by Sarina Dorie
A woman next to me threw off her shirt. Someone grabbed the hem of my dress and tried to lift it off me, but I swatted the hands away. There was more bumping and grinding going on here than at an unchaperoned high school dance. A group of people decorated in fluorescent glow-in-the-dark paint near me swayed as if in a trance. People jumped up, leaping far higher than was naturally possible. I halted at the edge of the crowd, afraid this was more witchcraft. It felt like witchcraft.
Hot and cold tingles rushed through my limbs. Flickers of naked limbs appeared and disappeared as the spotlights swept over those nearest. What my eyes beheld between flickers of light made that weird partying sex scene in The Matrix Reloaded look PG.
I was jostled into the human herd, becoming one more body in the mob. Someone’s elbow dug into my back and a woman jumped up, bouncing her glitter breasts in my face. A moment later, hands grabbed me and lifted me upward. I screamed, but no one heard over the deafening music. I realized too late that people were getting thrown into the air.
I was flung up toward the sky, my stomach leaping into my throat. Adrenaline rushed through me. I came down hard and the breath was knocked out of me. I slid back into the crowd, my knees wobbling. I would have fallen over if it hadn’t been for the wall of people on either side of me.
Some lady beside me moaned. I glanced over to see her legs around some guy’s waist. It was hard to tell in the flashes of light, but I suspected he was buck naked. It wouldn’t have surprised me if they were having sex. The rave probably would have been better if I did drugs, but there was no freaking way that was going to happen. The last thing I needed was to lose control and turn everyone in the crowd into toads, bananas, or dildos.
On the plus side, I was hidden.
The only time I stayed up until morning was to finish a good book. I never partied all night or went to mosh pits in clubs. This was very different from my all-nighters reading Lord of the Rings. The first hour was weird and kind of blah.
Someone offered me shrooms. I declined. There was no telling what my magic would do with drugs. I was already unpredictable enough.
Then after about an hour, something changed. My limbs loosened, I closed my eyes, and the music vibrated through me. I fell into step with the beat. Dirty dancing no longer seemed like such a bad idea. That guy grinding against my crotch felt pretty good. At least, I suspected it was a guy. It was too dark to tell.
Everything looked bright and shimmery. The boughs of trees whipped in the wind, sending leaves sprinkling down on us. A warm flush crept over me. I leaned my head back against someone’s sweaty, muscled chest.
Was LSD airborne, or did I have a secondhand high from all the weed in the air? My skin felt electric. A blaze of euphoria pulsed in my core. Pleasant throbbing started up between my legs. Wow, I was going to have a mosh pit orgasm.
A brilliant burst of dazzling pink light sparkled above. This was the fireworks everyone talked about. I was finally going to find out what an orgasm was like. Usually they had been cut short when someone died or something blew up. Part of my mind did consider something dangerous might happen in the mosh pit orgy as a result of my magic. Just as before when I’d been compelled to kiss Felix Thatch, I was too swept up by the spell of magic to care.
Another pleasant spasm radiated between my legs. The fireworks lit the sky and the crowd. I was bathed in a glow of tingling light. Warm flesh rubbed against my back. Some anonymous person grabbed my butt, and it felt right in that moment.
More colors shot out from the trees. By now I realized they weren’t the metaphorical fireworks people talked about, but literal ones. That was fine too.
What was less fine was the woman floating above the crowd. Another silhouette of a winged person became clear as another explosion of light radiating above them. One pointed down at me.
My heart lodged in my throat.
“Dude, that is awesome!” someone near me shouted. “This is the best show ever.”
Another dark figure appeared, giant wings flapping in the air.
“I must be tripping!” a man shouted. “These are excellent shrooms.”
The light shining on me grew brighter. It took me a second to realize the light wasn’t coming from up above; it was coming from me. My skin glowed pale pink like a light-up Barbie. Not that I’d ever seen a doll with glowing skin, but I was sure if I ever did, it would be the hue of bubblegum. No wonder the Raven Court had been able to find me in this crowd.
As if my pink, luminescent skin wasn’t weird enough, white light radiated from between my legs. It looked like I had a light bulb hidden under my dress. A ripple of energy surged from me. Those nearest were pushed back. People covered their eyes and toppled over as a wave of pulsing magic radiated from me.
For the record, I just want to point out, the powerful energy wasn’t an orgasm. It was just my light-up vag being weird.
The drumming faded. The festive fireworks I’d been admiring earlier caught a tree on fire. Screams filled the air. Chaos broke loose. I probably would have been trampled if people hadn’t given my glow such a wide birth.
A man in flowing robes and a wizard hat zapped a beam of golden light at the flock of bird people. He created a wall of energy, cutting them off from the crowd. The shield of light reminded me of a science fiction force field. More yellow light crashed against blue light. The starbursts were too bright to look at. I ran toward one of the paths, where the rest of the mob flooded.
I glanced over my shoulder. The battle above raged at least two stories up. Lights sparked and rained down on people. I should have looked where I was running. I ran into the hard wall of a body.
“Oof!” I said as the air was knocked out of me.
A hand closed around my wrist and stopped me from falling. I stared up into Felix Thatch’s face. One of his eyes was dark, bruised. For once his hair didn’t look quite as nice, and there was dirt on his suit.
“When trouble is at hand, why are you always at the center of it?” he asked.
It wasn’t just me near the epicenter of trouble. He was there too. Each time.
I shouted over the cries around me. “Why are you doing this to me? Why can’t you just leave me alone?”
He stared down at me, his expression perplexed. His gaze shifted to the hem of my dress. Apparently my vaginal Lite-Brite decided it was time for rainbows. I giggled at the ridiculousness of this, the mortified look on his face, and the fact that near-orgasmic mosh pit orgies made multicolored disco lights shoot out of the Republic of Labia.
Thatch waved a wand over my abdomen and the light diminished. It felt like he’d just sucked the breath out of me. I didn’t like the sensation.
A whoosh of wind brushed against the slick sweat on my back. I looked over my shoulder. One of the raven people landed. A circle of them formed around us. Thatch’s lips pressed into a thin line.
“Hand her over and all will be forgiven,” said a woman with a raspy voice and black plumage that ended in a bird body.
My knees wobbled, and I felt sick after the way Thatch had extinguished my magic. He turned to face the bird woman. One of his hands remained clamped on my wrist.
He lifted his nose into the air. “I haven’t done anything that needs forgiving. I’m not the one who let the Raven Queen down, am I now?”
“It’s always a game with you, isn’t it?” Her lips drew back in a sneer. “Well, we’ve won this round. Hand her over.”
“Gladly. After I’m paid.”
“No, you will not take her!” a man’s voice thundered from behind us.
The old cowboy wizard I’d seen earlier floated on dark storm clouds. He held out a staff that glowed with pale light.
The bird woman tilted her head to the side. “She has broken the rules and put both our realms at risk. She must pay the price. We claim her as our tithe.”
I didn’t know what that meant, but it didn’t sound good. She went on. “She killed an emissary of the Raven Court
today with untamed magic. She is ours.”
That abra-cadaver spell earlier had been worse than I’d realized.
The old man leaned on his staff. “Now you just hold your horses. We didn’t know she existed until today. She doesn’t know the rules and needs to be given time to learn them.”
“Whose fault is that? Isn’t it your job to find lost Witchkin and train them in your school before they hurt themselves and others?” A vicious smile tugged at her lips.
School? Did they say there was a magic school and I should have gone there? It had to be Womby’s School for Wayward Witches. I had the intake form. Yes, this was everything I’d ever dreamed of! Except for the part about a bunch of harpies trying to intercept me before I could get there.
“By gum! That’s our intentions,” the old wizard said. “Call off your big guns and we’ll take her to our school to be properly educated.”
The bird woman strode forward. “It’s too late for that. One would think you’d have tried a little harder to find the kin of the most powerful witch ever born.” She extended a hand toward me. Her curled talons stretched and lengthened as though she were the villain in a Freddy Krueger movie.
Thatch shoved me behind him. He still clung to my wrist. Expertly he untucked a wand from his sleeve.
The raven shifters words sank into me.
My mother? Powerful? That was a good joke. And yet … there had to be a reason both sides wanted me, Thatch had been following me around, and people wanted to kill me. Not to mention there had to be a logical reason for the glowing fleshlight between my legs.
Thatch’s grip around my wrist tightened like a vice. He looked to the bird lady. “Where is my payment?”
“What?” the old wizard asked, hurt crossing his face. “Felix, say it ain’t true! You haven’t been working with them, have you?”
Voices murmured around us. “I knew he was a traitor!”
Yeah, I’d sort of had that vibe too.
“Why does Bumblebub trust him?” someone in a witch hat asked.
Bumblebub? Was that the old man’s name or an insult?
Beyond the bird people, more men and women in conical hats stepped out of the shadows. Faint luminescence radiated from the wands and staffs they held.
This was so cool! It was just like Harry Potter. Only I might die or be turned into some harpy’s sex slave. That part wasn’t as cool.
The bird woman looked Thatch up and down. “You can collect your just reward from the Raven Queen herself … if you dare.”
He raised his wand. The twisted wood glowed.
The harpy held her hand palm up, a ball of blue fire dancing an inch above her skin. “Stand aside.”
The old man, Bumblebub I assumed, floated forward to stand beside us. I flinched back from the cold moisture in his storm clouds and the hot lightning crackling toward me. He loomed higher than everyone there. So far, I liked him the best out of everyone, since he was the most rational and least homicidal.
He looked down at the head bird lady. “There’s a truce between Fae and Witchkin. Abducting one of our own on neutral territory violates our treaty. The moment the Raven Court takes this young lady out of our custody—”
“Pu-lease. She wasn’t in your custody,” the raven woman said. “As you said yourself, you didn’t even know about her until today. We are in our right to acquire her as our tithe for the crimes she has committed.” She ran her tongue along teeth sharpened to points. “Do you wish to risk peace over one you have no right to?”
That was the second time they’d said the word “tithe.” The ominousness of its meaning weighed down on me. My mom had said her foster mother had used her pain as a tithe. If a witch could do that, the Fae could just as easily take an entire person as tithe, I suspected. As a sacrifice. I looked to Bumblebub hopefully.
The old man cleared his throat. The Witchkin were silent. Someone coughed. It was difficult to tell which of the shadows were witches and which were bird people. Fear flounced around erratically in my belly like a moth trapped in a bug zapper.
“We wouldn’t, ahem, break the treaty,” Bumblebub said airily. “We just ask that, um… .” He floundered.
It didn’t look like the Witchkin were going to be able to rescue me. Bumblebub cleared his throat again. All eyes looked to him. Mine would have been glued to him as well if Thatch’s fingers hadn’t dug painfully into my skin. He muttered something low under his breath. He drew a symbol in the air with his wand, close to his side behind him where it was hidden from the Witchkin and Raven Court.
A surge of electricity prickled over my skin and turned to ice where his hand held my wrist. My skin felt like pins and needles under his touch, and my hand went numb. I blinked, fatigue settling into me. The sensation reminded me of that time I’d given plasma in college and all the warmth had drained out of me. My field of vision became a tunnel and my mind floated above me, disconnected.
I didn’t know what he was doing, but I didn’t like it. Maybe this was what it felt like to be drained. I had to save myself, from him and these creatures who wanted to steal me away.
I waved my hand to be seen over Thatch’s shoulder, my movements floppy and flaccid. “Excuse me!”
People looked away from Bumblebub.
I waved again. “I don’t know much about these rules you have, but if it makes any difference, they did know about me.” Every word came out as slow as taffy being pulled. I stumbled into Thatch’s side and accidently elbowed him.
He cursed and released his grip on me, but only for a second. The tingling chill sweeping through me abruptly stopped. The spell was broken.
Dozens of eyes bored into me.
I projected with my teacher voice so I could be heard over the rustling of wings and Bumblebub’s thunderclouds. “The Witchkin were tracking me. Thatch visited my classroom loads of times. For years, actually.” He had visited me when I’d been a student. That self-assessment paper I’d found in Derrick’s sketchbook wasn’t a coincidence, I realized. Thatch was the one who had given it to me. “He tested me. I have an intake form for Womby’s School for Wayward Witches. How do I know about that school if I wasn’t going to be admitted? So, yes, I was in their custody.” I wasn’t sure it was to my benefit to mention Thatch’s involvement, or I had just made a mistake. All he had to do was deny it. I couldn’t tell where his loyalty lay.
Bumblebub’s gaze fell on Thatch, his eyes narrowing, but only for a second. His belly jostled in a jolly, Santa-like laugh. “Why, yes, you’ve caught me there on that one. Felix Thatch has been keeping an eye on Miss Lawrence. As you know, he serves as teacher as well as our school’s recruiting agent. He informed me long ago. We’ve been monitoring Miss Lawrence since that time.”
Thatch said nothing.
I tried to smile, but my face felt stiff with fear. “Yep. They just accepted me into their special school, and I said yes, so it looks like I’m one of them.”
“Did they? Where’s the proof?” The raven woman lifted her chin.
“Try to pull that out of a hat,” Thatch said under his breath.
“Out of my butt, actually,” I said.
Bumblebub’s shoulders deflated. He looked to me with mournful eyes.
I wasn’t planning on going without a fight. It was a long shot, but I had one trick left up my sleeve. I hoped it would work, since it was the only option I had left.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Damsel in Distress Attempts to Save Herself
When I’d said out of my butt, I couldn’t have been more literal.
“I’ve got this,” I said.
The nearest witches looked at each other grimly. Shadows shifted out in the night. Feathers rustled. Bumblebub sighed and shook his head. He didn’t think I was going to be able to dig myself out of this. I didn’t think I was going to be able to either. Still, I had to try.
I lifted the back of my dress and dug my wallet out from my rear pocket with my free hand
. “You know, this would be easier if you let go.” I tried to shake off Thatch’s hand.
He released my wrist. Sensation flooded back into my fingers.
Thank goodness I hadn’t taken off my clothes in the mosh pit. Not that I was the naked dancing type, but I hadn’t exactly thought I was the public orgasm type either, and I had been close to that. I unfolded my acceptance letter to Hogwarts. I covered up the school’s name with my fingers and held it out for all to see.
Bumblebub leaned closer, reading the letter. My name was clearly printed on the parchment. The paper had been folded so many times, deep creases marred the paper and holes were worn into the pleats, obscuring some of the words. Thatch tried to snatch the letter out of my hands, but I elbowed him. The raven lady stepped forward. The witches and birdbrains crowded in.
“This is impossible,” the head raven said.
Bumblebub chuckled.
She crossed her arms. “It isn’t on vellum, and it isn’t written in blood.”
“Details,” Bumblebub said.
“Who is this Headmaster Dumbledore the letter speaks of?”
Some witch in the crowd in a purple hat snorted out a laugh. Apparently, she got the reference. She abruptly stopped when no one joined in. To the lady’s credit, she didn’t give me away to the harpies.
“It’s a typo,” Bumblebub said airily. “You know how my secretary can be when she’s in a rush. She was in such haste to write this.”
The harpy’s eyes narrowed. “She doesn’t have your school’s mark of protection on her.”
“We reckoned we’d wait until the first day of school. That can be remedied, though, if you like.”
“She’s a little old for being a student,” someone muttered.
Birdbrain’s talon-tipped fingers curled and uncurled. “Just wait until the Queen of the Raven Court, Giver of Pain, and Ruler of all that is Evil hears about this.”
