Hex on the Beach

by Melissa Marr

  The others are also going, but it’s a busy night, and the wheel is full when we get on, leaving them standing in line.

  As we whoosh up, I gaze out over the town, with all its glittering lights, laughter bubbling up, the smell of popcorn making my stomach growl. Marius passes me his elephant ear, and I pull off a piece, and we enjoy the first revolution in silence.

  Then I say, “I was wrong.”

  “What? You? Never.”

  “In the long term, I still suspect I’m right. Ani and Jonathan belong together. So do Kennedy and Aiden. I’m also not convinced Hope and Rian do. But for now, they are all where they want to be. Where they need to be.”

  Marius only nods, the wheel revolves again before I speak.

  “I also realize this wasn’t about them,” I say. “I was projecting. Or transferring. Or whatever a therapist might call it. It was about me. What I need. What I’m not sure how to get. I was meddling in their love lives when the one I’m really worried about is my own.”

  I glance over at him. “I need to know if getting back together is off the table. Kennedy said she doesn’t want to risk her friendship with Aiden by pushing for more. I feel the same, and I need to know if you’ve had enough.”

  “Enough of what? Of you?”

  “I know I’m difficult. I’m dramatic, and I’m demanding, and it can be too much. Far too much.”

  “No,” he says, meeting my gaze. “It can never be too much, Vess. Not for me. I wish you’d stop feeling as if you’re—” He inhales, cutting that short. “You left because of Havoc, and that hurt. Of everyone, I expected you to understand. When you left, I felt abandoned. But I came to realize I’d abandoned you. You were concerned about me, and I couldn’t see that.”

  He’s quiet. That silence might seem as if it’s waiting to be filled, but I know it’s not, and I wait it out.

  He continues, “I pushed Havoc out on her own, as gently as I could, but that didn’t fix things between us. So I decided I needed to make a grand gesture.”

  “The necklace.”

  “Yep, which went horribly awry. You had to deal with Havoc, which reminded me how she treated you, how unfair it’d been to inflict her on you. I always feel as if I know you best and see through your walls, but with that, I didn’t. You said Havoc’s bullshit didn’t bother you, and I stupidly believed it. Then there was Hector.”

  I grumble under my breath.

  “Yep, he never quite goes away, does he? But seeing again how he treats you reminded me that I can never be like him. In any way. I can’t push. I need to wait for you to come to me.”

  “I handled the Havoc situation badly. I should have been honest, but I was mostly upset about what she put you through. As for Hector, I would never make that mistake. I know if you want to get back together, I can always say I’m not ready, and you always respect that.”

  His eyes meet mine. “So are you ready?”

  “Beyond ready.”

  As the wheel swings up, he leans over, hand behind my head and pulls me into a kiss. A whoop sounds below us, and I look down to see Hope bouncing and giving us a high five, Kennedy and Rian cheering, even Aiden clapping.

  “Well,” Marius says. “One match was made this weekend, and everyone seems happy about that. I call it a win.”

  “The biggest win,” I say, and I kiss him again.

  Daiquiris & Daggers

  A Faery Bargains Novella

  * * *

  By

  * * *

  Melissa Marr

  Chapter One

  “Come down here!” I stalked around the edges of the mausoleum. Some enterprising soul had festooned the edges of the mausoleum roof with concertina wire. The deadly décor glittered right now thanks to the mix of torrential rain and the glowing streetlights.

  Millicent Johnson, eighteen and dead, was supposed to be in her grave. When her mother came to weep at her daughter’s grave, she found the ground disturbed. Millie had crawled out of the earth, infected with draugr venom. That or necromancy were the only ways to walk after death.

  With much wailing and angst, the Johnsons hired me to retrieve her and deliver her to a T-Cell House. After a number of years in containment, Millie would be as rational as any teen. She’d need blood, and never physically age, but short of beheading, nothing would end Millie’s un-life.

  For that un-life to progress, I had to capture Millie tonight. I’m a necromancer, sometimes freelancer for NOPD, and I do the occasional job for the queen of the draugr in this region of the world. All that considered, capturing one dead teenager ought to be easy.

  It wasn’t.

  If she went on an indiscriminate murder spree, typical of the newly dead, she’d be beheaded post-haste. When the draugr were revealed, Icelandic folklore revealed to be fact, laws had been made. Walls had been built. Panic had fed a sort of societal shift. According to those laws the Johnsons ought to have observed the required waiting period instead of burying the girl. They’d have saved themselves a pile of cash and saved me a long, wet evening.

  “Come on, Millie.” I held out my arm, not beckoning exactly her but as if I was holding kibble out toward a cat in a tree.

  As rain continued to soak me to the bone, I decided I was willing to pretend to be kibble if it meant she came down easily. This was to be a simple bag and tag, the sort of recovery that I’d been able to pull off even as a teenager still trying to get comfortable with a sword.

  “So help me, if I have to crawl up there . . .” I circled again, not entirely sure how to manage this. “Get down here, Millie!”

  Millie growled at me, glaring at the sword in my hand. She was hunched over, balancing on her hands and feet like she was imitating a less verbal primate. I’d nudge her ass-over-tea-kettle if I could, but the height of the mausoleum meant she was out of reach. And the concertina wire meant that I couldn’t vault up there without spilling my blood—which, as a necromancer, I wasn’t keen to do in a cemetery.

  “If I can’t contain you, I will chop that pretty head off,” I threatened, stalking her from the sopping wet ground. At least if she leaped down, I could catch her. “I mean it, Millicent, pop goes the weasel! Off with your head!”

  Millie paused, but unfortunately, she couldn’t actually be threatened into clarity. Draugr didn’t start their “second lives” terribly coherent. They were akin to toddlers, all instinct and drool. Again-walkers grew in clarity and strength after they were transfused, but the newly risen were far from clarity. By about a decade—if they weren’t beheaded before that—draugr would be nearly indistinguishable from humans most of the time. They were stronger, faster, hard to kill, and mostly allergic to sunlight.

  My job was stopping them before they went around New Orleans ripping throats out. Or, in cases like this, I was hired for bagging and tagging so they could be warehoused.

  I pointed at the muddy wet ground. “Down, Millie!”

  She plopped down on the roof of the mausoleum--looking like a dripping-wet, dead princess--and stared at me.

  “Not what I meant!” I swiped at the water sluicing down my face.

  Millicent was very obviously not coming down. I wasn’t an archer, so I had no projectiles other than bullets. That left me with the choice of either waiting until she eventually came down or leaving a confused draugr perched on top of a grave. Both options sucked.

  I shoved my hair out of my face, flinging water. “Damn it.”

  I hated bag and tag jobs. Killing was easier than capturing, but that wasn’t my objective tonight.

  “Millie?” I beckoned. “Please?”

  I was a witch, born and raised as one. It was a part of my maternal lineage, along with Jewish faith. My paternal genes were more complicated. The sperm-donor was already a walking corpse when he impregnated my mother, so I was the world only living dead woman. Half dead. Half witch. Between the two sides of my heritage, capturing Millie ought to be easy.

  Until recently, it was. In fact, I was the only haman draugr in
existence as far as I knew. I had counted on that aspect of my heritage to be enough to handle a simple job. For most of my life, I could summon the dead from their graves to help me in whatever I needed. It made for an awkward childhood, but it was the basis of my career. I was the witch to call for beheadings, summoning the dead, or capturing the walking dead.

  However, a few weeks ago, I’d summoned so very many corpses that I’d accidentally restored a dead man to life. Since then, my necromancy was . . . sluggish. Apparently, if I drained my magical reserves, I needed time to recharge.

  Who knew?

  “Damn it, Millicent. Get your dead ass down here. Right this moment . . . or else!”

  “Bonbon?” Eli’s laughing voice behind me had me spinning around too quickly.

  My feet went out from under me, and I landed flat on my back. Now I was not just soaked but muddy, too. Slimy ooze coated my back, squishing into the neck of my jacket. “Ugh.”

  My husband held out a hand, as if to help me from a carriage not a muddy mess. I accepted, letting him tug me to my feet, but I dug my feet into the ground, stopping him from embracing me. “What are you doing here?”

  “You were late, so . . .” Eli gave an elegant half-shrug that pretended the act was nonchalant. It wasn’t. He worried since my magical depletion, balancing on a line between infuriating me by hovering and happening to be near when I needed help. It was graceful enough, explainable enough, that I couldn’t even yell at him for being smothering.

  And truth was that I needed the help more than I’d like. The past three months had been rough. My magic was absentee, and I was restless.

  “Plus, I missed looking at you,” Eli added lightly. The look in his eyes—and the fact that the fae can’t lie—made it clear that he somehow found me appealing even spattered in muck.

  I tilted my head up, letting the still-pouring rain wash away some of the mud. My hair, more brown than its usual blue thanks to my impromptu mud bath, hung in clumps, and I was doing a great impression of a wet cat. “You, Eli, are a lunatic.”

  “Perhaps.” He shrugged again. Sometimes, I wished he was a little less breathtaking. The combination of the way he looked at me and the way he looked was distracting. From cut glass cheeks to courtesan’s lips, Eli was much too beautiful to be in the rain with my muddy self. Even dripping wet, his darker-than-black hair hid glimmers of stars. Entire universes blinked out at me.

  “You shouldn’t look at me that way when I’m . . .” I gestured at my muddy self.

  Eli shrugged in a way that only a man like him could pull off: elegant, careless, and utterly telling all at once. “You would need to pluck my eyes out for me to look at you any other way.”

  “Fine. You’re pretty, too,” I muttered.

  Eli chuckled before looking up at the dead girl who was watching us with a keen interest. “How’s work?”

  “Obstinate. Work is obstinate.” I swiped mud out of my hair. “Princess Squirrel here won’t—"

  “I see,” he interrupted before I could rant. “Could you summon her? As with proper corpses?”

  I sighed and admitted, “If someone gave me an energy boost . . .”

  “My damsel in distress,” Eli murmured, stepping closer.

  I had a sword raised before he could touch me. “Not a fucking damsel.”

  “My damsel.” He pushed my sword away. “As you are, undoubtedly, also my knight.”

  “Sweet talker.” I pulled him closer with a muddy hand fisted in his shirt and kissed him. The moment my lips touched his, I felt the wave of faery magic. His magic. I should have been able to draw on it at will since we were wed, but that, too, was beyond me currently.

  Eli poured his energy into me, and I could taste fresh water and blossoming trees.

  When he pulled away, I had only moments before that surge would resettle itself in me, feed my depleted reserves, and vanish. I needed my magic to return to me.

  I stared up at the dead girl. “Get down here, Millicent Leigh Johnson.”

  This time, my words held a compulsion, a magical command wrought by my necromancy.

  The draugr girl stood and cartwheeled to the ground. Millie landed with a sploosh of mud, but as I was already filthy, I couldn’t object. Quickly, I bound her hands and feet, smacked a bite-proof gag over her mouth, and dropped my magical hold.

  Eli waited, not touching me while I did what I must.

  “I free you, Millicent Leigh Johnson. Not mine. Not yours.” I stepped back just as the light was returning to her eyes.

  As soon as I dropped my compulsion over Millie, she flopped around like an angry caterpillar trying to bite me through the gag. No longer calm, she wanted my blood or at least to strike out at her captor.

  “Cutting it close, bonbon,” Eli murmured.

  I nodded. If I was connected to any draugr when Eli’s magic stopped working for me, the dead would become my responsibility. I was a human, a witch, so it ought not work that way. Unfortunately, the secret that only my closest friends and family knew was that being a witch-draugr hybrid meant that my particular magical affinity—necromancy—had combined with my draugr genetics. In sum, I could do things that only the oldest draugr could do: bind and control. Any draugr I bound to me would be coherent as long as she stayed near me, and if that particular information were to be revealed, I would be both a threat to existing draugr hierarchy—and sought after by those who wanted to be brought back to a second life.

  However, I had no interest in collecting minions. I’d already accidentally bound two draugr, and I was fairly sure I’d bound my human assistant, too. I felt responsible for them, which I hated. I was not interested in adding to that list. Some people wanted an army, or a flock to mother, or didn’t feel responsible for those who served them. Me? I didn’t even want to have houseplants.

  Eli called for transport while I hauled Millie to her feet. “Come on. Up you go.”

  My hand on her bound wrists wasn’t enough to keep her standing. Millie jerked out of my hold and fell to the ground. We repeated the process several times, mostly because I was too stubborn to ask Eli to help, and he was adamant that he would not “overstep” unless my life depended on it.

  So, I hauled a trussed up dead girl to the gate where a bright purple van with T-Cell Transition Homes emblazoned on the side waited.

  Once they took the growling girl away, I stood there, wet and muddy but victorious.

  “Shall I tell Alice to invoice the Johnsons?” Eli’s voice was calm enough to make clear that he wasn’t sure of my mood.

  “Yep. And add ten percent for complications.” I met his gaze. “Dead folk are not supposed to perch on any roof.”

  Eli nodded, his expression unreadable.

  “What?”

  “Would you object to walking to the bar, Geneviève?” He offered me his arm, chivalrous as always.

  “What? No chariot?” I looked around for his little blue convertible.

  Eli was silent for a long moment before saying, “You smell rather atrocious, love.”

  I sniffed. Obviously, someone had been taking Fido on walkies in among the graves and not scooping. The slimy mud in my jacket was not just mud from the smell of it. “Ugh. I stink. I need a shower and a vacation.”

  “As you wish, bonbon.”

  And then my patient spouse escorted my mud and poo-coated self to Bill’s Tavern, where we walked through the bar and into the back. I all but ran to the shower while Eli was still peeling off his soaking clothes. He was polite enough to give me space to get clean before joining me.

  Chapter Two

  I sat at the breakfast table as the sun started to dim the next evening. Eli was out somewhere, so I woke alone and filled with nervous energy. I couldn’t say that anything specific was wrong. No open cases. No recent attacks or threats on my life. No question or doubt in my relationship. I ought to be more relaxed than I felt. Maybe I was simply accustomed to anxiety and worry.

  Eli and I were bonded. Together until one of us die
d. We’d had a month-long honeymoon after our bonding, and although everyone else was nagging me to get on with dress shopping and venue booking, Eli was being absurdly patient about planning wedding ceremonies. Plural. I’d have to endure a wedding in Elphame as well as in New Orleans—well, in The Outs where I was raised. We were having a wedding on the land where my mother homesteaded not in the city proper.

  Wedding talk was as overwhelming as my magical depletion and my newly married status.

  My life was out of my control lately, and the details of the weddings were more than I could manage. I’d gotten as far as agreeing to two ceremonies. It was either that or only have the fussy future-queen ceremony in Elphame. That was a hard pass. Not everyone was able to travel there. The realm of the fae was separate from the human world, and most faeries stayed there. The man who’d once been my friend, fight partner, and was now my spouse had failed to mention that he was not only fully fae, but the self-exiled prince. I had no interest in thrones, but if that’s what I had to do to be with Eli . . . well, love makes a person do weird things sometimes. In my case, it meant politics, fussy dresses, and several weddings.

  I’d decided that if there was going to be a wedding at all, I’d have at least one wedding that was to my taste. We started out discussing the two “suitable” places for formal weddings in the city: the Touro Synagogue, one of the oldest synagogues in the nation, and Saint Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square, the oldest church in the nation. They both held the gravitas appropriate for the wedding of the heir to Elphame and his bride, but the thought of being a spectacle, of having strangers gawk at us, of the sheer pageantry of it all made me cringe.

  And so, I’d been delaying. Avoiding. Eli and I were already married, so who needed a big fancy mess? “Avoid and procrastinate” was still my default setting for emotional things. Weddings, much like funerals, were for the attendees, and so I wanted nothing to do with either. Call me selfish, but I thought that some things, some moments, ought to be reserved for the guest-of-honor. And Eli was simply content to do whatever made me happiest.