Page 45 of Whiskey, Thieves, and Bastards
The girls who were going to leave their friend looked over in horror.
“Is that the guy who was looking at you funny, Stephanie?”
“Yeah. He was creeping me out.”
“Let’s get out of here before the shit hits the fan. Sorry your celebration got ruined.”
I guess the girls bonded and decided not to leave their friend. The girlfriend also decided to leave. That left the three men.
“How do I turn it off?”
“You just pull it back in.”
Except I didn’t know how I let it out. It was an accident. While I was trying to concentrate, the bouncer tossed all three guys outside and the cops came and got them.
“Uh, oops?”
“It’s a learning curve. You aren’t going to learn overnight.”
“Are those guys going to be okay?”
“Probably not. Maybe. If they can fight through it and learn to be a better person, it will wear off. If they continue to think they are a good person who doesn’t deserve what they are going through, they’ll die.”
“And you!” I said to Calamity, pulling her into a hug. “That was brilliant.”
“Sorry, I am definitely drunk and a piña colada girl.”
Yeah, I was going to make her all the piña coladas. Yeah, I couldn’t figure out how I turned it on and I couldn’t turn it off, but she figured out how to get through to the innocents without me having to terrorize them.
I didn’t know what kind of fury I wanted to be, but it wasn’t the kind that sent nightmares and hallucinations to someone to save them.
We didn’t usually allow humans in our village, but this was a special circumstance. We had Aidan and his foster mom, Rose, at one of the empty houses. It was late, and we didn’t know how long Medusa would be out with her friends, so we got them settled, sent out an email that there was a human here, and left them to sleep.
Everyone was pretty drunk when they got back. Medusa didn’t do what she set out to do. I mean, she released her fury magic, but she ended up trapping three men in their worst nightmares. From what they said, these men had it coming.
Still, she was in a good mood. She felt happy and content through our bond. Everyone did. Daisy’s pies were somethingelse, and we got to help someone. I’d already made a potion for everyone who was at the bar drinking.
One of the village green witches taught it to me ages ago. It would sober you up so that you could have decent sleep and not wake up hungover. We had to use it a lot when Benji was going through a phase and not dealing with his shit very well. Some asshole said we were rewarding him by not letting him feel like shit after, but that wasn’t how we wanted to deal with it and we still got him through it.
“Is this what I think it is?” Medusa asked.
I just winked at her.
“Thanks.”
She wrapped me up in a giant hug. I couldn’t smell like Benji and Cas did, but I could tell she smelled like my shampoo and wildflowers. I loved that smell. I didn’t know what she was doing when I sensed her run out of the room and run back in shortly after.
Cas let out a possessive growl.
“What?”
“She’s wearing my sweatshirt again,” he purred.
Yeah, that was one of Cas’s kinks. Benji and I didn’t buy hoodies for ourselves and just bought a lot for Cas so we could steal them. Helovedseeing us in them and he loved it when other people could smell him on us. Medusa would be no different. Cas and Benji were going to be in overdrive because she was new to our village and we hadn’t had time to introduce her as our center yet. Only a few people knew.
“How’s the kid doing?” Jezebel asked.
“Talking up a storm now that he knows he’s a siren, and he just needs some lessons on how to control it. Rose is ecstatic. I’ve got them set up in one of the empty houses and I’m guessing Rose is going to let him stay up past his bed time just to listen to him talk.”
