by Tijan
Micaela’s Big Bad
A Halloween Novella
Tijan
Copyright © 2020 by Tijan
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover Design: Regina Wamba
Editor: Elaine York, Allusion Graphics
Proofreaders: Crystal R Solis, Amy English, Paige Smith, Kara Hildebrand, Chris O’Neil Parece
For all the readers who love Halloween,
and a little bit of magic.
Contents
1. Jay Happened
2. Something Something
3. Thank You. Jeez
4. Squeak, Splash
5. Who’s The Big Bad?
6. The Big Bad
7. Ribbit!
8. Ohmygod!
9. Sire Bad Ass
10. Quesadilla
11. She/I
12. Harry Bahls’
13. Anti-Climactic
14. My Business
15. Rakon
16. Fucking Brad
17. Post-Halloween Party
18. Quesadilla Bitch
19. Yes
20. Explain Yourself
21. Don’t Calm Me
22. So Girly
23. Halloween
Acknowledgments
Also By Tijan
1
Jay Happened
The only thing standing between me and me getting drunk was a naked four-year-old.
He was my best friend’s nephew, and he was swinging his little penis in the air, staring at it, smiling and giggling, and clapping his hands with glee. He was also standing just inside the door, and I was standing on the doorstep, a full bottle of whiskey needing to be drank, and he wouldn’t let me in.
“Heya, Bud.”
More laughing.
He clapped.
He was shaking his little hips as if it were the first time he’d learned how to shake those hips.
“Bud.”
That was actually his name.
“What?”
I nodded to the doorhandle. “Let me in.”
“No.” He hit the lock—shit, my hands were full, but why hadn’t I just grabbed for the handle, anyway?—and took off running.
Crap.
I had a bulging backpack on me. Three grocery bags were hanging from one of my arms, the same one I had my coffee in. My other free hand held the whiskey. I knew my priorities. Also, the grocery bags were filled with my clothes, or at least what I had been able to grab in a desperate speed-round of packing.
I went so fast. If there was a speed packing race, I could’ve been a contender.
Not a winner, a contender. After all, I was realistic about my abilities.
The most extraordinary thing about me was my long hair. I had long dark hair.
Jay used to whisper how he liked to twine it in his hands when he—nope. Not going there.
But this was me. Micaela Nadeem, an energist who didn’t use my energist side. Middle of the road. Some might say boring. I played everything safe. No risks in life. Not great at anything, but not bad at anything either.
Even leaving my boyfriend, I half-assed it. I took what I could, and bolted.
And I threw a fork.
I should’ve thrown a knife. At least a knife? Why not go totally lame and toss a spoon instead? Nope. A fork. I was a fork girl. A fork non-energist energist.
My car was full of blankets, what bathroom toiletries I’d been able to grab, and all my schoolwork, because this fork girl still needed to finish two courses before I had a bachelor’s in communications. What I planned to do with that? I hadn’t a clue. See my theme here.
I barely knew what I was going to do past tomorrow, so the future was totally up in the air.
I was not, what someone would call, a planner.
Who are those people?
They’re a species I’ll never understand.
I tried hitting the doorbell with my elbow.
Nothing. I chafed against the wall instead.
I tried a second time.
Rin—
It cut out.
Great.
I had two options. Put my stuff down, find my phone (I had no idea which bag I’d stuffed it in) and try her that way. Bud was here, so chances were high that Nikki was babysitting, but her phone always seemed off so the probability of that working was nil.
My other choice: “Nikki! Nikki! NIKKI!”
She came out from the back hallway, her shirt hanging down one arm, doing up her pants, and her hair was all frayed everywhere.
I—
I couldn’t.
Not at all.
Her eyes went wide seeing me, and she cringed.
Her face was all red and splotchy.
Her lips swollen.
She came over, cursing under her breath, and unlocked the door. She opened the door, stepping back. I stepped in, and hissed under my own breath, “You just got laid! While you’re babysitting!”
More cringing from her, but she shut both doors and swung around to me. “I—” She took in my bags, and surmised the contents in my bag, and her eyes got round all over again. “Oh no, Cale.”
I wrinkled my nose at her. “Don’t ‘Cale’ me in that tone. Babysitting. You! Bud locked the door on me.”
“Bud?!” She whirled around.
And Bud decided to come running back down the hall, yelling at the top of his lungs, arms in the air. Still naked.
“Bud!” she gasped, rushing to him. “What are you doing here?”
She lunged right.
He jumped left.
She jumped left.
He dodged, then climbed up on a chair.
“BUD!”
Still giggling, he got up on the kitchen counter, and ran the length of it. He was fast approaching the point where he’d be caught or have to jump because across from him was the refrigerator.
I heard Nikki draw in a swift breath of air, at the exact same time as I held mine.
He launched—
“BU—”
He was caught mid-air by two muscular arms.
He was curled up to a very manly and shirtless chest, and he was carried the rest of the way into the living area where I was still standing, still holding all my bags, still clutching that whiskey because I was still hoping to crack this sucker open tonight and drown every last sorrow.
“Uncle Cream!” We were still on the high-pitched theme here. That was coming from Bud, and he was pulling with all his might at his Uncle Brad’s hair.
There was a story behind why Brad was nicknamed Cream, but I never heard it—actually, I never wanted to hear it. I was hoping to go through my entire life not knowing…and now onto the weird family awkwardness here.
Brad and Nikki were not boyfriend/girlfriend, or at least I hadn’t been updated on an official relationship status.
What they were, though, were siblings to Bud’s parents. Nikki’s sister married Brad’s brother, and their first shindig that resulted in my best friend having to do up her pants happened the night their siblings were married.
Do the math.
Bud was four.
Nikki’s sister didn’t get preggo until the honeymoon.
Brad ending up in Nikki’s bed, on and off, had been going on for a long-ass time. I say it like that because there are always after-shocks whenever Brad comes around.
Then, he would leave.
Nikki had tried closing up the bedsheets to him, but he could charm and seduce her and say all the nice words to her to get those sheets back opened pretty much any time
he deemed her worthy.
He’d hotfoot out, and Nikki would get a text from one of our other girls (we had a lot around town), and there’d be a picture of Brad curled around another girl.
They were back and forth so much, and it’d been going on for almost four years.
This wasn’t my drama, but I was her best friend, and I was pulling the best friend card and admitting only to myself that I was tired of the Brad-drama. Also, not shocked that he’d bring Bud around when he was hooking up with Nikki. How he got Bud into the house without Nikki seeing him before the bed-capades was something I also didn’t want to know all the details about because Nikki was all looking shocked at seeing her nephew naked.
And in her house.
“What’s up, Nadeem?”
I grimaced. “Don’t speak to me.”
Uncle Cream was the most real-life version of someone who reminded me of Billy Hargrove from Stranger Things. The difference was that Uncle Cream had straight hair, not curly hair. That was it. He could’ve been his twin, both physically and personality wise.
“Brad,” Nikki snapped, but my best friend wasn’t paying much attention to her recent lay. She was back to looking at me. Studying my bags. Studying the booze in my hand.
She noticed before, but got distracted. She was back to noticing and she was figuring it out.
My best friend was catching up here.
“Jay?” she asked.
Nope. That most definitely wasn’t a frog in my throat. And it hadn’t doubled in size when I nodded back.
“Yeah,” I rasped.
Another cringe from her, mixed with a pitying look. I hated the pitying look.
The frog just did a loud-ass ribbit.
I looked away, and shuffled back because I knew what was going to happen. She would herd Uncle Cream and Bud, no—she’d make sure Bud got clothes on first—and once they were gone, she’d take my whiskey from me. She’d go to the kitchen. She’d pull out some drink glasses, put in some of the nice cubed ice she always keeps on hand for me, and we’d pour ourselves a drink. After that, it’d either be a veg-out night, which I was now wondering how that phrase came about? Because we’d sit, talk, fill each other in, and we’d drink. Pizza would either get ordered, or we’d go the other way.
We’d drink. Talk. And decide we needed to go out.
It was Halloween, a night we both avoided because we were usually insulted by how humans viewed us, but… Jay happened.
2
Something Something
“He was in mid-thrust?”
We were an hour into drinking, and Nikki jerked toward me, sloshing her drink on the way.
She didn’t notice.
“Mid-thrust.”
I’d relayed the story of how I came home early from work, heard the moaning and groaning from the bedroom, and thought Jay was watching porn. That was it. That’s all I thought.
I should’ve known better.
I did know better. That was the thing.
I had found texts on his phone three months earlier.
Silly me, right? Stupid me, more likely.
“Four years, Nik.”
She moaned with me. “I know. Four years.”
Fuck.
Four years.
“He was my high school crush.”
“He was. You liked him for so long.”
I did.
I had.
“You were, like, pathetic about it too. Like, really, really pathetic about it.”
“Uh…”
“You wrote him poems. You drew hearts with his name in them on all the desks you sat in. You’d stare at him in every class you both had. You were the water girl for the football team, and had a special bedazzled water bottle just for him.”
“Um.”
“It was pink, with his name in a circle.”
“Okay—”
“You offered to drive him home all the time, and you didn’t have a car. You started taking cooking lessons from his mom, and you don’t cook. You’re banned from your own kitchen by your landlord. Or you were, when you lived with him, I mean…”
An awkward silence.
Not for Nik, apparently.
She was only taking a breath.
And breath taken. “You used to slip him anonymous letters.” She reached for her glass. It sloshed again. “I never told you, but Becca Harris saw you slip a letter into his locker one day.”
“She did?”
“She did.” She took a messy drink. It sloshed down her throat. “She told Jay it was from you.”
She paused, frowning. Her head cocked to the side. “I never told you about that.”
I gritted my teeth. “No. You certainly did not.”
She was still frowning to herself. “I should’ve told you. There was a reason I didn’t tell you.” She went back to thinking. “I can’t remember it now.”
I wanted to growl at her.
Screw it. I did. I bared my teeth too.
She just laughed, finishing her drink.
Shoving her chair back, she stood. “I need another drink—OH MY GOD! I forgot it’s Halloween tonight.”
“Yeah…?”
She looked at the clock, then grabbed for her phone, and she screamed again. “I’m supposed to work tonight.”
“What?! We never do anything on Halloween.”
“No—” But she was off, racing to her bedroom.
She came back, still rushing, and grabbed the whiskey before hightailing once again. She yelled over her shoulder on the way, “Grab my glass and follow me. I’m late, and I can’t be more late.”
“What?”
But I did as she asked.
With my own drink topped off, I took the rest of hers. She was in the bathroom, her make-up scattered everywhere. I grabbed her glass, filling it.
Sitting on her bed, facing her in the bathroom, I gripped my glass tightly. “You said you’d work Halloween tonight?”
I have to stress how this was so not normal.
We didn’t do Halloween.
Halloween was for humans, not for us. Not for those of us who were ‘other’ than just human.
They dressed up like us, and it was beyond insulting.
Contrary to everyone’s opinion, we weren’t ‘sexy fill-in-the-blank’ all the freaking time.
I watched Nikki finish her makeup (record time) and disappear into her closet. Literally. Nikki was a demon. Not all demons were equal in their powers, but Nik had been working on her teleportation lately. Which was whoa, you know? Teleportation is huge in our circles, and my girl was achieving it. Granted, she could only teleport five feet away, but that’s something in my book.
She came back a second later in black leather pants and a black leather corset. Her hair was up and she whispered a few words. As she did, her hair started braiding itself. It wasn’t something she always did, but only at times like this—when she was late for work.
Her powers were growing more and more.
Not all demons are naturals. When Nik started trying to braid her hair, the scrunchie just kept flying through the hair. There used to be injuries, of everyone in the room except her.
“Nik!”
“What?”
“Why are you working tonight?”
She worked at a nightclub. Bass. All kinds went there, meaning ours and theirs. The humans. It was known as one of the most exclusive clubs in the Western Hemisphere. (That’s our speak, not humans.) Humans don’t talk like that. They’d say it’s one of the most exclusive clubs in the nation or something like that. They only cared about country borders, state lines, county rules. Not us. We paid attention to territory, and Bass was straight up the best on our side of the world.
Nikki had been working there for the last year, and her powers had been getting stronger ever since. It was also known as a demon bar, where most of the employees were demons. I used to question it at first, but when she seemed to have her power in check, I backed off.
Power corrupted, or t
ended to corrupt, and I didn’t want to lose her.
She hadn’t answered my question. Her mind was distracted, and I could feel her communicating with someone else. It was my thing. I could see, feel, and hear energy, and with Nik right now, her energy was spreading out from her, completely leaving the room we were in.
I shoved up. “Nik! I’m getting alarmed here.”
She snapped back to our room, all her energy focusing back around her. “You didn’t finish telling me about Jay.”
“What?”
“Jay. We were mid-thrust. He was mid-thrust.”
Right. Because that was important here.
My boyfriend whom I’d known all my life, crushed on all through high school, had finally gotten together the last summer before college and had been living with the last two years, had cheated on me. At this point, I was more distracted why she was panicked about missing work tonight.
Her energy was off. Way off and it had turned on a dime.
There was a layer underneath that I’d never seen before. It was dark and swirly, and it surrounded her completely. It was clinging tightly to her body too. Nik’s energy was never that tight usually. It usually just circled her like a fun-loving mist, and she had lots of pastel and sparkly colors intermixed. Good time Nik, almost always happy and content.
Actually, for a demon, she was all about the happy joy joy, you know?
I rattled off, “Jay was in mid-thrust into some vampire. It’s whatever. I threw a fork at him, then a picture. And a few more pictures. I might’ve ripped down his favorite painting. I said a lot of shit, packed my bags, and I showed up at your place to get drunk.”
She was putting on her heels.
Her clutch was next.
She was looking around.
Her phone was on the nightstand.
She grabbed it, and she was heading for the door. She had asked me to finish, and now was so distracted that it was insulting, “Then what?”