September 2021
When Harvest Rosenbloom met her soon-to-be brother-in-law, she never expected to end up falling in love with him. Or is this love, she wonders, looking down at the text message that popped up on her phone screen a minute ago.
It’s probably not love. Not really. Just a passing whimsy. An idea she keeps circling back to.
She reads through the message again, wondering if she’s misread it. No, she has the right words, but it’s the most suggestive message she has received from Ezra yet. It feels like the edge of a precipice.
More like she is preparing to walk through a wall of flame, only if it’s to escape from a burning house or waltz right into one, she isn’t sure. Either way, it’s an apt metaphor considering Ezra’s affinity for fire-work, a gift that runs in his family much like the spellcraft and aura reading that runs in hers.
Not that she couldn’t acquire some measure of skill working with fire if she really tried. The affinity may be nurtured through family lines, but the mischief—ancient magic passed down through birth, bite, or curse—remains the same. Harvest and Ezra are both mischief-born witches, forever bonded in their power despite their different affinities.
Maybe she could ask Ezra to give her a lesson or two? He’s a teacher, after all, at a magical school just outside of Valkaria town limits. She decided against the formal education route, sticking with the Rosenbloom tradition of apprenticeship, and it would be nice to learn a new skill. Nothing crazy, just enough to light a candle with a snap of her fingers perhaps. Her own gift—a second-sight that allows her to see the auratic energy that people unknowingly give off and leave behind—is far less practical than something like conjuring fire.
Then again, her second-sight does help to read feelings: she can sense a person’s intentions and emotional state, sometimes even more accurately than the person themselves. It means that she is rarely wrong-footed in a conversation, though clearly she is easily startled by text messages.
She does wonder vaguely what Ezra’s aura would look like right now, though. A simmering vermilion? A deep rich garnet? A very obvious scarlet, she thinks, reading his words again.
She shouldn’t respond.
He’s drunk, misspelling words he would normally never misspell. Sharing thoughts with her he would never normally share.
I think Hazel can warm you up enough, she types out. Then she deletes it.
Instead, she navigates to the ongoing messaging thread with her sister and types: Wanna grab a drink?
The response from Hazel comes a few seconds later: Having a late dinner with Ezra. Maybe tomorrow night?
Before she can respond to Hazel, Ezra sends another message: Shit. Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Just wanted to hang out with a friend!
That’s better, and probably truer to his original intention than what her imagination had conjured. She wonders idly what Hazel is truly up to; she’s certainly not with Ezra if he’s texting Harvest.
A few years ago, Harvest would know exactly where her sister was. They would probably be together, truth be told. It is with a sad jolt in her heart that she realizes the distance that has grown between them.
They’ve been slowly drifting apart, two wayward leaves that have fallen on opposite sides of the tree. Harvest with her entry-level job at a tech start-up. Hazel with her new responsibilities as the manager of their family-owned diner.
Adult life, once coveted, suddenly seems so heavy to Harvest.
Maybe Hazel is actually with Ezra right now, she tries to convince herself. Maybe they can spend time together tonight, she lies to herself.
She types out a reply to Ezra, reads it four times for errors or phrases that could be misconstrued, and then hits send.
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In the heart of Valkaria, miles away from Harvest and her worry-chewed lip and her hesitant words, Hazel Rosenbloom slips her phone back into her pocket and smiles easily at Grayson Locke, the vampire who is sitting next to her.
The Vintage Lounge is crowded since it’s a Saturday night, but Hazel and Locke have secluded themselves in the corner booth, in just one of many shadows in the bar. A spell contained in her bracelet keeps their conversation from the prying ears of the demons, werewolves, shifters, and vampires packed into the tiny rectangular room.
“Everything alright, love?” he asks, giving her a rakish smile, his canine tooth just a little too pointy to be human. His face is shadowed in red from the neon sign hanging on the wall, but even without the light, his eyes would still be pools of crimson.
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When she first met Grayson Locke a few months ago, she had been waiting for Ezra at the Vintage Lounge. It’s not their usual bar, but it’s down the street from the diner she manages. He was late, as usual, and she spent the hour chatting to the deceptively young vampire sitting next to her.
The vampire was attractive enough, if a little too posh for her tastes, but his swept-back hair, well-tailored suit, and cordial, polite smile made her unusually comfortable talking to him. There were no leering looks, no suggestive comments about her body (her auburn hair has been the subject of many pick-up lines over the years). There were no unwanted invasions of her personal space, no cringy declarations of how attractive she was or how much he wanted to wake up next to her in the morning.
He was a perfect gentleman, and when Ezra did eventually show up, she found herself missing the smooth tones of Locke’s voice, his ability to keep his hands to himself, his keen sense of hearing that meant she didn’t have to yell over the crowd. Locke had been remarkably charming and clever in their hour-long conversation, and so impressed with her skill in spellcraft that she demonstrated her homemade shield bracelet for him several times. As a vampire, Grayson Locke may have some measure of mischief in his blood, but mischief-made creatures like him can’t wield or even really understand magic like hers.
They’ve met up at least once a week since, always at the Vintage Lounge. Even though he looks entirely out-of-place among the burly werewolves and the grungy vampires, he is always perfectly at ease, slipping himself into spaces with a quiet authority, looking as at home in the low lights and peeling vinyl seats as he would standing on the balcony of an Italian villa.
She hasn’t told Ezra—hasn’t told anyone—about her unlikely friendship with Grayson Locke. For one, she’s fairly certain he is the head of an underground criminal network. He has never said as much, of course, but between his choice of nightly haunt, the expensive shoes, and ostentatious diamond ring, the ominous scar on his arm, and the numerous times their conversations have been interrupted by other bar-goers for a short conversation about “business,” she’s fairly certain her assumption is accurate.
Further still, his interest in her skills and his casual requests for certain trinkets (a much kinder word for what they could be, which is weapons) have become more frequent and specific as of late.
Adding it all together, she’s fairly certain that Grayson Locke is an entrepreneur happy to exist somewhat on the outside of the law.
“Just my sister. I’ll call her later,” she says, a small stab of guilt that she hasn’t done the best at keeping up with Harvest lately. Tomorrow, she thinks. Tomorrow, they’ll get together and drink too much wine and laugh the same laugh while Ezra rolls his eyes at their sisterly inside jokes. There’s a smaller part of her that realizes this for the lie it is: there will be something to do tomorrow that gets in the way. A work-thing to attend. She’ll be tired. Harvest won’t respond in time.
There is always something in the way these days.
Truthfully though, it’s Ezra she should be spending more time with. Their fight last night was not a new topic, and it’s been dominating their conversations lately. It almost feels choreographed sometimes, like they’re rehearsing for a play, saying the same lines over and over until they no longer have any meaning.
Hazel sips her drink, refocusing her thoughts on the present moment. “What were we talking about?” she asks Locke.
His gaze flickers down to her neck, and he reaches out to touch the most recent addition to her necklace. The new pendant sits next to the H charm given to her when she turned eleven—a Rosenbloom family tradition. Harvest has one just like it. The pendant, however, is not a Rosenbloom family tradition, though she did find it at the bottom of her aunt’s jewelry box. The gold trinket is heart-shaped and has a single red garnet set in the middle of the front. The pendant itself isn’t what matters though: it’s the nifty little bit of spellcraft carved into the back, a mischief of her own making.
Locke’s finger is cold against her collarbone. “You were trying to convince me that this little piece of gold could make the wearer invisible.”
“Not quite invisible,” she says. “More like, not important enough. It works best if you’re standing right next to the person, though you have to be sure they don’t touch you.”
“And how do you activate it?”
“With a kiss,” she says, amused when his gaze flickers down her lips. “Press the side with the symbol to your lips.”
She shows him the face of the heart-shaped pendant, the garnet the same shade as his eyes, then she flips it over to show him the alchemical symbol she etched into the metal. The symbol is technically four symbols, overlaid, stretched, and arranged together again to form something new, something layered and complex despite its simplicity in aesthetics.
“Let’s see it then,” he says, leaning back and motioning with his hand, the incline of his head welcoming her to a stage. Locke always appreciates a good performance and she sometimes feels a bit like a court jester, performing silly tricks for his amusement.
But this isn’t a silly trick, she thinks. The mischief appears simple, but the process was far from it. It’s taken her a year to refine the technique and it’s caused countless migraines and quite a few nosebleeds in the process.
Hazel presses the gold to her lips, feeling a small spark of mischief, and is momentarily forgotten by him. He blinks, confused, then picks up his drink.
She watches him as he checks the time and glances around the room, his eyes skating right by her without a hint of recognition.
She allows herself to admire the smooth planes of his face, his full lips, and his chiseled jawline. He looks impossible, the product of an artist’s wine-drenched musings.
He is carved marble or paint strokes or smoothed, polished bronze.
But she reminds herself that he is real.
All too real.
It wouldn’t do to forget Grayson Locke’s true nature. The red neon light makes his eyes look simply dark but also frames his mouth in a color it knows only too well.
She has never seen him consume blood, but it doesn’t take much to imagine his lips on the soft skin of a woman’s neck, to envision the wound left behind by his bite, to wonder how many of those bites have led to death.
How many shirts has he ruined with spilled blood? Probably not many, she thinks. Locke seems like he has impeccable manners. Surely, he knows how not to make a mess of a meal.
With a sigh, she deactivates the charm and almost laughs at his startled look. He quickly recovers, smiling widely.
“Incredible work, as always,” he says, reaching for his wallet. “How much?”
“Actually, I had another form of payment in mind,” she says, her hand on his thigh.
He arches a delicate eyebrow as he slips his wallet back into his pocket. “Indeed.” He glances down at her hand, her pale skin stark against the black of his suit. “Let’s take this somewhere a little more private, then.”