Jane The Nymph: The Boxed Set (The Circle Series Book 2) Read online

  The man smiled at her. A warm and genuine smile that reached his eyes. “Come on,” he said, getting up and leading Jane out of the office. The man showed her to the front of the dive bar. It was shitty but cozy - if the two could exist in the same space - and clearly only for the magically inclined. There wasn’t a single normal person in the whole place. He motioned to an empty stool at the bar. “Please, have a seat.”

  Jane did so and eyed the man as he went behind the bar. He grabbed a bowl of peanuts and a soda and set them in front of her. “We started on the wrong foot. That’s my fault,” he said and looked in Jake’s direction. “I’ve worked hard and won the respect of all the practitioners in The Circle. I’m fair and diplomatic, but it’s been a long time since I’ve had to prove that. We don’t get many newcomers. I’d like the chance to earn your trust as well, Jane.” He held out his large, rough hand.

  Jane looked at it and popped two peanuts in her mouth.

  He let his hand fall to his side.

  “My name is Amari Faa. This is my bar, The Laughing Cat, and I’m the arbiter for the practitioners of The Circle. Can I get you some lunch? A sandwich perhaps?”

  Jane stared at him, carefully chewing her peanuts.

  The man sighed. “Jane, we have rules. You need to follow them for your own protection.”

  “Is that so? Because the way I see it, the only thing I need protection from is the goon you sent to drag me here. I’m doing fine all on my own.

  “Are you?”

  Jane was silent. She couldn’t tell him, she wouldn’t.

  “Judging from your, need for energy pulls and resistance to my magic, you’re at least partly nymph.”

  Jane felt Amari’s magic, and he was right, it didn’t affect her. Every energetic olive branch he’d extended bounced off her.

  “You’re the first we’ve had here,” he continued, leaning into the bar well. “I know someone who’d be very interested in how you shield yourself from nons.”

  “Nons?”

  Finally, the man had wedged a tiny shim into her facade. “Non-practitioners. We have an issue with enthrallment here,” he said simply.

  Jane didn’t know what that meant. She didn’t care, it couldn’t be worse than what she’d escaped.

  “If you get too close, they’ll eventually have control over your abilities—”

  “Look, I don’t care about whatever problems this shit hole town has, OK? I don’t care about you or your weird diplomacy, or any of it, got it? I do exactly what I need to survive.” Jane said and popped another peanut in her mouth.

  The man hardened - face, posture, even the energy Jane read from him changed. “Have it your way, Jane the Nymph. Do what you need to survive, but you will follow the rules. No more feeding in public. And no more sex in public. Am I clear?”

  “Perfectly,” Jane said and rose out of the barstool.

  “This is your only warning, Jane. One false move and you will be removed from the city.”

  Jane flipped him off and left the bar.

  “Who the hell does he think he is? Remove me from the city? And what the fuck kind of name is The Laughing Cat anyway?” Jane mumbled to herself as she left the building.

  “It’s an Alice in Wonderland reference,” said Jake who leaned against the exterior wall. “If you can find your way into this bar, you’re definitely one of the weird ones.”

  She’d been so angry at the man and his stupid rules, Jane didn’t notice her tattoo slithering around her arm - an energy warning.

  Shifters had a lot of fucking energy.

  “I wasn’t talking to you,” Jane said and marched passed him. Jake sidled up next to her and matched her stride. “Leave me alone,” she warned, aiming her palm at him. Jane’s tattoo writhed around her arm, working its way down to her elbow.

  Jake smiled. “I’m supposed to make sure you get home safe. And put that down before you hurt someone.” He brushed her hand away as if casually swatting a fly.

  “I can make it fine on my own,” Jane said and quickened her pace.

  “I know. But I still have to do my job.”

  The tattoo, now fully enraged by Jade’s lack of action at such a delicious well of energy, spun in circles around her wrist. She crossed her arms, hiding her wrist, and hoped Jake wouldn’t notice.

  “He’s a good leader, ya know. He does right by us.” Jake said as they stopped at an intersection.

  Jane said nothing.

  “But you do have to watch out for the nons, they like to drain magical energy in these parts.”

  That piqued Jane’s curiosity. “What do you mean?” she asked as they crossed the street.

  “I don’t know exactly how it works. But it’s like they try to get their magic through us. Just be careful is all I’m saying.”

  Jane knew it wouldn’t be a problem for her. It was interesting, but the only thing she had to worry about was feeding before shit got out of control.

  She’d only let that happen once. It wasn’t pretty.

  When they reached the entrance to the cramped studio Jane rented, she checked her own well. It was still three-quarters full from the empath she had earlier in the week. But a top off had never hurt.

  “Wanna come in?” she asked and reached to touch Jake’s skin to lay on her coercive energy.

  Jake, flinched away from her. “I can’t do that,” the shifter said quietly.

  Jane met the shifter’s amber wolf-eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said to the sadness she saw within them.

  He nodded once and walked away.

  Only one thing puts sadness like that in a wolf shifters eyes.

  He’d just lost his mate.

  3

  Jane shook where she stood, assimilating the energy she’d siphoned from the random fae she’d just fucked. He didn’t notice and left her studio without so much as a “can I call you?”. Which was fine by Jane. The last thing she needed was racking up heartbroken men that wouldn’t leave her alone.

  It had been two weeks since she’d fed off that empath behind the coffee shop, which was three days longer than comfortable. Her tattoo had been hula-hooping her wrist for so long that Jane had resorted to wearing a leather cuff to hide it.

  Sinking into her recliner, the only piece of furniture she owned, aside from her bed. It was also the only thing that would fit in her basement studio. Jane tried to think of a better way to get the energy she needed. The guy that just left only filled her about a quarter of the way. Jane figured that would last a few hours.

  She thought about finding that shifter from the bar but dismissed the idea just as it crossed her mind. He was clearly in too much pain to have her without serious coercion. And Jane wasn’t about that.

  She also had to figure out a different way of getting what she needed without taking strangers to her place. Jane could handle herself if need be, but she didn’t like the prospect of having hundreds of men know where she lived. It was the whole reason she hunted at work, so she could use the alley.

  She just hadn’t known it was monitored by a security camera.

  “Fuck,” said Jane to herself and rose from her recliner. She didn’t know how, but she was going to figure it out. She’d die of energy starvation before she ever went back to where she’d come from.

  She knew Amari, the man behind the desk, was serious. She didn’t want to risk getting caught and getting thrown out of The Circle.

  Because Jane had a hunch that the key to freeing herself from her curse was in unlocking the wild magic in the center of the city.

  The circle itself.

  She needed to be here.

  Jane took a quick shower and skipped washing her short purple hair. She’d paid a lot of money she didn’t have for the custom multi-shaded dye job and wasn’t about to watch it wash down the drain. Now she was ready for her shift at the coffee shop.

  The khaki uniform shirt didn’t fit her petite build, which worked out because though it was short sleeved, it still covered her stylized snake ta
ttoo. That is, it did when the tattoo stayed put on her upper arm.

  She didn’t need people asking her questions about it all day long. Jane grabbed the keys to her studio, the lunch she’d made for herself, shoved her wallet in her back pocket, and left for work.

  “Fuck,” she said as she opened her door to find Jake waiting on the stoop of the building.

  “We need to talk,” he said.

  “I don’t have time for you, I have to get to work.”

  “I’ll walk with you.” Jake stepped aside to let Jane pass and the two walked to the intersection. Jane’s tattoo danced her wrist, begging for the energy Jake housed.

  “What do you want?” asked Jane at the next intersection when Jake still hadn’t said anything.

  “Amari has me keeping an eye on you.”

  “OK.” That wasn’t news to Jane. She’d seen him tailing her the past week. She knew why he was watching her too.

  “To make sure you follow the rules.”

  Jane wondered if the shifter was as dumb as he seemed.

  “You shouldn’t bring so many men home.”

  Jane said nothing. She wasn’t about to have a feminist debate with a shifter, whose pack probably kept women subservient.

  “Clearly you’re entitled to fuck as many men as you like, it’s your pussy after all. I just worry that one of those men you send out will come back asking for more than you want to give.”

  Jane laughed, a high musical sound that made Jake smile. “That was the last thing I expected you to say, Jake. But you’re right, I’m worried about that too.”

  “There’s a woman who might be able to help you.” Jake handed Jane a business card. “Tell her I sent you,” he said and left her at the intersection.

  “You’re late,” said Frankie, Jane’s manager as she walked into the employee break room to grab her company issued visor and name tag.

  “I know,” said Jane. “Some creep stopped me on the street and wouldn’t leave me alone.”

  Frankie made a tsk noise with her tongue. Frankie was short for Francesca, and the middle-aged woman had no tolerance for tardiness. But what got her engines going more than being late was catcalling and street harassment. Jane used it to her favor. “Where is he? Is he still out there?” Frankie left to go look for the imaginary man.

  Jane grabbed the sweatband from her locker and put it around her wrist. They weren’t allowed to wear jewelry, so she couldn’t cover up the tattoo with her cuff. But she could pass off the sweatband as a sports wrap of some kind.

  Three hours and half a shift later, Jane was not doing well. The second time Jane mouthed off at a customer, Frankie sent Jane to the bar to make the orders. Her energy well was nearly empty which not only made her swirling tattoo angry, it also made Jane a very cranky nymph.

  “Fuck! Motherfucking fuck!” Jane yelled loud enough for customers to hear when she bumped the steam wand and spilled boiling milk foam on her hand.

  Frankie, who waited on the customers Jane wasn’t able to tolerate, excused herself from the teenage girl about to order a frappuccino.

  “Are you OK?” Frankie looked at the burn on the back of Jane’s hand. It was already starting to blister. “Do you want to file and incident report?” Jane shook her head. “OK, do you want to go home?” Jane nodded. “That’s fine. Get yourself together, I’ll call in George to cover the rest of your shift.”

  “Thanks,” Jane said and got out of that coffee shop as fast as she could.

  The burn wasn’t that bad. The void in Jane’s magical well was so distracting, so painful, Jane wouldn’t have noticed if the burn had seared off her flesh entirely. But she knew Frankie would send her home. She was a softy like that. And while Jane needed the money, which is why she hadn’t called out of her shift in the first place, she needed to feed more.

  She crossed one of the spokes of the traffic circle.

  “Fuck it,” said Jane and headed for the center of the circle.

  4

  Jane wasn’t born a nymph. She was born a green witch and she aimed herself at the center of the traffic circle, hoping she’d be able to finally free herself of the magic that locked her soul with another’s. Jane waited for a lull in traffic and sprinted across the street to the middle of the grassy easement that the town was named for.

  “We meet again,” Jane said to the air. No one was around because no one crossed a spoke of the circle to go to the middle; they crossed one spoke to get to another. The tattoo whirled on her wrist, bleeding the colors into a dull reddish smear. The circle, and the potential freedom it offered excited Jane’s tattoo. It didn’t want to be there any more than Jane wanted it spinning around her wrist.

  Jane sat in the center of the grassy circle. The tiny bit of wild magic seeping through the ancient seal on the convergence thrummed around her, wrapping her in tingly sheets of pale golden shimmers. On her first day in The Circle, she’d come to this exact spot hoping the wild magic contained in the center of town would break the magic that kept her enslaved.

  It hadn’t worked that time. And it wouldn’t work this time.

  But Jane tried. She reached into her chi, past the well of the nymph, and tried to feel for her own green magic. But with disuse comes deterioration, and she found her own magic thin and hollow, barely a thread of what it had been.

  The first time she was here she tried breaking the ancient seal by using the nymph within her to siphon it away. She would fail this time because only one thing would break the seal, and while Jane was an important piece, she couldn’t do it alone.

  Jane called on all her old talismans, not the physical kind, the kind that nature provided. The kind that green witches love. She drew power from the trees, from the water, and the air itself.

  “OK,” Jane said, building her magic within. “Let’s go.” Jane tilted her head back and let her and the nymph’s magic out at once. Her delicate green magic and the nymph’s greedy musical magic collided with the ancient seal.

  Any nons passing by that happen to notice would see a tiny purpled haired girl who might be meditating. Not that they could see beyond the trees and shrubbery that surrounded the easement.

  “Fuck!” Jane said as the magical dust settled, so to speak.

  The spell had failed and the nymph’s well was nearly empty, the whizzing around her wrist told her she only had moments to give the nymph something, anything before all hell broke loose.

  If only that fucking empath were around, thought Jane. She scanned the circle and its spokes for any pedestrians who had energy to spare. Regular people, or as they say here, nons wouldn’t do, they barely had enough energy to go to their boring jobs each day. She needed a shifter or a vamp - they were always surprised when she took from them as they were taking from her - or another empath.

  At midday most shifters would still be asleep, resting from their nightly runs. And the only vampires that could brave the harshest rays of high noon would be the oldest. The unfuckwithable ones.

  Jane spotted the grinning signage of The Laughing Cat, the bar that served only practitioners. She was running out of time. She needed to feed before bad shit happened, but she didn’t want to do it in the bar owned by the man that threatened to kick her out of the city.

  And then she saw him. Tall and lanky, his movements clearly preternatural. Graceful and fluid, he crossed a spoke of the traffic circle and Jane sprinted across the grassy inner circle to meet him.

  “Please,” she said, running into his path.

  The vamp looked at her, not missing the tattoo whirring around her wrist. Jane, so desperate to feed, had forgotten to hide the telltale sign of ownership. “You belong to another.” His pale violet eyes giving away not only his age but that she’d intrigued him.

  “I belong to no one,” said Jane. “This was forced on me, against my will, and I aim to break the magic that holds it.”

  “That is impossible.”

  “Please,” repeated Jane. “I need to feed, I’m offering an equal trade.”
She knew the nymph’s coercion tricks would never work on such an old one. Jane had to get the vamp to agree to this on his own.

  “You’re lucky I have a soft spot for blood nymphs,” the old one said.

  The oldest of the old ones, the most ancient vampires still used the Nymph’s Curse to populate their feeding conclaves. Trapped by the need for sexual energy, the women under the curse were like cattle to the vampire who owned them - captive feeding stock.

  It’s what Jane had escaped.

  “That you were strong enough to break free of subservience is very intriguing,” said the vamp in a droning monotone.

  Jane shook where she stood. Bad things were about to happen. “Please!”

  “Not here,” said the vamp and he whisked her into the closest alley so fast the security footage would show them disappearing.

  It would also show the two practitioners reappearing in the alley half a block away to have the most violent, satisfying, magically instigated sex ever caught on camera.

  Jane shook so hard when they reached the alley, her teeth chattered. “Please,” she said again. “You know you do not want to deal with what’s about to happen. We’re kept well-fed, for this very reason. Now FEED ME!”

  5

  The old one spun Jane’s tiny frame around to face the brick wall. “Please, hurry,” Jane whispered, still shaking and about to turn into a very, very bad thing. The vamp undid his pants, Jane unbuttoned hers and slid them down her narrow hips. Jane was nearly two feet shorter than the vampire, and the old one lifted her off the ground by her hips.

  She braced two palms against the brick wall while the vamp held her off the ground. The vampire sank his teeth into the back of her arm as he entered her. Jane screamed with the release of so much magic into her chi. A vampire’s sexual energy was the strongest of all. She didn’t have to wait for him to climax to siphon from him, every stroke pleased the nymph within her, filling the well to capacity.

  Jane pushed herself against the vamp, riding him as best she could, given her position. She sank deeper onto his hardness as the tingling magic of his bite spread through her body. It ramped up her desire, even more than the nymph did, turning Jane into a wild thing. She threw herself backward into the vamps torso and writhed against him.