by Ashlyn Kane
Leo stared. “Wait, muggle, that’s an actual term you use?”
“Nah, but when Harry Potter got big, we started to use it. Raises fewer eyebrows and everyone knows what it means. Mundane’s the proper word, but it’s, well….”
“Mundane?”
“Exactly.”
“So your family thought you didn’t have magic?” Leo prompted. This seemed like a story he wanted to hear.
“Let’s just say they decided it was a good idea for me to learn a muggle trade, just in case.”
And he picked making candy. Not exactly the most lucrative endeavor, but it was sweet.
Cole wiped a bit of sauce in the corner of his mouth with his thumb. “What about you?”
Leo blinked. “I’ve always been a muggle.” He thought he’d been clear on that point.
“No, I mean, do you work?” Cole made a face. “Is that gauche? I don’t do a lot of small talk outside of sugar-adjacent subjects.”
Oh, right. “I work at the hospital. Nurse. I got off shift an hour before I went to see you at the store.” The twelve-hour days had been a bear to begin with, but he was used to it now and couldn’t imagine working the kind of job he had to do five days a week instead of three or four.
On reflection, no wonder he’d thought pineapple on pizza was an acceptable risk. His blood was probably 60 percent coffee right now. And that beer was going to hit hard too. It had been a long week.
“You’re not going to pass out on me, are you?” Cole asked as Leo set his beer farther away from himself. He didn’t need the temptation.
“Not on purpose. But I’ve worked just under fifty hours in the past four days.” And now that he didn’t have the adrenaline rush of worrying someone was going to think he was a lunatic for believing magic was real, he was going to crash.
Cole set down his pizza crust and dusted flour off his hands. “Gotcha. Well, let’s get to it, then.”
All at once, Leo’s apprehension came rushing back. “Just like that?”
Cole shook his head and stood, a self-deprecating smirk twisting his features. “Come on. I’ll show you where the real magic happens.”
Chapter Three
“IT’S not the fancy kind of setup my gran has.” Cole pressed his hand against the door to the altar room. “But then again, my needs are pretty simple.”
At his touch, the door unlocked and swung open. Beside him, Leo froze. “Uh, so that was magic.”
Cole cocked his head. “You used to let a guy drink your blood, but me opening a door freaks you out?”
“I’m not freaked out!” Leo protested. He wavered a little on his feet.
Yeah, Cole was glad he’d told Niamh to roost outside tonight. He waved Leo forward. “Come in and sit down. This could take a while.”
Cole hadn’t been kidding: his setup was pretty minimal. Gran’s altar room featured velvet curtains, gas wall sconces, and a pentagram inlaid in colorful wood. Cole had vinyl blinds, LED candles, and a rug Kate had woven into a pentagram pattern for him, because before he’d bought the house, he’d lived in an apartment where he couldn’t make any permanent alterations and his landlady liked to stop by and chat. He didn’t bother with the candles now, though, just gestured Leo to the armchair he’d set in the center of the rug.
Leo hesitated at the edge of the circle.
Oh boy. Cole didn’t often work with mundanes so unfamiliar with his world that he had to tell them everything. “It’s a protection symbol,” he said. “And in this case it will help magnify my ability to see the spell you’re under. I can’t do anything to you while you’re standing inside it. Not unless I’m in there with you.”
Leo had entered the pentagram and was lowering himself into the chair when a voice said, “What the hell, Cole, it smells like patchouli in here,” and Leo almost hit the ceiling.
Damn it.
“I told you to stay outside!” Cole hissed.
Niamh alit on his shoulder, ruffling her feathers. “I never get to meet your company,” she sniffed, beak clacking. “It’s like you’re ashamed of me.” She drew out the sh; the shape of her mouth meant it came out almost as a whistle.
“Or it’s like you’re a talking bird and that’s kind of a lot to dump on a guy who just learned about the obscure world three months ago.”
Leo sat the rest of the way down.
“You just pointed out that he let a guy drink his blood.” Niamh ruffled again before settling. “I thought he could handle it!”
“I’m still here,” Leo protested. His tone reminded Cole of a wet kitten.
“Niamh.”
“Fine.” She took off toward the open kitchen window.
Cole let out a long breath. “I’m gonna put in a screen,” he muttered under his breath. “Freaking magpies.” Then he recentered and closed the door behind him. “Sorry for the interruption. Familiars are notorious busybodies.”
“Familiars,” Leo said. “Animals that talk. To witches.”
Cole should have fed him more alcohol. Or offered one of Gran’s special candies. “Do you want to do this another time?”
Leo exhaled and visibly reined himself in. “No. I’m okay. It’s just been a long week.” He shook his head. “What do you need me to do?”
With his foot, Cole reached out and snagged the rolling stool next to the door. He pulled it toward himself and sat, then hit the dimmer switch. He didn’t really need the candles, but low light would let him see the spell better. “Just sit, for now. The pentagram acts sort of like the UV light in those crime shows, you know?”
Leo made a face and squinted down at his chest. “Uh….”
“Never mind.” Cole sat and closed his eyes, centering himself. Under the pentagram’s magnification, the spell buzzed unpleasantly, setting his teeth on edge. “So. Tell me about you and Roman.”
He heard Leo shift in the armchair. “Not much to tell. We met at a bar.”
Oh, so it was like that. Cole hummed in acknowledgment and listened to the changing pitch of the spell. “Which bar?”
“No. I don’t think so, at least.”
Cole rephrased. “The name of the bar was?”
“Oh! Nightshade.”
Cole couldn’t help it—he opened his eyes. “The bar’s called Nightshade and you don’t think it’s a—whoa.”
The curse glowed a lurid green, casting an eerie halo around the armchair. Two bands wrapped around Leo’s mouth almost like a gag and then, judging by the angles, crisscrossed behind his neck. They bound his arms, his chest, his hands, his legs. His dick. And they kept crossing, back up, until they met again over the left side of his chest.
That was some spellwork.
“What?” Leo asked, looking down. “Is it that bad?”
Cole shook his head. “I reiterate: you really pissed someone off.” Someone who knew what they were doing with their craft too. But that would wait until later. “So you met Roman at a bar. And?”
“And what?” Leo challenged, his cheeks pink. Unfairly, the flush only made him more attractive. “I’m the victim here!”
“I’m not trying to slut-shame you or anything,” Cole said quickly, hoping that was the problem. “But the more I know about your relationship, the better I’ll be able to figure out the spell.” He already had an idea of what it did. But the why would be instrumental in figuring out how to undo it.
“Oh.” Leo deflated. “Sorry, I’m really…. It’s been a brutal few months, and I feel stupid about it.”
Cole had experienced his own share of romantic trauma—he could definitely relate. “Tell you what. How about we trade horror stories? Then it’s not such a one-sided thing. I’ve got some doozies dating back to my childhood. Deal?”
Leo smiled, cheeks dimpling, and for a moment, under the magnification of the pentagram, he glowed pink instead of green, and the knot of spellwork twitched. “I think I’m getting the better end of this deal, actually. All right. I met Roman at Nightshade in June, and I invited him home with me.”
Without intending to, Cole made a noise in the back of his throat.
“Yeah, rookie mistake, right?” Leo shook his head. “In my defense, I didn’t know vampires were a thing. Not until he was an inch deep in my femoral artery, anyway.”
Cole didn’t mean to pry, but he was looking at Leo, and Leo was sitting in a pentagram, and it was impossible not to see the way his whole aura pulsed a heated red at the memory. Warmth rose in the back of Cole’s neck, and he ran a hand over his hair, grateful for the low light. He was probably so blotchy right now. Jeez. “That’s not very polite.”
“No, it’s not, though I wasn’t complaining at the time,” Leo admitted sheepishly. “We had words afterward, though.”
“I can imagine.” Fortunately Cole had never had to explain magic to a boyfriend or even a one-night stand. Unfortunately that was because he always got his heart broken before things got that far. “My turn. Let’s see. My freshman year of high school, we were supposed to collect specimens for a project. My lab partner was”—like you—“popular, handsome, junior varsity basketball team. We were identifying our finds at Gran’s and I was trying to get the nerve to ask him out to lunch, when suddenly the dead frog in front of him kicks and hits his hand. He screamed like a banshee and ran out of the house. I had to finish the project myself.”
Leo’s eyes were wide, even as he seemed to be fighting off giggles. “Your grandmother brought a frog back to life to fuck with your love life?”
“She didn’t bring it back. She’s not that evil. She just made its legs twitch a little.” Cole shrugged ruefully. “He kind of deserved it. I’m pretty sure she overheard him ask me if she really was a witch like everyone said.”
Leo grinned. “So you never asked him out?”
Cole shook his head. “I was gonna try it anyway, but he’d never meet my eyes after that. Either he thought I was the witch or he was super embarrassed about hitting a pitch that could shatter glass.”
“Or he decided to respect the magical cockblock.”
“Or that.”
“My turn again.” Leo leaned his head back against the chair. “Where was I?”
“Having your femoral artery perforated.”
“And the ensuing ‘vampires are real’ conversation, yeah. In retrospect, I probably should’ve called the cops. Random pickup turns out to be a creature of the night? But on the other hand, what are they going to do? Do they carry garlic spray? Would that even work?”
Cole couldn’t believe Leo was still alive. “You didn’t kick him out.”
Leo fidgeted. The edges of the halo went orange. “I asked him out for coffee.”
A beat. Two. Cole took his time schooling his face and voice. He didn’t need to put Leo on the defensive again. Finally Cole said, “Why?”
Leo flushed. “The sex was good! He seemed nice! I don’t know, you don’t go around telling just anyone you’re a vampire, right? I thought we had a connection.”
With some effort, Cole closed his mouth without saying anything. Deep breath in. Long breath out. Crap, he needed another embarrassing story. “When I was sixteen, I begged to borrow Gran’s car for a night so I could take my friend Jamie to the movies.”
Leo let that hang for a moment before he prompted, “And?”
“And she accidentally left a limburger sandwich under the passenger seat. It was August.”
“No movie magic that night, huh?”
“No movie magic that summer,” Cole lamented. Not until the summer after he turned seventeen, when he defied Gran’s wishes and took a job as a counselor at a sleepaway camp. Mom had said Gran couldn’t shelter him forever, and he was going to have to learn to get by in the mundane world on his own sooner or later.
Of course, Cole unwittingly removed a curse from his might-have-been-boyfriend co-counselor, and suddenly everyone found him super attractive and he didn’t need Cole anymore.
Cole wasn’t bitter.
Much.
Though after that, he knew he wasn’t the genetic throwback of the family after all. “So. Coffee date?”
“Do you know how much daylight there is in June? Caffeine wasn’t viable. Not if I didn’t want to mess with my sleep schedule before work. But we went to a movie, caught a late dinner”—Cole refrained from asking whether Leo had been dinner—“and one thing led to another, and then it was July, and….”
“And suddenly you’re dating a vampire?”
“I didn’t see anything wrong with it. I’m an adult, he’s….” Leo’s mouth twisted and curled up in a wry admission. “Well, he’s definitely old enough to make his own decisions. And it’s nice being in a relationship. Having someone to come home to.”
Oh holy Diana, he did not. “You moved in with him?” Not that most vampires weren’t perfectly decent, but it didn’t seem like Leo had made much effort to discern whether Roman was.
“No! I gave him a key.”
Cole needed a minute to digest. How was Leo the guy who freaked out at talking magpies but also the guy who casually struck up a relationship with a vampire? The kind of relationship where he’d give someone a key within a month of meeting him? Cole was getting a headache just thinking about it.
He opened his mouth to counter with the time his prom date had an allergic reaction to Cole’s boutonniere and started sneezing anytime he got too close, but what came out was “Seriously?”
Leo frowned. “I thought you weren’t going to be judgy!”
“That was before I knew you gave a vampire a key after like one date!”
“I would’ve done the same if he were human!”
But he isn’t, Cole wanted to say and didn’t because, well. He didn’t know Roman, and vampires weren’t generally morally worse than the average mundane. “It’s a miracle you’ve never been robbed,” he muttered instead.
Leo went orange again. Cole decided not to ask for clarification and poked at Leo’s thing with Roman a little further instead. “So what went wrong, anyway? Why’d you break up?”
Apparently Leo had forgotten this was supposed to be tit-for-tat. He shrugged. “The same thing that always goes wrong, I guess? We weren’t working out. I didn’t love him and vice versa. So we broke up.”
That sounded fake, but that could just be Cole’s personal biases coming into play. “No hard feelings?”
“Why would there be? Nobody cheated, nobody lied, nobody was an asshole. At least not until afterward, when I ended up with this… thing.”
And Cole would get to the effects of that in a minute. But first, one more question: “So when was the last time you saw Roman?”
“Must’ve been about two weeks after we broke up,” he said, obviously thinking back. “Yeah. He came by my place to grab a shirt he left there.”
“And what were you doing at the time?”
Leo frowned. “Cooking, I think? I was working the day shift and Miguel came by for dinner.”
Bingo. That smacked of motive. “Miguel?” Cole asked neutrally, following the threads of the curse as Leo spoke. Energy flowed along them, offering little hints.
“Yeah. The guy I dated after Roman.”
The energy pulses all seemed to be heading in the same direction, culminating in a spiral around Leo’s mouth. Cole’s life would be a lot easier if humans would just pick up a book and learn about human—vampire, whatever—nature once in a while. “Well. The good news is I know why you got cursed.”
Leo sat up straight. “That’s awesome.” And then he sagged again, slouching even more than he had previously. “What’s the bad news?”
Cole stood and stretched the kinks out of his back. He needed to get a more comfortable chair. “You broke the cardinal rule of interacting with vampires: you hurt his pride.”
Chapter Four
COLE let Leo out of the creepy pentagram chair, and they moved to the cozy living room. Leo kept looking for evidence of witchiness—sage bunches by the fireplace or upside-down crosses or more pentagrams or what-have-you—but no. Just a co
zy overstuffed sofa, a worn armchair with a hand-knitted throw over the back, and… okay, the bird perch in the corner was a little witchy.
“So the curse,” Cole said conversationally. “What’s it do? Be as specific as you can.”
Leo looked at him incredulously. “I was in that chair for half an hour. What were you doing?”
“Looking at it objectively. Now tell me what it does. I’m curious.”
He had to have some idea, at least Leo hoped so. He sighed. “It—sort of makes me tongue-tied? I don’t mean that I don’t know what to say. I know what I want to say, but I can’t get the words out.”
“All the time, or in certain situations?”
Right, he had to be specific. “Like if I see a hot guy at a bar and I want to buy him a drink. I can’t. Or ask for a number.”
Cole nodded. “Anything else?”
Oh yeah. Lots. Leo counted off on his fingers. “Can’t give anyone my number—not that anyone has even asked, though a few guys have looked like they’re interested.” If no one was asking for Leo’s number, that was definitely part of the curse. “Can’t even go dance with a guy I want to get to know. If I do start dancing by myself and someone comes up to me, I move away. I can’t stop it. And I can’t even count the times a guy has come up to me and said ‘Can I get your’ or ‘Do you want’ and not been able to finish the sentence.”
“So essentially, you’re magically cockblocked.”
Leo let his head drop back against the sofa. “Pretty much.”
Silence reigned for a few heartbeats. “So can you jerk off?” Cole finally asked, and Leo gave himself whiplash turning his head so hard. His ears felt like they were on fire.
“What?”
“I’m just, you know.” Cole’s light brown cheeks had gone a blotchy red, and he was staring at the wall over Leo’s shoulder. “How urgent is this? A guy can go without getting laid pretty much indefinitely, but if you can’t even relieve the pressure yourself, that could be, uh, unpleasant. So how urgently do you need this curse broken?”
