Page 11 of Magic Pussy

Luke expected Michelle to be offended, or surprised, but she sipped her tea quite calmly.

“Oh, good. I would have had to get all your bedding burned after you left. I'll see you at the ceremony, traitor.” There was fire in her eyes and her words.

Rain shrugged it off, but something in her eye made it obvious that she hadn't been indifferent to the insult.

“Where’s Sara?” she asked.

“Out with her friends. She would have been here to greet you, if you’d bothered to warn us of your arrival, of course.”

“Good. Wouldn’t want to have to wait for her here.”

On that note, she turned on her heels, heading out.

Luke breathed a little easier when they were out of Michelle’s place. They had somehow managed to get in and out of the large, airy villa in less than ten minutes.

“What did she mean?” Luke asked, picking one of the many questions that had crossed his mind while he’d listened to their tete-a-tete. “When she called you a traitor? It seemed to be very personal. Was it because you left Nola?”

Rain sighed. “No, not just that. Michelle has a long list of grievances against me. And at least half of them aren’t exactly undeserved. We’ll never get along, so I don’t even try, but take my word for it: Michelle isn’t the only bad guy here.”

That certainly did get his attention.

“Oh?”

Rain sighed. “If you’re gonna hang out here, I guess you’ll hear about it anyway, so better it comes from me. Just promise me none of this gets back to the pride?”

Luke signed a cross on his shoulders and heart. “What happens in Nola stays in Nola.”

She nodded. "Right. Let's go get a drink, then. I'm not sharing my deepest, darkest secrets while sober. Let me text Sara, so she meets us at the bar."

City of Magic

The sun was setting down on the horizon, and as day turned to night, Nola seemed to change, shifting from a vibrant, cheerful city to something else. It was as if a shadow had engulfed them, changing the atmosphere and making everything darker. Luke's cheetah was on high alert.

For two generations now, everyone, regulars included, had known of the paranormal world, but sups still stayed on their own turf, from what Luke had seen in his travels. The Wyvern got along with the regulars of Lakesides, but that was the exception, not the rule.

Nola was very different in that regard. Vampires, wolves, witches. They didn’t even try to blend in, flaunting their nature to the tourists, who loved it.

"Are all those witchcraft stores real?" he asked Rain, his personal guard, who shook her head.

"Not all of them, but a bunch. Here," she said, pointing to an alley, "there's Amanda's place. She makes twenty-four-hour love spells. They work, too, although I'd call it lust spells, really."

"Is that even legal?" Luke asked, eyes wide.

Shifters didn't need to obey to normal human laws; they had a treaty with the governments--as long as the local prides and the overarching shifter authorities kept the peace, regulars were happy to stay out of their ways. It wouldn't do to try to imprison someone who could turn into a feral beast and deck any policeman for something like drunk driving. Murders of regulars were the only thing they investigated.

To Luke's knowledge, though, witches still fell under regular laws. Love/lust potions sounded a little too much like a rape drug.

"It's not directly covered by any law, and no one has ever complained," Rain said carefully.

In other words, no, it wasn't legal, but Amanda got away with it, somehow.

“All the magic...the tourists eat it up. They always did, even back in the day when only a select few knew it was real, but now? They love it." She paused. "And fear it.”

“They certainly don't fear it enough,” Luke grumbled, seeing a couple of scantily dressed cheerleader-type girls ask a vampire couple if they could take a selfie with them in the street.

The bloodsuckers were good sports, posing for them, but Luke watched them with a frown, wondering when it would go sour. Because it would eventually; maybe not for those girls, but somewhere in a city so filled with their kind, someone would mess up, and soon. Bloodsuckers did have to eat, and it was well known that they disliked the synthetic replacement to the real stuff.

"Chill. There's a truce here. And besides, even if there weren't, vampires aren't stupid, they wouldn't do anything untoward in public."

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