by Gary Jonas
“You’re not doing that well, Brett.”
“I can give you a tour of my house.”
“Ending with the bedroom, no doubt.”
“Only if you want it to end there.”
“You’re a fine looking young man,” she said. “When I first saw you, I will admit to thinking you might be fun in bed.”
“Well, now you have to sleep with me.”
“Why?”
“So I can prove your first impression was right.”
Another laugh. “I’ll tell you what,” she said. “I’ll let you give me a tour of your house, but I’m going to stick with something my father always told me as a perfect way to avoid pregnancy.”
“I have condoms.”
“That’s not it. He said all I have to do is keep a quarter between my knees.”
“Your dad’s an idiot. You can place a quarter on the mattress between your knees and I’ll happily take you from behind.”
“If you saw my father, you wouldn’t think he was an idiot.”
“Oh, so if I were to have dated you when you were a teenager, he’d have been in the living room cleaning his rifle when I dropped by to pick you up?”
“He doesn’t like guns. He likes to use his hands.”
“Big guy?”
“Powerful.”
“Good thing you’re a grown woman and can make your own choices.”
“Grown women can make the choices for their men, too. We just let you guys believe things are your idea.”
“So it’s your idea to go to my place.”
“You’re not as dumb as you look.”
“Oh, I probably am, so you do my thinking for me. Cool?”
“For tonight.”
“Works for me.”
And we left the bar to head to the house. I could tell she wasn’t impressed with my car, but she didn’t complain when I opened the door for her. Yeah, it’s just a Mustang GT and it’s as old as I am. My old man refused to buy me a car, so I saved up for it. I guess technically, he did end up buying it. If not for the oxidation on the hood, it would be pretty nice. It was a beautiful Burgundy when I bought it, but now it was filthy on the outside. A neighborhood kid had scrawled WASH ME on the passenger door.
But hey, it ran. Most of the time.
Fortunately, tonight it was happy to start and didn’t complain too much when I pulled into traffic. I put on some music. The radio cranked out “Let You Down” by Seether.
“Can you change the station?” she asked.
I hit scan. “Burning House” by Cam was on the country station.
“Let’s hope that’s not a portent,” I said.
“I love this song,” Olivia said.
“Then I’ll let it play, but if my house is on fire, it’s on you.”
As I drove, I thought maybe Sabrina could sing this song, and we could add it to our set list.
“You don’t like it?” Olivia asked.
“Huh?”
“The song.”
“I like it,” I said, looking over at her. “It’s a good song.”
“Look out!” she yelled, pointing.
A black SUV swerved into my lane. I slammed on the brakes and tried to swerve, but the vehicle plowed into us. My poor car crumpled, and the impact drove us sideways into the curb. The seat belts saved us from major injury. We came to a stop, and steam billowed out from under the buckled hood.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
She wasn’t moving.
I tried to unbuckle her belt, but I heard a motor rev. The SUV backed up, nearly colliding with another car, then shifted to drive and rammed us again, this time right into the driver’s door. Glass rained down on me, and I tried to shield myself.
My seat belt wouldn’t unfasten. I struggled with it as the SUV backed up for another run at us.
The tires barked and the truck smashed into us a third time. The impact crunched my car, and I felt like a rag doll. Olivia flopped helplessly, her head lolled to the side. Blood trickled from her forehead. I had to get her out of the car. The SUV jerked back, and part of my car hooked onto theirs, so they dragged us into the road a bit before the scraping of metal on metal stopped and they shot back.
Cars stopped, but nobody got out to help. The truck’s grill was scuffed and bent, and it raced toward us a fourth time. My seat belt finally released. I reached across Olivia for the door handle on the passenger side. The SUV plowed into us and drove us into the curb again. The jarring collision threw me on top of Olivia and my shoulder smacked into her while my head hit the door. A loud pop sounded and the car dropped at an angle as one of the tires blew. I tasted stale, rubber-flavored air.
I managed to get the door open, and tried to crawl over Olivia. I looked up and saw a large middle-aged Black woman draw a circle on the brick wall of a doughnut shop beside us with a can of spray paint. She seemed a bit old to be a tagger. She placed her hand against the wet paint, spoke some words I couldn’t hear over the screeching tires of the SUV aiming for us again. She raised her other hand toward my car and a bright light flashed before everything went dark.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
When I say everything went dark, I don’t mean I passed out or anything like that. I mean the streetlights and business lights and headlights of the cars in the vicinity all went out. I found myself in utter darkness, crawling over Olivia. I pulled her from the car onto the pavement and then hands were on me.
“It’s all right,” a woman’s voice said. “I’m here to help.”
“The SUV!”
“It’s not going anywhere. We have ten seconds. After that, it will come back on and hit your car again. Let’s get her to safety.”
As she spoke, she grabbed Olivia’s legs. I lifted Olivia from the armpits and we carried her over to the building. As we set her down, the lights came on again and the SUV crashed into my car again.
“Magic flows through your veins,” the woman said. “Can you access it?”
The SUV pulled back, then screeched away and tore off down the street as sirens wailed, growing louder. The police hurried our way.
“I think they’re gone.”
The woman nodded. “So it would seem.” She knelt beside Olivia and placed a hand on her shoulder. “She has a concussion, but nothing is broken.”
“What kind of magic did you just use?” I asked. “What’s your name?”
“You don’t need to know that yet,” she said and rose to her feet.
“Wait! You saved our lives.”
She shrugged. “It’s my job,” she said.
“You can at least give me your first name.”
She walked away, but before she ducked into the alley behind the doughnut shop, she gave me a smile and said, “Lakesha.”
A few people approached us now. “Are you all right? I called nine-one-one. I saw the whole thing. That guy was trying to kill you!”
“Cops are here now,” I said, nodding toward the street where a patrol car skidded to a stop, siren winding down, lights whirling. Another siren sounded in the distance.
A police officer rushed over to us. Before he could speak, I pointed to Olivia. “She needs a doctor.”
“Ambulance is on the way.”
I answered questions, going through what happened, while a few witnesses gave statements to another officer. The ambulance arrived, and the paramedics went right to work. They made sure she was stable, then put her on a gurney and slid her into the back of the ambulance. I rode with her to the hospital. One of the paramedics rode in the back with us to keep an eye on her vitals. The cops would have more questions. My car was totaled. The tow truck was on the way, but Olivia was more important than my demolished Mustang.
As I climbed into the ambulance, I took a quick look at the wet paint on the doughnut shop wall. It looked like normal graffiti. But the symbol was something I’d seen before in a book about magic. Who the hell was Lakesha?
The paramedic kept Olivia stable and when we reached the emergency
room, doctors wheeled Olivia away. I tried to follow, but a nurse put a hand out to stop me.
“You can’t go back there. She’s in good hands.”
“Okay,” I said.
“You’re bleeding.”
“I am?”
“Come with me,” she said and led me to an examination room. “Good thing you’re here tonight instead of last night. Saturdays are always busy. Things are a bit slow tonight, thank goodness.”
She cleaned and patched my wounds then led me to the waiting room. “We’ll update you on your wife as soon as we know something. In the meantime, you have a lot of paperwork to fill out.” She handed me a clipboard and a pen.
I didn’t bother to correct her on the wife thing.
When I looked at the papers, I realized I had very little information about Olivia, so I set the clipboard on the table beside me and pulled out my phone. With my car destroyed, I’d need a ride home, so I figured I’d call Michael. But before I got the chance, two police officers walked in with a truckload of questions. I put my phone away. Fortunately, there were a few witnesses to what happened, so they took my statement, and used only an hour of my time going over what happened from various angles. I told them as much as I could, but I didn’t mention Lakesha stopping time. I didn’t have a mundane explanation, so it was easier to just say the SUV drove away.
The cops seemed fine with that explanation, which told me that the other witnesses hadn’t experienced Lakesha’s little magic trick. Who the hell was she?
After the cops finally left, a doctor stepped into the waiting room. He walked right up to me. “You’re waiting for news about Olivia Sinclair?”
“Sinclair?” I said, and thoughts exploded in my head.
He raised an eyebrow. “I apologize. I thought you were with the young woman from the traffic accident.”
“I am,” I said, trying to focus on the now. “Brown hair past her shoulders, cute, wearing a little black dress.”
“All right. She’s going to be fine. She’s waiting for a room. We’ll keep her overnight for observation, since she’s…wait. You’re not her husband or family, are you?”
“No. Can I still see her?”
He shook his head. “Visiting hours start at eight in the morning. You’ll have to come back then.”
“Thanks,” I said, and meant it because I needed time to process. I walked out of the hospital and called Michael for a ride.
Ten minutes later, he pulled up in a black Dodge Charger. He wore his usual black pants and dark sunglasses, and his shirt tonight looked black until I opened the door and the overhead light revealed it to be navy blue.
I climbed into the passenger seat.
“Cool car,” I said.
“Thanks.”
“Not sure I’ve ever seen you drive this one. You’re normally in the Buick.”
He shrugged. “I was with a young woman who likes to go fast.”
“How many cars do you have?”
“Enough.”
We drove to the scene of the attack. The streets were quiet. Michael pulled onto a side street and we walked back to the doughnut shop. We examined the wall.
Yellow spray paint in a strange symbol.
“Not your normal graffiti.”
“It’s a sigil,” Michael said. “Ceremonial magicians, witches, some demon hunters will use them.”
I told him about Lakesha. He nodded. “Probably a witch. Some city witches use graffiti on buildings, street signs, and especially infrastructural lines on pavement.”
“That would be the weird painting I see from construction crews on roads and sidewalks?”
“Utility workers mostly,” Michael said. “They tend to be color coded for easy reference so crews can instantly tell whether there are power or gas lines under the surface. Red is for power lines, conduit and lighting cables, that sort of thing. Yellow is for gas, oil, steam. Orange for communication lines.”
“You lost me at color coded. You worked construction?”
“Before I died, I was on a utility crew. Witches liked to put sigils beside or on top of our lines. People never notice them, but witches can use them to instantly cast spells or bring up generic magic they can manipulate.”
“Do you know a witch named Lakesha?”
He shook his head. “I dated a witch named Augusta once. That was an amazing three months.”
“I’d like to find this Lakesha woman.”
“She saved you, right?”
“And I want to thank her.”
“The fact that she saved you will be thanks enough,” Michael said. “Good deeds are returned three-fold according to Wicca. If she wanted anything more, she’d have told you. I think your more immediate concern is the SUV. Why were they trying to kill you?”
“What makes you think they were trying to kill me?”
“You’re right. Maybe they wanted to give you a full body massage with their tires and grill.”
“Maybe they were after Olivia.”
“Why?”
I sighed and stared at the handprint in the yellow sigil on the side of the doughnut shop. “Doesn’t matter,” I said.
“Why would they be after either of you?” Michael asked. “Does this have anything to do with that weird guy in the duster?”
“Probably.”
“What pile of shit have you stepped in, Brett? Maybe I can help.”
“These guys are dangerous, and there are more players involved than I know.”
“I’m already dead. They can’t do much to me that I can’t heal from.”
“True that.”
“You seem mighty laid back about me being a vampire.”
I shrugged. “It’s not my first undead rodeo.”
“Whatever’s going down here, I can help. And toward that end, I have a confession to make. Just so you know I’m on the level here.”
“You slept with Sabrina already?” I asked.
He chuckled. “No. I have no intention to sleep with her at the moment.”
“But that could change?”
“You’re more interested in whether or not I sleep with your cousin than what I have to confess to?”
“My head is still spinning from the wreck. I think I have a concussion. Mild, but I feel kinda whacked.”
“You seem like yourself to me,” Michael said. “A scattered slacker with potential you have no interest in realizing.”
“Now you sound like my father.”
A car drove by. Police.
I watched to make sure they didn’t turn around to come back to us. Two guys outside a doughnut shop at two in the morning.
Michael nodded toward his car. “I’ll take you home. We can talk on the way.”
Maybe he didn’t want to talk to the police either.
We got in the Charger, and Michael turned to stare at me. I wondered how good his night vision was. “Confession time,” he said. “I knew who your parents were when I auditioned for the band. I can feel untapped magic in you.”
“Powerful bloodline, blah, blah, blah,” I said. “Magic was never my scene.”
“But your father is one of the strongest wizards in the world.”
“Top five,” I said. “That’s why I’m such a colossal disappointment.”
“You don’t seem upset that I had ulterior motives for joining the band. I keep hoping your father will come to town and attend one of the shows.”
“He’s coming to town on Tuesday,” I said. “I’m going to get an earful. You going to start the car or are we just going to sit here? Your little magic eye thing won’t work on me, so if you think I’m going to cuddle, you’re way off base. And…you’re not even smiling. What’s the deal, Michael?”
He took off his sunglasses so I could see his eyes. “Is there any chance your father has the power to cure vampirism?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know much about vampires, and I never paid much attention to all the magic shit either. Too much work for my ass.”
He wasn’t going to stop. “I’ll ask him,” I said.
“Thank you, Brett. I’m so tired of this curse.”
The sincerity of his gaze made me uncomfortable. “He might not be able to help, you know. Hell, he might be unwilling to help. He’s an asshole.”
“No offense, Brett, but every wizard I’ve ever heard tell about is an asshole.”
“I’m not really a wizard, though.”
“You may not be a good wizard, but you’re still kind of an asshole.” With that he slipped his sunglasses on, grinned, and punched my shoulder.
“Drive, bitch,” I said.
“Blow me first,” he said and lowered his sunglasses to focus his eyes on mine.
“Eyes on the road, dipshit.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I knew something was wrong as soon as Michael pulled up in front of the house. The inside lights were all out, which made sense for the time, but the porch light illuminated a note taped to the front door. Wind rippled the page. Why would there be a note on the front door?
“Houston, we have a problem,” I said, as I slid out of the car.
Michael followed me to the door.
I pulled the note down. It read, Sorry about the mess.
The door wasn’t locked. I entered the house and flipped the light switch.
The living room was indeed a mess. Mangani, my rug, was partially rolled up, but some asshole had driven spikes through it, pinning it to the floor. The sofa was out of place, and a table and lamp had been knocked over.
“Sabrina?” I called. “You home?”
No answer.
“Mangani?”
The rug twitched.
Michael pointed to one of the spikes. Another note had been speared there.
I hurried to the spike with the paper.
We have your cousin. We’ll be in touch.
I handed the paper to Michael then yanked the spike from the floor. Mangani rolled up over the other spikes, devouring them, then unfurled to her normal position.
“Sorry, Mangani,” I said.
The rug waved a corner at me. She was fine.
But what about Sabrina?
“Wait here. I’ll check the house,” Michael said, and swept through the downstairs in no time. He shot up the stairs, calling her name.
