A Little Night Magic

by March, Lucy

  “Thanks for coming.” I went to the carafe of coffee I’d made on the mini-coffeemaker and poured us each a mug. Millie watched me carefully. She was suspicious, which made me feel even worse about dosing her, but I was already here, and it would help her.

  Maybe.

  I set the cream and sugar on the counter and mixed them into my mug, took a sip, then set the coffee down.

  “I really don’t see what we have to talk about,” Millie said. “But for old time’s sake, I guess it made sense to come.” She left her coffee black and sipped it.

  “We need to talk about Peach,” I said. “And Nick. And what the hell’s been going on with you.”

  She gave me a flat look. “Oh, please. Like you don’t know. Davina told me all about you, you know.”

  I couldn’t help my surprise. “What do you mean?”

  “She told me that you and Stacy and Peach had been laughing behind my back about Nick, all these years. Saying I didn’t stand a chance with him. Calling me pathetic!” Rage flashed on her face, and then she calmed down. “Who’s pathetic now, Liv?”

  I shook my head. “That never happened.”

  “Right,” Millie huffed. “I’ve always been the laughingstock. It’s always been the three of you against me.”

  “Millie, that’s not true. I swear.”

  “Like your word means anything.”

  “Look,” I said, slowly, “I know how convincing Davina can be. I believed her, too, but Mill—”

  “Just stop it, okay? I’m not interested in hearing more lies. I’ve got what I want.”

  “And just what is that, Mill? Nick wants Peach. Once Davina stops needing you, you won’t have her mind-control trick anymore. What are you going to do then?”

  Millie shook her head at me. “You know, I would have thought at least you’d be on my side. Stacy and Peach, they think that because they’re beautiful, they can have whatever they want. They just step over the bodies of girls like us. How can you side with them after the way Stacy treated you?”

  “Stacy never stepped over me,” I said.

  Millie slapped her hand down on the counter, making me jump back a bit. “She slept with Tobias! He was yours, and she slept with him! Doesn’t that make you mad?”

  “He wasn’t mine, Mill. And Nick wasn’t yours.”

  “Yes, he was. I was there for him, every day. I made him coffee, I laughed at his jokes, I loved him. And Peach just swoops in with her perfect face and her perfect ass and just—agh!” She flashed her fingers out in frustration. “She had no right! He was mine.”

  “No, he wasn’t.”

  And it was then that I saw it, a hint of uncertainty, the old Millie inside this new, awful thing. I leaned forward and took her hand in mine.

  “Millie, you can’t let Davina do this to you. This isn’t you. I know you, and you’re not like this. You’re kind and you’re sweet and you love us. Peach, Stacy, and you and me, we’re family.” I sighed as I let out a sharp breath, my eyes filling with tears. “I miss you, Mill.”

  She lowered her eyes, looking down at her hand in mine, but she didn’t pull away, so I went for it.

  “I can help you,” I said. “I just need you to trust me.”

  She raised her eyes, and they were full with tears, her lower lip quivering. “Trust you?”

  “Yeah.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out the vial Cain had given me. “I can mix this in your coffee. It’ll cut off your connection to Davina, and cut off some of her power. It’ll make it easier for me to take her down. She’s trying to kill me, Mill.”

  Millie shook her head. “No. No, she wouldn’t do that. She’s been really nice to me. She helped me.”

  “Here.” I put the vial in her hand. “I won’t dose you against your will, but I’m going to ask you to take it.”

  Millie examined the vial. “What is it?”

  “It’s a potion. My friend Cain made it. He’s really good. When Davina got to me, he saved my life.”

  Millie stared at it for a while as a tear tracked down her cheek. I reached out and put one hand on her arm, but she pulled away from me violently, and when she looked at me, her eyes were glittering with hatred.

  “Mill?”

  “I told her you’d never betray me,” she said, shaking the vial in her fist as she stepped away from the counter. “She told me you would, she told me you’d do exactly this, but I said no. Liv would never do that to me, I said. What an idiot!”

  Behind her, gray smoke started to whirl, coming up from under the tables behind her. Within the smoke, sparks started to fly, at first small and then growing bigger, illuminating the smoke around them like lightning. Millie closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them, she was smiling.

  I stepped out from behind the counter, and as I passed by the kitchen door, I smelled it.

  Gas.

  I turned around, looking at Millie, those sparks in the smoke whirling behind her even more ominous now. “Millie, I smell gas. We need to get out of here.”

  “Of course you smell gas,” she said. “Who do you think turned it on?”

  “Goddamnit, Millie!” I said, and headed toward the kitchen door, but I couldn’t move it. Something was wedged up against it. I pushed against it with everything I had, and moved it an inch, just enough to see the blue of Cain’s T-shirt as the dead weight of his unconscious body sagged against the door. I coughed as the gas that had saturated the kitchen swept in through the crack in the door, then twirled around to see Millie there, arms raised, smoke and sparks seeming to come from her fingers.

  “Millie, stop it!” I yelled. “If this place goes up, it’ll kill you, too.”

  “Yeah?” Millie rolled her eyes. “You think she’ll let anything happen to me? She’s my friend. She loves me.”

  “She’s not your friend!” I ran for the front door. I pushed back the Venetian blinds and tried to open it, but the dead bolt was flipped, and the key we usually kept in there was gone. I coughed again as the smell of the gas scorched my lungs. There was a pounding on the glass and I looked up: Tobias. I motioned for him to go around the back. If he could get Cain out in time and open the kitchen door, we might be able to get out the back. He gave me a quick, frantic look, then ran off. Stacy and Betty, who’d been standing behind him, moved closer. I waved for them to go away, but Betty was motioning to Stacy, saying something I couldn’t make out, and Stacy ran off. Betty stood on the other side of the plate glass, her hand flat on it.

  “Go away!” I hollered, dizzy from the gas. I fell to my knees, frantically motioning for her to get back. All I could see was her head shaking back and forth, a simple No.

  I experienced the explosion in phases, my mind unable to process it all together at once. The first thing I saw was Betty’s face, illuminated in red as the flames flashed through the dining room. Then, she was gone, thrown back by the force as all the windows and doors blew out in a million screaming shards. I pushed myself down to the floor and covered my head as the oppressive heat consumed the air around me. Then there was the concussive boom of it, making my ears ring. I gasped for air, unable to hear anything aside from the ringing in my ears, unable to feel anything but the heat from the flames.

  A moment later, I felt myself being dragged out, and after a few gasps of fresh air, I realized that Tobias had me. I clutched at him and yelled, “Betty! Where’s Betty?” but if he answered me, I couldn’t hear him. The street was a mass of emergency vehicles, blue and red flashing lights, and the first thing I was able to focus on was Cain, breathing through an oxygen mask, an EMT next to him inspecting a wet rag. She must have snuck up behind him with chloroform or something.

  Someone was prodding at me, asking me questions, but I couldn’t answer. There was a mask over my face, and the tanked oxygen felt stringent against my ruined breathing passages. I pulled the mask down and grabbed the EMT attending me by the arm. “Betty? Where’s Betty?”

  The EMT shook her head, then pointed across the street. I t
urned just in time to see Stacy crawling into the back of an ambulance and sitting next to a body strapped to a gurney.

  Betty.

  Then the doors shut to the ambulance and it started away, and I watched it go, my eyes filled with helpless tears. The sound around me started to come back, and when I heard my name being called, I turned to see Tobias moving toward me, covered in soot but seemingly okay. He sat next to me on the edge of the truck, hesitated for a moment, then pulled me into his arms. He put one hand on the back of my head and kissed my forehead, then my cheek, and then held me to him again. Every muscle in my body was shaking, I had no strength left, so I leaned against him and allowed his to seep into me until I had enough to pull back and look at him.

  “Millie?” I said, pulling my oxygen mask down. “She’s still in there?”

  Tobias shook his head. “They pulled her out. She’s on her way to the hospital in another ambulance.”

  My eyes filled with hot tears. “And Betty? Is she…?”

  “She’s alive, but…” He let out a rough sigh. “Stacy said she’d call as soon as they knew anything.” He pushed my hair back away from my face. “What the hell happened?”

  I swallowed, trying to soothe the rawness in my throat. “I didn’t want to trick her. I told her what was going on. I was so stupid, and now Betty…” I crumpled against him. “It’s all my fault.”

  “She knocked Cain out and turned on the gas before that conversation ever started,” he said. “It was going to end badly, no matter what you did.”

  I felt a hand on my shoulder, and a harried EMT stuck my oxygen mask back on my face. “Take that off again, and I’ll put you in restraints,” she warned, and then went to check on Cain.

  I leaned my head against Tobias’s shoulder, and watched as the EMT fussed over Cain. He looked up, and our eyes met for a long moment, and then we both looked away to watch the firemen as they hosed down the hollow, charred remains of Crazy Cousin Betty’s.

  19

  Stacy came back from the hospital the next day, somewhere around 11 A.M. I had crawled onto the porch roof outside my bedroom window, and saw when she pulled up, but I didn’t make a move to go down and talk to her. The news, whatever it was, would come and find me, I was sure. In the meantime, I stared out at the neighborhood where I had grown up, feeling disconnected from this place that had been a part of me as far back as I could remember. I remembered riding bikes into town with Peach and Millie and Stacy, remembered getting our prom pictures taken out front by my tree. It all seemed so far away from me, as if it had happened to someone else. I was just the observer, the one who came in to finish the story off. The rest of it had belonged to someone else, and somewhere, that Liv was still completely herself, serving waffles at a whole CCB’s, living a mundane but reasonable life.

  I wasn’t that girl. I was the girl who, when she closed her eyes, could only see and feel fire. The roiling flames of the explosion, the oppressive, sickening heat of it as I was crumpled up, helpless on the floor. The hellish glow flashing over Betty’s face before the explosion tossed her into the street. The dancing shadows on Millie’s face as she made me realize what I should have known all along.

  I was going to lose.

  “Liv?”

  I opened my eyes, but I didn’t turn around. A few seconds later, Tobias was crawling out onto the roof through my bedroom window. Somehow, despite his size, he gracefully managed to settle down next to me.

  “Stacy’s here,” he said.

  I nodded, keeping my eyes on the neighborhood. “How’s Betty?”

  “The swelling in her brain seems to have gone down, and the doctors are really hopeful, but … she hasn’t woken up yet.”

  “And Millie?”

  He sighed. “Left the hospital this morning. No one knows where she went. She’s not answering her cell phone.”

  I nodded. It didn’t matter where Millie was, really. It would be over before she had a chance to do any more damage. I took a deep breath, and raised my eyes to meet his. I was still the Liv who loved Tobias; no matter how disconnected I felt from everything else, I hadn’t lost that.

  I found that interesting.

  “People are starting to worry,” he said. “Cain asked about you, and when Cain notices a person’s emotional state, I think it’s pretty bad.”

  I smiled at him. “I’m okay.”

  “You don’t look okay.”

  I held his gaze for a bit, then motioned back toward the room. I crawled inside and he followed me. I waited while he came in through the window, and then I placed the flat of my hands against his chest and looked up into his eyes.

  At first, he seemed wary, but then the pull between us got the better of him, and he let his arms find their place around my waist. I moved closer to him, my hands traveling down his chest, around to his hips, and he had a sudden, sharp intake of breath that was so simple, raw, and real that it made me smile. It was all simple, really, and we’d spent so much time making it so much more complex than it ever needed to be.

  I leaned into him, pushing up on my tiptoes to place a gentle kiss at the base of his jaw. He moaned and his hold on me tightened; I could feel him hard against me, and the sensation was accompanied by a rush of raw desire that would have knocked me over had he not been holding me up.

  “I need you inside of me,” I whispered. “Right now.”

  He groaned and took my mouth with his, hard, punishing kisses that spoke to the breaking of restraints we’d both held in place for far too long. Clothes peeled off easily as our need to touch and feel overwhelmed us, and when we fell back onto my bed, there was nothing in the world but the two of us, the one of him. His lips set off explosions under my skin, and I writhed under his touch as he tasted every part of me until my hands gripped his hair as his tongue made me forget everything but the feel of him. I closed my eyes and let it take me. I wasn’t worried about anything, not the past, not the future, just this moment now when he was making explosions of color dance behind my eyelids as I moved beneath him. Moments later, we rolled together and he was underneath me and I was taking him inside of me, watching his face as I moved rhythmically, loving what I did to him, the power I had in that moment. He was mine, to do with as I pleased, and this was what I pleased, to see him helpless beneath me as I loved him with everything I had, until there was nothing left of me. Nothing to hold back, nothing to save for later, nothing to do but collapse upon him, my ear to his chest as we both gasped for air. His arms tightened around me and he kissed the top of my head, and I listened as his heartbeat drummed out the chant. Mine-mine, mine-mine …

  Mine.

  We shifted to lie side by side and fell into an exhausted sleep, the peaceful darkness of his naked embrace keeping me from having to deal with my pressing reality until about a half-hour later, when I opened my eyes to find him propped up on one elbow, watching me.

  “Don’t say it,” I said.

  “What?” He reached for my hand and kissed my fingertips.

  “I can see the gears working in your brain.” I snuggled up next to him, nuzzling his bare chest with my nose, loving the solid, manly scent of him, wanting to remember it forever, however long that was. “If you start thinking, we’ll lose this, and I’m not ready for that.”

  He held me to him, running his fingers down my side, kissing my forehead, my face, my shoulder. I could feel him hardening next to me, but when I reached for him, he took my hand in his and pulled it to his chest.

  “Stop,” he said, his voice coarse and breathy. “I can’t think when you do that.”

  “No thinking,” I said. “Please. Not yet.”

  He opened his eyes and focused on me, and despite my pleas, I could see the pieces coming together for him, the worry creeping in.

  “What’s your plan?” he asked, and I sighed and pulled back from him. Quietly, I gathered our clothes from the floor, passing his to him. Once we were both dressed, I sat on the edge of the bed and said, “You should go now.”

&n
bsp; “Wow.” He let out a sharp laugh, but there was nothing happy in his tone. “Give me a minute to process the whiplash.”

  “You know how I feel about you,” I said softly. “You know that was all real. It’s just that now … it’s over. And you should go.”

  He got up off the bed and stood before me. “Yeah? Why?”

  I looked at him, then pushed up off the bed and stepped away from him; the closer I was to him, the more it hurt, and I’d made up my mind. There was no point in making it any harder than it already was.

  “You know why,” I said.

  “I want to hear it from you.”

  “It’s my decision, Tobias. My life, my call. It’s over.”

  He crossed the room to stand next to me, his hand gripping my arm. “No.”

  I pulled out of his grip and felt the first pang of fear and regret since I’d made the decision. “Stop it. You’re only making this harder.”

  “Goddamn right,” he said. “You’re not committing suicide by Davina. We can still win this.”

  I laughed outright at that. “No, we can’t. I’m done. Betty almost died last night, so did Millie, and why? Because I thought I could take her on. I can’t.”

  “They got hurt because they’re part of this fight, because they chose to be. People get hurt, you can’t prevent that. But if you go and give yourself to Davina now, then you make it all meaningless.”

  “And if I don’t? People die. We got lucky last night. No one died.” Yet, a black voice whispered in my head. “But if I keep up this ridiculous fight, they will. And who’s next? Stacy? Cain? You?” I shook my head, my entire body recoiling at the thought. “No. I have the power to stop all this, and I’m doing what needs to be done. As soon as the sun sets, I’m going to her.”

  He gripped my shoulders and pulled me to him. “No.”

  “Go, Tobias.”

  “No.”

  “I can’t do this if you’re here.”

  “Good.”

  “Tobias … please.” I felt a tear slip down my cheek, and I could see the response to my pain in his face, and suddenly, I knew.