Chapter 3

Vlad

W aking up, I immediately know that something is wrong. I'm in a cramped queen-size bed instead of my roomy king. And I'm warm. Far too warm to be alone. But I haven't taken anyone home with me for maybe a year.

Opening my eyes, I see a frothy, black tulle canopy hanging over the bed that I'm in, the ceiling painted a light purple. Definitely not my room. Before I can really start to be alarmed though, a warm body burrows into my side, mumbling unintelligibly. I turn my head to see a riot of dark brown hair and fern-green skin. Gertrude Nightshade, sleeping by my side.

Ah, this dream again.

So, I'm not awake, I'm still sleeping. I shouldn't be surprised. I've been half in love with Gertrude since we were teens, not that she's ever noticed me as more than a friend, and I've had dreams about her regularly for years. Sometimes they are . . . of the dirty variety, but more often than not they are mundane. Walking with her through the park, sharing a meal, and now, laying in bed together. It's never been this clear before and I've never envisioned her bedroom with quite this much detail, but I decide to just enjoy it.

My arms come around the witch, pulling her onto my chest and settle down in the cramped space. A feeling of rightness bubbles up in my chest and I feel at peace. That is, until the sour smell of day-old alcohol makes its way to my nose and wayward long hairs itch at my neck. Hmmm, odd. That's never been part of the dream before. It's really never been this detailed, smells and sensations, other than the pleasurable, are usually absent..

Gertrude stirs in her sleep, mumbling again and a fresh waft of alcohol makes its way to me. Before I can think too hard about what that could mean, Gertrude yawns and unscrews bleary eyes. I expect her to go warm and welcoming, like she always has before in my dreams, but instead she stiffens and pats my chest. Still patting, she makes her way up my body until she's light tapping my face. Hesitantly, she looks up, meeting my eyes and I smile.

"‘Morning," I say, a little sleepily.

Gertrude shrieks, rearing back out of my arms and stumbles out of bed. I bolt up in alarm. What the hell is happening?

"What are you doing in my room?" the witch shouts, pointing at me. "What are you doing in my bed? "

The last vestiges of sleep firmly recede from my mind at her questions and the first thing that strikes me is that, no, I'm not asleep. And if I'm not asleep that means . . . I'm actually in Gertrude Nightshade's bedroom, for some unfathomable reason. My mind races, trying to remember the night before, but all I remember is going to sleep in my bed, alone, after a long hard day at City Hall.

"Gertrude," I say, putting my hands up in a calming gesture. "I don't know how I got here. I'm as much in the dark as you are."

"Vlad, you broke into my house and got into my bed! There's nothing to be in the dark about!" Her finger is still pointing at me, accusing, though she looks a little unsure. Strangely, a glowing red string is wrapped around her delicate wrist, trailing between us and disappearing under the covers. But I don't have time to ask what that's about.

"Why would I do that?" I ask, keeping my voice even, still trying to calm her down. If there's anything that my years in public office has taught me it's how to smooth ruffled feathers. "I would never intrude on your space and abuse your trust. Besides, even if I did try to break into your house, I wouldn't have been able to come inside without an invitation, right? I've never been here before and you've never given me leave to be here, so by all rights, I shouldn't be able to be here."

The wariness in Gertrude's posture relaxes somewhat at my words and her accusing finger goes down. My eyes follow the movement and I notice, for the first time, that she's hardly wearing anything, just a spaghetti-strap tank and underwear, showing off her perfectly curved thighs and a short expanse of her midriff. She looks delightfully rumpled and undressed. I feel my dick start to wake up and desperately will it down. Him showing up right now will not help the situation.

"But if that's the case . . ." Gertrude says, scrunching her face up adorably in thought, oblivious to my randy dick, "then why are you here? How did you get here? What is happening?"

"Like I said, I'm as confused as you are. Last thing I remember was going to bed in my own bed and then waking up here."

Gertrude just looks even more confused, then scrubs her hands over her face, the string on her left wrist coming back into view. "This would be so much easier to figure out if I weren't hung-over!"

"You're hung-over?" I ask, with a little frown. Gertrude never really seemed like much of a drinker.

"I had . . . a rough night. Harry broke up with me."

Everything goes still in my brain. Nothing else matters for a moment, not even our strange circumstances. Harry Moonkin, that sniveling loser, finally, finally broke up with Gertrude? A shocking amount of happiness and hope blooms in my chest. I haven't had a shot with the witch in years as she stayed with that worthless wolf. But now, she is single. Available.

Hold your horses, Vlad , I chide myself. She said it literally happened yesterday. You don't want to be the rebound . But part of me, the dumb, lovesick part of me, wouldn't care if she used me to get over her ex. I just want to be with her in any way she'd have me.

"Anyway," she continues. "Gretchen came over and we drank until I passed out. Then I woke up . . . wait a second. Maybe . . . wait. No! The potion!"

"The potion?" I ask, totally confused with the speed at which her thoughts are moving.

Gertrude bites her full bottom lip, looking completely embarrassed. "I may have made a totally crazy, completely impromptu potion last night while I was still pretty wasted . . . and then drank it. You don't think . . ."

"That your potion somehow summoned me last night and that's why I'm here?" I ask. "Yeah, it kind of sounds like it."

Gertrude scrubs her hands over her face again, more violently this time. "Ugh, I'm so embarrassed. I can't believe I got you wrapped up in my mess!"

Her arms swing down from her face, pulling the string on her wrist taut, and the movement suddenly tugs at my own wrist. With another frown, I pull back the covers and see that the glowing string is connected to me too, wrapped tightly around my wrist, but with no knot. There's no visible way to take it off. That's alarming.

"Do you think that your potion has something to do with this?" I ask, raising up my wrist.

Gertrude's eyes go wide, noticing the string for the first time. "What is that? Why are we tied together?" She scrambles at the loops around her own wrist, but nothing happens. She pulls at the string and it yanks on my wrist again.

"Careful there," I say. "If this is magic, there's no telling what will happen if you try to take it off."

"Well, we can't just stay tied together! I have to get to the shop. You have to get to . . . wherever you have to go. I'm sure that you're busy. Halloween is just six days away!"

She's right. I have a lot of things I'm supposed to do today. There's the ceremonial picking of the City Hall pumpkin, approving visas for the Human Realm portal, the last details to finalize of the Halloween Day Festival and the Halloween Welcoming Ball. Not to mention the various meetings I have with lobbyists, contractors, public works. A mayor's' day is always very busy. As much as I would like to, I can't just spend all day with Gertrude at her shop.

"Ok, well," I say. "What are your ideas? How do we get rid of this thing?"

"I have scissors in the kitchen downstairs," she offers. "That seems like the most logical place to start."

"Are they magical scissors?" I ask.

"No . . ." Gertrude replies hesitantly. "But it's worth a shot. We can work through the process of elimination. C'mon!"

She tugs the string and I find myself getting pulled out of bed. I'm only wearing pajama bottoms, my chest bare, but Gertrude doesn't even seem to notice my state of undress as she makes her way downstairs to the kitchen dragging me behind her by the string, much to my dismay. I'm an attractive guy and I keep myself fit. I'd like to think that she would at least sneak a peek at my abs or pecs, but I'm out of luck. Me being half-dressed doesn't seem to affect her as much as her being half-dressed affects me. Damn. Oh well, I guess that's not the focus of the moment. We need to get separated and then maybe I can figure out how to get the witch of my dreams to notice me.

∞∞∞

AN HOUR LATER it's firmly morning and we're no closer to cutting the string than before. An array of sharp objects are on the kitchen island between us, along with magic ingredients and a burning sage bundle. Nothing has made the string go away. It's obvious at this point that it's something metaphysical. Objects pass through it like mist, but both Gertrude and I can both grab it and if one of us moves too far away from the other, roughly six feet, it pulls taut and we get yanked back together.

Finally, after a lot of trial and error, I ask, "What was this spell supposed to do, anyway?"

Gertrude flushes a dark green, a charming blush, and mumbles something that I can't quite make out.

"What?"

If anything Gertrude gets a darker green and bites her lip again. "It was supposed to be a cure for heartache."

My stomach turns over unhappily at the thought that this brilliant, sparkling individual would ever have heartache because of Harry Moonkin . Truly, I have no idea what she saw in him for all those years. The guy can't hold onto a job for more than a month and spends most of his time writing absolutely abysmal music to sing at the neighborhood's open mic nights hoping to gain a following, which he never does. Gertrude has always deserved more than that. She deserves someone dependable, who supports her dreams, not the other way around. If that someone can't be me, at least it shouldn't be Harry Moonkin.

Still, I can't say all that aloud. Instead, I say sympathetically, "Tough break up?"

She laughs with a bitter tinge. "You could say that. When he came to the shop yesterday ‘to talk,' that was him breaking up with me so that he could go be with Calliope Aetos."

"He was cheating on you?" I spit out incredulously. I'm going to kill him.

"He says no. That they've just been ‘talking,' but I don't know what to believe. He was a lot less interested in me this past month, but I thought he was just giving me space because this is such a busy time of year. I should have known something was up."

"You can't blame yourself for his bad behavior. He's a big boy, he can make his own decisions, especially the stupid ones," I say firmly.

Gertrude sends me a little smile. "Thanks. I needed the reminder."

"Anytime," I reply sincerely. Changing the subject back, I continue, "But I don't get it. Why would a spell for heartbreak bring me into this?"

The witch flushes again, the deepest shade of green I've seen so far. What could that mean? "I may have, uh," she begins, clearing her throat, before talking so fast that all her words slur together, "Imayhaveaskedforanewboyfriend."

"What?" I ask again. I can't have heard what I thought I heard.

The deep green flush is reaching all the way up to the tips of her ears now. "I . . . in my incantation, may have asked for a, ahem, new, uh, boyfriend."

A grin grows on my face. I can't help it. Something akin to pure joy skitters in my veins. My voice comes out teasing, flirtatious, when I ask, "So, this makes me your new boyfriend, does it?"

"No!" she burst out. "I mean, I wouldn't mind , but, I mean, you have a choice. Just because a spell put us together doesn't mean that you have to date me. I mean, I know you don't want to date me, err, I mean, I think you don't. I mean, why would you? I'm a mess. I mean . . ."

"Gertrude, Gertrude," I interrupt her nervous chatter, even as the smile stays on my face. She's just so cute when she's embarrassed. And she couldn't be more wrong. I'd be fucking honored to be her boyfriend. More than that. I've been dreaming of it, pining after her for years. But I don't want her to be uncomfortable, even if this is the most hope I've felt in years. I continue, "It's fine. I'm teasing you. We don't have to rush into anything."

"Right," she says, smiling sheepishly. "Anyway, that's probably why you got summoned here. The spell went haywire and grabbed a guy that I . . . know."

That doesn't sound like what she was originally going to say. I'd pay a lot of money to hear what she was actuall y going to say, but I instinctively know that pushing on that won't get me anywhere and will just make Gertrude more self-conscious, so I drop it. For now .

"Well," I say, getting back to the matter at hand, "what are we going to do about this string? We can't cut it, burn it, untie it, blow it away, or dispel it. What next? I've got to get to work soon and so do you. In fact, even if we hurry, we'll probably both be late."

"You're right," she sighs, leaning against the kitchen island. "I'm going to have to reverse engineer the potion. Which is hard because I drank the whole thing and I don't really remember anything about making it. But I can take stock of all the missing ingredients and see if there's any residue that I can test in my cauldron. But all that will have to wait. We need to get you to City Hall."

"What about your shop?" I ask, loathe to make her miss a day of work. I know how hard she's worked to make Eye of Newt a success.

"I'll call Gretchen and have her watch the counter for me today. Most of my orders are already made and the ones that aren't are simple enough that she should be able to make them even though potions aren't her specialty. Plus, she owes me after getting me wasted and causing this mess."

"Sounds like a plan," I agree. "There's only one problem."

"What's that?" Gertrude asks innocently.

"I can't go into the office like this," I say, spreading my arms wide, showing my bare torso.

I can see the moment that she registers that I haven't had a shirt this whole time. Gertrudes's eyes bug out for a moment and if I thought she went dark green before, I hadn't seen anything yet. She blushes so hard that her whole face goes forest green and then whirls around to face the opposite wall.

"I'm so sorry!" she bursts out. "I've been making you sit there practically undressed all morning while I tried to cut this string and . . . oh my goddess, where are my pants?"

"Don't worry about it, sweetheart," I say, the pet name sliding out naturally from my lips. Like it's the most ordinary thing in the world for me to call this witch my sweetheart. "We've both been distracted. There's nothing normal about our situation, so we shouldn't be too hard on ourselves for how we're reacting or what we haven't noticed, okay?"

Gertrude peeks over her shoulder. "Really? You're not mad?"

Mad? I'm thrilled, but I can't say that. "No, I'm not mad. We're just figuring things out right now. There's bound to be some hiccups."

She sighs again, but it sounds relieved. "Okay. But now, let's figure out how to get dressed? Neither of us can go to City Hall like this."

My unruly dick stirs again at the thought of Gertrude changing clothes, but I ruthlessly squash those thoughts. I haven't been invited to help, so there's no need to get excited.

"Objects seem to pass through the string," I say, "so I think we should be able to shut a door. As long as the one outside stays right next to the door, the other should have enough room to maneuver into their clothes."

"Let's head upstairs and try it," Gertrude says, moving toward the stairs and pulling me along with her. But I don't mind being led around on a leash by her. Far from it.

There's no other place I'd rather be.