Like A Spell 3: Air

By Jennifer Levine

For the Like a Spell anthology, we asked writers to challenge the traditional tropes and send us something new—original stories of magic users, interesting twists on the typical sorcerers and mages. The response was overwhelming and exciting, and we decided to publish four separate anthologies, using the theme of classical elements (earth, air, fire, and water) as the focus for each collection.
For the air anthology, we've focused on stories portraying the love between men and women. Air can be gentle or rough, hot or cold; it can draw you closer or push you away. It can caress, but it can also punish.
September Sui's "Carnival" is like no carnival you've ever experienced. It teems with secrets and mysteries, and when a simple farm girl is finally old enough to attend, she isn't frightened, like her friends, but is instead intrigued and desperately curious. The carnival master in particular interests her, and she is determined to learn his secrets... in the privacy of his tent after the main show.
In "The Alchemist," A.D.R. Forte tells the tale of an alchemist whose work relies on both his skill and his discretion. His business is simple: women come to him in secrecy, and in exchange for the essence of their sexual passions, he pays them in money and pleasure without ever touching them. But his latest customer is more mysterious than most, and he's sorely tempted to push past his professional boundaries.
In Dee Maselle's "Rapture," Melyse finds herself taken by Ivon the Fiend, despite being neither a damsel nor in any particular distress. In fact, although she knows she should be terrified, the thought of being ravished by the Fiend only makes her more excited, and it is with a small thrill of anticipation that she lets him carry her off to his castle.
In "Refrain," V.A. Cates introduces us to Marlene, a witch who specializes in brewing potions. When Jack comes to her looking for a love potion—but with no particular love interest in mind just yet—Marlene feels strangely drawn to him. She knows she shouldn't get involved with him, for his own sake, but one thing leads to another, and her single-minded desires overpower any concern she once had for the innocent, mortal man.
In "Curandero," Donovan Blake introduces us to Sani, a Navajo curandero, which is a kind of spiritual healer. Most of his patients are just depressed, or have regular medical problems, but Sani is intrigued when a man comes to him with a real, bona fide hex on him. Unfortunately, in curing the man, the hex gets transferred to Sani... and he finds himself forced to track down the witch/succubus/vampire/whatever-she-is to kill her and end this hex once and for all. What he discovers when he finds her in person isn't quite what he expected, though.
Morrigan Cox plays with the idea of food magic in "Heat in the Kitchen." Justus and his brother have been sent by their coven to seek out a rogue witch in town, but when Justus sees her food truck—the Kitchen Witch—and gets to know her, he realizes she might be using her magic for good. And the enchantment he feels when he looks at her doesn't seem to be magical in origin.
Mary Andrews takes food magic a step further in "Potions and Pastries." Our narrator is a witch who uses her potions mastery to make delicious pastries. While closing up shop one day, her assistant, Leland, asks her to taste-test a new chocolate cake recipe he's concocted. It's an aphrodisiac recipe, though, and all the yearning she's kept buried refuses to stay hidden any longer.
Finally, in "Entwined," Kassandra Lea introduces us to Canis Cavender, a wizard who has grown tired of peaceful forest solitude and has moved to the city to be part of society again. When Anwyn shows up to bring him the jar of fairy dew he asked for, dripping wet from getting caught in the rain, Canis insists she stop dripping on his floor—but he's unprepared for her to emerge from the bathroom dressed in nothing but one of his button

• Language: English
• Publisher: Circlet Press
• Release date: Mar 2, 2018

Book preview

Like a Spell 3: Air: 

Heterosexual Fantasy Erotica

Edited by Jennifer Levine

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Like a Spell Volume 3: Air

Copyright © 2017 Circlet Press 

Cover photograph © Irina Kharchenko | Dreamstime.com

All rights reserved.

ISBN  978-1-61390-165-6

Published by Circlet Press, Inc. 

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Cambridge, MA 02138

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Contents

Introduction

Carnival by September Sui

The Alchemist by A.D.R. Forte

Rapture by Dee Maselle

Refrain by V.A. Cates

Curandero by Donovan Blake

Potions and Pastries by Mary Andrews

Entwined by Kassandra Lea

Contributors

Introduction

Magic has captivated the human imagination for centuries, and magic users, especially, continue to pique our interest. When you think of a wizard, do you think of Merlin? Dumbledore? When you think of witches, do you think of The Wicked Witch of the West? Baba Yaga? What about mages? Necromancers?

No matter what (or who) you think of when you think of magic, there's more to the magical arts than love charms and an old, bearded wizard hunched over dusty books. For the Like a Spell anthology, we asked writers to challenge the traditional tropes and send us something new—original stories of magic users, interesting twists on the typical sorcerers and mages. The response was overwhelming and exciting, and we decided to publish four separate anthologies, using the theme of classical elements (earth, air, fire, and water) as the focus for each collection.

For the air anthology, we've focused on stories portraying the love between men and women. Both Plato and Aristotle thought of air as being both wet and hot, and this seems an apt description of the union between men and women. Air can be gentle or rough, hot or cold; it can draw you closer or push you away. It can caress, but it can also punish.

September Sui's Carnival is like no carnival you've ever experienced. It teems with secrets and mysteries, and when a simple farm girl is finally old enough to attend, she isn't frightened, like her friends, but is instead intrigued and desperately curious. The carnival master in particular interests her, and she is determined to learn his secrets... in the privacy of his tent after the main show.

In The Alchemist, A.D.R. Forte tells the tale of an alchemist whose work relies on both his skill and his discretion. His business is simple: women come to him in secrecy, and in exchange for the essence of their sexual passions, he pays them in money and pleasure without ever touching them. But his latest customer is more mysterious than most, and he's sorely tempted to push past his professional boundaries.

In Dee Maselle's Rapture, Melyse finds herself taken by Ivon the Fiend, despite being neither a damsel nor in any particular distress. In fact, although she knows she should be terrified, the thought of being ravished by the Fiend only makes her more excited, and it is with a small thrill of anticipation that she lets him carry her off to his castle.

In Refrain, V.A. Cates introduces us to Marlene, a witch who specializes in brewing potions. When Jack comes to her looking for a love potion—but with no particular love interest in mind just yet—Marlene feels strangely drawn to him. She knows she shouldn't get involved with him, for his own sake, but one thing leads to another, and her single-minded desires overpower any concern she once had for the innocent, mortal man.

In Curandero, Donovan Blake introduces us to Sani, a Navajo curandero, which is a kind of spiritual healer. Most of his patients are just depressed, or have regular medical problems, but Sani is intrigued when a man comes to him with a real, bona fide hex on him. Unfortunately, in curing the man, the hex gets transferred to Sani... and he finds himself forced to track down the witch/succubus/vampire/whatever-she-is to kill her and end this hex once and for all. What he discovers when he finds her in person isn't quite what he expected, though.

Mary Andrews plays with the idea of food magic in Potions and Pastries. Our narrator is a witch who uses her potions mastery to make delicious pastries. While closing up shop one day, her assistant, Leland, asks her to taste-test a new chocolate cake recipe he's concocted. It's an aphrodisiac recipe, though, and all the yearning she's kept buried refuses to stay hidden any longer.

Finally, in Entwined, Kassandra Lea introduces us to Canis Cavender, a wizard who has grown tired of peaceful forest solitude and has moved to the city to be part of society again. When Anwyn shows up to bring him the jar of fairy dew he asked for, dripping wet from getting caught in the rain, Canis insists she stop dripping on his floor—but he's unprepared for her to emerge from the bathroom dressed in nothing but one of his button-down shirts.

I hope these stories will enchant you the way they enchanted me. When you're done with these, check out the other elements that make up the Like a Spell series: earth (F/F stories), fire (M/M stories), and water (orgy stories).

Jennifer Levine

June 2017

Carnival

by September Sui

There is something about this city and its outskirts; the sky is always dark, and the walls and alleys are always dank. There is some industry here, one would suppose, looking at the smoke stacks. What do they make? one could wonder. What, indeed. There is a foundry here, processing raw ore into iron and steel. There is any number of blacksmiths and gunsmiths; there is an impressive correlation between the numbers of weapons that this city produces and the murders that occur.

It is a city that sustains itself with the hamlets on the outskirts, if they could be called that. There are farms surrounding the city, and they prosper with the city. The city belches out smoke and heat; the grains and trees and lettuce leaves claw the sky for warmth. For all the menace of the clouds, the resultant apples are actually quite delicious, if a little depressing to look at.

She is one of those farm-girls tending to the orchards and swine just outside the city. There are no walls around the city, and she walks into it quite often, pushing a wheelbarrow and selling fresh vegetables. As she does, she sings songs and whistles through the side alleys as one would in the forest.

She is a winter child; her hair and eyes are the limpid darkness of the solstice. She confuses everyone in spring, because she runs with light feet over melting snow and budding flowerbeds, throwing fertilizer every which way and generally appreciating growing things. In summer, she hides from the sun with books in hand and bag, or seeks out dark corners where secrets hide.

But when the leaves turn brown and the air grows cold enough to slow the smoke stacks as they climb, she becomes expectant: this is when carnival comes to the city.

Carnival will take her someday, she hears them whisper as she walks past the crowded cafes and the silent sidewalks. Carnival will claim her as its rightful child. She ignores the gazes, flinty from fear of blackmail. The city people's secrets are mundane, and she has stopped looking for these; the city's secrets are more interesting, and she has found some of those.

No one knows why carnival comes to this city, or why it goes wherever it does, really. The elders suspect that the same reason this city has prospered has to do with why carnival comes.

It is not the only carnival to come to this city, but it is the only one that really matters.

For when this carnival comes, it sets itself up around the city, not just in one corner. It wraps itself around the city for a whole day and night.

Carnival permeates the city with its men and women on stilts, its harlequins and clowns in the streets, things flitting about the rooftops. Carnival darkens bright corners with posters announcing showtimes and brightens dark corners with colorful streamers and mirrors reflecting the obscured sun.

There are rides, of course: large roller coasters that will disappear with the dawn, tunnels of horror, and haunted houses. There are side shows of women and men undressing to become men and women, or someone in between. There are displays of impossible creatures that skulk the corners of their cages and find homes in visitors' minds.

When carnival comes to town, the children are allowed to run amok only during the day. At sunset, parents hurry home to stow away their children safely.

Everyone else, though, goes to the show held in the city center. No one knows how carnival ever manages to get the licenses for that. But the seats are always set up, the three-rings, the aerial wires. The cathedral facing the city square always looks displeased; the angels frown in disapproval in the flickering of the gaslights illuminating the walls.

She has reached the age when she is allowed to stay out after dark for carnival. She's been waiting for this all her life.

People go missing during carnival. Not murdered or anything (although regular crime victims of the day do mysteriously disappear, and the city morgue manager tears his hair out in frustration, for though he keeps watch all night, all the bodies go missing), they just vanish.

Most, though, keep their wits about them, and the next day, they're tougher, stronger, richer. Even if something in them has visibly died.

Many girls long for the day when they can attend carnival. They've all seen their sisters or cousins return home, heavy-lidded and dreamy-eyed, all broken hearts and expanded minds, every year, without fail.

She has never had a sister to watch come home like that, but she, like all her friends, has waited.

Her friends tease her, maybe your real parents will come for you! every year.

She doesn't like it. She loves her family deeply; she just wants more, and doesn't know what, yet. She knows she'll find the answer at carnival. If the city's secrets are interesting, then carnival's secrets are more so.

Carnival unfolds itself over the course of the night, and as the sun rises, it is ready to play. Children shriek on the roller coaster undulating between the spires of the city's business district. Lovers seclude themselves on the Ferris wheel right by her vegetable plot.

She babysits