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MONSTER SHORT STORIES
Sinful Attraction
The Sky Below
Maeonia
Between Heaven and Earth
THE SEA KING AND THE LIBRARIAN
TRISH HEINRICH
All Tandy wanted was a quiet week at her aunt's beach house. Drink a little wine, do some spell work and forget that her life was in shambles. But no, she just had to go and summon a Sea King.
Now he claims that she's his queen and that she's destined to live with him under the sea and spend her days being pleasured by him in every way imaginable.
Taking the plunge maybe an extreme response to a midlife crisis, but Tandy has a feeling this is more than just a fling. This could be what she's been looking for her whole life.
CW's include: references to abusive relationships in the past.
It'sa truth universal that merlot and spell casting do not go well together.
Ask me how I know.
And yet, here I was, laying in my soft bed, mouth dry as cotton, head feeling like the drum set for Animal and my spirit aching from the depletion of energy that casting a major spell produces. I refused to open my eyes because I knew the second I did, I'd throw up. So maybe if I just laid here, the hangover would just dissipate.
Yeah, right but I'm still not moving. I refuse.
Soft air cascaded over me from the open window in the bedroom, bringing a bracing aroma off the ocean. Seagulls cried in the distance, punctuating the crash of waves that was actually the only pleasant thing about this morning.
I'd come out to my aunt's beach cottage straight from the reading of her will two days ago. The knowledge that the one person in my family who had given two shits about me was now gone caused a burning ache to erupt from my chest, and tears squeezed past my closed lids. She and I had been the only ones gifted with magic, and my mother, sisters and brothers had always been salty about it.
Like it was something I could help.
She'd been well off, not rich but comfortable. I think my mom expected to get some of the goods being the older sister but the only things she and my siblings had been left were some albums by bands no one had ever heard of, a set of Hummel figurines, which were likely cursed, and a winery in southern Oregon that had never produced a single bottle of drinkable wine.
I'd never seen a more interesting 'fuck you' in a will in my life.
My family flipped out when the lawyer announced what I got, though I'd have given every single item, every red cent, every square footage of property back if it meant I could've kept my aunt. She'd left me this house, her other cottage in Salem (yes, that one), and her Witches' Safe.
I'd been going through the safe when I found a beautiful amulet on a gold chain. It was a huge stone the size of an egg. The blue color had changed and moved like water in the sunlight and draped over the top was the image of a wave and a trident in gorgeous gold filigree. The box it was in contained a note about where in her journal to look for details.
It got fuzzy after that because I'm pretty sure I'd started my second bottle of wine, but I had a memory of finding the spell and casting it for some reason.
Was I crying? Why do I feel like I did something really dumb? Crap, I'm gonna have to get up, aren't I?
I cracked open an eye and groaned.
"Stupid sunlight...in the stupid sky...with stupid sea breeze...from the stupid ocean."
I tried to move and the nausea hit me like a Mack truck.
"Oh, shit."
It was only six feet to the en suite, but it was almost too far. I barfed up everything but the kitchen sink, though it felt like that came up too by the time I was done. I slumped against the claw foot tub, the cool porcelain heavenly against my aching head. It wasn't until the world had stopped its incessant spinning that I realized something else ached besides the obvious parts.
It was a place that hadn't had a reason to ache since the douche canoe (may he never get an erection again and die of dysentery) had decided that I was too old for him and served me with divorce papers. He was currently dating someone who wasn't alive until the beginning of this century and lamenting how his hair loss treatments were actually making more hair fall out. I won't say I hexed him technically but....
