by J. S. Malcom
I grab a brush from my dresser, and I’m still dragging it through my hair when I answer the door. Autumn rushes inside, looking behind down the hall.
“Everything okay?” I say.
She rubs her palm against her cheek. “I think so. I swear something smacked me in the face when I was climbing the stairs. It felt like a tongue.”
Oh, right. I almost forgot. “Did you eat anything sweet today?”
Autumn frowns. “Part of a donut. Why?”
“You probably had sugar on your face. Snorflers are crazy for the stuff.”
“What the hell is a snorfler?”
I shrug. “Flying demon frog. We really need to do something about that little fucker.”
“Where did it come from?”
“I don’t know. Where does any flying demon frog come from?” Only to a fellow witch would that answer be sufficient. Just to mess with her I add, “By the way, you’re late.”
Autumn shrugs and walks farther into my apartment. “Actually, we’re not meeting for almost an hour. I just wanted to make sure you were ready.”
I can’t exactly resent this manipulation, since she was right. “Almost,” I say. “But I guess I can stop rushing now.” By which I really mean I started getting ready three minutes ago.
Autumn looks me up and down. “Is that what you’re wearing?”
She’s just messing with me now. The reason I know this is because, while her jeans aren’t as beat up as mine, she’s dressed almost identically. She’s wearing a green top, with a light green sweater showing at the part of her black leather jacket. I’m tempted to sniff her for evidence of thrift store shopping. I don’t, but I’d bet fifty bucks on it.
I drag one last snarl out of my hair, and then wing the brush across the room. I miss the couch, but I guess I’ll find my brush again when I step on it.
Autumn looks around my living room, where last night’s unfinished burrito bowl remains on the coffee table next to a couple of empty beer bottles. Evidence that I had a hot date with Netflix and fell asleep on the sofa regretting my life choices. Although, Autumn never criticizes me on that front. Not even jokingly. Not long ago, she felt completely lost too.
“Your place looks cute,” she says. “I always like the light in here.”
It’s true that my apartment gets great light, which nicely illuminates my mess of a life.
Autumn unzips her jacket, her gaze going to the collection of photos on my wall—those framed and given to me as a gift when I first moved into my apartment. There are pictures of us together with our mother, one of me and Phoenix, and another group shot showing me with Phoenix, his mother, Isabel, and his sister, Bethany. Autumn took that shot, so she's not in it, but it's looking at that one that makes her sigh.
I'm pretty sure I know why too. Because we used to visit the Aimes family all the time and now we don't. Not since Phoenix and I broke up.
Autumn won't say it, so I say it for her. “I miss them too. Have you spoken to any of them?”
“Not in a few weeks,” Autumn says, leaving it at that.
“You should call them. Maybe go have lunch with Bethany and Isabel.”
Just because Phoenix and I are no longer a thing doesn't mean Autumn should end any friendships. I hope my friendship with Isabel and Bethany will continue too. If it wasn't for those two, Autumn and I wouldn't even know we were veil witches, never mind how to focus our powers. Actually, the same can be said for Phoenix, who taught both of us so much. Apparently, it’s my turn to sigh.
“I will soon,” Autumn says. “The new semester just kicked off so Bethany is probably busy right now.”
Bethany teaches science at the University of Richmond and the new semester did just start, but I don't for a second think that's what's stopping Autumn. She's trying to keep things from getting awkward for me.
“Just don't hold back on my account,” I say. “I'm sure we can all handle it.”
I'm not sure if Autumn even hears me. She seems distracted as she goes to the window, where she looks out over the neighborhood. A few moments pass before she sighs again, and I think about what Julia said the other night.
“How’s it going with you?”
Autumn speaks over her shoulder, her voice soft. “Okay, I guess.”
Something tells me that this is the real reason she showed up early. So we’d have a chance to talk about that decision she’s facing. I plop down onto the sofa and pretend to be looking at my phone, giving Autumn time to think. She’ll tell me if she wants to.
Finally, she turns to face me again. “So, I’ve kind of got a situation,” she says.
The phrasing worries me a little, but I can tell from her expression that we’re not dealing with anything too dire. I gesture to the easy chair, which for once doesn’t hold a pile of laundry. “What’s the deal?”
Autumn takes the chair. “Okay, well…” She looks at me for a moment, eye to eye. “Ian asked me to marry him.”
I’m a little stunned. Maybe it’s that I expected this down the road a little more. But I also get why she was hesitant to tell me. After all, Phoenix and I just broke up. Autumn probably figures this isn’t the best time. And I haven’t even told her about what went down with Esras. So, my sister is right in ways she can’t begin to guess. Still, a smile spreads across my face.
“That’s your situation? Cool! What did you tell him?”
Autumn rests her head against the back of her chair. She looks at the ceiling for a moment. “I haven’t given him an answer yet.”
“Oh.”
Autumn’s eyes glisten as she looks at me again. “Right. It’s just, I don’t know…”
She doesn’t have to say the rest. I get it. Ian is an awesome guy. Autumn totally loves him too. Which can only mean one thing. “Is it Justin?”
Autumn wipes a tear from her eye as she nods. I understand where she’s coming from, I really do. She loved Justin with all her heart. Losing him nearly destroyed her, but she grieved long and hard already.
I perch forward, resting my forearms on my thighs. “He’d want this. You know he would.”
Autumn nods, wiping her eyes again. My sister is tough. In many ways, tougher than me. So, those tears she’s trying to hold back tell me that this deal is tearing her apart.
“I know,” she says. “He would, you’re right.”
“So, what’s stopping you?”
Autumn shakes her head. “I don’t know. Guilt, I guess. Fear. Both maybe. It’s just that Justin is so… gone now. I mean really gone. There was a time when I could still sense him being around me. I knew he was still there. It’s not that way anymore. And the strange part is I’m the one who made that happen.”
It’s something that possibly only a veil witch could say, in that it’s literally true. When that demon tried to lure her in, he’d used Justin’s trapped soul as bait. Autumn has been so desperate to be with her dead husband again that she very nearly succumbed. In the end, Autumn broke free, but part of breaking the spell had involved helping Justin to finally step through the veil into the afterlife. The whole thing nearly destroyed her all over again.
“You did the right thing,” I say. “You know that, right?”
Autumn nods, but her eyes go to the window again.
“You set Justin free,” I remind her. “And he’d want the same thing for you. You know that.”
Autumn nods, her eyes distant. “I do,” she says, softly. “You’re right.”
“How did you leave things with Ian?”
“That’s the thing,” Autumn says. “Ian knows me too well. He said he didn’t want an answer until I had some time to think about it.” A soft smile plays upon her lips, one that shows how deeply she feels about him. “In fact, he forbade me to answer him for at least two weeks.”
It’s just so like Ian to be sensitive. On the other hand, I’m not exactly known for my diplomacy. “That’s because he already knows you’ll say yes. The guy’s a first-class psychic.”
“Oh
, okay,” Autumn says, mock-defensively. “So, I’m like that easy to read.”
“Pretty much.” My smile turns into a grin. “You’re just a total softie. So, first you’re going to torture yourself for a while. Then, once you’re sure no one in the entire universe gets hurt, maybe you’ll allow yourself to be happy. Maybe.”
Autumn wings a throw pillow at my head. “I’m not that pathetic!”
“I didn’t say you were pathetic. I said you were a softie. Which is why Ian is so good for you. He cares about what you feel first, and then he lusts after your hot body.”
Autumn bursts out laughing. And, just like Autumn would, she gets up and retrieves the pillow she just threw. “I found your brush,” she says, tossing that my way too.
I knew that would work out.
Autumn checks her phone and says, “Okay, maybe I cut it a bit wide. We still have twenty minutes to kill.”
Which is really her way of saying, Now it’s your turn. I know there’s stuff you haven’t been telling me.
Of course, there’s always stuff I haven’t been telling her. It’s been that way since she reunited me with my body and I started sneaking out at night to hunt vampires. Which is why, at one point, she installed a tracking app onto my phone. Yeah, I nearly murdered her for that one. Then again, she saved my life with that tracking app.
“So, it’s kind of time I told you something,” I say.
Autumn raises an eyebrow. “Let me guess. About Faerie?”
“Um, yeah. Actually, it might be better to show you. It might mess you up a little at first, but it’s really no biggie.”
Autumn raises her other eyebrow.
“Ready?” I say, as my hands start to heat up.
Autumn glances at my hands. I don’t have to look to know they’re glowing.
“Go for it,” Autumn says.
I raise my hands to either side of my head, soon feeling heat against my ears. When they feel cool again, I know I’ve dropped the glamour. I wait for Autumn’s eyes to pop out of her head at the sight of my pointy ears. Instead, a smile tugs at the corner of her lips.
“That’s it?” I say. “I show you my freaking elf ears and nothing?”
Autumn raises her own hands, which now glow as well. She flips her hair back and I’m the one whose eyes go wide. If anything, her ears are pointier than mine. Is that my imagination? It has to be my imagination.
“What the fuck are those?” I say.
Autumn shrugs. “Remember when we went to Faerie? This started happening the day after we got back. A little at a time, but it kept going. Freaked me out, at first, but then I remembered something I overheard at the wedding.”
Oh, shit. “What was that?”
“You’re friend, Cade, said something to his wife about you being half fae. I figured he meant it figuratively, but then…” Autumn shrugs and gestures to her ears. “Then, this happened. All I can think is that visiting Faerie must have activated my fae genes.”
“And you didn’t tell me?” Right, did I really just say that?
“I thought about mentioning it, but decided to save it for the right moment.” I try not to wilt beneath her knowing look. “As in, when you finally decided to fess up,” Autumn adds. Not that she had to. I knew what she meant, but I can’t exactly blame her for twisting the knife.
“So, you knew the entire time?”
“That you had elf ears?” Autumn’s smile grows wider. “I figured there was no way it was just me. How often have things gone that way?”
Right, pretty much never. We may not be biological twins, but we’re damn close in every other way, including magic. The timing has been hit and miss, but we keep ending up in pretty much the same place. And it explains something I’ve been wondering about. Namely, that if I have fae blood running through my veins, wouldn’t Autumn too?
Suddenly, Autumn jumps in her seat, and then digs her phone from her pocket. “Shit, they’re already at the restaurant. We better get moving. You can fill me in on the rest as we drive.”
“You better drive slow,” I say.
CHAPTER 11
Glamours safely back in place, we pull into the mall parking lot half an hour later. I look up at the sign above the restaurant. “Seriously, the Cheesecake Factory?”
Autumn glances over as she turns off the engine. “It’s Big Jim’s favorite restaurant.”
“The Cheesecake Factory is Big Jim’s favorite restaurant.”
“I guess so. What’s wrong with that?”
I shrug. “Mom hates cheesecake, for one thing.”
“But she likes Big Jim,” Autumn says. “Besides, you don’t have to eat cheesecake.”
We get out of the car and start walking toward the mall. “But you kind of do, right?”
Autumn sighs. “No, you don’t. They just happen to have cheesecake.”
I stare up at the giant sign again. “They don’t just happen to have cheesecake. They’re the Cheesecake Factory. Ergo, eating cheesecake is pretty much mandatory. Does Big Jim know Mom hates cheesecake?”
Autumn looks over at me. “I think she’s still working up the nerve to tell him. You know, in case it ruins their relationship. What’s gotten into you?”
“What do you mean, what’s gotten into me? Our mother hates cheesecake and her new boyfriend loves the stuff, apparently. Not a good sign, is what I’m thinking. Geez.”
Autumn laughs, assuming I’m kidding. It’s a fair assumption. But am I really feeling just a little pissie suddenly? I kind of am. As we enter the restaurant and make our way toward the table, I realize the source of my sudden pissieness. On the way over, I told Autumn about what happened in Faerie. Including a somewhat edited version of my relationship with Esras. I mean, I didn’t lie to her about the two of us having sex. I just kind of tamed things a little, since she probably would have thought I was exaggerating. But then it dawned on me that both my sister and mother have someone now, while I have no one. Sure, those were choices I made, but still. Another item for my therapy agenda, come to think of it.
We enter the restaurant and make our way toward the table. Ian is already there, and his eyes light up at the sight of Autumn. Ian is a good looking guy, with an athletic physique and thick, wavy dark hair, but what attracted Autumn to him first was his intelligence and passion for helping people. Theirs is a relationship based on mutual respect, friendship and emotional support. At the same time, from what I've managed to gather from my more reserved sister, the physical aspects aren't half-bad either.
Beside my mother sits a middle-aged, stocky man with graying brown hair. He doesn’t look particularly big. He also wore a blazer and a dress shirt to the Cheesecake Factory.
I speak quietly to Autumn. “So, that’s Big Jim.”
Autumn whispers back, “Give him a chance.”
As usual, she’s right on the money, because what I was thinking is that the man sitting next to my mother doesn’t look anything like our father. That man, thin and tall with auburn hair, died while I was gone. I know that my mother deserves to be happy again, just as Autumn deserves the same. But something keeps holding me back from finding happiness of my own, and I wonder if it might be the part of my own past that I didn’t get to experience.
Ian gets up and kisses Autumn. He gives me a hug, squeezing a little harder than I expected, but it feels good. It’s just what I needed, in fact, for me to pull my head out of my ass. Autumn and I take seats on either side of him.
Our mother beams at us. “Girls, this is Jim.”
Right, she doesn’t call him Big Jim. We came up with that to bug her. We both smile and say how nice it is to meet him.
“Your mother has told me so much about you two,” Jim says.
I repress a chuckle at that. I mean, how much could she have told him? Jim, honey, did I mention that my daughters are witches? Oh, and they regularly interact with the dead and sometimes vampires and demons? Every family has a few of those, right?
Jim turns to Autumn and says, “Your moth
er says you’re working on your graduate degree. Visual Communications, right?”
“That’s right,” Autumn says, probably preparing herself for the usual reaction of “Do you actually think you’ll get a job with a master’s degree in art?
“That’s a fantastic program,” Jim says. “A friend of mine went there and he ended up working for Pixar, way back when they first started out. I remember his parents thinking he’d never get a job. Which is why I always encouraged my kids to remain open to whatever path felt right for them.”
Big Jim has kids? I guess it makes sense at his age, but does that mean we have backyard barbecues in our future? I don’t think I’m ready for this. I glance over at Autumn to see her smiling at Jim. Not just a polite smile either. A smile that says, I think I really like this guy already. Shit.
Big Jim leans in toward me. “Your mother says you work in a new age bookstore.”
Okay, here we go. As in, you must be the underachiever of the family. Technically, true, but the backstory on that is being bodiless for fifteen years. Kind of hard to convey without seeming deranged.
“Part-time,” I say. I almost go on to say my main gig these days is performing supernatural cleanups, but I just can’t do that to my mother.
“That sounds interesting,” Jim says. “I may not look the part, but I’m totally open-minded about that kind of thing. To be honest, I believe we’re surrounded by paranormal elements. Most of which we can’t see, or even begin to comprehend.”
He doesn’t lower his voice or look around self-consciously. He seems completely unconcerned about possibly being thought a total weirdo. Oh, shit, I kind of like the guy too. Still, I say, “I suspect that’s probably the case,” which prompts a snort from Autumn. She manages to conceal her amusement by pretending she’s coughing.
“I’d like to come into the store sometime,” Jim says. “Maybe you could suggest a few books.”
I’m tempted to say, “Well, we have a section just for witches, but I could show you the boring stuff.” I don’t, mostly because my mother is watching me closely. Just to mess with her, I float her fork up from the table while Jim isn’t looking. My mother snatches it from the air behind her new boyfriend, but not before Autumn notices. She lets out another involuntary snort, raising her hand to cover her mouth.
