The Strongman's Spell

by Amorette Anderson

  “But we’re talking about murder,” the vampire woman said. “One of us could be next.”

  “Danger is part of the game,” Neil said. “If you try to find safety all the time, you’re going to grow weak. If you want to be strong, you gotta face that danger. Who here wants to be safe all the time, and weak? Raise your hands up. I want to see them.”

  No one budged.

  “Good, good,” Neil said. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Who here wants to be stronger? Who wants to face the danger head-on and persevere? Who wants to be tougher, more resilient, more capable?”

  A few hands went up, and then more, and more, until everyone on the landing was raising their hands.

  “Yeah!” Neil said. It came out like a roar. His chest and shoulder muscles bulged. A vein popped out on his neck. “This is it!” he said. “Right here, right now! This is how we get stronger! Now, let’s get this weekend back on track!”

  An excited holler rose up. The mix of beings turned and headed back to the lobby. I spotted Annie standing at the edge of the room. “Now, dear?” she called out to me. We’d discussed, earlier in the week, the idea of starting dinner after Neil’s welcome speech. I had a feeling she was asking me if she should start serving food. I’d been so busy, I’d completely forgotten to ask her what was on the menu.

  I nodded and shouted back, “Yeah, now!”

  And then, to my amazement, the trays of appetizers sped up and hovered along one wall of the room. As I watched, the trays fuzed together, and then morphed into a long wooden buffet table.

  Silver platters sprouted up on the table like plants growing at warp speed, and then food blossomed up off of the platters. Beings cheered with delight and formed a line at one end of the buffet table. The music, which had faded during the speech, escalated and once again filled the room.

  “Whew,'' I said, as I joined my witch sisters at the end of the buffet line. “That was a close one. Good thing Neil saved the night. He’s a good speaker, isn’t he?”

  My friends agreed. We inched closer to the table. I eyed the offering, and my mouth started to water. “I’d actually like to go see a few of his lectures.”

  “I doubt you’ll have time for that, dear,” Annie said. “You have a murder to solve, after all.”

  She was right, and I knew it.

  Chapter Six

  For the next few hours, I ate dinner and conversed with guests. Around eight, the dinner party started to wind down, and I felt it was okay for me to duck out for a minute or two of fresh air.

  I’ve never been good at being around crowds for too long. After all the chaos and intense socializing of the day, I needed to be by myself.

  I pulled my hood up on my sweatshirt, pressed through the barrier at the edge of the parking lot, and then ambled under a crescent moon into the sleepy little town that I’d grown up in. Skili flew high above me, giving me plenty of space. She can sense when I need alone time.

  Seeing as it was getting late in the evening, Main Street was quiet. I saw lights on at The O.P., our town’s only bar, but that was about it. There was music emanating from the bar, and the interior cast warm yellow light out onto the sidewalk. Sometimes, I like to go in for a drink, but I didn’t feel like being part of a social scene at the moment. I really just wanted to be alone.

  The air was chilly. I stuffed my hands into my vest pockets, put my head down, and walked at a good, fast clip. I walked for a good hour like this, just cruising the length of the town back and forth. Then I turned down Willow Street. It was the street I’d grown up on, and I knew it well.

  My pace slowed outside of a little yellow house with a white picket fence. There was a For Sale sign posted in a patch of grass just in front of the walkway that led into the front yard.

  I paused in front of the walkway and looked at the house.

  It was so small. It was hard to believe that I’d grown up in the little structure. My childhood seemed so far away. I stood for a long time, just staring at the house. Then I heard the scuff of footsteps, not far behind me.

  I turned to see a tall, lean man wearing a dark jacket and a beanie. Shoulder length hair poked out from around the edges of his hat. He walked with a loping stride. I knew that jacket, that haircut, that stride; it was my boyfriend, Justin.

  I smiled. He walked up to me and hugged me to his chest. He’s a foot taller than me and has a wiry build. He gripped me tightly. “I thought I might find you here,” he said.

  “What, do you read minds now?” I asked him.

  A little while after I dove into the occult-waters of witchcraft, Justin started studying paranormal phenomenon, too. Only he decided to take a different route. He decided to study vampirism. He’s fascinated by the idea that by learning, a person can become a vampire. He’s well on his way.

  We’d only been dating for a few months when he dove into the paranormal waters along with me, and I have to say that his interest in magic brought us closer. I loved the fact that he wasn’t put-off by my witch practice. Instead, he was attracted to it.

  Besides being a student of vampirism, Justin’s also the lead singer of Hillcrest’s most popular band, the Hillcrest Funk Collective. He’s also a pretty avid mountain biker, and an all-around chill dude, which makes us super compatible.

  “Nah,” he said. “Not mind reading. I was just heading up to the mine, and I saw a few of your friends on their way back to town. Annie told me that you’d had a rough day and you were out walking to clear your head. You always come here after your solo walks.”

  “I do, don’t I?” I asked, as he released me. I reached for his hand, and then led him onto the property. “Come on. This place has been on the market for so long, and the previous owners moved all the way across town. No one will care if we sit on the porch swing for a minute.”

  Justin followed me up the creaky wooden steps that led onto an even more worn out porch. Some of the floorboards were rotting and crumbling, but we skirted around those and made it to the swing.

  Justin put an arm around me and hugged me close. “Aren’t you cold?” he asked, eyeing my sweatshirt.”

  “You know me,” I said. “I don’t really feel the cold.”

  “You want to tell me about your day?” he asked.

  My shoulders slumped. “It was really bad,” I admitted. “This reviewer that I was really eager to impress was murdered.”

  “Whoa,” he said, with a low whistle. “That is bad. What happened?”

  “He arrived, and I showed him to his room,” I said. “He was in there for a while. I left to go pick up the guest speaker, who’s awesome, by the way, and when I got back to the center, I went to check on this reviewer guy, Carlisle... I found him dead in his jacuzzi tub. Someone tossed a hairdryer in there, and he was electrocuted.”

  The chains that attached the old porch swing to the ceiling squeaked and creaked as we gently rocked back and forth. “I just don’t get it,” I said with a sigh. “I wanted this weekend to go well. Why did this have to happen on the very first day?”

  Justin didn’t answer me. He knew it was a rhetorical question. One of the things I enjoy about Justin is that he’s a great listener. I leaned my head against his shoulder. It was a bit boney and firm given his lean, wiry build, but comforting none-the-less. “My life was so much simpler before I started this center,” I said. “The only thing I worried about was what kind of cool deals I’d find at the thrift store, and whether I had enough propane to heat the grill for dinner. I’ve never had this much responsibility.”

  “It is a big undertaking,” Justin said. “It’s a change in your lifestyle, for sure.”

  “Yeah, for sure,” I grumbled. Thinking about giving up my old simple lifestyle was not fun. “Do you think I was lazy before opening the center?” I asked Justin.

  He was quiet.

  That’s never good.

  I pulled away so that I could look at him. “You do, don’t you?” I asked.

  “Lazy’s not the word I’d use,” Justin
said. “You were just really, really relaxed.”

  “Remember how I told you that I had a vision of my grandmother?” I asked him.

  In the dim lighting, I saw him nod.

  “She said that I was in a phase of inertia before, but now it’s time for me to be more active. I guess this is what it’s like to be passionate about something. It means you start to get invested. I want this center to be a success so badly. It’s like I’d do anything.”

  “It’s cool that you care,” Justin said. “That’s passion, babe. It’s like how I feel about my band.”

  I leaned into his shoulder again. “I love how you are with your music,” I said. “You’re so into it. I guess I was kind of apathetic before... I was afraid that if I started to care too much, I’d get disappointed when things didn’t go my way.”

  I look down at the floorboards. “Before the center, anything could happen. I just went along with it. It just didn’t really matter. But I don’t feel like that anymore.”

  “Mar, why do you right away think that the world is going to disappoint you? Maybe when you let yourself really want something, the Universe has even more reason to give it to you. It’s like... it’s like with you.” He placed a hand on my knee. “You used to come into the O.P. when the Funk Collective was playing, and I’d almost get too nervous to even go up to the mic and sing. My throat would, like, literally close up.” He reached up to his Adam’s apple and touched it to show me.

  I laughed a little. I remembered those days of going to his shows well. The funny thing was, while Justin was getting nervous over my presence, I was in the audience getting butterflies at the thought of seeing him.

  He went on. “Sure, it would have been easier to detach, and just say screw it, who cares what she thinks of me. But I did care, and I knew it. And that was a gift. I wanted you so badly, Mar, and now look at us.” He squeezed my leg gently. “We’re together, and I couldn’t be happier. So caring can be a good thing.”

  I licked my lips. My heart felt a little bit tight. I’d never told Justin what I was about to tell him now. Talking about my childhood made me uncomfortable, so I usually avoided it and stuck to more pleasant topics.

  I turned, so that I could see the window that faced inside the little house. It was so dark inside that I could only see my pale reflection, lit by the faint glow of a streetlight out on the sidewalk. But I didn't have to see past my reflection to know what room lay beyond the pane of glass. It was a living room.

  “Things are good for us now,” I said to Justin. “But that doesn’t mean they’ll always be good. Life does disappoint, Justin. It’s safer to remain detached. That way, you don’t get hurt.”

  I tilted my chin toward the glass. “When I was six, I sat inside that room, on a little futon couch, while my mom announced that she was leaving. I remember that my dad started to cry. I think that was the day that I stopped feeling the cold.”

  “Oh, Mar,” Justin said. He shifted his arm so it was once again around me.

  “I’m serious,” I said. “I went out to play without a jacket on, and snow was coming down. I just decided that nothing outside of me would affect me. I decided it was safer that way.”

  “Babe, don’t let the past dictate how you feel now. Maybe you had to pull away back then, but you’re older now. You can handle feeling more. You can handle really caring about something. Maybe that’s what this retreat center is going to show you.”

  I bit my lip. I was still thinking about my mother. She’d left that day, and had never returned. My father and I hadn’t even heard from her since then, except for one letter that my dad received a year ago, saying she was in Vegas and she was happy. My throat felt tight and my heart ached; I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk about my feelings with Justin anymore. So instead of talking more about my childhood, I simply said, “Yeah... maybe... thanks for listening,” and snuggled against him.

  For the next little while, we didn’t talk at all, and that was just fine by me.

  Chapter Seven

  It was late by the time I crossed through the pinkish-purple energetic barrier that protected the retreat center. I saw the building at the far end of the parking lot. The lobby glowed with a dim light, and a few windows on the third floor did, too. Apparently, a few guests were still up. The sky above was deep navy blue and star-studded. Mountains silhouetted against the night sky provided a picturesque background. All in all, the center had a peaceful look about it. It was hard to believe that a murder had occurred there earlier in the day.

  I approached my van.

  I liked spending nights in it. If the temps were in the single digits, or if I was feeling social, I sometimes crashed at Penny’s house, or Justin’s apartment. Justin had two roommates, so that wasn’t ideal, but I had my own room at Penny’s. Mostly, though, I loved climbing into my small pull-out bed, knowing that I had long hours of solitude and rest ahead to restore my energy for the next day. I knew that one day it would make sense for me to move into the center, but for the time being, I was content in my little home on wheels. It was like a comforting cocoon that I still needed.

  Skili, who had soared high above me during our walk home, flew over toward the van. I expected her to swoop down and land on a branch of her favorite tree. Instead, she cruised in a few slow circles, and then returned to me. I felt a breeze against my cheek and then weight on my shoulder as she came in for a landing on her second favorite perch: my shoulder.

  “You have a visitor,” she informed me telepathically.

  “At the van?” I responded. “Who?”

  “Who, who, who!” she called out aloud. Then she switched over to a silent telepathic communication as she said, “Don’t know. I’ll go get another look.” She took off into the air again.

  I felt my body tense up. I was still walking, and getting closer to the van with each step. Was my visitor friend or foe? I wasn’t sure, and all of my senses were alert as I neared my camping set-up. I’d left my chair and table out on the flat dirt next to the place I’d parked. As I eyed the area, I saw a figure sitting in the camp chair, but I couldn’t discern who it was. Skili flew back to me and landed on my shoulder again.

  “She must be here to speak to you about the murder,” Skili said.

  “Why do you think so?” I asked.

  “Because, it’s Carlisle’s wife. The tall, thin woman.”

  “She could be the murderer,” I transmitted to Skili. My feet slowed. “Should I be prepared to fight?”

  “You’re a lover, not a fighter,” Skili said. “Remember, you want peace and healing, child.”

  “I know that,” I said. “But I need to be alive to spread peace and healing. If she’s going to attack me, I’ll need to defend myself.”

  “I don’t sense danger,” Skili said. She adjusted herself on my shoulder, lifting her wings and then letting them settle a few times. It tickled my neck. “She wouldn’t be sitting out in the open like that, if she was here to kill you.”

  “True,” I muttered. I was tired. The last thing I wanted to put my mental energy to was whether or not a visitor wanted to kill me.

  I started walking again.

  As I neared my van, Beatrix stood. It was so dark out, all I could see was the black solidness of her slender form.

  “Beatrix?” I said. “What can I do for you?”

  “There’s something I wish to discuss with you,” she said. “I heard you stayed out here in this... in this vehicle.”

  “It’s my home on wheels,” I said. “It has been for over a decade.”

  “It’s a car,” she said, turning to look at it. “I really can’t keep up with you hipster kids these days. This is the trend, isn't it? Being homeless is hip?”

  I suppressed a smile. She was amusing me. I loved it when people questioned my van lifestyle, because it was something I felt entirely happy and comfortable with. My tense shoulders relaxed. It was becoming clear to me that I wouldn’t need self-defense—if Beatrix was going to attack me, she would have
already. Skili lifted off into the air and settled on the van’s roof. I think she was feeling more comfortable with the situation, too.

  “I just like living in it,” I said to Beatrix. “It’s pretty much just my bedroom—a safe and cozy place to sleep. The rest of my home is the great outdoors... Check out my cathedral ceilings...”

  I tilted my chin up and looked up. Billions of stars twinkled and glittered in the sky above.

  She didn’t follow my gaze. “Well, if it works for you, I suppose that’s what counts,” she said disdainfully. “But I, for one, could never live in a car. In fact, I can’t wait to get back inside. It’s dreadfully cold out here.” She hugged herself and stamped her feet. “I’ve been waiting for you for over an hour.”

  What was so important that she waited in the cold for an hour? I had no idea. I kept quiet, giving her space to proceed.

  She did. “It’s rather urgent, you see,” she said. She glanced over her shoulder at the retreat center. “I told Alyssa that I was going out for a walk. I do that sometimes when I’m in a funk, and obviously, given today's events, I had every right to be upset. She understood.”

  “I do that too,” I said. “I go out for walks when I’m anxious or sad. It helps, doesn’t it?”

  I saw her nod.

  “But you didn’t go for a walk, did you?” I asked. “You came here, looking for me. But you didn’t want Alyssa to know. Why?”

  “Because—I have to talk to you about her.”

  “Okay...” I said.

  She hesitated. “This isn’t easy to say,” she said. “I’m her mother. I raised the girl. I love her. Of course I do. But...” Her voice drifted off.

  “But what?” I prompted.

  “The hairdryer... you said it was pink?”

  “Yes,” I said. “A pink 120 volt Bio Pro SuperSonic dryer. That’s what it says on it.”