She laughed and took another gulp of beer. Kera hung nearby, curious.
“No,” Ph.D. Lady continued, “off-duty, I’m ready for some nice simple conversation and a night of quality humping. And let me tell you, sister,” she nodded, “muscular guys have all the energy that’s required. God, I’m going to be so sore all weekend!” She broke off, tittering, but forced herself back to composure as her suitor returned from the men’s room.
Kera laughed along, but once she was able to get away from the pair, she rolled her eyes. “Man, older people! What the heck do they do with their lives? They’re acting more like kids than I do.”
The night proceeded with no sign of Chris. Business was steady but by no means overwhelming, and Kera racked up a decent haul in tips by the time 2:00 rolled around. She announced last call and served the final drinks, then helped Cevin shoo off the stragglers so they could close up shop.
In addition to the manager, Kera, Stephanie, and one other bartender were still present.
“Okay, everyone,” Cevin announced, “Friday is payday, and it’s technically Friday, so those of you who are here can have your checks now. Unless you want to come in for them tomorrow if you’re not working, I guess.”
No one did, of course, so he handed them out. Kera was last in line, and Cevin motioned for her to wait and listen once she’d accepted hers.
“Yes?” she asked.
Cevin waited as the others filed out.
“You might remember that when I gave you a few days off,” he said quietly, “after your bike got shot up, I said I felt bad and that I’d compensate you for the time you couldn’t work. Well, I’m as good as my word, and your check for this pay period reflects that. I figure it’s only fair since in this town, being more than twenty-four hours without a ride is like being on crutches or something. Consider it a settlement for all your trouble.”
Kera had pretty much forgotten about that with everything else going on lately. “Oh, yeah, right. Thanks, Cevin. It’ll help. And I’m sorry about yesterday. I got wrapped up trying to help a friend after I forgot to sleep, and I passed out like an idiot. It won’t happen again.”
Cevin locked up the cash register. “Sounds good. I saw how tired you were, and you did a pretty good job regardless. Judging by what your apartment looked like, I can tell it wasn’t because you were, y’know, getting into trouble. I can tell when someone’s been on a bender, and you look pretty straight-laced.”
Kera mock-glared, her hands going to her hips. “Oh, really? How would you know that?” She wasn’t angry, but she felt obliged to fuck with him if he was going to say something like that. “For all you know, I might have had a wild party with dozens of different drugs, three guys at once…”
He didn’t look at her, just chuckled. “As long as you keep coming to work, it’s none of my business. If that’s what you want to do, it’s your call.”
Finished with his final chores, he walked past her and motioned for her to follow as he did a final scan of the security cams and double-checked a couple of things in his office.
Kera wasn’t finished. “It isn’t what I want to do, but I’m not boring.”
He glanced at her with an arched eyebrow. “Never said you were.”
Kera followed as he opened the rear door. “You kinda did, dude. ‘Oh, Kera, she’s so straight-laced, she never does anything exciting.’”
“Mmm,” Cevin murmured. He scanned the parking lot, decided the coast was clear, and they stepped out. “Let the record show that you were the one who decided to read into my words. If you want to have wild orgies with multiple guys and a pile of drugs, that’s fine, but don’t do it because you’re trying to be interesting.”
She scowled, annoyed that they were seconds away from their respective vehicles since she felt like there was a good five minutes’ worth of argument remaining, maybe more. She decided to flip the script on him this time.
“Hey,” she riposted, “maybe I meant platonically. Like, having dudes come over to watch car shows or something.”
Cevin stopped and turned to stare at her.
“What?” she asked.
He shook his head and smiled, looking vaguely wistful. “Never stop being so naïve. It looks cute on you.”
She smacked his shoulder. “Does my paycheck include mental-health hazard pay? It should.”
“No.” He pulled his truck keys out of his pocket. “I’d have to take money out. Oh, just so you know, I’ll be moving everyone to electronic deposit starting next week. The bank finally cleared me to do that.”
Kera snorted. “After eighteen months?”
Cevin opened his driver’s side door. “It’s been an affair to remember,” he admitted. “And perhaps I was a little lazy. A little. Goodnight.”
Kera watched him climb into the truck and fire up the engine, then decided it was time to do the same with her bike. She’d been engrossed in their little discussion, but with Cevin gone, there was no reason for her to hang around a dark parking lot in the wee hours of the morning.
Especially not this one.
For the first time in a while, life seemed halfway normal. As she rode, Kera let herself relax. Every time she went into the alley to get Zee, she remembered her confrontation with the asshole.
You need to let it go, she told herself. The memories will fade with time.
But it bothered her. She hadn’t been able to stand her ground when he attacked them, and it was only luck on her end that he’d shot Zee instead of her. She couldn’t be repaired as easily.
As she’d found when she took on the jerks trying to steal the Mercedes, she was far from being a vigilante superhero. Even with her augmented luck, she hadn’t beaten them as handily as she wanted to.
It could have gone very wrong.
Healing people is good enough, she told herself. It was safer. Most people never got the chance to do something like help someone fight cancer or pull people out of a burning wreck. If Kera played her cards right, she had a long life ahead of her, full of events like that.
She ignored the nagging sense that it wasn’t enough. It had felt good to help Mrs. Kim, not to mention the people in the burning car, but something in her rebelled at the idea that she wouldn’t even try to stop injustice.
She clenched her jaw and tried to relax. When she was home with the door locked behind her and her leathers off, she looked at herself in the bathroom mirror.
“It’s enough,” she told herself. “Don’t get in over your head.”
But something in recognized that she wasn’t going to be able to rest until she knew she wasn’t helpless.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
It had not been a good morning.
James and LeBlanc walked slowly back down the sidewalk toward James’s parked Rolls Royce. James hated this particular part of his job, and he suspected his companion did as well. Magic was rare, rare enough to bind those who practiced it into a tight-knit group, and powerful enough that they had to be careful about who could wield it.
When someone had the aptitude but lacked the other qualities they needed, certain measures had to be taken.
They had found the boy and confirmed that his capabilities were not a fluke. In fact, he demonstrated a lot of power and potential.
But he’d been unable to control it and was too willful and abrasive. He’d shown a marked tendency to ignore suggestions and instructions and rebel against them out of spite. Someone like that couldn’t be trusted with the abilities of a miracle-worker.
Lovecraft and LeBlanc had been left with no choice but to bind his powers, so they had collaborated on a spell that would defeat any further effusions of magic he might attempt and block him from learning more or advancing as a thaumaturgist. It was tragic and in some ways, a violation, but the danger was too great. The boy was a danger to others and himself. That didn’t make it easier.
Lovecraft shook his head. “Such potential.” He sighed.
“I know,” LeBlanc said quietly, “but
it wouldn’t have worked. We both know that. That boy’s power had a leak, and he was too stubborn to learn. If all that magical force were to crack on him during his training, it could kill him. Maybe other people, too.”
James made a fist for a second, then released it. “I just hate that our first one out of this process had to be dampened. So discouraging.”
His shoulders slumped another notch. Willow trees swayed in the warm spring breeze as the thaumaturgists trudged along. The afternoon was fading to evening, with the light gaining that bronzed quality James had always found oddly bittersweet.
His dejection must have been even more obvious than he’d guessed since Mother LeBlanc made a small, comforting sound in her throat and put a hand on his arm.
“There, there, James,” she said, and there was no sarcasm or irony in her tone. “We were both looking forward to this. We’ve needed new students to continue our tradition for a long time, but it’s always been an uncertain business, hasn’t it? Realistically, what with so many new prospects in such a short time, we couldn’t have expected to find one who’d work for us right out of the gate. This was only the first try. There will be others.”
He sighed. “Yeah, I suppose you’re right. I just wish you weren’t. No offense.”
“None taken.” She gave his arm a final pat and walked around to the passenger’s side of the car, their trudge down the sidewalk having reached its end. “As long as your qualms are with reality and not with me.”
He smiled.
Once they both were within the car, James slumped in his seat, and his head drooped forward to rest against the steering wheel. He let out his breath in a long, slow, rattling sound of defeat.
“Where to next?” Mother LeBlanc asked briskly. “There was another candidate in South Carolina, wasn’t there?
Making a faint grumbling noise, James checked his tablet, where he’d marked the locations of their prospects.
“Uh, not far. Looks like somewhere around Morris Island.”
LeBlanc gave a slow nod and the hint of a smile. “Any good barbecue down there?” She closed the door beside her and folded her hands in her lap, smoothing out the wafting folds of her dress.
“Oh!” James raised an eyebrow and perked up as suddenly as if she’d stuck a hypodermic needle filled with caffeine in his arm. “I believe I heard that Melvin’s Legendary BBQ is down that way. Come to think of it,” he adjusted his glasses, “maybe we can get a solid lead and a solid dinner.”
The witch-woman conceded the point but allowed her tone of voice to grow sterner and more serious. “Perhaps. Yet, what are we going to do when we find someone we can teach who isn’t a grown adult? This isn’t the nineteenth century.”
James flapped a hand in annoyance as he fired up the engine. “Let’s worry about that when we come to it. Besides, if our first effort was a fair indication, we might not have to worry about it for quite some time.”
“Don’t be negative,” LeBlanc chided. “One dead end doesn’t mean that every end will be equally dead. We might well run through a hundred opportunities in search of the right one to bring into the fold, and it will be well worth it.”
As Lovecraft checked the street and piloted the Rolls into it, he could only mutter, “If they don’t have their power crack, then yeah.”
His partner shook her head. “I wouldn’t want that for anyone.” She reached into her skirt. “Would you like a croissant?”
James glanced at the flaky golden pastry resting in LeBlanc’s hand and wondered as he turned right at the next intersection, “How the hell do you keep them warm?”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Ted nudged Christian with his elbow. “So, are we doing this tonight?”
Christian looked at him vaguely. He was still coming back to reality after an excessively long All Staff meeting that had included satellite offices and some executives from New York.
Their weekly department meetings were a horror show, but this had been a two-hour snooze-fest, punctuated with corporate speak and exhortations comparing their work to war.
Christian had never been deployed, but he was fairly sure his work in a cubicle in no way compared to charging into battle.
“Dude.” Ted plucked Christian’s mug out of his fingers and filled it from the machine. “Wake up. Did you go into standby or something? Is that an IT trick? Can you teach me?”
“God, I wish.” Christian held up the mug. “Thanks. Cheers.” He sipped. “And, sorry, what? Are we doing what tonight?”
“Going back to the Mermaid,” Ted said, enunciating each word carefully as if explaining a concept to a toddler.
“Oh.” Christian put the cup on the table nearby. “I don’t…meh.”
“Dude.” Ted pointed at one of the chairs, indicating that Christian should sit down, then sat in another. “You want to see her again, right?”
“I mean, yeah, but—”
“And you realize the odds of that are low if you, I don’t know, don’t go back.”
“Yes.” Christian had to admit his friend had a point.
“You didn’t go back too soon and get all stalker-y. That’s good,” Ted said encouragingly. “You just gotta close this.”
“Why did you have to say that?”
“Say what?”
“’Close this.’ I don’t do well with that stuff. Trust me. I subscribed to GQ for a full year. None of it ever worked for me.”
“I see.” Ted sipped his coffee. “So, I’m misremembering the part where you wandered into a bar and talked IT crap with a goddess and she remembered you, remembered your favorite beer, and wants to see you again.”
“Uh…” Christian was certain this was a trap, but he didn’t know how to avoid it.
“My point is,” Ted said, “call it what you want, but you’ve done well. You trusted me enough to go in and talk to her, and that went great, right? Trust me one more time.”
Christian heaved a deep, put-upon sigh. “You’re only saying this now because you know I’m not all there after that meeting.”
“Maybe.” Ted grinned. “So, I ask again…are we doing this tonight?” He stared Christian down.
There was no getting out of this without agreeing. Christian sighed again and took a gulp of his coffee, delaying as long as he could. He’d been enjoying the idea that he could go into the bar again and get Kera’s number.
The fantasies might not be as good as the real thing, but if he struck out, he was going to have to give up even those.
It was a good thing Ted was relentless.
Christian nodded. “Fine. We’re doing this.”
“Atta boy.” Ted clapped him on the shoulder and stood up. “See you at six.”
Johnny’s Mustang crept slowly down the street. He made no particular effort to be inconspicuous, but he didn’t do anything that would draw attention to himself either. This was one of the few times he didn’t want to be noticed.
He turned into the alley and crept by slowly, seeing no one around, then turned down the main street, peering down the alley as he passed.
It was about 10:15 in the morning, not an hour when most bars were bustling. As Johnny understood it, some owners would show up early, especially on or right before the weekends to get everything ready for the peak business to come.
He didn’t see anyone, but he decided to do a walk by as well. He parked a few streets away and came back, making sure not to look like he was hurrying. Under his jacket, the Beretta felt good and solid in its shoulder holster. He doubted he’d need to use it this time since using it the first time had made the point. Still, though the gun’s existence would be presumed any time he showed up, it would be foolish not to have it.
He peered in the windows a couple of times, but there was no sound or light or movement from the building. If by some chance the cops, private security, or a concerned citizen popped up, he would just say he was a salesman hoping the Mermaid’s proprietor was around.
But no one noticed, and no one was the
re.
“Lazy chingado,” Johnny muttered. “Who doesn’t work their own bar in the morning?”
He shut up before he allowed himself to say anything more. They’d probably replaced their security cameras, he realized, and there was a chance there were some around the rest of the building that recorded audio as well as video.
Granted, there wasn’t much risk now. They hadn’t gotten a good look at him the last time he’d been here, and he was wearing massive sunglasses. He’d parked his car in a different lot the night he’d made his initial offer, so there was no way they could associate his Mustang with that little event.
Still, risk or not, it bothered him to have wasted a trip.
“Well,” he said as he headed back to his vehicle, “let it be said that I tried to do this the polite way and keep it out of everyone else’s hair.”
He gave one last look over his shoulder at the Mermaid. For a place he’d pegged as second-tier, it had cost him a lot of trouble.
That would end tonight.
Kera’s phone rang at 11:00. She saw the clock before she saw the screen, and therefore did not bother asking who it was as she sat up in bed and put the phone to her ear.
“Hello, Mother,” she said through a mouth sticky and muffled from sleep.
“Hello, Kera.” Even accounting for the time difference, the other woman sounded disgustingly energetic. “How are you doing, dear? I hope you’re getting up earlier. It’s not natural for human beings to wake up after noon, regardless of what work schedule they’re on.”
Kera rubbed crust from her eye. “Well, today I got up earlier than usual.”
“Oh, good.” Her mother was either oblivious to the joke or ignoring it. “Anyway, I’ve been waiting to hear from you about that old college flame you mentioned, but I haven’t heard a peep. Has he looked you up again? It was a week ago last night, wasn’t it?”
How to be a Badass Witch Page 21