“Witches are weird,” was Finnick’s dry response.
“They are,” Gwen agreed with him, “but in this case, I think Willa’s right. The last thing you need is Killian all up in your life. He’s powerful and influential, and a whole lot of trouble.”
Finnick grinned devilishly. “The right kind of trouble.”
“Oh my Goddess, stop!” I grabbed a pillow, tossing it at him. Finnick caught it and smiled back, and my insides warmed. I might not have magic. Or my coven. But I had Gwen, Finnick, and Ambrose, and that was enough for me. Done with all this nonsense, I said, “If we can stop talking about my sex life, wasn’t there a festival to go to tonight?”
Gwen and Finnick turned to each other, downed their drinks, then smiled at me, their lips and teeth bloody. “Party time,” they said in unison.
I secretly hoped that was the only blood I saw tonight.
Across town, the blood moon, with its reddish tinge, stood out in the starry night, eerily making it feel like trouble was brewing in Charleston. The festival was roaring with undead life when we arrived at the abandoned soccer fields to canned clown laughter, flashing light bulbs around multicolored signs, and loud music. On his leash next to me, Ambrose jumped up and down, fluttering his little wings in excitement. Screams echoed across the warm, dry night air.
While everyone seemed hopped up on magical blood, my stomach turned as I stared up the snack vendor: popcorn covered in blood, blood corn dogs, and funnel cake, drizzled with more blood. “Blood caramel apples.” I groaned. “This wasn’t exactly what I meant when I said I wanted a candy apple.”
Gwen’s sweet laugh wrapped around me as did her arms. She rested her chin on my shoulder and asked the attendant, “Could you possibly make her a candy apple without the blood?” She batted her eyelashes, pushing out her chest, amplifying the cleavage already poking out through the top of her corset.
If vamps could blush, this young vampire would be beet red. “Yeah, of course, no worries.”
I smiled at her, and she winked. Gwen had vampires chasing after her constantly, but she was the exact opposite of Finnick, picky about who she took to her bed. Even more so about who she gave her heart to.
“A treat for later,” Finnick said with a laugh, gesturing to the attendant.
Gwen nudged him with her elbow. “You might like the shy ones, but when a lover touches me, the last thing I want is his hand to shake with nerves.”
“You and me both, girl,” I said, giving Gwen a high five.
Finnick eyed the attendant. “Fine by me. I like turning the innocent ones wicked.”
A couple of minutes later, I was a grinning fool eating my witch-appropriate candy apple, walking side by side with Gwen and Finnick, who shared a bloody popcorn, with Ambrose flying a little ahead. Some vampires gave him funny looks, but I suspected those were vampires from out of town. Everyone in Charleston knew Ambrose from the shop when I’d bring him to work when my night wasn’t too busy. We were walking by the bumper cars, when Finnick rushed ahead in a blur to stick his head through a photo stand-in of Dracula.
He smiled. “How deadly handsome am I now?”
“You’d think you wouldn’t be so starstruck over Dracula,” I said, biting into the sugary sweetness. All vampires loved the story of the famous vampire. Sometimes I wondered if they loved it so much because Dracula was bloodthirsty and violent in a world where they were bound by strict social rules, but I kept that thought to myself.
“Oh, hush you,” Finnick countered, taking his head out and frowning at the image. “Dracula is a God among vampires.”
“A fictional God,” I reminded him.
“Still a God,” Finn purred.
I snickered, finishing my bite, then gestured to the corn maze. “Shall we?”
“We shall,” Gwen said.
Finnick waved. “You lead the way.”
I plodded off with Ambrose flying ahead of us, the leash fully extended, his little tail waving from side to side. Of course I led the way. With vampires' heightened sense of smell, they could find their way out of the maze without any effort at all. “So, the date the other night went well?” I asked Finnick.
He shoved his hands into his pockets and shrugged. “A perfect night, but the morning ended up the usual way.”
“Let me guess, you got bored?” Gwen asked, tossing popcorn in her mouth as we went into the maze.
“Don’t look at me like that.” Finnick scowled, staying a little behind me as we came to a fork in the path. “I can’t help it they get boring the next morning.”
I turned right. “Do you think you’ll ever get serious with anyone?” Finnick couldn’t seem to stand anyone longer than a night.
“Not anytime soon,” he muttered, grabbing a handful of popcorn from the bucket Gwen held. “I’ve got immortality ahead of me. Unless I find my gemina flamma, I can’t see why I should bother putting in more effort.”
Witches fell in love with warlocks the way humans fell in love with each other, naturally, though most witches were attracted to wealth and power. Vampires fell in love naturally, too, but they also had the ability to find a mirror soul or gemina flamma. The English translation: twin flame. No one really had it figured out, except that the souls were like mirrors, knowing each other fully. Some believed that it was a vampire’s dark power that sparked this ability—that drew two vampires together to produce a powerful couple that could eventually produce children. Only old vampires had enough power to produce life from an undead body. “Survival of the fittest,” Gwen had told me once. Other vampires believed it was a soul-deep connection, where two souls belonged together, and no force could keep them apart. I never could shake the creepiness of it all. I liked the freedom of choosing my life partner, and I couldn’t imagine accepting an arranged marriage, especially one created by dark magic.
“Makes sense,” I said to Finnick. “It is sort of pointless to date and maybe fall in love with someone if you know fate might swoop in and change everything if you find your mirrored soul.”
“I can’t even imagine how heartbreaking that would be,” Gwen muttered. “But it’s not like there isn’t a choice. If you do fall in love, there’s always the bonding ceremony that connects magic and souls together. You’d never feel your gemina flamma even if you met them.”
“That’s what I’d do,” I said.
Finnick rolled his eyes. “Yeah right, you, Ms. I-Date-No-One. Like you have any plans to fall in love.”
“I do,” I retorted, tugging on Ambrose’s leash a little so he’d follow us to the left, down another long row of dry cornstalks. I scrunched my nose against the smell of something rotting within the crops. “But it’s a bit hard to find a suitable match when you live in a city full of vampires.”
“I don’t see the problem,” Finnick said. “Vampires are far superior to warlocks,” the only partner a witch ever bonded herself to so offspring would stay within the magical family. Interspecies relationships were frowned upon on both sides. “Why don’t you come over to the dark side?”
“You wish.” I laughed, nudging my shoulder into him.