“I can leave if you want?"
A pang of guilt shot through me and I sighed. "Sorry, it's been a really long afternoon and I'm still so tired."
"It's fine. In fact, that's why I came. I thought you could use some help closing up."
"Of course you did," I said, circling the counter and wrapping my arms around his neck. His skin was cold and welcome against my warm fingertips. "You're just so damn sweet, aren't you?"
"I'm glad you see it."
"How couldn't I?" I asked, "You remind me of it every time you do something like this."
His lower lip caught my eye, so plump and full. I reached for it with the tip of my tongue and licked it before taking it into my mouth and holding it between my own lips. Damn you for swooning, I thought. But I couldn't resist his lips. They were so soft and kissable and tasted of peppermint—Damien's favorite gum.
"I can see now I made the right decision in coming here," he said.
"Damn right. You offered to help me close up, so I'm putting you to work."
"What do I need to do?"
"Get naked," I said, grinning.
"Get—what?"
"You heard me."
Damien glanced at the front door and the large window to the still bus street outside. "But... why?"
"Well," I said in my best matter-of-fact voice, "There's nothing you can do here that I can't do myself. And, actually, I should do most of this myself. Like, you can't know how many books we've sold today or—"
He smiled and the sides of his mouth curved up to reveal playful dimples. Damien had, many times, guessed the right number of gum-balls at the candy shop down the street. I didn't know how he managed it and he wasn't willing to part with the secret, but his approximations were better than anyone else's. I was sure it was Magick, but he wouldn’t confess it.
"Don't," I said, offering him a clear warning, "Just stand there and look pretty for me. Naked. That’s an order."
Damien removed his jacket and set it on the arm chair. I cocked my head to the side and watched him, curious. He wasn't really going to strip, was he?
"Damien," I said.
"What?" he asked. He tucked his hands under the hem of his shirt.
"Stop it!"
"You told me to get naked."
I marched up to him, smiling, and grabbed hold of his hands. "It was a joke, you tool! What's with you today?"
"I don't know. I'm just happy. Yule is close. I haven't celebrated it in a long time."
"You didn't celebrate it in San Francisco?"
"My sister and I always swapped gifts, but we never... let the holiday fill us with happiness. There was always something to be sad about."
"That sucks..."
Damien's lips pressed against my forehead and sent all manner of tingles through me. "Don't worry about it, okay? I'm really trying now. And this time I've got you."
I smiled. "We're gonna make this Yule special for you," I said. "To make up for all the other ones you didn't get to have."
"You don't need to do that."
"Of course I do! We can even have a wreath in Lily and Joanna’s honor.”
Damien's smile never faded, nor did the light in his eyes diminish. It was nice to see him accept the idea that his sister was no longer with us. Talking and thinking about her still brought a kind of sadness to his face—and mine, if I could be honest—but a few months ago his voice would break at the simple mention of her name and now.
Now everything was better.
"C’mon, we have to finish up," I said. “I have work to do at home and you, mister, have a home to get to also. Don’t’ think you’re worming your way into my pants tonight. The bar is closed.”
Damien put his hands up and smiled. “All I wanted to do was help you close up. So how about we do that and I walk you home—and then I can go back to mine.”
“Alright, fine,” I said, “But no funny business.” Although I knew full well that if it came down to the crunch I would pick funny business over work.
CHAPTER SIX
I shot upright into the waking world, eyes wide and heart pounding. A foul stench tickled my nostrils and I could swear I tasted dirt in my mouth, or maybe it was something fouler. What the fuck did I just dream about? Stunned, I scanned my bedroom. It was dark and quiet and I heard no swallows. No cars. No children getting ready to go to school, but I knew the sun was out. Panicked, I reached for my phone and checked the time.
Class ended almost two hours ago. "God-dammit!"
Damien. Where was Damien? I felt lost. I couldn't remember a lot of what had happened the night before. It was like being hungover without the stomach pain and the headache. A gap existed where memories should have been. Was I so tired I had forgotten the entirety of last night?
I picked myself up and staggered into my living room like a drunken person searching for a late night beer. My kitchen table was covered in papers, books, pens, and a closed laptop. My bag was propped up against one of the table legs meaning that I must have come home and worked on my assignments, but in my mind there was nothing but the faintest hint of a being chased in my dream and the unsubtle aroma of something rotten, or burning.
My stomach twisted and a cold wash overcame me. I knew I had calls to make, texts to send, but the dream I had just experienced didn't—wouldn’t—let me focus on anything else. I wanted to dig for details, images, sounds, and smells, and this determination was holding my concentration hostage. So I grabbed my writing pad, clicked the pen top, and wrote my dream down as best as I could remember.
Only that I couldn't remember it.
I had slipped out of that place between waking and dreaming in the moments of indecision since leaving my bed, and the dream was gone.
"Fuck!" I threw the pen across the room and cursed, sure that the dream had been more vivid than any of the other dreams I had had experienced since my attack. But just like a cloud of smoke, there wasn't anything left for me to take hold of and I had to abandon it.
I sat at my desk, staring at what little I had managed to scribble onto the page for ages. There was nothing of use on the page, of course. Just some scattered words here and there, impressions mostly. And most of it, I had good reason to believe, inaccurate at that.
When someone knocked on my front door I was happy for the reprieve, so I stood, approached, and checked the peephole. It was Damien, and I would have had to be blind to not notice the concern on his face.
"Hey," I said when I opened the door, "I was just about to text you."
"Is everything okay?" he asked, stepping inside.
No. I didn't know what to say. "Yeah... why?"
Damien walked over to my kitchen table and unpacked some papers, pens, and a brand new notepad from out of a bag. "You missed a test today."
"Shit."
"Shit is right, and there's another assignment to do."
"Another one? I've already got three to do!"
Four assignments? How did I let it get this bad? I knew I had missed a couple of classes, but I thought I had it under control!
"I don't know how you're going to finish four assignments in... three days," Damien said, "Including today."
"Don't kick me while I'm down, okay?” I said, “I know how many days I have left."
"I'm sorry," Damien said, "I didn't mean for it to come out like that. I just don't know how you're going to do it."
I sat down on the chair by my laptop and ran my hands through my hair. "I don't know either. I don't know what happened. I fucked up again."
Damien squatted to my level and looked up at me. "You didn't fuck up, okay?" he said, taking my hands. "You've just been through something most people will never go through. You're allowed to not be in the best of shapes."
"Yeah, too bad I can't tell anyone about what happened, though."
As far as the world was concerned, I was nowhere near the Sheriff when he was killed. The then Deputy made sure the cover up excluded all mention of my involvement to protect me from the slew
of media attention I was likely to receive; attention I fought hard to not get. And as much as I enjoyed the normalcy that not being the near victim of a serial-killer it meant that I couldn't tell anyone about what had happened to me. As far as college was concerned, I was just another time waster.
Damien stood upright and caught a glimpse of my failed attempt at writing down a dream on the notepad on my table.
"What's this?" he asked.
"Oh, I... had a dream last night," I said. "At least, I think I did."
He picked the pad up and scanned the page. "You remembered enough of it to write it down?"
"Not really. But I tried."
Damien put the notepad down. "I'm not a psychologist, but I think this—the stuff you're dreaming about—is your subconscious acting out."
"What do you mean?"
"You haven't been able to tell anyone about what happened to you... I mean, I know, and Eliza and Frank knows, but someone really hurt you and you’ve had to hide that from everyone else."
"So you think that some kind of trauma is causing me to have all these bad dreams?"
Damien eyed the writing again. "Maybe it's not the whole reason... but some of it."
"What am I supposed to do?"
"About what?"
"This... everything... I don't know where to start."
He brought me to my feet and took my hands in his. "You need to put your head down and work, Amber. That's all."
"But... I have things I need to do. I promised Eliza I'd go with her today to get a Yule log. You know we've been growing a little distant lately. I can't just bail on her again. She'll hate me."
"I don't know what to tell you," he said, "But I'm going to help you with whatever I can, okay? Do you have to go anywhere right now?"
I shook my head.
"Okay, let me take care of your household chores for you while you work. I'll even help you write the assignment. How does that sound?"
"No," I said, "No. You have things to do. Besides, if you stayed here I definitely wouldn't get any work done." I kissed Damien on the lips. Gods how I wanted to rip his clothes off and forget about this mess. "I'll figure it out, but you need to go."
Damien nodded. "Alright. I'm a phone call away, okay?"
We kissed again and he left, and when he was gone I knew I had made the right decision in asking him to leave. Distance suited my needs more than his body could. I wanted to be alone with my thoughts. That's when I was at my strongest. I wanted none of that melting-around-Damien business.
Not today.
"Alright, Amber," I said to myself, breathing deep. "Here are your choices. Blow everyone off, including Eliza, and write all four papers right fucking now. Or seduce the professor, which would be gross. Or use Magick to get out of this whole thing.”
I turned to the mountain of work and sat down. The use of Magick never offered anyone any long term solutions, so finishing those assignments was all on me. I would have to meet Eliza in a few hours to go get our Yule log and I had four assignments to finish before the weekend, and that was only three days away.
In no universe would I succeed there.
The assignments were huge. I couldn't physically write the amount of words necessary to make it work. So I searched through the pile and picked the most interesting one; a study on contemporary Demons and modern Catholic Exorcisms. Score! This was a subject I could get behind. With my fascination with Churches and Demons fuelling my enthusiasm it seemed to me that it would be a better idea to whole-ass one thing than quarter ass four things, right?
I would write the best god-damn paper the Professor had ever read in his entire life. Then I would get down on my knees, beg him to give me more time to finish the rest, and hope he wouldn't take the gesture as invitation to ask me do anything… degrading.
Gross.
CHAPTER SEVEN
At night and in the early mornings—when temperatures plummeted—Raven's Glen went from a lively small town to a quiet ghost town. The sun set early and rose late, so we had way more dark hours than light. But the dimness of the sky and the warmth from the fireplace I had decided to set up sent a sweet, cozy atmosphere about the house. I much preferred the winter though. Being snuggled up and warm whenever rain or snow fell outside was my kind of thing.
So with a cup of hot chocolate in hand and a fresh dose of willpower and energy I settled down to write my paper before going to meet Eliza. Of course, I got carried away and lost track of time. But could you blame me? I had so much to say about Demons and Exorcisms; some of it first was first hand—Kyle—and a great deal of it given to me by a real exorcist named Padre Perez.
I had met him in Barcelona when I was backpacking through Europe. The priest spent his time in one of Barcelona's most beautiful Cathedrals; La Catedral de la Sagrada Familia, or, Cathedral of the Sacred Family. It was where he worked, where he did most of his praying and studying, and even where he lived. To me, though, this church was the one where I had my life-changing revelation, when I decided to start learning about Religion and the Occult.
The Cathedral was unlike any building I had ever laid eyes on before. Tall spires could be seen jutting into the sky as if to stab the heavens. They seemed jagged and broken from afar, but when you got close you could see the detail in the walls; the cherubs, the crosses, and the piles of skulls and bones. And that was only the outside. The interior of the Cathedral also took my breath away.
The ceiling seemed to stretch up for miles. Racks of pews numbering in the hundreds flanked the way toward an altar decked out in beautiful gold and marble decor. Every single square inch of the massive structure had been thought of with lavishness in mind, despite being a place of worship. But that’s just how buildings were built back then. Religion was everything, and everything went into veneration of deities.
Europeans really knew how to build gothic structures.
Regular services were performed at the Cathedral, but when it wasn't being used as a house of worship it was a mecca for travelers the world over. It made no difference where you stood, inside this massive cathedral—or standing in the grounds—one couldn't avoid the chatter of tourists, the rumble of footsteps, or the flashing of cameras. This, I learned, was the norm in Europe as far as Cathedrals were concerned.
I also learned that Europeans really knew how to build gothic structures.
California doesn't have cathedrals like this one. Heck, you'd be hard pressed to find Gothic architecture of this ilk anywhere in the US. There was simply no choice for the lover of mammoth, gothic constructions but to go to Europe if he wanted to feast his eyes one. And it was while feasting that Padre Perez singled me out of the horde of tourists to talk to.
"May the Lord's blessings be upon you, child,” he said.
I spun around and looked at the saintly old man. An aged man, the priest's gray hairline had receded to the point where he only had hair on the sides of his head. He wore a purple cassock, a simple black shirt, and the white collar of the Order of Catholic Priests.
"Thank you," I had said to him, "But I'm not a Catholic."
"You do not need to be a Catholic for the Holy Spirit to be with you, child."
"That's awfully un-Catholic, isn't it?"
"Not at all," said the priest, "I am but a messenger, and I do not judge one by their faith."
"So, is that the message? That the Holy Spirit is with me?"
The priest smiled, wrinkles forming around his eyes and mouth. "We all have our trials, and we all make mistakes. When one makes a mistake he must seek solace in His love and he will find protection."
"Thanks, but I really am not a Catholic."
Padre Perez's eyes softened. He looked so much like my dead grandfather. They could have been twins! Or maybe I just thought that about all old men.
"The adversary and his minions care not of your faith,” he said, “Only that you opened the door."
"Opened the door? I haven't opened any doors."
"Sometimes we open doors by doi
ng. Other times we open doors by not doing."
"I don't understand."
"All will become clear with time, child."
When I left the cathedral I didn't know what to make of the old man. My brain was spinning. Maybe I hadn't truly understood what he had said, or maybe his Spanish accent was too thick and something got lost in translation. I didn't think so, though. I got the impression the priest had chosen his words, and his target, carefully. But that didn’t help me figure out what was missing.
I also didn't know it then, but I would go back to see Padre Perez before leaving Barcelona for Rome. On the second time we met we would find ourselves sharing a long chat about religion, faith, and the spiritual crisis humanity is in now. The most interesting thing about him, though, was his status as an Exorcist. I had never met one before, and he was open about his studies, where he had trained, and his experiences. I had many stupid questions for him, of course, but he answered them all despite my own religious predilections.
Meeting Padre Perez was one of the best things that could've happened to me in Barcelona, next to the revelation I had. My experience backpacking through Europe wouldn't have been the same without him. Now if only I could find a way to tell him that the knowledge I had gained from him would be helping me complete the assignment which could very well determine my future at Raven's Hall?
And also, on the same note, what he would say if he knew I was failing?
Finally I was done, so I put the last few words down on the page, grabbed my jacket, and raced across town toward the tree lot. It was cold and snowing and Eliza's black Fiero was the only car parked outside.
I rushed toward it and knocked on the steamed up window.
"You're late again," Eliza said.
"I'm sorry!” I said, “I got caught up with this assignment and I just couldn't put it down before leaving."
Eliza pursed her lips and rolled the window up before stepping out of the car. She was wearing a thick, puffed blue jacket, a scarf, and a matching pair of fluffy black boots and gloves. I kind of wanted them.
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