Cantrips: Volume #2: Minor Magics Crafted to Amuse and Entertain

by Joey W. Hill

  He stopped the internal monologue, attention sharpening as his senses got a whiff of something that hinted of violence, that seemed not quite right. Across the big open space between the railings, past those standing against the railing on the opposite side, his gaze alighted on a couple. They were standing in the shadowy opening of one of the maintenance hallways tucked between two stores. The woman, probably around John’s age, wore thick makeup, a tight top and short skirt, platform heels. A lot of young women wore risqué clothing on Friday nights, but there was a different quality to her, to the look on her tired, guarded face. He was looking at a hooker.

  The big guy holding her arm in a lobster pincer clamp had to be her pimp. He was getting up in her face, giving her hell while she did her best not to flinch or spit at him, though she looked torn between the two impulses, inciting Kane’s curiosity. She was tired but not cowed. But the guy still outweighed her, and she looked like it wasn’t so much that she thought she could keep him from hitting her, as much as she’d learned the price of showing him her fear of it.

  “Let’s go over there,” he said, nodding in that direction. Farida followed his gaze. Thanks to her vampire senses being as enhanced as his, it didn’t take her long to pick up on the situation.

  “Kane,” she warned. “We don’t get involved in human issues.”

  “I’m not getting involved.”

  Yet he was already on the move. His speed picked up, smooth as a snake cutting through water, as the male pushed the woman against the wall to make their conversation both more private and more menacing. As they rounded the railing, he tuned in enough to make out some of the conversation through the white noise.

  “I don’t give you room and board to spend your time shopping at the mall, Jackie.”

  “I was just picking up a gift for Nancy, Earl. With my money.”

  “You don’t got no money that’s yours. Everything you’ve got is mine.”

  “That’s not true.” She tried to yank her arm free. “I get twenty percent of what I earn.”

  “Your time is mine, and when you’re wasting it, I take more.”

  “Is there a problem?” Kane stepped up with a smile pasted on his face he was pretty sure wasn’t pleasant in the least. “Jackie, you never came back.”

  Earl was a bulky man with questionable taste in aftershave. He also obviously thought an expensive brown suit with a red tie and a reindeer stick pin were all that was necessary to reflect good taste and the spirit of the season, respectively. He turned a narrowed gaze on Kane. His eyes were the gray of a cinder block, his face pitted like one. “Who the fuck are you?”

  “I’m the person who paid Jackie for her time tonight. Her entire evening. I don’t like to Christmas shop alone.”

  Earl scowled at Jackie. “You didn’t say nothing about hanging around with some rich guy. You trying to take my money, bitch?”

  “I told her one of my conditions was absolute discretion. You are not discreet.” Kane slid a gaze over him. A life-sized pus boil can’t be discreet. He pulled out his wallet. “I can pay her for the night thus far and call it done. However, if you’re willing to get lost and stop making it obvious what kind of relationship you have, she’ll get the balance of it and you’ll receive a greater benefit.”

  Jackie’s gaze was shifting between the two of them, but fortunately she held her tongue, not calling Kane out as a liar. Her pale green eyes were wary, though. She didn’t look like the type who trusted sudden turns of good fortune. That made him feel even less charitable toward Earl, not that he had any to begin with. He wondered if the red hair was hers or a wig, and had a feeling it was a wig. She was blond, wasn’t she? A dark blonde. He frowned, wondering where that thought had come from.

  “I’m her business manager,” Earl said, interrupting his thoughts. “Before you do anything else with her, we negotiate it out.”

  The man’s gaze was roving over Kane, sizing him up as a mark. Like Farida, Kane had downplayed his appearance. Male vampires were no less distracting on mortal senses. Farida had chosen dark glasses because her amber eyes were an unusual color. Not impossible in a day of colored contacts, but they drew attention. Kane had gone with brown tinted shades that muted the blue of his eyes. He didn’t care for hats, but he’d tied back the thick dark hair that fell to his shoulder blades in a glossy mane.

  He wore jeans, too, but according to Uncle Gideon, he’d inherited Daegan’s sense of style. Whatever that meant, Kane liked dressing well. The jeans were a designer brand, his tan belt revealed by the casual fall of a dark green turtleneck over them. He wore a cashmere top coat against Atlanta’s mild winter chill. To someone like Earl, he looked like money. He did have money, but that didn’t make Kane respond any better to the avaricious gaze. The man’s very scent offended him.

  He could handle all that. He was handling all this pretty well, despite Farida’s concerns about getting involved. Then Jackie opened her mouth to speak. Earl’s grip tightened and twisted, turning her elbow in toward her body as he stepped closer, screening the painful move. Her features whitened with pain.

  Heat swept up through Kane’s chest, a rumble like low level thunder happening in his mind. He made himself take a breath, center, but that filled his nose with that offending scent again. Scent could be a trigger.

  John stepped to his side.

  I’m fine, John.

  Yeah. I know. John still moved closer.

  Triggered bloodlust opened his mind to John, whether Kane wanted to do that or not. As irritating as that was, it was an obvious symptom, telling Kane he needed to focus, get his shit together.

  “Let her go.” Kane laid his hand on Earl’s wrist. With a simple squeeze, he forced the issue, shifting between him and Jackie and pushing Earl back a step. The movement was smooth, easy enough for Kane to accomplish, but touching the male took his reaction up another notch. Unfortunately, it did the same to Earl.

  “Just because you paid for pussy don’t mean you own it,” Earl said, showing teeth. “Get your fucking hands off me.”

  “Kane,” Farida said. She moved to his other side.

  “Step back, Farida,” John said urgently. She gave him a startled glance and then Earl’s gaze was on her.

  “Why you need to buy a used-up piece of ass when you got this top grade one? Or maybe she’s too expensive? You like pinching pennies, rich boy?”

  Earl was wheezing, Kane noted with interest. Maybe because his hand was wrapped around his throat and he had the man pinned against the wall. He leaned in, his fangs starting to extend. He could almost taste the blood pounding rapidly through Earl’s heart.

  “You don’t look at her,” he said. “You don’t think about her.”

  That aftershave smells like he milked a skunk and spiced it up with citrus, John said calmly in his mind. If you drain him, you’ll probably have that coming out your pores for a week. Your mother will make you sleep outside. Even the dogs won’t sleep with you.

  No matter the time lapse between visits, it was always that way with John. He just knew how to support Kane, how to anticipate his needs, an intuition that exceeded even the expectations of a second mark’s abilities. He heard Farida’s chuckle, slightly forced, but still it penetrated. It helped ease the roaring, enough Kane could do what he’d been taught to do to bring it all the way under control. Counting, focusing on an image that would help calm him.

  He imagined Farida ice skating, her smile as she found her footing. Even with vampire grace, she’d probably fall down a couple times while she learned, but she’d dust off her jeans and do it again until she figured it out.

  Kane’s grip eased enough that Earl could speak. “You want to be with Jackie, it’s five hundred for the night,” he rasped. “A thousand if you want her to stay over with you.”

  He had enough confidence in his public surroundings to still sound belligerent, but his rolling eyes and white face said he was also picking up on how little concern Kane had about that. “Cash,” he added hopefull
y.

  With effort, Kane let Earl go and drew out his wallet again. He put four hundred in Earl’s hand. The pimp looked at it. “Where’s the other hundred?”

  “Your split is 80-20. You probably didn’t pay close attention in math class, but that means the other hundred belongs to her.”

  “I hold her money for her.”

  “Not tonight.” Kane closed his hand over Earl’s fist, tightly clenched on the money, and jerked him closer. “You don’t have to live to see tomorrow. One more word, and I’ll make sure of it.”

  The man wasn’t smart enough to cast his gaze down, to submit, and nothing could get a vampire’s blood up like a direct challenge. He felt John’s tension flood back into him. But he sensed his own response affecting Farida. Shit. She was having to fight back her own bloodlust. The two of them could rip apart this piece of shit faster than the blink of Christmas lights. He had a flash of Farida’s T-shirt stained with blood, those pretty fingernails. That wasn’t what she’d wanted tonight. She just wanted to pick up her parents’ gift. Probably wanted a chance, just like he did, to do something unsupervised and not have it go bad.

  He grimly hung on to that, to her needs and desires, even as the other side of himself howled for blood. His grip tightened, and a bone broke. Earl let out a pained grunt, a strangled squeal of pain.

  Kane. Think of Farida. You have to protect her. We have to protect her.

  John closed his hand on his shoulder, not to restrain him, but to remind him he wasn’t alone. He had his back.

  “I have paid adequately for her time,” Kane said at last. Though a hiss tagged his syllables and Earl was still looking at him like he’d grown horns, he managed to sound civilized. “Your dislike of me or my abuse of your pride and person will not come back on her. Because if it does, I will give you reason to highly dislike me. For the short period in which your heart will still be beating while you beg for death.”

  Jerking Earl around, Kane shoved him out of the hallway, forcefully enough that Earl stumbled about twenty feet into the crowd before he could regain his footing. The distance helped. Kane took a deep breath of clean air, took another one. Fortunately for all of them, Earl pocketed the money and kept moving, hurrying off into the crowd.

  Kane? Are you all right?

  He bit back a curse as his mother’s voice filled his head. He caught the faint sound of music, the orchestra at the symphony. Apparently they were on an overture, which went great with the boiling of his blood. Since she’d agreed to limit her infiltration into his mind to picking up on excess emotion, not specific eavesdropping on his thoughts, she wouldn’t know the situation he was facing. Unless his bloodlust escalated, and then he was sure she would toss any promises of respecting his privacy aside and scour his mind like a steel-toothed rake.

  I’m fine, my lady. He was a man, not a skulking boy, so he did what he should have done before he left. John and I are at the mall with Farida, picking up her parents’ gift. Just ran into an unpleasant human, being aggressive toward a woman. The situation is under control.

  Silence. He could almost feel the weight of her jade stare. She used silences in the way intelligence agencies employed far more aggressive interrogation tactics. But he was his mother’s son after all. He stubbornly stayed quiet himself until she spoke again.

  All right. Don’t linger long. We’ll discuss this when we get home.

  He bit back the retort that he didn’t feel there was anything further to discuss. A moment later, he was glad he had when she added, on a kinder note, Pick your father up some of those gingerbread Moravian cookies from the Christmas Mouse. I’ll add them to his stocking.

  Yes, Mother. She might be the oldest vampire alive, but she did understand his frustration. Sometimes.

  I also suggest you take some extra blood from John as soon as feasible to help calm you. It would probably do Farida good as well, because Jessica said she left half of her blood meal in the refrigerator.

  Kane frowned. He’d assumed Farida had fed as well as he had before she left. However, he had more pressing matters to address right now. Jackie stood between John and Farida staring at him, a million thoughts obviously struggling in her mind.

  “See?” He nodded to Farida. “I’m fine. Not a problem. We’re all good here.”

  “You are so your mother’s son.” Farida sighed.

  John snorted. “I was going to say his father’s. Have you ever seen Jacob react when someone threatens Lyssa?”

  The newest addition to their party shot Kane an impatient look. “Don’t really need to be part of your little chitchat party. What do you and your fancy friends really want?” She flipped back a lock of the brassy red hair and eyed them with a blink of the lashes lacquered with mascara. “You want me and her to get it on while you two boys watch, and then I do both of you? You’ve paid enough to cover that.”

  Kane blinked as John coughed and Farida hid a smirk. “Uh, no.” Closing his hand gently over her wrist, Kane turned Jackie’s hand palm up and put the hundred dollar bill there. “We didn’t want anything. You just looked like you could use a break. Merry Christmas. You can buy Nancy a good gift with that.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Rich people charity. Makes you feel better because you intervened, helped save the hooker at Christmas. When what you’ve really done is piss Earl off so he’ll beat the shit out of me if I don’t avoid him for the next several days. Merry fucking Christmas yourself.” Giving him a disgusted look, she stuffed the hundred in her bra and started to slide around him.

  Her derision took him aback, but as the light shifted over her face, Kane reached out without thinking, brought her to a halt with a hand resting on her shoulder.

  “Hey, what’re you doing?”

  He studied her, his eyes narrowing. Whatever he thought he’d seen, it was gone again, but he couldn’t let go of something…familiar. “Is your hair blonde under the wig?” he asked, wondering if he was losing his mind. “Dark blonde?”

  She tossed him a bored look. “So you like blondes. Big surprise. Most like the red this time of year. More Christmas festive. But yeah, I can be a blonde if you like.”

  He shook his head, sharpened his tone. “Is your hair dark blonde?”

  When he caught the amused expression on John’s face, the slightly unsettled one on Farida’s, he wasn’t sure how to interpret either. What? he asked John.

  You also sound like your mother sometime. The whole dominant vampire thing.

  Shut up. We’re freaking her out enough.

  “Yeah. Make up your mind, pretty boy.” Jackie stepped away from him, shaking him loose. “I’m bitchy, but I’m honest. You’ve paid. You want something for your money, you tell me and you’ll get what you paid for.”

  Kane straightened, considered. “Okay. I’d like to sit and talk with you a few minutes. Is that all right? The money’s yours even if you don’t want to sit with me. But if you’re okay with conversation, I can buy you a hot apple cider.”

  “A hot apple cider?”

  “You look cold.”

  Farida and John exchanged a glance. “We’ll just go over there and wait on you,” John said. He motioned to a bench close to the toy store.

  “Thanks.”

  Despite Farida’s thoughtful expression, she went with John without comment. As they withdrew, Kane gestured politely toward the kiosk for the hot apple cider. “If you want something to eat, we can get it as well. There’s a bench by the rail there. It has a nice view of the ice rink while you’re eating.”

  “Your dime, hon. I’ll look at whatever you want me to look at.”

  “It’s not like that.” He pointed at the oversized bag she clutched on her shoulder. “Are you carrying your regular clothes? Non-work clothes, I mean."

  She cast a caustic look over herself. “What, you don’t like the ‘twenty bucks and I’ll blow you in an alley’ look? Too much slumming for someone of your refined tastes?”

  “Since I hope I’ve covered the rest of your night,
I thought you’d be more comfortable in your regular clothes,” Kane said evenly. “If you’ll tell me what you want food-wise, I’ll get it while you change in the bathroom.”

  She pursed her painted lips, shifted to a cocked hip. “What’s to stop me taking off with your money?”

  “You said you’re honest,” he responded simply. “I won’t keep you long. I just want to talk to you a bit. But…” He lifted a shoulder. “I’d like to see your real hair. That’s my one requirement.”

  She executed that cynical shrug again, shouldered the bag more securely. “I want a hot apple cider and one of those big Asiago cheese stuffed pretzels when I get back.”

  “You got it.”

  * * *

  Farida frowned as Kane moved to the wheeled cart to buy a hot cider and a large stuffed pretzel and the prostitute went down the hallway to the restroom. “What is he doing?”

  “Being Kane. People interest him. They always have. He gets in their heads, figures them out. He doesn’t like not knowing the answers.”

  “You know him so well.” She stayed silent a moment. “You did good back there. Kept us both okay.”

  “It’s not so hard. All I have to do is remind him he’s supposed to protect you. That always brings him right back on point.” John stretched an arm out behind her shoulders, an affectionate contact between friends. She drew her feet up on the bench, looped her arms around her knees and laid her head back on his arm. “Hey.” She rolled her head back and forth, testing the terrain. “You have biceps now. You must be working out.”

  “Some. Strength training helps mental focus, stamina, for long hours in the lab.”

  She chuckled. “I should have known. It wouldn’t simply be because you were trying to impress a girl. Nothing normal like that.”

  John snorted. “Like me impressing a girl has ever been possible when I’m with Kane.”

  “Well, you’re not around Kane as much anymore, are you?”