She paused, searching for words.
“People like me, Charlie,” said Daniel, from across the room. “People who are gay. The world doesn’t always like us.”
Charlie’s jaw dropped open. Daniel Burman was gay? That couldn’t be possible. He looked so normal. Charlie couldn’t imagine him wearing women’s clothes, or running around fluttering his eyelashes, or whatever else gay men were supposed to do.
None of the other adults seemed surprised by what Daniel said.
“That’s right,” continued Beverly. “The world doesn’t always treat gay people, people like Daniel and Diego …”
“And Maureen,” said Joan from the couch.
Randall rolled his eyes. “Uh yeah, Joan. Thanks. Charlie has no idea who you’re talking about.”
“Just trying to help. Jeez.”
“It doesn’t always treat gay people well. I wanted you to have a break. Charlie, you have to understand. It’s not that I think there’s anything wrong with you liking Diego or wanting to be more than friends with him. He’s a great guy. I just got scared for you. I was worried that people would tease you or hurt you. I figured that I wouldn’t be able to stop that from happening. I felt helpless. That’s not a feeling I’m used to.
“Don’t you see, Charlie? It’s not you. What I mean is, it’s not that there’s anything wrong with you … it’s that I love you.” More tears.
“I don’t know how it happened. You’ve only been here for such a short time. I didn’t know I had a nephew until a few weeks ago. I didn’t even know if Lizzy was alive or dead. But then she comes here, you come here, and you’re so, you’re so sweet, and good, and I was scared I didn’t have what it takes to be your guardian, or your aunt, or your mother, or whatever I’m supposed to be. I didn’t know I if I could do it. And then this unexpected … love … slipped in and grabbed me before I saw it coming. It happened to both of us,” she said, indicating Randall, who nodded back.
“And when Randall told me about you and Diego, I got even more scared. I didn’t know if I could be the right kind of aunt for you. What if you asked me questions about being gay? I feel so clueless. I don’t know anything about it. What if I said the wrong thing? I mean, look what happened tonight. I did say the wrong thing. Or at least, you took it the wrong way. And look how much it hurt you. I just, I don’t know … I want you to know how much I love you and care about you, and if Grace ever even thinks about getting her goddamn claws on you again …”
The couches began to shake as if in an earthquake, while the food platters rattled on the coffee table.
“Okay, okay, honey,” said Randall, standing up. “Let’s all just take a deep breath. No more broken furniture.”
The shaking subsided. Rita laughed, and soon the others were smiling too.
“Sorry. What I’m trying to say is that I will come rescue you again if something happens. But I’m afraid. What if I can’t be there next time? What if …”
Her words stopped, and she took a deep breath.
Charlie felt his own tears again as he heard what his aunt was saying. At first he thought she was just talking to say the right thing, but somewhere in there, as more and more of her words tumbled forth, he began to believe her. It was as if her words snuck into him—the same way that the “unexpected love” had slipped into her. He believed her. He believed his uncle, and he could tell that the other adults weren’t disgusted or angry with him for liking Diego.
He still couldn’t believe that Daniel Burman was gay. He didn’t know you could be a detective and be gay at the same time.
But he believed Beverly. And this helped to calm him. The final vestiges of his desire to run away disappeared. He looked at his aunt and uncle.
“So you’re really not mad if I, well, if I like Diego? Or if I don’t like girls that much?”
“No, we are not mad, Charlie,” said his uncle. His look was so earnest that Charlie could feel his own heart breaking open.
“No, we are not mad, Charlie,” repeated his aunt. “We love you just the way you are. Oh my god.” She crinkled her face as if smelling something foul. “That sounded really corny.”
Morty broke out into song. “We love you just the way you are.” The others joined in. It was completely embarrassing.
Charlie wanted everyone to stop singing, but he found himself laughing. Laughing because he had spoken out loud the biggest secret he had, so big he hadn’t even been willing to tell himself. And nothing bad had happened. Nobody called him a dirty little fag. Nobody beat him up. Nobody got up and left. The skin on his face felt strange, as if it had been stretched out over his chin and down his shoulders. He wanted to touch it, to see if it was real. He wanted to look at himself in the mirror and see if he recognized the reflection. Maybe he would look like normal scared Charlie. Maybe he wouldn’t look any different. But maybe, just possibly, he would look like someone brave.
CHAPTER 15
The Watering Hole
TONY, CLAUDIA, AND THOMAS the Dog Man sat together at a table in the basement of a dark elegant bar in Belltown. The décor imitated a 1920s laboratory, dimly lit by overhead rods pulsing blue with electricity. Hammered bronze tubing covered most of the walls, and each of the myriad sitting nooks pocketed throughout the bar displayed tributes to the spiritualism of the era, including crystal balls in glass cases and black and white photos of mediums with headdresses holding seances.
The patrons that night were enchanted by the collective charm of the three witches and bought them round after round of bright cocktails in vintage glassware. Plates of tapas continued to arrive at the table, courtesy of the chef, or a bartender, or a shy besotted member of the waitstaff.
Upon each delivery, the witches smiled, nodded their thanks, and then continued their conversation, not inviting a single person to join them. No one dared approach the table.
“Think she’ll be back after midnight?” asked Claudia. She wore a purple flapper-era cocktail dress. The tassels shimmied as she breathed, raising the blood pressure of her many male and female admirers.
“Nah,” said Tony, watching his reflection in the glass case of an exhibit featuring Nikola Tesla, the Russian electrical engineer. Stubble accentuated the sharp length of his jawline. He turned his head left, then right, looking at his face from different angles.
“She’ll be here any minute. Knowing her, she went full out.”
Thomas ran his hands through his curly blond hair. “Jesus, Tony, do you know how annoying you are? Believe me, your face hasn’t changed since you looked at it five minutes ago.”
“We Americans could learn more art appreciation, my friend. I’m just leading the way.”
Thomas and Claudia exchanged looks.
“For some reason,” Thomas continued, “I’m not feeling as confident in our leader as you two seem to be. The boy hasn’t given us anything but trouble. His whole family, for that matter, has been nothing but …”
“Such a doubting Thomas,” said a soft voice from behind them.
Grace walked around the corner and sat down at their table. Her hair was smoothed and shaped into its usual chignon. Her peach dress, complimenting Claudia’s period clothing, was soft and unruffled. Her elegance and beauty outshone all three witches. A collective intake of breath could almost be heard as the bar’s patrons took in the newcomer.
Grace’s companions examined her. Her usual glow seemed diminished. Her eyes shone with a predatory light, and there was a tiny cut on her right temple. It wasn’t bleeding, but it was the first blemish any of them had ever seen on her.
That, combined with the fact that she arrived empty-handed, made them nervous.
“Are, uh, are you okay?” Claudia asked, trying to hide the worry in her voice.
“I’m fine. What does a girl have to do to get a drink around here?”
A waiter appeared at their table.
“What do you have that is especially perfect for an evening of revenge?” she asked. The waiter was tall and golde
n-skinned, his black hair oiled back from his brow. His eyes had the double epicanthic fold common in East Asia. He smiled, and two perfect dimples formed at his cheeks.
“Besides you, that is,” said Grace.
The other witches fidgeted. Her light flirtation meant that she might have plans for him later. They hoped that her plans might include them too.
Grace’s eyes lingered on the waiter as he walked to the bar to put in her order.
“The boy got away,” she said, turning to face her underlings. “I had him. He was ready to follow me and learn what I had to tell him. But there was a surprise attack from Beverly and friends, and …”
“What?!” said Tony, mouth agape. “But she’s nothing compared to you. How could she …”
His words were cut short as Grace balled her hand into a fist. He clutched at his chest. His eyes rolled into the back of his head and he made sharp grunting sounds.
“Don’t!”
A grotesque expression of pain marred his perfect face.
“Question!”
Drops of spittle spilled over his lips.
“Me!”
Tony gasped, then wheezed in breath as Grace relaxed her fist.
He mumbled a quick “sorry” and grabbed for his martini. His shaking hands spilled some of the drink. Claudia took the glass from him and brought it to his lips so he could take a sip.
“You,” Grace said, turning to Thomas.
“Grace?” the man asked, his voice thinner and reedier than before Grace had appeared.
“Ever think about all of this when you decided to get us involved?”
Thomas held his head in shame. There was no reason to play-act in front of Grace, and she wouldn’t permit a defensive stance. He tried to think of a way to apologize.
“No matter,” Grace said. “Now we know that Charlie might be able to help us, which makes it all worthwhile. Besides, we’ve all tried to catch him, and we’ve all failed. We’re members of the Losers Club, apparently.”
The three tried to laugh at her joke, but the quivering lips and the forced chuckles stopped once they realized she wasn’t laughing with them.
“Here we are,” said the waiter, returning with a tall champagne flute filled with a clear blue liquid, which he placed in front of Grace. “I hope this helps with your evening revenge plans.”
The other three noticed how he stood a little too close to her, how his smile lacked a server’s formality. How he seemed slightly drunk himself.
“Oh, I’m sure it will,” Grace said, sipping the cocktail. “Lovely. Just lovely. Tell me, what’s your name, handsome waiter?”
“Jason.”
“Jason,” said Grace, drawing out the word as if it were a good idea she was considering. “Wonderful. Tell me, Jason, would you like to join my friends and me for a little fun later tonight?”
He answered immediately. “Yes. Yes, of course.”
“Excellent. We’ll be leaving after I finish my drink. You’ll come with us?”
It wasn’t a question. The others knew that she sometimes liked to soften even the most vicious of blows with a façade of mutuality, or even subservience. This was when she was at her most dangerous.
“Good. Then wait over there in the corner against that wall, okay, Jason? Just stand there. No one else will know. It’ll be our secret.”
He nodded, then walked over to the shadowed corner where Grace had made her entrance and stood stock-still, facing the wall.
Tony, Claudia, and Thomas the Dog Man smiled their hungry smiles. In spite of the edge on which Grace always kept them, they were excited. Jason was a very good choice. They were eager to learn what she had in mind for him.
* * *
During the car ride to her house, Grace kept Jason bewitched enough to relax him, but alert enough so that he could respond to stimulus. He proved to be an excellent sport.
Grace’s home was located on the shores of Lake Washington. Claudia had once said that it deserved to be described with a verb, not an adjective. “It sprawls,” she had said. It was a far cry from the three-bedroom, mid-century house with the moldy basement that Grace had purchased in the nineties when she had been starting out.
Grace kept her hand on the small of Jason’s back as they walked into the house. She needed to maintain contact with him in order to keep him docile.
Thomas started to gather bags from the trunk of the town car.
“Leave them be,” Grace ordered over her shoulder. “The people will handle them.”
“The people” referred to an entire class of workers, assistants, helpers, and in some cases, slaves, who inhabited the residence. Some of them were echoes who ran errands and such for Grace in the hopes of learning more about their stunted abilities. Others were paid workers who kept the grounds, cleaned the house (except the basement; they were never to go in the basement), and prepared meals. Another group of them were Grace’s gofers. They were people like Mavis, kitchen witches who showed enough talent or seemed useful enough for Grace to pop and then use as her eyes and ears in the city. Most of them never came near where Grace lived, though occasionally one might be seen in the living room.
Thomas was always relieved when Grace referred to “the people.” It meant that she still considered Claudia, Tony, and himself as a separate superior class. He also knew that her ranking system was capricious at best. The three of them were too far in to ever leave on their own, even if they had wanted to, so they had to be always on the lookout for ways to prove themselves useful to Grace. Being in her inner circle gave them status over the others, more power than they had ever imagined, and slightly more margin of error than, say, the ones who cleaned the toilets.
But the trio had no illusions that she kept them around out of the goodness of her heart. Grace had no heart.
“Go find out if the people know anything new. I want to see what Jason’s made of before we, well, before you-know-what,” Grace said, leading Jason upstairs.
CHAPTER 16
Park Bench
MAVIS SAT NEXT TO A sullen-looking teenage boy with a shock of pink hair on a bench up in the old-growth part of Seward Park. The sun was just starting to rise, turning the gray expanse of grass at their feet into a mint-green carpet.
“Don’t be fresh with him the way you are with me, and don’t ask him questions about what else you can do, and don’t, well, just don’t talk, okay?”
“Okay! Jeez, I’m not some little kid, you know.”
“That’s exactly what you are. So just shut up and …”
“Hello, Mavis.”
The woman jumped a foot, yelled “Whatoofy!” and landed with a jowl-shaking thud back on the hard seat of the bench.
The pink-haired kid started laughing at the older woman’s reaction, then stopped short. A man with blond curly hair was standing a few feet away from them, dressed in a pale-colored fitted suit. He walked over to the park bench and sat down. The hairs on the back of the kid’s neck stood up. Even in the faint dawn light the man’s expression reflected that he was here for nothing other than business. And by the looks of things, it would be dangerous business. The boy had no trouble following Mavis’s directions to keep his mouth closed.
“What’s new?” asked Thomas.
“Why do you people always have to sneak up on me?” Mavis said, clutching at her heart.
“Because the results are so satisfying,” the man replied.
“What do you know?” he asked, his words clipped and quiet.
“Not much,” Mavis said, trying not to sound frightened. “Seems like there was a kerfuffle over at Beverly’s house tonight. Witches coming and going. We can’t get anyone close enough to scope it out, and there are so damned many cats!”
“It’s all right. We don’t expect you to get around the cats. What else have you heard?”
“The kid’s gay,” Mavis shrugged. “But Grace already knew that. The police report on Todd Laramie was filed ‘missing persons.’ No one has linked him yet with the t
wo girls from Rainier Beach, or that punk out in Maple Valley. Russ Yamada at SPD moved some things around so the connections are harder to make. He has Daniel Burman to worry about, but …”
“Keep him on Burman. Bring in more reinforcement if need be.”
“We got Gracie Guerrero downtown too, so we shouldn’t have to …”
“I don’t want to hear ‘shouldn’t have to,’ Mavis. Track Burman and report his every move to us. She won’t like it if she hears you’ve been lazy. And you won’t like it if she doesn’t like it. ¿Comprendes?”
“Sí, comprendes.”
“It’s ‘comprendo,’ for ‘I understand,’ Mavis. See, you even get to learn Spanish by associating with us, not just more ways to trick people into buying your hand creams.”
“Gee thanks, Thomas. My world is expanding so broadly.”
He was on her in a flash, sitting astride her, his legs surrounding her ample hips and squeezing tightly, his face inches from hers. The pink-haired kid scooted to the far end of the bench, his eyes wide.
“Don’t be cute, Mavis. I don’t like cute. Claudia may be more forgiving than I am. Trust me, you don’t want to push it.”
He slapped her hard in the face. Then he hopped off and punched her, once, in the gut. She doubled over and fell to the ground, clutching her stomach.
Thomas was behind the teenage boy before he could do anything. The man’s hands clamped around his neck. The boy thrashed on the bench, kicking at the air, beating uselessly against Thomas’s hands.
“You work for us, kid. End of story. All those fun things you can do now? They mean nothing. You do what we say, you do all of what we say, and maybe you’ll live long enough to enjoy bossing people around with your new bionic superpowers.”
The Boy Who Couldn’t Fly Home: A Gay Teen Coming of Age Paranormal Adventure about Witches, Murder, and Gay Teen Love (The Broom Closet Stories Book 2) Page 12