Swift (Strangetown Magic Book 1) (3 page)

But I didn't, and I was still trying to decide what the hell to do about all this. Trust me, it wasn't easy.

"I made it," I said, smiling weakly and avoiding his gaze. Feeling as glamorous as a potato in a sweating plastic bag, I unlaced my boots and hoped the stink wasn't contaminating his perfect nostrils. I knew I needn't have worried, as apparently my ripe odor is akin to his sweet scent to me, which kind of grosses you out if you think about it. I mean, maybe what I can't get enough of is really the smell of an elf in need of a shower.

When the proverbial hit the fan, endless Strange came to us for help once they found not all humans wanted to turn them into dust, enslave them, or just hate on them. Many of my kind have taken these dispossessed creatures in, our Queen giving over our homes to those in need. Same as many Normal people have. Some of them absolutely adore the more freakish creatures that dwell among us. Takes all sorts. And we sure have that, and then some.

I was given this freaky looking dude and told to like it or lump it.

Then I got the hots for him; then I got obsessed; then I got angry and punched him in the knackers for being so damn sexy. So he cried, and I cried, too, and now we don't touch each other as everything is messed up and he could be gone, whoosh, at any moment. And besides, he's an elf and they are all bad news.

Or that's what we thought, but, as usual, things can never be simple can they? Turns out Zeno is one of the good ones, and they are few and far between. It's not fair though, as elves are like drugs and you aren't yourself around them as they make you feel like you are half in a dream if you let your guard down for a moment. There is no way to truly understand your thoughts or emotions in their presence.

He'd been here for two months now, and it wasn't getting any better. It's the original forbidden fruit, a deadly apple that will bring nothing but trouble, but boy did I want to sink my teeth into his bum and lick him and tickle him and have him do naughty things to me. See, what a mess.

"Pleasant morning?" asked Zeno with a twinkle in his eye.

"Had better, had worse." I tugged off my jacket and flung it onto a chair, but I couldn't even get that right and it landed on the carpet. Dead on my feet, I sank into the sofa like it was a bubble bath.

"Oi!" came the voice of Mack as his head poked out my pocket.

"Sorry, totally forgot." I reached down, dragged my jacket to me, popped the clasp, and Mack stared up at me with what I assumed was anger. It's really hard to read the features of a dormouse—they just always look cute and cuddly no matter how annoyed they are.

"You could have squashed me," he moaned.

"Don't blame me. You could have stayed at home, and anyway, you're the one that picked a bloody dormouse as the 'perfect' way to hide. Idiot."

"We've been through this. I wasn't thinking straight. You try to keep it together when one moment you're tucking into a nice hot bowl of lava that's been simmering for centuries so it's all flavorsome, and the next you find yourself in a pet shop and your head is sticking out through the roof and your horns are dripping with human blood because cashiers happened to be there when you got robbed of your lunch."

"Yeah, yeah," I waved his excuses away, "same old story. If every demon decided the best way out of it was to take up residence in a bloody dormouse then I'd understand, but most of them stayed as they were."

"I thought it would make escaping easier, or... dunno, let me catch my breath and think. I was stressed. How was I to know you can't go swapping back and forth here like you can at home? I've been loads of stuff over the millennia. I was even a god for a while. Not 'God,' but I did all right, did some good work."

I yawned. I'd heard it all before and it gets boring after a while. Especially when you were the one that happened to pick up the little dude after finding him out on the street. Then what do you know, hey, a talking magic mouse that used to be a demon and now you claimed it you are stuck with it, like, for eternity. That's the rules, everyone knows that. He's mine, although it mostly feels like the other way around.

"When you two have quite finished." Zeno lined up my boots neatly close to the front door—elves are obsessed with order—and then moved into the kitchen. I'm sure he wiggled his bum as he went, just to tease.

"Damn, what a morning." I could have slept for a week, eaten a horse, complete with saddle. Would he cook? Would he hell. Apparently elves don't do cooking. They have, I guess you would call them slaves, to do it for them.

"Where's the shopping?" He loomed over me as he put two coffees down on the table. That's the extent of his culinary expertise.

My admiration of his muscles, all seven feet of him, was replaced with a sinking feeling and the realization I was going to be hungry. "I got sidetracked, and chased, by one of you lot."

"So, no food then?"

"No. Like I said, I got—"

"Why do you do this every time? You just had to go to the supermarket and buy supplies." Zeno can be a real pain at times, which makes it easier to halt the lusting thing.

"I told you, I got chased by an elf on a goddamn troll and then I had to kick their ass. So, no shopping." This isn't what I am usually like, it really isn't, but it had been an incredibly stressful morning.

"Where's the vampire, I thought he was coming to lunch?" Zeno ignored my outburst, so maybe I do get stressed sometimes.

"He won't be coming. He got splatted, Zeno. I saw it and was meant to be next."

He sat down next to me, careful to look for Mack first, but he was busy someplace else, probably grabbing some of the coal I need to keep buying. Have you any idea how hard it is to get coal when demons are so mad for it? It's become a damn gangster drug war out there because of it—dodgy looking demons on street corners, pockets bulging with the stuff. It cost more than my cigars.

"I'm sorry, I didn't know. You have to be more careful, Swift, keep away from them." He put an arm on my shoulder so I leaned in, just because I was tired.

"I tried, I really did. The vampire was keen to help some friends out, but we got sidetracked and never got far with it. And I was going to do the shopping afterward until... Ugh, what a mess."

"I understand. So, what are you going to cook? I'm starving." He looked at me expectantly, and if I'd had the energy I would have punched him right in his stupid face.

"You stupid fu—"

"Whoa, joke! It was a joke."

"Not funny." Then it dawned on me—he may have been being lighthearted, but he still expected me to cook.

Then the front of my house exploded.

Time to Move

"For fuck's sake, Mack, what is wrong with you?"

We clambered over the rubble, once I'd found my boots, and stood in the street with numerous witches of varying ages accompanied by various Strange lodgers, all staring at first my house then at Mack. There was a lot of muttering. Witches are experts at it, there are lessons and everything.

Mack, the no longer tiny dormouse-cum-demon, but now the demon-cum-very-large-and-very-red-and-very-scary-looking-demon, all sixteen feet of him, not including tail or horns, said, "Oops."

"Oops!? Look at my house! What the hell were you thinking?" Like my day wasn't bad enough already.

"Sorry, Swift, I thought I was still a dormouse and walked to the door to go through the little gap like I usually do. You know, just chillin', and er—"

I held up a hand. "I got the rest. The fact half my house is missing explains it." I had to lower my gaze, even though I wanted to burn holes through his red hide with my anger. It was making my neck hurt looking up so high, plus, he had something nasty up his nose—probably coal boogers or something equally unpleasant.

"You're worse than the damn trolls, I swear. Now where am I supposed to live?"

"Don't you compare me to a troll. I've got brains, and I've got rights. I'm a person, you can't treat me like that. Anyway, I can fix it."

Demons, they drive me nuts. "You are not a person, you are an otherworldly demonic creature that eats the damned and defecates them out and does it for eternity. Anyway, there is no way in any kind of hell you can fix this mess." I watched, dumbfounded, as Mack tried to stack the red bricks into a makeshift wall. He stood back, angry slash of a mouth spreading wide revealing more teeth than in a shark museum, inordinately pleased with himself.

I wiggled my eyebrows at him as the dodgy wall collapsed in yet another display of dust. "I liked you better as a dormouse," I said before storming off through the rubble to see what I could salvage.

"She's touchy, isn't she? Needs to chillax." I heard Mack say, voice echoing up and down the street. Him and his damn out-of-date, so-called street talk, he seems utterly oblivious to the fact he sounds like an idiot.

"She's always been a bit of a hot-head," I heard one of the witches say, others agreeing before they went back to their homes with all the walls still standing. Me, hot-headed? Damn cheek. I'll tear their faces off and... Joke. Sort of.

"Hey, hey, isn't anyone going to comment on me not stuck being a dormouse any more?"

I honestly wasn't in the mood for congratulating him, although being referred to as male is just a personal preference and what Mack likes to go by. Truth is, they are all the same between the legs and he is no more a he than a blade of grass is a cabbage, whatever it may like to think.

*

It says a lot about a person's life as they stand out on the street staring at the ruins of their home, beside a dumb demon and a hot elf, and all they have to show for so much living is a couple of bags of clothes and a few knick-knacks.

I had no photos of my parents. I had no keepsakes from my youth, just clothes, bits and pieces of technology like laptops and phones, no books as I went digital to save on clutter, and that was about it.

There was some nice furniture still intact inside which could be moved when I had somewhere to put it, but when you got right down to it I was a bag lady with a sudden newfound sense of freedom.

Have you ever felt tied to your life? To things and to the restrictions society puts on you? Felt like just running away and leaving it all behind and starting afresh where no one knows you? Where you can be whoever you want to be, do whatever you want, where there is nobody to recognize you, nobody to tell you how to behave or what to do with your life?

Yeah, well, I had none of that.

In the past, yes, many times. I have roamed the world and seen wondrous things, done deeds both good and bad. Had lovers and husbands, and I have become a different person numerous times in a new city, making new friends out of necessity as people I have known for decades grow old and then die as they are Normal, but at this time, in this place, with all that was going on, no, I had no freedom. I had responsibilities, I had duty, I had my sisters and brothers and untold Strange to consider.

So I hitched a ride on Mack, the least he could do under the circumstances, and went to find an empty house. Preferably one with a front wall.

We got a few funny looks from the neighbors, but I'm sure it was just jealousy.

Dangerously Sweet

I resisted chewing on Mack's horns as we looked for a new place. Hunger was taking me over and I was seriously ready to break a bit off and gnaw like a beaver on a tree, but I held it together, remained ladylike, and instead ordered him to let me down.

He stopped and rather considerately lowered both me and my luggage without breaking bones or Gucci. I turned to Zeno, who wasn't even out of breath or looking remotely concerned about the turn of events.

"I have to get food, or I'll collapse. Do you think you can deal with finding somewhere new? Somewhere with a high ceiling, I guess, if Mack is staying."

"Sure, I can do that. Leave it to me."

"Hey, you wouldn't want me to leave, would you?" said a worried looking Mack. "I thought we were besties." He really needed to get his act together. Besties!

"We are, Mack. I was just saying, that's all." Demons, who knew they were so needy? "Not many houses are built for demons. It was never part of the architect's design brief to accommodate horns on demonic creatures from the netherworlds."

"Oh, right." He cheered up instantly, shielded his eyes with a hand and scoured the road for houses. Sometimes he is such a muppet.

"Thanks, Zeno. I'll see you soon. With shopping, promise."

He gave me a funny look, one I tried not to notice, because he knew that I knew that he knew that we both felt the attraction but knew it was a really bad idea because you could be damn sure something like my house falling down would be mild in comparison, then unexpectedly kissed me, feather-like, right on the lips before I knew what was happening.

It was like the sweetest sugar being poured into my mind, softening anything hard and mean inside of me, melting the hurt and turning it to honey. It was how I imagine an angel would make you feel as it took away your sin and the hurt of centuries.

So I slapped him and stormed off. Gotta have standards. He didn't ask and I certainly didn't say yes.

I am a complete and utter fool, and as I wandered through the witch enclave and then streets that homed numerous wizards, I forgot what I was doing. I was lost to a haze of purity that threatened to leave me a quivering wreck and forever in his thrall.

You think vampires are good at the glamoring stuff, then just let an elf kiss you and see how well you do.

Disgust welled inside of me for allowing myself to get even remotely involved with such a dangerous creature. Did I lead him on? Did I let him think it was all right to kiss me? I didn't think so, even though we both knew there was an attraction. But it wasn't real, at least not on my part. It was how they operated, a part of them, warping your reality so you risked losing yourself. There is no free will if you let your guard down with the elves, and that's more dangerous than any magic I can possibly conjure.

This is the real risk they pose to us, the danger that is more a concern than their violence and the hate most of them have for humans. Worse than their desire to eradicate or enslave us, stomp us or take away all that humanity has built and striven for, it's the fact they are so damn beautiful yet utterly repulsive at the same time.