Lyra's Magic: Witches of Manhattan Book One

by Langley Keaton

  Lyra’s Magic

  Witches of Manhattan Book One

  Langley Keaton

  Tobann Publications

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  1

  Lyra

  The first time I died I was only 21 years old. In fact, it was on my 21st

  birthday. And it really fucking hurt.

  Happy birthday to me.

  Right.

  Turns out it was one of those freak things. A freak thing that can only happen in America, the land of the guns.

  I literally was minding my own business that night. I went to a bar, as 21- year-olds do for the first time (right…). Ahem, as 21-year-olds do legally for the first time, but I, of course, had been in many bars before this one. I had fake IDs and people had snuck me in before. But that night was different – I was going to proudly show my very own driver’s license, unaltered, for the first time. And to say that I was looking forward to it would be understating the matter.

  The plan was to hit the hottest rooftop bar in Manhattan. My friends Olive and Jordan, and my sisters Sybil and Maddy were all going with me. Jordan was the only guy in the bunch. I know that he has an androgynous name, and the androgynousness of his name suited him perfectly, for he is an androgynous dude.

  I can say that he is an androgynous dude, not that he was an androgynous dude for one reason, and one reason only. But I’m getting too far ahead of myself.

  Anyhow, the five of us were planning to go out and do things right. I didn’t eat at all that day, because I wanted to get drunk as soon as I possibly could, and, if I ate, that would slow down that process. That was one thing that I had learned in my prior drinking experiences – if I ate a heavy meal, I could drink shot after shot and not feel much of anything. But if I drank on an empty stomach – let’s just say that I became a cheap date on those occasions.

  I even got tarted up for the evening, which is something that I rarely do. But I had worked hard on my body – running every evening, lifting weights and swimming – and I wanted to show off just a little. So, I bought a super short dress and high heels. I had been growing out my red hair for a few months, and it was twisty and curly, so I piled it up on my head. I put on just a little bit of makeup to play up my light green eyes, and I looked in the mirror and twirled around.

  “You’re looking pretty good, Lyra,” I said to my reflection. I took out another mirror so that I could properly see my backside. A firm butt and even firmer legs looked back at me and I nodded. It looked like all those hours in the gym were paying off.

  In my tight and short black sleeveless dress, I was ready to show the world that…I was finally ready to legally drink. And that was literally all that I had in my mind that night.

  Sybil was the first person up to my apartment. Olive and Maddy were my roommates, so they were already there. Sybil’s hair was magenta, because, of course, she dyed it that color, but her natural color was red. Maddy’s hair was a gorgeous shade of blonde, and she was white and freckled. She was obsessive about sunscreen, of course, as a girl of Irish descent must be. As for Olive, she was tall and lean and stunning. Her hair was jet black, and her eyes were almost as dark. Her Italian heritage was evident in everything from her olive skin to her high cheekbones and super dark eyelashes. You could never tell that Sybil and I were related to Maddy – Sybil and I looked similar, but Maddy was quite a bit paler than us, and we had no clue where the blonde hair came from. We only knew that it was beautiful on her.

  Sybil and Maddy were both only 20, so they had fake IDs. They usually didn’t use them, but tonight was special. They made the exception.

  As for Jordan, he was a former girl, also named Jordan, and he joked that his parents must have always known that he was going to be transgendered because they conveniently gave him a name that could go either way.

  “I mean, it’s not like that poor Bruce Jenner,” he said. “Girlfriend had to change her name. Me, I didn’t even have to get a new birth certificate or nothing like that.” He laughed at his own little joke, and it even gave me a smile. “Besides, I love my name. It would be too weird to go by something else.”

  I was friends with Jordan when he was a she, back in high school. Now he was a gay man, and we had grown closer than ever. We didn’t exactly share eyeliner, but we could have, as Jordan was partial to guy-liner. He used it to line his huge dark eyes.

  So, it was really just the “girls.” I didn’t yet have a boy, at least not one that interested me. I was too choosy, or so Olive was always telling me.

  “Ah, what do I care?” I didn’t really have the time, nor the energy, for a boy. I didn’t even have the energy for a man. I had seen what men had did to my mother over the years, and I had no desire to even go there.

  On that evening, we all piled into a cab. Our apartment was only a few blocks from the bar, but we all planned to barely be able to stumble out of it at last call, so we knew that we wouldn’t be able to walk home. We somehow managed to convince our cabby to let us all take one vehicle, even though there weren’t enough seat belts for us all, and I basically had to sit on Jordan’s lap.

  We got to the rooftop, and went inside. The music was loud, the people were drunk, and the place was alive. It was a beautiful evening – mid-October in Manhattan, and it was an unseasonably warm night. The outdoor heaters were lit, but they really weren’t needed. Since we got there somewhat early, we were able to score a couch that surrounded its own fire ring. The sun had just set, and, soon, we were going to be treated to seeing the sparkling lights from all the skyscrapers in the city. I went over to the edge and looked down, reveling in the feeling of the freedom and the breeze that wafted over me. This was going to be an amazing night. I could just feel it. It would be a night that I would always remember.

  True enough. But it was going to be a night to remember for an entirely different reason than I had originally thought. An en-fucking-tirely different reason.

  When I got there, I made a bee-line to the bar and ordered a round of shots for everyone. I was jostled and I had to squeeze in between about a hundred people who were surrounding the bar, all of them with their glasses in the air and shouting out drink orders to the bartender. The bartender found out that today was my 21st birthday and gave me a shot on the house.

  “What shot would you like?” he asked me.

  “Sex on the Beach,” I told him with a sly smile. I might not have liked most men, but I did like to flirt.

  The bartender smiled and blushed as he gave me a salute. Then he tossed the fruity concoction to me and raised an eyebrow. “What will be your next shot?”

  “Screaming orgasm,” I said as I walked away from the bar after tipping the guy five bucks.

  I joined the others at the table, knowing that we were lucky to even have a table, consideri
ng we got there early, but not that early, and, usually, these prime tables would have long been taken. They all had a shot, and all of us raised our glasses.

  “To Lyra, who is finally legal,” Olive said. “This will be the first of many, many shots in her future.”

  We drank our shots and I made a face. Sex on the Beach was supposed to be a fruity shot, but this one tasted really, really strong. Nevertheless, I made my way back up to the bar to order my Screaming Orgasm. It was made with Kahlua, Amaretto and Bailey’s, and it was one of my favorite drinks. It was one of my favorite drinks to order, as well. It brought plenty of flirting potential, and this cute bartender, with the enormous muscles, longish dark hair and blue eyes, was primed for flirting.

  The bartender raised an eyebrow and, without a word, poured my Screaming Orgasm shot. I ordered a round of the shots for the table, and Jordan soon appeared behind me and playfully ground his body into mine while he stood behind me. “Girl, let me take those from you,” he said. “You’re going to spill every drop before you get to the table if you try to carry them all yourself.”

  I turned around rapidly and handed the shots to him. “Oh my god,” I said, “I’ve just had one shot and I’m already feeling it.” I nodded my head. “It was a really smart move on my part to skip eating before coming here. I’m going to be schnockered before you know it.”

  I followed Jordan back to the table, and we all drank the new shots, again raising our glasses to me, the new 21-year-old. I started to get more and more woozy, and everything around me seemed to start spinning. Already.

  Yet I had the presence of mind to say to myself that I wasn’t quite making a fool of myself. After all, I had only had two (very strong) shots. I consciously thought that I needed to slow down because, if I didn’t, I was going to wake up on the floor of some strange dude’s apartment. Maybe the hot bartender’s apartment.

  Huh.

  The night wore on, and I did slow down with the shots. I also tried to drink glasses of water in between the shots. At any rate, the five of us ended up all dancing together on the very crowded dance floor, in a line, all of our bodies grinding each other.

  We ended up on the crowded streets around 3 AM. The bar played the song “Closing Time,” and an enormous bouncer was literally herding everyone out the door en masse.

  “You can’t kick us out,” I heard myself say. It was a vague sense that I was saying it, as if it was a voice that was outside of my head, yet, at the same time, I knew that this voice was actually mine. It was coming out of my mouth. “It’s my birthday. My 21st birthday.”

  “I can kick you out, doll, and I am. Now go.” He shoved me just a little bit towards the crowd that was forming outside the bar. “You too,” he said, shoving Jordan in the same direction.

  “I’m going, I’m going,” Jordan said, his cute little butt sashaying in front of me. “You don’t have to tell me twice, handsome.”

  “Come on, let’s get out of here,” Maddy was saying, dragging me by the hand. “We’ll have an after party at our house.” She started to shout at the crowd. “After party at our place!”

  An interested part of the crowd started to surround her, as she gave out our address to the people. “We have tequila, rum, vodka, any kind of beer. Just show up, it’ll be fun.”

  My mind was hazy, so I couldn’t really stop her, but I knew that what she was doing was a bad thing. After all, it was after 3 AM, and we lived in a condo where people were going to be trying to sleep. There were rules, according to our condominium association, and I would imagine that us inviting a shit-load of people over would probably be something that would be a no-no. To say the very least.

  Sigh. Looking back now, I know that Maddy inviting people over to our apartment was the least of my worries. Because I never made it back to the condo that night.

  I never really made it back to the condo at all. Well, I sort of did. But to say that I was different by the time I got back there is really, really understating things.

  2

  I went over to Maddy, who was busy, in the middle of a circle of about 20 people, giving them our address for the “after-party.”

  “Maddy, I-“

  Just then, shots rang out. They came from a car that was passing by us. Everyone stood there, in shock, for a few seconds, before everyone started to scatter. Because I was so drunk, I reacted extremely slowly. I saw the people running in all directions, I heard the screaming, and I heard the shots. But I couldn’t react. It all seemed surreal.

  Maddy, Sybil and Olive must have been a bit less drunk than me - after all, it wasn’t their 21st birthday! – because they knew what was happening, and they immediately started to run as well. They tried to grab my hand, but I saw Jordan standing against the wall, seemingly unable to move. They tried to drag him as well, but he was like dead weight. I guess that he was in shock, and he had drunk even more than I did that night, so he really wasn’t able to react on time.

  “No,” I said to the girls. “You guys go, I need to stay here with Jordan.” All at once, I was sobered up and I knew what I had to do. I had to stay there with Jordan and make sure that he was safe.

  “Come on,” Maddy said. “We have to go.”

  “No,” I said, going over to Jordan, who was still standing against the wall, perfectly still. I looked back, and the car was still there, and one of the guys was aiming right at Jordan.

  “Fucking tranny,” the guy shouted. “You goddamned tranny, hitting on me at the bar.”

  “Jordan, come on, we have to go,” I said.

  Jordan just shook his head rapidly. He was terrified, and I knew how he was feeling. If I could have read his thoughts, I probably would have seen that he felt that he was in a dream, where somebody is chasing you, and your feet just do not want to move.

  It was then that I felt it. It was a bullet going right into my back. It ripped through my muscles and bone and I felt it going into my heart. The pain was excruciating for a split second, like nothing I had ever felt before.

  Then, all of a sudden, I felt nothing at all.

  Then I woke up. At least I thought that I woke up. I looked around, not quite knowing where I was. This happened to me frequently – I would wake up out of a deep sleep, disoriented, not knowing where I was, then gradually discovering that I was still in my bedroom. I took a deep breath, and tried to feel what was beneath me. I sighed with relief as I felt my bed. “Relax, Lyra, it was only a dream.”

  I turned on the light, and I saw that there were clothes all over the bed. In fact, my room was a huge mess. There was a shirt hanging over the lamp shade, books all over the floor, clothes on every conceivable piece of furniture.

  I shook my head. I was a neat person, and, to be honest, being around a mess was something that I tried never to do. I always put my clothes back – when I would change into my pajamas, I would hang up my day clothes, or put them carefully back into the dresser drawers.

  “Maddy, Olive,” I shouted. I was really, really pissed that they would come into my room without asking me, but to come into my room and mess it up…it wasn’t something that they would do, I knew, but I could come up no other explanation.

  I opened the door and walked out into the hallway. What I saw stopped me in my tracks. The apartment was a complete and total mess. There was a half-eaten pizza on the sofa – it wasn’t even in the box, it was just sitting on the sofa and staining it completely. Beer bottles were everywhere. It looked like a barrel of trash had turned over in the middle of the living room, because there were discarded food boxes, fast-food wrappers, half-eaten food, soda bottles that were half-full, and all sorts of other trash. There was even a dead mouse.

  “Gross,” I said, my stomach turning. “What the hell?” Did Maddy go ahead and have that after-bar party?

  Wait. The after-bar party invitation was in my dream. She was talking to those people right before I was shot in my dream. So it stood to reason that she didn’t invite anyone over, because if it was all a dream, then h
er little party-planning was also a dream.

  So, I got really drunk at the after-bar party, and then I dreamed the other part. The part where the weird transphobic dude had a gun and wanted to shoot Jordan. That would explain it.

  I went into Maddy and Olive’s rooms, one by one, and found neither of them there.

  “Fine, fine,” I said, shaking my head. “Leave a holy mess, and I mean a holy mess, and then just leave it up to me to clean it up. Thanks a lot guys. Thanks a whole fucking lot.”

  I spent the better part of the next couple of hours picking up their shit, cussing to myself the whole way. It was a fine way to spend the day after my birthday, cleaning up after their asses. It wasn’t like them to be like this, either. That’s what got me – Maddy and Olive were never disrespectful like this. They weren’t as neat as I was – I bordered on OCD at times – but they certainly weren’t slobs. Not like this, anyhow.

  But I cleaned up anyhow. I put everything into enormous trash bags – I had to use the contractor bags that were extra-large and extra-heavy duty – but, after a few hours of throwing everything into these bags, and then dusting, vacuuming, and spraying everything down with Lysol, the place looked back to normal.

  I looked at my activity watch, feeling pleased that I burned a ton of calories doing this housework. Then I turned to my bedroom. It would be a lot easier to clean that room up, really, because it wasn’t nearly as dirty and sloppy as the living room and dining room were. It would be a matter of putting all my clothes back to where they were supposed to be, and then I could leave for the day. I was worried about Jordan, and I wanted to see him and know that he was okay. I would go out to check on him, but after this holy mess of a place got cleaned up.

  Why was I worried about Jordan? That transphobic asshole was in my dream, not in reality. I was quite sure that he was okay, but I had an uneasy feeling. It’s like, after you have a really bad dream about somebody, you check on them, even though you know that, in reality, everything is fine. In your mind, though, that person isn’t fine.