Bite of Passage

Chapter 1

Chapter One

“I need your worst hex. Or maybe you can curse the jerk for me?” Gemma Leight leaned on the sales counter at the Sage & Flame metaphysical store. Smudge braids, tumbled stones of all colors, crystals, and a few miniature cast iron cauldrons cluttered the surface.

Val lifted a pink crystal keychain off the counter. She dangled it from her index finger and let it swing back and forth. She stopped its back-and-forth swing to pick at a cuticle on one of her long, blue-painted nails. “Was that ER resident an asshole to you again?”

Gemma stirred a bowl of smoothed amethyst stones with a finger. “He has gone out of the way to make my life hell ever since our coffee date. The guy tried to suck my fingers in public. Eww, right?”

Val didn’t jump to agree or disagree.

“It’s been months. He’s got to get over it.” Gemma held up a corked bottle filled with black powder labeled “witches’ salt” and shook it in her fist. “What does this do?”

“It’s for absorbing negative energy but it won’t harm him. Take it.” She held out the bottle. “It’s the real stuff from Nepal. Rare. You might need it someday.”

With the way things were going, she might. “I hate fighting him over patient care and being blamed for everything that goes wrong on his cases. Can’t you cast a spell to make him sick for a year or, even better, make him forget who I am?”

“How about a margarita?” Val pulled a pitcher from beneath the counter and poured the tequila mixture into two ice-filled plastic cups. She lifted her glass in a toast. “Here’s to finding a sex god worthy of your love and strong enough to fight the creeps of the world.”

Gemma fake-glared over the top of her glasses. “Are you casting a love spell on me?”

“Maybe I am.” Val grinned wickedly and batted her ultra-long mascaraed-black eyelashes. “It’s better than wasting any more energy on the jerk.”

“Great.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm. “Now if I fall for a guy I won’t know if it’s real or magic induced.”

“Are you passing up a Friday afternoon margarita?” Val held the plastic cup toward her.

“No.” She took the cup and sipped. “Mmm… so good. I needed this.”

“I know.” Val waggled her eyebrows as if to suggest she’d somehow read into the future. “You’ve got magic too, hon. Someday, we’ll figure out what kind. It’s why you ended up in here. You need me to help you discover yourself.”

“You’re funny,” Gemma replied flatly. “I can’t do real magic.

Ask me to burn some herbs? Sure. Pull a rhyme out of my ass to cast a spell and have a chance of it working?

Nope.” She and Val were odd friends. Val drank the Kool-Aid of magical mysticism and claimed to be a junior level witch.

According to Val, only those over thirty, two years away for Val, could achieve upper-level magic.

Gemma’s faith rested in science and fact—two things that didn’t jive with most of the stuff in the shop.

Despite their differences, they’d been friends since the day Gemma wandered in after moving into the apartment building across the street.

She downed half the margarita in one swig.

“Whoa. Take it easy.” Val cringed. “I didn’t skimp on the tequila. If you’re not careful—”

“Brain freeze.” A vigorous forehead rub didn’t help. “Can’t you do a spell or something to make it stop?”

“No. That was straight up stupidity on your part.” Val twisted her thick auburn hair into a disorganized bun. “Report the jerk for sexual harassment. That’ll put an end to it.”

“Then I become that person. I’ve only been on staff for five months. He’ll claim we dated even though one coffee barely counts.”

“Then, avoid him. Maybe transfer to a different floor—I’m sure there are about a thousand departments other than emergency at San Fran Main that could use a nurse who looks like Snow White.”

“What do my looks have to do with how good I am at my job?”

Val shrugged.

“It’s not my fault I don’t tan and stand out like a sore thumb in California. Not all of us can be five-eleven with the body of a swimsuit model, like you.”

“Even Snow White can get a spray tan in California.” She reached behind the counter to slap a coupon for a tanning bed business on the counter. “These guys do real and fake tans.”

“Then I’ll look orange.”

“True. Probably not a good idea.” She slid the coupon to the side. “If you’d let me curl your hair and maybe put in a few red or pink highlights, instead of hiding it all in a bun or braid, it’d be stunning. Being tall isn’t all that. Finding pants that fit is a bitch.”

“Finding decent pants is hard no matter how tall you are.” Relieved her head no longer throbbed, Gemma traced circles with the moisture left by the pitcher of margarita on the counter.

“I’ll figure out what to do about him, but I still like the thought of him being so sick he can’t go to work for a year. ”

“That’s juvenile magic. Totally ridiculous.”

“Fine.” She fiddled with a miniature caldron. “Maybe I should use the dating app again. I haven’t hooked up in a long time.”

“I thought you quit online stuff after the time you bribed the waiter to spill wine on you so you could leave early?” Val cast her a side glance with compressed lips as if trying not to laugh. “That was the guy whose wife called him in the middle of your date, wasn’t it?”

“Dating sucks.” She sagged against the counter and took a delicate sip of her drink. “Have you got any friends you can hook me up with?”

“You’re too much for them.”

“How is that possible if they’re into all this?” She waved her plastic cup toward the shelves that housed glass jars of herbs and supplies for “spiritual bathing.”

“The few witchy guys I know are too gentle, more into tantric stuff. You need someone a bit more hardcore.”

“I’m not into BDSM.”

“Ever tried?”

Her face flashed hot. She recalled her accidental foray into a frat party in college with a BDSM theme. She might’ve had too many beers before she discovered it wasn’t her thing.

“I think I need some details on whatever's going on in your head. But no, I didn’t mean that extreme. I meant someone confident in the bedroom. You want the full package—romance, love, and hot sex. You’ll never find the kind of connection you read about in your romance books without a little help.”

“I don’t want magical help. I’m realistic.

I’m okay finding part of the package so long as he’s not a psycho.

Confident in the bedroom works. I can rely on fiction to fulfill my dream of the whole package.

” She grinned. “Tell me you have the second DVD with you, so I can watch it tonight.” Val had lent her the first DVD of the Legacy of Magic fantasy series yesterday.

No one used DVDs anymore, but Gemma was lucky to find an old external disc player at a thrift store that would hook into her computer.

Apparently, this series wasn’t available any other way.

It couldn’t be found streaming or on any resale market.

She tried to find it everywhere. After the few episodes she already saw, she needed to watch all eight episodes.

“Is Skarde Blackmann your type? A vampire?” Val made a sucking sound with her teeth. In a poorly executed Scottish accent she said, “He’ll want to drink ye blood, wee lassie.”

“That was the worst impersonation of his accent.” She put a hand across her heart dramatically. “I’d die happy if his low, accented voice was the last thing I heard.”

“It might be the last thing you ever hear if you let him bite you.” Val’s sharp tone sounded more like a warning than sarcastic.

Gemma shrugged it off. “I might let him bite…in bed.”

Skarde, a loner and emotionally remote vampire, roamed his medievalesque fantasy world as a sword-for-hire to fight monsters even when he himself was considered one.

The vampire was a brutal killer who never hesitated to do the tough thing, whether it was killing someone infected by evil or fighting dirty to survive.

If someone needed a necromancer destroyed or a demon-possessed priestess dispatched, or a mage terrorist executed, people paid Skarde to fix the problem.

He claimed he did it for the money, but she thought he liked killing.

“Stop staring at me like I’m nuts to crush on the monster hunter.” Gemma hid behind a big sip of margarita. “He’s hot. At least, the actor that plays him is. I’m not into being bitten—in the bedroom. I was kidding.”

“I knew you’d like that show, even if it isn’t the least bit romantic. You know the symbol they use for the logo for the series is a rune that means chaos.”

“It should be a romance. Skarde needs love. The guy hooks up a lot, but he’s so alone.” She picked up the black salt Val gave her. “I need the next disc in the series. I need to know what happens to him.”

Val leaned across the counter, waving a disc case in the air. “I never watched these four episodes. The show wasn’t my thing, and I quit after the first disc. My aunt said this last disc of episodes is unique—it’ll make you believe in magic. Maybe even help you find your own.”

“It’s a fantasy TV series that never made it to prime time. Does the show pause in the middle for a magic infomercial?”

Val shrugged. “Promise me you’ll only watch one episode a day—the series ends after these four, so you’ve got to savor them.”

Note to self: return the DVD in five days. Binge watching would happen tonight.

“I wonder why the show only made eight episodes. Maybe it didn’t make it big because of its documentary filming style. The budget to make it so realistic must’ve been huge.”

“There’s no chance for more.” Val seemed to watch her carefully.

“That’s too bad.”

“How badly do you want soul deep love?” She lit a smoking stick and waved it in her direction. The witch wannabe scared Gemma a little when she got like this.

“Where’s this coming from? I want to watch the TV show and hear more of the hot guy’s accent. Maybe I'll get a glimpse of his naked ass again. It’ll be the thrill of my week.” She waved smelly smoke away from her face. “What're you doing? If you’re casting something on me, stop it.”

Val continued a circular motion with the smoking stick. “Strong love, eternal love, will rock you to your bones, but it comes at a cost. When it finds you, you must pay its price or lose it.”