by A. J. Locke
I had driven out to Queens and found much of the same. Group of dead squirrels under a tree in a park, and a mix of dead dogs, cats, rats, and birds in the middle of a wide, busy street. I’d even come across a few people who were freaking out about backyard discoveries similar to mine. At least I hadn’t heard anything about more people being hospitalized the way the PTF officers who’d been guarding the circle were.
I had called Tielle to tell her my findings, but she already knew because it was all over the news. An isolated incident could be kept quiet, but similar instances of dead animals all across the city was going to get attention. I emailed her all the pictures I had taken. The phone call and pictures was about as full a report as I could give, so she told me I didn’t have to come in for face time. Which was great because I wanted some time to unwind and get myself together for date night with Micah. No amount of weird occurrences and signs of darkness rising was going to make me call off date night.
I parked and headed inside. I had felt too thrown off by what I’d been doing all day to eat much, but now my stomach was letting me know it did not appreciate being ignored today. I hoped Ethan was back and that he’d cooked or ordered something. These days he seemed vehemently against me ordering takeout. If he hadn’t cooked and I said I was going to order food, he would head to the kitchen to whip something up. It was both sweet and eye-roll inducing. There was nothing wrong with some greasy, bad stuff every once in a while. At least I had cut down from doing it every day.
No delicious smells met my nose when I entered the house, but Luna leaped into my arms and bathed my face with her tongue. I headed into the living room, but as I dropped my handbag onto an armchair, I noticed that while Ethan was home, he was not alone, and the other person was not Kyo. A pretty young woman sat next to him. She looked to be around his age, had wavy, dark brown hair, a nice smile, and dark eyes.
“Oh, hi Selene.” Ethan stood straight up and looked a little jittery as though I had caught him doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing. They’d just been sitting there, each with a game controller in their hand. When I glanced at the television, I saw that they’d been playing a Super Mario Bros. game. He avoided gory, first person shooters with his lady friend. Such a gentleman.
“Hiiii,” I said exaggeratedly. I smiled widely at Ethan. My day had been long and troubling, but this was an amusing little nugget to come home to. “How was your date, I mean day, Ethan?”
Ethan coughed in his throat then looked from me to the girl, who had stood up as well. She came over to shake my hand.
“Hi, I’m Ailani.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said. “I’m Selene.”
“Oh, I know all about who you are,” Ailani said. “You’re amazing.” She glanced behind her at Ethan, who looked a little flushed. “I hope it’s okay that I’m here.”
“Of course,” I said. “Any friend of Ethan’s is welcome here. I see he was introducing you to his nerd life.”
Ethan made an unhappy sound, but I just smiled wider.
“I play video games myself actually. This Mario game just came out, so Ethan invited me to come play it. I haven’t bought it myself yet.”
“Well, isn’t that so nice of Ethan to invite you to come over to play.”
Ethan looked like he wanted to throttle me.
“Well, you two kids get back to your game, I’m gonna find me something to eat then rest up before heading out on a date of my own.” I winked at Ethan, and he flushed even more. Ailani just kept smiling. I put Luna down and headed into the kitchen. Ethan followed.
“Uh…I didn’t cook anything. I didn’t have time to…”
“That’s quite all right,” I said, waving him off. “Laying down your game trumps cooking for Selene. And I don’t mean the Mario game. Although I guess that is part of your game.” I laughed at my own silliness while I wolfed down a granola bar. I opened the fridge, found some string cheese, and pulled out a couple to munch on. I was hungry, but tonight’s date included Micah cooking me dinner, which I knew he was excited to do, so I didn’t want to fill up. I got the bread and proceeded to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
“She’s cute, good going,” I said. “I mean she could do better, but it’s definitely a win for you.”
Ethan gave me an unfriendly look. “That…that’s not what it’s like.”
“You sure sounded convincing when you said that. Your day was very productive after ditching your parents, I see.”
“It was,” he said. “I actually met Tielle’s son, Jian.”
“Oh? Tielle mentioned he was here to scope out colleges.”
“Yeah, she called me earlier and asked if I would meet up with him to show him around NYU since I already know the campus.”
“Cool. What’s he like?” I was trying not to show just how interested I was in the topic of Tielle’s son. It was all I could do not to ask Ethan if he saw Jian do any dead magic. Like did he take a rune out and take some energy from a plant in Washington Square Park. Because that would have been a dumb question to ask.
“Seems cool,” Ethan said with a shrug. “Very quiet though, doesn’t talk much. He seemed most interested in the business school and the performing arts school, which are vastly different.”
“One can make you rich, the other can make you dream of being rich,” I said. “Are you going to meet up with him again?”
“Yeah, I told him I’d go on his tour of the dorms with him.”
“Nice, well, don’t keep your pretty lady friend waiting while you chitchat with little ole me, go on back.”
Ethan gave me a look that seemed to be him asking me to behave and not to hover, before he turned away.
“Hey, wait.”
Ethan turned back.
“Have you seen Kyo since you’ve been home?”
“Nope, why? Something wrong?”
A thousand times yes, but now wasn’t the time to burden Ethan with something I didn’t fully understand myself. It was best to let him enjoy the normal life he was rebuilding. When he was a ghost, there would have been zero chance that he would go out and befriend someone, let alone a female, and invite her over to play video games. There were even drinks and snacks on the table. Ethan didn’t just feed anyone.
“Nothing’s wrong, just wondering where he is.”
“He’ll drift in sooner or later, same as always,” he said as he walked back into the living room. I ate my sandwich then headed to my room, stopping to ruffle Ethan’s hair, which he had neatly combed. If he could have shot lasers with his eyes, I’d have been dead. Once I was in my room, my humor faded as I walked over to the window to look outside. I was relieved, but only slightly, when I saw that all of the animal corpses were gone. Only the blackened earth remained.
I let the curtain fall then headed to the bathroom and had a nice, long shower. Afterwards, I threw on some clothes and stretched out on my bed, trying to unwind. Luna came and curled up beside me, but I couldn’t fully relax. Tension clung to me like a second skin, and I was hyper aware of the dark energy that remained in my yard. I had growing anxiety over this new threat. Even though I couldn’t put a name or face to it, I knew that whatever we were dealing with would be different than anything we’d dealt with before. I sighed. I guess having a few months of peace was too much to ask for. Some other evil presence had to come shake things up.
Well, they could shake, and when they did I’d deal with it. Like I always did.
Since a catnap didn’t seem possible, I retrieved my laptop from the bedside table and booted it up. Once I was logged in, I went to the “Bio” section on the Paranormal Sector’s website and looked up Tielle. This had been where I’d first learned more about her, including that she had a son. It’s not like I was looking at her bio to dispute that, but maybe it had said more about him than I remembered.
Tielle’s biography was lengthy and dry. Clearly whoever was in charge of writing these things had no creative flair. Maybe it was Tielle. I scrolled until I go
t to the short section about her personal life.
“Tielle is mother to one son, a young man by the name of Jian Chen,” I read. “Jian was adopted as an infant, and Tielle has been a strong voice for the adoption of children who need a safe and loving home.”
I sat back and stared at the screen, frowning slightly. I didn’t remember that from before, but that was probably because it had talked about Tielle having warm and fuzzies for children needing to be adopted, and at the time I had just thought of her as a snake. So I’d probably blocked that out. But reading this now did fizzle out my earlier flurry of questions about the fact that she had a son when all signs pointed to almost no dead warlocks being around. Unlike necromancy, which was not always passed down through generations, any child a dead witch had always carried dead magic, so there wouldn’t have been any chance that Jian could be non-paranormal if he was her biological son. Well, I guess it was best that it worked out that way or else it would have given rise to questions I wouldn’t begin to know how to find the answers to. I certainly couldn’t have asked Tielle why she never killed her son or kept him a secret.
So that was that. I shut down my laptop and hopped off the bed. Time to put this day behind me and get to the cherry on the cake. My first date with Micah in what felt like forever.
CHAPTER NINE
I was like a sixteen year old going on her first date with the cute high school quarterback as I rode the elevator up to Micah’s apartment. I had those feelings of excitement and nervousness that felt like my stomach was doing somersaults. I loved it. I hadn’t been sure I would ever feel this way again when it came to our relationship. For too long it seemed like all there was to feel was a deep, soul crushing love wrapped in pain and lies that burned too hot to bear. The pain wasn’t all gone, but more and more there were rays of sun peeking through those dark clouds.
I walked up to Micah’s door and knocked. He opened it a heartbeat later as though he’d been standing nearby waiting for me. My heart skipped a beat as he smiled and stepped aside so I could walk in. He then took my coat and hung it up in the coat closet near the door. I was bending down to take off my boots when I heard his low whistle.
“You look…ravishing,” he said. When I turned to him, his eyes were traveling up and down my body. I felt a flush go through me as I saw how into my appearance he was. It had taken a while to settle on an outfit, but I had eventually gone with a body-hugging, navy blue dress that ended mid-thigh, and heeled booties. Despite the cold, I hadn’t put tights on, just a long trench coat. I wanted my legs on display. I’d gone simple with my hair, just giving my curls a side-part, and had done understated makeup. Micah liked my hair down and when I looked natural as opposed to all done up, although he certainly had no complaints when I rocked a smoky eye and sultry red lips.
“Thank you,” I said. “You don’t look so bad yourself.” He was wearing a cream-colored cable knit sweater that he knew I liked on him and back jeans. His hair was freshly cut, although he’d kept it on the long side because he knew I preferred it. He was clean-shaven, leaving his strong jaw line visible for my eyes to appreciate and my fingers to trace. And I was looking forward to doing just that.
“So, what’s for dinner? Something smells good.” I turned toward the kitchen, but Micah put his hand on my back and steered me into the living room instead. I pouted and made a whiny noise and Micah laughed.
“That’s adorable, but I’m not going to let you sample before it’s time to eat.”
“I wasn’t going to sample, just have a look!” I gave Micah a winning smile but the look he gave me in return said he knew full well that wasn’t true. We sat down on the sofa, and he handed me one of the two glasses of wine that had been on the coffee table.
“Wine. All right, I guess I can wait.” I took a sip. It was good wine, a nice deep red with a bit of sweetness that was just right. I didn’t know much about wine since I tended to go for beer or hard liquor, but Micah fancied himself to be on sommelier status.
“How is it?” he asked, taking a sip.
“Wonderful.”
“It will compliment dinner nicely.”
“I expected no less,” I said, smiling. We sipped in comfortable silence for a few moments. We sat about a foot apart, turned toward each other. Micah had one arm along the back of the couch, and I had crossed my legs, which raised the already short hemline of my dress. Micah was not subtle about taking notice, which was fine by me.
“So, how was your day?” Micah asked.
“Ah, the clinical questions begin,” I said with a laugh. “At least we aren’t sitting here with a written out list of items to go over.”
Micah laughed too. “That would have taken some of the romance out of it I think. We might as well just have Dr. Ness come over.”
“I know, wouldn’t that have been something?” Not only was the date doctor-recommended, but Dr. Ness had told us to incorporate things we had been working on in therapy. One such thing being that we checked in with each other about whatever was going on. One of the hugest issues in our relationship was communication, specifically the tendency we both had to hedge the truth or withhold it completely on the logic that it was better if the other one didn’t know what bad, stressful, deadly, or controversial thing we were dealing with. We needed to learn to talk to each other about anything, regardless of the effect it would have on us, and learn how to not let every difficult conversation bring the mood down or end in a blowout. So even though this was a date and the last thing I wanted to talk about was the day I’d had, I forged ahead and told Micah everything.
“This isn’t good, to state the obvious,” Micah said. “I wonder if those hospitalized PTF officers would be able to help. Maybe they saw what came through from the other side.”
“I plan to question them once they’re up for it,” I said.
“Tielle doesn’t seem to know any more than she did this morning.”
“I know, I spoke to her and gave her a summary. I’m fairly certain these happenings with piles of dead animals are going to keep occurring. The scary part is not knowing to what end. People are going to start freaking out and looking for answers that the PCC can’t give.”
“It might have helped if there’d been energy to analyze, but you said the rune turned to ash. That’s troubling.”
“Tell me about it. That doesn’t make me feel as though this will be something we can eventually bring down.”
“We might have to wait for them to play their hand, which isn’t ideal, but until we see a ghost, or monster, or whatever show itself, we won’t know how to handle it.”
“Yeah, and waiting is just going to keep people tense and on edge. I know I will be.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Micah said softly. My arm was also resting on the back of the sofa and he was gently running his hand up and down it. It was a welcome, comforting touch.
“So, that was me, how was your day?”
“Pretty good, worrisome thoughts about this mess aside,” he replied. “I visited a couple hospitals to monitor some rune therapy patients and things are going well. And Tielle is finally allowing me to head my own project. I’m going to be in charge of a new rune development that’s focused on repairing damage done to sensory functions like hearing, eyesight, and speech.”
“That’s amazing,” I said. “Congrats!” I reached over and gave him a hug. I was genuinely happy for him, which wouldn’t have been the case a few months ago. I was finally at a place where I understood that Micah’s way of dealing with his past decisions was to use Alchemy to make a positive change. Every time he told me about an experiment he’d been a part of that had a successful outcome I knew it was helping him.
“Thanks,” Micah said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me a moment, I’m going to check on dinner. It should just about be ready.”
“Can’t wait, I’ve been fighting not to sit here drooling over how good it smells. That’s not sexy at all.”
Micah grinned then headed to the kitchen while
I finished up my wine and watched him prepare two plates. He then came over and escorted me to his small dining table, which was just big enough for the both of us. And like a true gentleman, he even pulled out my chair. Before he sat down, he replenished both our wine glasses.
“Oh my.” I was looking down at my plate. There were beautifully cooked lamb shanks along with seasoned, roasted vegetables, and a serving of couscous.
“This looks delicious,” I said. “Bon appetite!”
As we ate, Micah looked pleased at my enjoyment of his meal. The conversation flowed well, and I was filled with a warm feeling from my head down to my toes that wasn’t only due to the other glass and a half of wine I’d now consumed. This moment with Micah felt as close to normal and perfect as possible.
“What is it?” Micah was looking at me curiously and I realized I’d just been staring at him over the rim of my wineglass with what I was sure was a dopey look on my face.
“Oh, nothing,” I said, setting my glass down. “I was just thinking about how perfect this feels. How normal. I’m on a date with my boyfriend. We’re even in couple’s therapy. I love it!”
“Me too.” Micah had his hand on top of mine, his thumb moving slowly back and forth across it, sending little thrills through my body. He took my hand and stood up so I followed suit. He led me back to the sofa and left me there for a moment while he cleared the dishes. When he returned, he was holding a plate.
“For desert we have chocolate cake,” he said, sitting down beside me. “It’s not fancy, but I’m not much of a baker so I opted to go simpler. Ethan provided the recipe.”
