by A. L. Tyler
Charlie snapped his fingers and lit the candles around the room, using a hand to close a thin wall cabinet. I caught a glimpse of several vials of dark liquid just before it snapped shut, and then he went to the large wardrobe that contained a million different samples of hair. Opening the doors, he stood before the well-organized and disgusting mess, and sighed.
“Do you still have those hairs I gave you?” he asked after a moment of quiet reflection. “The ones we need to summon her?”
“Yes,” I responded. I was happy to be out of the drizzle, but the smell that emanated from the hair wardrobe was enough to gag me, and I went to a window and undid the complex locking mechanism to force it open a few inches. I had the hair, still wrapped in a tissue, tucked into the bottom of my sock drawer. I hadn’t thought about it much, but I knew those hairs were important to Charlie, and I didn’t want to have to tell him that I had lost them.
He had a way of turning people into cats when they angered him.
Still facing away from me, he took a hand and dragged it across his face. Then he ran his hand along the contents of his collection, like he was stroking the hair of a pet, and I looked away, once again trying not to be sick. My hair was in there somewhere, casually mingling with a million other samples of various cleanliness.
When I looked back, Charlie had selected a long lock of deep brown hair. He held it gingerly in his hands, and then looked back up at me.
“If we can’t get Lyssa’s hair, then we’re going to have to use Kendra’s.”
“You said we needed that hair to summon her,” I said, scoffing. “If we use it for this—”
“I know what I’m losing!” he said forcefully. “We’ll have to find a different way to summon her. I need that hair now.”
I held up a hand and shook my head. “No… no. You’re not going to leave me alone until I use that hair to summon Kendra. We’re not using it for anything else.”
He set the hair back into the wardrobe and took a threatening step toward me. “Thorn…”
“I’ll find a way to convince her!” I said quickly. “Somehow, I’ll find a way.”
~~~~~~~~~
The following Friday night found me standing in front of my bathroom mirror wearing a trendy dress and makeup. I swept my hair up into a casual bun and stared at my reflection.
I had never been very concerned with fashion in high school, but I looked upon that aspect of my life as something that I wanted to leave behind. I wasn’t going the full nine yards into fashion, but now that I was out and on my own, I at least wanted to look nice. More like a finished piece instead of a work in progress, and that meant getting out of my paint stained art jeans. At least on occasion—I hadn’t been able to part with them completely, and I still wore them to the grocery store and the greenhouse some days. They were comfortable.
But as I looked at myself in the mirror, I saw the woman I wanted to be, and she was confident and sleek. She also had Charlie staring over one of her shoulders, like a demon in an old cartoon sent to whisper in her ear.
He was getting anxious, and it wasn’t a good look on any of us. When he was unhappy, he had a way of hanging around, all the time, and seeing to it that everyone else was unhappy, too. I had been carrying my aunt’s hairs, wrapped carefully in a tissue, on my person since he had brought me back to Earth. I wasn’t sure if it would make a difference or not if he decided that he wanted to take them, but I also wasn’t sure that I believed him when he said he needed a Thorn to give them to him.
It started with little taunts, like when he began mocking Gates with a laser pointer. Then he had cut off my hot water, mid shower, under some sort of deluded logic that it would motivate me to work harder to get Lyssa to give him her hair. When I had walked out one morning to discover that Charlie had installed a new door in my kitchen, and it was a direct passage to his personal chambers on the Other Side, I knew I had to try something.
So now, I was wearing makeup, and doing my hair, and making dinner.
The doorbell rang, and the stove alarm sounded at the same time. I hesitated, torn as to which one I should get first, and then I saw Charlie pulling the pork chops out of the oven. We had an understanding that he wasn’t going to be joining us for dinner, so he set the hot pan down on a trivet before going back through his door, and then the entire doorway collapsed into a shower of glittering light before disappearing.
I straightened my dress and my hair, and opened the front door. Lyssa was standing there, holding her toddler daughter Rosemary, Josh standing just behind her shoulder. He had a large bag hanging from one arm. The sound of glass clinking as he adjusted his weight told me that Lyssa had insisted on bringing along some precautionary supplies.
She didn’t look happy to be there. As she narrowed her eyes at me, I began to question my plan. “Anise Hawthorn, how dare you…”
She pushed into my apartment and started to look around corners.
“He’s not here,” I said, hoping I sounded half as confident as I wished I was. “Look, I just wanted to talk this out, because—”
“There is nothing to discuss!” Lyssa said, passing off Rosie to Josh as he set the bag down on the floor. She squatted down to and pulled out several jars of dried plant matter and two new boxes of salt. “You called dad on me to say I was worried about him and Janet?! For god’s sake, Anise—do your own dirty work and leave them out of it!”
“You weren’t answering my calls and you weren’t showing at work. It was a last resort.” I sighed as she lit a bowl of sage and set it on the table, saying a strange incantation. “That stuff won’t work now, Lyssa. He has my blood and I’m pretty sure he’s been using it continuously. I’m his bridge. He’s not leaving until he finds Kendra, so if you want to help, give him some hair.”
“Wait—” She stood up very suddenly, nearly kicking over a jar of mustard seeds in the process. “You gave him blood?”
I shrugged and crossed my arms. I knew it was gross, and Charlie had openly admitted that it wasn’t witch magic, but an old and crude warlock’s spell. But I was done being ashamed of what I was trying to do.
I had to help Gates.
“You gave him blood?!” Lyssa said in a hyped whisper. “Annie, you have no idea what you are doing!”
“Knock knock!”
My dad walked through the door right then, and Janet was close behind him carrying a fruit salad. Neither of them knew about witches or demons, or anything else magical. Lyssa had told me in a rush once that our dad didn’t know, and couldn’t know, because Kendra had put a protective spell on all of us in the family that would stop demons from harming us if we didn’t know they existed. It had taken some doing, but Lyssa had managed to extend the protection to Janet. The two graying love birds were none the wiser to our strange moonlighting activities, and we were going to keep it that way.
“Dad!” I plastered a smile on my face as I went in for a hug, and then took the fruit salad from Janet with a smile as Josh passed a giddy Rosie off to her grandfather. “So glad you two could make it!”
Lyssa had my arm in a claw-like grip as she gave Josh a look. He put on a smile and turned back to strike up a conversation about sweater vests with Janet as my dad carried on an upbeat chat with Rosie.
I let her drag me to the kitchen, and we kept our voices low.
“You gave him blood?!”
“It was a protection spell!” I said in a hush. “I don’t see what the big deal is!”
She grabbed an apron and snapped it out with an angry flick of her wrists and a toss of her red-blond hair before putting it on over the black dinner dress she was wearing.
“Blood has a lot of uses!” she said. “Stop giving him any of your other cast offs unless you’re sure you know what he’s using them for!”
My eyes went wide, both with the paranoia of realization and a stubborn need to defend my actions. “I’m his bridge, Lyssa! He’s not going to do anything to hurt me!”
“You don’t know that!”
We both fell silent, glaring at each other. Lyssa finally broke eye contact to put the fruit salad in the fridge, and that was when Gates stepped in.
She jumped up on the counter and waited for Lyssa to stand back up from behind the refrigerator door. My sister’s eyes froze and her expression faltered when she saw Gates sitting there, her cat eyes narrowed, not speaking a word.
“It’s nice to get the family together for dinner though, isn’t it? Even despite all this weirdness?” I said in a casual tone as I stepped up next to Gates and crossed my arms. We couldn’t have timed it better, because right then, Rosie gave a loud squeal of a laugh, and my dad’s jovial bellow followed. “It’s easy to get comfortable and take it for granted. Nice for dad to get to see all of his kids for dinner. You know who else would like to see all of their kids for dinner again?”
Lyssa looked like she was going to cry, but she shook her head when she looked at me. “Annie… this won’t help her.”
“Do you have a better plan?” I raised my eyebrows. “Because right now my best friend is a cat and I have a demon who keeps dropping in unannounced.”
“Oh, you don’t mean Mr. Jones, do you?”
I spun around and Lyssa’s eyes went wide. Janet had walked in on us.
“I—no!” I managed. “I meant this other guy, he just keeps coming around. Mr. Jones has been great. I think I’ll ask him to get me an extra lock just in case this creeper doesn’t stop, but I’m sure he will. Right?”
I looked at Lyssa, but she didn’t say anything.
“And I’m sure you’ll make friends when school starts, Annie. But there’s nothing wrong with having a cat as your best friend…” She reached out to pet Gates just as Josh poked his head in behind her to mouth the word ‘sorry.’ “Sometimes I think animals are better friends than people. Do you girls need any help in here?”
Lyssa reached for the silverware drawer insert and passed it to her. “I think we’ve got it covered, but do you mind setting the table?”
As soon as Janet and Josh had gone, Lyssa turned back to me with a calculating expression. She took a deep breath, and then grabbed a knife from the block next to the stove. The overhead kitchen lights sent a sharp bright line down the blade as she pinched a small lock of hair and cut it free, laying it on the counter.
“Tell Charlie it’s for him,” she said, her lip curling a little. “But it won’t help Gates. Only Kendra can fix this, Annie, and she’s dead. I’m sorry, but it won’t help.”
She heaved another heavy sigh as she walked from the kitchen, and I started plating the pork chops. I took a deep breath of my own, and couldn’t help myself when I smiled a little. Gates gave a little purr and an enthusiastic meow before jumping down and trotting back to the living room.
“Charlie?” I whispered under my breath.
I couldn’t see him, and I couldn’t hear him, but when he stepped closer to gather the hair from next to my hand, I thought that he would be grateful.
When he leaned close to my ear to whisper, his voice held only determination.
“This will do, Thorn,” he said. “Enjoy your dinner, and then get some sleep. The next items on my list will require a little more footwork to acquire.”
Baffled, a nervous smile crept to my lips. “What?”
But Charlie didn’t answer. He was already gone, running back to his wardrobe of hair to stock his latest find.
Chapter 5
I tried to stop Lyssa after dinner. I wanted to know what she had meant when she said that blood had a lot of uses. She waved me off as she walked out the door with Dad and Janet still in earshot.
Gates attempted to strike up a conversation late that night, thanking me for what I was doing for her, but I was too tired for more than a few exchanges before I drifted off to sleep. It was going to be Saturday, after all, and Lyssa had expressly told me at dinner that she wanted me to take a day off after all of the long shifts I had taken over that week. Now that I didn’t have a job to show up to, and Charlie had his hair, I was looking forward to a long, late sleep.
Charlie had different ideas.
“Thorn.”
There had been a time when hearing the voice of a man in my ear as I lay in bed would have made me jump. Now it only made me crack an eye and check the time.
“It’s three,” I said. “Give me another five hours.”
“Dew from the morning glories,” Charlie prompted. “You have to get it before the sun hits them.”
“Get it yourself.”
“I can’t touch it.”
Sighing heavily as I shoved my blankets off and sat up, I stared at him wearily. “What?”
“If I touch the flowers or the dew, it becomes unusable for my purposes. You have to do it.”
With my eyes hanging heavy, I resigned myself to my fate. He wasn’t going to leave this alone.
Rubbing my face and then bringing my palms back to slide over my hair, I closed my eyes. “Fine. Whatever.”
The next thing I knew, I was sitting in a field, still in my pajama bottoms and my camisole. The wet dew from the night was seeping through the seat of my pants and chilling my previously warm skin as the sun threatened to peek over the horizon. Charlie was attempted to put a small vial into my hand as I looked around in confusion.
I finally closed my fist around the vial, and then stared around at the flowers around me. When he had said morning glories, I assumed he meant the large, colorful cultivars we sold in seed at the greenhouse. During the summer months, we even had a trellis wall where we grew the most popular varieties. But he meant wild morning glory, and those flowers were tiny. Each one held only a single dew drop, if that.
“How much?” I asked groggily.
“An ounce,” he said. “Two, if you can get it.”
I cocked an eyebrow at him. Drip by drip, an ounce may as well have been an ocean.
“We’re on a deadline here, Thorn…”
“So slow time down!” I said, getting onto my knees to start tipping each tiny drop into the vial. “Geez, Charlie. It’s not like there aren’t other fields with other morning glories that are farther west where the sun isn’t up yet.”
“I need these,” he insisted.
Of course he did. I rolled my eyes and did what I could, as fast as I could, and I was surprised at how fast my little bottle filled up. Drop by drop, I filled it, and then he handed me another, and I got it filled halfway before a ray of golden sun pierced the darkness and blinded my sleep-heavy eyes. I instinctively covered the dew I had collected in my hands, and then corked the vial and handed it to Charlie, and the darkness fell around us like a heavy wet blanket.
When the light returned, we were back in Charlie’s storage room in the Other Side. When I raised a hand to cover a yawn, Charlie snapped his fingers and the window flew open and a heavy gust of rain blew right into my face, drenching me like a bucket of water had been thrown at me.
I screamed in surprise as the cold dribbled down my front, and Charlie only stocked his dew with a face as impassive as Gates’.
“No sleeping,” he said, repeating the one rule of the Other Side. It was for my own protection, because any human who slept on the Other Side became a demon, but that didn’t make it any less annoying.
Shivering, I looked at him with malice, and another snap took us back to my dark apartment. At least it was warm there.
I turned around to look, and checked the kitchen to be sure, but Charlie was gone, and without so much as a goodbye.
Gates raised her head and started to get up, but I stopped her before she could step off her bed.
“Charlie,” I grumbled as an explanation. “Go back to sleep.”
She paused for a moment, but then did as I suggested. I changed my wet clothes and got back into bed.
~~~~~~~~~
Charlie made breakfast again that morning. And once again, he made too much.
“I don’t need an entire pound of bacon…” I mumbled, trying to smooth my frazzled hair as I roll
ed into the kitchen at ten that morning. “I mean, geez, Charlie, are you fattening me up to eat me?”
He gave me a somber look, and my expression fell.
“Wait,” I said. “Are you fattening me up to eat me?”
“Oh, no,” he said with a completely straight face. “I’m just preparing you for sacrifice.”
I gave him an equally serious stare. “That’s not funny. At least make sure I get laid first.”
“Hmm…” he made a face. “Can’t have a virgin sacrifice without a virgin, Thorn.”
I turned around to grab the tea he had prepared for me, scoffing. “You don’t know that about me.”
“You own underwear with math puns on it and more than one tee shirt from educational summer camps you attended. ‘Camp’ should be in quotes,” he said, still making a face. “So yeah, I’m pretty sure I do.”
“Stay out of my underwear,” I said. “And that doesn’t mean anything.”
Gates jumped up on the counter top, and sniffed at the eggs. “Annie, your favorite channel is PBS. He’s got you nailed.”
Charlie nodded at her. “And that’s why she’s the cat and you’re not. Virgin sacrifice.”
“I only have an antenna, and that’s all I’m paying for,” I replied, scooping myself a portion of eggs before Gates got her cat breath all over them. “And still not funny.”
I gathered up a plate of food and sat down, dully stretching my neck and wondering if Charlie had really teleported me away that day to collect dew from morning glories, or if I had only dreamed it. I glanced up, and saw that he and Gates were both staring at me uncomfortably.
My eyes darted back and forth between the two of them. “You’re not really going to sacrifice me, are you?”
“No,” Charlie said quickly. The way he raised his eyebrows didn’t engender much hope. “But I would like to take you out this evening. I need some things that can’t be procured except from a specialist.”