Welcome to Capricious by Julie Cox, a Texan tale of love and magic. NSFW.

A new chapter appears every Tuesday. This week is the Epilogue.

Epilogue

If it hadn’t been for the horns, she wouldn’t have recognized him as a satyr at all. The only thing Greek she could tell about the young man was his Roman nose. The rest of him was generic European–blond hair, gray eyes, and pale skin. His hooves were not visible, clad as he was in loose cargos and hiking boots. Her hair was dark; like his nose, it was the last vestige of her myth’s native people, the dying notes of the Navajo in her blood. He sat a little ways apart from the other myth-folk, arms around his knees, practically screaming “introvert.” Trish stopped a few feet away from him, waiting to be noticed. Her bare toes dug into the sand, and she kicked a little at him.

“Hey,” she said. Continue reading Capricious: Epilogue →

Welcome to Capricious by Julie Cox, a Texan tale of love and magic. NSFW.

A new chapter appears every Tuesday. This week is Chapter Sixty-Five.

Chapter 65

It threatened to storm the morning of the wedding. Sally took care of that. It took another couple of fae spells to turn it warm before three, when Sally met Luke by the sunflower patch.

She let her father give her away. Her dress was simple, new white satin to her bare feet. She wore her grandmother’s gray shawl, the one piece of weaving the impoverished Navajo woman had kept for herself, hand spun from a favorite ewe’s last fleece. It represented the grand sum of all Sally knew about her grandmother. She borrowed Allison’s mother-of-pearl butterfly hair clips, and a small stone of turquoise in a silver pendant. Luke wore a white shirt, black slacks, and suspenders under a dark red vest. His hair behaved. They each thought the other resplendent. Continue reading Capricious: Chapter 65 →

Welcome to Capricious by Julie Cox, a Texan tale of love and magic. NSFW.

A new chapter appears every Tuesday. This week is Chapter Sixty-Four.

Chapter 64

Sally’s parents were waiting for them when Luke and Sally arrived at the house. The air was heavy with suspicion and alarm, which Sally disarmed with a hug around her father’s middle. She said into his chest, “I’m sorry I can’t tell you.”

Wilson’s eyes softened, and he kissed the top of his daughter’s head. “I know you can’t. I’m just glad you’re OK.” Continue reading Capricious: Chapter 64 →

Welcome to Capricious by Julie Cox, a Texan tale of love and magic. NSFW.

A new chapter appears every Tuesday. This week is Chapter Sixty-Three.

Chapter 63

Luke sat in the passenger seat, exhausted but smiling, and Charlie sat braced and wincing in the back seat while Sally recounted her aerial battle with Brent and his flying machine. Her dark hair was a mess; she’d thrown on an old baseball cap of Charlie’s from the depths of the trunk, drawing a ponytail through the hole in the back to keep it corralled. With every dramatic gesture she made, the ponytail flipped up or back or around, mimicking her excitement. Continue reading Capricious: Chapter 63 →

Welcome to Capricious by Julie Cox, a Texan tale of love and magic. NSFW.

A new chapter appears every Tuesday. This week is Chapter Sixty-Two.

Chapter 62

Luke felt Sally land behind him before he saw her. It wasn’t her weight–even a massive bird like a thunderbird was relatively light–but the great gust of wind that nearly knocked him over, then abruptly died. The storm above them began to fall apart, dissipating back into the atmosphere. It was still cold. He raised his hand to touch her beak as she nudged his shoulder. He looked aside at her; alien eyes looked back, sharp and predatory. Her feathers were not soft, necessarily, but smooth. She moved with the rapid jerks and twitches native to birds and reptiles, and at the moment looked just about as forgiving. Continue reading Capricious: Chapter 62 →

Welcome to Capricious by Julie Cox, a Texan tale of love and magic. NSFW.

A new chapter appears every Tuesday. This week is Chapter Sixty-One.

Chapter 61

Luke drove up to the trail that would lead to the portal, enveloping the car in a cloud of red dust with a hard, sliding brake. He exited in a rush and started up the trail, leaving Charlie behind in the car. He glanced back as he ran, a little nervous about leaving the injured and exhausted Jersey Devil alone, but he had little other choice. He just had to hope Brent was the only baddie left.

The heavy scrub obscured his view until he was almost right on top of the portal. He stopped short of bursting into plain sight, peering through the last scrap of cover for an idea about the situation. The chill day had turned positively cold with the fierce thunderbird storm, the first truly cold day of fall. It was a wind that went right through the meager cotton of his T-shirt, almost alive in its aggression. Luke crossed his arms and searched the skies for Sally. Continue reading Capricious: Chapter 61 →

Welcome to Capricious by Julie Cox, a Texan tale of love and magic. NSFW.

A new chapter appears every Tuesday. This week is Chapter Sixty.

Chapter 60

In the car rushing toward the portal at the edge of Fox Pass, Luke was having a quiet, queasy, possibly lethal existential crisis. Charlie watched him in his peripheral vision. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “You’re pale. And you’re Mediterranean; it’s wrong for you to be pale.”

“I think I gave Sally too much energy,” he said. “I have supposedly charged people before, the way I let them charge me, but I can’t remember doing it. I didn’t know when to hold back.” Continue reading Capricious: Chapter 60 →

Welcome to Capricious by Julie Cox, a Texan tale of love and magic. NSFW.

A new chapter appears every Tuesday. This week is Chapter Fifty-Nine.

Chapter 59

Luke watched the storm coalesce out of nothing. The towering clouds swirled, swelling to greater and greater magnitude, and the wind blew around them in chaotic gusts. Lightning played around Sally, dancing through her fingertips and down her arms, to the brown-tipped mounds of her breasts, over her stomach, between her legs. She yelped and wriggled her body, black eyes wide.

“Oh,” she said, “oh what the–oh!” She spread her legs farther apart, as if caught in the middle of a jumping jack. “I’ve never done this right after sex, when I’m aroused, when I’m so aware–holy shit!” Electric lights sparked across her legs, lighting up her skin, almost from the inside out. Luke reached out and touched her; he got a small jolt, not entirely unpleasant. He scooted forward to her and raised his mouth to her clit. Continue reading Capricious: Chapter 59 →

Welcome to Capricious by Julie Cox, a Texan tale of love and magic. NSFW.

A new chapter appears every Tuesday. This week is Chapter Fifty-Eight.

Chapter 58

Luke looked over the top of the rusted Ford, gauging how far away Brent was, obscured by multiple skeletal motorcycles and a contorted chassis. He put his hands on the ground. “Get ready,” he said to Allison, and curled his back like a stretching cat. His magic roiled through him, a warm current in rivers of blood and muscle and bone. It washed out of him, into the ground, as if he were made of the same material as the earth. He focused it, sent it crashing toward Brent. The tinker fae shrieked as a jutting spire of rock threw him into the air. Allison fired, and Brent fell back to the ground. Continue reading Capricious: Chapter 58 →

Welcome to Capricious by Julie Cox, a Texan tale of love and magic. NSFW.

A new chapter appears every Tuesday. This week is Chapter Fifty-Seven.

Chapter 57

Luke caught up to Sally and Allison behind Brent’s house, and the three of them stopped, crouching, behind a pile of rust that was once a tractor. The backyard was a breathtaking field of chaos, full of cars, boats, bicycles, and parts for every mechanical thing ever made, all thrown haphazardly into the brush. Blackberry brambles crawled out from beneath a trio of old Triumph motorcycles, briars curtained off a stripped-down Volkswagen, and a holly bush was caught in a permanent act of exploding from within a propane gas grill, its red berries like bright embers. It looked like a mechanic’s shop long after an apocalypse. For Luke, who was as delighted with machines as a child in a Toys”R”Us, it was a macabre scene. Continue reading Capricious: Chapter 57 →