by Gary Jonas
I caught her hand, took the gun away, and tucked it in my pocket.
“Nice try,” I said.
She frowned.
“Want to watch me take a shower?” she asked and let the negligee drop to the floor.
As much as I wanted to stare at her, I spun around. Rhonda stepped into view, gun in hand. I grabbed the gun away from her, too.
“Hey!”
“Stand against the wall there,” I said, pointing.
She did as I said.
I turned around, and unfortunately, Melissa had bent and slipped back into the damn negligee. So much for getting a nice look.
I grabbed her purse from the counter, and dug through sticks of lipstick, compact mirrors, various kinds of makeup, combs, hairbrushes, and tissues until I found her phone, a pink sequined number. It was an iPhone. I pressed the button and it asked for a code.
“What’s the code?”
“All fives,” she said.
I tapped four fives and the phone opened up.
“You might want a better password.”
“I wanted something I could remember,” she said.
“I doubt you’re that stupid,” I said, scrolling through her contacts list. I found my father’s name, Nathaniel Masters. I took out my phone, checked the number. It was different.
I updated my contact info for him.
I considered dropping the phone back into her purse, but instead, I put it in my pocket.
“You can’t have that,” she said.
“Sure I can. You can buy a new phone.”
“But that has all my contacts in it.”
“I don’t care.” I turned to Rhonda. “I want your phone, too.”
“Why?”
“Because.”
“Because why?”
“Because reasons.”
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll have to move away from the wall to get it.”
“You have my permission.”
“You’re not the boss of me,” she said, all offended now.
“Just bring me the phone.”
She moved away from the wall.
I glanced at Melissa. “You, move over to the wall.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t trust you.”
She gave me an indignant look. “I don’t trust you either.”
“I don’t care.”
“I don’t care either.”
“Well, good for you.”
Rhonda returned with her phone. Hers was purple sequined.
“Pass code?” I asked.
“All sevens because seven is my favorite number.”
“Mine, too,” I said.
“Really?”
“No.”
I punched in the code and it opened the phone. At least I wouldn’t have to work too hard to remember their codes. I slipped the phone into my pocket.
“You’re mean,” Rhonda said.
“Do you like mean guys?”
“No. I don’t know. Are you going to do anything to us?”
“What do you have in mind?”
“Nothing.”
“In that case, no, I won’t do anything to you. Both of you can get dressed now.”
“We just wore coats over our lingerie.”
“Hot,” I said.
“Kinda chilly, actually. It’s February.”
“Put on your coats,” I said.
While they fetched their coats from the closet, I went to the window and looked down at the thug.
“How’s it hanging?” I asked.
The kid looked up at me. He was crying. “I’m afraid of heights, man.”
“Remember that next time you decide to try and break someone’s skull.”
I reopened my wound, made the bat extricate itself from the building and float back into the room. The kid landed safely on the carpet, and rushed to the door, but with the bat wrapped around his wrists, it was hard to grip the doorknob. He finally got it open and raced down the hall.
I made the glass reappear in the window, motioned for the curtains to close, then looked over at the Ringo Twins.
“You two can go now. And while this probably goes without saying, I think I’d better say it anyway. Don’t ever come after me again.”
“We won’t,” they said in unison, and bolted out the door.
I motioned the door closed, twisted the lock with my mind, then released the rest of the magic. I climbed into bed and closed my eyes. The pillows smelled like roses. A last lingering whiff of the twins.
Nice smell, but empty. I shook my head. Just a few months ago, they would have been all I’d ever wanted.
Times were so much simpler then.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
As I tried to go to sleep, my mind swirled around, examining the various pieces of what I’d endured. This troubled me on a deep level because sleeping is my super power, and now I couldn’t shut off my brain to drift off into sweet and glorious slumber-time. My brain was so rarely engaged, this had never been a problem before.
And what’s worse, most of what I was thinking about was too complex to be reduced to six words or less. Fewer, as Sabrina would say, but who gives a shit about that anyway?
My brain went from person to person.
My father. He was King Asshole. He’d never been happy about who I turned out to be. Was he willing to kill me so his treasured replacement version of me could take over? I wouldn’t put it past him. Could he have the Magic Council working with him? Of course he could. Hell, he could order those bastards to take me out. But if so, he—or they—were giving me a fighting chance because they hadn’t come at me full bore.
A few conversations about the Magic Council had mentioned someone known as the Matriarch. Who was she? Was she simply the head of the council and therefore in charge of the test the other me was gearing up to take? Was there some benefit to her to have me killed or did she think the other Brett was the only Brett and his death would save them the hassle of giving a test years after it was supposed to have been administered? After all, most wizards took the test at eighteen, though I’d read about a few waiting until twenty-one.
Sabrina. She tried to get us to follow her inside, and she wouldn’t have done that if she were in on trying to eliminate me. Unless she knew there were more attempts coming, and I was supposed to take the brunt of any attack aimed at the other Brett. She clearly liked him more than me.
Speaking of the other Brett, that son of a bitch sent me here, so he knew where I’d be. Okay, that was silly. The show had been advertised, so anyone wanting to find Brett Masters could have seen the show time listed along the venue. Brett Masters and the Sound Blasters had my name up front and impossible to miss. But the other Brett had me take his place. He’d been semi-honest about using me this way, but one question kept jumping out at me. What if he was sending assassins after me himself? Would he do that? Was there a benefit to him if people thought he was dead?
Gideon. Yeah, good old Gideon. He’d at least made sure I was protected from the gunfire, but was that to make me trust him? Was it a scheme to make me fall in with him? Give him back the ring so he could always be near? Of course, he’d given me the ring in the first place, but… The ring!
I rolled out of bed and hurried to the bathroom counter. The ring was still there.
Good.
Unless it was a tracker.
Holy shit. I was getting paranoid.
Getting?
Okay, I was paranoid.
Who could I trust?
Michael? When Sabrina tried to get us to go inside, he didn’t go with her. He could have grabbed me and pulled me inside before the shooting started. Was he in on it? Did he like the other Brett better, too? This sucked balls. I had no clue. The people I thought were my friends might not be real friends. None of them seemed to be particularly fond of me.
Chuck and Teddy were clearly not in on it. They were just regular dudes. No worries there. If they’d noticed a difference, they might just think I’d been nicer for a wh
ile, and was now back to my normal self. They would certainly like the other me better. Not sure I can blame them on that front. I’d never really given them much thought. Maybe that made me a bad person. But does anyone really pay that much attention to the people they know on the periphery of their friends? I mean, yeah, they were in my band, but we didn’t hang out if we weren’t playing. I didn’t know where to stand on that, but they were clearly not involved, so I didn’t need to worry about them.
The twins shouldn’t be a problem now. I’d shown them I was boss. They couldn’t sway me with nudity. Well, they could, but I was onto them now. I’d like to get onto them, but we won’t go there.
Who could I trust?
Lakesha? I hadn’t seen her in a few days, and while she’d attacked me, maybe she would shoot straight with me.
I needed to figure things out. Lakesha seemed like my best bet. She would have to realize I was the real me and not a demon.
I didn’t want to get blasted again, nor did I want the damn cat to scratch me, so my easiest point of contact was a phone call.
The clock on the nightstand told me it was 2:46. Lakesha wouldn’t take kindly to me calling her at this hour. Could it wait until morning?
Yes.
I went over everything one more time, to see if I’d missed anything. If so, I missed it again. Then I crawled back into bed, and finally drifted off to sleep.
“Wake up, dipshit.”
I opened my eyes. It was still dark.
“Huh?”
“Wake your ass up.”
“Sabrina?”
“Yes,” she said. “Get up.”
I sat up in bed, and she moved to the window. She yanked the curtains open. Sunlight blasted into the room and I shielded my eyes.
“Holy shit,” I said. “Warning much?”
“Get up.”
I slid out of bed. I wore sweat pants and a T-shirt. Sabrina was already dressed for the day in a nice purple dress with pink polka dots. She wore a belt that matched the dots. She also wore high heeled shoes and had a purse draped over her shoulder.
“What time is it?” I asked, stifling a yawn.
“Noon,” she said. “We need to get moving. We have another show in Dallas tonight and a TV interview before that.”
“I need a shower.”
“Later,” she said. “Put on some shoes.”
“I have to at least take a piss.”
She rolled her eyes. “Hurry.”
“What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is that we have a three hour drive ahead of us.”
“What time is the interview?”
“Four.”
“Then let me get cleaned up.”
“You want to magic us to Dallas?”
“Did you just use magic as a verb?”
“I did. Gideon says you’ve come a long way with your skills. Can you open a doorway to Dallas?”
“I don’t know how to do that.”
“Then you don’t have time to get cleaned up.”
“Can you open a doorway to Dallas?”
“Would I ever ride in a car with you if I could open a portal?”
“So what makes you think I can?”
“You blew apart the buildings the snipers were on. You threw a van onto the roof. And you did those on your own. No help from your father or anyone else.”
“So I’m getting to be a better wizard than you ever thought I’d be,” I said with a grin. And I promptly stubbed by toe on the foot of the bed. “Fuck!”
Sabrina laughed. “Clumsiest wizard on the planet.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The interview went okay because Sabrina coached me on the questions the other Brett had agreed to in advance, and gave me direction on how to answer them. The show that night didn’t have any hitches. My karaoke method worked fine in conjunction with the magic to keep me from getting too pitchy.
I still had Gideon’s ring in my pocket. He hadn’t asked to get it back from me, which surprised me. I kept expecting him to ask, but maybe he knew I’d tell him, “Too bad, so sad.” I wasn’t any closer to knowing how things could or should go after the show than I was before.
After the encore, Michael, Sabrina, Chuck, and Teddy went out to talk to the crowd and to have a few drinks. I said I’d join them soon, then went out the back door of the venue into a parking lot. It was dark, and it was just after ten at night. I unlocked my phone and called Lakesha.
She answered on the third ring. “You’ve reached Lakesha, but she doesn’t want to talk to you right now.”
“You don’t have a choice,” I said.
“I could hang up.”
“I hope you don’t do that,” I said.
“Which Brett is this?”
“You called me a demon, but we faced a demon together, so you know better.”
“You sure seem like a nuisance demon to me.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“That’s not how it’s intended.”
“Regardless, you know I’m really me.”
“The other Brett came to see me yesterday,” she said. “He told me what was going on.”
“I know you like him better.”
“I do,” she said.
“You don’t have to be so quick to agree.”
“But it’s true. He’s more thoughtful than you are. He’s nice to Isis. He’s nice to Demetrius.”
Demetrius was a ghost who lived down the block from Lakesha’s store. Nice kid who died young. But the kid liked Sabrina and Michael way more than he liked me.
I was beginning to sense a pattern.
“I was in Fiji,” I said. “Kinda hard to bring Demetrius comic books when I’m out of the country.”
“The other Brett found time to do so.”
“All of that should be proof that I’m the real me.”
“He’s the better Brett.”
“He’s the boring Brett.”
“What do you want?”
“I need your help. Someone’s trying to kill me. I guess they might be trying to kill the other Brett. Hell, they might be trying to kill both of us.”
“As I understand it,” Lakesha said, “you’re not even real.”
“You know better than that.”
“How so?”
“You’ve seen me bleed. Your damn cat has drawn more of my blood than any doctor or nurse I’ve had to deal with.”
“Isis likes scratching you.”
“I don’t like being scratched, but you’ve seen me bleed. You’ve seen me heal. You’ve seen me face magical beings.”
“What’s your point?”
“If I was fake, could I do that?”
“Yes.”
“You’re supposed to say no.”
She chuckled. “Your father has great magic.”
“My father has great wealth.”
“That too.”
“You’re still on auto-pay, right?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“You really think he’ll keep paying you if the other Brett becomes the only Brett?”
Silence.
“Are you there?” I asked. “Did you hit mute?”
“I’m here.”
“Do you want to keep getting paid?”
More silence.
“Lakesha?” I asked.
“I’m thinking.”
“Think how much harder it will be to pay the bills if my old man isn’t sending you money every month.”
“I won’t lie. It’s been helpful.”
“And if I’m gone, that will go away.”
“It hasn’t so far.”
“And that’s how you know I’m the real me. If the other Brett was the real me, my father wouldn’t have kept paying you.”
“To him it’s nothing,” Lakesha said.
“He’s rich. You know how rich people stay rich? They don’t waste money. He would not keep paying you if I wasn’t the real me. He knows he might sti
ll need you to work with me. Otherwise, you’d be off the payroll.”
“I don’t know.”
“Have you taught anything to the other Brett?”
“No. He’s stopped by to chat and to check on Isis.”
“Of course he has. He’s the perfect little shit.”
“We like him.”
“And you hate me.”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
“But you don’t like me.”
“What do you want?”
“I told you. I need your help. I need to know who’s trying to kill me. Or if they’re after the other Brett instead of me. Or both of us, of course.”
“I guess that makes sense. If they don’t know which is the real you, why not kill both of you?”
“Has anyone tried to kill the other me?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll be back in Galveston tomorrow,” I said. “I’ll swing by the store before closing time.”
“Maybe I’ll close early.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“It’s a great way to avoid you.”
“Ha ha,” I said.
“You think I’m kidding,” she said. It was not a question. And then she hung up on me.
It was nice to be loved.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The other me was waiting at my hotel when I got back to Galveston. He was stretched out on the bed with headphones listening to music.
“How’d you get in here?” I asked when I entered the room.
His eyes were closed and he didn’t respond.
I dropped my suitcase on the floor, walked over to the bed and pushed against his leg.
He opened his eyes, smiled, and removed the headphones. The sound of Taylor Swift singing “Blank Space” assaulted my ears.
“Hello, Brett the Copy,” Brett said.
“Are you gay?” I asked.
“If it’s you and me, it’s more like masturbation,” he said. “Want to play?”
“I was referring to the fact that you’re listening to Taylor Swift.”
“Like you don’t?”
“Dude, you’re the blank space.”
“You’re the one who knew the name of the song.”
“You did too.”
“Of course,” he said. “I was listening to it. My point is that you knew it, too.”
“Not by choice.”
“It’s on your iTunes playlist.”
