by Willa Okati
He looked closer and tried to figure out why he seemed to remember her. When he spotted the studded collar she wore, Harrison had to bite his tongue to keep from swearing a blue streak. “You might not have seen her before, but I have.”
Martin gave him a look of genuine curiosity. “Really? Do tell.”
“For the past couple of weeks or so, a black cat has been sneaking into my house no matter how hard I try to keep her out. I’d swear this is the same one. Ha! If you’re a Magician, why don’t you wave your magic wand or something, and tell me how she manages her tricks?”
“Mmm. Some things aren’t my secrets to reveal. But if this is the same cat, and she’s been paying you the honor of not one but repeated visits, you’re a very lucky man. You just don’t know it yet.”
The cat finished her cream and burped delicately. After briskly washing off her whiskers, she patted Martin’s hand with one paw, turned about, and butted her forehead hard against Harrison’s before he had time to react.
Apparently well-satisfied, she hopped down from the table and minced off to take care of her own business. Harrison wanted to rub the spot on his forehead where the cat had bonked him. It tingled in a strange way he didn’t like and couldn’t understand, warmth radiating through his body from the spot she’d touched. The gesture felt similar to a blessing, another thing Harrison didn’t believe in.
“My, my, my,” Martin clucked, sounding impressed. “Talk about luck.”
“You don’t believe black cats are bad luck?”
“Are you kidding? I’m a sorcerer. We love cats of any color.”
“Wasn’t that ‘Magician’?”
“Magician. Sorcerer. Mage. Witch. Warlock. Wizard. Lots of fancy names with gobs of meaning attached to each designation, with different ways of going about things: good, bad, indifferent, you name it. They use the power as they prefer, but when you break it down to the basics, that power all stems from the same source. They’d flay me alive for being so flip, but hell, I’m older than they are. Most of them. I do prefer ‘Magician,’ but I don’t really care what you call me, as long as you say it with respect and in the belief that I am what I say I am.”
“We’re back on that again, are we?”
“Naturally. Why else, as you’ve reminded me time and time again, would you be here? And where were we... ah! Yes.” Martin snatched Harrison’s hand and dragged it toward him. “I’ll be telling yer future, laddie.”
Harrison tried to yank away from Martin. “The hell you will.” Damn him, but Martin had a strong grip. “Stop this at once.”
“No chance, pet.” Martin scanned Harrison’s palm, nodding and murmuring and clicking his tongue. “What do I spy with my little eye? All sorts of things, that’s what. You’re a man on a journey, Harrison.”
“I’m sure. And I’ll travel across great waters to meet a tall, dark, and handsome man, will I?”
“Don’t be stupid. You have a trim, blond, and delightfully attractive man already.”
“Do I, now?”
“You do.” When Martin looked up, his playful comedy mask had slipped to once again reveal the face of someone with great intensity and danger. Harrison swallowed as his wariness returned in full force. “Damn!”
“What?”
Martin narrowly examined Harrison’s palm, shaking his head. “Straight up? What I see here tells me our paths are linked together, beginning with this night. Believe it or believe it not, we’re bound, one to the other, and never shall the twain be parted, come what may, et cetera.”
“You and me? Bound? I seriously doubt it.” Harrison scoffed, though his voice shook a little.
If looks could kill, Martin would have laid him out flat with the power of his glare. “Not just bound in flesh and bone, but in soul, life after life. And before you get way up on your high horse, I’m not any too happy about this discovery myself. I didn’t ask to have my soul entwined with a stubborn, mulish non-believer. On the other hand, no pun intended, I am not stupid enough to try and buck fate.”
“There is no such thing as fate. The course of a man’s life depends on the choices he makes.”
“Of course it does. Congratulations. You’re right for once. You’re wrong, too. The Third Eye -- go ahead, snort and paw in disbelief -- is opening, and Lord have mercy, what I do see?”
“Third Eye.”
“Something we Magicians call a window into the future -- and the past, if the Third Eye is willing to grant a talented practitioner a look backward. Usually the recent past, but if you get lucky, the long-since past. I don’t know why history is cloudy and all those possible futures are clear, but them’s the breaks. You still don’t believe in magic? Then, tell me how else I could know what I know now.”
Martin jabbed Harrison’s palm. “When you were twelve, you kept a garter snake as a pet in a shoebox. The wyrm terrified you, but you forced yourself to hold it every day and let it wrap itself around your neck and arms until you weren’t scared anymore.”
“How did you know that?”
“Magic!” Martin snapped. “Want more proof? Your mother always baked snickerdoodles when you came home with an ‘A’ on your report card.”
“Stop,” Harrison warned. “I don’t know how you’re doing this, but stop.”
Martin ignored him. “Your father was a drunken sot who most often sat on the couch building towers of empty beer cans until he decided to go off for a weekend with some drinking buddies and never came back. You were nine.”
“Stop, I said.”
“You don’t know how to ride a bicycle. You do know how to ride a horse.”
“Martin!”
“At twenty-one, you chickened out at the last minute before getting your nipple pierced. The left nipple. You still dream about how good the metal would feel hooked in there and wish you had done it after all.”
“Please,” Harrison begged hoarsely, shivering creeps crawling ferociously up and down his spine.
Martin’s voice dropped into a low hush, no less commanding for its lack of volume. “When you were eighteen, the summer before you went off to college, you made friends with a really nice guy who’d just moved into the neighborhood. He was almost twenty years older, but still lean and fair, and claimed to be a wizard. He could do so many amazing things -- light a candle with the snap of his fingers, see visions in what he called a scrying glass, draw sparkling patterns in the air, and even float. He was so enchanting. So fascinating. For more reasons than one. You had only recently figured out why you’d rather look at other boys instead of the pretty young girls.”
“Stop, stop, stop!”
“I can’t. His name was Thyne. You fell in love with him, and when he kissed you, you thought the two of you would be together forever. But, no, you were there at his house learning how to pull a rabbit from a hat when he clutched his chest and fell over the snacks laid out on his wooden kitchen table.”
“Stop!”
“Not going to happen. When Thyne died is when you stopped believing in magic. When you decided it was your job to teach the world magic wasn’t real. It couldn’t save your first true love, so belief in mystical powers was pointless.”
Harrison hadn’t thought about Thyne in years, or how much he’d loved the man. God. Oh, God. Watching Thyne die in front of his eyes. Helpless to do anything. “Damn you!” Harrison meant the curse.
“Too late. I was damned long ago. But here’s my point: for all you’ve done to convince the world it isn’t real, magic does exist, Harrison. You’ve been touched by magic throughout your life. Think back, and you’ll understand what I mean.”
Harrison swallowed on a dry throat as, against his will, memories began to well up.
Surviving not one but three car accidents -- each of which should have killed him.
Getting into an Ivy League college and being able to afford it through the random whim of a far-flung, eccentric, and generous relative.
The dreams that haunted him every night.
Further back --
A glimpse of watching soap bubbles turn into butterflies.
Talking to frogs in the lily pond behind his house.
Pretending fireflies were fairies, and laughing as they flew around his head in swarms.
Recognizing he was gay in a glorious burst of revelation that felt like fireworks going off.
Learning, with Thyne, the glory and power in another man’s kiss.
The window in the wall of Amour Magique.
Lily. Gargoyles. Tarot cards. Black cats.
Magic.
“You see?” Martin’s voice grew husky, and his grip on Harrison’s hand was sensually clinging before he released it. “I know about all of this, and more.”
“Please...” Harrison wasn’t sure what he was asking for, comfort or solitude.
“Shh, shh. It’ll be okay.”
Harrison shook his head.
“You feel small and helpless, don’t you?”
Harrison nodded. Then, he hid his face in his hands.
“There’s something that can make you feel better. Another thing I know for sure now is how you’re so tired of being the one in command all the time. You’ve ached to surrender yourself and let someone else carry the weight. You’ve burned for relief from the pressure, but before tonight you didn’t know how to find a vent that worked. That’s why you gave in the way you did, pet. You needed me to dominate you.”
Harrison glanced up. Martin’s bi-colored eyes glowed with a dark fire. “You need it again. Now. You need to learn how to find the magic once more and how to relearn the art of being at peace with yourself.” The Magician stood. “I have a bedroom just through the doorway hidden behind the tapestry. Come with me, Harrison. You want to.”
Harrison did want to. He went, head bowed. Heart pounding with excitement.
He went.
Chapter Six
Step by step, Harrison entered the heart of Martin’s quarters. The Magician’s bedroom. He couldn’t lie to himself and protest he was doing this against his will. No, he wanted to go. At the same time, he felt terrified. Felt as if he were giving up something he’d loved and treasured and clung to for years, no matter how heavy the weight.
“Let go, Harrison. You’ll be astonished and thrilled, I promise. Everything you hold so tightly to is a burden you do want to drop, honest and true.” Martin walked beside Harrison, guiding him with one elegant hand wrapped around Harrison’s upper arm, and spoke quietly. His voice rose and fell in a lulling rhythm that made Harrison both sleepy -- no, not sleepy, just stripped of the tension he was used to carrying -- and yet kept him keenly alert.
Without carpets to cushion their steps, their footsteps sounded louder on the stone floors, even though their feet were bare. The slap of flesh against rock echoed in an eerie cadence. Harrison paused, feeling as if the sounds of walking were ugly and awkward. That he was out of place.
“No, no,” Martin urged, gently pulling Harrison along. “You belong here. Don’t be afraid.”
Harrison wanted to huff indignantly and say he was not afraid, that he didn’t fear anything, because people only feared the unknown, and he understood the way the world worked. A mundane world built by men’s sweat and labor, not by the forces of magic and mystery that induced dread.
The problem was, he didn’t think he believed his own rhetoric anymore.
So where did that leave him?
He kept his head down as he shuffled forward, Martin crooning encouragement every step of the way. Most of the words went over his head, but Harrison caught a snatch of speech every now and then. “Good” and “pet,” mostly.
A door shut behind them, not slamming, but with a sound of finality as stone grated against stone. Harrison drew to a stop, suddenly filled with a mad impulse to turn around and run back, to wrench at the main door until the gateway opened and he could escape.
“Shh. It’s all right.” Martin placed two fingers under Harrison’s chin and guided his head up. “I’ll let you go if you decide you really want to. But I don’t think you do. You’re still so afraid, Harrison. I want to help you conquer that fear.” He clucked his tongue soothingly. “I’m not saying this is going to be easy, but nothing worth having ever comes without at least a little struggle.”
Which Harrison knew to be true. A single fact he could cling to. “All right,” he said, realizing that he’d closed his eyes somewhere between leaving the Magician’s visiting room and this private place. “Okay.”
“You make me proud of you already by coming this far. Now, open your eyes and look around. See? This isn’t a bad place. It’s really very nice, if I do say so myself. Decorated it with my own two hands and a bit of magic. It’s fine. Indulge your curiosity the way a small part of you wants to. Nothing’s going to hurt you unless or until you want to be hurt.”
A strange turn of phrase. Harrison shivered but parted his eyelids.
“Oh.” His lips parted. “Oh.”
“Well?” Martin asked with a touch of amusement. “What do you think?”
Harrison shook his head, utterly lost for words. He thought about shambling forward to touch and smell and even taste, but the sight of Martin’s quarters alone all but overwhelmed his senses. Climbing one fence at a time would be the only safe way to accept this room.
The chamber didn’t even vaguely look like what Harrison had thought it might appear. He’d been expecting more of the cold gray stone, probably clammy-cold and wet to the touch, like the gargoyle corridor, like a cave. There would have been rusty, old iron bondage wheels and vicious bullwhips hanging on the walls. A bed, too -- chosen for its high posts and not for comfort, perhaps with only a bare, stained mattress. Dangling cuffs and piles of rope.
Research had taken Harrison many different places in his time. He’d seen BDSM dungeons before, and they’d always given him both a case of the creeps and a yearning he didn’t understand. Although he respected the desire in some men and women for dominance and submission, he didn’t like to poke his own feelings with a stick to see what would happen or to think too hard about what he’d seen.
For all that, though, Harrison had never been able to resist running his hand down the links of a well-used set of chains. Though he hadn't dared to go any further, he'd ached to touch the instruments of torture often laid out in careless rows on trays. Such fascinating tools, driving him wild with a need to know about what this one or that one did. Not daring to fantasize on a personal level, though, oh no.
But sometimes, when he didn’t have the... the bad nights, he dreamed about those toys and chains and the men who knew how to use them, all the while safe in his own bed. Every time, he woke up with his cock hard and his breath ragged.
“You’re remembering now,” Martin murmured. “I saw bits and pieces in your memory when I looked into your mind. Not everything, but enough for right now, I think. I’m understanding more and more all the time. Go on. Keep looking. Nothing’s going to bite if you walk around. Nothing bites until I say the word -- or you do.” He gave Harrison a light push to the small of his back. “Trust me. You have to trust me, or this will never work.”
Why did it matter? Harrison still wasn’t sure. He only knew that it did.
Slowly, as if he were caught in a dream, he took a few staggering steps forward, then stopped again to turn in a slow circle and look around himself. To his surprise, he found himself chuckling. “Leave it up to you.”
Martin leaned one shoulder against a wall in a saucy pose. “The style just screams me, wouldn’t you say?”
“That’s an understatement.” Harrison inhaled, catching the scents of vanilla and cinnamon from dozens upon dozens of tapers and votive candles. The heat they generated warmed his skin and the light was bright enough to illuminate the room and banish any shadowy corners. Yet, paradoxically, the glow was also so gentle it soothed his jangled nerves. Or perhaps the sense of easement came from their smell?
Slightly more confident, Harrison took closer stock of his surroundings. No c
uffs or chains dangling anywhere. No torture wheel -- although Harrison suspected if Martin had owned one, it would be made of fine wood polished to a high shine. No bondage horse.
The walls were of soft, cream-colored marble, smoothly cut and perfectly fitted together. There was a bed more than big enough for two or possibly three, neatly made up with a rich brocade quilt in various shades of Martin’s trademark purple and black. Plumped-up pillows were strewn in abundance across the bed. The bedposts, four of them, yes, were sturdy and unscarred by the marks of any bondage gear. The wood glowed like satin in the candlelight.
No windows. No other door. No means of escape, which should have been frightening. Should have set Harrison’s nerves on high alert.
He marveled, instead, at the sense of comfort settling over his shoulders like a cozy blanket.
And although he would never have done such a thing before this night, Harrison went with what felt both natural and right. He dropped to his knees, spreading his thick fingers on his thighs, and gazed at Martin. “Beautiful,” he managed to say. “So beautiful.”
“Beautiful, yes. I’m glad you like the room, pet. But is that all?”
“No.” Harrison chewed at his lip. “Homely. Like home, I mean. Like I’ve been here before. With you.” He paused. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Not yet, but maybe it will. With magic, who knows?” Martin hadn’t moved from his position on the wall near the door, or where Harrison vaguely remembered the door being. Hard to tell, with the marble fitting so neatly together. “Good enough for now, now that you’re pleased. I do want to please you, Harrison. We both have something to give. The offer’s open and on the table. If you want, I’ll take all the burdens you carry and then show you how to find the peace you lost so long ago.”
Harrison wet his lips. “And in return?”
“Fear me. Love me. Do as I say. Believe. Submit, and let yourself believe. You’ll be happier than you ever were before.”