She puts her hands on her knees and takes one more deep breath. When she looks again at her girlfriend, Mickey’s face is pale and her eyes are filled with worry and fear.
“Did I hurt you?” Mickey asks timidly.
“You didn’t, no,” Cali says shaking her head. “My brain just flashed back to yesterday.”
“I’m so sorry Cali, I wasn’t even thinking. Are you okay? I’m so stupid.” The words tumble out of Mickey’s mouth all rushed together.
“Stop,” Cali says again. She moves to Mickey, Milo moving with her, and buries her face in the crook of her girlfriend’s neck. “It’s not your fault. I’m okay.”
Mickey’s arms circle the shorter woman and hold her tenderly. Her forehead is still creased with worry, she tilts her head so her cheek rests on the top of Cali’s head. After a minute of them two holding each other, green eyes meet blue and the women share a soft kiss.
They part from their embrace and leave the bathroom. Cali plops onto the couch and turns on the TV. Mickey grabs her forgotten orange juice off the coffee table and goes to the kitchen. She takes down one of the boxes of cereal from above the fridge, grabs the biggest bowl from the cabinet, two spoons from a drawer, and the milk from inside.
Mickey takes out her phone and sends a text to Jack to cancel her appointments and classes for today and tomorrow. She waits for him to respond then puts her phone on the counter leaving it behind as she goes back to her girlfriend in the living room.
Mickey checks that Milo isn’t on the couch before she plops down herself. He’s curled up in a ball underneath Cali’s feet that are perched on the table. Mickey pours the cereal, adds the milk, puts the box and carton on the coffee table, and hands Cali one of the spoons. They dig in together while watching a sitcom on a streaming service.
Cali pauses the episode and looks at Mickey without saying anything. Mickey’s mouth curves up on one side as she looks back. She waits, letting the younger woman take her time. Cali’s eyes travel all over Mickey’s face, recording every inch.
When she returns her eyes to the blue ones staring back at her, Cali’s eyes shine as they fill with tears. Mickey’s face manages to soften and display concern at the same time. Still, she waits.
Cali clears her throat and nods her head sharply once. Mickey nods in return. Cali leans in and kisses her girlfriend on the lips. Everything she wants to say has already been communicated without words, but she says the words anyway to make herself doubly clear.
“I love you,” she says.
“I know,” Mickey says back in her soft, melodic voice. “I love you, too.”
Mickey leans over to kiss the auburn hair of the woman next to her. Cali presses play on the remote and the sitcom on the screen in front of them continues.
The two women finish their shared bowl of cereal and the current episode. Leaving the cereal and empty bowl on the table, Mickey gets up to return the milk to the fridge so it doesn’t spoil. She returns with two glasses of water. Cali has the next episode cued up and snuggles into her girlfriend as soon as she sits down. The couple spends the rest of the morning, and most of the afternoon, in that exact position watching successive episodes of the show.
Cali is uncharacteristically quiet, so Mickey is quiet too. She doesn’t feel the need to fill the spaces with meaningless chatter. She knows Cali is still processing the last twenty-four hours and will give her the time to do so, she won’t push her.
She’ll be there whenever it is that Cali is ready to talk. Whether she wants to talk, or cry, or scream, or rage about yesterday, she’s not going anywhere. Mickey will wait, and she will be here.
● 40 ●
“Alexa”
After peeling myself away from Matt, I go back to my cube. I got four books done this morning, so I get right back to translating The Book. I must’ve been more tired than I thought, because checking over what I did last night with the translator app on Cali’s tablet, none of it makes sense.
I reenter the Latin into the app and what comes out is completely different than what I wrote down last night. Which means I’ll have to redo everything I did last night.
I plan to start with the part on Victus and Extensios. If my gut feeling is right and Darius is a lot closer to finding me than I initially thought, it seems more and more likely that I’ll need to make an Extensios or two.
I think Cali could handle it. Unless in my exhaustion last night I also imagined our conversation, she’s open to the unknown of the supernatural world. Unknown to humans, that is. But changing Cali into an Extensios creates some challenges too, mainly Mickey and Matt.
Matt and I are just starting our relationship. I don’t know if he can handle this, if we can handle this. I get a vivid image in my mind about me explaining to him or showing him my powers, his face contorting into The Scream by Edvard Munch, and then him literally running for the hills.
With Mickey, how could I ask Cali to leave her behind? They make me believe that people having soul mates is a real concept and not just a Hollywood fabrication. Their relationship is what I hope Matt and I are lucky enough to have — and work hard enough to achieve.
Telling Cali the entire truth, going through the process of becoming an Extensios, and then adding that there’s a very real chance she may have to leave Mickey behind could immediately turn me into the bad guy.
If the roles were reversed I don’t know if I could do it, so how can I ask Cali to give up the love of her life?
I don’t even know how to make an Extensios yet! I grip my hair in frustration. I yell out loud at myself, “You’re worrying about the wrong thing right now!”
I’ve been staring at my notebook for over half an hour, my mind circling. I haven’t even begun the translations again. I’m thinking through scenarios in my head regarding Cali and Matt and Mickey; them as Extensios, them not as Extensios. Them helping me defeat Darius, or Darius getting The Book...
I’m going back and forth with if/thens over and over. I’m so lost in my head and my thoughts, that I don’t hear the door to CCR1 open. I didn’t expect anyone to come in so I don’t have a book in front of me, not even my book, just my notebook.
“Alexa.”
I gasp and nearly fall off the stool I’m perched on. For someone with magically enhanced senses, you sure get snuck up on a lot, “Alexa.” I catch myself at the last possible moment and spin around to face my boss.
“Jeff!” I pant trying to slow my heartbeat. “You startled me.” I put my hand over my heart before I say, “I’m sorry, I was just lost in my own thoughts for a moment.”
“That’s okay. I got your note that you were already here this morning,” he says. “I just wanted to come down and check how things are going.”
“Things are going well,” I say. “I’ve gotten a few books done this morning before I went to lunch. I—”
“Wonderful,” he cuts me off. “I would like to talk to you about payment for the extra time you’ll be putting in on this project.”
“Okay, sure.”
“I’ve been able to get approval to pay you at your regular rate, plus time and a half for any time past your normal hours.”
“Really? That’s great. Thank you.”
“Yes, however,” he continues quickly with a slight huff, obviously impatient to just say what he has to say in full. “I could only get that approved for two days a week. So for this week, it will be today and tomorrow.”
“Of course, I understand. Let me ask you something though,” I say. “If I happen to stay later a few extra days, and I know I won’t be paid past my normal hours, would that be okay to do?”
“You mean work without being paid?” he furrows his brow trying to understand what I mean.
“I mean, what if, for example, I’m in the middle of an entry for a book and it’s six o’clock, and I stayed ‘til seven or eight to finish it before going home, would that be acceptable?”
“I don’t see why not. As long as you are aware that your wages would
stop at the scheduled end of your shift?”
“I am.”
“Then, yes that would be fine,” he says. “Okay, well, I’ll leave you to it then. I’ll stop in again before I leave for the night.”
“Sounds good, Jeff.”
I get up and put the white gloves on, make my way to the shelves. Uncharacteristically, Jeff hangs around for a moment. He starts and stops a few times before fully expressing himself.
“How, um, ahem. How is your roommate?”
My eyebrows raise in surprise but I mask it with a smile. “She’s okay... I think.” My shoulders droop, “It’s just, I still can’t believe someone would grab onto her like that. It’s just such a.... predatory kind of thing.”
“Well,” Jeff clears his throat again. “I hope that the footage you and Matt brought to the police station yesterday helps catch those men.”
“Thank you, Jeff. I appreciate that. And I don’t think I’ll be able to thank you enough for thinking about the security footage. Hopefully it will help catch those creeps. I really think it will.”
Jeff nods his head and takes a step backward in the direction of the door. Before he turns around I see a small, almost bashful smile on his face. He closes the door to CCR1 softly behind him and walks away after another quick look at me in the cube.
What was that look about? I ask myself.
Jeff’s sudden unexpected expression of emotion, however subtle it may be, is one of the last things I need right now. I’m on a deadline of my own creation and cannot afford to miss it. To clear my mind of all the scenarios playing through it, I set myself up to do at least one more book before getting back to the decidedly more pressing issue.
I pull out the looseleaf marker and pick up the next book, Ulysses by James Joyce. I bring it over to the table and wake up the laptop. As I open the database and create a new entry, my eyes land on my open notebook and the thick line I’ve drawn between the word Extensios and Cali’s circled name.
I hesitate and almost put Ulysses back on the shelf, my brain starting to circle through the if/thens again. Stop, I tell myself. I need a reset, and it’ll take less time to just do this entry now and then return to The Book rather than to keep waffling back and forth about it.
As I flip through the first few pages taking photos and checking they upload clearly, I throw out a thank you to my previous years working in a library, my love of reading, and my advanced placement high school English classes. If I hadn’t already read the majority of the books I’ve been cataloging, I’d have barely any time at all with The Book. I roll my eyes and think, too bad I didn’t take Latin in high school.
I don’t want to have to do the entry over so I slow down to type up the synopsis. I read over what I’ve written and then click save. I move the cursor across the screen to close the database and see that the entry I just made has a time stamp from a minute ago.
A light bulb goes off in my brain: if I make all the entries first thing, I can save them throughout the day which will make it appear as if the books I enter have taken me the whole day.
So if it takes me a half hour, maybe forty-five minutes at the most, to complete an entry, I’ll leave it open for an extra ninety minutes before hitting save. I’ll use that time to translate or study The Book.
I reopen the entry I did before lunch, before bringing Ulysses back to its shelf. I set a timer for ninety minutes on my phone to make a minor edit and save the entry.
Then I’ll open and do the same with my entry for Ulysses, set the timer this time for two hours. When that’s up, I’ll take down the next book, which I see is Moby Dick by Herman Melville. They really gotta work on the organization down here, I can’t help but think.
In the meantime, I have translations and studying to do. I stare at my notebook for another hour becoming more and more overwhelmed. A steel cage of doubt starts to encircle me as everything I don’t know starts to add up on top of each other.
I’ve always been a pretty quick study. As a kid, after a couple of attempts or lessons at something new, I’d pretty much have it down. And that has relatively seamlessly translated to my adult life. So when I found The Book I figured I’d read it and study it and within a few days I’d know what to do.
I either severely underestimated my ancestors and my enemy, or I overestimated my quick study ability. Probably both.
Every time I open The Book, or my notes, I’m pulled in multiple directions. I have to have the purest of thoughts and intentions so that I don’t give in to the temptation to just use my powers for whatever I want, good or bad. I have to translate the Latin that’s written on the page simply to understand it. And, I have to make sure I don’t recite a single thing out loud until I know what the words mean so I don’t accidentally use my powers.
Plus, constantly swirling around my head, heart, and body are my growing feelings for Matt, my concern about Cali, my anxiety about being caught — by anybody — with The Book, the ache I have to see my family which I have to continually squash, and the as yet undecided way to explain all of this first to my roommate and then maybe to her girlfriend and best friend.
On top of all of that, I have this growing gut feeling that I’m in more danger now than I have ever been before. Even before Cali was attacked, basically as soon as I found The Book, I’ve felt like someone is looking over my shoulder, breathing down my neck.
And Victus being in Portland just confirms it: Darius knows where I am and could be here any minute.
I could find Darius right now and take the fight to him. But that would mean accessing powers that have been dormant for twenty-three years except for two times. And that was only to shield my family from my adversary and to get away from him myself.
I was told the story of the evil demon who is defeated by the good princess from the time I was born until the time I was told it wasn’t just a story. So I know what powers I possess. But hearing about them in a story, or learning about them in a book, is completely different from internally connecting all the pieces of myself together to summon my powers to the surface to face someone who’s had use of his powers for centuries.
Frankly, I don’t know how to use my powers. I don’t know how to control them once I access them. I don’t know how to speak Latin properly. I don’t know how to create an Extensios. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know!
I can feel the uneasiness starting to build in my chest. My palms are clammy and my vision is beginning to tunnel. I’m inches away from my first panic attack in almost two years.
I take ten deep, steadying breaths. Slowly in, hold, slowly out. I stop telling myself all the things I don’t know and remember what I do.
The only thing I know with absolute certainty is that someone has to defeat Darius or it will be the end of the human world and the decimation of the good magical one too.
And by the ways of fate, the someone chosen to do it happens to be me.
After I count my breaths longe enough to return to normal, I make a mental hierarchy of the things I’ll need to know and plan to tackle them one at a time. Because that’s what I am going to do, what I have to do.
I am going to defeat Darius.
● 41 ●
Darius
Damon and Julius returned to Atlanta three hours ago, and the black-haired man with tattooed hands has spent the last two and a half trying to convince Damon that joining him is something people simply don’t say no to.
They’re positioned at the back corner of the bar. Damon is sitting in a bar chair up against the wall, Darius seated in an identical chair facing him. His Victus flank him.
Now that he knows where the girl is with almost certainty, and why she must be where she is, Darius does not want to waste an extra day of recuperating from having to force Damon into becoming a Victus. He’d rather use the day to sneakily make his way out to the west coast, carefully flying under the girl’s radar. But he’ll do what he has to.
Damon is holding strong that he’s not interested in
whatever it is Darius and his little sidekicks are up to.
“I saw the look in your eyes when you spotted that blonde in here, little one,” Darius says. He’s switching between selling, intimidation, condescension, and baiting Damon that he’s not “man enough” to join them. “You’ve got a vein of evil running through your body. I saw it as soon as you caught her in your crosshairs.”
Darius leans in, invading Damon’s personal space. “You are one of mine,” he whispers.
Damon slowly shakes his head. He doesn’t look at Darius, nor at Viribus or Julius. The demon sees light reflected in his eyes as the door to the bar opens and closes; Damon doesn’t even squint.
“Need I remind you of the fate your buddies suffered because you were such a hard-headed piece of shit?”
My Name Is Not Alexa Pearce Page 23