by Gary Jonas
The clerk was helping a mother with a boy and girl. The girl tugged at her mother’s shirt. “Billy’s touching me.”
“Don’t touch your sister.”
Billy shrugged and touched his sister.
We moved down the aisle. I stopped to admire a pair of tennis shoes. “Oh, I like those.”
“Keep going.”
“I could use some new shoes.”
“Another time.”
“But new shoes smell good.”
Then the perfume smell grew stronger. New shoes do smell good, but not as good as the promise of sex. I went through a door into the backroom. Shelves filled with shoeboxes lined the room, and a small office sat at the very back. The aroma intensified as I walked toward the open door. Then I saw her. She had her back to me, and she was talking on her cellphone.
“Yes, I’ve got her inside me,” she said.
I blocked the doorway so she wouldn’t be able to get away. “That sounds painful,” I said.
She spun around. “You?”
“I’m hot for you, baby, but you have more in common with a praying mantis than I’m comfortable with.”
“Hang on,” she said into the phone. “I have to deal with an asshole.”
She set the phone on the desk, but before she could make another motion, Sabrina stepped up and let loose with a powerful blast of energy.
The girl flew backward against a file cabinet and grunted in pain. Sabrina held her in place.
I grabbed her phone. “Hello?” I said. “Are you the ringleader of the circus?”
“Who are you?” A man’s voice.
“Good question.” I held the phone away from me. The screen showed a single name. “Quincy,” I said.
He laughed. “Put my associate on the line.”
“She’s not available at this time. What’s your deal, dude?”
“Let me go,” the hot chick said.
“Hang on, man.” I glared at the girl. “I’ll get to you in a minute. My … associate is way more powerful than you are, so be good or she’ll close off your carotid artery until you pass out.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Not me. I’m still kinda hot for you, but my associate thinks you’re a bitch.”
“True that,” Sabrina said. “A bitch and a killer.”
“I didn’t kill anyone.”
“Sounds like you have your hands full, sir,” Quincy said, and the line went dead.
“Your boss hung up on me,” I said.
“Good,” the woman said.
“You slit your partner’s throat,” Sabrina said. “How can you not be bothered by that?”
“I told you, I didn’t kill anyone.”
I pressed a few icons on the phone to bring up recent calls. Then I pulled my phone from my pocket and added Quincy’s number to my contacts. I followed that by calling myself on her phone so I’d have her number too. I tossed the phone on the desk.
“You don’t mind if I call you later, do you? Once we get the whole ghost abduction and murder and theft thing sorted out, I’d like to take you to dinner. I know it’s kinda sudden, but I like to live on the edge.”
“How many times do I have to say it? I didn’t kill anyone. Jesus. You have no idea how far in over your head you are.”
“My name isn’t Jesus, but I fell for you in the food court,” I said. I stepped closer to her. I wasn’t sure how long Sabrina could hold her or what kind of movement she might be able to manage, but I really liked this woman whether or not she slit Weston’s throat. I knew it was because of the spell, but it was no less real.
“I’ll only rip out your heart, little boy,” she said. “If you two walk away now, I’ll see to it that the Dark Ones don’t hunt you down and kill you for interfering in Mr. Quincy’s operation.”
“So Quincy is his last name?” I asked. “Good to know. What’s your name?”
“We need to hurry this up,” Sabrina said. “She’s stronger than she looks, and I can feel her magic squirming free.”
I rested my elbow on the cabinet and my cheek on my hand so I could gaze at the girl. She had brown eyes that I could have stared into for hours. Her dark hair had touches of gray at the roots, so she wasn’t as young as she looked. Or maybe she was really a blonde. I couldn’t tell. I’m not a hairdresser. She had her bag hanging at her side, and when I glanced down, I saw her wallet.
“You’re a beautiful woman,” I said.
She batted her eyes at me. “And you’re a handsome man.”
“Flattery will get you everywhere with me, baby, but before we start planning a honeymoon, what say you let Regina’s ghost go?” I held her gaze, and let my right hand dip into her bag to grab her wallet. As I lifted it, I spotted a necklace with a big black jewel set into a almond-shaped opal. The black onyx. The Eye of the Tiger.
“You found us because of a ghost?”
“She’s sort of a friend of the family.”
“She was a suicide.”
“I really want to kiss you,” I said, putting her wallet in my back pocket. “Is that part of your spell?”
“I’ll bite your lip.”
“I don’t recommend that,” I said, gazing into her eyes to keep her attention while I reached back into the bag for the necklace. “I’m a powerful wizard, and if you draw blood, I’m likely to accidentally blow you to smithereens, wherever that is, and I’d really rather take you back to my place for some fun.”
“You’re not my type.”
“My name is Carlton, and I might grow on you.”
“Like a fungus,” Sabrina said. “She’s getting free.”
“It’s all right, Dana,” I said, so the girl wouldn’t know Sabrina’s real name. “I think she wants me something fierce. I know I want her.”
“You want every woman.”
“I don’t want you, Dana.” I gave the girl a smile as I casually slipped the necklace into my front pocket. “What say you tell me your name. You’d make my day.”
“I’m going to make you cry, Brett.”
It hit me that I’d already told her my name. “Brett is my last name,” I said. “Carlton Brett. Your big lummox of a boyfriend knocked me down before I could do my Bond, James Bond routine. I was trying to be cool.”
“Mr. Quincy is no doubt sending reinforcements, Carlton, Brett, or whatever. This is your last chance to walk away from this.”
“Turn Regina loose, beautiful.”
“I’m losing it,” Sabrina said. “She’s building power.”
I reached out with my forefinger and touched the tip of the woman’s nose. “Are you a good witch or a bad witch?”
“You want the ghost?”
“I do.”
“Here you go,” she said and broke free from Sabrina’s grip. Her arms straightened and the tattoos on her arms spun.
Regina shot out of the tattoo, and arced around behind me.
I leaned in and kissed the woman. I didn’t plan it. What can I say? It just happened. But she kissed me back, so I was golden.
The ghost slammed into me, but went right through me into the woman.
She slammed her palm against the filing cabinet, and pointed at Sabrina. A blast of energy shot forth. Sabrina dove to the side and the blast hit the shelf behind her. Orange boxes exploded, sending tennis shoes, white tissue paper, and silica packs flying every which way.
“You just killed me!” the woman yelled.
She punched me in the throat, grabbed her phone from where I’d dropped it on the desk, and raced from the room.
I dropped to the floor, choking.
Sabrina rushed to me. “Do you need help or should I go after her?”
I tried to speak, but my words came out choked. “Let her go.” I rubbed at my throat.
“Are you sure?”
I nodded and glanced at the sigil the woman had carved into the filing cabinet with her fingernail. “We need to get out of here.” My voice sounded better, but it hurt to swallow. At least I could breathe.
“We should stop her. What did she mean saying you killed her?”
“No clue.”
“That was weird.”
I climbed to my feet and pulled the necklace from my pocket. “On a more positive note, she’ll want to get in touch with us,” I said and grinned.
There was a back exit, so we took it, and burst into the sunlight. We hurried toward the parking lot where Lakesha’s hearse sat waiting. Sabrina called Lakesha and told her to meet us there, while I pulled the woman’s wallet from my back pocket. I flipped it open. Pennsylvania driver’s license with the name Abigail Annette Argent. Her parents must have hated her, but she could at least come first in the internet magic lists as AAA Witch Services.
“You stole her wallet?” Sabrina asked.
“She wouldn’t tell me her name.”
“And her necklace?”
“She stole that first. I just channeled your father.”
She shook her head and laughed. Her father was a kleptomaniac wizard who stole shit from everyone. For a few years when I was eleven and twelve, I wanted to be like him, and he taught me a few skills. My father was so pissed. I’ll never forget his admonishing finger waving in my face. “So you’ll apply yourself to thievery, but not to magic?”
But stealing shit was fun until you got caught, and I was never any good at the whole magic thing.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Lakesha met us at the hearse a few minutes later. She unlocked the vehicle and we piled inside with Sabrina in the center again.
“I trust everything went well with the cops?” I asked.
“I called them, but I didn’t stick around to see them.”
“You had to call them?”
Lakesha nodded as she wheeled around a curve to exit the shopping center parking lot. “Yeah,” she said. “I went back to the jewelry store, but it was closed. No cops. No crime scene tape or anything.”
“That’s weird,” I said. “But not as weird as the shit we dealt with.” I filled her in on the run-in with Abigail. We were on the highway headed home by the time I finished up and dangled the black onyx necklace in one hand, letting it swing back and forth like a pendulum.
“So you’re a thief as well as a slacker,” Lakesha said. “We should return the jewel. I’ll turn around at the next exit. If I can get over, that is.” She signaled to change lanes, but Houston traffic at rush hour is a parking lot, and with all the highways and byways swirling over and under one another, it’s a real pain in the ass to get where you want to go. The lane beside us was packed bumper to bumper. The guy in front of us hit the brakes, and Lakesha was still looking to see if she could get over.
“Brakes,” I said.
She hit the brakes hard enough to bark the tires. Fortunately, we weren’t going fast and managed to stop without a collision.
“You said the store was closed,” I said. “We’re never going to be able to get over, and we’re in the right lane to get back to forty-five. Let’s just hang on to the necklace for now. Besides, we may need it to deal with Abigail. She had to have stolen it for a reason.”
“Well, since the store is closed, and I don’t want to deal with rush hour traffic any longer than I have to, we’ll call it good for the day. But you need to promise to return it. I don’t want that old man to get fired.”
“I promise. Gene Gene the Dancing Machine will get to keep his shit job.”
“How do you know it’s a shit job?” Sabrina asked.
“Because it’s a job.”
She shrugged. “You have a point.”
“Not all jobs are bad,” Lakesha said.
“That’s true,” I said.
“You’ve never had a job,” Sabrina said.
“That’s not true. I had a blow job just last week.”
“Girl,” Lakesha said. “I can’t reach past you, so you need to slap him for me.”
So Sabrina slapped my left arm and shoulder multiple times. I suspect at least one of those was for Lakesha.
But I didn’t care. It was worth it.
When we got back to Galveston, I told Sabrina to head back to the house, told Lakesha I’d see her the next day after two, and hopped in my car without telling them where I was going.
I was tired, and I wanted to go home, but I felt I had a promise to make good on while there was still some light left.
Demetrius was in his room when I arrived at the haunted house. I knocked on the doorjamb to get his attention.
“Hi, Brat,” he said.
“Try that again, little man,” I said.
“Hi, Brett.”
“That’s better. It’s a bit dark in here. Come on out on the front porch.”
“What for?”
I held up the two comic books. “Blast from the past, buddy.”
His face lit up, and it was worth it to have comic geeks look down their noses at me. It’s not every day you can make a dead kid smile.
We went out on the porch, sat on the steps, and I read the comic books to him. He sat enraptured by the adventures of Brother Voodoo and a werewolf fighting some silly-assed bald dude in robes named Dr. Glitternight.
When I closed the second comic, he looked at me with a smile. “Thank you, Brett. That was so cool.”
It occurred to me that no one had done anything like that for Demetrius in more than thirty years.
“What did you do to your arm?” he asked.
“New tattoo,” I said. “I was supposed to take the bandage off already. Want to see how it turned out?”
“Yeah.”
I peeled off the bandage.
My tattoo didn’t look any different than it had the day before. Just a Chinese dragon on my upper arm with grass and flowers on my forearm. It still hurt.
“Hmm,” I said. “Let’s try something.”
I gave my arm a shake, thinking about what tomorrow might hold.
The grass flared out and a Tarot card appeared on my forearm.
Ten of Swords: Ruin.
A bunch of swords stabbing and splintering against one another, and into a heart. Yeah, not a lot of subtext there. I remembered the Rider-Waite deck with a dude lying on the ground with ten swords sticking out of his back, too.
I shook my arm again, but nothing happened. That’s right. One query per day. And now the damn card wouldn’t go away.
“Cool,” Demetrius said.
“Not so cool,” I said. “Maybe I should just stay in bed tomorrow.”
“Well, thanks for the comics.”
“You bet, little man. If I live through tomorrow, I’ll see about getting more.”
“That would be awesome!”
His excitement broke me out of my concern about the ruinous card displayed on my forearm. Maybe the ruin would be that the next comic book would have a tear on the cover. Somehow I didn’t think I’d be that lucky.
“And if you die, you can still come back here,” Demetrius said with just as much excitement.
Funny, but that didn’t improve my outlook.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Twenty minutes later, I stumbled into the house. As I climbed the stairs, ready to crash, I heard the thunk thunk thunk of a bed frame against a wall, along with grunts and moans of pleasure.
Michael was laying undead pipe in my cousin.
I hung the necklace on my doorknob, tossed Abigail’s wallet on my dresser then collapsed on my bed. I tried to go to sleep, but the noise kept me awake.
One thing I’ll say for the vampire, he sure had stamina. As I hugged my pillow, I kept thinking about Abigail. I knew it wasn’t a natural thing. Maybe I’d absorbed too much of her perfume into my system, but all I could think about was holding her. When I found myself kissing the pillow, I knew I had a problem.
I gave up on sleep and went downstairs to get a beer. Before I finished it, Michael came downstairs in a pink terrycloth robe. His long, dark hair flowed over his shoulders. When he spotted me, I raised my bottle.
“What’s up, stud muffin?” I
said.
He gave me a sly smile. “Your cousin is … energetic.”
Michael was the only guy I knew who could rock a pink robe. He got himself a glass of water. Vampires could eat and drink like the rest of us, but they had to occasionally have some blood. Fortunately, wizard blood was bad for the undead.
“What do you know about witches?” I asked.
“I’ve been with a few,” he said.
“How do their love spells work?”
“Color me clueless,” he said. “I’ve never fallen for a witch.”
I frowned.
“Something wrong, Brett?” he asked.
I finished my beer and set the empty bottle on the counter. Sabrina wouldn’t like that, but she’d get over it. After all, we had a maid service coming in now. She didn’t have to clean up after me.
“Not sure anything’s actually wrong,” I said. “Oh, who am I kidding? I’m in a bad way, dude.”
Sabrina came downstairs, so I stopped talking. “Hey, Brett,” she said.
“Cuz,” I said giving her a nod.
She embraced Michael and kissed his neck. “You look hot in pink,” she said. “You coming back to bed?”
“I’ll be up in a few,” he said and kissed her.
“Okay,” she said. She pointed at the beer bottle. “Don’t leave that on the counter, Brett. Trash can is under the sink.”
“Feel free to pitch it,” I said.
She flipped me the bird, got a glass of water, kissed Michael once more, then went back upstairs.
“What’s the problem?” Michael asked.
I shook my head. “Don’t worry about it. You should go sleep with your food.”
He raised an eyebrow. “That’s not the way I eat her,” he said.
“TMI,” I said.
He drank his water, put the glass in the dishwasher and looked at me again. “You want to talk, I’m here for you.”
“Sabrina needs you more than I do. I’ve got this.”
“Your call,” he said and went back upstairs.
I wanted to go get my phone and call Abigail, but I didn’t know what I’d say to her. After all, she didn’t like me. Her damn spell just jacked me up, and I needed to get it out of my system.
If I worked out, or went for a run, that might help, but that was too much like exercise. The headboard started bumping the wall upstairs again, and built up to a steady rhythm, so I didn’t want to go back to my room. I stretched out on the couch. My usual method for handling things was to sleep it off. That should work for this too.