by Gary Jonas
“Yeah, you cheated,” Rhonda said.
Now that their breasts were covered, I turned and saw a thug with an aluminum baseball bat. He looked like a teenager hired off the street.
“Howdy, Slugger,” I said. “Is it my turn?” I motioned with my hands and the bat twisted itself around his wrists.
“What the hell?” he said.
“Sit down, Junior.” I pushed him toward the chair by the desk.
He sat.
I turned back to the twins.
They were pouting.
Damn, they were cute. But Michael was right. They brought nothing else to the table. Well, they brought a thug to the table, but they had shown me their tits, so that kinda made up for it.
“How did you find me?” I asked.
“The other you told us where you were. He didn’t even let us get close to him. We think he might be gay.”
“All right, ladies, it’s time we had a bit more of a chat. You said you were on a mission from the Council.”
“Yeah,” Rhonda said.
“Tell me about it.”
“We told you. We’re supposed to kill you, reanimate your body, and take you back to the Council.”
“Why?”
“They didn’t tell us why, they just told us what to do.”
“What good would it do them to have either me or my double?”
They both shrugged.
“Can I get out of here?” the thug asked.
“Sure, dude, the window’s right there. Feel free to jump.”
“We’re on the twenty-first floor.”
“Yeah, so?”
“The fall would kill me.”
“In that case, shut the fuck up or I’ll throw you out the window.”
“Don’t worry,” Melissa said. “He won’t do that.”
I still had blood in my mouth, so I waved my hand toward the window. The curtains swished open, and the glass disappeared. I pointed at the chair and it lifted off the ground. I floated it toward the window.
“Holy shit,” the guy said and jumped out of the chair.
“Did I say you could get up?” I asked.
“I’m not just gonna let you toss me out the window.”
“Sure you are,” I said, and gave him a wave.
He flew backward out the window.
I let him drop out of sight, then focused my energy to mold the bat into the building. I didn’t want to kill the guy, but I didn’t mind scaring him because he’d tried to bash my brains in. He could hang out for a bit while I chatted with the Ringo Twins. This was my wizard version of Scared Straight.
“Where were we?” I asked as I turned back to them.
They stared out the window and pulled the covers up. The fear in their eyes gave me a sense of power. I wasn’t sure I liked that feeling because it could get addictive.
“Please don’t kill us,” Melissa said in a small voice. The girls shrank away from me as I moved toward the bed. If they were acting, they were destined to win Oscars.
“I don’t want to kill you,” I said. “Really, I don’t. But you’re not telling me anything useful.”
“We don’t know anything.”
“You have to know something. You’ve managed to get this far in life.” As I said it, I wanted to take the words back. Pretty girls with nice bodies don’t have to know much to get through life. They learn early on how to manipulate men because we are total suckers.
I shook my head.
“I can’t believe you just killed that guy,” Rhonda said. “He was just a kid.”
“He tried to crack my skull open.”
“We paid him to do that. You’re not a real person, so what difference does it make?”
“What makes you think I’m not a real person?”
“Because you’re a copy of the other Brett.”
“How do you know he’s not a copy of me?”
“Because he told us.”
“Well, I’m telling you he is the copy. What do you say to that?”
“He told us first.”
“And that makes him right?”
“I don’t know. I’m so confused.”
“Who on the Council sent you to take me out?”
“The real you’s father.”
I should have known.
I shook my head. It always came back to my old man. The bastard hated my guts, and now he created a replacement, so I needed to go bye-bye.
“Hold on,” I said.
“What?” Rhonda asked.
“You two were watching out for me in Galveston before I came back from Fiji.”
“Yeah, so?”
“When did you get there?”
“About a year ago, I guess. Why?”
“You’ve been watching me for a year?”
“Off and on.”
“That doesn’t make a lick of sense.”
They both shrugged.
“When did you first see that there were two of me?”
“Your father called us when you left Fiji.”
“And he told you to kill me.”
“He told us to kidnap you, and make you feel special before we killed you. Then we were supposed to reanimate you and take you to the Council.”
“But why would he have you watch me for a year? That’s about when I first arrived in Galveston.”
“He didn’t tell us.”
“You didn’t need to know,” I said, nodding. “Do you have a number to call him?”
“Of course.”
“Give it to me.”
“It’s in my phone,” Melissa said.
“Mine, too,” Rhonda said. “Don’t you have your father’s number?”
“He changed it.”
“Not for us.”
“He changed the number I had. He probably has other numbers. He’s that kind of asshole. Now get me the number.”
Melissa got out of bed. She looked phenomenal in that negligee. Nice long, shapely legs that went all the way to heaven. She went into the bathroom.
I followed her.
She reached into her purse, and pulled out a gun.
I caught her hand, took the gun away, and tucked it in my pocket.
“Nice try,” I said.
She frowned.
“Want to watch me take a shower?” she asked and let the negligee drop to the floor.
As much as I wanted to stare at her, I spun around. Rhonda stepped into view, gun in hand. I grabbed the gun away from her, too.
“Hey!”
“Stand against the wall there,” I said, pointing.
She did as I said.
I turned around, and unfortunately, Melissa had bent and slipped back into the damn negligee. So much for getting a nice look.
I grabbed her purse from the counter, and dug through sticks of lipstick, compact mirrors, various kinds of makeup, combs, hairbrushes, and tissues until I found her phone, a pink sequined number. It was an iPhone. I pressed the button and it asked for a code.
“What’s the code?”
“All fives,” she said.
I tapped four fives and the phone opened up.
“You might want a better password.”
“I wanted something I could remember,” she said.
“I doubt you’re that stupid,” I said, scrolling through her contacts list. I found my father’s name, Nathaniel Masters. I took out my phone, checked the number. It was different.
I updated my contact info for him.
I considered dropping the phone back into her purse, but instead, I put it in my pocket.
“You can’t have that,” she said.
“Sure I can. You can buy a new phone.”
“But that has all my contacts in it.”
“I don’t care.” I turned to Rhonda. “I want your phone, too.”
“Why?”
“Because.”
“Because why?”
“Because reasons.”
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll have to move away from th
e wall to get it.”
“You have my permission.”
“You’re not the boss of me,” she said, all offended now.
“Just bring me the phone.”
She moved away from the wall.
I glanced at Melissa. “You, move over to the wall.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t trust you.”
She gave me an indignant look. “I don’t trust you either.”
“I don’t care.”
“I don’t care either.”
“Well, good for you.”
Rhonda returned with her phone. Hers was purple sequined.
“Pass code?” I asked.
“All sevens because seven is my favorite number.”
“Mine, too,” I said.
“Really?”
“No.”
I punched in the code and it opened the phone. At least I wouldn’t have to work too hard to remember their codes. I slipped the phone into my pocket.
“You’re mean,” Rhonda said.
“Do you like mean guys?”
“No. I don’t know. Are you going to do anything to us?”
“What do you have in mind?”
“Nothing.”
“In that case, no, I won’t do anything to you. Both of you can get dressed now.”
“We just wore coats over our lingerie.”
“Hot,” I said.
“Kinda chilly, actually. It’s February.”
“Put on your coats,” I said.
While they fetched their coats from the closet, I went to the window and looked down at the thug.
“How’s it hanging?” I asked.
The kid looked up at me. He was crying. “I’m afraid of heights, man.”
“Remember that next time you decide to try and break someone’s skull.”
I reopened my wound, made the bat extricate itself from the building and float back into the room. The kid landed safely on the carpet, and rushed to the door, but with the bat wrapped around his wrists, it was hard to grip the doorknob. He finally got it open and raced down the hall.
I made the glass reappear in the window, motioned for the curtains to close, then looked over at the Ringo Twins.
“You two can go now. And while this probably goes without saying, I think I’d better say it anyway. Don’t ever come after me again.”
“We won’t,” they said in unison, and bolted out the door.
I motioned the door closed, twisted the lock with my mind, then released the rest of the magic. I climbed into bed and closed my eyes. The pillows smelled like roses. A last lingering whiff of the twins.
Nice smell, but empty. I shook my head. Just a few months ago, they would have been all I’d ever wanted.
Times were so much simpler then.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
As I tried to go to sleep, my mind swirled around, examining the various pieces of what I’d endured. This troubled me on a deep level because sleeping is my super power, and now I couldn’t shut off my brain to drift off into sweet and glorious slumber-time. My brain was so rarely engaged, this had never been a problem before.
And what’s worse, most of what I was thinking about was too complex to be reduced to six words or less. Fewer, as Sabrina would say, but who gives a shit about that anyway?
My brain went from person to person.
My father. He was King Asshole. He’d never been happy about who I turned out to be. Was he willing to kill me so his treasured replacement version of me could take over? I wouldn’t put it past him. Could he have the Magic Council working with him? Of course he could. Hell, he could order those bastards to take me out. But if so, he—or they—were giving me a fighting chance because they hadn’t come at me full bore.
A few conversations about the Magic Council had mentioned someone known as the Matriarch. Who was she? Was she simply the head of the council and therefore in charge of the test the other me was gearing up to take? Was there some benefit to her to have me killed or did she think the other Brett was the only Brett and his death would save them the hassle of giving a test years after it was supposed to have been administered? After all, most wizards took the test at eighteen, though I’d read about a few waiting until twenty-one.
Sabrina. She tried to get us to follow her inside, and she wouldn’t have done that if she were in on trying to eliminate me. Unless she knew there were more attempts coming, and I was supposed to take the brunt of any attack aimed at the other Brett. She clearly liked him more than me.
Speaking of the other Brett, that son of a bitch sent me here, so he knew where I’d be. Okay, that was silly. The show had been advertised, so anyone wanting to find Brett Masters could have seen the show time listed along the venue. Brett Masters and the Sound Blasters had my name up front and impossible to miss. But the other Brett had me take his place. He’d been semi-honest about using me this way, but one question kept jumping out at me. What if he was sending assassins after me himself? Would he do that? Was there a benefit to him if people thought he was dead?
Gideon. Yeah, good old Gideon. He’d at least made sure I was protected from the gunfire, but was that to make me trust him? Was it a scheme to make me fall in with him? Give him back the ring so he could always be near? Of course, he’d given me the ring in the first place, but… The ring!
I rolled out of bed and hurried to the bathroom counter. The ring was still there.
Good.
Unless it was a tracker.
Holy shit. I was getting paranoid.
Getting?
Okay, I was paranoid.
Who could I trust?
Michael? When Sabrina tried to get us to go inside, he didn’t go with her. He could have grabbed me and pulled me inside before the shooting started. Was he in on it? Did he like the other Brett better, too? This sucked balls. I had no clue. The people I thought were my friends might not be real friends. None of them seemed to be particularly fond of me.
Chuck and Teddy were clearly not in on it. They were just regular dudes. No worries there. If they’d noticed a difference, they might just think I’d been nicer for a while, and was now back to my normal self. They would certainly like the other me better. Not sure I can blame them on that front. I’d never really given them much thought. Maybe that made me a bad person. But does anyone really pay that much attention to the people they know on the periphery of their friends? I mean, yeah, they were in my band, but we didn’t hang out if we weren’t playing. I didn’t know where to stand on that, but they were clearly not involved, so I didn’t need to worry about them.
The twins shouldn’t be a problem now. I’d shown them I was boss. They couldn’t sway me with nudity. Well, they could, but I was onto them now. I’d like to get onto them, but we won’t go there.
Who could I trust?
Lakesha? I hadn’t seen her in a few days, and while she’d attacked me, maybe she would shoot straight with me.
I needed to figure things out. Lakesha seemed like my best bet. She would have to realize I was the real me and not a demon.
I didn’t want to get blasted again, nor did I want the damn cat to scratch me, so my easiest point of contact was a phone call.
The clock on the nightstand told me it was 2:46. Lakesha wouldn’t take kindly to me calling her at this hour. Could it wait until morning?
Yes.
I went over everything one more time, to see if I’d missed anything. If so, I missed it again. Then I crawled back into bed, and finally drifted off to sleep.
“Wake up, dipshit.”
I opened my eyes. It was still dark.
“Huh?”
“Wake your ass up.”
“Sabrina?”
“Yes,” she said. “Get up.”
I sat up in bed, and she moved to the window. She yanked the curtains open. Sunlight blasted into the room and I shielded my eyes.
“Holy shit,” I said. “Warning much?”
“Get up.”
I slid out of bed
. I wore sweat pants and a T-shirt. Sabrina was already dressed for the day in a nice purple dress with pink polka dots. She wore a belt that matched the dots. She also wore high heeled shoes and had a purse draped over her shoulder.
“What time is it?” I asked, stifling a yawn.
“Noon,” she said. “We need to get moving. We have another show in Dallas tonight and a TV interview before that.”
“I need a shower.”
“Later,” she said. “Put on some shoes.”
“I have to at least take a piss.”
She rolled her eyes. “Hurry.”
“What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is that we have a three hour drive ahead of us.”
“What time is the interview?”
“Four.”
“Then let me get cleaned up.”
“You want to magic us to Dallas?”
“Did you just use magic as a verb?”
“I did. Gideon says you’ve come a long way with your skills. Can you open a doorway to Dallas?”
“I don’t know how to do that.”
“Then you don’t have time to get cleaned up.”
“Can you open a doorway to Dallas?”
“Would I ever ride in a car with you if I could open a portal?”
“So what makes you think I can?”
“You blew apart the buildings the snipers were on. You threw a van onto the roof. And you did those on your own. No help from your father or anyone else.”
“So I’m getting to be a better wizard than you ever thought I’d be,” I said with a grin. And I promptly stubbed by toe on the foot of the bed. “Fuck!”
Sabrina laughed. “Clumsiest wizard on the planet.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The interview went okay because Sabrina coached me on the questions the other Brett had agreed to in advance, and gave me direction on how to answer them. The show that night didn’t have any hitches. My karaoke method worked fine in conjunction with the magic to keep me from getting too pitchy.
I still had Gideon’s ring in my pocket. He hadn’t asked to get it back from me, which surprised me. I kept expecting him to ask, but maybe he knew I’d tell him, “Too bad, so sad.” I wasn’t any closer to knowing how things could or should go after the show than I was before.
After the encore, Michael, Sabrina, Chuck, and Teddy went out to talk to the crowd and to have a few drinks. I said I’d join them soon, then went out the back door of the venue into a parking lot. It was dark, and it was just after ten at night. I unlocked my phone and called Lakesha.