Magic and Mayhem: A Collection of 21 Fantasy Novels

by Jasmine Walt

  “I have this thing I have to go to on New Year’s Eve—a work party. It could be fun . . . but I’d have a much better time if you came with me.” He removed his hat and watched me, his eyes glittering.

  “Sure, yeah,” I said, trying to hide some of my eagerness.

  His answering smile was radiant. “Great! I’ll pick you up at eight. Oh, and it’s cocktail attire.”

  “It’s a date,” I said, blushing as I scooted out of the passenger seat and retrieved my bag from the backseat of the silver Audi.

  “See you in two days, Lex,” Mike said before I shut the car door.

  I walked up to the building’s main entrance and fit the key in the lock. By the time I looked back, Mike’s car was nowhere in sight. I felt giddy with excitement . . . and I really, really needed to talk to Cara and Annie.

  Once I was in my apartment, I tossed my bag onto the bed, snuggled on the couch with Thora, and pulled my phone out of my pocket to call Cara.

  “Lex? Is it really you? Are you alive?” was Cara’s greeting.

  “Yes, yes, and yes. And I have news. When can you get over here?”

  She paused. “If I leave the office early . . . maybe four-ish?”

  “Okay, great!” I said excitedly. “I’m going to call Annie. See you la—”

  “Lex, wait,” Cara blurted before I could hang up. “Is it good news or bad news? I want to be prepared.”

  I considered holding back the info about my parentage and only focusing on the date with Mike, but thought better of it. “Both,” I told her, unsure if I would go so far as to fill them in on the weird, way-too-real dreams.

  “Okay. See you later!”

  “Bye.” I quickly called Annie and had a nearly identical conversation. Both women would be over in three hours, and I had some thinking to do.

  Disturbing Thora from her euphoric cuddling, I rose from the couch and retrieved a yellow notepad and pen from atop the coffee table. I kept both items generously scattered about the apartment as a general rule—I couldn’t predict when research inspiration or insight would strike. When I reclaimed my comfortable position on the couch, my cat simply glared at me from the windowsill, stretching and lying down with her feet curled primly under her.

  “Have it your way, Thora,” I said, clicking the pen open.

  I drew a line down the center of the page, dividing it into two columns. At the top of one, I wrote THE DREAMS AREN’T REAL. Atop the other, THE DREAMS ARE REAL. Quickly, I began listing items in the AREN’T REAL column, like, “impossible,” but I ran out of ideas almost as soon as I started. Switching to the ARE REAL column, I marked up the page with furious starts and stops. After five minutes, I compared the lists, shocked.

  AREN’T REAL

  —Impossible

  —Wasn’t even alive for the Grandma/Grandpa scene

  —Impossible

  —I might be in shock

  ARE REAL

  —The painting

  —Dr. Lee

  —Dr. Ramirez???

  —Grandpa’s voice—he’s Italian?

  —Convo between Mom and Jenny

  —Knowing Mom thinks Jenny isn’t strong enough for the truth

  —Mom’s fashion is way too ridiculous for even me to dream up

  —Feels just like the memory dreams I’ve had since high school

  —I can remember the dreams too well when I wake up—unnatural

  —I’m fully aware in the dreams—also unnatural

  “Well, shit,” I said, copying my mom’s signature profane exclamation. It was the one she used when she realized she’d forgotten an essential item at the grocery store or when she received a notice from school notifying her of Jenny’s skipped classes. For her, it meant, “Huh, I guess I should’ve seen that coming, but it still sucks!”

  I flipped the page up over the top of the notepad and started a new list, cataloging all of my recent dreams. As I wrote, I started to notice several common characteristics.

  First, I had to be asleep—but that one was pretty obvious, seeing as they were dreams. However, I did find it a little odd that I’d fallen asleep at Grandma Suse’s right after I’d had a great night’s sleep. Tiredness had crept up on me, then wrestled me into submission.

  Second, location seemed to be important. Each dream first played out in my mind while I slept in the same place as the scene had actually happened. I’d been at my parents’ house when I’d dreamed of their conversations about telling Jenny and me the truth, and when I dreamed of the blowup during the previous Christmas Eve dinner. After dozing off at Grandma Suse’s, I’d dreamed of the discussion about the clinic and Dr. Lee. The Dr. Ramirez nightmare hadn’t technically been in the same location—the accident had taken place just outside of Denny Hall, where I’d fallen asleep—but I still wasn’t one hundred percent convinced that dream had really been like the others.

  Third, I’d been experiencing extreme emotion each time I’d fallen asleep. I’d felt overwhelmingly eager for winter break before the nap in Denny Hall, lost before the first dream at my house, desperate before the one at Grandma Suse’s, and regretful before I’d dreamed of Jenny. Eager . . . Lost . . . Desperate . . . Regretful . . .

  As I thought about the emotions, I realized that other than the Dr. Ramirez nightmare, the dreams shared a common thread—they seemed to pop up out of need. I’d needed to understand where I came from, to figure out where I could learn more about my paternity, and to make things right with my sister. The dreams of my parents, my grandparents, and my sister had met those needs respectively.

  With that realization came another thought. Can I control this? If I could focus on something I needed at the moment, maybe I could force another one of the too-real dreams . . . maybe I could learn to use them to help me discover other useful bits of information. I ignored the part of my brain screaming about delusions and straitjackets and padded rooms.

  Checking the clock on the wall, I saw that I still had two hours before Cara and Annie arrived—plenty of time to test my insane theory. I was tired enough to nap, so I stretched out on the couch and covered myself with a blanket. Thora, apparently forgiving me for displacing her, hopped down from her perch to curl up next to me. I thought about what I needed, what was making me feel extreme emotions at the moment, and eventually drifted off to asleep.

  My apartment door opened, admitting a stumbling, laughing couple. The man was wearing a black suit, his jacket unbuttoned and metallic blue tie undone around his neck. The woman was wearing a silky black dress that skimmed the bottoms of her knees, and her feet were bare. Her gleaming, dark hair was falling out of its loose updo. I was watching . . . me.

  The man, Mike, pressed the other version of me against the wide, polished wood post separating the kitchen from the living room. She giggled. He kissed her hungrily, pressing his whole body against hers and running his hands over every reachable part of her. She twined her fingers in his soft black hair and groaned.

  I moved closer, equally curious and disturbed by the scene playing out in front of me. I couldn’t imagine myself ever being as inebriated as the other version of me seemed. Part of my mind whispered that what I was watching wasn’t real. Another part wondered if it was, but it just hadn’t happened yet.

  “God, I want you, Lex . . . can you feel it?” Mike groaned, grinding his hips harder against hers. “Can you feel how hard you made me?” He slipped one hand up her skirt while the other fumbled with his belt buckle.

  “Wait . . . wait,” the other me whispered, trying to push Mike’s groping hand out from under her dress. “I’m . . . dizzy. I don’t feel—”

  “No, it’s good. You’re beautiful,” Mike said hoarsely, unbuttoning his pants and lowering the zipper.

  “Mike, wait,” she demanded. She turned her head away and made an effort to push him back.

  He ignored her, using both hands to raise the skirt of her dress and pull down her black lace boy shorts.

  “No! Stop, Mike!” she repeated, her prote
sts growing shrill as Mike became more forceful.

  I couldn’t stand it anymore. I lurched forward, intending to push him away from her, but I bounced off an invisible barrier. “STOP!” I shouted. “LEAVE HER ALONE!”

  Mike glanced at the couch, then shoved the other version of me into the living room.

  She screamed, tripping on the underwear tangled around her ankles. As she fell to the floor, her head smashed against the corner of the steamer trunk coffee table. Within seconds, she was still.

  Mike stared down at her, mouth hanging open in shock, and the front door crashed open.

  I lurched to a sitting position and immediately felt nauseated. It was just a dream, just a regular, meaningless dream. But I couldn’t get over the way it had felt, like a memory . . . like the others. But how could it be real? Mike wouldn’t—

  Before I could dwell further, there was a knock at the door. Cara and Annie had arrived. Still a little shaken, I quickly finger-combed my hair and stretched before letting my friends in.

  “We brought wine!” Cara exclaimed, hugging three beautiful bottles of the nerve-calming libation.

  “And cheese!” Annie sang immediately after her. She offered up a canvas shopping bag filled with cheeses and, knowing her penchant for decadence, some other tasty goodies.

  “Amazing! Splendid! Genius!” I said, bowing as I showered them with praises.

  “I wasn’t sure how much we’d need,” Cara said, using a corkscrew to point at the bottles lined up on the counter.

  Without hesitation, I replied, “Probably all of them.”

  After laying a half-dozen varieties of cheese along with strawberries, sliced apples and pears, crackers, and olives out on the coffee table like an offering to the divine, we settled in the living room with glasses full of wine. My friends perched on the couch, and I settled on a floor cushion on the opposite side of our little feast. Taking frequent sips of wine, I listened to their soothing, inane chatter. It was nice to be surrounded by silliness for a few moments.

  “So . . . spill,” Cara demanded, her bright blue eyes focusing on me.

  “Cara!” Annie admonished, slapping Cara’s leg. “She’ll tell us when she’s ready.”

  “No, it’s fine,” I said. “Good news, or bad news first?”

  “Um . . . bad,” Cara said, doing her best to contain her curiosity and appear supportive.

  “So, it all started with my mom’s surprise visit . . .” I began. It was surprisingly easy to tell them the story of my mysterious paternity. However, though I tried, I couldn’t bring myself to spill about the too-real dreams. I ended my enormously long monologue with the good news—a replay of the ride home with Mike and the resulting planned date. “But, I’m not really sure about it,” I said, feeling my eyebrows draw together.

  “Why?” Annie asked.

  “Yeah, why? If he’s such a stud, why would you possibly consider backing out?” Cara asked, clearly confounded.

  Blushing, I shook my head. “Well, it’s weird. I, um, took a nap this afternoon and the dream I had was just”—I shivered—“unnerving.”

  “And why would that change your mind about going out with Studly Martinez?” Cara asked, emptying the remaining contents of the first wine bottle into her glass.

  “Hernandez,” Annie corrected.

  “Whatever. You know what I mean.”

  I rolled my eyes and took a deep breath before explaining. “In the dream, Mike came back here with me after the party and . . . and he sort of tried to force me to have sex. I mean, I wanted to . . . I think . . . or at least at first I did, but not like that.”

  Cara held up her hand like a traffic officer. “Wait. He dream-raped you?”

  “No . . . at least, not all the way. I woke up before it was over,” I said and let my friends ponder the information for a few seconds.

  “Kinky!” Cara exclaimed.

  “Cara, you’re horrible!” Annie accused, glaring at the blonde sitting beside her. “It’s creepy, not kinky!”

  “What? It was a dream. As in, not real. Come on, Lex. You have to go out with him. You haven’t been on a decent date in at least six months. You’re just nervous. When was the last time you even had sex?” Cara asked, crass as usual.

  “A while,” I mumbled, hiding behind my hands. She’s probably right—it was just a dream, and I am nervous.

  When I lowered my hands, I found Annie and Cara studying me with identical expressions: eyebrows raised and mouths pinched. I immediately burst into giggles, and upon seeing each other, they joined me.

  As soon as the laughter died down, I expressed one of my several anxieties about the impending date. Anxieties, I told myself, not excuses. “I don’t have anything to wear, and I can’t really afford to splurge on a new dress,” I said, moping.

  “Oh my God, shut up! You are so ridiculous! I have the perfect dress,” Cara said, bouncing on the couch again. “I haven’t actually worn it yet, so you cannot get anything on it. But, because I love you so much, I’ll let you borrow it.”

  “Oh!” clapped Annie. “And I can come over and get you fixed up. You are not going on a date to a fancy New Year’s Eve party with a ponytail!” She waggled her finger at me sternly.

  “Okay, okay,” I said, holding up my hands in submission.

  “Good!” they exclaimed and began plotting and laughing and hiccupping. The night went downhill from there.

  “Okay, you’re done,” Annie stated, finally allowing me access to the full-length mirror hanging on the back of my bedroom door.

  I examined her handiwork, noting the classiness of the loose, low bun. “Annie, you’re a genius!”

  She blushed and shrugged, gathering her various salon-grade tools into a bag with seemingly infinite compartments. I had just experienced one of the very amazing perks of having a hair stylist as one of my closest friends.

  Finished packing up, Annie studied me. “Hair, check. Makeup, check. Nails, check,” she said, accenting each statement with a flick of her raised finger. “You, my dear, are ready to get dressed.”

  I unzipped the garment bag hanging on the closet door. “Are you sure it’s not too much? What if I’m overdressed?”

  “Better overdressed than under,” she said.

  I removed a silky black dress from the hanger and unzipped the back. “If you say so,” I muttered. I stepped into the dress and let Annie zip it up, glad my bruises from the collision with Dr. Ramirez had healed in a matter of days. At least I didn’t have to cover the ugly marks with tights. When I turned to face the mirror, my heart nearly stopped.

  I was wearing the dress, the same one I’d been wearing in the nightmare. This can’t be happening, I thought, terrified by the beautiful dress. It was simplicity at its best, with thin straps crisscrossing my back and flowing black silk draping over my hips and reaching just past my knees. It fit snugly around my chest and waist, emphasizing my slender curves. Against the inky fabric, my skin looked like smooth, flawless alabaster.

  “Oh, wow,” Annie said in a hushed tone. “Maybe you should just buy it from Cara. It looks amazing on you.”

  When I didn’t respond, she studied the reflection of my face. It had blanched from creamy alabaster to bone-white. “Lex? Are you okay? You’re shaking. Sit down.” She guided me to the edge of the bed.

  “I’m fine,” I responded hollowly. It’s just a dress . . . a common, black dress. This whole thing is a stupid coincidence. “I just haven’t eaten much today. I think I’ll make some toast.” I stood and hurried from the room, shrugging into a light robe to keep the dress clean . . . and to hide it.

  A few minutes later, Annie emerged from my bedroom carrying her bag and some strappy silver heels. “You have to wear these. I found them buried in the back of your closet.” She placed the shoes on the table.

  “Those? I don’t know if I can even walk in those!”

  “Then you’ll just have to lean on Mike,” she suggested, her face slack with mock innocence. Having been in the same rela
tionship for nearly six years, Annie liked to date vicariously through her friends. Usually she was limited to Cara, whose love life was both varied and active, but for once, I was included.

  I snorted and buttered the toast.

  “I should go. Mike’ll be here any minute, and I don’t want to get in the way,” Annie said, raising her eyebrows suggestively.

  “Come on, Annie, it’s the first date. We’ll at least go to the party first!”

  She fixed an unusually stern gaze on me. “Fine, but don’t be a nun. You need this.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” I gave her a quick hug and thanked her for all her help, and then she was gone.

  I finished the toast quickly and was in the process of strapping on one of the silver death traps when there was a knock at the door. “Be there in a sec!” I called, trying to keep my balance as I strapped on the other shoe.

  Dropping my robe off in the bedroom, I took a quick peek in the mirror to make sure everything was still in place, frowned at the dress one last time, and hurried to open the door.

  “Hi!” I said, a little breathless.

  For several seconds, Mike just stared, his eyes wide and childlike before crinkling with a smile. He looked quite handsome in a black suit with a blue tie, and I was relieved it wasn’t a metallic blue tie like he’d worn in the dream. It was just a dream, I reminded myself again.

  “You look gorgeous,” he said.

  “Thanks,” I replied with a slight shrug. “You look nice too. Do you want to come in?”

  “Well, we should probably go. We’re already late. My fault,” he said, holding out his arm.

  Slightly relieved, I smiled. Part of me was convinced that if I let him into my apartment, the horrible nightmare would play out, but if I kept him out . . .

  “Let me grab my coat real quick.” I plucked my favorite coat—a nearly knee-length, plum-colored pea coat—out of the pint-sized coat closet, grabbed my keys and handbag, and locked the door on my way out.