ever taught, and what she was taught even more probably, was that sex wasn’t inherently a good thing. You had to have a reason for it. Like love. It was you sharing something with someone else.
It was a connection.
But why did connection lead me to thinking it was wrong?
Wasn’t a connection a good thing?
Only if it went both ways.
And I’d been taught by others and experience that sex did not create a connection in males the same way it did in females.
And that’s why it was wrong for women to be sluts.
Because it was us giving something to guys when they gave nothing back.
It was us being used.
But what if that was a lie? What if that wasn’t every man?
