“Ow?!” I rubbed my nose, then checked my phone to make sure I hadn’t accidently dialed Sri Lanka. “If I had a dollar for every time I’ve dropped this thing on my face, I could afford a rhinoplasty.”
“Your nose is fine. Come on! Talk to me. Dish all this crazy shit.” Katie was so excited, burrowing in under the covers, she ended up punching herself in the boob.
“Ow ow ow! My boobie!”
I busted out in laughter. That hard, deep kind of laugh that purges all a person’s ills. “God, I missed you, Katie. I’m so glad you came.”
“Easy choice. I get to hang with you, and cream over all the beautiful greenness of Ireland! Hey! We could still go camping! It’s a win-win-win.”
I gave Katie a tight hug. “It feels so good to hug you again.”
“Ordinarily I’d joke about you being seriously touch-starved. But...”
“But what?”
“What ‘butt’ indeed. Dish, girl. Which one did you sample first?”
“Get your mind out of the gutter.”
“Let me guess!” She frowned in phony concentration. “Aah, I know. Did Magic Guy show you his magic tricks? Or better yet, his magic wand?”
I gave her the stink eye, which she completely dismissed with a Grade A huff of disbelief. “Well? Why not?”
My glare burned now, but I was dying to spill.
“I know you’re dying to spill, Cupcake.”
I tried to hold back, but my mouth took off at a gallop. “Katie... oh my god. I’m so cross-eyed horny I can’t stand it anymore.”
“Really? ...Duuh.”
“I get these... I don’t know. Daydreams? Except much more... vivid, I guess. Like total virtual reality.”
Katie suddenly looked serious. “Like visions.”
“Yes! That’s it, like that.”
She chewed on that for a while. “Same guy, or...?”
“All of them.” My face was scarlet, but I couldn’t deny it anymore.
“Mmmmm. Ala carte? Or the whole buffet?”
I puzzled a second, then got it. “Wait. You think I’d... all four at once?”
“Honey, it’s your fantasy,” she winked. “But no. I just mean, are you hot for one bull moose in particular?”
Katie was always awfully good at asking questions that made me blush. This one could win a trophy. “I... oh, they’re all...” I waved my hand rapidly in front of my face to signify “Hot. So hot I could ooze at fifty yards.”
“Praise Jesus.”
“I just want them so bad. Not just one taste. I want to bang my way through all of them. Bam, bam, bam, bam. Then start all over again.”
“Oooh. I feel the burn.” She scooted closer. “So? Why hold back?”
“I only just got here.”
“So?” she said with a wicked smile.
“Despite just meeting them, I don’t want to ... pick one.”
“I don’t think you’ll have to. They’ll all try. Just say yes to one.”
“What if I get with one, and then he gets all... monogamous?”
“Not my cuppa. But it works for many, I hear.”
“It can’t work here. I couldn’t... Oh, god, even if I swear to be faithful to one of them... I just know I couldn’t. I’ll for sure jump the bones of every damn one of them, first chance I get. It’s like I’m... under a spell, or something.”
“A spell?” Now Katie mimicked my fast fanning the face gesture. “Horny and romantic. Keep talking, you shameless hussy.”
“So, it doesn’t matter which one I...”
“Ravish?” she offered.
“Whatever, it’s still fuck one, piss three off.”
“Then make all four happy.”
“And drive all four crazy. Then what? Imagine those guys punching each other out? Look at them.”
“Look? I’d buy ringside seats for that cage match.”
“I’m serious. Somebody would get killed.”
I thought Katie would give me a pish-posh over that. But again, she got that serious look. Why do I feel like she knows way more that she could? And what is it about visions... and murder... that flips on Katie’s serious switch?
She was shaking her head. “Keira Quad-cock Morrigan. What fucked up kind of sling have you got your ass into now?”
I took a deep sigh. Then, it all tumbled out. The nightmare visions. The attack. The Morrigan. The goddamn prophesy – Darkness, Violence, Evil...
“They want to kill me. I’m the last of my bloodline. I am literally the Morrigan’s last hope.”
“Awww, Cupcake... That’s all pretty...” She trailed off.
“Fuck you if you don’t believe me!”
“Geez, Keira. Don’t get all bitey at me over nothing.”
“This isn’t ‘nothing’ to me!”
“I know you’re freaking, Cupcake.”
“Of course I’m freaking! I’m some kind of... freak.”
“I do understand. Really.” She put a soothing hand on mine. “We’re both kind of different—” Katie cut off, and slapped her hands over her mouth. “Oops, sorry.”
I knew it. She’s hiding something.
“Both different how?” Her smile was gone. Her calm demeanor had vanished. She sat up stiffly, pulled herself out of bed. “Katie?”
“Uh, sorry.” She started to pace. “I need to... think about something.”
“Katie, what’s going on?” Katie was wearing a hole in the rug by the bed, and rubbing her temples.
She really is holding something back - I can tell. “Are you okay? Kates? Talk to me.”
“It was all in front of me,” she scolded herself. “I just didn’t want to put two and two together.”
“And you call yourself a math genius?” Rimshot.
But she ignores that. “Seriously. I was afraid it would tear us apart.”
“Tear us—” That made me sit straight up. “What are you saying?”
She shhh’d me, and kept pacing. Don’t tell me Katie’s gonna start slinging cryptic bullshit, too? That’s just more than I can handle.
“Katie, you’re fucking up my head. Stop!”
She halted. She faced me. “I believe you. Every word.”
I hesitated. “...You do?”
“All the signs were there. The prophetic dreams, omens... and now magic. I’m a freaking idiot. I don’t know why I didn’t sense it before,” she confessed.
“What do you mean ‘sense it’?” I asked with squinted eyes.
Katie looked instinctively over her shoulder, even though we were alone. “Keira, I’m... well, I’m no stranger to weird supernatural magic.”
“Hunh?” I smell cryptic...
“I’m—” She paused, cleared her throat. “Cupcake?...
