The Second Wish (Yes, Master Book 2)

by Simon Archer

  “Well, yeah, kinda…” Andi answered, looking at Vila. I had no idea why anyone would get mad at two soft-hearted individuals trying to save a baby bird, but the two of them were sure worried that I would be.

  “Of course, I don’t care if you have a bird!” I hollered over to them louder than I intended.

  “You don’t?” They asked in unison.

  “No! Why would I?” I crossed my arms and sat back in my chair, still chuckling.

  “You’ve never mentioned getting a dog, or a cat, or any kind of pet, really so we weren’t sure you even liked animals,” Vila spilled out.

  Andi hit her in the arm. “Not that we think you don’t like animals, we just weren’t sure if you would be ok with them in your house,” she clarified, certain I’d take offense to what Vila had said.

  “Ladies, I do not have a problem with animals in the house,” I started. “Assuming they are not wild rats or giraffes, I’m fine with it. I actually think it's sweet that you rescued the little guy. Chester, is it?” They both broke into smiles that lit up the room.

  “Yes, Chester!” Andi replied excitedly. “When I was young, before I went to live in the castle with my mother, we used to find abandoned or injured animals all around the property where I lived. Birds were my favorite to try to help, though. They are just so tiny and adorable!”

  “Adorable?” I wasn’t sure how a scraggly, naked head with a twig body was considered adorable, but I knew girls tended to like most things in miniature form when it came to animals.

  “Yes! He’s so tiny and cute!” Vila chimed in.

  “Why Chester, though?” I had to know.

  “Chester was the name of one of the birds I was able to save when I was young. I thought the name might bring good luck!” Andi answered happily.

  “Well, alright, then. Welcome to the family, Chester,” I said dramatically.

  “Oh, thank you!” the two girls cried out together. They ran to me and threw their arms around my neck with so much enthusiasm that they nearly knocked my chair over.

  “You’re welcome,” I laughed as they released me, making sure I wasn’t going to fall over. As soon as they were sure I was out of tipping danger, they ran back to the kitchen and disappeared behind the countertop. I could hear tiny, high pitched whispers as they cooed to comfort Chester.

  I shook my head to myself and stood up. It was about time for me to be getting to work. My faculties were back to normal, mind-wise, which I was grateful for because Glen wouldn’t be driving me to work. He was tasked with taking Sven and Asher to the airport this morning. I felt my pocket for my money clip, phone, and keys, then headed towards the foyer.

  “Goodbye, ladies. Thank you for breakfast, and the side-splitting laughter!” I called out to their backs. They both put their hands up to wave goodbye backward but didn’t turn around.

  It was truly adorable how smitten they were with such an ugly little thing. I continued into the foyer and out the front door. It was unseasonably warm outside, reminding me that I did, indeed, have a door that led to the garage from inside the house and that I should use it when pulling my own vehicles out. That way, I wouldn’t fry outside needlessly.

  By the time I got the garage door open, I was already sweating. I climbed in my Mustang, and put the keys in the ignition, starting the engine. I was just about to put the car in gear to back out when my phone rang. I fished it out of my pocket and slid my finger across the screen.

  “Bennett Anders,” I answered.

  “Bennett, hello! It’s Dave Klerik.”

  An instant sense of ugh came over me.

  “Yes, Dave. How can I help you?” I was hoping to get the man straight to the point. I’d had a great morning and didn’t want him to bring me down with his weird energy.

  “I’m calling to tell you that I found something in your table,” he said excitedly.

  “You found something? Like a scratch or something?” I asked impatiently.

  “No, not a scratch. It’s really rather incredible!” He was so jazzed up, I was certain he hadn’t noticed the irritation in my voice.

  “What did you find?” I asked flatly.

  “It’s really hard to describe. Can you meet me? Or I can bring it to the office if you’re there?” he offered.

  “No, I’m not there. I was just starting my car to go, though,” I answered. I didn’t want him at the office again, and I knew Jack wouldn’t be happy to see him either.

  “Oh, okay. Well, do you want to come here on your way in then?” Dave’s voice had changed suddenly. It had gone from excited to satisfied-sounding, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

  “Where is ‘here,’ Dave?” I asked cautiously.

  “Beside the old Thrift ‘n’ Save. It’s one of the locations I’m filming at. Plus, I find a lot of old, fun stuff in thrift stores. It adds to the ‘rags-to-riches’ feel of the film,” Dave rambled until he was out of breath.

  “Fine, I’ll swing by, but are you sure you can’t just tell me what you found?” I was seriously dreading seeing the man.

  “I’m sorry, Bennett, I have to show you. See you real soon,” Dave said.

  My blood ran cold at the change in the tone of his voice. It was pure freaking evil. The line disconnected, and I dropped my phone on the seat beside me like it was contaminated just from talking to him through it. As I stared at it on the seat, my vision changed, and I saw a flash from my recurring dream. It was the part where the four hooded figures were walking towards Andi and Vila, who were playing in the river. Lottie, Jack, Gisele, and the woman I didn’t know.

  I watched the woman, and when her cape swayed to the side slightly, I saw the hem of her dress. It was embroidered with gold thread, and I figured out who she was. Only royalty wore gowns like that. It was Andi’s mother. I studied the figures as they continued walking. There was something I was missing about my dream. I believed it meant more than it seemed, especially after finding out that Jack had seen the woman in blue as well.

  Then it struck me. I wasn’t just having the dream at random. It was a warning.

  In the very recent past, this Dave person had managed to visit Lottie, Jack, and myself, acquiring items from each of us. Vila had talked about Gisele being able to sense magic. The girls were magic, and they were about to be found out. All of us were in the dream. The only person whose connection I couldn’t pinpoint was Andi’s mom, and it dawned on me that I didn’t even know her name.

  What I did know is that recently, she’d been very forefront in Andi’s mind. Even though she didn’t talk about her mother directly that when she talked of home, it was clear she was thinking of her. The woman in blue had been trying to warn me that when the four figures made it to the genies, my world would be destroyed.

  Dave was at the center of it all somehow.

  I reached for the door handle and the keys at the same time. I had to go back inside and tell Andi and Vila about the conversation I’d just had, the horrible malice I’d just heard, and what I’d figured out. I didn’t know how to stop Dave yet, or even exactly what he was up to, but there was no way in hell he was going to hurt the people I loved.

  Just as my hands touched my keys and the door handle, there was a flash of blinding red light. I felt myself violently pulled from my car. The light was so bright that I couldn’t see, and then some unseen force threw me so hard that it was as if I was flying through the air. The sensation changed to that of falling a split second before I slammed into something.

  My back hit something hard, and my head whipped backward. A sharp, searing pain stabbed through my skull a split-second before I passed out.

  20

  Dave

  I didn’t even care that I’d let my ‘filmmaker’ façade down when I was talking to Bennett on the phone. He’d told me everything I needed to know. He was alone, and he wasn’t in his home or office. That also most likely meant that whatever magical item Bennett possessed, it wasn’t with him. I was sure it was a box of some kind.
>
  More importantly, I heard his voice change with his last question. He’d known something was off, but it was too late. I intended my call merely to locate him. I hadn’t lied about where I was, though. I was standing next to the Thrift ‘n’ Save, staring up at the name painted on the side of the brick building. It also happened to be the location of the alley where I'd found the remnant magic glow I was certain was associated with Bennett.

  On the off chance that Bennett’s strange way of helping people, whether they asked for it or not, was magical, I’d already spelled myself to ward it off. I couldn’t be influenced while I carried out my plan. I turned from the building and walked to the table I had set up on the other side of the alley. It was Bennett’s table. Of course, I hadn’t really found anything inside it, but I was rather proud of myself for thinking the lie up as a way to force a conversation with him.

  The table was prepared for my next step. I’d scraped a few shards of wood off the table earlier, and they now sat in a cast-iron pot set in the middle of the tabletop. My artifacts, four in all, were laid on the corners of the table, surrounding the pot. I had been pleasantly surprised to find that the quipu had remnant magic in it. Originally, I had collected it and Jack’s golf club merely as items to connect to the most important people in Bennett’s life. The quipu was ancient, however, and whoever made it either had magic surrounding them or was a practitioner of magic. It simply added to the power I was now able to wield at my whim.

  I lit a match, whispered a spell, and threw the match into the pot with the wood shavings. At first, it looked like the match was going to go out before the wood caught fire, but at the last second, a splinter caught flame. The shavings flared as though they’d been soaked in lighter fluid. Black smoke rose into the air.

  Just before the fire went out, I swirled my hand through the smoke and chanted the last line of the spell. The smoke turned red just as the flames died out. It started twisting around itself and rising higher into the air. When it passed above the top of the buildings, it flashed and sped off in the direction of Bennett’s house. Now, I had nothing to do but wait. I sat in one of Bennett’s chairs that I’d brought along for just such an instance.

  I pondered exactly what to say to him when he arrived. There would be plenty of time to reveal his mistakes to him if I wanted to. I wouldn’t be completing my spell work to undo the fabric of his life right when he arrived. I only decided to summon him early to induce some of the torment that his actions had led me to feel that past year. Despite all that, I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell him anything. Maybe it would be more satisfying to see him watch his life crumble in front of him and not know why.

  It was a hard decision, but I decided I would tell him. It would hurt him so much more if he knew that he was the reason for his own downfall. Seeing his loved ones turn on him one-by-one, knowing it was coming, knowing he was responsible, would break him down even further. I couldn’t stop smiling at the thought.

  After all, he’d ruined my entire future in one fail swoop. It was only fair I returned the courtesy.

  I thought back to the day my dad’s lawyers had visited. They told me that my parents were in jail and that their assets had been frozen. The cheap bastards barely gave me enough to live on as it was. At first, when I’d call the lawyers to get updates about my parents’ case, they were polite and answered my questions, but then they became short with me. Each time I called, they were ruder and more impatient.

  One day, the receptionist told me that my calls would no longer be received by the lawyers at all and asked me to stop calling. When I’d screamed at her, she threw a fit and yelled at me. She told me the stop order came from my parents, that they were the ones that didn’t want me to know anything.

  I’d slammed the phone down and pictured my parents’ faces. Even from prison, they were treating me like shit. They’d give the world to my ex-wife and my asshole stepson, but not me. Finally, one day, a letter came notifying me that their trust had been dismantled and used as restitution payment. That meant I would get nothing. My entire inheritance disappeared. My parents weren’t going to leave the money to me, anyway. That was why I had drafted a false Last Will and Testament to use when they died so I could inherit the money. They had scammed away millions of dollars, and because of Bennett, I wouldn’t see a single cent of it.

  The smile disappeared from my face as the memory floated through my mind. The same day I talked to the rude receptionist, I had been ready to go confront Bennett in person and show him who he had messed with when a knock came at my apartment door.

  It was the archaeologist.

  At first, I thought he was a solicitor and was about to punch him in the face, but then he said he had some things to give to me. Our visit was short, but he’d left the blanket, the rope, and the book, along with some tall tales of magical folklore. He’d even tried to get me to let him keep the stuff for science’s sake. I tossed him out and threw all the stuff he gave me under the bed, thinking it was all useless junk in the beginning.

  Then, about a week later, I saw a glow coming from where I’d put them. When I retrieved them, the book glowed ever-so-slightly. It did that just that once, but that was all I needed. I became obsessed with learning what I had actually been given. While the process of digging for information seemed to take forever, the more information I uncovered, the more a plan started to form. It took me longer than it should have to start looking into where the stuff all came from, or more accurately, who it all came from.

  The archaeologist had talked about a lineage that led him to me. It turned out that hundreds of years earlier, a man had been banished to an unknown island, unknown at the time anyway. There was no record of how he got there, but there were stone drawings showing he’d managed to start a family with a woman on the island. When they found his body, he had been clutching the book, the rope, and the blanket. Nobody could figure out how none of the items had disintegrated. They would have kept them to study but, because there was a traceable lineage, they had to give them to me. It was magic that had kept them from disintegrating, plain and simple.

  After my research was complete, I originally just wanted to get back at Bennett. Then, knowing what I’d learned about magic, I realized that he had magic in his life too somehow. The signs all added up. I wasn’t able to be one-hundred percent certain though until the day I used the blanket right there in that same alley to uncover the remnant magic. When I was sure, however, I could feel the power within my grasp. By destroying the magic in Bennett’s life, I would absorb it into myself. Then I would use a spell from the book to solidify my powers, and the result would be me becoming a full-powered warlock.

  The rest of Bennett’s distress would just be the revenge-icing on the cake.

  My smile returned as I sat and thought of how brilliant I’d been in figuring out all the pieces. I lifted my arms above my head to stretch, and when I looked up, the red smoke had started to dive back down into the alley.

  I jumped to my feet, my heart racing as I focused on every twist and movement the red cloud made. I wanted to be able to recall every moment of Bennett’s demise perfectly in my memory. The smoke rushed down between the buildings, creating a gust of wind as it approached. It formed into a fat funnel, and just before it touched the ground, something flew out of the bottom. I nearly cried tears of joy as the smoke dissipated, and Bennett’s limp body slumped against the side of the building he’d just been slammed into. My summoning spell had worked perfectly.

  21

  Vila

  Andi and I spent the morning sitting and talking to Chester after Bennett left for work. The poor little bird would’ve most likely died if my genie hearing wasn’t so acute. We had fallen out of his nest, and I really wasn’t sure how he survived the landing. However, nothing appeared broken, and we’d gotten him to eat ground-up worms from a pipette.

  I had high hopes for the little creature. We’d even moved him into the living room while we played chess. Our chess tournaments ca
me and went over the years. We’d play for a week or two, and then not again for a decade or so. It had actually been three decades since we’d played that time, so we were having an extra good time. We had to modify our game so as not to scare Chester, though. The feel of it was entirely different when we weren’t allowed to destroy each other’s game pieces physically.

  We were just setting up a new game when my phone rang. I answered it to hear a familiar voice on the other end.

  “Hi, Vila, it’s Jack,” he said politely.

  “Hey, Jack. How are you?” I greeted him.

  “I’d be doing a little better if that housemate of yours was here,” he said. He put a lift in his voice to sound humorous, but it didn’t cover up the stress I heard.

  “I’m not sure I understand, Jack,” I replied.

  “I’m looking for Bennett,” Jack stated plainly. Chills ran up my spine.

  “He left here hours ago,” I told him. “He’s not there with you?” I sat up on my knees. Andi was listening to the conversation, and her face reflected the dread that was settling in my stomach.

  “No, he’s not. Did he say anything about going somewhere else first?” Jack’s voice had shifted from irritation to concern.

  “He didn’t say anything to us other than he was going to leave for work,” I answered. “So, where the hell is he?”

  “I have no idea, Vila. He’s driving himself today, right? He sent Glen to drive Sven and Asher. Can you tell me what car he drove?” Jack asked quickly.

  “Give me just a second. I’ll go look.” I pushed the ‘hold’ button on my phone, so I wouldn’t accidentally hang up while Andi and I bolted out the front door. We turned the corner of the house on our way to the garage and stopped short. The garage door was wide open.

  “What the hell?” Andi called out. Bennett had never left it open before.