Silk & Steel by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: lesbian fiction, short stories, anthologies, collections, action adventure, action and adventure, sceince fiction fantasy, science fiction and fantasy, lesbian romance, alternative history, humorous, paranormal urban, paranormal fantasy, urban fantasy, sword sorcery, sword and sorcery, monsters, witches and wizards, witches wizards, sword duels, space opera, ruritania, dueling, duelling, prohibition chicago, age of sail, dance off, chinese scholars, fairy tales, magic and technology, humor, aritificial intelligence, aliens
ISBN: 978-1-63327-025-1
Publisher: Cantina Publishing
Published: 2020-11-09T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

That night, in bed with the Duchess Tremontaine, Angwar Bec began her discovery of what it meant to be a success.

Katherine fed her cake after sweet cake. Bec ever after associated the taste of anise with the taste of Katherine’s skin, the chocolate crushed in her fragrant armpit, the raspberry dipped in her navel. The tang of her hard kisses had a flavor of their own.

But she found she liked the chestnut best.

Danger Noodle

by S.K. Terentiev

“Earth to Jane...?” Sophia held out a bloody chunk of goat, squatting with her purple galoshes bright in the mud. “Liver.”

She waved the gobbet of goat at me impatiently and I extended the specimen bag. I waited until after she’d turned back to eviscerating—pardon me, autopsying—her goat of choice before sticking my tongue out at her. “Earth to Jane” my ass.

Goats. Why did it have to be goats?

It’s not that I’m afraid—I’m an insurance adjuster working non-standard insurance. I’d been on this rodeo too long to be freaked out by a few goats. It’s just their eyes are so creepy, rectangle pupils like tiny mail slots into their brains. The fact that the whole herd was wide-eyed dead around us in the pasture didn’t exactly help.

“So what do we think?” I dropped the bag into the cooler at my feet and snagged another one from the kit.

“We don’t think anything. We are still investigating.”

I took a deep breath instead of snapping back at her. I’d brought this on myself with the whole anniversary thing; I couldn’t exactly blame her for being upset.

“Babes, can we talk about this?”

“It’s fine.” She shoved another bit of goat into the bag I held out.

Yeah, pretty sure it wasn’t fine.

“Today’s not over—”

“Can we just focus on the job, please?”

“Okay... sure.” I handed her a swab. “So what do you think happened?”

“I don’t want to speculate.”

“Since when?”

She sighed. “I have a few hypotheses but no theories. There’s not much to go on.”

That was putting it mildly. We were in the bottom corner of the pasture, nestled up against the fence. The whole herd was sprawled around us without a mark on them, like a caprine sleepover gone wrong. Clouds rumbled overhead but so far the rain had held off, and everything was the muddy gray and green of a Texas February. The only real spots of color were orange construction cones along the road and our SOTCO Insurance van, which was currently Neon Frog’s Ass green.

Sophia wasn’t a mage with a capital M, but she had enough juice that the van had developed an affinity for her, which manifested in its being a giant mood ring on wheels. From the color, she was at DEFCON Three.

Which meant I’d annoyed her enough to knock her off her game. Knowing her, she was going round and round in her head over what I’d done—or hadn’t done. Completely distracted and more frustrated by the minute.

“The fact that the scene’s pretty clean means we can rule out things like run of the mill cult sacrifices or a werewolf on a bender, right?” I prompted, stripping off my gloves.

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