by A. L. Tyler
I took a deep breath and smiled at him. He wasn’t going to manipulate me that easily. “No. Happy funeral, Charlie.”
“You think you’ll come to it?” he asked cordially. “I would like that. It’s not like I have any family here to—”
“Annie! Annie!”
I turned around, surprised. I didn’t know anyone in Stonefall. A young man with ambiguous hair that sat somewhere between blond and brunette was waving and walking over. I knew the hair. I knew the face…too well. I had been crushing on him since middle school. He was part of the reason that Charlie was here now, because Jennifer Wilmot had started asking him out on my behalf just to mock me.
“Anise Hawthorn,” he said. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“Vince!” I said in a high-pitched voice. A nervous smile crept onto my face as I glanced back to Charlie, laughing shrilly. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m here meeting my new roommate, who is from here,” he said with a smirk. “And why are you here, again?”
I took his meaning. He thought I was here to buy weed, and we had an ongoing thing about clever banter. Charlie licked his lips and raised his eyebrows, staring at me as I stared at Vince. He was wearing a shirt that was slightly too tight and showed off his swimmer’s body, and I stuttered pathetically and failed to respond to his question.
Charlie’s eyes finally left mine, and he tentatively offered a hand to Vince, who shook it.
“Charlie,” he said conversationally. “Annie’s cousin on her mother’s side. She’s here to buy weed.”
“Oh, damn it, Charlie!” my words finally returned. “I am not here to buy weed. He told me about some book store out here where you earn free coffee when you buy stuff and offered to take me.”
Charlie raised his eyebrows, clearly impressed that I had rebounded so quickly. Actually, it had been Gates who had told me about the bookstore; she had found it while she was in Stonefall with one of her older college friends. (He was there to buy weed.)
“Oh yeah, Buzz Words. It’s great, I go there with my mom all the time.” He pointed. “I’ll walk you if you want.”
I smiled. “No, I’m sure we—”
“We want,” Charlie squeezed my arm a little too hard and I had to stop talking to bite my lip against the pain. “In fact, maybe you could join us, on me. I’ve never been and I would love a guide to what’s good. You’re going to college out here?”
“Same one as Annie,” Vince said. “We filled out our applications together in study hall. Of course, I didn’t think she would get in, because her ACT score was so low…”
My jaw fell open a little and I tilted my head. My score was in the top ten percent of the entire country, but it had fallen one point short of Vince’s. He had taken the test a second time because he had the flu the first time, and I stood by the fact that taking it twice constituted cheating if he was going to compare our scores. “You failed an art class. An art class—!”
“That’s so wonderful to know she has someone she knows going to college with her.” Charlie talked right over me, and then gave me a wink when I finally fell quiet. “I bet he could help you with that math stuff we were talking about earlier.”
“Roomie!” A guy with dark, shaggy hair and a beard to match came up behind Vince. He had a bottle in a paper bag in his hand and his eyes fell on me. “You moving in on the girls already, bro?”
Vince pursed his lips, and I saw a spark in his eye. “Walter, this is Annie and her cousin Charlie. Annie and I went to high school together.”
“Annie…” he offered his hand to me, and we shook. Then his eyes moved to Charlie, who hadn’t moved an inch to offer his own hand, and whose smile remained fixed like it had been artificially cast in plastic. Walter’s own smile fell a little when their eyes met, and he dropped his hand very suddenly. “Cousin Charlie.”
“Walter,” Charlie said in a dangerous tone.
“They’re going down to Buzz Words,” Vince explained. “I was going to walk them, if you want to come.”
Walter made a pained face. “I don’t want to cock block you—”
Vince made another annoyed face as he crossed his arms.
“—but we’ve got to get going if we’re going to make the game later.” He grinned as he looked at me and Charlie. “Ultimate Frisbee after dark. You’re welcome to join if you want?”
Charlie jumped in before I could even consider my response, mimicking Walter’s earlier expression. “I wish we could, but I promised her dad I’d have her back before eleven, so we’ve got to start driving right after we leave the book store. But I’m sure we’d love to join next time. Annie, give your number to Vince so he can tell us when they’re playing again.”
I didn’t know how it had happened. Vince was smirking at me again, and I should have been blushing, but instead I had accepted Vince’s phone and input my number like I was any normal person who didn’t care. We said a quick goodbye, and I managed to escape without embarrassing myself again.
As we walked down the street, I took a breath, and felt my relaxed mood slowly evaporate into the night sky. I had given Vince my number, and thanks to Charlie, the process hadn’t been even slightly embarrassing for either of us.
“On the house?” I finally asked.
He looked over at me darkly, his mood transformed from when we had been talking earlier. “Hardly. Your friend has a poor choice of roommates—”
“They’re randomly assigned,” I said. It was part of the reason I had opted for an apartment instead.
“Whatever.” Charlie looked back over his shoulder, but Vince and Walter were already lost in the sea of people shopping the outdoor mall. “His roommate’s a werewolf.”
Chapter 6
“Excuse me?” I twisted to look behind us. Walter had been shaggy, but a werewolf? “Like, for real?”
“Like, for real!” Charlie said in a mocking tone. “Werewolf hide is a commodity for warlocks because it makes great gloves. You’ve just been seen with a demon, so he may have some assumptions about you.”
“Okay, whoa!” I held my hands up. I wasn’t sure if I was more blown away by the idea that werewolves existed, or that Vince had one for a roommate, or that warlocks were skinning them to make gloves. “What are you saying…he thinks I want to make gloves out of him?”
“Something like that. I suggest we steer clear until we know if he’s going to try to preemptively attack.”
I glanced over my shoulder again.
“Preemptively attack?” I squeaked. “What the hell does that even mean?”
“Stop—” He grabbed my arm firmly again to keep me from looking around like I thought I was being followed. “Stop making a scene. Werewolves are a little faster to action than to thought, and they have tempers. If he comes after us, tonight or ever, I’ll take care of him.”
“Take care of…?” I said in a whisper, now trying too hard to walk naturally. “He’s his roommate!”
“Take care of him in self defense.” Charlie rolled his eyes. “But you are going to love those gloves when you feel them.”
My head snapped over so fast that I pulled a muscle. “I will never—!”
“Joking, Thorn.” Charlie laughed.
I shook my head, but a moment later I couldn’t help but grin.
“What?”
My grin widened. “He invited us to play Frisbee with him.”
“Oh, Thorn…Now that’s just racist.”
A little farther down the way, he directed me to a small boutique grocer that specialized in gluten free and organic items. We went in, and Charlie left me browsing a long aisle of pills with unlikely claims written on the bottles, and about five minutes later he gestured me over to the cash register.
The girl behind the counter gave me a smile and a wink as she rang up a bag of supplies. “That’ll be seventy-six dollars and three cents.”
I cocked an eyebrow at Charlie, and he only nodded at me. I took it that there was some reason I had to buy the stu
ff, or else it wouldn’t work, so I dug my wallet out of my purse.
A hundred-dollar bill had magically appeared in it, and I paid it to the clerk, accepted my change, and then took the bag and we left.
The next place we stopped was a little tea house with a large front window lined in bonsais that had been expertly trained. When we walked in, the gentleman host seemed to know immediately who we were, and he disappeared into the back before returning with a large paper bag that was stapled shut at the top and leaking water at the bottom. He gave Charlie a wary glance before leaning forward to whisper in my ear.
“Keep it shut until your demon can take it somewhere safe!”
My eyes were practically bulging from my skull, and I couldn’t manage any words, so I nodded. I couldn’t believe that other people not only knew about demons, but that they could be so blasé about them. I reached for my wallet, and the host immediately backed away and shook his head. He gave us both a little bow.
“No, no… It’s a gift. Remember us when your karma turns.”
I forced a weak smile, and saw Charlie wink at the man as we emerged onto the street again. He took the bag from my hand, careful to support the water-weakened bottom, and it disappeared from sight into the Other Side.
“One more stop,” he said with a satisfied smile.
I followed him, still carrying the bag from the organic grocer, and hardly looked up until we stopped.
We were at Buzz Words.
I glanced at Charlie with a small smile as he held the door for me, and then stepped inside. He nodded at a little booth in the corner. I sat down, setting the bag on the bench next to me. Charlie came to the table a moment later toting two coffees, and sat down across the table from me.
I thanked him as he set my coffee in front of me.
“Am I allowed to look in the bag?” I finally asked.
Charlie cringed a little. “Curiosity kills, Thorn. It’s not a great quality to have in this profession. But yes, you can look.”
“More than seventy dollars?” I chided, opening up the bag and pulling out a handful of small vials of dried herbals and an empty jar, and lastly, a small cast iron cauldron, just big enough to fit in the palm of my hand. I looked back at him, baffled. “All of this cost more than seventy dollars?”
“The cauldron costs more than seventy.” He leaned back in the booth and stretched out. “The rest was a gift. One witch to another. They lose potency if you buy them.”
“The clerk was a witch?” I asked.
Charlie nodded.
“Was the guy at the tea house…?”
“A superstitious old man,” Charlie said dismissively. “A little touched, perhaps, because his mother was one.”
“What did he mean about my karma turning?”
“He means that warlock spells are all about shifting balance in the universe. You take from one person and give to another. So he gave you a present, hoping you’ll choose to bless him instead of curse him, should the opportunity ever arise.”
I shifted uneasily. “I’m not a warlock.” Was I?
Charlie laid a hand on the table and started to toy with the cup stirrer in his coffee. “You make a better warlock than a witch right now, Thorn. But no, not unless you choose to be.”
I didn’t like the sound of it. Even Charlie had a pretty negative view of warlocks, and he had openly admitted that working for one was a dream job for a demon.
I didn’t want to be a warlock. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to be a witch, or if I even could be a witch, given how little I had actually accomplished in the magical realm. I had decided, in all of the angst-ridden time when Charlie had abandoned me, that all I wanted was to learn was enough. Just enough to set things back the way they were meant to be. Then I was done.
I wanted to go back to my life before demons and cats and crazy rules about how I had to acquire strange things at inconvenient hours. I didn’t want to worry about my best friend being a cat or my demon wanting to die. I just wanted to go to college and sit up late wondering when Vince was going to call me.
Charlie sensed my stress and started a casual conversation about how Stonefall was one of the most densely populated towns he had ever encountered as far as Touched people went. I had laughed at first, but then he had explained.
It was a town that witches had heavily settled, which explained why Kendra had chosen to buy a greenhouse only a couple of hours away. The magical cast-off from all of their activity drew in the others—the werewolves, the vampires, the demons, and every other strange creature in every fairy tale I had ever read. Normal people thought the town was weird…because it was. The people here were eccentric because they lived under their own social covenants, and drug use had only been a convenient cover-up to what was really going on.
“They keep their lives quiet when they can,” Charlie said. “Warlocks are only one of a handful of predators that they might wish to avoid, so they spend a lot of time trying to look like everyone else.”
“Demons?” I asked with a hint of a smile. My coffee was nearly gone, and the night was wearing down to a comfortable place. I hated to admit it, but there was some glee in thinking that I didn’t have to drive home. When we were done, Charlie was just going to snap his fingers, and I’d either find myself in bed or a stone’s throw from it.
“Dragons too,” Charlie smiled back at me. “Even werewolves sometimes prefer a degree of Touched prey. I’ve seen them go after the Fae, for example, and the Fae tend to consume any magical outlet they can find. Especially blessed fauna, which is why the witches tend to protect their gardens so fiercely, and why Kendra chose to build her greenhouse a little out of the way. There’s a whole ecosystem of terror to suppress knowledge of who’s a what. If there wasn’t, then everyone would know about them.”
I nodded, looking down at my coffee. The world I had fallen into was much bigger and stranger than I had anticipated. It made complete sense that the magical beings of the world had their own magical predators to hide from; it explained why they tried and so often succeeded at looking like perfectly normal people.
“Why did you ask me to give my number to Vince?” I asked. “I mean, if Walter already felt threatened by me, then it had to look like a suspicious move.”
“Because of the way you were looking at him,” Charlie grinned. “You need to relax, Thorn. I don’t know who told you that life was a race, but they were wrong. You need to put your enjoyment ahead of your priorities some days. And I was serious about him helping you with your math. He’s really going to enjoy those puns on your underwear. Punderwear. Ha.”
I cocked my head, unsure if I was more horrified or intrigued. “You didn’t do anything to him, did you?”
“No. Did you want me to?”
I busied my mouth with my coffee, trying to think of the best way to say it, but thankfully, Charlie moved the conversation along.
“I didn’t, anyway. And I won’t tell you if you will or not, since you seem to like surprises where I’m not the feature. We do need to get back, now. You need your sleep before work tomorrow.”
I had nearly forgotten about work, but he was right. I had watering to do in the morning, and likely inventory and re-stocking, too. I downed the last of my coffee, and then blinked to discover I was back in my dimly lit apartment. Gates had fallen asleep watching a strange late-night infomercial for a device that claimed to make growing lucky bamboo “so easy that a baby could do it.”
And for the first time, I wondered if lucky bamboo was really lucky. Perhaps only if it was a gift from a witch?
I turned off the television and left Gates alone, stripping out of my clothes and getting straight into bed. I dozed and worried, staring at the ceiling for a minute or two, and then drifted off into a sweet slumber.
~~~~~~~~~
Work the next day started off badly. I arrived at the greenhouse to find a huge puddle—more like a small pool—in the middle of the annuals. Lyssa’s car was there, but she was nowhere to be seen, so I
tracked back the leak to a crack in the casing of the automated watering system we had installed. When all of the craziness with Charlie had happened, we decided the investment was worth it to keep the plants from dying if we were too busy handling a demon to water by hand.
I turned the water off, removed the automated device, and then took it inside and brought back out some signs and rope barriers to keep people from accidentally walking into the sinkhole.
Then I went into the office to look for the warranty information, and found Lyssa wearing a bathrobe and sitting at an altar in a circle of lit pillar candles.
“Did you take care of the hose outside?” she asked.
“Hi,” I said, carefully stepping around the candles to get to the desk. “Good morning. Nice to see you. What the hell are you doing?”
But even as the words left my mouth, I saw the crushed marigolds and the melted wax, and I knew.
“You’re looking for Kendra?”
Lyssa raised her hands to rub at her eyes, and I wondered how long she had been staring into the crystal.
“I can’t find her,” she said miserably, raising a knee and resting her arm on it.
“Well,” I said sourly. “To our knowledge, she is dead, so…”
“Yeah,” Lyssa laughed a little. “I just… This is too much for me to handle. Have you figured out what he’s really doing with the hair yet?”
I took a deep breath and sighed. The broken sprinkler had completely occupied my thoughts. “Yeah. He’s trying to kill himself.”
I dug through a desk drawer, trying to find the little card that had come with the automated timer.
“He said that?”
I looked over to see Lyssa watching me.
I gave a little shrug. “Not in so many words. He said he wants to be human so he can die.”
Lyssa pursed her lips and shook her head. “Oh, Charlie…”
“Why do you care?” I furrowed my brow. “You hate him.”
Shaking her head, Lyssa stood and started to blow out the candles. “You’re right.”