Chapter Fifteen
Ria
You can do this , Ria ordered herself.
Dinner had been so painful she almost bailed on the whole ritual.
She couldn’t imagine Lissa would still be interested in her after she spent ten minutes talking about the best way to grow basil while pushing her caprese salad around on her plate.
Then Lissa had to go and spill her feelings, making it impossible for Ria to remain stoic.
Which left her with only one option—go through with the lessening ritual.
You can do this, she told herself again as she waded into the water, choking back a gasp as the cold bit into her skin.
So much for not as bad as she’d thought.
Apparently her time away from Seacliff had an amnesiac effect since Ria couldn’t remember the water ever being this freezing in the summer.
Though, in all fairness to Mother Nature, she’d never gone in after dark before. And never naked.
Damn. She was popping all kinds of cherries tonight.
Moving farther into the sea, she hit the waist-high point and froze. Literally.
Okay, not literally, but it sure felt like her lady bits had iced over.
The gasp she’d been fighting back finally escaped, and she was grateful for the crashing waves that drowned it out.
She was supposed to be a sexy, confident, skinny-dipping girl.
Not a “squeal like a little bitch and dash out of the ocean” girl.
Steeling herself, she pasted on a grin that hopefully came across as sultry and turned around.
She could have sworn her eyes cartoonishly popped out of her skull when she took in a naked Lissa strolling toward the water.
She’d never been more grateful for a full moon in her life.
Lissa was the epitome of the perfect woman, looking like something straight out of a Botticelli painting, only with pink hair and piercings, an improvement in Ria’s mind, given she’d always liked her girls with a little bit of edge.
Maybe because she had none herself save for the tiny tattoo on her ass she hoped Lissa hadn’t seen.
Ria’s gaze started to drift a little lower down Lissa’s body, but a sudden flare of guilt had her spinning back around.
She had no right to be eye fucking Lissa after putting her under a spell.
She was better than that. Now, if after the spell was gone, Lissa didn’t hate her, she would be more than happy to try to win her back under nonmagical circumstances.
She just needed this spell to work.
Running through the steps of the ritual in her mind, she was pretty sure she had it fully memorized. She’d studied the spell over a hundred times, extremely motivated to free Lissa from her influence. She pictured the page in her mind once more to convince herself she wasn’t forgetting anything.
Ritual of Reduction
To reduce the effects of a ritual that has proven to be cumbersome or overextended its reach. To be used when the original ritual cannot be fully reversed.
Step 1: Conduct the ritual in a place surrounded by salted water.
Step 2: Ensure a full moon shines down unobstructed.
Step 3: Invoke Hecate’s name.
Step 4: Call upon your will to summon the emotions of release and surrender.
Step 5: Seal the ritual with the Goddess’s mark upon the recipient.
Step 6: Speak a closing blessing to Hecate.
Step 7: Submerge the recipient, and let the mark wash away, taking with it the strength of the original spell.
Tossing her shoulders back, Ria summoned the confidence that loved to take frequent naps inside her. She absolutely could do this.
Full moon? Check.
Salty water? Check.
A witch with the will to perform the ritual? Absolutely check.
It would be easy enough to invoke Hecate’s name when the time came, so now all she needed was a way to get the symbol onto Lissa’s skin. Something she was now realizing wouldn’t work given the lipstick she’d planned to use was still in her purse on the beach.
Crap.
It was fine. Everything was fine. She encountered snafus all the time in marketing. She just needed to pivot. Surely she could find something to use… Okay, so obviously, she was in a freaking ocean with literally nothing but water all around her.
Think, Ria, think! Her feet squished into the sand, a piece of seaweed wrapping around her big toe, and she was struck with a brilliant idea.
Soft hands settled onto her shoulders, and she whipped around to see Lissa only inches away from her, the water line hitting right below the most exquisitely full pair of breasts Ria had ever seen.
The moonlight glistened on Lissa’s wet skin, and every thought in Ria’s head fled town, leaving only a pulsing in her lower abdomen that made it hard to focus.
Forcing her attention away from those perfect tits, Ria raised her face to look into Lissa’s eyes. Suddenly the water wasn’t so cold anymore.
Lissa must have felt otherwise, given how loudly her teeth chattered. “So is this everything you hoped it would be?”
Ria let out a tiny, slightly embarrassed laugh. “Umm, ask me that in a minute.”
“Right,” Lissa drawled, rubbing furiously at her arms. “Hey, aren’t you a witch? Can’t you cast a spell to warm us up?”
Ria didn’t miss the teasing in Lissa’s voice, and she was really starting to wish she’d memorized the handcasting for warmth.
She could have shut down Lissa’s reluctance to believe in magic and saved her nether regions in one go.
Of course, at the rate she’d been screwing up, she would probably light them on fire by accident.
“I don’t do that kind of magic,” she replied rather than admitting she lacked the confidence and knowledge.
“Right, of course not. How silly of me,” Lissa joked. “So now that we’re here, what do you want to do?”
Kiss you again, Ria thought. But what came out of her mouth was “Oh, I just wanted to talk.”
Maybe that was a piss-poor excuse, but she couldn’t exactly tell her the truth.
“Talk?” Lissa gaped at Ria. “You dragged me into the freezing ocean to talk?”
Ria swirled a hand over the surface of the water “Yes?” she replied, though she doubted she sounded very convincing.
Lissa blinked a couple times, then shook her head. “Okay, what did you want to talk about?”
Ria had no idea how to respond. Part of her had doubted she’d even get Lissa into the water tonight, let alone what she would give as an excuse for her objectively bizarre actions. “I don’t know. How about you tell me what you’re thinking right now?”
Lissa chuffed out a laugh. “Honestly? Okay, well part of me is thinking you might be the most insane girl I’ve ever met, which is saying something, given my somewhat questionable past. And the other part of me can’t stop thinking about that tattoo on your ass.
There’s more to you than meets the eye; isn’t there, Ria? ”
Ria cringed, remembering the night she’d gotten the ink and what had led to the permanent marking on her right butt cheek. “Oh, I’d hoped you didn’t see that.”
“Babe, not only do you have an insanely tight ass, but there’s a cartoon sea lion on it. What else was I going to be looking at?”
All the blood in Ria’s body raced to her cheeks. “Yeah, there’s a long story behind that. I’m surprised you don’t have any tattoos, given your…”
“Alternative look?” Lissa supplied. “Yeah, I get that a lot. I think I’ve never had enough conviction about anything in my life to want to make it permanent on my body.
I’ve always been a bit of a rolling stone I guess, moving from town to town and job to job.
Seacliff is actually the first place that feels like home. ”
Ria latched onto the opening, desperate to get the ritual over with so she could curl up in a warm bed. Preferably Lissa’s but she didn’t see that happening once the spell was lessened. “Well then, let me be the first to give you a Seacliff tattoo.”
Lissa raised an eyebrow, and Ria quickly dashed into the shallower water to grab a handful of wet sand. Not as useful as lipstick, but nothing in the spell specified how the rune was to be applied to her target’s skin.
“Turn around,” she said, twirling her finger in a circle.
Lissa glanced at the mud in Ria’s hand, her eyes narrowing. “Do I want to know what you’re about to do to me?”
No.
“It’s fine. Just roll with it.”
Lissa gave her one last dubious look, then turned around, exposing a large swath of smooth skin to Ria.
Using the sand, Ria quickly drew the rune over Lissa’s back, grateful it was little more than a few lines in a specific configuration.
Glancing up at the moon, she drew upon her will to focus on the image of magic sloughing off of Lissa’s skin and whispered, “May Hecate make you whole once more.”
Lissa stiffened for a second, then asked over her shoulder. “What does that mean?”
“Hmmm? Oh, nothing. It’s a little witchy saying. Like Hecate’s blessings upon you.” She directed that last sentence to the moon, hoping she’d done enough to seal the spell.
“Okay. So how does my new tattoo look?” Lissa craned her neck to get a look at her back.
Ria pretended to analyze her work. She had only one step left to solidify the spell. She just hoped Lissa didn’t hate her afterward.
“You know,” she said, scrunching up her face. “I think you look better as a blank canvas. Lower down a bit so I can clean it off.”
“You’re killing me, smalls.” Lissa let out a playful groan.
Ria grinned at the reference. “I know, I know. But we need to get you clean.”
Lissa tossed another look over her shoulder at Ria, her eyes twinkling in the moonlight. “What if I like being dirty?”
Ria gulped, fighting back the urge to accept the offer in Lissa’s expression. “Let’s start with getting you clean and go from there.”
“Whatever you say, Enchantress,” Lissa replied, winking.