by B. T. Alive
I’ve never figured out whether all animals are immune to the Touch, or if it’s only my personal, wonderful cat.
When you can’t even hug your friends without making sure you don’t brush cheeks, you really appreciate your fat, lazy, snuggly cat. His breed is literally called “Ragdoll”, and he’s like a sentient white lap blanket. When I touch him, I don’t feel a jolt, only a warm, soothing calm. And he only seems to relax even more… if that’s physically possible.
Anyway, I was all worked up thinking about the trip, so of course I missed my exit, and then there was this crazy accident that made the beltway a parking lot. It was well past lunchtime and my stomach was howling by the time I finally parked at my apartment and clattered up to the glass entrance in my stupid heels.
I checked my reflection in the door. The spring humidity was frizzing my bounteous red mane, but only slightly. I’d come to accept that what my hair might lack in finesse, it more than made up for in volume and attitude. My dress jacket and long skirt were classy and confident, and though I was never going to be some twiggy starving model, I decided that between working out and cutting carbs, I was looking pretty darn good. Mostly.
One more girl in her mid- (okay, late) twenties, out to conquer the world.
As I rode up the elevator, I got even more excited wondering how Mr. Charm would react to the countryside. Who knew? He might even move around.
“Charm?” I called, as I unlocked my door and bolted it behind me. “Road trip! We’re going to Virginia!”
“I think not,” said a complete stranger.
He was a cadaverous old man in a black suit, tall and lean and sinking into my couch.
He held Mr. Charm on his lap, and his strong, thin fingers rested close around the furry neck.
Chapter 3
Normally, I loved that first step into my apartment. The living room glittered with my exquisite taste, and a wide bank of windows revealed a gorgeous view of the water.
But now my velvet curtains were closed, and the lights were off. On my couch sat a tall man I’d never seen, shrouded in shadow.
He was old, with a gleaming bony head, but he was impeccably dressed in a black pinstripe suit. Though his weight was crushing the cushions, he sat straight up, and his posture radiated power. My precious cat was trembling in his grip.
“Who are you?” I gasped. “If you hurt him, I swear—”
“Let’s not be hasty,” he said. His voice was cold, smooth, and polished as a new gravestone.
“Hasty?” I said. “You’ve got ten seconds to get the hell out or I’m calling the police.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” he said.
His thumb and forefinger tightened, ever so slightly.
I might be able to unbolt the door and run, but I couldn’t risk this lunatic killing Mr. Charm. He didn’t seem to have a gun… if he did, wouldn’t he be pointing it at me instead of clutching my cat? I loved that cat… I could barely think, but I managed to tell myself, get this man talking. The second he got distracted and let go, I could grab Mr. Charm and run for the cops.
“What do you want?” I said.
His thin lips stretched into a smile. It sliced across his pale face, like a surgeon making the first cut.
“Please,” he said. “Sit down.”
Warily, I came toward him, but with a firm nod, he indicated a chair at a distance, well out of lunging range.
“You really should let him go,” I said, as I sat. “That’s a nice suit, and you’re freaking him out. He’s totally going to pee. Big time.”
He frowned, with a visible flicker of concern.
Unfortunately, I was lying. Unlike me, Mr. Charm could hold it through a barrel plunge over Niagara Falls.
“Look, let him go, and you can make your pitch,” I said. “I’ll give you ten minutes. I promise.”
“Do you?” he said. “And will that promise hold when you disrupt my memory?”
My stomach clenched, like I’d swallowed ice. I couldn’t speak.
I’d been using the Touch for almost twenty years. Maybe longer. No one had ever guessed what I could do.
Not once.
Not even Dad, and we’d lived in the same house. At least, officially.
I’d stopped even worrying whether anyone would figure it out. People might catch me and think I was slipping my “victim” a pill or something, but the Touch itself had been beyond secret.
Until this leering stranger broke into my locked apartment.
“I see we understand one another,” he said. His smile-gash twitched with amusement. “I’ll take my chances with the cat.”
“Who… are you?” I said.
“That is of no consequence. For the moment. The far more intriguing question is: who are you? And are you living to your full potential?”
My hyperalert brain jolted out of its panic tunnel vision. Potential? Really? This creep was here to recruit me?
Yes, I was technically back on the job market. But would I sign on with the sort of Mr. Cadaver Guy who would ferret out my lifetime secret, break into my apartment, and threaten to throttle my cat? Not a chance. The last thing I needed was a Boss From Hell. Possibly literally.
“I’m listening,” I said.
He sighed. “No. You’re watching. Let us give you something worthy of your attention.”
Keeping one hand clutching Mr. Charm, he lifted his other hand and slowly reached for my end table. “You may not be aware of this, Miss Sassafras, but you are not the only individual with a gift.”
I didn’t have time to process what the man might mean before I realized what he was reaching for.
On my end table was a spider plant, one of those exuberant houseplants that spills out in every direction like enchanted ivy. The man frowned, squinted, and touched the nearest tendril.
The entire plant withered.
Or even… bubbled. It happened so fast that I couldn’t be sure.
My mind stopped. Total terror override. I was staring at the impossible, the living green dried to crackled gray in seconds.
You might think that since I personally had the whole Magic Memory Touch thing, I’d have been more prepared for this.
Nope.
I’d never met anyone else demonstrate anything close to real magic. I’d gotten used to my own “gift” ages ago, and I’d lived a mostly normal life, thank you very much.
Now I was five feet from some lunatic who could kill with his touch. With his hand on my sweet cat’s neck.
I’d never felt this level of full-body fear. But I could also feel the adrenalin rush, my senses kicking into high gear. And if there was one thing I’d learned from a gazillion sales calls, it was this: when you get scared, get loud.
“So! You’re a magician?” I blared. The blast of my voice actually made Mr. Cool Cadaver startle. This was absurdly gratifying. “You rigged up that whole trick just for me?”
His eyes blazed with offense. Ice cold, he said, “Do you require a demonstration more impressive?”
“No, that was fantastic,” I said. “I hope you do birthday parties. The kids must go wild.”
He scowled.
“You are destined for a great work, Summer,” he said. “You cannot escape the fate for which you were born.”
A shiver crept down my back. No one had ever said anything like that to me. Ever.
But what I said was, “You talk a pretty big game for a guy who dresses like a substitute butler.”
That did it.
When an old man spends that much money on his outfit, he’s walking around with a neon sign advertising his weak point. He growled, and he clenched both hands into fists.
Meaning, he let go of my cat.
In one instant, Mr. Charm lunged, clawed the creep’s face, and bolted. I’d never seen him move so fast.
The man shrieked and clapped a hand to his bloody cheek. I jumped up, grabbed my chair, and swung it into his rib cage. The thud made my stomach turn, but he gasped and doubled over, coug
hing.
I tried to run, tripping across the room in my stupid heels but too frantic to think of kicking them off. I still had my purse on my shoulder, and I swung it off and scrabbled through the junk to get my phone to call the cops. Minutes seemed to crawl before I found it, but the second I finally grabbed my phone, the damn thing sparked and started smoking. Dead.
I hoisted my purse back onto my shoulder and lunged for my landline. (Yes, I kept a backup.) My old corded phone was mounted by the front door. I seized the handset… and the line was dead.
What? I’d hardly ever fried the landline.
Then I saw. The phone wire was neatly cut, limp on the floor.
Then his bony fingers gripped my right wrist, cold and strong as iron.
The skin contact should have jolted me hard, but I was so amped-up that I barely felt a prick. I expected the man to step away, dazed by my Touch…
… but to my horror, he leaned close, completely unaffected, grimacing with rage.
I cried out and slugged him with my other fist. The blow was awkward and I missed touching his face, but my sleeved forearm slammed his neck. Even through my long sleeve, his skin chilled me like ice.
He let go and clutched his neck, gasping. “You… are wanted…” he choked. “At the… highest levels…”
I hollered for my cat, but Charm was already crouched behind me, ready to make another lunge. I scooped him up, struggled for awful seconds with the door bolt, and then finally escaped into the hall.
I tripped again on my detestable heels, and this time I kicked them off and ran. My stocking feet pounded on the thin apartment carpet, but I didn’t feel a thing. I was down two flights of stairs before I realized that my wrist felt wrong. It was hot. Burning.
I looked.
Where he’d wrapped his fingers, my skin was dark and mottled. Like cancer.
Chapter 4
For the first couple of hours, I just drove. South.
It was a long time before I calmed down.
With my phone dead, my cards maxed, and no cash, I was very thankful that “Grandma” had had the foresight to print out directions. Most of this trip was going to be highways, and after a solid hour or so of monotonous driving on the interstate, I started to feel normal enough to think again.
I glanced at Mr. Charm in the rearview mirror. He was cuddled in the backseat, a big white ball of comfy calm, watching the world with his usual lazy grace. As if nothing had happened.
Just looking at him eased my heart rate. I really do love that cat.
“Thank God he didn’t mess with you,” I said.
Mr. Charm blinked. His big blue eyes vanished into his cute black mask of facial fur, then opened again, bright as ever.
I took this as a sign of placid agreement. I like to tell myself that Mr. Charm tends to agree with me. Also that he likes to hear me talk.
Even in my frantic rush to get in my car, I’d checked the cat’s neck where the creep had been holding him. The fur was white and pristine, with not a hint of hurt.
My wrist, however, still ached. I let my long sleeve hide it and I tried not to think about it, but every time the rash caught my eye, I creeped out.
Shouldn’t I be going to the hospital? Or the police? What the heck was I doing?
I did finally stop at a rest area and call 911 on an ancient pay phone. This was my first time calling the police, and I felt super anxious, like I might say the wrong thing and they’d be like, while we have you on the line, we’re going to go ahead and pick you up for that jaywalking last Saturday. The laconic dispatcher didn’t help when he kept asking why I was reporting a “break-in” that was already hours ago and over a hundred miles away.
By the time I got off the phone, I had zero interest in going to some emergency room and talking to a fresh round of total strangers. I hate hospitals anyway. And it’s not like I had health insurance anymore.
I’ll be honest: a woman who ran an inn and called herself “Grandma” sounded about a million times better just then than any other alternative. I wanted to crawl into a cozy bed and have some nice old woman bring me milk and cookies. I know it sounds childish, but I’d never had anything like that in my life. Not even close.
I mean, seriously, I’d been attacked. In my own home. A normal person would go and stay for a few days with family. Friends. Someone.
The hard truth was… I had no one like that.
I kept crazy busy with work, and then spent it all faster than it came in. Not a great recipe for social connections. The few old friends who might really have cared, I hadn’t talked to in years.
(To be fair… it definitely doesn’t help a long-distance friendship when you can’t get emotional without shorting out your phone.)
Over the years, I’d tried to find Mom’s family, but I’d always drawn a complete blank. If this Grandma lady really could tell me how to find them… real family…
I might finally find home. For the first time.
Of course, a few concerns did nibble at the back of my mind.
I mean, aside from the obvious issue of magic really exists, it’s lethal, and some assassin magician dude is obsessed with making you his minion.
There was that.
But even with Grandma’s letter… why had she just happened to write me right now? With hints about urgency and danger?
Had she known that this creep would come find me? And if so… what did that even mean? Could she possibly be… dangerous?
Nonsense. No way. That was preposterous. Just look at the woman’s handwriting!
Okay, yes, I wanted to believe that everything was going to be fine. Maybe I needed to believe it.
But I could still resolve to stay alert. Despite her stunning penmanship, this woman was a total stranger.
“Good thing I’ve got you,” I said aloud, glancing in the mirror at Mr. Charm. “Who knew a Ragdoll could be so good in a fight?”
Mr. Charm purred.
Around D.C., I hit some truly epic traffic, but I finally escaped onto a highway heading west into Virginia. At first, it was a slow slog through nasty sprawl and even more traffic, but at last the road cleared, and I was roaming free between the gentle Blue Ridge mountains. Up north in Pennsylvania, the April weather had been chilly and brown and bare, lingering in late winter, but down here, the slopes were green with spring.
Following the printout, I took an exit onto a country road. It was a two-lane ribbon of pavement, and although it snaked and twisted along steep slopes, pickup trucks zoomed around me at highway speeds. The dented guardrails looked like they might not save a scooter, and every so often, a roadside cross with a wreath of fake flowers marked a fatal accident. So much for the calm countryside.
But the natural landscape was soothing. The sun was setting, bathing mountains and valleys in a golden glow, and the space and the sky opened around me like I could finally breathe.
“Are you seeing this, Charm?” I said. “There are so many trees in bloom… blossoms are everywhere! White, pink, purple…”
But he was asleep.
That was the only real downer with all this country expanse and beauty. All this space seemed a bit lonely.
Then I crested a ridge, and the sudden view caught my heart.
Below me, the road sloped down to a small river that was sparkling in the sunset. A two-lane covered bridge arched over the water, complete with a wooden roof. Across the bridge, on a gentle slope, sat the loveliest little town I’d ever seen.
I’d seen other small towns on the way here, and they were mostly depressing. The country highway would blast past a few cruddy franchises, a decaying church or two, and maybe a post office from the Truman Era and a courthouse from the Civil War. The places seemed haphazard, accidental, unloved… like the crook of a stream that gradually gathers trash.
This was different.
Even from afar, you could see for sure that someone loved Wonder Springs.
Of course, it helped that the place was a sheer riotous garden of
tree blossoms. I recognized the ethereal clouds of dogwoods, both white and pink, but there were also those purple blossom trees I kept seeing along the road, and trees that drooped and swayed like willows, but cascaded with white blooms. There were other kinds of trees too, more than I could recognize at this distance—trees in bloom were truly everywhere, festooning every street.
The shops and houses blended a quaint old-fashioned style with immaculate upkeep; even from here, the stone walls and wood siding sparkled pristine. The wide main street seemed to be paved with brick, or even cobblestones. I couldn’t tell for sure, but there wasn’t a car in sight, only people walking peacefully, many holding hands.
At the far end of that street rose a matriarchal mansion, brooding over the town like a mother hen. The mansion was a paradise of nineteenth century whimsy, with crenellations and towers and high windows aglow.
That had to be the Inn.
I drove down the hill and across the covered bridge, and the roof above and the river below made it feel like some fairy passage, both inside and outside at once.
On the far side of the bridge, the road ended in the pedestrian mall I’d seen before. The main street really was cobblestone. A pretty welcome sign politely guided me to drive around to a side street, and I followed more signs down a few blocks to the Inn.
Even the side entrance where I parked was gorgeous. A wraparound porch with a low, sheltering roof seemed to shimmer with hospitality, as if the empty rocking chairs were just begging you to sit and share a sweet tea.
In fact, two figures were already sitting there in chairs. But the sun had softened into twilight, and what with the high porch railings and the bushes of azaleas that were just starting to open pink, I couldn’t quite make them out. One of them wore a strange high hat, oddly shaped but vaguely familiar.
I pulled into a spot, parked, and grabbed the letter.
When I looked up, one of the porch people had risen, the one without the hat. She stepped toward me, showing the face of a woman in her early fifties, with wide, dark eyes and a bright smile. She didn’t seem like a “Grandma”; it was possible, maybe, but something in her expression just seemed too young.