by H. T. Night
“This is quite the dinner,” Katherine said. “We did good.” Katherine smiled at me with a sense of vulnerability that was precious. Vulnerability? That was a side of Katherine I had yet to see. She was usually emotionally tough as nails.
“Let’s eat,” I said.
We passed the food to each other until we both had a little of everything.
“Can I ask you a question, Anthony?” They were her first words since we had started eating and I had a mouth full of food.
I chewed my food, swallowed, and wiped my mouth. “Of course.”
“How do you feel about me?”
I looked at her, shocked. I had never been asked this question by the opposite sex or anyone of either sex, for that matter.
“How do I feel about you?” I repeated. “You mean, how I feel about you in the complete sense?” I was stumbling over my words and my heart was beating faster in my chest.
“Look, I know it’s early. But we have spent a lot of time together. Every day feels like three dates with all the talking we do in person and on the phone.”
“I agree,” I said. “It feels like we have known each other much longer than we have.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked you. It wasn’t cool for me to put you on the spot like that.”
“I care about you a lot.” I paused and looked into her greenish-blue eyes. She was smiling from ear to ear, but I could tell she was possibly waiting for me to say more. I felt more, so I continued to speak. “You’re a breath of fresh air. I think about so you much that I wonder if you could possibly think about me even half as much.”
Tears began to build in Katherine’s eyes.
I plunged ahead and said, “All my life, I had this pathetic vision that I would meet someone and feel for her the way I do you. It doesn’t make any sense because tomorrow will be two weeks. I never thought I could feel this way.”
Now, tears had started to drip from Katherine’s eyes. “What way is that?”
I was scared to death to say the words to her. I had never experienced these kinds of emotions for anyone before. What if she doesn’t feel the same way? I paused and watched another tear build and drip from her eyes as she looked at me. I knew this was my destiny. “I love you,” I said with confidence and a touch of my own vulnerability.
Katherine stood up from the table and rushed over to my side. So, she only took three steps. I stood up and she jumped into my arms and we almost fell on the table. Luckily, it was me who caught her. I held her tightly in my arms and she wrapped her legs around my waist. I quickly put her down on the floor beside the table and said, “Wait. You haven’t said anything to me.”
Katherine took my hand and led me to her single bed on her side of the room. I lay on her bed and hugged the wall with my back to give her maximum room. She lay next to me and we looked into each other’s eyes. The only light in the room was coming off the candles at the table.
Then, as the fate would have it, Tony Bennett sang, “The Way You Look Tonight.”
“This is my all-time favorite song,” I said in a low voice to Katherine.
“Mine, too.”
“Seriously?” I whispered.
“That is an old CD we are listening to.”
“So, how do you feel about me?” I asked boldly.
Katherine smiled, took a deep breath and then began speaking. “Anthony, I knew I loved you the first day I saw you. I mean, it was infatuation, but all you have done is prove that my initial feeling was the right one. I love you too, Anthony.”
I wrapped my outer arm around her and hugged her tightly. Then I loosened up. I looked her in the eyes. Our faces were an inch apart. She leaned in and kissed me. It was tender and filled with electricity. I kissed her back and before I knew it, we were rolling around her bed kissing and touching each other all over. Our touch was gentle, but our kisses were intense.
I had only been intimate with one other person, so this was pretty rare for me. Stuff like this didn’t happen to me every night. I didn’t want to be too aggressive, but every particle of my being wanted every inch of her.
“I want you, Anthony,” Kat whispered in my ear.
“I want you, too,” I repeated.
Kat unbuckled my belt and unsnapped my pants. She touched me softly and gently and I thought I was going to lose my mind.
“Do you like this?” Kat whispered.
“Yes. Very much.”
Kat took my hands and placed them under her black dress. I felt the silkiness of her panties. I gripped her tight butt and massaged it slowly. We continued to kiss each other. Now, our kisses were wandering all over each other’s bodies.
“I want to consume you with my heart, body, and soul,” I said. I hadn’t planned on saying it, but the words were drawn out of me. I was experiencing something supernatural. But this time, it was in the realm of romance. As we took each other’s clothes off, I slipped into another dimension of passion and love.
“It’s okay,” Katherine whispered in my ear. She physically took me in hand and placed me inside her. I entered her body and began to move. The euphoria and love were out of this world. This was more than making love. I felt I had entered into another dimension.
Or, is this how it feels when you completely fall in love with someone? As we made love, I just went with all the feeling I was experiencing. I continued to kiss her lips and made sure she knew this moment was about her. But there was something else happening. I was not only being consumed by her love, but I was experiencing the same power I had felt the first time we touched. That power was now trying to erupt out of me. It took all I could do to hold it in.
“My heart is beating so fast,” I said.
“So is mine,” Kat answered.
“I love you so much.”
“I love you.”
We proceeded to make love multiple times throughout the night. Each time was better than the last. I was drowning from the love I felt for her. At the same time, I suppressed the power I felt for the simple reason that I had no idea what kind of power I was experiencing.
This was the greatest night of my life.
Chapter Twenty
When I called Detective Sherbet exactly two weeks from our first meeting, he told me to meet him at Zombee Donuts and he would have something for me.
Katherine and I had worked out that I would be driving her car again on the following Friday morning. I told her I was doing a follow-up to my investigation.
I headed out to Fullerton around nine. I figured I wouldn’t be at my meeting too long since I would just be picking up the case file. I pulled into the same donut shop around 10:30. I’d made good time on that beast of a freeway.
“Moon! I was just about to leave. My son and I are going to some conference. Some LGBT thing. Yay.”
I was pretty sure the ‘yay’ was sarcasm. I nodded. It was no secret that the detective had a gay son. He had been worried about it for years and apparently, his son had come out to him at some point. My mom said the detective had been coming to terms with it for years and had made huge strides.
“The Westminster cold case. I’ll need this back when you’re done with it.” Sherbet grabbed a file underneath his crumb-filled plate.
“The case file seems pretty thin,” I said, stating the obvious.
“I’m telling you, kid. There is hardly anything in there. There were seriously no clues.” Sherbet handed me the file.
“There might be something in here that will trigger something,” I said, hopeful.
“Trigger something?” Sherbet gave me the once-over. “Are you one of these psychics?”
“I’m not sure what I am,” I answered. “I just believe in my heart of hearts that I will have this solved in no time. I have to.”
“The confidence your mother feeds you. But who am I to stop a Moon? Go for it, kid.”
I said thanks and left the donut shop. I jumped in Kat’s car and took off back to Big Bear, driving into the school at about the same time tha
t school ended. I had missed my classes completely. Traffic had been worse than I’d anticipated.
I hurried to my dorm because I wanted to read through this file as soon as I could. Barry was nowhere to be found. Maybe he had gone walking again, looking for some grub. Food didn’t matter to me at the present moment. I began reading the notes from the detective who was previously assigned to the case. The file was a mess. Just a series of Post-its and half sheets of paper with little written on them.
I laid out all the notes, Post-its, and little bits of paper on my bed. As I laid out each Post-it, note and piece of paper, I tried to organize them chronologically.
What Katherine had told me was only part of the picture. I was seeing that now.
Katherine’s mother’s name was Sheila Norquist. I looked at the first Post-it note. “Thirty people saw her at WinCo on the day she died.” That was definitely new information. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but I was gathering more facts about what had happened.
There was a note that mentioned all the prescription medicines she was on: Tegretol, Prozac, and Seroquel.
I looked on the Internet and learned that all three pills were antidepressants.
Okay, that was something I didn’t know.
Kat’s mother had struggled with depression, possibly anxiety. I needed to know why this wasn’t ruled as a possible suicide, besides the fact that no weapon had been found in the car. Hard to shoot yourself in the head and then make the gun and bullet magically disappear.
I went over the medical examiner’s report. She had zero injuries, except for the bullet hole in her skull. No bruises, no scratches, nothing. She wasn’t suffocated, poisoned or strangled and there were no defensive wounds. I had to admit the oddest piece of information was that there had been no bullet found at the scene. Or in her. I knew that bit of info before, but now it was sticking out like a sore thumb.
I sat in my chair at the desk and read the full police report from beginning to end. It wasn’t that long. So, I read it several times. There were three more facts that Kat hadn’t been able to tell me.
First, her father had been standing at the door when her mother had pulled up.
Why? Had he gone to the door because he’d heard her pull up and gotten distracted by the news on TV?
Second, her father had also been with Katherine when she’d opened the car door and her mother had fallen into her arms. Had young Katherine been so mortified that she didn’t realize that her dad was right behind her?
Third, which I felt was the biggest, was that there had been no gas in the car.
It might have been a coincidence that she’d run out of gas just as she’d pulled into the driveway.
None of this made any more sense to me than it had when Katherine had told me what had happened. I was more lost than when I’d started. I started to feel distraught when one of the Post-its fell to the floor. It had flipped over and there was writing on the other side.
Two words: Archibald Maximus.
Chapter Twenty-one
I was able to convince Kat to let me use her car again on Saturday. I told her I needed to speak to Archibald Maximus about something important and private that I would explain later.
The only place to reach Maximus when he wasn’t wandering the halls at the Academy was at the Cal State Fullerton’s Library on the third floor. The library was closed at 6:00 p.m. on Saturdays. I needed to speak to him by myself. Maximus was a tricky dude. Truth was, I wasn’t sure what side he was even on. I knew that was a scary thought to ponder when he was the Dean of Students at the Alchemy Academy. He was just always in the middle of it.
His office on the third floor was in the Occult Reading Room. The problem was, the room was mystical. The door would only reveal itself to me if Maximus was expecting me. I wasn’t sure just how powerful this dude was and whether or not he could anticipate my need to speak to him today. He was the figurehead Dean at my school, but I had hardly seen him since I had been there these past three weeks. I was confident he had something to do with how easy it was for Barry and me to sneak in and out of the potions lab.
Once again, I took the 91 freeway but this time, I took it to the 57 and went off on Chapman. I pulled into the thirty-minute parking lot in front of the Administration office and would just hope I wouldn’t recieve a ticket. Colleges loved giving parking tickets and Cal State Fullerton was no different.
I walked past the offices and made my way to the library. Cal State Fullerton’s library was right smack in the middle of the campus and was impossible to miss.
I stepped into the extremely large library and made my way to the third floor. I took the stairs, and once I reached the third floor, I made my way to the back where they had the computers. If Maximus was expecting me, I would be able to see the door. As I reached the third floor, I took a deep breath. From a distance, it didn’t appear that the door was visible.
I was relieved as I stepped closer that the door began to appear from the blank wall. I could see the words “Occult Reading Room” on the door.
I held my breath as I walked up to the door. I had been through some earth-shattering crap in this room. Opening this door was inviting all that back into me, but I had to do it. I opened the door gingerly. I stepped into the room and heard the sound of an elevator door opening inside the room. I’d forgotten how bright the room was.
I wasn’t sure exactly how this worked because I had only entered this room with my mother. Behind a table, near some files, sat Archibald Maximus in all his glory.
Even though I was seeking him out, I was still shocked to see him. Even more alarming was that I started to have shortness of breath. My chest hurt and I hurried to the chair in front of the table where he was sitting. I sat down, too.
“I don’t feel so good. What is happening to me?” I asked.
“Anthony, you know better than most, there is a wide variety of evil present in this room. Any one of them could be irritating you. You know that better than anyone.”
“Irritating me? I feel like I’m having a heart attack!”
I looked at Archibald and focused on his bright-green, piercing eyes. As I focused on his eyes, I began to feel calmer. My chest pains began to leave my body.
“That’s right, Anthony. Just relax.” Maximus knew I needed some help. I looked at his pointed beard and I couldn’t help but think that he reminded me of a large gnome. I took a couple deep breaths and began to speak, “The reason why I’m here—”
Archibald cut me off. “I just might know why you’re here. We will get to that in a moment. Right now, I want to speak with you about yourself.”
“About me?”
“Yes, you, Anthony.”
“Okay,” I said. “What would you like to talk about?”
“Tell me what is happening with you.”
“You mean the Fire Warrior?” I asked.
“We can start with that.”
“Okay,” I said.
“When was the last time you summoned him?” Archibald asked.
“A couple of months ago,” I answered.
“Were you with your mother?” Maximus asked.
“That time. The Fire Warrior has pissed off a lot of shitheads.”
“And you,” Maximus answered. “You may switch forms, but you make all the decisions.”
“I do,” I said.
“And your ring? Why don’t you wear your ring?”
“It’s too small. It’s uncomfortable.”
“Bring it in and I’ll adjust it for you,” the dean of students said. “Are you aware of the evil you allow in your life by taking it off? How long has it been since you wore it?”
“Six months.”
Archibald shook his head in disbelief. “You and your ring come by my office at the Academy on Monday. When you return to your dorm, put the damn thing on. Tough it out for two days.” Then Archibald was quiet. He stood up and walked down one of the aisles of books that filled the Occult Reading Room. “Follow me,” he said.
I stood up and felt light-headed.
“Be careful,” Archibald pleaded, with a touch of sarcasm.
I walked over to him. We were in between two rows of books. One row gave me pleasant feelings, while the other row of books made me feel anxious. Archibald left me standing in the middle of the two rows of books and sat back down in his chair. He nodded to me as if to say, “You will be okay, but proceed gingerly.”
I turned my head so Maximus could not see my eyes. I stared at the sides of books that were snapping curses at me and I knew this was where my answer stood. I just didn’t know where.
As I began to walk further down the aisle, what seemed to be an endless row of books, the magic of the reading room was now playing with my head like some sort of Alice in Wonderland trip.
Sweat began to drip from my face as I walked facing the row of books that hissed and swore at me.
I began sweating and my chest started hurting again.
“Think, Anthony. What else do you know about Katherine beside the case? Think.”
I focused hard as the curses and hisses became more intense.
Finally, I yelled out, “Her necklace? She said it was made of volcanic rock from a South American volcano.” I looked and saw a row of books on volcanos and in that section was a book about Chile. The book seemed to be hissing the loudest at me. I grabbed it but the coffee table-style book was so hot, I dropped it on the floor of the Occult Reading room. The book steamed on the floor as if being cooled off by the tile.
“Pick it up, Anthony,” Maximus said. “Don’t be scared.”
Very few things scared me and that was a fact. What I am... is cautious. I leaned down and with both my hands, I gripped the large book on both its sides. I picked it slowly and laid it down on the table that Maximus was sitting behind.
The book was titled, Chile.
“I want you to take this book with you.”
I was hesitant at first. I was also puzzled by the book. “You want me to learn about the country of Chile?” I also knew I was thinking about Kat’s necklace and I was sure this book and that thought were not coincidences.
