by Taylor Fray
"What have you done so far, with the words? The incantation?”
"Nothing.” Emily was suddenly defensive. "I mean I've been very careful. I've only used it on a few things. You know small things. Pencils, a pillow.”
Her patron listened carefully. He clasped his hands together. "And you're not afraid? You're not afraid of what you can do, what others could do?”
“Well, I try not to be afraid. I think we should face the truth.”
“And what if the truth is something terrible?”
Emily was not sure if this was a test or what it was but she was trying to answer as best she could. “Then we should change the truth.”
“Is that what you want, Emily? To change the truth?”
It sounded terrible the way he put it. "First I would like to learn the truth, to see if I should change it or not.”
Something in her reply brought a grin to his face. "You've answered well." He rose from his seat slowly.
She noticed that he already knew her name. “I don't know your name, Sir,” she said shyly.
“You’re asking me my name?”
“Yes.”
His face turned serious. Hints of red fire began writhing in his eyes until they grew ablaze. “You should never do that, to a demon.”
“A what?” Emily jerked up from her seat. Her patron went on staring at her with torch eyes. She began panicking, turned for the door. But with the sound of 100 matches striking the door caught on fire. It was a solid blazing rectangle that left the rest of the wall untouched like a furnace door had been thrown open. She felt a scream wanting to burst out of her throat. She turned back and forth between the door and the demon patron unsure of what to do in her panic. Suddenly the door was thrown open and the flames scattered like beads from a broken string.
A woman in a long flowing skirt entered. It was Sandy!
"Oliver! Cut it out with the flames!”
Emily was utterly confused. She watched as Sandy strode into the room and the flames from the door and with a snap of her fingers the flaming demon eyes vanished.
“I told you to give her a briefing not a heart attack,” Sandy said, the bracelets on her arms jangling.
“A scared mage is better than a dead one,” the demon replied.
“And really, it was just a little bit of fire nothing she shouldn't get used to.”
“A little bit of fire,” Sandy said shaking her head in exasperation. “Adhavan!” She exclaimed pointing to her finger at the dapper dressed Oliver. Emily's eyes rounded as crackling magic energy rippled around Oliver and suddenly he was transformed into a yellow and white Corgi. He complain-grumbled a little as he curled himself up near the corner of the room.
Sandy turned to Emily. "You take in one hellhound and he wants to take over your house.”
Sandy sat where Oliver had been just moments before. As she sat across from her, Emily studied her more closely, as clearly she was no ordinary person. Her features and tan skin could have passed for any number of ethnicities, large jade earrings and wavy black hair that came to her shoulders.
“Hellhound?” Emily managed to say as she glanced over to Oliver, now sulking in a corner.
“Yeah. It’s a long story,” Sandy said as she lit some incense and crossed her legs.
“He could have killed me.” Emily clenched a fist.
“Him? Haven’t you heard the expression all bark and no bite? He knows you’re new to… all this. He was just trying to show you not to be so trusting. The fire was actually all illusion. I’ve trained him well. No fires in the house.”
The confidence Sandy spoke with put Emily at ease. "So… You're the one who left the book there?"
"Yeah, and the one who wrote it."
"But you're just a regular person. You’re the owner of the store. You’re… Sandy!"
“You can call me Dee. Sandy is just my name for the mundanes. I needed something close enough or I might forget.” She laughed at that last part.
"The mundanes?”
“Yeah. Ordinary folk. Folk who'd think I was crazy if I told them I had a demon dog assistant and pet. The kind of folk who you were a part of recently, though not anymore.”
"I guess you're right if you mean the whole magic thing."
"I know I am."
"Why didn't you just… tell me who you were. Why did you leave the book there? It was really confusing. I mean it wasn't straightforward.”
“A mage needs two things, willpower and intuition. I needed to make sure you had both. And that little test was a way to find out. If you didn’t have what it took, you simply would have failed and I never would have revealed my identity to you.”
“The dream. That was you too wasn’t it?”
“I merely created a place for you to find in the dream plane. You made your way there. That was part of the test.”
Emily looked at her, a thousand thoughts jammed in her mind. One thing won out. “Will you teach me more?”
Dee ran her fingers along her bracelets and studied Emily. “Every once in a while someone with real potential comes to this place. You've been here enough to see that most people here are dabblers. That's not to say they're hopeless. They learn a lot. But what you can learn now is just not accessible to them.”
“You mean the people reading all the New Agey woowoo?”
“Yes. It works out great though. They provide some cover. Anything strange happens here and people try to tell about it, the mundanes just brush it off. ‘Oh it's that place where all those flakes go.’
“Makes sense, people would just think they were making things up.”
“But you are not flake not a mundane. You’re a mage. A witch to be exact.”
"Why a witch and not a mage?"
“Mage is neutral, witch is female.”
“Oh, makes sense. So I’m already a witch?”
"Well you're becoming one. If that's what you want. It'll be easier now to turn back if you decide to. It'll get harder the further you go. There'll come a time when you can never turn back and be a mundane again. Never."
"What's it like? To be a witch? To be like you?"
" For some it's bliss. For some it's torture. For most of us it's a little of both. But one thing is true, you’ll never be a part of the mundanes again. You can live around them, even with them. You can talk to them, you can give birth to them, you can be friends with them, but you'll never be a part of them if you go down this road. You’ll always be keeping secrets. You’ll always be around people who can never understand the things you know, who you can never explain those things to.”
“Emily thought of that for a moment, memories rushing back to her. "If that's t true, and I think I've been a witch my whole life.”
Dee chuckled at that. Emily smiled even in this bizarre situation she was still a student eager to please her teacher. “Is that all you wanted to know before you decide?”
“Actually, I wanted to ask you… do witches ever meet vampires?
"Now why would you ask about that particular topic?"
Emily considered the question for a moment then realized it was a bad idea to lie to the person she wanted to be her teacher—who could read her mind for all she knew. "A person I knew became one." She wanted to keep explaining but the words trailed off. Dee nodded, a knowing smile on her face.
"What else? What else did he want to ask before you decide if you want to continue?"
Emily pressed her lips together as she thought about it. "You said part of the book test was to test my intuition. My intuition tells me this is what I want."
Oliver now in a slightly better mood barked from his corner. Dee glanced at him and then looked back at Emily. "Yeah, yeah she is." Dee smiled. "Seems like Oliver has changed his opinion of you. He said you’re sharp as a whip.”
"Thanks, Oliver,” Emily said with a slight smile.
"Alright," Dee continued, "this is for you then." She held out a large book to her. Its cover seemed like it was made of led and had inscribed
on it various runes of some arcane language.
“What is it?”
“It’s everything you need to know about magic.”
“Really?”
“Well, almost everything.”
Emily gazed at the book with an eagerness she could hardly contain.
8
CHAPTER 8
High heels clattered on the concrete like nails into a coffin. Long, beautifully sculpted legs followed. Hair as luscious as silk, cheekbones as supple as rose petals, breasts like perfectly ripe fruit all adorned a girl whose beauty was nearly blinding. A chic Chiffon crop top and million dollar jeans only accentuated her dazzling looks. She made her way toward the mansion, was flanked by two friends who normally would be the beauties in a room, but beside her looked as plain as door knobs. It was amazing what a difference a semester—and some magic—can make.
The girl who made her way towards the entrance of the party had once had scraggly, sandy blonde hair. But she had always wanted dark hair, dark with just a tinge of red. She had always wanted moist plump lips, a couple of inches more on certain places of her body, a couple of inches less in others. She had even wanted to be taller, stronger, had wanted her skin which was impossible to tan, to be tanned. She had once thought it impossible to look like this idealized version of herself, but nothing was impossible to her anymore.
To say that Emily had become the “it” girl in less than a school year would've been completely wrong. More accurately, she had become the “all” girl. She could get perfect grades. Had limitless amounts of money, could befriend anyone, dazzling them with her beauty, charm and intelligence. She could beat the entire debate team in debates, was in better shape than all the track stars, had every guy gawking at her from the geekiest nerd to the brawniest jock and everything in between.
They say that a starving person will eat themselves to death if suddenly given too much food. Emily was smart enough to know that she was dangerously close to going down that road, but intelligence cannot conquer the impulses of the human heart, for as powerful a witch as she was becoming, she was still that girl who never felt accepted, never felt she had been acknowledged, never received praise and admiration. Now she had these things and was drinking of them, gorging herself for the years she never had them. And after all, Dee had her alternate identity of Sandy. For very human reasons, most mages kept some connection to the mundane world, some identity there. Few were the ones who could truly dive into the world of the arcane, travel in strange dimensions and among supernatural beings to the exclusion of humanity. And so, if she were going to keep a semblance of a human life, why not make it one of utter enjoyment?
She walked with her two girlfriends, Gianni and Nicole, to the basketball team’s after game party Emily had deemed worthy of her presence, if only for a few fashionably short moments. It was at a house somewhere between lavish and full blown mansion. It was very modern with large, exotic plants all around the exterior, large angular columns framing gigantic windows. One of SCC’s basketball players was the son of a retired Chicago Bull who had spoiled his son with a house near his alma mater. The arrangement had given Emily ideas of how she might want to upgrade her own living situation. It was getting ridiculous that she still lived in a dorm—however nice it was, it was still a dorm. But then again property was a rather large commitment and she had to give it more thought. Above everything was her magic, and she wanted to be sure embroiling herself in large financial dealings would not jeopardize it.
Dozens of people crowded around the front lawn. Heads turned as Emily and her two wing women strode in through the front door. The vast marble floored reception room opened up to a spiral staircase. Clusters of well dressed college students and their various friends and lovers dotted the room. From the top of the stairs Emily noticed that she had been noticed by Orlando, the host. He froze for a moment and seemed to shudder, likely the impact Emily's newfound beauty, and he made his way down the stairs to her.
“Hi, Emily right?” Orlando said. He was wearing a vintage sky-blue polo that had been meticulously faded at the edges and a gold watch the size of a tuna can.
"Yes, hi,” Emily smiled, amused. “It was really nice of you to invite me. Do you know my friends, Nicole and Gianni?"
Orlando reached out to both ladies to shake their hands. He was tall, though not as much as one would expect for the son of a basketball player. His skin was almond brown, he had full lips, a broad nose and light-colored hair that suggested a mixed heritage.
Gianni and Nicole began congratulating him on the basketball game and making other small talk. Emily's interest wandered to the architecture of the house. Lately she had begun seeing how objects were really ideas that had taken on physical expression; knowing what she did about the nature of magic and what it implied about the nature of reality itself, it had to be true, she reasoned. Walls had the idea of strength in them, they had the idea of a flat plane, the idea of rectangular prisms, the idea of a certain color. Many, many ideas came together to form a wall. That is what allowed mages to alter reality. Through their awakened perception, they could reach the ideas hiding behind solid matter, and ideas were ideas, things that could be changed entirely with the mind, the right mind that is.
She was brought out of her reverie by someone she spotted at the top of the stairs. She knew that guy from somewhere, and he knew her by the way he was looking at her. He was frozen a moment as if he were trying to remember where he recognized her from.
Full of confusion, he walked down the stairs. He slowed his gait as he got closer to her. She recognized him exactly, as he stood next to Orlando. It was Dominic. But he was still in confusion as to exactly who she was, though he seemed to be realizing it.
"…Emily?” Dominic said.
She smiled, had gotten used to the reaction these last few months. She tried to make it a cold smile, but it was hard to do so as the way he was dressed, sharp, wearing shades of grey and white, and a shirt that showed a toned body like that of a soccer player. And above it all, it was hard to smile in a cold way at someone who reminded her of the only boy she had ever loved.
“Hey Domenic." She didn't know what else to say. He had hurt Tori. Even if it had been a breakup, it had still hurt her and she felt compelled somehow to distance herself from him.
"You look so different,” he said. “I'm just really surprised to see you here. It doesn't strike me as your scene exactly."
"You'd be surprised, people can have a lot of sides to them." Something about Dominic was throwing her off. Just about all guys who she spoke with either became fumbling fool's trying to stand before her beauty or became so lascivious it was offensive. Dominic only stared at her with curiosity.
"Hey I hope it's all right to ask you…" He stepped in a little bit closer so as to distance themselves from Orlando and Emily's two friends who were still making small talk, "how is Tori doing?"
"Shouldn’t you ask her yourself?" It surprised her that she was so defensive of her roommate, but she couldn't help but feel that there was some kind of sisterhood established between them. However obnoxious Tori could be, she was still her roommate and friend.
"I would, but I think that would just makes things worse. She took the whole thing so hard, worse than anyone I've ever seen."
She ignored the reference to what sounded like many breakups and focused her annoyance on Tori’s hurt feelings. "Well breaking up with someone suddenly and with no real reason tends to do that."
"No reason?" Dominic showed genuine confusion. "You don't think cheating on someone is a clear reason?"
"Cheating? You cheated on her too?” her sudden outrage made her voice rise. An embarrassed Dominic looked around but it seemed no one had really paid much attention. He gently tugged at her elbow to keep talking with her farther away from the mingling crowd.
"Of course not. She cheated on me, a bunch of times with some frat guy.”
Emily took that in, silently running it over in her mind. "Really? You know you don'
t have to pretend to be a gentleman around me."
"Why would I try and do that?"
Emily felt a little embarrassed at her sudden presumption, but it wasn't entirely unreasonable with how she looked lately.
"Sorry I didn't mean to…”
“Hey it's all right. You probably think I'm a dirt bag.” He slipped his hands in his pockets. “Let me ask you something. Why are you always avoiding us? Me and Tori, I mean. Was it since that first day that we were… that we embarrassed ourselves? I'm really sorry. I hope we didn't make you totally uncomfortable. We did though, didn't we? Really I can't say sorry enough.”
Emily recalled that first day and was a little flustered, which she hadn't been in a good while. “Well… it's all right. It's just… human biology, I guess,”
Dominic chuckled. “You know Emily, I don't know what in the world happened to you so that you became a model overnight, but deep down you're still that nerdy girl I met a few months back. I hope the new you doesn't push her out.”
Something about the way he said it and looking at his dark brown eyes just like Vincent's, his finely sculpted lips, it suddenly took her out of her new persona. She felt for a moment what it might be like to be loved for her and not for this glamour she had put on. She only stared at him in silence for a moment, her mind reaching back to the past.
"Hey let me ask you, what really happened with you? You just look so… different? Did you win a make over like on Oprah or one of those shows?”
"No." A smile spread on her face as she contained a laugh. She leaned in close to him with a grin. "It's magic."
He looked confused for a moment, then smiled a with 100% confidence that she was pulling his leg. "Come on," he said with fake annoyance, "I'll show you magic." He reached for her hand and she was taken aback suddenly.
"What do you mean…" Emily said, suddenly alarmed as he guided her toward a room full of people and music. It was the dance room. The room lights were dimmed so that the red and blue dance lights bathed the crowd. Emily was nervous. Dominic wanted to dance with her... but she did not dance—there was no spell for it! Not any she knew, at least. She hesitated, wanting to stay at the edge of the partying crowd. With a nonchalant grin he shook his head and kept tugging at her until she was fully surrounded by swaying bodies, bobbing heads, flicking arms. Her heart started pounding. She was going to fall over trying to dance on heels—she just knew it. By a domino effect she would knock over every single person in the crowd along with the stereo and the damn punch bowl. That's how uncoordinated she was.