by Karen Mead
“Don’t curse,” Sam reminded Khalil, “and yes, I noticed.”
Dwight looked from Khalil to Sam with an annoyed expression. “C’mon, they’re all college students. I don’t rob the cradle.”
“You don’t know they’re all college students,” said Khalil, holding up his index finger. “Some of them might even be 25!”
“Whatever. Still way too young for me,” said Dwight, looking down at his water. Cassie looked at him and wondered, for the first time, just how old he was. She’d always thought of him as being in his “mid-thirties,” but what did that really mean: 32, or more like 37? Furthermore, even though he looked great, how old was too old to be the lead singer in a band like NCWP? She realized she didn’t really know anything about this entire Sodatown culture that Dwight belonged to.
Even though burgers were her favorite food, Cassie only ordered a small plate of fries while everyone else decided to try Maggie’s Famous Cheeseburger. Animal flesh was used for black spells, and eating it regularly could taint a white witch’s magic, or so Serenus’ had told her. She thought her magic was quite pure enough as it was, but Ser had made her promise that if she insisted on making no other progress in her magical training for the time being, she could at least start getting used to the proper witchy diet. She found she couldn’t argue with him there.
As they waited for the food, they talked about the show, while Khalil filled Dwight in on anything of note he’d missed at the shop that evening— mostly the exploits of some of their more annoying regular customers. Sam mostly kept quiet, which pleased Cassie; she had no idea what was going to come out of his mouth tonight. The lively conversation suddenly died down when a copper-haired man in a tailored blue suit approached their table, coming to a stop next to Khalil.
“Excuse me,” the newcomer said. “Sorry to interrupt, but is Dwight MacGregor of NCWP here?”
Khalil pointed to Dwight, who suddenly looked wary.
“Yeah?” said Dwight.
The man broke into a huge smile; he must have used some kind of product to get his teeth to look so blindingly white. “I thought so. I’m Mitch Treyard from Apollo Records, and I caught the show at Warehouse tonight. Amazing set, mind if I sit down for a minute?”
Khalil’s eyes lit up with excitement; here was a record company bigwig, and he wanted to speak to Dwight. This could be the big break the band had been waiting for all these years. Cassie, Mike and Jay were all giving Dwight encouraging smiles when his response shocked them.
“We’re kind of out of chairs,” said Dwight, fixing Mitch a look with his light blue eyes that Cassie could only describe as frigid. “Might want to find somewhere else to sit.” Glaring at Dwight like he’d suddenly gone crazy, Khalil quickly turned to their guest and stood up.
“Sorry man, he’s just tired from the show. You can take my seat.”
“Thanks,” said Mitch, gliding into Khalil’s seat effortlessly. If he was rattled by Dwight’s cold reception, he didn’t show it. “As you probably already know, we at Apollo are always scouting for local talent. I’d heard some great things, but I was still blown away by what I saw tonight. If you have a few minutes, I’d like to talk about—“
“—whatever your boss told you to offer me,” said Dwight, his face a mask. “Because you knew what you were going to say to me before you even saw us perform tonight. Am I right?”
“Dwight!” said Khalil and Cassie in unison. A record executive had followed Dwight after the show and wanted to talk business, and Dwight was pushing him away? What was he thinking?
Cassie saw her confusion mirrored on Jay and Mike’s faces, but Sam looked like he understood what was going on all too well. “I want you to know I had nothing to do with this,” he said, turning to Dwight. “They didn’t contact me.”
Cassie felt an icy tendril of fear in her stomach, for the first time in a while. Clearly this was some kind of demon business, but for what purpose? And how had Dwight known?
Dwight crossed his arms in front of him, fixing Mitch with a glare. “You’re not a demon, but I’ll bet your boss is. And I’ll bet he sent you to offer me a deal as some kind of favor to him—” and with that, he cocked his head in Sam’s direction. “I don’t want to be part of whatever politics you guys have going on. If I get a record contract someday, it’ll be because I deserve it, not because I’m part of some demon’s entourage.”
Mitch dropped his veneer of politeness and looked at Dwight like he was an unruly child. “Look, you have your pride, and I respect that, but there’s no reason to act all offended; this is how this industry has always worked. Don’t tell me you didn’t suspect as much,” he said. Turning to Sam, his voice took on a more deferential tone.
“I’m sorry that I have offended your…friend, but we were acting in accordance with tradition. Now that you have taken up residence in this area, it was only natural to pay tribute. Our main office is in the city proper, after all.”
“No tribute is necessary,” said Sam, “and I would appreciate it if your boss would address me directly in the future. Don’t try to go through members of my entourage.”
“I will pass that on,” Mitch said, nodding solemnly as though he had committed everything Sam said to memory. In fact, he probably had. “Mr. Macgregor, I apologize for impinging upon your sense of self-worth in any way. Please forget this intrusion, and have a pleasant evening.”
He got up to leave, then seemed to think better of it and turned back towards Dwight, who watched him with a guarded expression. “For the record, you were really good,” he said. “The rest of the band is decent, but you’ve got an amazing presence on stage.” At that, he turned and walked out.
Khalil watched Mitch push through the waiting customers to exit the diner with an expression of disbelief on his face, then slowly took his seat. “I cannot believe you,” he said, clearly addressing Dwight though he wasn’t looking in his direction.
At that moment, a waitress arrived with their food, causing Khalil to hold whatever else he was going to say. Cassie took a piping-hot fry off her plate as soon as it was placed in front of her, blew on it gently, and tasted it: it was perfect oily, greasy, fatty goodness. These were fries for people who had never heard of the concept of “calories.” Whatever demon weirdness was going on now, at least her stomach would be pleased.
“How did you know he was here on demon business?” asked Mike when the waitress disappeared. Jay took a sip of his strawberry milkshake, looking at Dwight with a curious expression.
Dwight sighed. “When he asked for me, he was looking at Sam,” he said. “Besides, you don’t think I tried to get Apollo to come to our gigs before? They couldn’t be bothered to give us the time of day. It was always ‘we’re not interested in that style, we only publish current music’,” he said bitterly. “I could just tell it was too good to be true.”
Khalil shocked them all by slamming his fist on the table. “Still, that was no reason to say no!” he yelled, then lowered his voice when a murmur rose up from the surrounding tables. “You could have been inking a record deal right now, what does it matter why he was interested?”
Dwight turned his attention to his food, not meeting Khalil’s eyes. “Sorry, but I’m not going to sign up with a label just because they want to get on Sam’s good side.”
“Don’t you get it?” said Khalil, obviously struggling to keep his voice down. “The whole industry is like this! You think anyone gets these deals on talent alone?”
Dwight shrugged as he chewed and swallowed a huge mouthful of cheeseburger. “I doubt the music industry is made up entirely of demons. I want to get a real deal someday.”
“That was as real as it gets!”
Cassie was only half listening, absorbed in the euphoria of a hot plate of freshly made French fries. There was something intensely satisfying about them, as though they were made with something more substantial than potatoes, oil and salt. She stopped chewing suddenly when she realized she couldn’t taste the potatoes at
all.
She turned to Sam, who was tucking into his Maggie’s Special. “Did you order your burger rare?”
He gave her a puzzled look. “Yeah, why?”
“Because I can taste it,” she said slowly, suddenly feeling ill. “I’m tasting your food…our minds are getting crossed….” At that, she suddenly felt a wave of nausea and bolted for the bathroom at top speed.
CHAPTER THREE
To Cassie’s relief, the bathroom had just been cleaned and had an overpowering smell of artificial lemons. Kneeling over the toilet in a stall, the citrusy aroma seemed to soothe her nerves, and the waves of nausea slowly receded. Sometimes artificial smells were comforting just because they were so obviously fake; they took her mind off more primal sensations.
She heard the door open and assumed another woman had entered the ladies room, only to recognize the sound of Sam’s hiking boots on the tile floor.
“Hey, you can’t be in here! This is the ladies room.”
“We need to talk,” he said, ignoring her protest. “I’ve hexed the door so no one else can come in.”
Not moving from her position over the toilet, Cassie yelled at him through the door of her stall. “You can’t hex the door, what if there’s a pregnant lady who really needs to go to the bathroom and—”
“Cassie, shut up!” he snapped loudly. Pausing for a moment, he continued in his normal speaking voice. “I know you’re scared, and I don’t blame you, but you can’t freak out every time I try to talk to you about this.”
“Right, I should just hop over and sit in your lap, right?” Cassie said. As awkward as it was, talking to him while she was hunched over the toilet bowl, it actually made it easier in some respects. “Seriously Sam, what was up with that? The things you said tonight….”
“It seemed like that was the only way I could get your attention,” he said quietly.
“Well you’ve got my attention, and now I’m trying not to puke.”
“I’m sorry you picked up some of my sensations. Serenus warned me it could happen, but I’ve always been so bad with the mental stuff I didn’t...I really didn’t think it would happen to us. I’ll try to keep it from happening again.”
“Trying isn’t good enough, I can’t live like this.”
“You don’t have to,” he said evenly. “You can start training with me. You’ll learn about magic, and my control should get much better with practice.”
At that, she stood up, confident she probably wasn’t going to lose what little she’d eaten of her fries just yet. She exited the bathroom stall and turned to face him, her back against the door. She didn’t want to say this to his face, but she felt like she had to.
“Right, I’ll start training to be a witch. All I have to do is go home with you, right?” She said. Courage fleeing, she dropped her eyes as she finished speaking. There was a pregnant pause as he considered his answer.
“Forget that,” he said finally, and she snorted. “Well don’t forget it, but don’t worry about it now. That’s light years ahead of where we are now.”
She frowned “Where are we now?”
“Right now, we have to learn how to do a power transfer without draining your energy so much. You should start to develop a feel for magic through our bond as you watch me do it. We have to figure out exactly what our bond can do, so we don’t have any more unpleasant surprises like tonight.” He put his hands in his pockets, expression unreadable. “There’s a lot to do before we even consider making you a witch.”
Cassie looked down at the chipped bathroom tiles, considering his words. She’d been so afraid, she hadn’t really considered how nice it would be to gain a measure of control over some of the magic in her life. As much as the thought of spending time with him made her stomach fill with butterflies, being trained as a familiar had to be better than just stumbling through it, completely in the dark.
“Okay,” she said, taking a deep breath. “I’m on at DG Friday afternoon. If you want to start training, I can get to work a little early so we have time. I can’t stay late because my Mom will be suspicious.” She raised her eyes to see him wearing one of his rare smiles, the kind that always made her stomach do jumping jacks.
“Well we certainly can’t have your mom suspicious,” he said. “She already thinks I’m using dark magic on you with no proof whatsoever.”
As Cassie laughed, they both heard the clunk of a door swinging open. Horrified, Cassie turned to see a tiny elderly woman, with hair pulled back into a gray bun that was practically bigger than she was, gingerly make her way out of a toilet stall. The old woman fixed them both with a dubious expression.
Cassie struggled for something to say. The woman was so tiny that Sam must not have been able to see her feet under the door when he’d checked the bathroom for other inhabitants. “Oh um, hi. What we were just talking about, it wasn’t real, it was just um—“
Fixing Cassie with a raised eyebrow, the woman turned on her heel and went for the doorknob, which refused to open. She turned to Sam “Unhex it, please?” she rattled out in the gruff voice of a multi-decade chain smoker.
“O-of course,” Sam said, racing to her side. With a gesture, the door clicked and the elderly woman exited the bathroom, giving Sam one more withering look over her shoulder as she did so. Sam scratched the back of his head and turned to look at Cassie.
“We really have to stop discussing this stuff in public,” he said.
“You know, I say that all the time but it just keeps happening.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Miri ran home, trying to get out of the rain as fast as possible without breaking into a full sprint. If she ran at her full speed, she’d be little more than a blur and even the typically self-absorbed New Yorkers around her would probably notice that. Plus, her embroidered thigh-highs tended to slip down towards her ankles when she ran.
That was the problem with Manhattan; the abundance of people made it extremely easy to find willing ones to drink from, but you had to assume that someone was always watching, because they usually were.
Taking a hard right on 37th, she burst through the side door next to the comics store that occupied the bottom floor of her family’s building. Once safely inside, she dashed up the stairs at full speed, clearing three flights in a matter of seconds, holding up her stockings as she did so.
She didn’t know what she expected to see when she made it through the front door, but it certainly wasn’t everyone gathered at the couch around a prone Nyesha. The young woman had her back to the room, pressing her face against the back of the gray leather couch as though she were trying to disappear between the cushions.
Miri threw her wet pea jacket onto the old-fashioned coat rack and cut through Liam and Dmitri to get to the slender woman in sweats who was slowly curling into a fetal position. “Ny, what’s going on?” She put a hand on Nyesha’s shoulder, her own pale complexion looking shockingly white next to Nyesha’s midnight black skin. When Nyesha didn’t answer, Miri shook her gently. “Ny, come on already.”
“It’s the sun sickness,” said Eugene, from over Miri’s left shoulder. As usual, his voice betrayed little emotion. “She got it today, suddenly. She’s been like this for almost 12 hours.”
Miri spun around to look at their patriarch. “Sun sickness? Are you kidding me? She was turned what, three months ago? That’s impossible.”
Eugene walked past her, his hands clasped behind his back. The unnatural whiteness of his hands was the only clue to his mental state. “It’s not impossible. I’ve heard that it can happen to young ones in cases of extreme stress.”
Miri turned back to look at her blood sister, biting her lip in frustration. Quentin had done this to Nyesha. Maybe not directly, but through his unwanted attention, he’d made her tense up to the point where she was getting sun sickness 60 years before her time. As a vampire, Miri wasn’t used to feeling like she should lament the unfairness of life, but seeing Nyesha crumpled on the couch filled her with righteous anger.
How dare he do this to her. How dare he, and worse, there’s nothing we can do about it.
She started as Eugene suddenly materialized at her side. “There may be yet,” he whispered in her ear, then turned to the others. “Liam, Dmitri, stay with Nyesha and give her anything she requests. I need to speak with Miriam in private.”
Miri’s eyes widened. Though Eugene wasn’t unapproachable, he only very rarely sought to speak to her specifically. What did he want to discuss with her that he wouldn’t say in front of the others?
Within seconds, they were in Eugene’s office, sumptuous and elegant where the rest of the apartment was plain. She knew Eugene could have afforded virtually any class of real estate, perhaps on the Upper West Side where they could have had a view of the park, but being located smack dab in the middle of midtown was worth the rather nondescript furnishings. His office was the one place where Eugene had bothered to personalize.
Sitting down in his chair next to a restored Tiffany lamp, Eugene gestured to the old fashioned bar stool across his mahogany desk, where Miri perched. Normally she might be a tiny bit concerned that the position made her short vinyl skirt ride up practically to her naval, but this was Eugene; he had made her into a vampire. There was no part of her he hadn’t seen.
For a few moments after they had sat, Eugene simply looked at the desk calendar before him, filled with appointments in his immaculate cursive script, as though she wasn’t in the room. As was his habit, when he finally addressed her, he made it sound as though they were already in the middle of a conversation. “Time we moved to a new city, I think.”
“What?” said Miri, her hazel eyes widening. “Change territories? Can that be done?”
“I don’t know,” said Eugene, his eyes on the classical oil painting above her head, as though the Madonna herself could provide guidance. “But I’ve decided we have to try. Nyesha won’t last if we stay here.”