Bad, Dad, and Dangerous

by Rhys Ford

  “Now she’s casting some glamour on gift cards to make her teacher do something or other.”

  Marjorie bent over, scooped the rocks back into their jar, and placed a nice piece of rose quartz in front of Thomas. “I don’t think she meant any harm. She never does. Nate is here because she loves him. If she did a spell to make her pretty teacher—her pretty gay teacher—come to the shop to talk to her pretty gay dad, is that such a bad thing?”

  “It’s meddling. I can’t approve of meddling,” he said as he moved to help pick up the last of Nation’s mess. “I’d rather not dwell on it. I have a date to prepare for in twenty-four hours, and I’m horribly out of practice.”

  AFTER BIDDING Marjorie good night, Thomas followed Nation up the steps to his house. It was warm in spots and too cold in others. The building was old, and it didn’t have very good air-conditioning, just the spare vents they could afford when it was installed in the shop. He thought about upgrading it every time there was a Santa Ana wind, but he never got around to even doing research on it. As long as it worked downstairs and almost worked upstairs, they’d live. The heat, on the other hand, worked great for what passed as winter in San Diego.

  Nation sat like an Egyptian statue near his bowl on the kitchen counter, sleek and stoic, never blinking while he waited for his food. It was the only time the undead cat was quiet, which was another flaw in his resurrection. The old furry version of Nate demanded his food with a yowl you could hear from Peru. But not Nation. For him a good glare was more than enough.

  “Of course, Your Worship,” Thomas said as he pulled the lid from a can of food that declared it was turkey, tuna, and egg. “This smells like skunk. You’ll probably love it.”

  “I do. It is my favorite.”

  “Yes, until I buy more than four cans of it and you decide you don’t like it anymore.” He tapped the edge of the can on the bowl and was thankful none of the stinky goop got on his fingers or his clothes. He wanted a shower, not to feel the need to open a fire hydrant to get the nastiness off.

  “Contrary,” Nation said around a mouthful, “thy name is cat.”

  “Thy name is pain in the ass,” Thomas told him as he headed toward his bedroom, where he toed off his shoes, fell back onto the queen-size bed, and stared up at the ceiling, which was covered in celestial images from his favorite tarot cards. It was cliché, but he liked it. It didn’t hurt that there were protection spells mixed into the paint. No magic but his own unless he allowed it in there, which meant Nation avoided the room like the plague. Last time he’d romped through, the edge of one ear had curled up like an old artichoke leaf, and Star was terrified he’d lost a toe. Thomas agreed to set the wards to allow Nation in, but the cat was still wary of his room, which was just fine with him.

  Star, hope the trip was good. Mr. Beshter came to spend his gift card today.

  Hey Dad! I managed not to puke on the drive. Thanks for the ginger candy! Mr. B is cool. Wish I’d seen him.

  He was sorry he missed you too. Star, there was magic on the card, and I know it was yours.

  Just wanted to make sure he didn’t lose it. He told us he lost almost $100 from Starbucks last summer.

  That makes sense. I will check in with you tomorrow before I go on my date. Goodnight sweetheart. Love you.

  DATE!!! You better tell me everything. Love you, Daddy.

  It made sense. KJ didn’t seem to be the most organized person. In fact, the impression Thomas had been trying to figure out seemed to radiate loss of something—not loss of someone—which made him even more curious about the teacher. The pretty teacher. The teacher that had been touched by the supernatural.

  “I should not be thinking like this,” he said to the painting of the Sun. “What if he senses something? I mean, I know there are normals who know it’s real, and he thinks it is. But I’ve never been the one to break the Silence.” The Silence was the unspoken rule that kept the supernaturals from lording it over the normals and vice versa. There were more normals than supernaturals, and by sheer numbers alone, they’d win any war. The lives lost would be astronomical, and while humanity was becoming more humane, the Council didn’t trust them in general. Neither did Thomas.

  But there were the rare ones, the normals who were touched by the supernatural and were drawn to it, and he knew in his gut that’s what KJ Beshter was. He’d seen or touched something in his past, and Thomas was dead set on finding out what it was before he let himself fantasize about anything else. If this turned out to be matchmaking by Star, she’d be very disappointed to find out that it would go nowhere very, very fast.

  Thomas would be disappointed too. He’d told Star he needed alone time, and Nation hadn’t been wrong when he’d chimed in that Thomas needed to get laid—not that he’d have put it so crudely. If KJ hadn’t tasted of magic, would he be as cautious? Probably not. A normal normal was fair game. He’d have a good time with him and then say goodbye a few days later.

  But if something happened with Beshter, he couldn’t bid him a graceful adieu unless it really went south. He was important to Star, even if he wasn’t her teacher anymore, and Thomas liked his first and second impressions of the man. He just wished it didn’t terrify him that the third time might be the charm. They might click, and then everything would get more complicated.

  His thoughts were deep compared to his wandering hands. While thinking of KJ, he’d unbuttoned his shirt, letting the last of the sunlight touch his bared chest, and brushed his fingers along his skin to the patch of hair that barely covered the space between his navel and the waistband of his pants. Slipping his fingers beneath the band, he thumbed the button at the top free and then encouraged the zipper down.

  Between wiggling and shimmying, he managed to get his pants and underwear off his rump and halfway down his thighs with one hand while he wrapped his fingers around his cock. A quick glance at the bedroom door told him he hadn’t forgotten to shut it, and he let out a sound that was a mix of a sigh and a moan as he began slowly stroking at himself. Thomas tried not to think about Beshter while he tightened his grip, but the teacher’s amber-flecked green eyes were locked in his mind.

  KJ was also a much better thing to focus on than Nation watching him masturbate. It’d happened before, and it cost him in ahi to keep the cat’s mouth shut about it. Everyone did it. But they didn’t need to know that he did it!

  Thomas bit his bottom lip to keep from making more noise. His groin tightened and his nerves fired. He was almost panting as he breathed, and in his mind’s eye it wasn’t his own hand on him, it was KJ’s. And KJ was very good at what he was doing.

  Seven

  WITH A cold bottle of beer in each hand, David plopped onto the couch while KJ divvied up the sushi DoorDash had just delivered. Using chopsticks with the skills of a ninja, he separated the eel rolls that had stuck together in their little Styrofoam container and placed half on the lid he’d torn free from the box along with half a lump of wasabi and a clump of pickled ginger. He didn’t need to ask David if he wanted it all in the lid. They’d had enough sushi nights to never need to ask how to serve the food or what to order.

  “How do you eat that?” David’s nose wrinkled as KJ moved his Philly rolls into the bottom half he was going to use as his plate. “It’s got cream cheese. There is no cream cheese in Japan.”

  “With my tongue and mad chopsticks skills, dude.” To show his point, KJ popped one piece into his mouth and chewed it slowly before putting David’s spicy tuna and crunchy rolls into his quasi-plate. “There you go, brother, friend of mine. Eat some and I’ll give you your presents.”

  “Oh, presents! You shouldn’t have.” David took the lid and balanced it on his knees as he opened his own cheap paper-wrapped chopsticks. He frowned when they broke badly, and KJ shrugged. “Why do yours always come out perfect?”

  “Because the chopstick fairy loves me.” KJ slid onto the floor in front of the sofa. It was too hot to sit near David, who radiated heat no matter the weather. Good to
sit near in winter; not so much in summer. He made a great show of dipping his cream cheese and salmon sushi into his wasabi and hummed yummy noises while he chewed. “It’s so good. Have you ever even tried it?”

  “Haters gotta hate, KJ.” He poked one of his pieces with the chopstick like it was a knife and shoved it in his mouth.

  “Barbarian. That’s why you can’t break them right. You can’t even eat with them.”

  “Whatever.” David’s next piece went into his mouth using his fingers, and so did all the rest until the lid was as empty as his bottle of beer. “Can I open my presents now, Mom?”

  “Yes, dear,” KJ said, using his best imitation of David’s mom’s voice, with her Texas drawl and all. “But first, you help me clean up this mess, and then you can have your presents. There’s even pie in the fridge for later.”

  “Pie instead of cake!” David bent over to gather their trash and kissed the top of KJ’s head before he could get up. “Dude, it’s times like this that I really wish we were into each other. You’d be the perfect boyfriend.”

  “I know, and I love you too. But we tried and it was fail.” KJ leaned on the coffee table to get to his feet and headed for his bedroom to get the presents from Target. He stopped at the bathroom long enough to wash his hands, and then raked his damp fingers through his hair.

  He brought both the gifts from Target and the bag from Equinox. He didn’t know whether to give the goddess stuff to David or not. He’d wait to see if he liked it, and if he did, KJ could always go to the shop to buy more. Unless the date went really bad, in which case it was okay, since he’d only paid a few bucks of his own money.

  “Here you go,” he said, trading the Mylar-wrapped presents for a fresh bottle of beer and a slice of pie. KJ climbed into his usual corner of the old brown leather sofa and balanced his pie on his knee. “If you already have ’em, we can swap them. I kept the receipt. They’re supposed to be exclusives, but I know what a toy junkie you are.”

  “Just because you decided to grow up doesn’t mean I have to.” David popped the ribbon on the gift bag and pulled the two Pops! free. Both were painted in bright red chrome, which marked them as much as the little Target on the label. “Dude, these are so cool. I don’t have any of the Target ones. Tony looks sweet in red. Carol does too.” With much more care than he’d used on the ribbon, he took Iron Man out of his box and held him up to the light. “I am Iron Man.”

  “Do not take me to a dark place, David. I’m not over it yet.” One would expect that with KJ’s fascination with magic, Doctor Strange would be KJ’s Avenger of choice, but it was the genius billionaire playboy philanthropist who got to him. It didn’t hurt that RDJ was on the top of his “celebrities I’d like to get naked with” list.

  “What’s in the other bag?” David reached for the other bag, and KJ let him have it. “You went to Equinox?”

  “I had a gift card from one of my students. Her dad owns the place. I bought a few things with it. If you like them, you can have them.” KJ had to take a bite of his pie to keep from snatching the bag from his friend. What the fuck is up with that? Yes, Thomas is beautiful, but you do have a date with him. Chill.

  “I’ve been meaning to stop there, but it’s easier to buy everything in life from Amazon.” David had taken the other end of the couch, and he spent a minute or two unwrapping the candleholders and goddess figure. “These are nice. Not really my style. You thinking about setting up an altar?”

  “I have a few times over the years, to be honest. I was mostly killing time before meeting you, and by the time Thomas and I talked about Star….”

  “Thomas, is it? Not Mr. Whatever?” David leaned forward and set them on the coffee table in a safe place before propping his feet on it to dig into his pie. “You said you had a date tomorrow. Did you make a date with him? Dude, she’s your student.”

  “She was my student. I teach junior year history. I don’t teach senior. That means it’s not against my personal code or whatever rules the school district might have, because God knows they probably do have rules like that. And he’s really pretty. Also, he said yes.”

  David let out a snort. “KJ, hate to tell you, but you’re pretty too. People don’t turn you down often. You just don’t ask enough people out.”

  “It’s too hard to avoid your leftovers, and we don’t live in a small town. You never went out with him, right? Thomas Anders?”

  “Puppy-dog eyes wouldn’t help if I did, you know. Nope, don’t think so. I’d be too worried he’d cast some spell on me when we broke up because I’m not a commitment kind of guy. Love and leave ’em.”

  “You’re not that bad. There was that Marine from Pendleton you almost moved in with.” He’d been a nice guy, one of the few David had him meet in person, which meant he was serious about him.

  “Long distance after he got transferred didn’t work. Totally my bad, not him. I’m not good at monogamy—especially when I’m being deprived by thousands of miles and a few oceans. I am a bad boyfriend.”

  KJ licked his lips after finishing his pie and set the plate on the side table. Then he thought better of that and got up to take both their plates to the sink before either of them got an elbow or a foot covered in apple pie goop. “I have noticed your inability to keep little David in your pants.”

  “I’m just doing my part for both of us. So do you like him? Thomas?”

  “There was something about him that felt familiar. I met him before on a parents’ night, and he seemed nice and unapproachable. Now it’s different. There was literally a spark when I handed him the card.”

  “Sounds like mojo to me. Maybe Thomas Anders has the answers, and we can skip spending nights in haunted death traps. Speaking of which, we should check the footage if we’ve got any.”

  KJ sat back down, turning toward David with his tablet across his lap while he tapped on the app that should let them see what the cameras were seeing. The images were grainy, which was to be expected. Pretty much any low-price night-vision camera was going to take crappy pictures, but they had to make do with what they could afford. It wasn’t as if they could leave David’s baby in the woods. They’d be using it on the solstice when they watched for something to happen.

  “Usual garbage, although it’s not as bad as I thought.” He tapped on one of the cameras that had caught some movement and was rewarded with the sight of a raccoon hanging upside down in a trash can, fishing out a crumpled box from Popeyes Chicken. “Trash panda’s got good taste. We should go there and get sandwiches when we go to the park.”

  KJ switched from one camera to the next and let out a disappointed sigh. “Well, that sucks. I didn’t say anything earlier, but I saw her, the Lady in White. She was near one of the trees where I planted a camera, and that’s not all. There was black wax where a candle had been burned to nothing.”

  “How could you not tell me about that!” David hit him with one of the small throw pillows. “Why does the good shit never happen when I’m with you?”

  “Maybe you’re antimagic and I’m quasi-magic?” KJ had no idea why it happened. “I just wish the camera had caught her. But it wasn’t aimed in the right direction, or she doesn’t film. I was too excited to tell.” He decided not to tell David about her warning or the cold feeling in his gut. He’d had them before, and nothing came of it. No reason to freak his friend out too.

  Eight

  THOMAS DIDN’T feel guilty for his fantasy about the teacher. He reasoned that it wasn’t any different than thinking about someone you saw on the street or a celebrity who pushed your buttons. It was perfectly normal. Just because you knew someone’s name didn’t make imagining them licking your balls a bad thing.

  “Twenty-four hours, Thomas,” he scolded himself as he cranked up the shower, setting the temperature more than a little colder than was his practice. “You can hold off on dirty thoughts for a day.” He took the soap and begin lathering his crotch. “And enough out of you until tomorrow too. Now be good, or I’m shutti
ng off the hot water.”

  A BIT later than he’d planned, and Thomas was lacing up his high-tops and zipping up his jeans. He tugged a long-sleeved, lightweight pullover on and then looped a stuffed-to-the-brim messenger bag across his body. He popped open the bedroom door, careful not to step on Nation’s paws where they were reaching through the crack to get his attention.

  “Why do you do that?” he said, looking down at the sprawling furless feline. “You’re not a cat anymore.”

  “I like to stick to the classics, Tom.” Nation got up and stretched. His back seemed to arch one bone at a time from his shoulders through his tail, and then he flicked said tail at Thomas. “My brain might not be cat… exactly… but look at me. I need to attempt the cute card.”

  “Good luck with that.” Thomas bent down and scooped Nation into his arms, propping his head over his shoulder. “Do you know where your carrier is?”

  “I thought you were my carrier?”

  “Not in the car, I’m not. We’ve got a meeting tonight, and then we’re going to do a small patrol.” Thomas leaned to one side, balancing his bag and Nation while shoving his keys into the pocket of his faded jeans. “I know you hate it, but if we’re in an accident, you’ll be safer in it.”

  “We’re both pretty sure I can’t die,” the cat pointed out as he let the tips of his claws sink into Thomas’s shoulders lightly enough to possibly be an accident, which Thomas doubted.

  “Probably not, but I don’t want to explain to anyone why you’re not. Nor do I want you clawing me up in a panic if something were to go wrong. So stop arguing and tell me where it is. The sooner we’re out of here, hopefully the gods and goddesses willing, the sooner we can get out of the meeting.”