Elements of Mischief by Tate James
“We just started this business,” George said carefully, glancing at the others. “And frankly, with Charlie in town, it’s hard to get a lot of work.”
“Charlie, the plumber?” I asked, remembering the man I’d spoken to and his reluctant suggestion that I hire these four assholes. “And why’s that? You’re supernatural beings for Christ’s sake, shouldn’t you be blowing him out of the water?”
“Charlie’s Reg’s father,” Shane explained as Reg scowled and crossed his arms over his chest. The motion was somehow sexy as fuck, seeing as how he was tattooed and wearing a tight navy blue wifebeater that clung to his copious muscles. “And his quad is head of the elemental storm in this area.”
“What the fuck is an elemental storm?” I asked, sucking down the rest of my coffee. It gave me a nice, lightheaded feeling that seemed to distract from the distinct soreness between my thighs. And let’s just say—one pipe was a little bit sorer than the other.
“A storm of elementals is like …” Britt started and then snapped her fingers. “A chaos of succubi.”
I just stared at her.
“Not helping,” I whispered, finally relenting and taking a seat on the arm of the couch next to Reg. Even from here, I could smell him. Truthfully? He smelled fucking good, like a rainstorm after a long, hot summer.
“A pack of wolves,” Reg said, giving Britt a look I’d seen a million times. He thought she was stupid. In reality, she was willfully ignorant. Big difference there. “A murder of crows. A herd of cattle. A flock of birds. A lead of foxes. A kindle of kittens.”
“A kindle of kittens,” I said with a chuckle, but then I waved the laughter away. Nope. The ovs were still pumping estrogen into me at astronomical levels, and it was making me go a little loopy. “Right, so a storm is just … your word for a group of elementals?”
“More like a city or a state,” George explained, ever the helpful one. “It’s elemental law that we obey Charlie.”
“So you went into business as his direct competitor?” I asked, trying not to be a snarky bitch but failing miserably. “That makes perfect sense.”
“Charlie won’t let us do anything else,” Reg responded, and I could see that this was a sore spot with him. “This is the only storm-sanctioned way for us to make money, and to be honest, you were our first real client and we turned you into a shimmer. Things aren’t exactly looking up for me and my boys.”
“I … am now jobless,” I began, trying not to get hysterical. “Penniless.” I flung my hand out to indicate Britt. “My best friend is a sequined cocktail dress wearing werewolf and now I have four moneyless bums squatting inside my Gram’s crumbling old house?”
“The toilets work,” Billy supplied, head parked on his fist as he spoke up for the first time. His eyes burned like embers, this orange-brown color that bore right into my soul. Made me want to punch him a little. The leather jacket made me want to punch him a little less.
“This is what you’re telling me?” I asked with a hysterical little laugh.
“Oh, and also,” Reg continued, nodding his head like he’d just simply forgotten this little detail. “You’re now an elemental, too. Spirit, to be exact.”
“You …” I dropped the mug, but it didn’t shatter all dramatically. Actually, it just sort of hit me in the big toe and hurt like a bitch. “You’re telling me … that this is basically Captain fucking Planet?”
“No, that was earth, air, water, fire, and heart, silly,” Britt said, and then her brows went up. “Um, sweetheart …”
I glanced down at my hands and noticed that they’d turned … a very odd purple-black color that was quickly becoming see-through.
I did not stay conscious long enough to figure out what that meant.
“So … fucking Elementals is like asking for an STD?”
That was the very first thing I said when I awoke.
Reg and Shane may not have marked me per se, but they did a whole lot of other things that I wanted undone. Now.
“Not quite how I'd put it, Blossom, but yeah similar …” George's gentle voice accompanied the sudden arrival of his unnaturally bronze face an inch in front of mine. “How are you feeling? You might be a bit light-headed for a while.”
“Blossom?” I scowled at him, not liking all these new nicknames I seemed to be earning from the asshole elementals.
“Yeah,” he grinned, “because you're so pretty, like a freshly opened cherry blossom in spring …” His hand smoothed over my wild blonde hair, which probably looked like I had just been fucked sideways. Which, I guessed, was appropriate.
Pushing George gently aside, I sat up from the floor where I had obviously landed when I fainted … or dematerialized … or whatever the fuck had just happened.
“Okay, so point me in the direction of some magical penicillin because I am not on board with being the pink power ranger here.” Narrowing my eyes at the four broke-ass plumbers staring down at me, I tried really hard to ignore the nagging suspicion that whatever they'd done to me, it was totally irreversible.
“Ohhhh, if Ari doesn't want to be the pink power ranger, could I?” Britt asked, practically bouncing on her toes with excitement as Shane, ever the gentleman, helped me up off the floor. “I look soooo good in pink PVC!”
Billy and Reg both gave my bestie a look that spoke volumes to what they thought of her and I stifled an eye roll at her expense. It wasn't her fault: she genuinely did look great in PVC.
“Here.” Shane passed me my mug of spiked coffee that someone had refilled after my, um …
“Guys, what the shit just happened? I could have sworn my hands disappeared …” I wasn't even sure if I really wanted to hear the answer to this but Britt, the helpful puppy that she was, piped up excitedly.
“OMG girl, it was mental. Your whole body turned this like, really pretty eggplant color and then you just disappeared. One minute you're standing there in all your just-fucked glory, and the next you were gone!” She nodded at me like I had just pulled a rabbit from my ass … which I suppose I sort of had, in a magic show kind of way.
Sitting my ass back down on Gram's sagging sofa, I took a gulp of my fresh coffee then coughed as the whiskey burned my throat.
Jesus, is there even any coffee in here?
“Boys,” I prompted, giving them all a serious death glare, “please tell me where to get the cure for this Elemental STD so that I can go back to being a normal human?”
“A normal human with a giant target painted on her forehead for being an unmarked shimmer, you mean?” Reg smirked, drawing my attention to his lush lips and mesmerizing me for a moment while my brain skipped off to replay him going down on me in the bathroom.
The asshole knew it too, as he dragged his tongue across his lower lip, then winked one clear blue eye at me.
“There is no cure,” Billy responded in a dickish tone of voice, making me want to punch him in the beautiful face. “I can't believe you didn't stop to ask questions before letting two unknown supernatural plumbers pound your drains unprotected.”
“What?” I shrieked. “You told me we didn't need condoms!” Shane and Reg were so lucky they were out of reach or I really would have started throwing punches.
“Oh, sweetie,” Britt sighed, “how often have you heard that line before?”
Billy rolled his burning coal colored eyes and rubbed a hand over his stubbled chin.
“Fuck me, for a chick who's best friends with a slutty rogue werewolf, you're seriously clueless, Arizona Smoke.”
“Do. Not. Slut. Shame,” I snarled the words at the sultry fire elemental, but couldn't really disagree with his assessment. My actions had been firmly motivated by my hungry cunt rather than my common sense.
“Tell her the rest of it, Skeeter.” Billy met my angry gaze with a mocking eyebrow raised, and I got a sinking feeling in my stomach for what 'the rest of it' was going to be.
Shane cleared his throat uncomfortably and Reg leered at me with a look that was pure sex, making
“Sugar, it's sort of one of those things, where the water only runs one way …” He was clearly trying to be tactful and it was making me even more nervous. “It's like, when a pipe gets clogged and the only way to clear it is to force the obstruction through …”
“What Skeeter is trying to say, Blossom,” George interrupted, taking a seat next to me on the couch and casually taking my hand in his, “is that you broke the tap off after turning on the water.”
There was a long pause where no one spoke, but I was officially confused as fuck. These plumbing metaphors were starting to get obscure and this was just not the time for obscurity.
“You're going to have to fuck me and George, too,” Billy clarified with a wicked look in his eye. “Until you do, you're going to have no control over your elemental powers and you'll keep spontaneously turning into your spirit form.”
“Yes, queen! Gang bang for Ari!” Britt screamed. “I'll get you more whiskey girl, you're gonna need it!” She took off back into my kitchen and started clattering around.
Turning to George for confirmation that this was true, my gaze snagged back on his tree of life tattoo. Damn, that was some beautiful ink. I was so glad George seemed to be allergic to wearing shirts while he was in my house.
Snap out of it, Ari, you horny bitch. You have some major leaks to plug right now!
“So, Reg lied then.” I glared at Reg, extracting my hand from George's hold and folding my arms across my chest, pretending to be angry but really just covering up the evidence of my own taps being turned on. Mental note: buy padded bras.
“Lied about what, ST?” he asked, aiming for the picture of innocence and failing miserably. The way he tousled his short blonde hair with his fingers and flashed white teeth in a handsome face, he looked anything but innocent.
“I told you not to mark me. You said we could 'just fuck'. Those were your words, Reg—just fuck.” My body was practically shaking I was so mad, and I wasn't positive half of my ire wasn't directed at myself for being such a gullible twit. “And now here I am, turning fucking invisible …”
I held up a shaking hand and sure enough, it was darkening to purple-black again.
A small, scared whimper slipped from my throat.
“Ari,” Shane started, but I was already backing up and turning away, heading for my purse and the front door like … well, what the hell kind of metaphor is there for a half-invisible woman that's slowly changing color?
Not a whole lot, that's for fucking sure.
“Arizona!” Britt called out, but I was outside and down the steps before she could catch up to me. I flung open the door to my hearse (I know, I'm clichéd as fuck, typical tortured soul driving a death cab) and noticed my neighbor, a woman named Alberta O'Sullivan (also clichéd) going through the massive blue bin that held my glass recyclables.
“Sure are a lot of booze bottles in here,” she said when she caught me staring at her. I knew Alberta because even Gram had had problems with her and she'd been nowhere near as screwed up as I was. She had her shit together. Mine … well, it wasn't overflowing from the toilet onto the floor but it was getting pretty damn close.
I glanced down at my hands and realized that I was still half-purple and almost completely see-through from the neck down.
Alberta didn't seem to notice.
She was more concerned with digging through my glass recyclables than actually looking me in the face.
“Can you please get the hell off my property and go home? Believe it or not, I've got more important shit to worry about today than whether or not you approve of my drinking habits.”
“Rubbish is public property once it's been set at the curb,” she said, and then she mumbled, “Fumblin' Dublin,” in her thick Irish accent, just quiet enough so that she could at least pretend to be whispering.
I narrowed my eyes.
“I know what a fumblin' Dublin is,” I said, crossing my (very see-through) arms over my chest. “I'm not a drunk.”
The lady doth protest too much, methinks, a voice whispered in the back of my mind. Now, if my subconscious was quoting Shakespeare, I knew I was in serious trouble.
“Ari!” Billy called out, clomping down the steps in black work boots and a frown. His gray hair was artfully mussed and a small flame tattoo peeked up just over the edge of his jacket collar. “You can't just run away from this.” He grabbed the driver's side door when I tried to close it and held it with preternatural strength.
The old Irish lady from next door was now fully gaping without any sense of shame.
Fan-fucking-tastic.
“Please remove your”—ridiculously long and sexy—“fingers from my car door,” I said with a slight growl. But damn it. Billy had this musky, charcoal scent to him, like a campfire on a cold night. I just wanted to lean into him and …
No.
No, no, no,
Bad ovaries! Bad uterus! DOWN GIRLS!
“I just need to get some space. This whole thing is making me feel like there are kangaroos loose in the top paddock,” I said and Billy cocked an eyebrow.
“I have no idea what that means,” he told me, his voice this lazy West Coast purr that made me think of my time at Uni in Santa Cruz. Go Banana Slugs! Seriously, though. He sounded like the boys I went to college with. And I liked that. A lot. It made me feel young and carefree … and like my body wasn't fading and morphing and twisting without giving two fucks how I felt about it.
Oh, and also, there was still an old Irish lady staring at me and Billy. Fortunately for me, she was looking mostly at Billy.
“But you can't run, Arizona,” he finished finally, sighing and raking his fingers through his charcoal gray hair. For a second there—just a split second—he looked like he might actually say something genuine, something serious that I could hold onto, cling to in all of this chaos.
But like Leonardo DiCaprio's character, Jack, in Titanic … I guess that floating door was just not big enough for the both of us.
“Besides, you don't want to run from this, do you?”
“You don't know what the fuck I want, dickweed.” I slammed the door shut on his fingers, hit the locks, and peeled out of the driveway whilst flipping off a ninety-five year old woman.
Yep.
Today was already lookin' to be a fun one.
I made it about … two blocks before I reversed, called Britt from my cell, and had her tag along for protection purposes. After all, I was a lot less keen about getting ripped apart by a succubus than I was having Britt along to nag and make fun of me all day.
“So, when are you leaving?” I asked casually, even though in my heart of hearts, I didn't really want her to go. Britt lived in Montana and worked—get ready for it—as an environmental scientist who helped balance the ecology of Yellowstone National Park with the massive influx of tourists.
Yeah, I didn't get it either.
Or wait … werewolf … environmental scientist. Okay, wow, my best friend was starting to make a whole lot more sense now. I always wondered how she survived in Middle of Butt-fuck Nowhere, USA.
Wolf stuff …
“Are you part of a pack?” I asked, and then wondered if that was rude. Eh. Britt didn't much care if she was rude to me ten, twenty, or two hundred times in a single day. Might as well just go all-out and ask.
But all of a sudden, my best friend, the most confident woman in the entire world, clammed up like a deep-sea crustacean and glanced sharply away from me.
“I was,” she said, and the gentle melancholy of her voice gave me the chills. In a distant sort of way, it reminded me of a wolf's howl, that soft, sad sound that echoes through the forest at night, a desperate whimper for company, contact, for family. “But now,” she said, sucking in a sudden, sharp breath, “I'm moving in with you!”
I almost crashed the car.
And not just because of Britt's statement (although th
“Oh, shit,” I said, but when I tried to put the pedal to the metal, the engine in the old hearse coughed and sputtered like the bodies it had used to transport (I'm morbid as fuck, I get it). “Britt,” I said softly, but she was already growling low and deep in her throat.
But I'd already sort of figured it out.
I was an idiot.
Clearly, succubi (aren't the dude ones incubi?) didn't like me.
I should've just stayed home and let Billy light me up.
“Stay here, Ari,” Britt snarled, her teeth already elongating and her cheeks sprouting fur, “I've got this.”
She threw open the passenger side door and shifted into her wolf form while in midair—the pink heels fell off, but the crop top and booty shorts stayed. It should've been funny, watching my best friend leap toward a stark naked man with enormous bat wings, furry wolf butt cheeks hanging out of her shorts, but in my current state, all it did was make me anxious.
Maybe because I knew I'd fucked up? Yeah, that was probably it. I should've stayed at home with the crazy supernatural plumbers.
Wide-eyed, I watched from behind my steering wheel as Britt sunk her gleaming fangs into the naked man's arm. With a violent snarl, he turned his death glare to the rabid wolf hanging from his limb, shaking her loose with a spatter of blood across the pavement. Fortunately, we were still in suburbia so there weren't a ton of people around, but I could only wonder what the hell would happen if one of the neighbors called the police.
Britt stood up, shaking her charcoal and ash gray coat out before circling the naked weirdo in a low crouch, looking for an opening. Seeing as she'd taken out the woman in the alleyway without much pomp and circumstance, I just sort of figured she had this in the bag, too.
The naked incubi simply stood and watched, blood dripping from the wound in his arm, as he waited for Britt to make her next move. When she did, launching herself at him and going for the throat, he turned at the last minute and swatted her with one of the large, leathery bat wings decorating his back.