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my neck was killing me, but not literally, so I went ahead and opened my eyes. The first thing that I saw was the wila, human-looking and washed up against the same riverbank that I was on except that her face was under the water, the pike still jutting from both sides of her torso, my knife sticking out of her side. I don’t know how many hours it had taken me to heal, but the sun was up. I closed my eyes again, but the voice kept yelling. My body was strangely unresponsive when I forced myself to flop over on my back—my wounds had closed, but the temperature of the water and my unnatural position had impaired my blood flow. It would have been helpful if the blond Marine screaming at me had pulled me from the edge of the water, but then I realized that he couldn’t. The sun was shining through him.
    I dropped my head back into the water and closed my eyes again. Maybe I was dead. That wouldn’t be so bad if the voice would just shut up.
    But it didn’t. The voice kept screaming, and then a thought materialized in my mind fully formed: the faery ring . The other Marine must have come out of his trance and left the faery circle when the wila died, still stuck in that in-between place. He’s no ghost, but he’s still toast , I thought with that muzzy irreverence of the half-conscious. He’s doing the Limbo, Jimbo. The only reason I could see him was that I had performed the counter-charm.
    Another thought then: Someone has to bury the bugganes.
    There was still work to be done. Opening my eyes again, I rolled over onto my side and began the slow painful crawl back to life.

Meet the Author
An army brat and gypsy scholar, ELLIOTT JAMES is currently living in the Blue Ridge Mountains of southwest Virginia. An avid reader since the age of three (or that’s what his family swears, anyhow), he has an abiding interest in mythology, martial arts, live music, hiking, and used-book stores. Irrationally convinced that cell-phone technology was inserted into human culture by aliens who want to turn us into easily tracked herd beasts, Elliott has one anyhow but keeps it in a locked, tinfoil-covered box that he will sometimes sit and stare at mistrustfully for hours. Okay, that was a lie. Elliott lies a lot; in fact, he decided to become a writer so that he could get paid for it.
     
    Photo Credit: Self (Elliott James)

Also by Elliott James
PAX ARCANA
    Charming
SHORT FICTION IN THE WORLD OF PAX ARCANA
    “Charmed I’m Sure” (e-only)
    “Don’t Go Chasing Waterfalls” (e-only)
    “Pushing Luck” (e-only)
    “Surreal Estate” (e-only)

If you enjoyed
CHARMED I’M SURE,
look out for
CHARMING
P AX A RCANA
    by Elliott James
     
    John Charming isn't your average prince…
     
    He comes from a line of Charmings—an illustrious family of dragon slayers, witch finders and killers dating back to before the fall of Rome. Trained by a modern-day version of the Knights Templar, monster hunters who have updated their tools from chain mail and crossbows to Kevlar and shotguns, he was one of the best. That is—until he became the abomination the knights were sworn to hunt.
     
    That was a lifetime ago. Now he tends bar under an assumed name in rural Virginia and leads a peaceful, quiet life. One that shouldn't change just because a vampire and a blonde walk into his bar…right?

Chapter 1
A Blonde and a Vampire Walk into a Bar…
    Once upon a time, she smelled wrong. Well, no, that’s not exactly true. She smelled clean, like fresh snow and air after a lightning storm and something hard to identify, something like sex and butter pecan ice cream. Honestly, I think she was the best thing I’d ever smelled. I was inferring “wrongness” from the fact that she wasn’t entirely human.
    I later found out that her name was Sig.
    Sig stood there in the doorway of the bar with the wind behind her, and there was something both earthy and unearthly about her. Standing at least six feet tall in