Deviant Attraction: A Dark and Dirty Boxset

by Bene, Jennifer

  Would running into traffic be too dramatic to avoid talking about this?

  “Come on, just look for someone!” There she goes. Theresa leaned back in her chair as she sat down and took a long, judgmental sip of her Starbucks. Her cousin was never going to drop this.

  A long tirade left her cousin’s lips. You just need to find that one guy, the right guy will come along — blah, blah, blah. The smell of her mocha, whipped, something-or-other was tempting Heather, but she didn’t know how long her stomach would hold out in this conversation.

  It was only the, oh, five hundredth time they’d had it? Gag.

  “I’m just fine, Theresa.” Heather finally gave in to the temptation and took a drink of her coffee. It was delicious, and warm, and gave her a way to avoid talking while she looked across the street at everyone bundled in coats and scarves. The sky looked heavy with the promise of snow, but the weather wouldn’t be a good change of topic. Maybe she could bring up the Kardashians, or something else in pop culture? She should watch TMZ just for situations like this.

  Shiny things distracted Theresa.

  “Seriously, Heather? Just go on a date! With anyone and get it over with!” Theresa groaned and snapped her fingers in front of Heather’s face, dragging her gaze back to her beautiful cousin and away from the gray sky. Theresa rolled her eyes. “Are you even listening to me?”

  “Unfortunately, yes, I am listening. And it’s not that easy and you know it.” Heather sighed. She really did not want to discuss this, especially not in public. All the hearts, and chubby cupids in diapers, and the glitter on every shop window must have scrambled Theresa’s brain. Valentine’s Day? Really? Of all the fake holidays for people to celebrate with such reckless abandon, they had to pick one that involved shoving romance down the throats of unsuspecting single people everywhere.

  Thanks, assholes.

  “What’s not easy? Finding a date? Be serious, Heather. You’re beautiful. You’re smart. You could have any guy you want. Just pick one!” Theresa dramatically waved her arms around causing a few pedestrians to stare. Heather had specifically chosen to sit outside in below-freezing weather to avoid a scene with her lovely cousin.

  Mission? Failed.

  “I. Do. Not. Need. A. Guy.” Heather enunciated like Theresa spoke English as a second language, but she was sure even that wouldn’t make it through her thick skull. Theresa understood subtlety about as well as fish understood hiking.

  “So, you’re perfectly fine being like this for the rest of your life?” Theresa’s eyes rolled so hard this time that Heather was surprised they found their way back to her to glare judgmentally.

  “I don’t want to just find some guy. You make it sound like it’s simple, and it’s not.”

  “I know that I handled it just fine, and that was six years ago. I was nineteen! You’re twenty-four!” Theresa’s phone dinged and she grabbed it from the table, mumbling under her breath as she tapped away.

  Ah, yes. Theresa was the good Pritchett. Theresa was such a go-getter. Go, Theresa!

  “You know what? Exactly. I am twenty-four, Theresa. Which means I’m an adult. A full-grown, fully-adult woman, who can make her own decisions. You seriously do not need to keep talking to me like I’m some lost lamb! I’m perfectly happy!” Heather grabbed her coffee from the table, hoping the heat would seep through her gloves to her frigid fingers.

  “Would you rather it be me talking to you, or Aunt Marguerite?” Theresa tilted her head, her dark brown curls tumbling over her shoulder. She had their family’s trademark brown hair and blue eyes, like Caribbean water. Somehow those traits, and the total carefree attitude towards men, had skipped Heather’s DNA completely. With dirty blonde hair and brown eyes, Heather had been convinced as a child that she’d been adopted, but since her Aunt Carol had actually helped birth her there was unfortunately no denying her familial connections. Aunt Marguerite, on the other hand, hadn’t missed a single molecule of the Pritchett family inheritance. She was forty-six, but barely looked thirty. Brown hair, blue eyes. A powerful art dealer who spent most of her time in New York, but habitually returned to Cambridge, Massachusetts to harass the next generation of Pritchett women. Oh, and she still took men home like she was running a youth hostel out of her bedroom.

  Heather definitely didn’t want to have the man conversation with her Aunt Marguerite.

  “Why does anyone have to talk to me, Theresa?! I said I’m fine!” Heather sat her cup down a little harder than necessary and shoved her hands under her arms to try and warm them.

  “Because everyone is talking about it. About… you.” For once Theresa actually seemed reserved as she replied.

  Wait, everyone?

  “What do you mean, Theresa?” Heather stared at her cousin as she seemed to do everything in her power to look at everything but her. Apparently the bus next to them advertising a new TV show was suddenly more interesting than their conversation. “Theresa! Tell me what you mean!”

  “Ugh, fine!” She sat her own cup down and threw her hands up. Steam was still coiling out of the top of her cup and Heather glared enviously at the warm coffee. “The whole family is worried that you’re not going to, you know, bloom, which means that we may not have everything we need next month.”

  “Elaborate.” Heather felt a headache coming on, which usually happened when she was talking to Theresa, but it seemed particularly focused behind her right eye at the moment.

  “You work at the shop, Heather. You know exactly what I’m talking about!” When Heather just continued to stare at her Theresa continued with an exaggerated sigh, “Total solar eclipse? On the vernal equinox? Super rare combination of events in the Northern Hemisphere where we have an opportunity to expand our power exponentially? ANY of this ringing any bells, or do you seriously ignore everything that happens around you all the time?”

  “None of that has anything to do with me.” Heather started fortifying her internal walls against the verbal assault she knew was going to come. She’d been fighting off these discussions since she’d hit puberty.

  “What?!” Theresa screeched, once again attracting the attention of everyone within a hundred yards. “It has everything to do with you! God, Heather, you’re so — so — so selfish!”

  “That is the opposite of what I am, Theresa!” Her voice was too loud for the crowded sidewalk, and she snapped her mouth shut. A shiver washed over her and she tried to hide her chattering teeth, but Theresa caught it.

  “Dammit, Heather. Give me your hands.” Theresa reached across the table and Heather reluctantly dropped her hands into her cousin’s. At first nothing happened, then it felt like static tingles rushing across her skin, the smell of burnt air surrounding her as Theresa closed her eyes to focus.

  Magic.

  A pang of jealousy clanged inside Heather, followed by the rush of heat from Theresa’s hands. It flooded up her arms, splashing down her back as if someone had just thrown her in a steam shower, wrapped her in a fluffy blanket straight out of the dryer, and fed her a bowl of warm soup all at the same time. Heather tried to remind herself that she didn’t want the power, she didn’t need the power.

  She was just fine without it.

  Even after Theresa’s energy was done doing its thing, her cousin held on to her hands. Her voice was much calmer when she spoke again, “Heather, I love you. We’ve known each other our whole lives. I know you’ve got a hang up about this, and I’ve tried to explain it to the aunts. You know I have. But I don’t think they’re going to let it go this time.”

  Warm and comfortable for the first time since they’d sat down outside of the coffee shop Heather tried to think about what Theresa was suggesting; but she didn’t want to. All she could do was wish for a different family. A family that wasn’t such a nightmare.

  When people she knew complained about their family issues, about irritating Thanksgiving dinners, about exhausting holiday traditions, Heather always kept her mouth shut. Because first, how do you explain that your
family is huge, like ‘I have forty-two first and second cousins’ huge, and therefore family get-togethers wouldn’t happen at someone’s house, they’d require a fucking convention center. And second, how exactly would you explain that your family is really powerful? Not powerful politically like the Kennedys, or media-powerful like Brad and Angelina, or — whatever. Nope, when it came to the Pritchetts, power came in the form of magic.

  Real fucking magic.

  As in making things move and float without touching them, starting fires and floods, making spells and potions, playing mind games and crafting illusions. The Pritchett women were nightmares wrapped in pretty blue-eyed packages, because all of that stuff sounded really cool until it was your seventeen-year-old sister who suddenly had the ability to levitate you out of your bed and put you on the fucking roof.

  Thanks, Katy, for that lovely memory.

  All Heather had ever wanted was to have been adopted, to be a part of some other family that wasn’t actually a coven of power hungry, perfect looking witches pretending to be normal women.

  But that was never going to happen. She was a Pritchett and she always would be — and that meant they wanted her to be a part of the nightmare.

  She pulled her hands from Theresa’s and shoved her cold coffee forward on the table. “If you’re going to do that shit in public, at least use it to heat my coffee.”

  Theresa grinned and grabbed the coffee cup, but remembered to close her eyes and look down before she started to channel the energy. Glowing eyes tended to freak out anyone outside the family. As soon as she saw steam coming from the lid, Heather yanked it back. The last thing she needed was to explain boiling coffee bubbling out of her cup if someone chose to pay attention. “You know, you could probably do something like that if you’d just take care of your little problem.” Theresa was smiling, riding the high of using her magic. Her eyes still a little too vibrant a blue to be natural, but they were calming down.

  Heather took a sip of her coffee and almost burned her mouth. “It’s my problem, thank you very much.”

  “Well, actually, according to the aunts it could be everyone’s problem at the vernal equinox. If we offend He—,” she stopped before she said the name out loud, “—if we offend the one who gave us these gifts, the aunts say it could be bad. Really bad.”

  “And how would I offend her?” Heather drank more of the coffee now that it was slightly below scalding, and reveled in the warmth that still hummed under her skin while she studiously tried to ignore where the conversation was heading.

  “The vernal equinox is a chance to enhance our power, to gain more for the whole family. To have someone of age who hasn’t claimed their rite?” Theresa winced and grew quiet, speaking fast like she didn’t want to say the rest. “It might, sort of, be, like, a slap in the face of a really powerful ancient being who could crush us all beneath her heel?”

  Heather just stared at her cousin in disbelief. There were hundreds, no, thousands of Pritchett women across the world. There had been over three hundred years of Pritchett women, a ton of generations since Esther Pritchett lost her son and sold her soul to darkness. Why would one less witch matter? Why would she, Heather Pritchett, mean anything to the one who had given her family the power?!

  Fuck this.

  Heather didn’t want to be discussing her, or the rite they wanted her to complete, or the power she’d denied herself all these years. She wanted to go home, watch some TV, eat popcorn, and go to sleep. She wanted to be normal. “You can’t be serious.”

  “As a heart attack. The aunts mean business this time, Heather. They love your mom, and you, but the coven comes first. You know that. And, if you put that at risk…” Theresa trailed off ominously and Heather almost choked on her coffee.

  “What? Finish the goddamn sentence, Theresa! If I put that at risk — what?!” Heather gritted her teeth as pedestrians stole glances at her while they navigated the narrow sidewalk between the small mounds of snow on either side.

  “Heeeaatthheerrr…” Theresa whined, her brows knitting together above her eyes that had just barely returned to a less unearthly blue. She spoke so quietly Heather almost couldn’t hear her over the sound of traffic, “If you put everyone at risk, they’ll have to make sure you aren’t a — a problem, you know, at the equinox.” Theresa’s eyes were firmly glued to the top of her coffee cup as Heather’s world seemed to start collapsing around her.

  Her family, her fucking family, the people who had watched her grow up, cared for her, made her birthday cakes, sent her off to school, let her cry on their shoulders — were going to kill her if she wouldn’t complete the fucking rite and claim her power?

  “Say something.” Theresa looked so worried, so concerned, as if she weren’t part of the group of people who were threatening Heather’s life.

  “You would kill me?” Her voice cracked as she asked it quietly, and Theresa flinched like she’d hit her.

  “Heather, no one wants to—“

  “Really?!” Heather struggled to keep her voice low, and so she ended up doing a weird kind of whisper yelling that consisted of a lot of hissing between clenched teeth. “You guys would really fucking kill me because I won’t find some guy and complete the rite?!”

  “Just fucking do it!” Theresa half-yelled at her. More heads turning on the sidewalk. “Just — GOD — why are you so stubborn!” Theresa grabbed her head and growled in frustration. There were tears brimming at the edge of her cousin’s eyes, but Heather couldn’t summon any sympathy. Not with the knife of betrayal poised over her heart, waiting to be plunged in. Theresa was looking around, again avoiding Heather’s eyes as though that would somehow erase the fact that she had just threatened to kill the girl she’d grown up with, her best friend. They were closer than they were with any of their sisters. Only eight months apart, they had done everything together.

  Everything except the rite, of course.

  “Theresa. I just can’t—”

  “YES! Oh my God! Yes, you can!” Theresa jumped up, moving to the window of the coffee shop and slapping her hand against it to the absolute fright of a couple sitting on the other side of it. “This is the answer!”

  Heather couldn’t see through her hand to read the red paper taped against the inside of the glass. “An ad is the way to keep you and the aunts from murdering me?” Sarcasm wasn’t a strong enough descriptor for the tone in her voice, but Theresa ignored the comment.

  “Speed dating. ‘Find your Valentine in just two minutes, just in time for a night of love’. February 12th. Speed. Dating. Tomorrow night!” Theresa clapped her hands together and bounced up and down, grinning from ear to ear. “It’s perfect! You won’t know the guy, won’t know his friends, won’t know his family, it’ll be completely no strings attached!”

  “Theresa—”

  “Shut up, Heather, and just do it!” Theresa snapped at her, but she softened her voice, her brows pinching together again. “Please. For me, for your mom, for our nieces. You had to know that someday you’d have to choose a guy. It’s not like you’re a virgin, just do it.”

  Heather dropped her head into her hands. No, she wasn’t a virgin. Just in the last four months there had been Rick who liked to tie her up and tease her until she begged for him, Brendan who had made a game of how many public places they could fuck in without getting caught, and Clay who had spent their entire three weeks together trying to recreate every Nicholas Sparks novel known to man. Clay had been her least favorite, but she’d put off breaking up with him because she’d known he would cry. And he had. She had made herself break the others off because the longer they spent in her life, the more her family paid attention — and the attention of a Pritchett woman was something no man should wish for. Ever.

  These were some great choices. Perform the rite that she had spent a lifetime opposed to, a lifetime arguing against, a lifetime refusing — or die at the hands of her own family.

  Which would leave her sweet mother with only Katy and Bonn
ie, who could easily get the roles of the evil stepsisters in any stage production of Cinderella.

  Mom.

  Of all the things on the table — the threat to her own life, the threat of an ancient powerful psycho-bitch destroying her entire family, the threat of being cast out if they let her live for some reason — the worst of it would be leaving her mom to them.

  “Fine,” Heather whispered.

  “What did you say?” Theresa was scribbling the details from the flyer on a receipt she’d snagged from her purse.

  “I said fine, Theresa. I’ll do it.” Heather felt sick just saying the words. Theresa’s squeal of joy, her vibrant hug as she pulled Heather from her seat and wrapped her arms around her, the way she pressed the information on the speed dating event into her hand — none of it could seep through the weight of her decision.

  Because the rite to gain her power, to become a Pritchett witch, didn’t just involve finding some man, choosing him, and taking him to bed. That would be easy. That would be simple.

  But, it wasn’t simple. Because whomever she met, whomever she chose, whomever she fucked under the power of the rite -

  - would die.

  * * *

  Heather spent the afternoon wandering downtown Cambridge, adamantly refusing to show up for her shift at the shop. Unlike most days that she was late for a shift, Aunt Carol didn’t call her.

  No one called her.

  Which meant Theresa had already announced the news.

  Stubborn Heather was finally going to claim her magic. She was going to let go of her ridiculous morals and finally join the ranks of thousands of other Pritchett women who had sacrificed a man to gain power.

  Good men, because the immortal psycho-bitch who controlled her family wanted warriors. And as actual warriors had dwindled with the modern world, it had translated into men who fought the good fight, stood up for what was right, were brave, and strong, and good.