Violet didn’t even smell the incense anymore. People walked in and wrinkled their noses from the strength of sandalwood, cinnamon, lavender, whatever happened to be burning that day. The smoke got into her clothes, her hair, her skin. It rose up through the building to permeate the apartment above. But she’d gone almost completely nose-blind to it by now. Every morning, before turning the ‘Closed’ sign to ‘Open’, she lit the incense, closed her eyes, lifted prayers and blessings to the pantheon, then sent a text to Clive to come down when he was done fiddling with the coffee machine.

Her loose sleeves brushed against inventory like fingertips as she inspected the merchandise, mentally determining what she needed Clive to pull out from storage and what she needed to replace. Some—like the Blessed Be keychains, her stock of incense and candles, as well as cheaper altars and common tools and ingredients for rituals—were regularly reordered through wholesale vendors. No one needed a hand-crafted altar or a knife plated with real sterling silver to celebrate their spirituality. She had products for all kinds of budgets.

But she had to keep an eye on the rarer and more esoteric products, and twice a week, Father Bryer reluctantly pulled up to the back door of Book & Candle to bless any new inventory that might benefit from such a blessing, as well as to replenish her stock of holy water. She couldn’t trust her wholesale vendors, who’d tried sending her false holy water because they’d assumed she wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

The only reason she thought Father Bryer did her the courtesy was because the good stuff didn’t melt her like rain to sugar and she was the one who knotted the prayer beads and crucifixes for the necklace rack, with nary a cross-shaped scar on her palm.

She and Clive also hand-carved vampire stakes from ash. Plenty of vampire hunters did their own rough carving, because a working stake didn’t have to be fancy, but sometimes a demon hunter had to dispatch a surprise bloodsucker from his territory or a civilian learned that there were real monsters in the shadows. They’d creep furtively into her magic shop, hoping she had more than New Age crystals. And she did—a whole wall of weapons, in fact, with stakes and knives of varying degrees of artistry. Most hunters and civilians were strictly practical, but even veterans appreciated a little embellishment now and then. Or she’d get the odd tourist who liked the idea of displaying a pretty stake next to their collection of Monster High dolls.

She turned over the ‘Open’ sign before Clive made it down, because it was eight-fifteen, and she didn’t like the idea of staying closed much longer after her posted hours. Granted, her more serious clientele usually called this hour bedtime, but walk-ins could happen at any moment, and tourists were sometimes early birds.

Clive finally turned the corner from the stairs as she took her place behind the counter. He handed her the latte he’d made for her, with extra foam as an apology.

“Late night?” she asked.

“Me and my insomnia.” Clive settled next to the weapons display and the raw materials to make more. Customers loved watching a handsome man working with his hands.

“Did you try my tea?” Violet tried to keep her tone even, because this was far from the first time Clive had come downstairs with dark circles under his eyes.

“You know I don’t like tea.”

“Better than the five mugs of coffee you use to try to caffeinate your sleep deprivation into submission.”

“I’m working on it.”

Violet sipped her coffee. Milk foam didn’t quite make up for the last four weeks of complaining about sleepless nights without doing anything about them, even though he knew anything she gave him would be more effective than over-the-counter pills, folk remedies, or sleep hygiene rituals. She’d heard the creak of his bedsprings deep into the night as he would toss and turn. She would then light an unscented candle to chase off the darkness and pray until the spring-creaking stopped and her chest ached like a heart attack.

The bells over the front door jingled. Two girls who Violet assumed were morning birds between their coffee and a yoga session entered the shop, followed by a meticulously styled woman who Violet knew wasn’t as frivolous as her costume would suggest.

Someone might look at Cam Brumley and see only a pin-up girl at the end of a themed-diner shift—or perhaps from a classier strip joint—but Violet’s shoulders immediately tensed. As Clive carved, he kept an eye on Brumley while she browsed with the civilians. She was silent, deceptively casual, as the other two girls chattered and picked up things to smell them, inspect the craftsmanship, or try them on.

Brumley moseyed to Clive’s station to watch him sharpen the point at the end of the branch. Her lips were set in a smile, but she smiled like a predator, showing her teeth in an aggression display.

Brumley finally gathered a dozen practical stakes from the bins in front of his station and carried them with a small basket of holy water and two new crucifixes—one made with black onyx beads and the other in ruby—to the counter for Violet to ring up in a series of practiced codes. She had a spreadsheet somewhere for when Clive had to take the counter or she brought in her cousin’s friend Claudia to cover for her during convention weekends, bead shows, and ingredient-purchasing trips, but she knew the codes by memory—not by heart, because her heart wasn’t necessarily in the business, even though she was still damn good at it.

The vampire hunter handed Violet a hundred-dollar bill. Violet handed over her change. There were no words exchanged, because Brumley didn’t like Violet and Violet didn’t like Brumley. They tolerated each other strictly for business, because business didn’t care about vendetta, blood or otherwise.

Taking her paper bag, Brumley smiled again, showing five hundred teeth between carefully applied red lipstick. Petticoats swishing, she sashayed back out of Book & Candle. The bells sang merrily behind her.

Both Violet and Clive sighed in relief, almost in cadence.

The other customers didn’t notice. With suggestive grins and barely restrained giggles, they gathered in front of Clive’s station to watch him lean between his spread legs while he sharpened a stake. Clive flexed his muscles, built from years of physical labor, and grinned winningly right back at them. Violet didn’t recommend using the stakes as dildos—from either end, because even the less pointy end could splinter—but Clive sometimes inspired the odd adventurous woman to purchase one of the more decorative pieces.

These girls weren’t that kind of adventurous. They meandered instead over to the crystal section and selected small amethyst crystal balls, larger clear quartz shards, and a grab-bag of smaller, tumbled stones—popular among young and old alike.

Violet didn’t generally work with stones, other than clear quartz and the occasional carnelian or chalcedony, but there was no denying that they were pretty. She had a bowl in her apartment bedroom for her own collection of smooth stones through which she sometimes ran her fingers to ground her as effectively as touching grass. In the city, she sometimes felt so disconnected from nature. It didn’t hurt to have an abundance of it within her place of business and her home above.

Violet slipped the girls a beginner’s guide to crystal use—most of it useless to them, but in Violet’s experience, crystals tended to end up on a shelf and made people feel better just to look at them, so no harm, no foul.

She’d always trod the line between fraud and folktale, because when civilians entered a place like this, it was usually for fun, only occasionally desperation. In the same way they consulted a priest or read their horoscope, they visited Book & Candle for one of her protection pamphlets and a blessed silver knife, or they sneaked in on Thursdays for Frida’s fortune-telling gig next to the crystal corner. Frida was as much a psychic as Clive was a witch, but Book & Candle collected the table rental fee and people rarely stormed into the store to demand their money back, because Violet promised nothing to anyone who didn’t have knives strapped in unexpected places. As far as civilians were concerned, Violet was just another novelty New Age occult granola tattooed hippie Wiccan who played with plants and rocks and called religion by another name.

But she wasn’t. And the people who mattered knew it.

The real Wiccans and other Neopagans tended to look down their nose at her, but they still bought their accoutrements from Book & Candle because she was local, almost as cheap as online, offered the occasional hand-crafted piece people couldn’t find anywhere else, and nurtured the coolest carnivorous plants. Also, she sometimes sold herbs that weren’t strictly legal—for a price.

The hunters tolerated her, too, because she provided an endless reserve of spells and sharp objects they could use against the demons in their fair city, and she could guarantee valid blessings and spells upon them. Some of their patrons got them the good stuff, the really rare stuff, or made their own, dabbling in magic and alchemy as only the rich could afford to do. But some of those same patrons surreptitiously purchased those things from Book & Candle anyway.

The demons wanted to eat her heart, in the most flattering way, but they left her alone, too, because she sold them the same extralegal herbs, spells, and weapons of their own.

Book & Candle was neutral ground. By Meridian standards, Violet and Clive were diplomats—untouchable. Everyone needed them as much as they resented them. At best, she balanced precariously on the fences between the factions, but as long as no one pushed her, she stayed out of everyone’s way and let them have their war—somewhere else.

Perhaps she was simply an inevitability in a place like Meridian—a capitalist with a solid market grip on the guns and gauze, metaphysically speaking. If that were really the case, though, she’d probably be richer. As it was, Violet just felt fortunate that she could keep up with rent on the store and apartment and employ Clive full-time. She even had a nice little nest egg growing under the care of her financial planner, who’d been recommended to her by one of the demons who frequented the store. It was in that demon’s best interest to keep her happy so she could keep him in secretly donated virgin blood, so Violet had taken the referral and hadn’t yet been disappointed.

Her stretch of work hours saw another steady trickle of unpredictable customers, civilians rubbing shoulders with demons in disguise, angels sharing uncertain glances with hunters of every shape, size, and variety—and all of them wary of the witch with whom they did business. But in the end, money was exchanged and everyone left in better condition than they came, which was why Book & Candle had been able to operate smoothly for the last eight years.

Her parents had thought she was crazy to leave the mountains, the forest, the security and safety away from prying eyes. Crazy to leave family and venture out on her own with nothing but a spell, a prayer and a booth at several of the farmers’ markets before putting six months’ rent down on what had once been old tea shop in the downtown square—a relic of when downtown had still been a quiet little side town too far from I35 to garner much notice.

The historical downtown district had been the first place touched by Angela Cabrera’s Gothic hand, the façades renovated to a haunted-house grime thoroughly taken advantage of for Halloween festivals and perfect for Violet’s aesthetic. Sure, the store was, by generous description, cozy—and, by less generous description, cluttered—but it and the cramped two-bedroom upstairs did their duty.

She’d been alone at first, and that had been lonely and sometimes frightening, considering the element she and her store attracted. But after three years making it on her own, Clive had moved into the second bedroom. Both bedrooms could pretty much only hold a bed and a dresser each, but they liked having separate sleep space, even if they sometimes shared a bed.

She might have been the more powerful of the two, but hunters and priests could be a misogynistic lot, and having visible muscle nearby also dissuaded demons. So she’d effectively gained a bouncer, a good friend, and a portion of the rent covered in the bargain.

The city rang with cold stone and concrete and steel, but she heard birdsong here as well as home, she kept grass and earth in her shop and within walking distance, and she had easy access to the dead. She wasn’t completely cut off, and the dark and light magic that threaded like lightning through each lodestone, cornerstone and headstone charged her almost as well as climbing trees, digging for earthworms by the pond bank, and cultivating her garden and greenhouse rows.

Because of Meridian’s later nights and her most popular clientele’s sleep schedule, she kept the shop open until nine in the evening—sometimes later, if she was working with a historically good customer on something custom.

Tonight, however, was relatively quiet. Clive had left his station to package dried herbs while she tended her indoor gardens ensconced under sun lamps on the other side of the room from the weapons. After she turned the sign to ‘Closed’, Clive held up an Indian food menu, which meant they’d have dinner together tonight instead of alone. She smiled, pointed to her favorites that he already knew then vacuumed the shop while he left out back to pick up the food.

It wasn’t the most glamorous job in the world, and she and Clive didn’t speak as much as they used to, especially back when they’d met each other through his stepbrother, a hunter.

More adjacent to her world than part of it back then, Clive had taken to her immediately, intrigued as soon as he saw her under the stained-glass lamps hanging above the counter. He’d said she looked like an angel, the golden and colored lights caught like fireflies in the halo of her curly hair and glittering in her dark brown eyes. His stepbrother had replied that she was no angel, and she’d concurred. Despite the warning in the hunter’s voice, Clive had slipped her his number and hadn’t had much contact with his stepbrother since. As far as that hunter was concerned, Clive had stepped over to the other side. Clive, however, could better tell the difference between what demons did and what she was. Magic flowed through her veins and seeped out of her skin, as incense seeped in, but it wasn’t the same kind of magic as demons, any more than that of angels.

Violet checked the locks and wards, then headed upstairs to their shared living area, arranging the small coffee table with utensils and glasses. She started that evening’s wine without him as she listened to her uncle’s record collection and let the coil of her magic unwind, draping over her shoulders and curling through her hair like little serpents. Her magic never completely left her, but it needed to relax as much as she did. She wondered if she could convince Clive to use those well-worked muscles on her shoulders and back tonight—and maybe more, although she’d been sleeping solo for more months than she was used to since leaving home.

Clive re-entered through the back, set the security alarm—although her wards were more effective than any security system—and trod up the stairs with new smells much less familiar to her nose-blind senses and therefore welcome.

He kissed her hair as he set the bags on the coffee table. “So, how was your day?”

“Oh, you know, same shit. Wine?”

“I’ll get it.”

She unpacked everything and set out plates. Then she put another Billie Holliday in the player. She’d made no secret about the fact that she didn’t like most technology. The security system was a requirement from their leasing company, but she’d never had a television, depended on an older code-based cashier machine, and merely tolerated telephones. She’d been pulled into the smartphone era kicking and screaming and ordered from her vendors online by necessity but refused to put her own store online, although Clive had offered to be in charge of it. One of these days, she might be desperate enough, but today was not that day.

She and Clive settled on the loveseat and said little, because they’d already shared their whole day. Violet didn’t mind the quiet, and Clive seemed preoccupied as he ate. They finished with mango lassis, Violet reading a novel and Clive staring into nothing with whatever distracted him these nights. When he was done, he rested back on the cushion and rubbed at his face and eyes, stretching his back in the opposite direction he hunched during his work.

As much as she wanted him to give her the massage, she set down her book to crawl over and ease his fingers from where they dug at his eye sockets. She rubbed his temples, over his forehead, until his hands fell away from his face entirely and rested slack in his lap. She inhaled the mixed bouquet of garam masala with the spiciness of infused incense through the apartment and used the power of both to warm her fingers. If he wouldn’t take the tea, maybe she could help him sleep in other ways.

Violet moved the massage to his scalp, lightly scratching through his feathery hair with her nails, then over the base of his skull, then down to the knotted muscles of his neck and shoulders. He groaned in a way that curled like candle smoke in her lower abdomen. When she pressed a kiss to his temple—feverish from her fingers—he leaned against it, then lifted his head to meet her lips, though he kept his eyes closed.

They weren’t exactly a couple and never had been, unless Violet just hadn’t known otherwise. They might have dated or might have just gone out. They’d had sex plenty of times, but neither of them discussed it, as though that would solidify the ghost of what was between them into something less mysterious and ethereal. Sometimes they fucked and sometimes they didn’t, sometimes they went weeks without being seen together outside the apartment.

And now it had been over two months since they’d even kissed, and Violet hadn’t known how thirsty she was until she drank from him. The whole point of whatever they were was that they’d never be alone when they didn’t want to be, that they’d always have a friend or a lover or a partner on the other side of a wall or right next to them if they needed. But although their daily routine hadn’t changed, she’d felt so alone at night. She didn’t think she was supposed to, not in Meridian, which fairly seethed with ghosts and monsters and everything in between, and where someone or something was always watching. So why did she feel so unseen?

She’d just eaten, yet below her stomach, how she hungered. She framed his face between her hands, sending whispers of wish and suggestion, not to manipulate but because it was easier to make him feel what she wanted than to say it. And she was, in the end, a witch. If he’d wanted just a woman, he wouldn’t have moved in with her.

He gathered her in his arms as she climbed over his legs, but although he was hard against her when she straddled him, he drank less and less from her, his kisses more passive, and his hands too gentle on her, as though running over the same paths again and again to only mimic desire. He wasn’t there with her.

Violet sighed and sat back on his thighs.

“I’m sorry.” Clive rested his head back on the cushions. “I want to. I’m just tired. The magic can help with a headache, but…”

“I’ll put the tea on your nightstand this time,” Violet said. “If you drink it with a straw, you barely have to taste it.”

He managed a weary smile, kissed her back when she kissed him, but it wasn’t the kiss of a lover.

As she climbed off him, they might as well have been on different sides of the same mountain on the loveseat. She didn’t like it. Even during previous dry spells, they’d had companionship. Without the benefits, they’d still been friends. But every night he felt farther and farther away, and she didn’t know what she was doing wrong.

Other men—good and evil—wanted her, for all kinds of reasons. She didn’t know why the one she needed didn’t want her anymore. But she couldn’t say anything now, because they hadn’t said anything from the start, and she knew better than to hold too hard, or else what was already slipping through her fingers wouldn’t be there anymore at all. Whatever distracted him, he’d tell her about it in his own time, or he’d resolve it on his own.

They’d promised each other nothing. She couldn’t expect more than his portion of the rent and what she employed him for, and he could leave at any time, although she dared him to find a better deal so close to the historic downtown, a stone’s throw from the best of Meridian.

She made the chamomile and catnip tea and stirred turmeric, honey, cardamom and cream in with the straw. Then she laced it with an under-breath chant, “May slumber strike soon and swiftly and as gentle as the stroke of a feather.”

Violet brought the drink to his nightstand, as promised, then made one of her own, without the catnip or chant. She stopped the record player, which left the apartment too quiet while the two inhabitants knocked about with their evening rituals.

She considered leaving the loneliness of her own home and going to one of the clubs. She was as untouchable there as in her store, but any antagonism toward her could be its own deterrent. It had an energy effect on the people around her, whether they knew why or not. She thought about visiting Cemetery Grove to commune with the graveyards, although the stone angels there refused to speak to her. Or maybe she could bring herself into the twentieth century only a few years too late and go see a movie.

Anything she thought of made her more exhausted than she already was, despite the nervous, horny energy she’d yet to exorcise.

After Clive finished in the bathroom, she took a long, hot shower, then lotioned herself slowly to rub against the muscles that he hadn’t. She wasn’t sure when she’d started to ache like this, joint and bone deep, untouchable by herb or incantation. Maybe there was a storm coming. Maybe she was more upset than she’d thought.

Or maybe it was just that she was older now—although far from old—and with wisdom came pain. She’d consult her grandmother’s grimoire in the morning. If nothing else, Ethel Panabaker was no slouch when it came to her remedies, for anything from the sudden onset of a cold to the most violent heartbreak, sour stomach to lingering grief. Violet modeled her own grimoire on her grandmother’s, wished she’d known her longer in life so she could seek advice more directly than through fading scribbles.

Violet uncapped her hair, then wrapped it up before taking the rest of her tea into her room, where she read until she couldn’t keep her eyes open. Clive had already closed his bedroom door. He might as well have locked, bolted, and sealed himself away.

She needed to go to his door. She needed to knock. They needed to talk. It needed to happen, and soon. She needed to ask if their arrangement was no longer adequate, if there was anything she could do, or if what had brought them together had since frayed away, like a boat untethered. She needed to know if he still loved her as a friend, as something more. She needed to know if he wanted out, if he wanted to leave as her lover, as her friend, as her coworker. It would hurt to cut ties, but she hurt more not knowing whether she should reel him in or set him loose. It was time for a change, instead of this constant holding pattern, like a haunting—ghost ships passing in circles. Boundaries encouraged healthy growth, but once a plant outgrew its container, those borders could suffocate.

Violet reached up to stroke the shoots of the spider plant hanging above her bed as though to ask it what she should do, but plants didn’t concern themselves with the doings of people, as long as the plants were fed, watered, and put in a place to soak up sun.

She tucked her book back in its nightstand drawer and switched off the lamp, sighing.

Just as she started drifting to sleep, she jolted awake as though falling.

At first, she didn’t know what had brought her back, but then the creaking of mattress springs through the layers of dry wall between her and Clive’s bed grounded her. Not the quick series of squeaks that meant he was restless in his inability to fall asleep, but the kind that meant he was either with someone or engaging in particularly enthusiastic masturbation.

Either one hurt her from chest to fingertips, because she’d been right there, and he’d told her he was tired. She hadn’t heard any of the door alarms go off, any floorboard creaks on the way up the stairs. So he would rather jerk himself off than fuck her.

She was a goddamn folk witch of the Panabaker and Corinth lines, and even those who hated her watched the way her breasts moved under her dress when she chose not to wear a bra during summer, which in Texas lasted well more than half the year. Her body was wanted, whether whole or in parts, yet she was sexually frustrated in her bed while the man she’d thought still wanted her was roughly rubbing one off instead of knocking on her door.

Over and under the skin, her flesh tingled. She slipped her fingers beneath her sleep shirt to stroke over her abdomen but still resisted sliding her hand down. Her magic roiled inside her so deliciously that she would rather have someone to share it with.

Violet sighed, considering whether she should turn over and cover her head with the pillow to muffle the slow rise of his moans. It wasn’t like he was going to take much longer, not at that pace and with that kind of insistence.

Instead, she released the pillow and raised herself up on her knees. She pulled her T-shirt over her head, leaving herself only in her underwear in the cool, air-conditioned room.

Then she lowered herself back down to sit between her heels, and she listened. Felt the vibration of the bed springs through her fingers. Found his rhythm. Imagined herself over him, imagined him inside her, imagined she was the one making him moan like that, imagined he was stroking over her instead of himself, imagined that when she shifted her hips up and down over nothing that she was taking him in. She rocked in her bed to the beat of his, biting her lip as her bed springs started to creak in time.

He wouldn’t notice the sound, but maybe, just maybe, he would feel the tendrils of her magic within him. Arousal sang inside her, opened her like ferns unfurling toward the sun. The things she would do to have him beneath her. She’d knock his hands away from his cock and swallow him bare and straining down her throat, let him hold her head down. She’d moan and gulp and swallow and swallow until he knocked his head against the headboard and pushed up into her tightening mouth and let loose that sound, that one right there he made because he thought she was already asleep and couldn’t hear him come without her.

Violet slumped, chin against her chest, turned on but a little nauseated.

Because his moan wasn’t the only one she’d heard.