Just A Little Wicked: A Limited Edition Collection of Magical Paranormal and Urban Fantasy Tales

by Lily Luchesi

  “Then I guess we have a date.” The word made Perry’s skin tingle and she grinned as a shot of boldness coursed its way through her veins like whiskey. “How about we go somewhere before then? A real date?”

  “Are you asking me out?” Melisse was wearing light, daytime makeup and the blush that dusted her cheeks made her look like a goddess. Perry nodded and Melisse clapped her hands. “Then yes! I would love to go out with you.”

  “Great! I promise you I clean up well.” Perry motioned to her dirty jeans. “I won’t show up looking like this.”

  “I think you’re cute either way,” Melisse said as Lisa came back with their sandwiches and tea. “Thank you!”

  “Yeah, thanks.” Perry was lightheaded with joy. She’d expected the holiday to be boring and filled with sadness, but if she had someone with her who was also grieving in a way it might be better. She would have to order a cake. They couldn’t celebrate Halloween without a cake. Not only that, but she had a date with a gorgeous girl. “So when do you want to go out?”

  “I don’t know,” Melisse said. “You’re the one who asked me out.” She picked up her sandwich and took a bite. “Mmm. Best sandwich in town.”

  “It looks good.” Perry picked up her own club as she wracked her brains for a place to take Melisse. She would have to think of someplace good. Melisse seemed like a girl who was used to the finer things, and over the last year Perry had been acting more like a hermit.

  They ate their sandwiches and chatted about things that didn’t involve dead siblings, or ones as good as dead, and Perry spent every moment possible staring at Melisse, trying to memorize her face as if it was going to be the last time she saw her. She ran through possible days for dates until one came to her.

  “How about we go to dinner and see a movie on Wednesday? Halloween’s next Monday and I’m taking the day off.”

  “Sounds perfect.” Melisse winked at her and went back to her sandwich. “I’ll even let you pick the movie.”

  “You’re gonna regret that,” Perry said with a grin, and Melisse laughed.

  “Somehow I doubt it.”

  Five

  “Thanks for coming out with me tonight,” Melisse said with a smile. “If it weren’t for you I’d probably just be sitting in my house wondering if my sister was going to come home or not.”

  “You’re still at your house? Aren’t you worried about your sister coming home with a Hagspawn around her neck?” Perry looked at her date, shocked, but Melisse shook her head.

  “To be honest, I doubt she’s still alive. Why would a Hagspawn keep a witch alive, even if it needed her for the moment?” She moved closer to Perry as they walked through the people lining the sidewalk outside the movie theater. “Not to sound melodramatic, but I’m alone in the world now.”

  Perry wasn’t sure what to say. On the one hand she wanted to tell Melisse about her own sister’s death, but on the other they’d barely met. Melisse seemed comfortable telling Perry everything right away but the feeling wasn’t quite mutual yet. She knew that she would want to tell Melisse eventually, that much was for sure. Just not when they were leaving a chick flick in the middle of the night. One thing she was very sure about was that she was attracted to Melisse like crazy.

  “Not to seem insensitive,” Perry said, “but what would you say to coming back to my place?” The look of surprise Melisse gave her made her rethink everything in that one moment and Perry cleared her throat. “I’m not asking you to spend the night, just come and have a beer and look at my fish tank again. I trimmed the greenery a little.”

  “How can you flirt with a girl that way and then say you don’t want me to spend the night?” Melisse gave her a mischievous look and Perry blushed. Flirting was not her strong suit, which was why she didn’t usually do much of it. Now it seemed she was doing it by accident.

  “It’s not that I don’t want you to, it just seemed like it was in poor taste to ask after what you’ve been through this week.” It was the truth. She couldn’t imagine anyone even asking her to go to a support meeting after she’d lost Karin. “I, uh, I wouldn’t want to seem rude.”

  “Don’t worry about that. We all have our own ways of grieving.” Melisse slipped her arm around Perry’s and hugged her tightly. “I could really use that beer.”

  “Then let’s go look at that fish tank.”

  They walked down the street together, talking about the movie and laughing as if they didn’t have a care in the world and it felt good to Perry. She’d spent almost a year acting like she was in prison and Melisse had broken her out in a night.

  “Don’t you think it’s amazing that we met?” Melisse steered Perry toward the lot where she’d parked her car. “My sister and I mostly hung around with other witches, but to just run into one on the street – and one who likes women to boot – is like it’s meant to be.”

  “Meant to be? You believe all that?”

  “Sure. Are you telling me you’re a witch and you don’t believe in fortune and fate?” For the first time that night, Melisse frowned. “What happened to you to make you lose your faith?”

  Before Perry could answer, or at least come up with one that didn’t include her loss of Karin, an ear-splitting shriek rent the night. Melisse pulled her arm away from Perry’s and they looked up at the sky, tensed and ready to fight. Even though it had been a year since she so much as tried to use her magic, she felt it at the tips of her fingers.

  “We have to get out of here!” Melisse hurried toward the parking lot. “I can’t do anything without my sister!”

  “I can…” Perry started to speak, then fell silent. There was nothing she could do either. Without Karin to focus her magic, it would have easily gone wild without the proper concentration and after a year she didn’t have it.

  They got halfway across the parking lot before a shadow passed over the asphalt. Perry turned and saw something that chilled her blood. A young woman who looked exactly like Melisse stood in front of them, her eyes glazed. A shriek that she recognized instantly as belonging to a Hagspawn came from her direction and to Perry’s horror, it looked like the shriek had come out of Melisse’s sister’s mouth instead of the Hagspawn.

  The shadow from the sky dropped down as Perry watched, and the drooping, heavy tail of the creatur seemed to come alive and wrap snake-like around Melisse’s sister’s neck. Its face was scarred and its eyes were completely missing, but as soon as it made the connection with Melisse’s sister a pair of gauzy, barely visible eyes shimmered into view. Even so, it was unmistakeable. Perry would never forget the creature that had killed her sister.

  Rage built within her and before she realized what was happening, her hands were encased in blue flames. She took a step toward the creature, not seeing the woman beneath it, only the smelly, hairy beast that had taken her over.

  “No, you can’t!” Melisse ran forward and shoved her hard enough to send Perry stumbling forward. The flames disappeared and she fell onto her hands and knees. The Hagspawn grunted, seeing the threat was gone, then took flight again, this time only a few feet above Melisse’s sister’s head, knowing that she was its only protection. When they were both gone, Perry dropped her head onto the ground and slapped it with her open palm.

  “Dammit! Dammit!” She looked up at Melisse. “Why did you do that?”

  “I can’t let you hurt Annalise! You can’t hurt my sister!” Tears were streaming down Melisse’s anguished face and she shook her head. “I’m sorry.”

  “No, I’m sorry. You’re right.” Perry covered her face with her hands. “It would have gone wild. I haven’t used my magic since that thing killed my sister.”

  “It killed your sister? That Hagspawn?”

  “Yeah,” Perry said. “I’m the one that blinded it.” She scrubbed her face with her palms, then looked up at Melisse. “I’m a twin, too.”

  Six

  “We were late for Halloween dinner,” Perry said as she sat with Melisse on her couch. “My sister Karin was de
termined to kill the Hagspawn she’d found. She was like that whenever she set her sights on something, you couldn’t change her mind.”

  “So was Annalise.”

  “We finished it off and were ready to go home but there was a second one we didn’t see. That one. I blinded it with my magic, but it was too late. It killed my sister.” Perry took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I should have told you that I was a twin.”

  “Never mind that,” Melisse said. “We have to do something, though. I don’t know what, but we can’t just let that thing have my sister too.”

  “I don’t want that either. What can we do though? It’s not like we can go up to it and just pull it off her neck. Melisse, when that thing was screaming, it was coming out of your sister.” Perry reached over and took the other woman’s hands.

  “Maybe…you’re a twin, I’m a twin. Maybe I could shift with you. We could kill it and save my sister together.” Biting her lip, Melisse twisted her fingers together with Perry’s. “What do you think? Would you try?"

  “I don’t know,” Perry said. “I don’t know that we could fight together. We don’t share the same blood.” She leaned her head forward and pressed her forehead against Melisse’s. “I wish we could.”

  “Me too.” Melisse turned her head and kissed Perry gently. It was a welcome feeling, one that Perry had missed in the year that she had been punishing herself for her sister’s death, and when Melisse kissed her again, her tongue darting softly into Perry’s mouth for a moment, she wondered why she had avoided it.

  Perry leaned into the kiss, her hand resting on Melisse’s hip as she did. She slipped her hand under Melisse’s flutter-sleeved green blouse and felt the smooth skin of her belly. There was a softness to it that Perry missed seeing in herself – she’d lost weight when she was working construction and mourning Karin, and she moved her hand up to caress one of Melisse’s breasts through her bra.

  “If you don’t want to, I understand,” Perry said, brushing her fingertips over the lacy fabric.

  “I want to,” Melisse breathed, shifting her hips so that she was closer to Perry. “Maybe if we have sex we can connect. We can fight together.” Perry stopped and pulled her hand out of Melisse’s shirt. “Perry?”

  “If that’s the only reason you want to be with me, then I’d rather not,” she said. “I really like you, Melisse. I would love to touch you and kiss you, but not like that. I’m sorry.”

  “No! No, that’s not what I meant!” Melisse shook her head. “It was only a thought.” She moved closer to Perry, then slung her leg over so that she was straddling her. “I want you too. So badly.” She leaned forward and kissed Perry, then took her shirt off, exposing freckled shoulders.

  Perry ran her hands up Melisse’s body and unfastened her bra, tossing it aside so that she could fill her hands with Melisse’s ample breasts. She leaned forward and kissed each of Melisse’s nipples so that they stood tight, then put her mouth around one and sucked gently. Melisse gasped, then pulled away and got off Perry’s lap.

  With a smile, she slowly pulled down her skirt and let it fall around her feet before stepping out of her panties. She gave her soft, rounded hips a wiggle in Perry’s direction and Perry jumped off the couch, setting aside any sort of show in favor of getting her clothes off as quickly as possible.

  They fell back on the couch together, and Perry put her mouth on Melisse’s breast again, enjoying the feel of her nipple on her lips as she swirled her tongue around it. Melisse moaned, and this time she reached back and opened Perry’s legs with a hand. Perry offered no resistance, and when Melisse stroked her clit she moaned against the soft flesh of Melisse’s breast. Melisse’s fingers danced up and down the swollen folds for several long, aching moments before diving into Perry’s wet center. Unable to concentrate on anything else, Perry released her and slid further down on the couch, spreading her legs further.

  As soon as she did, Melisse took the opportunity to move down and replace her fingers with her mouth. Perry squealed, not having been touched in more than a year, and Melisse grabbed her hips so that she could pull her down more firmly onto her mouth. It was heaven.

  Their bodies intertwined on the couch as they made love, touching and stroking and kissing each secret sensitive place until the waves Perry was riding finally crested and she came, harder and longer than she ever had. Melisse lifted her head from between Perry’s legs and pulled out her fingers, and as she broke contact there was a surge of electricity that lifted Perry’s hips and made her cry out as she came a second time. Even though Melisse wasn’t touching her, spasms of pleasure rocked her body over and over, and when Melisse laid on top of her and kissed her, her body heat made it even stronger until she finally lay still on the couch.

  “That was one hell of an orgasm,” Melisse said, kissing her forehead and brushing aside her hair. “I’ve never made anyone come like that. You sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m better than okay,” Perry said, sitting up straight. “I think you and I will be able to fight together.”

  Seven

  It was Halloween again, one year to the day after Karin’s death, and this time Perry wasn’t late to dinner. Not only that, for the first time in her life, she brought a date with her. In spite of the fact that her sister’s death lay beneath every conversation, her family seemed truly happy for her. They also seemed surprised that her chosen partner happened to be a woman, but no one had any issue with it.

  “I’m so happy you came to celebrate with us, Melisse,” Perry’s mother said, passing a piece of pumpkin pie to their guest. “You’re always welcome in our house. You can consider it safe, as well. I put protective spells on it every week.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Helleman,” Melisse said, smiling pleasantly. “I really appreciate it.”

  “If you want to finish that pie, we have to go pretty soon.” Checking her watch, Perry stood up and downed the rest of her wine. “We have an appointment.”

  “An appointment? What sort of appointment takes precedent over family?” Lacy Helleman was in possession of a look that could convince anyone to tell the truth, and it was a talent that served her well over the years as the head of the family. Perry had gotten used to avoiding her eyes whenever she could feel a question about to be asked but she knew Melisse wouldn’t be so lucky. Before she could warn her newly-minted girlfriend, Lacy had her eyes on Melisse. “Where are you two going?”

  “We’re going to see my sister,” Melisse said with a smile. “She hasn’t been herself.” Her words had only the slightest tinge of hollowness to them and Perry knew that while she was avoiding the truth, her mother was working her magic at the same time. It was amazing, and at that moment Perry knew she was in love.

  “That’s nice,” Lacy said, beaming at the two women. “Halloween is a time for family, of course. Next time feel free to bring her along.” A man came out of the kitchen with a cake in his hands.

  “Here we go,” Michael Helleman set the cake in the middle of the table. “This is my second try today so don’t tell me if it’s bad.”

  “We’ll come back and try it, Dad,” Perry said, getting up from the table. “We really have to go. I promise we’ll be back tonight.” She pushed her chair back in and went to get her jacket. Lacy followed her and Perry sighed.

  “You’re not going out there to do anything stupid, are you?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like try and avenge your sister,” Lacy said. “That Hagspawn is surely dead by now and your dying won’t bring back Karin. Besides, how are you going to fight it without a weapon?” Something seemed to click in her mind and her eyes widened. “No. Don’t tell me---”

  “Thank you again for allowing me to have dinner with you,” Melisse said, appearing beside them to take her own leather coat from the rack. “You’re so kind.”

  “You’re welcome,” Lacy said, smiling at Melisse. She looked as if she wanted to ask her a question, then thought better of it and shook her head. “Please be careful
out there, girls. Please. I don’t want to lose another daughter.”

  “I love you, Mom,” Perry said, kissing her mother on the cheek. She didn’t want Lacy to see her cry, so she opened the door and ducked through it, leaving Melisse to say goodbye.

  “Hey,” Melisse said, trotting down the stairs to catch up with her while Perry took the stairs two at a time. “Hey, wait!”

  “We gotta go. No time to stand around listening to her trying to talk us out of this. If we’re going to help your sister, we have to hurry. We might be the most powerful on Halloween, but so are all the beasts of the night.” She watched Melisse unlock her car silently, her lips pressed together. “I’m sorry.”

  “No, you’re right. I just, I mean, my parents are dead. I wanted to hang out with yours just a little while longer, I guess.” Melisse got into the driver’s seat and Perry hopped into the passenger.

  “We’ll go back afterward, I wasn’t lying to her.” She took out her phone. “I think I know where this thing is going to be and I don’t want to miss it.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Karin was the one with that power, not me. Weird, I know, but she was also my older sister. I have to use my brains.” Perry looked down at her mapping app. “Head for the movie theater. That’s around the same place where my sister died.”

  “The place where my sister and the Hagspawn showed up before?” Melisse’s eyes widened. “That’s where your sister died?”

  “Yeah. And I think that there might a nest of them around there. The second one showed up way too quickly to be a coincidence.” She turned her palm up and a small ball of blue fire danced in the center of it. Perry smirked. “This time I’m ready for them.”

  “We’re ready for them,” Melisse said. “We’re ready for them.”

  Eight