by A. L. Tyler
“Thorn,” he said by way of greeting. “I need a favor.”
Chapter 2
He continued to stand there, a dark silhouette against the bright street lights that peeked through the window blinds behind him.
Charlie seemed to follow my gaze down to Gates. “Oh, she can’t hear me, Thorn…”
But even as he spoke, Gates leapt up from her bed, hissing and spitting as she spun around in confusion.
“…Or perhaps she can, now.” His smile glimmered white in the dark of the bedroom. “You’re more cat than human now, Gates. Good for you, settling into the digs.”
Gates’ back was arched to a nearly impossible extent as she slowly backed away from the corner. A constant low growl threatened the demon she couldn’t see, but she somehow knew he was there.
“You’re back,” I finally managed.
“Yes.” Charlie looked down for a moment, and then raised a hand and snapped his fingers. The lights in the room came on, and I closed my eyes against the sudden brightness. When I opened them again, he was still leaning against the wall in the corner, arms crossed, looking highly amused as I assessed him. “I’m back.”
He was dressed as he usually was, in a look that was reminiscent of work casual, but two hours after work has ended and in a classier bar. He wasn’t as disheveled as the last time I had seen him, and his eyes weren’t bloodshot with effort.
I swallowed my apprehension, reaching down to lift Gates onto my bed because she didn’t want to turn her back to jump up. “You’re looking well, Charlie. I suppose you’re back to heal Gates?”
He smiled and raised a finger, waggling it at me as he took two steps closer. Gates hissed.
“Oh, no, Thorn…You still owe me a Kendra before I owe you a Gates.”
“I became your bridge,” I said stubbornly. I didn’t care if he did look casually professional while I sat there in a camisole and pajama pants. Gates’ mother had gone beyond trying to find her lost daughter. She was mourning her now, and it wasn’t right. “You’re going to turn her back!”
“But if I only had the power,” he said with a sickly grin. He was enjoying the interaction too much, and I was tired.
Whipping off the covers and sending Gates leaping three feet into the air in surprise, I got out of bed and walked to the kitchen. Charlie followed, and once she had her feet and her wits again, so did Gates. I angrily grabbed at the empty kettle on the stove and filled it, setting it back and turning the stove knob with frustration. But even as I clicked it on, the water sputtered out, piping hot, and I flicked it back off with a glare at Charlie. He winked at me as I took a mug and a selected a bag from my box, and then set my tea aside to steep. Leaning on the counter to gather my thoughts, I sighed.
“Turn her back,” I said again.
“I can’t do that, Thorn.”
“Can’t,” I demanded, “Or won’t?”
“Can’t,” Charlie said simply. He picked up my tea and blew on it once lightly, and then set the mug in my hands. It was the perfect temperature, and I glared over the rim at him as I took a tentative sip. “I don’t have the power.”
“You’ve got the power to make tea,” I said sarcastically. “But you can’t find it in you to reverse whatever you call what you did to her?”
“Hmm…” He smiled again. “That’s exactly right, Thorn. Exactly how it is. I’m a demon that’s been reduced to making tea for a living.”
Still glaring, I leaned back against the countertop, trying to sort my emotions and my words, and hoping that Gates would jump in and give him a verbal lashing. She must have thought better of the idea, having been turned into a cat the last time she had insulted him.
“But I’m fine, thanks for asking…” Charlie took to the opposite wall, turning to face me. “I’ve been here and there, hiding in the Other Side for a while to heal up, and then back here again. I went to Boca, and then Cairns and Honolulu. I like the heat. I don’t think you knew that about me, did you? Anyways…feasting after the fast. It’s a good thing, but it tends to leave one feeling bloated and tired, so I went back and did some spring cleaning, and then—”
“Don’t care,” I said. “Why the hell are you back here if you can’t do anything for Gates?”
He didn’t even bother to spare her a look as he stared into my eyes.
“Hair of the dog that bit me,” he said with a twitch. “And I say ‘dog’ only to avoid the ugliness of my true sentiment. Your sister banished me, and I need a lock of her hair to make a full recovery.”
With a stony-faced expression of exhaustion and gloom, I set my half finished tea in the sink and then stared at it. The deals were never done with Charlie, and this one was a tricky matter.
“You need Lyssa’s hair?” I asked. My voice had gone flat.
“I do,” Charlie replied.
Quiet though they were, I heard Gates’ paws beating a retreat back to the bedroom, and I heard the cat door I had installed for her flip-flap shut. She didn’t want to be around him anymore, even for my sake. My dad had rolled his eyes when I said I needed cat doors in all of the internal doors, but my insistence won out and we had worked it out with the landord.
“That’s not going to happen,” I said, turning back to face him. “She’ll never go for it. You can have some of mine—”
“I need hers,” he insisted. “Thorn, she banished me, and to shed that weight, I need her hair. Make it happen. Unless you like owning a cat…”
I raised a hand to quiet him, and my stomach twisted into knots. “She’s not a cat. She’s my best friend, and I’m doing everything I can—”
“Everything except this,” he said lightly.
“—to help her!”
We stared at each other. I knew, with her superior cat ears, that Gates could hear us from the bedroom. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what she wanted. She hated Charlie, but her mother was in pain…worse. Her mother was beginning to get over the pain.
I didn’t know what she wanted me to do.
“If I get you her hair, you’ll help Gates?”
“If you get her to give me her hair, I’ll consider helping Gates,” he said crossing his arms. “I don’t know if it will heal me. I just know it’s the next step towards healing.”
I cocked my head, crossing my arms to match his posture. Then I heaved a sigh and walked away, back toward the bedroom.
“Sorry. Not good enough.”
“I technically don’t owe your friend a damn thing until you summon Kendra back here,” he protested, following me. “And need I remind you, this is a two-way street now, Thorn!”
At the door, I spun to face him. “Is that a threat?”
“It’s a fact,” he scoffed. His expression became much more serious. “And even if it was, what would you do about it?”
I tried to stare him down. But he was at least a head taller than me, and in the close confines of my humble one bedroom apartment, his stature was impressive.
“Not a damn thing,” he finished. “You’re not a witch. You’re not a warlock, or anything else. You’re just a baby, putting together some bastard book of random spells you don’t even own because they didn’t come from you. I am promising you the world, and all you have to do is agree to play my games. Get me her hair, and we can keep playing. If not, then I guess I’m on the market for a new bridge, and you know I’m good at getting people to say yes.”
I bit my inner cheek to cut the buzz in my head. It was hard to think straight when he started to lecture, because he was too good at it. He was too convincing.
“What I did to your friend can’t be undone by anyone but me,” Charlie said quietly. “I will undo it when I get what I want, and that’s Kendra. You had no problem with that before, so I fail to see why you should have a problem now. Stay on my good side until our deal is done.”
I shook my head, hugging myself. When I looked up at him, his cold, analytical expression didn’t engender much hope. “But that’s just it, isn’t it? Our
deal will never be done. I’m your bridge now.”
“’Til death do us part,” he said seriously. “But I’m growing wearier of this family by the second. I can have more than one bridge, though they become less effective that way. Find me Kendra, and I will get another. I’ll still traffic your soul, but you’ll never hear from me again.”
“Is that a deal?”
“It’s how I feel right now,” he said. “We’ll see how I feel later, which is why you should stay on my good side. I can’t make deals with my bridges, Thorn. It’s up to you to persuade me now.”
Looking down, I nodded. I tried to center myself, and remember that I had accepted my life was going to be complicated in the moment I had chosen to save a dying girl’s life. Moments like these were the debt I owed.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll get you her hair. But I want to know the particulars of this arrangement. No more surprises about not making deals. I want the rule book.”
He set a hand on the door frame behind me, leaning in uncomfortably close as he forced a little laugh and lowered his voice. “Fine. I’ll get you a book on demonology, but the rules are simple. There are no rules. We’re two people using a single soul for our mutual purposes. You use it for living, and I use it for travel. There’s no rule about what I can and can’t do. The same is true for you. But if we choose to be friendly, then I may afford you some benefit from my presence.”
I nodded with a grim, sarcastic smile. “You’re a parasite on my soul. Fantastic.”
Charlie didn’t seem bothered by the accusation. He leaned back. “If you choose to look at it that way. But you’re an optimist, Thorn. Accept my gifts and this is a symbiotic relationship, not a parasitic one. And I have gifts to give.”
“I have a long day tomorrow,” I said, my teeth beginning to grind from the effort of having to deal with his arrogance. “Can you give me a good nights’ sleep after all of this crap?”
He opened his mouth to speak, but instead only gave me a little nod. He fizzled into a dark mist and I was alone again. I turned and went into my bedroom. Gates was sitting on her cat bed in the corner, looking as cat-like and aloof as she ever had.
Her lack of visible emotion only made me more uncertain, because she didn’t say a single word as she turned around and lay back down to sleep.
I crawled into my bed, pulled my pillow closer, and then withdrew my hand when I felt something hard beneath it.
It was a bottle of sleep aids, courtesy of Charlie, because I never bought into them. I set them on my nightstand in anger, without taking one, and switched off the light.
Chapter 3
The next day started off with a bang. Quite literally, because Charlie had switched off my alarm clock to allow me to sleep in. I rolled over and saw that I needed to be at the greenhouse in five minutes, and it was a nearly forty minute drive with traffic to get there. I didn’t stop rolling in time, and went right over the edge of the bed in shock.
Bam. Straight onto the floor.
My bedroom door flew open, and Charlie smiled down at me.
“Oh good, you’re awake!” He turned and walked out as I tried to gather myself up from the floor and the tangled wad of sheets I had tied myself up in. “Have some breakfast, and we’ll get to work.”
Finally unwrapping my left leg and stumbling to my feet and out of the bedroom, I ran to the bathroom and ripped open the curtain to start the shower.
I yelped in surprise when I found Charlie hiding inside.
“Breakfast is traditionally consumed in the kitchen, Thorn,” he said.
“I don’t have time!” I hissed. “I’m opening the greenhouse today, and Lyssa is going to kill me if I’m not there on time!”
“You’ve got time.”
“No,” I insisted. “I don’t! You told me even demons can’t turn back time!”
“Annie…”
The weary tone of Gates’ small voice from the living room drew my attention, and I glanced out the bathroom door to see her sitting in the window, looking out. I walked to her to see what she was staring at, and discovered a bird that had just taken off from a street sign outside.
It was frozen in flight.
I whipped back around and looked at Charlie. He smiled politely, as though I was the crazy one.
“You stopped time?!” I said, louder than I had intended.
He brought a finger to his lips to shush me, and made a concerned face. “You’re going to wake your upstairs neighbors, Thorn! And don’t be ridiculous. I didn’t stop anything…”
He walked away to the kitchen, and I finally noticed the smell of bacon and eggs. Where they came from, I didn’t know. There hadn’t been any bacon in the fridge when I went to bed.
I turned back to the window, breathless and grasping at straws as I tried to figure out what was going on. “You slowed it down?”
“Don’t be silly.” Charlie set down a large plate of food on my little kitchen table. “Think scientifically. I made time move faster in here, so everything out there only appears to be going slower by comparison. I wouldn’t slow down the entire rest of the world just for you… You’re a vain girl, Thorn.”
I tried to breathe. I tried to reconcile what was happening, but it was too early in the morning, and I needed my caffeine.
Trying to calm my nerves and slow my racing heart, I turned back to the table, and Charlie gestured at me to sit down. I did so, gripping the mug of coffee a little too tightly.
It was the perfect temperature, just the way my tea had been the night before. It was all perfect… and abundant.
“I can’t eat all of this,” I said, picking up a piece of bacon and starting to chew.
“Please…” Charlie said, picking up a piece himself. “You’re in the company of a demon, Thorn. You’re not going to get fat unless you want to.”
I raised a skeptical eyebrow.
“That’s diet orange juice, if it makes you feel any better.”
The stifled laugh from the window made me glance over in shock, and I caught a glimpse of Gates’ stoic expression before she turned back to the window. “Shut up, Annie. That was funny.”
The way her face never matched her mood was still disconcerting to me, even after all this time, and it never failed to jar me from the moment. I took her a heaping helping of eggs and bacon before coming back and helping myself.
When breakfast was done, I took a shower. Then I got dressed, and looked at my clock. Not even a full minute had passed.
Back out in the living room, I found Charlie looking over my spiral-bound book of spells. Bastard spells, as he had called them.
“Oh, this is wrong. Just so wrong,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “Thorn, there’s dark magic and light magic, and never the twain shall meet, but this has more shades of gray than most recent parodies I’ve seen.”
I shrugged. “I got it all from Kendra’s spells.”
Closing the book and setting it down, he gave me a long look. “And I’m sure not all of them were Kendra’s spells, because I know she recorded a lot of Stark’s doings for posterity, as well. But that’s for another time. I need you to make me a protection spell before we go poking at your sister again.”
“A… protection?” I stammered. “Charlie, I haven’t managed a single spell since summoning you. You expect me to do a protection spell just on the fly, like it’s nothing?”
“Well…” He raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips, and I knew whatever was going to come out of his mouth next wasn’t something I was going to like. “You have no natural talent as a witch, so I thought we might go a cruder route until you learn. Witches are about theory and heart, but warlocks are much more about practice and mechanics.”
I raised an eyebrow. Thankfully, it was Gates who spoke first.
“You want her to do one of Stark’s spells?” she asked. “Dark magic? No. No way.”
Charlie threw his hands in the air. “What do you think she’s been doing so far? Demon summoning is dark by its very nat
ure. We’re not crossing any lines that haven’t already been crossed.”
I shared a look with Gates.
“Fine,” I said.
Charlie whipped a knife out from behind his back. “Give me your hand.”
I stepped back and put my hands behind my back as Gates hissed in objection. “You can’t be serious.”
Charlie’s eyes darted away, and then back. He smiled crookedly. “Not your entire hand, Thorn. It’s just a few drops of blood for the spellwork.”
Reluctantly, I brought my hand back out, but only to try to take the knife from Charlie. He withdrew it from my reach.
“If you need blood, I’ll do it myself.”
He scoffed. “I’ve seen enough people try and fail to cut themselves. Time is moving slowly, but it’s still moving. Get something to bite and then sit down and hold still.”
Cocking my head, I narrowed my eyes. “I’m in the company of demons. This shouldn’t have to hurt.”
The smile that spread across Charlie’s lips was a little too pleased. “Now, that’s the spirit, Thorn. Sit down. It won’t hurt.”
I took two deep breaths and then rolled up my sleeve and pulled over the gliding recliner I’d picked up from a garage sale the previous weekend. Gates jumped into my lap.
“Annie, wait…”
I looked down into her impassive face, waiting for her to speak. When she didn’t, I had to wonder if she really wanted to stop me.
“He’s the only one who knows enough to teach me how to fix this,” I reasoned, running a hand over her soft, furry head. “And if I don’t learn, he’s the only one who can help you. It’s okay, Gates. I got you into this mess.”
“I got you into this mess!” she protested. “Annie, have you seriously forgotten that I pushed you into doing all that crap that night?”
“And I decided to accept Charlie’s offer when he wanted to curse Jennifer for me,” I sighed. “I could have said no, Gates, and then this all would have been a lot simpler. I should have said no. Would you do it for me, if I was the cat right now?”