by A. L. Tyler
And as we both watched, the now dark outline of the man waved at us, and then he fizzled into a dark mist and disappeared.
~~~~~~~~~
After the incident, as I came to call it, we ran back to the car and I drove back to Gates’ house at a breakneck speed while she stared out the back window. It was a Friday night, and I had already told my parents I was planning to sleep over. We barreled through the front door in our bathrobes and right through the living room, where her two brothers had been playing Last Journey, and received some pretty strange looks. Gates grabbed a box of energy drinks from the fridge, an indulgence I had rejected completely until that point, and we retired to her bedroom to wait for a shadow to come and claim us.
Even though we kept the lights on all night, the combination of unspent adrenaline, exhaustion, and too much caffeine wreaked havoc on my senses. Every little noise the house plumbing made, and every yell from her brothers as they played video games, made my pulse shoot up another notch. We turned on some Strawberry Alarm Clock and opened a window, hoping the breeze would keep us awake, but I drifted in and out, constantly shifting between terror of what I thought I had seen and embarrassment that we were being silly.
Neither of us slept more than an hour that night, and by the time I arrived at work the next day, I had spent too many hours trying to reconcile what had happened.
“God. Damn it!”
I stood over the mess that Gates and I had made the night before. It was all still there, everything from the crappily sketched pentagram in the dirt to the box of candles and the replica skull that had been stored with them. Gates’ spilled drink was still where she had dropped it, the liquid left where it had splattered in the dusty path.
As I took in the scene with Lyssa, I tried to match her stunned and angered expression.
She swore. “Damn teenagers… Annie, could you…?”
“Yeah,” I said in a hoarse whisper. I cleared my throat. “Yes, I’ve got this. Can you open the shop without me?”
Lyssa nodded. “Just let me know if they stole anything or broke anything or…” She shook her head.
I reached over and patted her on the shoulder. “Yeah. Yeah, I will, don’t worry about it.”
I started to clean up, and it only took thirty minutes for Gates to show up, somehow looking much more put-together than I had that morning. She didn’t have dark circles under her eyes, but then she had managed to master the art of eye makeup—something I had dared not dabble in since an unfortunate experience with liquid eye liner two years earlier.
“Is she mad?” Gates asked in a hushed tone as she walked up. She took the stack of boxes I offered her, and then the books that I stacked on top.
“She doesn’t know it was us,” I said. I pointed to the books. “And we are burning those.”
“What?!” Gates’ eyes went wide. “No, Annie, don’t you get it? We have to protect ourselves—whatever that was last night, it saw us.”
“No,” I said, turning back to her. “No, no no—Gates, that wasn’t a whatever, that was a whoever. Some guy probably wandered over from the taco place and we freaked ourselves out.”
“Yeah?” She cut me off with a look. “Then why do you want to burn the books?”
I stared at her, and she stared back. I swallowed, and didn’t answer, because I still didn’t know what to say. A man had appeared out of nowhere last night, and then he had tried to grab me before disintegrating into the wind.
“We are not burning these books!” Gates looked down at them, and then tilted the stack to the side to look closer, and furrowed her brow. “Wait—where’s the leather grimoire?”
I raised my eyebrows. “The what now?”
“The one with all the stuff about Charlie…” She balanced the stack on her leg, running a finger over each book spine to check again. “It wasn’t with the others?”
I spun around, checking the area again, but I had already cleaned everything up. I was sure I hadn’t missed it.
Gates’ frown deepened. “Annie, where’s the leather grimoire?”
“It wasn’t here,” I said. “Stop calling it a grimoire. That wasn’t a demon.”
“Well, crap, Annie, you think you summoned a ghost, then?” she said, somewhere between sarcasm and anger. “A vampire? A leprechaun? What was it, then?”
I waved a hand, trying to quiet her, but the early Saturday customers were already around, and one of them gave us an awkward stare.
Lyssa stuck her head out the side door. “Annie!”
I started to walk. “Gates, lock those in your car, we’ll decide what to do later!”
She turned and went to the parking lot, and I went to the greenhouse door.
“All done?” Lyssa asked.
“Yeah. Nothing was damaged or stolen.”
“Good, good.” She gave me a quick, and entirely unnecessary, hug. “Thank you so much for doing that. I just hate to see this place vandalized, because of Kendra and mom, and how they loved this place…”
She walked me back to the door that led to the front room and the sales counter. She was only supposed to have me for an hour a day so that I could focus on school and still earn a few bucks to furnish my impending college apartment. My hour was almost up. I hoped she hadn’t discovered something new to set me on, because I had a crazy friend with a set of alleged magic books to deal with.
“Do you know that guy?” Lyssa nodded at the front counter with a fixed smile. “He was asking about you.”
He was slender but well-built, with dark hair and eyes, and just a hint of stubble extending beyond his sideburns. He was wearing dark jeans and a corduroy jacket that gave me a college professor vibe, but it was what he held in his hands that captured my gaze.
It was the leather grimoire. My eyes flashed up to meet his, and his lips cracked into a sharp smile.
“Lyssa, I…um…”
“Annie!” He walked over from the counter. “Annie Hawthorn, you owe me an assignment.”
He was so composed when he spoke, and so handsome when he walked, that I had to take a second look to convince myself I hadn’t imagined the grimoire. It was still there.
“Assignment?” Lyssa asked, seeming to catch my off mood. She crossed her arms. “Are you a teacher?”
“Oh, I’m so sorry!” He extended his hand to Lyssa. “Yes, I work at the school. I’m Charles Smith.” As they shook, he turned his eyes to me. “Please… call me Charlie.”
Chapter 3
“Charlie…” Lyssa still didn’t look convinced as her eyes moved from Charlie back to me.
“Hmm,” Charlie pursed his lips and nodded. He was the smoothest talker I had ever met. “Yes. Annie is in my home economics class, and as part of her senior final she agreed to demonstrate some horticultural techniques as an extra credit addendum to the midterm paper she wrote. As I said, she owes me an assignment.”
He clutched the grimoire to his chest in silence, waiting, and Lyssa’s suspicious glare turned to a relaxed and flattered smile. “Annie, you didn’t tell me you wrote about horticulture for your midterm.”
“Yeah…”
And the strange thing was, I had written about my time in the greenhouse. But it had been for my English class, because I wasn’t enrolled in home economics. I had received excellent marks on that paper.
“Oh, well, don’t let me interfere!” Lyssa went back to the counter to check out another customer. “Take all the time you need!”
My eyes searched the room as Lyssa left me standing alone next to the insufferably handsome and charming Charlie, who was likely a creature from the depths of nowhere good. I needed her to turn around and see me freaking out. I needed Gates, or anyone, to rescue me, and I opened my mouth to call out, but Charlie spoke first.
“I wouldn’t do that.” His endearing smile slipped to an intimidating grin. “Ms. Hawthorn. Perhaps somewhere more private?”
My throat ran dry.
I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t going to take him to the
back, where we would be alone, but part of me felt like I should find Gates. She had read more than I had, and she might know how to banish him, or whatever one did to get rid of unwelcome demonic visitors.
“Sure…” I led him to the side door and back out to the lot where we kept the container trees, hoping to run into Gates on the way. We didn’t.
He looked me up and down, focusing his eyes at length on my fidgeting hands and wandering eyes. I was trying to figure out where I would run to when the opportunity presented. I wanted to stop and take a steadying breath, but all of my confidence deserted me.
Charlie drew himself up to his full height, and the way he pursed his lips in a half smile made me think that he had taken pity on me. “It’s your first time, isn’t it?”
I searched his face, but there was nothing to find as I murmured a barely audible response. “…it was kind of an accident.”
He flashed a quick smile, nodding, and seemed to consider his options. When he looked at me again, I thought he was going to laugh. I still prayed that Gates would find me, and whisper some sort of magical incantation.
“Ms. Hawthorn,” Charlie said in a silky voice. “I’m a patient soul, but I won’t be if your height-challenged colleague tries to pull anything. Tell me why I’m here, and I’ll consider being your friend. I’m inclined to do you a favor for the sake of what you’ve done for me. I’m not one who likes the feeling of being indebted.”
It was like he had read my mind. My hands were fidgeting uncontrollably, and my eyes were still searching. “I…um, well…”
His eyes squinted, and he smiled again, cocking his head a little. “There’s someone meddling in your affairs… I can empathize. You would like me to take care of the situation for you?”
He had offered it so straightforwardly that some of my tension immediately evaporated. “You’re really for real?”
He lifted his hand in front of my face and and snapped. A purple flame shot up from his fingers like he was holding a lighter. “In the flesh, my dear. What do you want for proof, little witch?”
“I’m not a witch,” I replied. “And…I don’t know.”
“Not a witch…” Charlie dropped his hand, and the flame went out. “You’ve never asked yourself what you would do if a genie granted you three wishes, or anything of that nature?”
“You’re not a genie,” I scoffed. Then I frowned, because I already believed him. He was a demon.
He had a subtle arrogance about him, and as he leaned against the frame of the trellis we were standing next to, he lifted his hand again, now toying with a small globe of flame. “Most people wish for more wishes. Some of them want to be rich, or beautiful, or famous. Some of them want death, or life, or love. None of that interests you?”
My jaw fell open and I shook my head. But even as I denied it, a part of me ached, and the image of my mother flashed into my mind. I had just been starting middle school when she died. It was a hard age for a girl to lose her mother. I had made my peace with it over the years, but there was this part of me, the part that ached, that always felt like there was another me out there, living a parallel life where all of the awfulness that the accident had wrought never happened.
“No?” Charlie stood straight again. He looked disappointed and bored. If he had sensed any of my emotions, he didn’t let on, and I wasn’t going to tell him. That was too private.
But then, something came to me. Charlie tilted his head when I looked at him, waiting for me to speak.
“My car,” I said quietly. It seemed innocuous enough. “I want all the damage from the chai lattes fixed.”
Grinning, Charlie stopped just short of rolling his eyes as he turned to walk. “The world at your fingertips, and you want your car cleaned.”
We passed Gates on the way, and she gave me a questioning look and tried to pass us by unnoticed. She must have thought I was with a customer. I grabbed her firmly by the arm as we passed and kept walking, and she gave out a low hiss as she spun around to walk next to me.
“Annie?” she asked.
“Gates,” I said in the same tone, “this is Charlie.”
“Charlie?” Her tone was measured. “Like, Charlie Charlie?”
Walking ahead of us, Charlie held up his hand and snapped his fingers to conjure another flame. Gates’ eyes went wide and her jaw went slack as she looked at it, and Charlie wordlessly dropped his hand again.
“Well…” Gates drew the word out. “That’s… special.”
Charlie put a hand on my car door and all the locks popped open. My eyebrows shot sky high. Looking inside with a disgusted expression, he waved a hand, and then held the door open for me to inspect.
The car was spotless, and the smell was gone. Even my gym clothes looked freshly washed and pressed, and I went around to the back door to find my senior project and school notebooks returned to their former glory. I nodded in satisfaction, still not sure if I was scared or elated, and turned back to face a bored Charlie and a stunned Gates.
“So… you’ll take care of the thing with Jennifer Wilmot for me?”
“Yes,” Charlie said quickly. “I believe the book told you what I need in exchange.”
My finger moved to my hair, and he nodded. I didn’t have any scissors on me, but I kept a set in the glove box for emergencies, and I went around to get them.
“You’ll take care of it?” I asked, coming back to face him. “You can really do that?”
“I can,” he said holding out a hand. “You’ll find I can be a great friend, and it’s nice to meet someone so open to my services.”
Gates seemed to have finally found her voice. “What are you going to do?”
“Remove her from the equation,” he replied.
“You’re going to kill her?” Gates eyes went even wider, which a moment ago I would not have thought possible.
“Oh, I didn’t say that…”
“You didn’t not say it!” Gates turned to me, and then nodded at Charlie. “Tell him not to kill her!”
I eyed Gates, and then Charlie. She was freaking out, and he was… oddly normal. His eyes were a little intense, and he was a beautiful man, but other than that he was just a guy. I would have expected horns and a pitchfork.
“Don’t kill her,” I repeated.
Charlie rolled his eyes. “Always so concerned about which side of the veil you’re on. You know, from any other perspective than your own, life and death is a pretty arbitrary barrier—”
“Don’t kill anyone!” I repeated again. The slipperiness of his language was beginning to set off alarms in my mind.
Charlie eyed us both for a moment, not speaking, and Gates held out her hand. He didn’t give her the grimoire, but instead smiled condescendingly.
“Little girls shouldn’t play with magic, witches or not. And some things are too important—more important than me, even, if you can fathom such a thing,” he said, sighing. “I used to be in the employ of another Hawthorn, and I would dearly like to speak with her now. Do you know a Kendra?”
“My aunt,” I said. The realization that my aunt had been a real, practicing witch washed over me. It was a lot to digest, and I found my eyes wandering the greenhouse grounds with a fresh appreciation for the activities that they might have hosted.
“Your aunt,” Charlie repeated. “Well then. Please tell her that it’s my pleasure to continue serving the family, but I don’t take orders from the family babes. Where is she?”
“She’s dead,” I said haphazardly, wondering how he had gleaned so much about me earlier, and yet he didn’t know that Kendra had died years ago.
“Little thorn in my side, I’m going to grant you your wish for granting me mine. As I said, I don’t like being indebted.” Charlie frowned as he looked me in the eye. “But as for your aunt being dead, I assure you that she isn’t.”
And then, in a wisp of blackish smoke, he was gone again.
Gates’ jaw dropped open. “He took the book!”
I turned on her
, hardly able to contain my disbelief. “A demon just told me my dead aunt’s not dead! You’re worried about the book?!”
Gates was shaking her head wildly, and she finally reached up and grabbed her hair to steady herself. “He took the book, Annie!”
I shook my head. “So?”
“So you didn’t tell him to come back after he did whatever he’s going to do! We need that book to control him!”
She seemed to realize she was acting crazy, and got into my car. I followed, closing the door behind me so that we could yell at each other with the noise buffer of my newly cleaned vehicle. It had a slightly lemony smell now, as if he had hand-wiped the interior with an oiled cloth. “You didn’t even tell him what to do!”
I stumbled over the words as they blustered from my mouth. “You didn’t tell me I needed to!”
“I was getting to it!” she screeched. “I didn’t think a guy was actually going to show up—it kind of changed the plan!”
We both fell into silence, trying to grasp what we had done. I had just sent a demon into the world on a revenge mission, and the only parameter I had given him was not to kill anyone. I was now wishing I had been a little more specific.
“Okay,” Gates said, using the fake calm voice she usually reserved for times when she was about to give me bad news. “We need to find Jennifer and follow her. It’s the only way we’re ever going to find him.”
I didn’t bother to say goodbye to Lyssa. We left Gates’ car behind as we pulled out of the lot. We went to my house, and immediately got on the internet to try and find Jennifer’s address. Due to her uncommon last name, it was easy, and within fifteen minutes, we were there.
Sitting in my car out in front of the Wilmot residence, I felt a little like a deranged stalker. Like maybe I had been pushed too far and made up a demon in my head to justify my now insane actions.
“One of us needs to go look in the windows,” Gates said. “To see if she’s even home. And you’re taller.”
“And you’re shorter, which means you’ll hide in the bushes better!” I countered. “And what the hell are we supposed to do if she isn’t here? We just drive around town looking for her at random?”
