Suddenly, he was in front of me, kneeling so we were eye level.
“Zeb, I know what you need,” he said. His voice was thick with desire, and his eyes were so bright, they weren’t even blue anymore. His eyes were… amethyst. Purple.
I croaked out a response. “What do I need?”
He leaned into my space, placing one palm on my knee, where it burned like an ember thrown from a roaring campfire. He brought his beautiful mouth to my ear, and he told me what I needed to get my mojo back.
It was a physical act, involving the two of us, and there was an F-word.
I whipped my arm back and slapped him across the face, hard enough to leave the imprint of my hand on his cheek.
In the shocked silence following the slap, I said, “Gross. You’re so old. And you’re my teacher.”
He settled back, sitting on his heels and grinning. “Zeb, you’re almost twenty. I’m barely four years older than you. The college frowns upon fraternization, but I’m willing to take the risk.” His eyes continued to burn into me, still being all weird and amethyst-colored.
“Fine. You’ve made your point,” I said. “I’ll leave you alone. Sorry for trying to make your classes more fun.”
His smile gradually turned into a frown. His handsome eyebrows knitted together in confusion.
“Zeb, do you really not know you’re a song witch?” He shook his head, which toned down his eyes to their regular cool blue. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were operating without the guidance of a coven. I should have known… with the way you act. So wild. So beautiful. So—”
“So reporting you to the dean!” I jumped out of the chair and moved quickly to put the desk between us.
He looked up at me, his expression an intoxicating mixture of sweetness and sexual hunger.
“Zeb, I just want to help you.”
I took two steps back and spat out, “You just want to F-word your best student in the P-word.”
Then I turned and ran out of the room.
I really had to give full points to Arturo. Not only had he guessed I was a virgin who couldn’t even say dirty words, much less do them, but he’d effectively regained control of his classroom.
The next day, I withdrew from his composition class, vowing to never speak to him again.
Kenny quit the class out of solidarity, though I wouldn’t even tell him the nature of my meltdown for two more weeks.
4.
I spent every waking minute focusing on my musical performance skills. I had extra hours, from dropping the composition class, and I used the time to practice on my guitar until my fingers bled.
It was no use, though. I played at every low-rent gig and open mike in the city, and even Kenny had to admit I was getting worse, not better.
I took a few days off, figuring it was a lack of rest that was killing my mojo, but that didn’t help.
On a Saturday afternoon, five weeks after I’d started at the music school, I loafed around the house in my pajamas, threatening to quit.
My roommates—all four of them, if you count the dog, who you should count, since he’s bigger than me—told me to hang in there. They said every artist goes through a rough patch. It’s how you find out what you’re made of.
I wailed about my mojo, and the unfairness of life, and eventually everyone but the dog left me for more uplifting activities. And the dog only stayed because I had cookies.
It was thanks to the dog that the next horrifying thing happened. The dog jumped onto the couch after the cookies were gone and licked the crumbs off my shirt and face, making me giggle. With that bit of contact, I felt about five percent better.
My imagination started up, and it brought in Arturo, as my imagination had been doing for the last two weeks.
If getting crumbs licked off my chin by a dog cheered me up, I could imagine how much of a pick-me-up I might get from letting Arturo do his kinky man things to me.
It took me less than five minutes to track down his phone number and text him to set up a sex date. I was very clear about what I wanted. I texted the following:
Arturo, let’s have a sex date right now. No need to take me for dinner, because I just ate. Send me your address and I’ll bring Piglet over. I’ve got a futon in the back. Please supply your own condoms, not because I’m too embarrassed to buy my own, but because I don’t know what size you take.
Ten long minutes later, he replied with his address, as well as those four sexy words: Ready when you are.
I ran into the kitchen and told Kenny I was going on a sex date.
“Zeb, I’ll cover your rent if you need a loan. There’s no need to turn to prostitution.”
“He’s not paying me for it,” I said. “Unless… do you think… never mind.” I leaned over and sniffed the cocoa powder. “Are you making pot brownies?”
“No. I’m out of hemp butter.” He smacked my hand. “Don’t touch. These aren’t for you. Promise you’ll leave these alone.”
I turned to leave and called over my shoulder, “Who needs chocolate when they have a hot sex date?”
“Good luck on your sex date, Zeb! Don’t laugh when you see his you-know-what!”
I yelled back down the hallway, “I didn’t laugh when I accidentally saw yours in the shower last week!”
“Yes, you did, Zeb! You laughed and you took a picture with your phone!”
“The college years are all about making memories, Kenny!”
5.
I pulled up to Arturo’s mansion just as the sun was setting. He seemed awfully wealthy for someone who taught part-time at a music college. Perhaps if I’d known he was a wizard, things might have gone a different way.
After our last interaction, I did do some basic googling, starting with the phrase “song witch.” I found fan pages for a singer named Stevie Nicks, but not much else.
Piglet went blat-blat as I pulled into Arturo’s pristine paved driveway. The surrounding houses looked fancy enough to have their own staff. I checked my hair in the rear view mirror, then honked the horn three times. Arturo didn’t open the front door of his mansion right away, so I honked two more times.
He finally came out of the house, looking pretty irritated for someone just seconds away from a hot sex date.
I leaned out the window and asked, “Did you bring the party favors? Extra-medium?”
He muttered something under his breath, then came around and got in the passenger side.
“Hi,” I said breathily. “I’ve missed seeing you around.”
He sat in his seat, staring straight ahead. “I’ve missed you, too,” he admitted grumpily. “Two of your former classmates have taken up the class clown job, but they’re no Zeb and Kenny. No imagination. I’m surprised they got through the admissions process.”
“Speaking of admissions… how did I get in without even applying? I haven’t asked faculty, because I’m worried they’ll notice their mistake and kick me out.”
“You’re legacy, Zeb. Your great-grandmother was one of the founding partners in the music college.”
I gasped. “You knew my great-grandmother? I figured you were old, but gosh.”
He turned and gave me a dirty look that gradually melted into a smile when he saw I was joking.
“You didn’t know about your family’s involvement with the school?”
“Nope. My great-grandmother’s gone now, and I think she meant to tell me a lot of things, but didn’t get the time.”
“We’ve got some recordings of her in the archives, and photos. She was a beautiful woman, like how you’d look, minus all the weird stuff. And she was a gifted song witch.”
I snorted. “You say song witch like it’s a real thing.”
“Zeb, do you seriously not believe in magic?”
I reached across the distance between our bucket seats and gave Arturo’s knee a squeeze. His leg felt surprisingly firm and interesting. A zinging feeling shot through me.
“I dunno. Let’s try to make some magic,”
I whispered sexily.
He leaned toward me and stroked the edge of my jaw with the backs of his fingers. I felt something, like stars bursting. I assumed it was just my hormones, and a perfectly normal chemical response. He stroked my cheek, this time while murmuring a sequence of numbers.
I caught a glimpse of my cheek in the rear view mirror and gasped. The stars were real. The side of my face was lit up like a disco ball, with purple sparkles twinkling back at me.
Arturo, still chanting the numbers, held his hand up between us, palm facing me. More purple sparkles swirled and dazzled before me, merging in and out of his skin.
Magic is real.
In that moment, I crossed through a metaphorical door, into the new world. Once, I was a girl who didn’t believe in magic, didn’t know she was a song witch, and then, Arturo showed me his light, and everything changed.
I gazed into his eyes, which were glowing the same shade of purple.
“Kiss me,” I said.
He leaned forward some more, and brought his lips to mine. I met his kiss with hunger. Sparks flew up, bursting from us and raining down like confetti. Most of the light was purple, but some of it was gold.
My magic is gold.
We kissed for not nearly long enough, then he pulled away. “Are we going to do this?” he asked.
My lips were tingling from his kisses, and the rest of my body was throwing a party, with a marching band and ten trumpets.
I glanced back at the futon rolled out in the back of the van. If Arturo’s mouth on mine did that much magic, I was eager to see what else there was.
I shifted off my bucket seat and started crawling over to the futon. The passenger door opened, letting out some of our fireworks.
“You chicken!” I yelled at Arturo, who was escaping.
“Don’t call me a chicken,” he said grumpily. “I have a perfectly good bed inside my perfectly good house. As much as I’d like to get things rockin’ inside your pink contraption… uh…” He leaned back into the van and lowered his voice to finish, “Perhaps we should go inside my house? I can show you some things.”
I popped open the side door and jumped out. “Sure.”
He looked around his ritzy neighborhood guiltily, then grabbed my hand. I felt the sparking between our hands and smiled at how romantic he was being. I didn’t realize at the time that he’d grabbed my hand to speed up our walk to his door, so fewer of his neighbors would see me there.
We got to his front door, and I was so excited, I started hopping up and down. It’s not every day you get to enter a wizard’s lair.
6.
Arturo took me on a tour of his home. It only had six bedrooms, so it was just barely a mansion by my calculations, but it was very nice. Marble everywhere. A little too much marble for my taste, but with a woman’s touch and some colorful accent walls, it could be gorgeous.
He showed me his library room, which was full of old, leather-bound books. I grabbed one off the shelf.
“Are these spells?” I asked.
He took the book away. “Even better. It’s a first edition Swiss Family Robinson.”
“Ugh. Boring. Where are the spell books? What kind of magic can you do?”
“Have you heard of day trading?” He pressed a secret spot on a bookcase and a door opened. He led me through, into an inner room lined with multiple computer monitors.
“This is where I do the magic,” he explained. “You see, everything runs on algorithms, mathematical formulas.”
He led me on a mini-tour of the room, explaining how global commerce was like a symphony, and if you had the right data, you could see what the conductor was doing, and… some other stuff. He kept talking. I kept raising my eyebrows, feigning interest. Eventually, my eyebrows were up so high, my eyes nearly fell out of my head.
“I’m boring you,” he said. The amethyst gleam in his eye was completely extinguished.
“It’s a lot to take in, all at once.”
“You can’t tell anyone about this.”
“Why would I?”
He frowned and led me out of the room. Using my astounding powers of observation, I deduced that he was cranky because we’d taken too long getting to the sex. Even though I’d never had a boyfriend, or kissed anyone before that day, I had a good feeling if we got into the bedroom, the amethyst light would return to his eyes. And maybe elsewhere.
He moodily showed me the rest of the mansion, grunting monosyllabic explanations for the rooms. “Food,” he said when we toured the kitchen. “Guests,” he said of the smaller bedrooms. “Sleep,” he said when we reached the master bedroom.
I took his hand and tugged him to follow me over to the bed. “Just sleep? Nothing else comes to mind?”
He glanced away, feigning disinterest. I knew what he was up to. Playing hard to get. That little minx.
I tackled him onto the bed and started raining kisses down on his face. Each kiss left a mark, like the kisses my great-grandmother left at the bottom of her letters, except mine were gold and sparkly and magic.
Arturo gave me a sly smile and started kissing me back. At last, the magic was back on. No more playing hard to get.
His lean, muscular body tensed underneath me. Soon we were rolling, and he was on top of me. He pinned my arms and held me down as he nuzzled my chest through my clothes. I made a noise to let him know I liked it, but I hardly needed to. Golden sparks shot up from my body like it was the fourth of July.
“Take me,” I panted. “I’ve waited so long, Arturo. I want it to be you.”
He grabbed the front of my button-down shirt and yanked it apart, sending buttons flying. Then he kissed me all over as he removed the rest of my clothes. I writhed on the bed, somehow managing to find his shirt through the sparkly light show and rip it off. When our bare chests touched, there was an audible crackling, and then everything went still. The light drew back into our bodies, but I could feel it inside me, glowing.
I looked up into his beautiful eyes and said, “I love you.”
His face froze. “Zeb,” he said.
I reached down and grabbed for the button on his jeans. “Keep going,” I said huskily. “Forget I said that. It was just the light show. Come on, get your jeans off. I want you to fire your love rocket inside me.”
He pulled away and climbed off the bed. He backed toward the door.
“Zeb, it’s too dangerous.”
“Life is dangerous, Arturo. Get on the roller coaster. Don’t tell me you’re happy sitting on the carousel, going ’round and ’round, getting nowhere.”
“The carousel? I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“That makes two of us.”
We stared at each other in silence. I didn’t have Kenny there to hand me notes, so it took me a bit to gather my thoughts.
Finally, I said, “Embrace the danger, Mr. J. You can sit behind your computer screens and sit behind your desk to teach your classes, but you can’t control everything.” I smacked the bed sheets next to me. “Now get your freakishly cute body over here and let’s have a look at your squeezables.”
“I’m sorry.” He picked up his torn T-shirt from the floor, and turned his back to me.
“I’m naked,” I said. “If you walk out of this room, you’ll never get to see all of this again. Not until I’m on the cover of Rolling Stone, with a guitar tastefully hiding all the good bits.”
“I look forward to seeing that,” he said without the slightest hint of humor.
“Joking!” I cried out. “My bravado is all an act. I’ll never be on the cover of anything, except maybe a coupon book for the mall, and even then, it would just be my hands. I’m nobody.”
“You’re special.”
I snorted. Here was the best professor at the college telling me I was special. It filled me with rage.
“You’re special.”
I started yelling, “Great! Now you’ve gone and filled my head with this magic stuff, plus you tell me I’m special, and now I
think I might actually be someone. But you know what big dreams lead to? Big heartaches. And it will all be your fault when I fail. Damn you, Mr. J.”
“Damn me?”
“Damn you for seeing something special in me.”
I would have cursed him out for a whole bunch of things, including sexual frustration, but he was already gone.
I gathered up my things, gritting my teeth so I wouldn’t cry. Gritting my teeth didn’t work. I don’t know why people do it, because it only makes the crying more painful.
He wrecked my blouse, so I searched through his closet for something to wear home. I picked out the blue shirt he’d been wearing the first day we met, and put it on.
I left the bedroom and I found him in the kitchen, peeling labels off plastic storage containers and printing out new labels with a Dyno-brand label-maker.
“Would you be okay if I borrow your shirt?”
“I’m okay,” he said.
He was okay? I didn’t want him to be okay.
I scratched the back of my head and groaned like the dog did when it had fleas, because it seemed like the right thing to do after someone rejects you during a sex date.
Arturo snapped his fingers to get my attention, and nodded to a business card that lay on the kitchen counter between us.
Owl Plaza, Room #142
Sundays, 3pm
No peanuts or dairy.
“That’s the local coven,” he said. “You should have registered with them your first day in town, but since you didn’t know, they’ll probably let you off with a warning.”
“I’m not really a joiner, in case you haven’t noticed. I need to do my own thing. Is there a website or something where I can get the basics? When do I learn spells?”
“Just go to the meeting,” he said.
“Will you be there?”
“No. I only go to the AGMs.”
“AGMs? I’m dying of boredom already.”
“Just go,” he said. “Promise me you’ll go. Your magic is powerful, and I’m worried someone could get hurt.”
I grabbed the card from the counter and gave him a dirty look. “I’ll go to this stupid coven, and you know what else? I’m going to re-enroll back into your composition class.”
Witches and Ghosts Supernatural Mysteries Page 85