Beck snapped his finger between us and my eyes tore from the booth she was sitting at just an hour earlier. “You sure you’re okay, man? You’re good?”
“Yeah, what about you? How’s Josephine?” I asked, changing the subject.
Josephine was his Keeper’s daughter, who would eventually become his keeper once her parents passed on. She was only fourteen and had been battling the flu, and it was only getting worse.
Beck’s eyes steered past me. “It’s not looking good. It won’t be long ‘til they need us to step in.”
I leaned over and squeezed his shoulder until his gaze met mine again. “Just like riding a bike, baby Beck. We’ve done this many times, it’ll be fine. If she needs us, we’ll be there. We won’t let anything happen to her.”
“Yeah,” he nodded, blinked worry from his eyes, “Let’s go hit the grounds.”
The grounds were the old carnival grounds built in the early 1900s by a neighboring town, situated on the border of Weeping Hollow—taking up half our woods, the other half in the rest of the world. It had been abandoned after the townies ran the carnies out during a time when the shield was weak, but the grounds were still there, and once a year, the carnival came to life. Moving rides, bright lights, the sounds of children laughing and screaming and singing, and creepy carnival music that could make an RL Stine book seem as if it were written by Disney. Every other night of the year, the grounds were dark and chilling. A quiet place harnessing enough celestial energy to tap into the darkest of magic.
Norse Woods said the last time our coven used dark magic was over a century ago. My brothers and I had never dabbled with dark magic before, and we weren’t planning to tonight. As desperate as we were to break the curse, I refused to fall into the rabbit hole.
No, we only retreated to the grounds when we needed privacy and a location for sex magic because sex was the most potent energy source. Sex with the Norse Woods girls, a haunted carnival, and four Hollow Heathens, you’d think the grounds would sell like hotcakes. But no one aside from our coven knew of its existence. We kept the grounds masked. Sacred Sea nor the flatlanders could see it with a sober eye.
Beck and I walked out of The Bean and trashed our paper cups as soon as Fallon walked across Town Square with the reporter, the little redhead, and Kane on the other side of the gazebo. The view was like a bullet to the lungs, merciless, and killing me slowly.
As much as everyone advised me to stay away, I couldn’t. I wanted to stay inside her head. I wanted her to keep thinking about me if it meant Kane couldn’t get to her.
Life was easier before she’d returned to town, with the cold winds blowing through the broken battlements and casements of my soul. I didn’t mind the cold or the shade I hid under, or being alone with my thoughts, but not when every thought now led to her. It was only torture. I knew she knew it too. There was no denying this thing we had. This thing I had no name for, it felt like magic and read like taboo.
What would it take for me to convince her to live in this secret with me, hide in the alleyways, make out inside the shadows, and make love in the wicked Norse woods after nightfall? Because that was the only life I could give her until I could break this curse.
Fallon didn’t understand. I wasn’t hiding because I was ashamed of her.
I could never be ashamed of her. Fallon and me, we were the same.
But there were other ways I could prove myself …
“PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT!” I called out across town square, too late to stop myself now.
Beck elbowed me at my side. “What the hell are you doing?”
I had no clue, and Fallon’s white hair whipped when she turned her head, the rest of them too. The hardly-crowded streets still had enough witnesses to slam me in the tunnels even though I was still far enough away from her per the orders, and I wasn’t talking directly to her. I didn’t care anymore. I had to make sure she knew how far I was willing to push my limits.
“I WANT TO LET EVERYONE KNOW THAT I CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT FALLON!” I shouted, cupping my mouth with my hands and repeating the same words she spoke to me the night before.
Beck shook his head next to me. It was going to take more than this, I knew. But it was a start. Because I’ve never been embarrassed by you, Fallon.
Fallon tried to force her smile away, but her smile won. I was more than fifty feet away, farther than I had to be and farther than I wanted to be, and that smile still had the power to hit me in the chest, causing me to step back as if it were a force. And to me, it was.
“YOU’RE STUPID!” she called back, and I tilted my head to the side as a laugh pushed through my lips.
The little redhead took her hand, pulling her forward, and my smile faded as she rounded the corner out of view. Beck mumbled under his breath, rocky waters in his blue eyes. But he knew it was coming.
“It still fucking moves,” I whispered into the night breeze.
“That woman’s changing you,” Beck muttered. “Haven’t seen you like this since—”
Johnny. “I know.”
Zephyr and Phoenix were already at the entrance of the grounds. Four blindfolded members from Norse Woods Coven lined up against the iron gate. The blindfolds were necessary. The girls understood the conditions. This wasn’t their first time with a Heathen. We had to take measures to keep them safe. Zeph walked past Francesca, the girl he’d been paired with, and slipped through the gate’s bars.
To us, sex with them wasn’t for fun and games. All we needed was the energy drawn from male and female during this powerful act. Plain and simple, this was a means to an end, not the final goal tonight—a business transaction. We were four Hollow Heathens trying to break a curse—only sex. Fallon was the first girl I’d ever kissed because I’d never thought it was possible. Now, she was the only girl I thought about giving myself to in a way that was more than my body. The kind of way that wasn’t for magic or a ritual.
Tabitha stood there, blindfolded with a mop of black hair that sat on her head like a clown wig, a plastic onyx shine. She turned her head, probably listening for me, and the straight edge of her hair grazed her shoulders. She’d dressed for the occasion too, wearing a black lacy bra under her little top and a mini jean skirt for easy access as if it would have mattered. How desperate was I to break this curse? Desperate enough to engage in sex magic when my cock only ached to be in a particular white-haired stupid freak like me? As I looked Tabitha up and down, even though it meant nothing, it all looked, seemed, felt … wrong. Before Fallon, I’d never had to doubt my obligation. She was already in my head.
Phoenix carried the backpack of books, and the rest of us slipped through the bars and took off to the old Ferris wheel house. I lurked in the background of the group like an evil spirit, despair and remorse pressing on my heart. I didn’t like this one bit, but I was determined to bear on.
The girls grouped under the shack, gabbing back and forth, waiting for us as we stood off by the Ferris wheel. Phoenix sprawled out in the rickety and faded passenger cabin of the Ferris wheel, flipping through one of the books stacked over his lap. The rest of us passed around a bottle as the night carried on—the girls laughing in the distance. We detached ourselves as much as possible from them. No reason for foreplay.