THE three witches chowed down on butter-soaked lobster, twice-baked potatoes, and salad in Ember’s little apartment, eyeing the chocolate cake and figuring out how much room they should save.
Yes, Bethany Aura, Willow Sage, and Ember Niamh had been besties since they had met in kindergarten on their first day of school and re-met in Sorcery Saturday School just a few days later.
The three girls had grown up together, gone to school together, and failed at witchcraft together.
Utterly failed.
There was nothing wrong with them as far as the witchy healers could tell. Their parents had taken them to every shaman and magical therapist that they could find through WitchyDoodle, but no one could diagnose why the three girls sucked so badly at magic.
Poultices had been applied.
Potions had been drunk.
Crystal balls had been gazed into.
Rigor had been prescribed and laziness had been attributed, and yet, the three girls had remained hopeless when it came to casting spells.
It wasn’t that their magic didn’t work, it was just that it worked so badly.
Bethany Aura was an apparition witch. With her magic, she summoned cheerful little creatures who scampered around and did her bidding, usually cleaning. She was also a home and hearth witch, and her magic had a sweet, domestic quality to it. When she had tried to conjure algae-eating fish to clean the casino’s fountain like a giant aquarium, instead of getting plecostomus suckerfish, those enormous, vicious sea serpents had appeared, but they had eaten the algae.
Until the algae was gone.
And now they needed halibut to supplement their diet.
Willow, however, was a potions witch, and she had formulated the vitamin potion that was keeping the sea serpents healthy and flatulent.
So very flatulent.
Ember swallowed hard at the memory of the noxious gas.
When Bethany’s or Willow’s magic went bad, it could be funny. Willow had accidentally brewed a Potion of Poultry Persuasion a few weeks before. Ember and Bethany had helped her clean up the mountain of shed feathers.
When Ember’s magic went bad, elementals could go on a rampage and destroy the entire West Coast.
It might’ve happened once.
That other thing had not been her fault. She had tried to warn people that she could not control that many elementals at once no matter what the Sorcery Saturday School assignment had been, and the naturals had thought it was a freak West Coast hurricane, anyway.
Luckily, no one had died.
Ember cracked open her lobster and flicked bits of shell out of the tail. “I cannot believe he ran off like that.”
“Rude,” Willow said, forking into a potato. When she tasted it, her eyes rolled up into her head. “Oh my Ladies, this is good. Do you have any more of this?”
“Weird,” said Bethany, passing an extra Styrofoam clamshell to Willow and picking at her salad, spearing a truffle shaving with each bite of vegetables. “Really weird. This is amazing salad.”
Ember uncorked their second two-thousand-dollar bottle of champagne. The first one had been delicious. They say that wine is wine is wine and cheap wine is just as good as the expensive stuff, but they are wrong. So very wrong. She asked, “It’s not me, right?”
Bethany and Willow were so adamant in reassuring Ember that nothing was wrong with her and everything was wrong with that Cai Wyvern fellow that they set down their forks. Willow stood and gestured to the ceiling, railing about complicated men. Bethany nodded so hard that her bun flopped off her head and around her ears, her hands reaching, imploring, and insisting that Ember was the soul of perfection and obviously Cai needed someone to screw his head on straight.
“Nothing is wrong with you.”
“Nothing at all. It must be him.”
“It’s so totally him. Men are weird.”
“Dragons are weirder.”
“Dragons are so totally weird.”
“Ember, it’s not you. It’s really not.”
“Cai must have had an aneurysm or suffers from a terminal lack of taste in women.”
Ember waved them off when her self-esteem had been suitably propped up. “Just making sure.”
Bethany and Willow nodded and went back to their lunches.
“Totally not you,” Bethany added.
“But do you like him?” Willow asked her.
Ember rolled her eyes. “Well, I was going to ‘do the sex’ with him, so I think I like him at least a little. And he’s hot. He’s ripped as all heck. He looks like his pale skin is just painted over his muscles. And wow, muscles.”
Willow nodded. “Flying does that. They just totally hulk out. But he’s pale?”
Ember shook her head. “He’s got enough tan. He’s not pasty.”
Bethany swallowed hard. “They’re all tanned. It’s the basking. They like to bask in the sun like a lizard on a rock, and they don’t have tan lines. I like to watch Mathonwy bask. He’s pretty.”
“But you like Cai?” Willow pressed Ember.
“It doesn’t matter if I like him or not. He jumped out of the bed and ran away.” Ember dunked a hunk of lobster in the melted butter and chewed it. The revenge lobster tasted good.
“Is he really good enough for your first time?” Bethany asked, musing at the ceiling. “We can introduce you to other dragons. Math has lots of friends. Lots. Like, everyone wants to be his buddy. It’s a charisma thing. Or we can try online dating for you again. I’ve heard that new one for supernaturals is pretty good. You know, Shiftr?”
Ember shook her head. “Ladies of Magic, no. That’s just a hook-up app. The last time I tried that, a day-going vampire swiped right at me. He just wanted a snack.”
Bethany and Willow both shuddered.
Willow said, “Now, if a dragon wants a little bite—”
Bethany snickered.
Ember looked at them over her glass of expensive champagne. “What?”
The other two girls looked at each other, grinning and repressing laughter.
Willow said, “Nothing.”
Ember frowned at him. “Come on. Spill it.”
Bethany ducked her head, still giggling. “Bite me.”
Willow cracked up.
“You two! This is not fair!”
“All right, all right,” Willow said. “So, it turns out that dragons are venomous.”
“Like, fugu? You shouldn’t kill them and eat them? Or—oh! You shouldn’t go—” Ember mimed pushing something down beside her chair.
Willow shook her head. “No, no. Venomous, not poisonous. If you bite something and you die, it’s poisonous. Dragons aren’t poisonous. And you should totally do that,” She mimicked Ember, pushing her hand down by the side of her chair, “to him at some point. Dragons lose their minds when you do that. It’s awesome. But no, that’s not what I mean. Dragons are venomous. When a dragon bites you, he releases venom.”
Bethany laughed. “Trust the potions witch to know the difference between poisonous and venomous.”
Willow looked at her, eyes wide. “Yeah, it’s really important to know the difference when you’re brewing.”
“So, if they bite you, you get sick?” Ember asked, feeling like a stupid virgin with no information again.
“Nope,” Willow and Bethany both said together.
Ember stared at them. “And?”
Neither one of them would look at her. Bethany stared at her plate of lobster in her lap. Willow was gazing at the bubbles in her champagne like she was trying to scry the future.
“And?” Ember tried again.
Bethany’s voice was a little strangled. “Their venom is an intoxicant.”
Willow added, “And an aphrodisiac.”
“Like a love potion?” Ember asked.
Willow said, “Love has nothing to do with this.”
Oh, wow. This was so over Ember’s head.
“So,” Ember said, feeling like she was asking too much and yet not understanding what they were obviously hinting around, “it’s a sex thing?”
“Yep,” Bethany and Willow said, nodding.
Hey, the twenty-one-year-old virgin wasn’t totally clueless. Great.
Willow added, “It’s a blow-your-mind sex thing. Over and over. And over.”
Bethany snickered again.
“So, maybe I shouldn’t worry about him,” Ember said. “Maybe a dragon shifter for one’s first time isn’t a good idea.”
“Actually,” Bethany said around a mouthful of salad, a leaf drooping over her lip. She sucked it in and swallowed before continuing, “Now that I think about it, a dragon for one’s first time might be a really good idea.”
Willow considered this, looking up at the ceiling. “That’s an interesting consideration. I hadn’t thought about that. Yeah, that’s actually not a bad idea at all.”
“All right,” Ember said. “I’m a dumbass virgin. Spell it out.”
Bethany and Willow looked at each other, silently daring the other one to talk.
Willow broke first. “Okay, so you know you should relax and stuff, and make sure everything’s slippery enough.”
Ember stabbed her lobster with her fork. “Yeah, I’ve read romance novels.”
“But your first time can still be uncomfortable. But with some dragon venom, it might be great, even your first time.”
Bethany said, “Yeah, Math bit me twice the first time we did it in the butt, and I came like a freight train.”
“Bethany!” Willow and Ember both yelled, rolling back like they’d been slapped in their faces with a dank halibut.
“Well, I did,” Bethany said, ducking and shoving a huge bite of salad in her mouth.
Willow rolled her eyes. “TMI aside, that’s not a bad recipe for your first time. Evidently, two bites will make you stop thinking about anything else going on.”
“So, now I just have to keep him from running out of the room,” Ember grumbled.
“We can throw a dinner party,” Bethany said, “and invite you and him. You should see Math’s house in LA. It’s huge.”
“Or Arawn and I could,” Willow offered. “We can just shove you two together until he comes around and realizes that he should have stayed in that bed with you. If you want. If you want us to find you some other guy, we can do that.”
Ember muttered, “I don’t need you two to pimp me out to anybody, especially Cai Wyvern.”
“Okay,” Bethany said. “But if you change your mind, let us know.”
Ember nodded, feeling entirely stupid about herself.
“But when Cai does come around and realize that you’re the most amazing woman he’s ever met and that he must bite-and-boink you, just be careful you don’t do it too much or date him too long,” Bethany said. “Dragons can get mating fever, and then you’ve got some decisions to make.”
“It’s not that easy for a dragon to go into mating fever, though,” Willow told Bethany. “Sometimes, it takes months. And if you’re not perfect for him, if you don’t trigger the fated-mate thing in them, then it never happens. So, you probably don’t have to worry about that. It doesn’t just happen that fast.”
Bethany said, “It can happen pretty quickly. Math fell into it in three weeks.”
“Well, again, mating fever surely isn’t the problem if I can’t keep Cai in the room with me for long enough to sleep with him and he keeps dodging me everywhere else.”
Ember ate her lunch, stewing over Cai.
She wasn’t sure she even liked Cai Wyvern that much, anyway.
Except that she did.
Covering up that she was in agony made it worse.
How stupid was she for falling for a guy just like snapping her fingers? He was gorgeous and sweet and sexy and that thing he did with his tongue.
When they’d first met in the human resources’ manager’s office, he’d seemed perfect.
He’d been funny without being crass.
He’d been flirty without being creepy.
He’d been kind.
But Ember put such emotions out of her head because for absolutely no reason, Cai had bolted and left her.
She would not be with a man who would up and leave her like that.
The next morning, the first box of jewelry arrived.
The short apology on the card was written in masculine, hurried handwriting that she was sure was his.
Inside, the earrings were deep yellow gold and studded with clear gems, and the teal-blue box was from Tiffany’s.
Ember gazed at the metal and stones, summoning her magic. Elemental witches are shockingly good at identifying elements and impurities, so she knew that these two hoops were twenty-two karat gold, and there was about two carats of diamond weight in the set. Because each earring had nine stones, each diamond was over a tenth of a carat.
Turning the diamonds in the sunlight, she detected very, very few inclusions, even with the shimmer of her magic lighting up the stones from the inside. The grade for them was probably VVS-1, where even a highly skilled jeweler would have problems seeing flaws, even when they magnified the diamond by ten times. The color was very clear and had almost a blue tinge, so she figured the color was probably at an F on the color scale from D to Z, where Z represented a yellow-amber diamond.
These were some frickin’ expensive earrings, and it seemed weird that he had sent her something so expensive after leaping out of the bed and running away.