by Krista Walsh
I spun toward the door and curled my fingers so the water ball reformed, the tiny weapon rising to hover over my left shoulder.
“What the hell are you doing here, Jermaine? My deal tonight isn’t with you.”
He stood in the shadows of the foyer, leaning against the molded archway with a cat-like grin, and I knew he wanted something. He pushed away from the wall and stepped into the moonlit space. The light exposed the rough stubble on his cheeks and the bruises under his dark eyes. His worn jeans and ratty T-shirt added to the impression that he was nothing more than a no-good layabout. I knew better.
He reached into his back pocket, that grin still stretched across his cheeks to show off the clean but uneven teeth within, and retrieved a small pink gem. He held it up to the light to show off the glow at its heart.
With a gasp, I stepped forward to grab it, but he raised it out of my reach.
“Don’t be rude. You said you’d come to make a deal.”
“How did you get that? My contact for the parajula was Ahmal. Your name never came into it.”
Jermaine offered a slow shrug. “When I heard how interested you were in getting your hands on it, I decided I wanted a piece of the action and took over. Ahmal was paid handsomely, don’t worry.”
From his tone and my sketchy knowledge of Jermaine’s business practices, I accepted that my contact was likely dead, which was a pity. I’d worked my ass off building up my network through Ahmal.
I crossed my arms. “What the hell do you want?”
He tsked. “You’re always so angry, Daphne. I’m not here to cause any trouble. On the contrary. I have an offer for you.” He began to walk a circle around me. “We haven’t worked together in forever and I thought now might be a good time for a reunion.”
I twisted my head to follow him where I could, keeping the rest of my body still and braced for an attack. It had been years since I’d seen Jermaine, and I would have been happy to stretch that time out indefinitely. He was not only powerful, he was tricky. The only thing about him I could rely on was his desire to get ahead.
Aside from our magic, that sense of ambition was the only thing we had in common.
“What do you have in mind?”
He pursed his lips and came back into view on my right side. “A simple spell. Something I discovered in my journey out east.”
“What sort of spell?”
With Jermaine, one never knew his flavor of the week.
“One that, by the time we’re finished, will let you take that little ball of river water and drown the whole city if you want to.”
With a single stride, he closed the gap between us and lowered his voice against my ear.
“You would have the power you were born to possess, Daphne. Forget your mother and your grandmother — you would step into the power of centuries ago. You would fill yourself with the raw energy of your ancestors. Become a new legend in our day.”
I knew he was playing me, but gods help me, every word he uttered set my blood on fire. He’d grabbed hold of my desire, and no matter how much I might want to fight it, I knew I wouldn’t.
“Tell me what you need.”
***
He needed a lot from me, as it turned out. Almost his entire plan hinged on having a second magic user on hand, and since I knew I wasn’t the only sorceress in his circle, I guessed I was the only sorceress he’d managed to convince.
I decided to ask myself what that said about me at a later time, after the spell had succeeded and I was sitting pretty as the leading crime journalist at the New Haven Chronicle.
Jermaine had already done most of the leg work, putting together the checklist and requirements, so it only took another week before we were ready: the full moon overhead, some cemetery dirt in a bowl, and a pig foot ready to throw on the fire. If all went well, I would stand as the most powerful sorceress since the days of Morgan le Fay. The spell wouldn’t be the tidiest I’d ever cast, but with all the research I’d done over the last few days, we stood a very good chance of succeeding. Of course, Jermaine would grow in power as well, but as long as the magic was divided equally, I didn’t care.
Just a few more hours and everything I wanted in life would be within reach.
My blood hummed in my veins as the ritual drew closer. Jermaine and I were at the empty storefront on the harbor, relying on its isolation to guarantee our privacy.
“I’ll go grab the rest of what we need from the truck,” he said. “You get started on the circle.”
He tossed a box of chalk my way, and I caught it between my palms before it hit the floor. When he stepped outside, I sank to my knees on the dusty floorboards and pulled the spell book toward me to study the design I needed to recreate.
The pattern was simple but detailed, and something about it made me uneasy. I pushed that feeling aside and set the tip of the chalk against the floor, sketching the first lines of the design.
There was no room for doubt — not when success was so close.
I’d just closed the chalk circle when the door opened and Jermaine returned, towing a luggage cart behind him.
“We all set?”
“We are,” I said, but when I saw what he dragged behind him on the cart, that whisper of uncertainty I’d been ignoring rose to a shout. “What are they doing here?”
I stared at the three people stretched out at the bottom of the cart, haphazardly stacked one on top of the other. Their open eyes stared back at me in full awareness, their fear leaving a sour taste in the air, yet they didn’t move.
“You can’t get ahead without making a few sacrifices,” he said.
“We never agreed on human sacrifices.” My stomach turned at the idea. All that blood. The cold, terrified glaze in their eyes.
“Don’t be so naive, Daphne.” He straightened up and turned on me, his face full of impatience at the delay. “You knew this ritual wouldn’t be pretty.”
“But we never discussed anything about people, Jermaine.”
I sensed the rising crackle of electricity in the air from his summoned magic and wished I’d brought some water with me as a defense, no matter that it wouldn’t stand long against Jermaine’s power.
He lunged forward and grabbed my upper arm, pulling me close. “You back out now, you die. Understand? I’ve come too far to have some weakness like compassion get in my way.”
Tingles prickled under my skin, a warning of what he would set loose if I didn’t comply.
So I let him believe I would go through with it. Dropping my gaze to the floor, I lowered my hands to my sides and tried to appear as though I had submitted to his demands. He only needed to buy it long enough to let go.
And he did.
As soon as his grip loosened, I tore away and stirred the air in the room into a vortex around him, driving up all the dust from the floor in a thick cloud.
Jermaine waved his hands in front of him to clear a space to breathe, his eyes red and watering. I grabbed the opportunity and ran for the door, throwing myself against the cart to roll it outside. One of the dead-weight arms slipped from its place to dangle over the side, the knuckles scraping across the ground. A blast of magic struck my back, and I cried out as I fell to my knees. A tug on my soul pulled me down and made it impossible to stand up. I felt like I was being emptied, as though water were being sucked out of my pores.
“You think I’m as easy to fool as that?” Jermaine demanded, panting. “The spell kicked in as soon as you closed the circle. The effects may not be as strong without the sacrifices, but by the time you walk out that door, your power will be mine.”
The hair on my arms rose as his magic surged again, that suctioning sensation driving horror through my heart at the knowledge that it was my magic leaving my body. Fear fueling my limbs, I flipped onto my back and raised my hands in time to block his strike. I folded the air between my fingers and pushed back, hitting him so hard in the chest he lost his balance and staggered backward.
His spell pulled at
my veins, and I felt my magic circling. I tried to block it out, but it clawed around the barrier I created.
Closing my eyes, I used what remained of my power to reach out for the water in the harbor. I grabbed it one droplet at a time, my magic rising against his. Behind me, our would-be sacrifices moaned, and I heard the squeak of the cart as whatever drug or spell keeping them down began to wear off.
I tuned it all out and drew the water closer, hoping I had time. While the water approached, I split my thoughts to the other magic tearing me apart. I separated its complicated strands and followed the trail of oiliness to its source in the center of the circle. My hold on the water slipped. I grabbed it again, but forced my attention to stay divided, using my last effort to draw the two spells. My stomach clenched, braced for Jermaine’s attack, but I used my power to take hold of the source of his spell and twist it, redirecting its target. The magic formed within me before he noticed what I was doing, and I opened my eyes with a sense of triumph. The ebb of magic reversed, and I felt new strength fill my limbs. Jermaine’s strength.
He cried out and released another energy burst, and I rolled to the left to dodge the poorly aimed blow. He looked so pathetic, his bleary eyes still leaking with dust, his nose running.
All I had to do was wait. In a few more minutes, I would have his power, and he would be left an empty shell.
But I couldn’t take that chance. He had more power than I, and in the time I needed to absorb it, he could find a way to change the spell’s direction again. A half-finished spell was better than me ending up dead.
I glanced over my shoulder to gauge the distance to the door and stepped backward, my hands raised to project a spell of my own. I twitched my fingers and twisted the water into a ball between my palms
Jermaine raised both his hands, tears streaking his cheeks from the dust he hadn’t yet blinked away, and the air sparked as the temperature in the room rose. I drew the air around him again as I took another step toward the door, watching the sacrifices out of the corner of my eye to make sure I didn’t trip over the slack limbs hanging over the side of the cart. One of the victims had sat up and was tugging at the arm of a woman who hadn’t yet regained her ability to move.
A glowing ball formed between Jermaine’s palms, and I knew what would come next. Sweat poured down my brow as I fought to keep my own water ball intact, knowing I would have time for only one more strike and wanting to time it perfectly. My heart raced, and my breath struggled with every inhale. Pushing with a last effort, I expelled my magic at the same time Jermaine launched his attack. The lightning shot out from his fingers, aimed between the cart and me, and pain shot through my arm, enough of a burn to take my breath away.
But my water ball knocked him down and the air closed in around him. He curled up on the floor, eyes bloodshot, drenched in water and sweat. From head to toe he trembled, taken over by the chill of having his power drained.
“Looks like you should have taken your own advice, Jermaine. Don’t be such a fool. Did you really think I wasn’t prepared for you to turn on me?”
*****************
“And I walked out,” Daphne concluded. “Left the bastard a huddled mess on the floor.”
“And the sacrifices?” asked the human girl. Her skin had turned a ghostly white.
“Bolted as soon as they regained the strength in their legs. As far as I know, they all got away.”
“This is all well and good,” said Sunglasses, “but how do we know you’re not making it up? You could have followed him home and stolen the rest of his power until he died.”
She ruffled, like a bird fluffing her feathers. “Because I shouldn’t have to prove I’m not a liar. If you don’t believe what I have to say, what was the point of my telling you at all?”
The quiet woman held up a hand and the argument fell away.
“The only way we’ll learn the truth is if everyone shares,” she said. “You say you left him alive.”
Daphne huffed. “I don’t just say it. I did. Jermaine was an ambitious asshole trying to ride on the coattails of anyone stronger than he was. He wasn’t worthy enough to kill, and I definitely wouldn’t lie about it if I had.”
“But you did absorb some of his power,” said Tight Dress.
“Sure. A well-earned bonus for my unfortunate run-in with that pig. It’s not like I gained any new powers — just strengthened what I already had.”
The human girl shook her head. “Magical powers. What the hell did I get myself into?”
“How do we know he’s the one who started that spell? What if you’re draining all of us right now?” Sunglasses’s tone suggested he was intentionally antagonizing her, and from the way Daphne crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair with a scowl, his ploy had succeeded.
“All right, then, Mister Idiot Who Wears Sunglasses in a Dimly Lit Room, tell us your story.”
Sunglasses’s grin widened with Daphne’s epithet, and he slouched deeper into his chair. “It’d be my pleasure.”
4
*****************
Gabriel Mulligan
I sat in the farthest corner of the crowded bar at the smallest table I could find, and still the son of a bitch didn’t take the hint.
Jermaine grabbed a chair from the table beside mine, ignoring the nasty look from a man at the bar who had just left the seat to order a drink. He pulled it up across from me, leaned his somewhat beefy frame over the sticky surface, and offered a salesman’s smile.
“I believe you took that man’s seat,” I said.
The words I chose were nothing close to what I wanted to say, but I made it a point to always be polite to the people I loathed. It messed with them in ways that made me giddy.
“I won’t be here long enough for it to matter.”
“Wonderful. Then how about we skip over everything and get straight to the goodbyes?”
I set my pint on the table and braced my hands on the edge of my seat to push myself off the bench.
“Wait.” Jermaine held out a hand to stop me. “Hear me out.”
“I really don’t think there’s anything you could say that would interest me. Or did I not make that clear the last three times you contacted me?”
Jermaine grinned — the arrogant salesman about to make his pitch and believing he couldn’t lose.
“Consider my perseverance proof of my belief that you’re wrong. I suspect what I have to offer will be of great interest to you.”
“Sum it up in two words,” I said, hoping to get rid of the peddling quack for good.
And then he had to go and say the only two goddamned words I’ve ever wanted to hear. The two words that have been my driving purpose for the last thirty-odd years — ever since I became old enough to accept that loneliness is a shitty way to live and there might be something better out there if I could only get rid of my curse.
“A cure.”
The smug smile grew wider as my casual pose froze. For a single moment I lost all ability to hide my longing.
Jermaine slid my glass closer to me. “So why don’t you sit back down and we can talk it over?”
I tried to say no. My loathing for Jermaine was nearly strong enough to overwhelm my desire, but the temptation to know — even to hope — surpassed all else, and I sank back onto the bench.
That smile I wanted to punch away remained glued to his face. “Now you’re seeing reason.”
***
Jermaine being Jermaine, he took his time coming to the point. He mulled over the beer list, flirted with the blond server in the skirt that only just covered her butt cheeks, and allowed the first three swigs of his beer to linger on his tongue as though it were a five hundred dollar bottle of champagne.
No stranger to his antics, and with no plans to be anywhere else that night — my social life has never been particularly hip or happening, what with my tendency to turn people into stone if I’m not careful — I waited him out, enjoying the knowledge that he wanted to push my but
tons and couldn’t.
When the pleasure of messing with me wore off and he realized he’d get no more reaction from me than a blank stare through reflective sunglasses, the shit-eating grin disappeared, and he chugged the rest of his beer down.
“Let’s get out of here. Go someplace I don’t need to scream anything you’d prefer I kept quiet.”
I leaned back in my seat and gestured to the quarter pint still in my glass. “I haven’t finished my drink.”
In actual fact, the beer tasted like swill and I didn’t want to finish it, but I couldn’t resist turning the tables on him. And, unlike me, Jermaine hadn’t mastered the art of schooling his expression. Each twitch of impatience gave a jolt of pleasure to my cynical, vindictive soul.
A trait I got from both sides of the family.
After the third sip, the sharp bitterness of the stout ran the joke dry, and I rose to my feet, gesturing to the server to add the beer to my tab.
“You come here often enough to run a tab?” Jermaine shouted in my ear as he followed me through the crowd. Because of my tendency to wear sunglasses even inside the dimly lit bar, people chose to step out of my path. Jermaine, being a small man in all possible ways, preferred to follow in my wake. “Why? The beer here is terrible.”
“I like it here. People leave me alone.” I stared down my nose at him and raised an eyebrow. “Usually.”
It had started to rain while we were inside, and I pulled the collar of my brown leather trench coat up around my ears, my chestnut hair long enough now to curl over the tops. Jermaine buried his head under the ratty hood of his sweatshirt and dug his hands deep in his pockets. He tilted his head and squinted into the rain.
“Let’s get out of this weather.”
I deliberately screwed up my mouth in irritation.
“We were just inside. You wanted to come outside.”
Jermaine huffed and turned his back on me, stomping through the puddles down the sidewalk. “Come on.”