The High Priest spoons the potent liquid from the cauldron into a large ceramic mug and makes his way around the circle. I watch as the fae drink and close their eyes, muttering what must be another prayer. When the priest stops before me and lowers the cup to my waiting hands, the smell is overwhelming. I grimace as I gulp down the hot liquid and mutter the fudged words. Then the fae begin to shrug out of their cloaks. The females are dressed similarly to me, in low-cut sleeveless white shifts belted with a thin golden chain. The males are naked from the waist up.
I don’t know when the room starts to blur and skip like a TV with a faulty connection. My lids grow heavy, and I find it hard to keep resisting. I decide to rest my eyes for just a second. I sink deeper and deeper until there is no chance of opening them again.
I once watcheda documentary on Jim Jones and how, in the 1970s, he convinced 918 cult members to drink a lethal cyanide cocktail. It was called the Jonestown Massacre. Men, women, and children—all sheep led to the slaughter.
How many times had I been warned not to drink the Kool-Aid? How many times had I heard the expression?
And yet here I was, just throwing it right down the hatch.
What a fucking idiot.
Everything around me is black. Not just the kind of dark where my eyes need a minute to adjust. No, this is true blackness, void of color and light. I hear nothing, I feel nothing, like true sensory deprivation. I can’t wiggle my toes or fingers. Ican’t smell or taste or touch as I search for my own body and come up empty.
Panic begins to rise in my consciousness, fear that I’ve been tricked, and now I’m going to end up with Jim Jones and his pack of idiots. I’m dying, if I’m not already dead.
But the sound of a voice pauses my meltdown.
“Hello, little witch.”
The voice is buttery. If I could see its owner, I would guess them to be a sparkling, glowing, otherworldly creature. An angel.
“Have you come to make of yourself an offering for me?”
Unable to locate my own voice, I answer with silence.
“Speak,” she commands gently. Suddenly, the word falls out of my formless being.
“Yes,” I say, but then I think better of it. “What—what do you want with me?”
“This form pleases me. And I can sense the magic in your veins, the way it sings and begs for release. I can give that to you.”
“You can release my magic?” I ask.
“I can do more than that. I can make a gift of our magic, to be inside of you always.”
“Our magic?”
“Mine and my mate’s,” she supplies. “When we are joined once again on this the longest eve.”
“Joined…how?”
“When we can touch and embrace. Make love.”
Woah, hold on.
“You’re going to have sex using my body?” I balk. “No way, I didn’t agree to that!”
“You came here willingly; you drank the tea of your own volition.” Her voice begins to crackle with power.
“I didn’t know that was the purpose,” I counter pathetically.
“I know why you have come. Just like I know all. I know your magic remains trapped inside of you and that you have come here in hopes that I will help you in exchange for your vessel.”
“No,” I whisper. “No, I’ll find another way.”
But something is wearing me down. First, a sense of calm, a sense of peace. Then a stirring in my core. Heat where my face would be.
“What are you doing?”
