By Dusk

by T Thorn Coyle

  By Dusk

  The Witches of Portland, Book 7

  T. Thorn Coyle

  By Dusk

  Moss breathed, smelling the sweet, clean musk of the cedar, and the rich honey notes of melting beeswax.

  Images darted through his mind like schools of fish. Shaggy’s face, lit by sunshine. The strobe lights of the dance club. The river. Images of himself, arms in long tubes, locked down to his comrades. Police in riot gear. Shaggy again, eyebrows creased with worry. Cormorants skimming over the water.

  He inhaled again, more slowly and deeply, trying not to clutch at the thoughts.

  Trying to flow like the river itself.

  * * *

  This is a standalone book in a linked series.

  Please note that one character uses they/them pronouns. This is not a typo or editorial mistake.

  Copyright © 2018

  T. Thorn Coyle

  PF Publishing

  * * *

  Cover Art and Design © 2018

  Lou Harper

  * * *

  Editing:

  Dayle Dermatis

  * * *

  ISBN-13: 978-1-946476-12-8

  This book is a work of fiction. All characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, events, or locales is coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission. This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved.

  1

  Moss

  The old-fashioned vaudeville house mostly hosted concerts beneath its arched walls and curved, baroque ceiling. But this Sunday night, Temple, the quarterly pop-up club, was packed to the balconies with every Burner, raver, neo-hippie, and polyamorous love-bomber within driving, cycling, or bus range.

  Lights flashed, strobing from blue to orange to white. The DJ, like some sort of God up on the stage, orchestrated it all. The space filled with the sweet tang of marijuana smoke, patchouli, amber resin, gin, and spilled beer. This mélange was undercut with traces from people vaping near the door, and Moss loved it all.

  It was everything that Moss’s spirit desired. He needed this more than anything else right now. A moment of joy. A chance to feel free.

  The electronic dance music pulsed through Moss’s body, lighting him up inside. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, that he loved better than this. To be surrounded by a crush of other humans, all moving, flowing, sinuous, and staccato. One being, made of light and sweat and joy.

  With a roar, the crowd raised their arms, and shook their hands in the air. The beat shifted, the bass kicked in, and like one dynamic creature, the whole crowd began to bounce. Sheer joy. Moss’s smile was so huge, it felt as if his face would split in two. Lifting his own arms, he slid his fingers through the air, feeling the spirits. The hundred-year-old spirit that lived in the building. The spirit of the sound system and the lights. The spirit of the music itself. And the spirit of each person as they danced around him.

  Moss bounced, and waved his hands, conjuring up a spirit of his own. A spirit of magic and love. His calves bunched and tightened, shaking him up off the long, wooden planks of the dance floor, bouncing with the rhythm of every single body that touched his. Yes, this was his religion. Yes, as much as he adored the magic of his coven, and the sacred beauty of the great outdoors—the rivers and mountains and trees—this was Moss’s church. It was here that he prayed.

  A nerdy, activist, Japanese-American kid from Beaverton, he’d become an EDM fan the first time his parents took him to the Portland Pride parade. He’d never gotten around to asking whether his parents were just trying to share their culturally liberal stance with their only son, or whether they’d somehow picked up that his crushes included a girl in his class and Tobey Maguire in his tight Spiderman suit.

  That June day, the sight of men kissing men, women kissing women, and folks of indeterminate genders frolicking around in outfits that would make any cosplayer proud had made his head swirl. But the biggest soul-shaking thing about his first Portland Pride? That was the music.

  It boomed from party floats festooned with ribbons, balloons, and streamers and covered with happy people gyrating in the sun. The music filled him with a sense of happiness he’d never experienced before. In the decade since, it didn’t matter what the dance music called itself—EDM, house, even industrial—or what variations came and went on the charts, Moss sought it out.

  So here he was at Temple. The place of worship. The place of delight. The place where Moss, packed in with a thousand other people, could worship as he willed.

  Moss needed church. It had been a hell of a year, and frankly, the last giant piece of magic his coven had done had depleted everyone. Oh, it was well worth it—they’d pretty much taken out the whole infrastructure of Immigration and Customs—but the coven needed a break. Except for one meeting to debrief, Arrow and Crescent Coven hadn’t even met. Not even for the full moon. And here it was, coming up on the autumn equinox, and Moss couldn’t help but wonder what was next.

  Lately, something tickled at the edges of his awareness, breaking through the pulsating sense of well-being and joy. It was the same thing that had been bothering him off and on for the past couple of months. Trouble brewing. A spirit in danger. Something…

  Whatever the spirit was, it didn’t feel like one of the smaller, more ordinary kami that inhabited everything. This consciousness felt big. Moss had been so exhausted and overwhelmed he hadn’t made space to figure it out yet, but it felt as if the kami was part of some large system important to Portland itself.

  As he danced, his thoughts traced the edges of the troubled spirit. Sometimes it took an altered state like being on the dance floor for his subconsciousness to rise to the surface, giving him the information he was seeking. He danced, pushing just a little at whatever it was…and a sudden rush shot through him, as if a dam had burst, shoving him off balance.

  Moss stumbled into the man next to him, a white dude in dreadlocks wrapped with Day-Glo yarn. The man gave his arms a friendly, steadying squeeze.

  “You good, gorgeous?” The man flashed him a huge grin, white teeth glowing green beneath the black lights.

  “Um. Yeah!” Moss shouted back, shaking his head to clear it. “I’m great. Thanks.”

  He had been great, anyway, until that energetic river practically knocked him to the floor.

  “Is it you?” he murmured, conjuring up the image of the Columbia River that bordered Portland in the north, dividing it from Washington state. “Or you? Are you trying to tell me something?” The Willamette River. The body of water that flowed closest to Moss’s home. He considered that river a friend.

  Neither river gave him much, just an increased sense of unease. But he couldn’t help but feel there was more going on. That his spidey senses hadn’t been telegraphing danger for nothing.

  But damn it, he needed a night off from all of that, which was why he’d come out in the first place. Be here now, as the hippies would say. Moss shook his head again, then shook the rest of his body in time with the beat, trying to get back to the moment, and dancing, and not worrying about the past, or what might be coming.

  If he were a different person, he would be dissolving acid on his tongue, or dropping MDMA to escape what worried him. But the magic of the music and the energy of the crowd were ecstasy enough. He had learned that long ago. Oh, Moss wasn’t against some of Snoop Dogg’s “Tanqueray and chronic,” and would be getting another drink or a puff soon, but for joyous, soul-expanding communion? His preferred drugs were still sex, magic…and dancing.

  When trouble dogged the edges of his consciousness, any of the above were usually an antidote to his woes. Tonight, he let the music move all
thought out from his head, and opened his own spirit outward again, reveling in the flow of the music and the crowd.

  The DJ segued into Moss’s current musical favorite, Kygo. The bouncy tropical house mix filled the air with quick piano, electronic backbeat, and over it all, soaring, R&B tinged vocals. Moss threw back his head and laughed.

  On he danced, twirling and bouncing, bumping shoulders, and tasting the sweat that rolled past his lips. If he could have kissed the entire universe, he would.

  It was good to be alive.

  Forty minutes later, Moss was soaked in sweat, feeling cleansed, and vibrating with the power of the crowd. He also desperately needed some water and a little breathing room. He angled his shoulders, dancing his small frame through the crush, toward the long bar lit up with blue and white lights.

  And then he saw her. The dream girl, with her pale, elfin face, lightly muscled shoulders, and sharp collarbones that peeked out from a bright silk halter top. His two-night stand from the massive Bliss Festival up in British Columbia just six weeks before.

  He’d volunteered to work the big camping festival to get out of town, away from the political aftermath that rocked the city after the coven and their friends had taken down the ICE building and freed the asylum seekers into the loving, capable hands of a whole network of immigrant’s rights groups.

  Oh, it had been a righteous action, but Moss needed some frivolity after that. His work as both an activist and a witch got too heavy sometimes.

  And at Bliss, he’d found her. In between his work shifts, they’d danced for hours, bumping against each other over and over, until finally, they ended up making out while several thousand people danced around them. Moss would never forget that night. The massive energy of the crowd. The way the music felt like sex. The way her lips tasted, like pot and cherry candy.

  Finally, she had dragged him back to her fancy glamping tent, lit with glow sticks and solar lanterns. Back to her bed, piled high with fake fur blankets and tapestry pillows.

  Who had a tent like that? A bed like that? Moss was lucky to have his one-person—two in a pinch—crawl-in-on-your-belly tent that he took on bicycle trips and backpacking.

  But yeah, at a festival where Moss had to work in exchange for the price of a ticket he couldn’t afford, who had a fancy tent like that?

  A rich girl, that’s who.

  A tiny woman with strawberry-blond hair in a pixie cut, and lips he wished he could kiss again.

  A woman named Shaggy, that was who.

  All thoughts of the river, agitated kami, and any trouble that brewed in the early autumn air left his head when she turned, and the strobing lights of the club lit up her blue, blue eyes.

  2

  Shaggy

  Shaggy felt out of sorts, despite being in the middle of a dance party where some of her favorite music played. Well. It had been her favorite music until recently. Damn it. Now, the bouncy birthday ode to Kygo’s baby girl just made Shaggy want to run.

  And she wasn’t actually in the middle of the party, either, more like skirting the edges tonight, and that wasn’t like her. She shouldn’t have come out, but had thought the scene would take her mind off her current problem. But now that she was here—not drinking, not smoking weed, or dropping Molly—all she wanted was to go home to her newly purchased condo in the Pearl, dodgy stomach, tender breasts, and all. Her mother had bought the condo as an investment, of course, but it was Shaggy’s while she got her MFA.

  “Buy you a drink?” The man was tall, with dark skin barely covered by a green vest that topped his loose, paisley-patterned pants.

  “Oh! No. I’m just waiting for my friends. Thanks, though.”

  One of the little lies that every woman learned to tell strangers. Always let them know you have backup coming, even if you don’t.

  “You have a chill night,” the man replied, before turning away.

  Finally, the hated “Happy Birthday” song ended, the DJ put on some old Skrillex, and the crowd went nuts. From just outside, it looked like some giant, undulating sea creature made of Day-Glo and neon in the midst of a great, dark sea lit from above by cosmic forces gathered in a riot of celebration.

  And not too long ago, Shaggy would have felt all of that, too. She would be high, and smack in the middle of the cosmic party.

  But she was new to town, having just moved up from California wine country to go to design school in a place far enough from her mother, but still close enough to remain within her sphere.

  She had no posse, no squad, no gang of brightness to surround her and jolly her out of her current mood.

  She was pregnant and didn’t know what she was going to do about it, and it was all her fault. She was the one who’d stupidly forgotten to pack condoms and insisted he didn’t need to go back to his tent for his stash. He said he was clean, and she replied that she was both clean and on birth control even though the latter wasn’t true. She barely ever had periods and had more scar tissue in her uterus than any one person should be subjected to. Doctors repeatedly told her it was highly unlikely she’d ever get pregnant. But then she’d started feeling nauseated, and suspicious. Three positive home pregnancy kits later, and here she was. Sore, alone, and pregnant by a person she’d had sex with three times over the course of one music festival. A person she would never see again.

  Might as well get drunk, she thought. No way was she keeping this thing inside of her for nine months anyway, so why was she even being careful?

  She knew why, though. After being told your chances of pregnancy were slim to none? You didn’t easily throw away what might be your only chance.

  But that didn’t make her want a baby. Not now, and after resigning herself to her situation, she had assumed, not ever.

  “Hey! Shaggy! Wow! What are you doing here?”

  Oh shit. What the hell were the odds? It was him, with his practically black eyes, his short shock of black hair, and his soft, warm voice. Standing there, staring at her with a look of happy surprise on his face, a bottle of water in one hand. The activist and great dancer. The guy who looked amazing, all pale brown skin and tight muscle in a white tank top that glowed lavender under the strobing lights.

  The guy who kissed like no one she’d ever kissed before.

  Moss. The guy who’d gotten her pregnant.

  “Shaggy?” His gentle hand on her upper arm. “You okay?”

  “No, I…” Heart racing, she whipped her head around, looking for a way out. It was all of a sudden really hard to breathe. “I need to get out of here.”

  “Let’s go,” he replied, and gently steered her through the people clustered near the bar and around the edges of the main dance floor. Pushing through the double swinging doors felt like entering an airlock. Instantly, the sound muted itself and the pressure on her heart and lungs receded.

  But Moss didn’t stop. He continued through the small, jewel-like vestibule and on out through the heavy glass and brass doors.

  Shaggy followed like some imprinted duckling. Shocking as it was to run into him, she had to admit it was nice to see his face. But fuck, how the hell was she supposed to have a normal conversation with the guy when a tiny elephant occupied the space between them?

  “Need some water?” he asked, cracking open the cap.

  She nodded and, taking the plastic bottle, raised it to her forehead for a moment before drinking. Cool. Wet. Good. It calmed her jitters a little. She handed the bottle back.

  “Thanks.”

  Two couples tripped down the sidewalk toward them, shrieking with laughter. A car boomed by. The air smelled of motor oil and the lingering scent of perfume. Moss angled himself toward her, just a little. Not enough to seem like he was protecting her, but just enough to let her know that yeah, he was there.

  He smelled like clean sweat, cinnamon, and sunshine.

  “So, um…” she said. Great, Shaggy. But she really didn’t know what else to say, and then realized he was talking.

  “I never expected t
o see you again,” he was saying. “What are you doing in Portland? I thought you lived near SF?”

  “I do. I did. I came up to go to design school.” And to get away from my mother, Bianca, who only wants the best for me and thinks I’m halfway useless.

  “Wow. That’s cool.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Me? Oh, just gig economy stuff, you know. Picking people up in my hybrid, making deliveries, and spending the rest of my time trying to save the earth.”

  He grinned on that last part.

  “And going clubbing.” Shaggy jerked her head toward the doors.

  “Always,” he replied. His eyebrows drew together slightly. “But we got you out of the club because something was going on. No pressure, but do you want to go somewhere? Talk about it? I can buy you a drink. Cup of tea, maybe?”

  She stood rooted to the sidewalk for a moment, staring at him. Part of her wanted to run back to her posh condo. The other part wanted nothing more than to have a cup of tea with this guy.

  Even if that meant she was going to need to figure out how to get through the next hour while lying through her teeth.

  Because no way was she telling Moss she was pregnant.

  For one night, this night, she was going to pretend to be a woman who’d run into a really nice guy she’d had some fun with at a festival. That she wasn’t pregnant and running from weird family shit. That she wasn’t rich and he wasn’t poor. She’d act as if maybe, just maybe, they were a couple of regular people getting to know each other over cups of tea in a café at night.

  3

  Moss