“Yes.”
“But I can’t stop trucks with my mind.” He took a step back from me and shook his head, giving me a strange look now. “I don’t even really know why I’m here. I’m starting to think there’s something about you and that house. Like it’s haunted, and—“ He threw up a hand. “Since I walked away I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the house. I don’t understand it. The place is a mess.”
Poor non-magical folk. If you don’t believe in anything, then one brush with supernatural forces just leaves you so confused. It could upend his whole life, I thought. He would become obsessed with Lockwood House like some horror movie for the rest of his life without ever understanding why. And he looked like such a confident, self-assured man who clearly had it all. The women, the cars, the excitement of…passing a bipartisan legislative package, I guess. (I mean, the politics of humans were nothing compared to wizard politics, where as recently as 1983, Theodosia the Minister of Enchantment Arts was burned alive in the council chamber because she had summoned and become pregnant with the child of a demonic dragon in exchange for a promise that he would revive her upon death.)
“I wish I could make you forget and put your mind at ease,” I said.
“I don’t want to forget! That was my grandfather. I have many good memories of the house and garden, and I just…I don’t know why I came all this way and got so upset at you. You did buy it fair and square, but…” He turned around, pacing, hands in his pockets. He kicked the bumper of his BMW.
“Hey! Hey. Graham. Look, I hate to see a man who is disciplined enough to order salmon at a greasy spoon just unravel this way. I actually tried to call your office this morning.”
“Why?” He turned back to me and I was freshly struck by how some part of me responded to everything in him that seemed familiar and safe to me. Wealth and power were my family’s brand. I didn’t want it but I couldn’t stop feeling comfortable around it.
“I wanted to talk to you about some things. But I’m still getting my tile.”
He glanced at his hands and rubbed them together. I would bet he was feeling a little after-buzz from the spell he cast to stop my truck. Maybe he’d never had that feeling before, or more likely, this wasn’t the first odd thing that had ever happened to him. He was probably starting to wonder.
“Do you want to ride with me?” I said. “Pull your car over up ahead at the abandoned farm stand.”
He gave me a long, penetrating look, and then he quickly straightened my collar. It was sort of messed up from him grabbing me. “All right,” he said. “I’ll ride with you. And I hope you’ll be honest with me.”
Chapter Sixteen
Helena
I could already tell that Graham was a guy who had spent his whole life trying to project an image of success, to hold it together and be the perfect combination of public citizen and strong man. He had it all going on. He looked annoyed with himself for being here. So I knew I couldn’t just start grilling him outright about his grandfather’s belongings and dump the whole magic thing on him. I’d already seen that he would get defensive and temperamental.
He had already pulled himself back together by the time he got in my driver’s seat. “So the house is coming along?”
“Oh yes,” I said.
“You’re redoing the bathroom?”
“And adding a bathroom downstairs.”
“It definitely needed it, but it’s hard for me to imagine that anyone would buy a 3500 square foot house with only two bathrooms nowadays.”
“Wizards aren’t as—“ I stopped myself. So much for waiting to dump the magic thing on him.
“Wizards?”
“Uh—yeah—you know. There are some homesteader types who call themselves wizards.”
“You believe in wizards,” he said. “Actual wizards. And ghosts, too, probably.”
“If I believe in wizards, obviously I believe in ghosts,” I said witheringly. “Okay, fine. I was going to try to protect your fragile human sphere of knowledge, since it was clearly what your family wanted for you, and I respect the dead, but, you already know your grandfather had some weird stuff going on. He was a warlock.”
“A warlock.” Graham scoffed. “And you are, what, a witch?”
“Yes. And you—“
His brow furrowed. “I’m part warlock? Is that what you’re going to say?”
“Worse.”
“So you’re in the same cult he was in.” Graham looked out the window with a disgruntled noise you might make if you realized you had gotten a bus ticket next to a very talkative Jehovah’s Witness. He was attractive when he was disgruntled, with his eyelids lowering imperiously.
“I know you have to go through the disbelief and acceptance cycle,” I said. “But you used magic to stop me from driving away. Actual magic that defies the laws of the Fixed Plane, which you can only do if you have true wizard blood and the will to use it.”
“Christ,” he said, kneading his forehead. “You seemed so normal during the date.”
“Graham, if you don’t believe me, I will have to summon a talking bat into this car, but I want to make sure you won’t shit yourself.”
“A talking bat,” he said dryly. “I have never…shat myself, and I don’t think I’m about to start, so please. By all means.”
“Bevan!”
Bevan appeared on the dashboard of the car and Graham stared at him. To his credit, he did not appear to shit himself, but he had this look as if he was staring into the endless void of the universe. “How did you do that?”
“This is my familiar,” I said. “He connects me to the magical plane.”
Bevan glared at me. He was annoyed I was using him to put on a show of proof.
“Bevan, can you just say hi to Graham real fast?”
Bevan lifted his wings in sort of an angry gesture and poofed away.
“Did that bat just do an Italian fuck-you shrug? At this point I must be hallucinating. I miss Grandpa more than I expected, and I’m hallucinating.” His expression turned intense, his breath quickening, and some new resolve swept over him, shading his green eyes darker and setting his jaw. It was getting me a little hot and bothered. “Or maybe it’s all true,” he said. “It would explain more if it was true, than if it’s a lie…”
“It’s true,” I said. “It’s why I bought the house. It has a lot of special magical features, and a family of wizards will want to buy it. But did you mean to leave photo albums behind? And…well, I have some serious questions about your family that I need answers to. It might be a life and death matter.”
“I doubt I have the answers,” Graham said.
“But you got rid of some books,” I said. “You must have looked at them.”
“I didn’t understand most of it.”
“Why did you burn some and bury others?”
He was silent for a long moment. “I guess you won’t think I’m crazy when I say this, but I felt that some of the books were…dark. And some of the books were important.”
“I need to see them.”
“They weren’t written in a language I knew,” he said. “Latin, maybe.”
“That’s okay. I’m not too bad with magical Latin.”
“You’re definitely an interesting woman,” he said, with the beginnings of a smile, but it faded quickly back into those haughtily lowered eyelids and lips determined to give me nothing. “And yeah, I didn’t take all the photos. Not the ones with the…other family and Grandpa’s friends. They had a little gang called the Sons of Pandora and I always felt they were up to no good. They were the reason I started thinking he was ex-mob.”
“Sons of Pandora? Like Pandora’s box?”
“I assume.”
“So do you know what they were trying to open?”
“I never thought it could be literal until this moment,” Graham said, glancing at his phone. He was getting some texts, and he shifted in his seat uncomfortably.
“Girlfriend?” I teased.
/> “No! I was supposed to be at a fundraiser. If any of this ‘wizard’ stuff gets out, you know…I’m going to be a laughingstock and lose my fucking job. Excuse my language.”
I was rustling up his inner demon (and Italian warlock?) now, and I shouldn’t enjoy that as much as I did. I bet he tried so hard not to get caught cursing in the course of his political career. “Oh, it won’t,” I said. “None of us want that to get out, trust me. I don’t want mundanes up in my business.”
“‘Mundanes’? That’s rude.”
“Sorry, it’s just…I mean, what do you call non-magical humans? Nothing comes off well.”
“How do you stay hidden from humans? How would we not know about this?”
“Well, the magical community has a hardcore pact on not sharing with humans. That’s one thing Ethereals and Sinistrals agree on. Those are the two main factions. Well, and also Wyrd, who are the faeries.”
“Great,” he said. “There’s lingo. I’m guessing Ethereals are the white witches and Sinistrals are the black witches.”
“Yep! It’s really pretty simple. There are three magical realms, other planes of existence where magic comes from. Etherium is basically good, and the high spirits are there are like angels and gods, while the low spirits are helpful things like the sort of creatures who give blessings and favors. Sinistral is more like…chaotic. The vampires and werewolves and demons are all Sinistral. Wyrd is neutral and it was conquered by the fae centuries ago but it’s a very weak realm now because the faeries made a very controversial decision to stop dealing with humans entirely. They were trying to protect themselves but it almost killed them.” I glanced at him, as I felt like maybe this was not as simple as I thought when I tried to explain it, or maybe he would just think this sounded stupid, but he was listening carefully. His head was slightly tilted at me, his face intent. Yeah, I could definitely see how his political career would do well. Handsome and a good listener? Who could resist that?
“Because,” I continued after getting briefly derailed by his careful gaze, “the thing about magic is that it actually requires humans to believe in it or it will weaken and die.”
“So you have to stay hidden but also you need the clueless mundane rubes to believe in you?” he said, with clear sarcasm.
“Well…they used to believe. But they also used to be less of a threat. The withdrawal started with the witch burnings and now technology is as powerful as magic so obviously…we have to be careful. However, magical beings have found new ways of gaining power by becoming rock stars or supermodels or going into—uh—positions of power or whatever.”
“Like politics.”
“Sometimes.”
“How does that give a magical being power?”
“Well, you know that rapturous feeling you get in a crowd when you’re all excited to see someone perform or speak? The crowd starts to believe that they’re experiencing something magical. That feeds the magic realms and keeps them alive.”
“And do I benefit from that?”
“Of course. The more people admire you and believe you’re the answer to their problems…” (Or get hot for you on internet forums…) “…the more you will develop abilities that you might not even realize.”
“Hmm. And my grandfather was…a dark wizard, wasn’t he?”
“Yeah. But…” I didn’t even know how to easily explain the complications of wizard politics to him, although I guess if anyone understood, it was him. “Some Sinistrals are just born into that realm and they’re really not bad. Etherium is guarded by strict rules. It’s like the gated community of the wizards these days.”
He kneaded his forehead. “Well, this is a lot to process. So what about you? This is actually your job as a witch? Flipping houses like on TV? What do you get out of it?”
“I’m not really out to get more power. Just to make a living.” It also seemed like too much to explain to him now that wizards were human, so they didn’t actually have to feed on humans. That was something demons and ethereal beings needed to do, mainly. If the magical worlds died entirely, all of wizards would just become mundanes. But demons and ethereals would presumably be wiped off the face of the earth. If I told him that, I would have to break it to him that he was actually a demon. And specifically, a sex demon. “It’s just fun. Wizard houses have a special set of problems. And wizards have different concerns as a buyer. Electricity makes magical folk sick, and the simpler our technology is, the better. They don’t trust human systems much either. That’s why your grandfather’s house is so Amish. And then, you have ghosts and things sometimes.”
“So there is a ghost.”
“Yeah…there’s a ghost.”
“Can you help him move on?”
“I’m—yeah—I’ll try.”
“Why is your face turning red?” he asked, giving me a look like he’d caught me at something. “Is the ghost handsome?”
“He’s okay.”
“I see.”
“He kinda looks like you,” I tossed out casually, and now it was his turn to look a tiny bit embarrassed. I wondered if he’d be jealous if he had any idea what incubus ghosts could do…
Chapter Seventeen
Graham
Anyone who knew me, from high school (or even junior high) until today, would not have said I was inexperienced with women. I’d always been a magnet for girls. I hoped that I made a lot of women happy, but I tried to make it clear upfront that I wasn’t looking for commitment. I wasn’t trying to be a womanizing asshole, but when I tallied up how many women I’d slept with, it was…a number I would no longer care to share.
And sometimes I suspected I was a womanizing asshole in denial.
When I saw a woman I wanted, I always got what I wanted. And no matter how much I tried to act the gentleman, I could feel a part of me wanting Helena.
Knowing I’d get her.
Because when had I ever lost?
Despite all that? I felt like women were a mystery to me. After my dad left, I was raised by a single mom who worked two jobs and was strict as hell, pushing me to focus on school and coming down on me hard when my attention strayed. She was just taking up where my dad left off, anyway—he was even more strict than she was. He committed suicide when I was little, so young that I barely remembered him, but it was just another reason I was determined to make something of my life.
Women were the forbidden fruit. Endlessly enticing and seductive, but also bad news. When I took a woman on a date, I always went all out to make it a special night for her so I could get laid at the end. We might have a month’s worth of those dates at best and then I would back off before it got serious.
It was more complicated since I’d gone into politics, so I had a strict policy never to date a staff member. I was downright cold to the women I worked with and I tried not to hire them if we had even a whiff of chemistry, but they were loyal to me anyway, hopefully because I was fair. There no short supply of Capello supporters who were clamoring for my attention, even when I spoke at the funeral of a fireman in my district. Actually, the hardest part of managing my career was all the fans who didn’t even seem to care about politics. I had to be extra-serious so I didn’t get too much of a reputation.
I never spent time with any woman that wasn’t either just about sex, or just about work. I never saw women in their own natural habitats, and watching Helena burst through the doors of a home furnishings showroom was…pretty refreshing. Kinda cute, even.
“Man, there are a lot of options,” I said. “Who knew there were so many shades of gray?”
She was already honing in on a large white tile veined with pale blue. “Ooh, this one is so perfect.” She looked at the price and I saw her smother a wince. She opened a notebook with measurements and did some calculations by hand in the margins.
“Don’t get caught up,” I said. “You already spent too much on the house.”
“I got this,” she said. “It’s not that bad.”
“I like these littl
e ones.”
“You like white subway tiles?”
“Yes.”
She rolled her eyes.
“What? Aren’t they on trend?”
“This house is so special. I want something beautiful.”
“You’re going to out price me from buying it back.”
“Graham, you’re not buying that house back. Anyway, be quiet. I need to focus.” One minute she seemed interested, the next she brushed me off like she didn’t even think I was worth her time, which just made me feel competitive. She was doing more calculations for a similar but more grayish tile. I backed off but now the temptation to check her out was unbearable. I took a few steps back and noticed that she had the best posture of any modern girl I’d ever seen. Did she go to some fancy witch finishing school where she had to walk with a book on her head?
Despite the plain black dress she was wearing over knit tights with a run in the back and her grubby boots, plus the blond braids that were messy enough that she probably hadn’t redone them in at least twenty-four hours, there was something undefinably glamorous about her. Poised. She reminded me of the young women from those old school, big donor families who showed up at fundraisers.
But here she was, driving around in that beat up truck with bags of laundry in the tiny back seat. And other stuff. Suspiciously important stuff. If she was on the road all the time, maybe there was no point in having a home at all.
“Hmm…” She had littered several pages of her notebook with math problems.
“Are you aware that most phones have a calculator built-in these days?” I asked.
“I like doing it myself,” she said stubbornly. “Hmm. If I can go really cheap on the downstairs bathroom I could get the white and blue upstairs. And that is the bathroom. Just imagine soaking in an old tub with this gorgeous tile, like a mermaid…”
“Subway tile is cheap,” I said. “Look, it’s even on sale.”
“Yeah, yeah. Okay. Subway tile for the floor. This basic slate gray for the downstairs shower.”
Demons in the Bedroom (Paranormal House Flippers Book 1) Page 9
