Page 13 of Magic Pussy

"I can see you judging me, Hall."

"Well, some things deserve to be judged," he replied with a shrug. "But that's not you anymore. Sounds like a cry for attention to me. Why did you do it?"

"Because Michelle," Rain said slowly, "was too nice."

He had most definitely not expected that one. She hadn't been kidding; she wasn't the good guy here.

"Our mother raised us to be in competition with each other. Not in a healthy way. She'd always tell me, "look at what your sister did, it's perfect, you suck." And when I tried to do better, Michelle would help me. She'd sneak into my room and teach me the spells I couldn't get right. Mom's meddling never worked on her. When she said, "Rain's going to catch up, you know," Michelle just smiled and said she wanted me to."

Luke tried to picture the queen bitch as the woman Rain described and failed.

"When I was about sixteen, I’d had enough. We're only one year apart, so she didn't have much of a head start. I was at her level by then, and still, she just wouldn't be my competition. I felt like I wasn't taken seriously. So, I started to bug her in a personal way. If I pranked her around her friends, she’d get pissed enough to actually fight me seriously for a little while. But that passed, too. After a day or two, she'd call me a brat and go back to being Saint Michelle. When I did worse stuff, like making eyes at her boyfriend, or ask her father if he could show me how to drive, and shit, it lasted longer. She fought harder against me. Somewhere along the line, she started to hate my guts. And I deserved it."

Honestly? She really did. Luke kept his mouth shut because telling her that wasn't going to help.

"It took me a while to realize why I'd been that way. Michelle and I have the same amount of power; no one else in the seventy-three clans could have aspired to rule the Nola witch society someday. Only one of us could be head of the coven, and I wanted it to be me. For the first time, I spent a bit of time outside of Nola right after high school, and my thirst for power disappeared the moment I passed the borders of the city. There's something here, something that calls to the darker part of me."

"So, you left."

"So, I left," Rain echoed. "As soon as I could.

And that was why he liked her.

Maybe he should cut Michelle some slack, though.

Luke was glad he'd asked her to go first, because, after all that crap, his story didn't feel like it was that bad. At least, he hadn't been the bad guy in the scenario.

"My brother was a dick. A womanizer who didn't like to be told no. He was a born alpha, and he ticked all the boxes for the bad characteristics you can imagine for dominant shifters. We lived in Scotland, in a wild, open land our pride had owned for centuries, and we were relatively happy, although no one was looking forward to the day when Craig would take over from our uncle. One day, a small group of strangers came. They offered money and asked if they could rent part of our land for a little while. Shifters don't like sharing their territory, but we had plenty of space. There was the ruin of a castle south, near the coast. That's where they wanted to stay. Craig convinced our uncle to say yes. We should have wondered why."

He marked a pause as the memory came back to him.

"Among the strangers, there was a woman, a lass who was maybe twenty, and so fucking beautiful. Different to the girls you get up in Scotland, that's for sure. She had big eyes, and dark skin a bit like your sister's and Niamh's, you know? I think she said her family came from India, I don't remember. Anyway, my brother was sniffing around her. Of course he was. Thing is, she really wasn't interested at all. He didna' like that, my brother. So, one night, when she was a little tipsy, he just took her, and then got his fucking cat to mark her, too."

Rain was hanging on to his every word.

"We knew by then that most of the strangers were scions. We knew. We'd chatted together, drank, and ate at each other's places often enough. They were good company, really. All of them, even Ajax." To be fair and truthful, Luke amended, "Especially Ajax. He had funny ideas, not quite right. Like, he said regular humans were beneath them and what-not. He didn't mind shifters at the time, though."

He must have stopped for longer than he thought, because Rain prompted, "What happened?"

Luke didn't want to say it, but he had to. "The woman killed herself. Actually killed herself. And there was my family, knowing Craig had hurt her, discussing how it was cowardly to just exit life like that without fighting. I was saying that they were a bunch of cunts and that Craig should be fucking locked up. Ajax walked in on us that night. He killed them all. He said I was only alive because I was the only one of our disgusting breed worthy of breathing. He told me I should tell others what happens to those who go against his kind so that when the time came, we knew what side we should be on. And then, he left."

A heavy silence stretched between them. Maybe his story had been worse than hers, after all.

He was about to say something, anything, just to fill the silence, but before he added another word, Rain's attention snapped left, and her eyes brightened as she called out her little sister's name.

Luke turned to the club entrance and frowned.

The girl walking toward them in a red dress was, indubitably, Rain's sister. Unlike Michelle, she truly resembled her. But she didn't, by any stretch of imagination, resemble the description Rain had given him.

Ditzy, adorable, artistic, clumsy, carefree. None of those terms fitted the graceful young woman making her way to them through the crowd.

Luke's cheetah watched her closely, like it watched all threats.

Something was very wrong with Sara White.

Wrong Sister

The girl kissed her sister's cheeks and said all the right greetings, claiming that she was glad to see her, although her eyes betrayed her. She wasn't.

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