She and Julie, her assistant and apprentice, were waiting on several customers when I entered. The women Julie was helping were obviously tourists, and the two young women Kirsten was speaking with were obviously mages—flashy, expensive outfits, and patronizing attitudes.
Kirsten’s shop seemed much smaller than it actually was, segmented into cozy rooms, each displaying a different kind of merchandise. The front room displayed artifacts and tools, such as athames, cauldrons, candles and stands, altar cloths and tapestries, and other decorative and symbolic items. Actually, it looked a lot like our living room at home.
In another room, she sold charms of different sorts and jewelry that wasn’t magikal at all. A different room contained potions, tinctures, poultices, and other items for healing and preservation of health, and then there was the room with herbs, medicinal plants, and raw ingredients that she supplied to other witches. Her workshop and laboratory were at the very rear of the building.
There were two greenhouses—one on the roof and one in the back of the building. She hadn’t told me which one had the pump problem, so I started with the roof. I took the stairs past the second floor and emerged on the roof.
The view of the harbor was breathtaking, and we often sat out there in nice weather, enjoying a drink and watching the sunset. It was a good place to tourist-watch as well.
I walked around the greenhouse, listening for ‘funny noises’ but didn’t hear anything unusual. I went inside and checked out the two pumps—one for the irrigation system, the other for the air conditioning—but wasn’t able to make either one misbehave.
There were two sets of stairs to the roof—the one I came up on the inside of the store, and one in the back on the outside of the building. I took that one down and met Kirsten coming out the back door.
“I take it the bad pump is in this greenhouse?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she answered. “It goes dubomp-dubomp-dubomp when it starts up and when it turns off.”
“I can see where that might be a problem. Is there a particular tune you would rather that it played?”
“A quiet, humming one, like it used to.”
I determined that the irrigation pump had a bad bearing, and both the drive shaft and the impeller needed replacing.
“You need to order some parts,” I told her, writing down the descriptions and part numbers. “I can spell the bad pump so that it works until we get the parts in, but don’t wait to order them. That pump has a month or two at best, and then you’ll be wandering around with a watering can.”
I cast a spell on the pump, then we went back inside the store, and I asked, “Sell anything expensive to those mages?”
Her face twisted into a sneer. “Dumb bitches. I swear, mages are the worst, especially the rich ones. No, I don’t sell poisons so you can kill your boyfriend’s lover. My roommate is a cop, and she gets all upset when I help murder people.”
I laughed. “You’re joking, right?”
“I wish I was. Dani, if we didn’t have any scruples, we could get rich just supplying nastiness for all the petty little feuds the Families engage in when they get bored.”
“We could get dead doing that, too,” I said.
“Yeah, I know. And I’d feel bad if someone died because of me, but sometimes…”
“Keep working on that spell to turn assholes into frogs.”
Kirsten chuckled. “Oh, how I wish.”
“Order those parts, and I’ll see you at home,” I said.
Chapter 12
I was just drying off after a shower when Kirsten got home. While we were getting ready to go out, I told her about Jeri’s offer, and she laughed.
“Motorcycle mama? I’ll have to get you a t-shirt with that on it.”
For me, getting dressed to go out dancing didn’t involve much beyond what I wore to work. I put on some makeup and a fresh shirt. But Kirsten didn’t believe in giving men a chance. If every eye in the place wasn’t tracking her, she felt like a failure. We had known each other for twenty years, and I had never been sure whether she had a hidden insecurity complex or was simply the most competitive woman I’d ever met. Considering the way she ran her business, the latter was a distinct possibility.
We took ourselves out to dinner at Jenny’s, more formally known as the Kitchen Witch Café. Neither of us was hurting for money, and we could have gone to the fanciest place in town, but the food wouldn’t have been as good.
On the inside, the Kitchen Witch looked like an old farmhouse, with checked table cloths and homey pictures on the walls. Jenny didn’t use a compu-menu. The basic comfort foods were always available and listed on signs hanging on the walls. The daily specials, including all the baked goods and desserts, were listed on chalkboards hanging next to the printed menus. That part depended on what ingredients were available that day and Jenny’s mood. Jenny refused to cook anything that had come across the Rift so you had to go elsewhere for truly exotic dishes. For table service, she employed two brownies as waitresses.
It being Baltimore, such things as fresh fish, crab cakes, oysters, and shrimp were always available, along with brussels sprouts and mac-and-cheese in various flavors. And considering the desserts, just walking into the place could add five pounds before you even sat down.
Kirsten and Jenny grew up in the same neighborhood, and she came out of the kitchen to chat a bit after we gave the brownie waitress our orders. I ordered the bouillabaisse, and Kirsten opted for a ribeye steak. We shared an appetizer of clams casino, and for dessert we split a piece of Boston crème pie—one of those things that always made me wonder if it really came from Boston. Since the city was long gone to radioactive hell before I was born, I figured I’d never know.
With the exceptions of Baltimore, Montreal, Wilmington, and Jacksonville, every major harbor city on the east coast had been bombed at least once during the five nuclear wars. Why Baltimore had been overlooked was a mystery, but the Mid-Atlantic Metropolitan Complex stretched from Wilmington down to Northeast Washington, west almost to the Appalachian foothills, and was the largest city on the continent. What had been separate cities before, such as Annapolis, were now considered neighborhoods.
We rode down to the nightclub district in the hills north of the Baltimore harbor. Before all the dislocations and wars and climate changes, the harbor had been smaller, but the low-lying areas had flooded when the oceans rose. When we were kids, we could still see the tops of some of the old buildings sticking up above the water, but those had all been demolished, and new marinas built for rich people’s yachts. Beyond the marinas were luxury high-rise condos, hotels, and fancy restaurants—all built above any possible tidal and storm surges.
And beyond that to the west of the harbor were areas that had been rundown prior to the pandemics and the wars. They hadn’t gotten any better over the years, and in some places, they’d taken a distinct downturn.
Just as in human society, there were demons and vampires who were lazy, had low intelligence, or had personality defects that interfered in their social abilities. Human slums were bad. Vampire slums were worse, and the cops didn’t even try to police the demon slums. We just walled them off as best we could.
Kirsten and I parked our bikes in a garage, and I set the alarms, then we strolled out to see what the night would bring.
Two women, dressed in tight—in my case—or tight and skimpy—in Kirsten’s case—clothes, out alone at night in a part of town where everyone was looking for some kind of trouble, usually attracted trouble. We walked down the street and encountered sex demons of all five genders, human hookers and gigolos, drug dealers of every sort, leprechaun and imp pick-pockets, and the inevitable street-corner preachers trying to save our souls.
We had grown up with all of the craziness and barely noticed it.
Without even talking about it, we ducked into the doorway of the Gaslight Grill and grabbed a four-top near the bar. I keyed the comm, and the human bartender looked up and gave us a grin. “What will it
be, ladies?”
We ordered and sat back, surveying the crowd. Mostly human, with a fair sprinkling of magik users. A couple of shifters and a succubus sat at the bar. It was still early, and we knew the meat market dance clubs wouldn’t be revving up for a couple of more hours. The Gaslight was a good place to get a buzz on without paying outrageous prices for watered down drinks, so it was usually our first stop.
Going out with Kirsten always meant two things—there would be a lot of men hanging around us, and we wouldn’t have to pay for our drinks because…see number one. So, by the time we decided to head out for a higher level of excitement, we were both fairly lit and left a number of would-be lotharios feeling disappointed and with lighter pockets.
Of course, we didn’t make it ten feet down the street before we were accosted the first time. Most incubi didn’t waste their time once they saw their influence didn’t work on us, so they usually weren’t a problem. Vampires were a little slower. My theory was that they came from a less competitive world than demons did, so their brains weren’t as developed. But humans were the worst. Not the gigolos, but the drunks.
“Hey, baby. Lookin’ fer a party?”
Ignoring them worked sometimes. But a guy who towered over me reached out and grabbed Kirsten as she walked past him. Now, I’ve got four inches and forty pounds on my roomie, but she’s a long way from petite. Next to lover boy, she looked like a little girl. The top of her head barely reached his chest.
I started to get involved—a euphemism for tearing his head off—but Kirsten simply looked up at him and said in an even voice, “Let go of me or you’ll be singing soprano.”
“Aw, don’t be like that, darlin’. You and me gonna have a good time.”
“I don’t think so.” She reached out and grabbed his crotch. His pants immediately burst into flames, and he let go of her. Kirsten stepped back and turned to me. “Shall we go?”
As we walked away, I couldn’t help but look back over my shoulder as lover boy and his friend tried to beat out the flames. The tall man’s shrieks were climbing into the soprano range already.
“Nice spell,” I said.
She grinned. “People think that witches just collect herbs, mix potions, and create charms. They forget that we occasionally dabble in poisons and hexes, and some of us have nasty dispositions. And any witch who can’t kindle a flame isn’t much of a witch. I mean, keeping track of matches is such a pain.”
Kirsten didn’t normally have a nasty disposition, but she didn’t suffer fools.
We wandered down the street, enjoying the show around us, and stopping at Mythic Creations for a dark chocolate fix. Including us, the people out on the streets in Baltimore’s inner harbor on a Friday night were there to see and be seen and to have a good time. Due to different segments of the population having different fashion ideas, it made for a very interesting and unusual scene.
Chapter 13
Lucifer’s Lair was the largest, rowdiest, crudest, and most eclectic meat market bar in the area. Possibly in the entire metropolitan complex. People went there to listen to music, dance, flirt, and get laid. Johns Hopkins Medical School was just across the street, so the club attracted medical and nursing students, doctors and nurses, and the huge staff that ran the school and the hospital. It also brought in the students from Hopkins’ main campus and other colleges and universities, along with young professionals from all over the city.
The three-story building was full of people seven nights a week, getting drunk and high and flirting with each other. There was also the “lifestyle dungeon” in the basement, offering pleasures that were off my radar. I had never been in the basement, or on the third floor, which was rumored to be an orgy room. The club’s main attraction was the feeling of risk, of going someplace that was a little bit dangerous. That was because the place was owned by a demon lord and openly welcomed Rifters, as long as they were well-behaved while on the premises. It was considered safe inside, with a strict set of enforced rules on interactions. But if a university student decided to chance leaving with a demon or a vampire, the owner was legally absolved of guilt the second the idiot set foot outside the door.
I had always played it safe as far as Rifters were concerned. I mean, there was that one time with an incubus when I was at university, but sex demons almost never killed anyone. And what would the university experience be without sowing a few wild oats? Besides, I was drunk, and Kirsten dared me, so that was her fault.
The lines were already forming to get inside, but being relatively young, single, and female, we passed by the bouncers quickly and without paying a cover charge. The band was about half an hour into their first set, and the dance floor was starting to get busy. We headed to the second-floor bar, hoping to snag a table on the mezzanine overlooking the scene downstairs.
We timed our entrance so well that it almost seemed like magik. A two-top next to the mezzanine railing was open, and we slid into the seats. Lucifer’s was one of the rare places with live waitstaff, but that was due to the nature of the owner. He didn’t hire anyone who might carry a disease, and demons didn’t get along with technology.
“What’s your pleasure?” a sensuous voice purred before I even had a chance to look around for a waitress. She turned out to be a lilith, a lust demon, with bright pink skin and the cutest little horns jutting up through her blonde hair. She was wearing the standard waitress uniform—tight string-bikini top and a G-string—with her headlights distractingly turned on and her camel-toe prominently apparent. The pheromones she shed weren’t entirely wasted on Kirsten and me, even though we were staunchly hetero.
We gave her our order—drinks and a basket of munchies—and she sauntered off, probably high as a kite on the lust she’d inspired in us.
“Whew!” Kirsten said, watching her. “What I’d give for my ass to look like that.”
“Mine does,” I said. “You need to get off yours and exercise occasionally.”
“You wish. If I wasn’t in the mood before we got here, I am now. I wonder if your new partner ever comes here.” Her grin was definitely predatory. “He would be a perfect way to get inside Top Ten society.”
“From what his cousin told me, the Ten are a randy bunch. Not really any different from other mages. Or witches, if your predilections are common.”
“There’s nothing common about me. You should know that.”
“She also told me that Mychal is a nerd.”
Kirsten’s big disappointment in life was that she wasn’t born queen. She didn’t dwell on it, but the injustice was her prime motivation, and I was giving even odds she would get there someday.
A couple of vampires with human dates sat at a table near us, and to my surprise, an elf with a lavender-skinned lilith sat at another nearby table. The place was filling up. Our waitress brought our order. It was my round, so I paid and tipped her. She gave me a come-hither grin, but when I simply shrugged, she moved away to her other customers.
The first guy to ask Kirsten to dance was an incubus, and she declined, to his surprise. But she did say yes to a blood vampire, and I watched them go down the stairs to the dance floor. I doubted she would give him a taste, although she might if she was in the right mood, but he would never get her out the door. He would be crazy to even contemplate it, though. Magik-users’ blood was a drug, inducing a high that could become addictive, and that addiction usually spiraled down into madness.
“May I have this dance?”
Startled out of my reverie, I looked up and saw a mage standing by my chair.
“My friend is dancing, and I have her purse,” I replied. “Maybe when she comes back.”
He slid into Kirsten’s chair and put his drink on the table. “I hope you don’t mind if I wait.” He had a nice smile.
“No, not at all.” I gave him a smile in return. Blond, with a short, trimmed beard and blue eyes, he was slender but not skinny. I judged him to be about my height. His powder-blue suit was expensively cut.
�
��I’m Phillip,” he said.
“Dani. Nice suit. Black is so passé, don’t you think?”
He chuckled. “Definitely. I mean, how am I supposed to stand out amongst all the vampires?”
We chatted and I kept an eye on Kirsten. After dancing with the vampire, she danced with a mage, a human, and another mage before making her way back up the stairs.
“I’m only gone for a couple of dances, and you’ve replaced me already?” she joked, picking up her drink and taking a long swallow.
“He was interested in dancing with me, but after half an hour of listening to me, he’s probably changed his mind.”
“Not at all. Shall we?” He stood and waited for me to join him.
I noted the small sign of surprise when I stood up. The boots I was wearing had two-inch heels, which made me a little taller than he was. But I seemed to pass the down-and-up survey he conducted with his eyes, and his smile stayed in place, so we trooped down the stairs.
He danced okay, moved okay, didn’t try to be an asshole and invade my private space, so overall, I gave him a six out of ten, which was pretty good for a guy in Lucifer’s. It always blew my mind when I saw old movies where people actually touched when they were dancing. That was before the pandemics, of course. No one got that close to strangers any more. Except, of course, for the Magi. The common belief was that magik users were immune to most human diseases, and that was partially true.
We danced to two songs, then I excused myself to the ladies’ room. After I came out, I took the other set of stairs to the mezzanine. I didn’t want him to monopolize my evening, and he was giving signals that his intention was to do exactly that. To my relief, Kirsten was sitting alone.
Magitek (The Rift Chronicles Book 1) Page 6