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SOMEONE SAID TO A GIRL I KNEW ONCE, ask Father McDowell to help you and he will. Go on, ask him. Father Holden McDowell. Father Holden McDowell. You know, the young priest from Theology 1301? Him. The hot one. One summer, long ago, I stripped off a grey sweatshirt withContinue Reading

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I wasn’t there. But from what Violet told me and what I have dreamed and seen since knowing her, I can imagine it carefully (but completely) and I think it was something like this… Violet, just ten then, small and pale in the restless shadows of her suburban bedroom, tremblingContinue Reading

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“Of course, I bit you. What did you think was going to happen? Satan’s bifurcated cock! I told you what I am. Feeding on and corrupting the living is what I do. I don’t want to be your boyfriend or your sugar daddy. I’m not some slicked-haired, business-suited douchebag thatContinue Reading

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Soft leaves draped over clusters of long, brown seedpods. Thick spikes sprouted right from the trunk, some as long as my arm. I slipped my hand between these thorns and touched the bark. “What is this,” my friend Bird breathed, pulling loose a seedpod. She cracked it open; inside wasContinue Reading

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When kissing the Minotaur, get a firm grip on his horns It’s your best chance to avoid a concussion Make plenty of noise when you enter the labyrinth You don’t want to surprise the Minotaur But don’t whistle He hates whistling The Minotaur likes oats Also, scrambled eggs Also, theContinue Reading

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“‘The Tribe of Amalfia welcomes all shifters in the central Ohio area to an evening of community and sensuality.’ What a load of crap. I mean, I been here three hours now and I ain’t had one second of sensuality. And the only community I had is talking to you,Continue Reading

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If I summoned you into my chest I’d let the poltergeist pulse through muscle. • If I could summon you into a deep yard, under an unbuttoning moon, I’d never stop summoning you. • I’d summon you silken and night-velvet, safe vapor like shower steam, like a hot spring pinkContinue Reading

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Jordan was the youngest guy on the crew that season. Never worked a winter on an offshore rig, and so was more prone to incidents like becoming involved with ghosts. We all stood, zipped up to the nose, leaning into the  bluster of  the last helicopter as it whipped theContinue Reading

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“Vincere,” she says, “or die.”—her first words to me (and her last to me, as I die on my beloved Anacapa Island). In her grass crown, her red-feather ruff (to match her scarlet teeth), and necklaced with the heads of Dodo, Laughing Owl, and Great Auk, she dances, dances, dances.Continue Reading