by A. L. Tyler
“How do you know him?” I shot back at her.
We were at an impasse. Neither of us wanted to trust the other now, and I didn’t see any way around it. But then Martha spoke.
“He’s looking for someone named Charlie,” she said carefully. “They’re old friends, and rumor around Stonefall is that Charlie is back and spending time somewhere around here. I’m looking for Charlie, too, but more because of a mutual acquaintance we had. I’m sorry to have bothered you. I just kind of assumed, with the necklace and the demon, that maybe you would know my friend, because she’s… never mind. I’m sorry. Enjoy your meal.”
She got up to leave. I don’t know what came over me in that moment, but I had to know.
“What’s her name?” I asked. “Your friend?”
Martha stopped, turning back to me and holding her haphazardly wrapped sandwich in her hand. She seemed to debate if it was wise to tell me.
“Kendra,” she said finally. “If you see her around, just tell her I was worried about her. I haven’t heard from her in a while.”
In the few seconds it took for Martha to go back behind the counter, it felt like the dam that had been constipating my thoughts all day suddenly broke free, because the laws of karma had finally turned in my favor. The universe had been slamming me hard for months. And now this woman was a friend of Kendra, and she had stared Stark down, knowing who he was, and she wasn’t afraid.
I shot up from my table, grabbing my sandwich and making a sudden and loud noise as the paper crinkled in my tight grasp. Martha stared at me, surprised and annoyed.
“I don’t want any trouble—” she started.
“Kendra’s my aunt,” I confessed, coming over to the counter. Martha’s eyes were bewildered, but her face relaxed into a kind expression. “And yeah, I need help.”
It all spilled out from there. I told her everything that had happened since summoning Charlie, and how he was trying to become human, and how it left my best friend a part-time cat. I told her about my sister, who was now only seeing her daughter very infrequently. I told her about Vince, and oddly enough, that was where I started to choke up.
“Stark told me he’s going to kill himself,” I said, lowering my voice and biting on my cheek when I paused. Somehow, I hoped that the physical pain would dull the emotions. “And I want to think he’s just trying to get to me, but…”
Having come back out from behind the counter, Martha pulled me into a hug. She shushed me before shaking her head.
“Don’t worry about him,” she said quietly. “I can help him. Well, I mean, I know some people who can. That condition isn’t nearly as rare or unlivable as Charlie seems to think.”
Her words made relief wash over me, but my suspicions about Charlie increased at the same time.
“We’ll figure the rest out,” she said calmly. “My god, I just can’t believe Kendra would leave you with all of this…”
In my mind I clung to her. She was my salvation, and Vince’s, and everything was going to be okay.
We sat back down at a table, and she told me that she had some friends in Stonefall who were members of a loose pack of werewolves. They had taken in new members before, people who had been bitten as adults, and managed to teach them coping strategies. It wasn’t a cure, but they were at least living their lives again.
“I think that’s the most important thing,” she said. “We’ll get Vince help. Then we can focus on this thing with Stark and Walter, and that might be a tough one. I’m not afraid of Stark, but I have no doubt that he can stir up more trouble than any of us would want. We’ll find a way to banish him again, and I’ll see if any of my friends know Walter’s pack. If we can work from the elders down, that’s our best chance to gain his cooperation. And when we’re finished with that, we’ll help Gates by helping Charlie. Kendra never mentioned that he was after humanity, but I knew they were pretty hot and heavy. I’m not surprised.”
I nodded, grateful. She had a way about her that made even the hard problems seem procedural and easy. This was going to work.
“Where are you staying?” I asked.
She forced a weak smile. “I’m… not, really. When Kendra went missing a lot of us worried until the obituary was published, but I never bought it. She said something in her last letter about getting rid of Stark for good, and I just thought… a car accident was too common, you know? Especially after Stark went missing. Something else happened. And then people started seeing Charlie around Stonefall, and I had to find him. I had to know if she was okay, and if anyone would know, he would.” She took a deep breath, and sighed. “So I got in my car, and I drove, and that’s where I’m living now. In my car.”
I smiled. “Come and stay with me. It’s the least I can do. As long as you don’t mind the demon and the werewolf, and I understand some people do, so I won’t be offended if you don’t want to.”
She hesitated for a moment, but then grinned, wrinkling her nose. “Are you sure? Really?”
“Really,” I nodded. “You’re welcome. I’m sure Charlie can find the wall space to put in another room somewhere.”
We laughed together. We finished eating, and just as we were cleaning up, the bell over the door chimed, and the next shift worker came in. Martha gathered her things from the back and followed me out the door and down the street to my apartment.
I was feeling so happy when I stuck my key in the door. I felt a little proud, even, that I now had a sense of direction in the way that I was going to solve everyone’s problems.
When I popped the door open and stepped in, Charlie took one look at Martha and sprang to his feet hissing at her.
Chapter 7
“Whoa!” I said, dropping my backpack and putting a hand out in Charlie’s direction. “What’s wrong?”
“What the hell are you doing with one of those?” Charlie’s cat face sneered as he lifted a lip and folded his ears back.
I looked over my shoulder as Martha smiled calmly, almost smugly, and stepped through the door.
I turned back to Charlie. “It’s okay, she’s a friend of Kendra’s.”
Charlie was coming toward us, like he intended to do something about the situation, and Martha looked like she was going to laugh.
“You must be Charlie,” she said, bowing down to offer him a hand. “I have heard so many stories about you.”
“And you must be taking advantage of a child’s naivety!” He took a swipe at her hand, but fell just short of making contact. Martha didn’t recoil. “Annie, whoever this is, I can promise you she wasn’t one of Kendra’s friends! I have never seen her in my life, and Kendra wouldn’t befriend someone like her.”
“Oh, well there’s the pot calling the kettle black!” Martha said, amused.
I frowned, not sure what to do. I looked to Charlie. “What do you mean? Witches don’t make friends with other witches?”
“They do,” he said. “But that’s not a witch. That’s a necromancer.”
“A what?” I asked.
Vince must have heard the commotion. “What’s going on?”
“She works spells that use life-force, and she probably thinks she hit the mother lode here!” In the blink of an eye, he wasn’t a cat anymore. He stood before me, a head taller than both myself and Martha, glowering. “She’s a special breed of vampire, Annie, and they’re very fond of demons, werewolves, and youth.”
I was still staring at him in shock. If he was human, then Gates was a cat somewhere—and someone might have seen.
“She was in the shower,” he mumbled. “I checked first.”
My eyebrows didn’t lower. Gates was a now a wet cat somewhere.
Vince had widened his stance, but he didn’t seem to know what to do any more than I did.
Martha laughed melodically as she strode into the apartment and dropped her bag. She crossed her arms as she looked Charlie over, and then her red lips spread into another smile.
“Kendra didn’t judge people so quickly or so harshly,”
she said. “And we were friends. Good friends, though our heyday was a little before you came along.”
“She never talked about you,” Charlie said gravely. A bright purple ball of flame was glowing in his hand, and I had no idea what he was planning to do with it.
“Well, she wrote me letters, and she talked about you all the time,” Martha winked, pulling a chair from the kitchen table and sitting down. “I know things about you that she would only tell a friend, Charlie. I know about the birthmark on your junk, and the scar next to it.” She leaned forward. “I know about the workbench.”
Charlie frowned. He took two steps back, and resumed being a cat.
Martha stared him down. “Are you going to tell them I’m legit, or do I need to go into details?”
“She’s legit,” Charlie said begrudgingly.
I didn’t realize that I had been holding my breath, but I finally breathed again.
Vince looked at Charlie curiously. “How’d you get a scar on your—?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Charlie said shortly.
“—right.”
Martha stood back up, looking around the apartment, and then shouldered her bag again. “Well, Annie promised me a room, Charlie, so how about you and me catch up while the kids do their homework?”
He didn’t budge. “I don’t trust you.”
“So tell me what you want. Kendra and I were like sisters. For a time, we were closer than I was with my actual sister.” She took off her ruby bracelet and offered it to him. “You want my talisman as collateral? Take it. I’m here to help, not to start something.”
His eyes shifted to the bracelet and back.
“Hair,” he said definitively. “And blood.”
“Done.” Martha smiled.
Vince raised a hand to his mouth as he turned and went back into the bedroom, and I followed him, closing the door behind me.
“That’s disgusting,” he muttered before turning to face me. “Does he do that a lot? The hair and blood thing?”
I remembered the first time I had seen Charlie consume one of my own samples of blood, and cringed. “Yeah. He does. I’m sorry.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
“I kind of have to be…” Truthfully, I just didn’t like thinking about it. Now that I was, I was reminded of the other things I needed to discuss with Charlie, and it killed my mood. I changed the subject. “How were your classes?”
Vince’s expression changed, and he gestured for me to follow him down into his apartment. He had the university’s online schedule website open in his browser, and I saw a list of my own classes printed out next to the mouse.
“So, I tried to match up what I could, but your other astronomy class has a twenty person waitlist. I can’t get into your noon lit class without dropping a math class, and it’s a prerequisite for a class next semester that would set my whole program back a year if I missed it. I could get into your Japanese lit class, but it’s so late in the day, and I already leave so early…”
“No,” I smiled reassuringly. “I hear you. Leave good enough alone. We can always ask Charlie to get you notes if you miss classes.”
He sat back and regarded me, crossing his arms and looking cocky. “We could always ask Charlie to just give me my degree.”
I grinned. “Yeah, but where’s the fun in that?”
Our eyes met, and I waited for him to say or do something. I wanted him to make a move, and I knew I was just as capable, but I couldn’t. There was something nice in the tension between us. There was beauty in the possibilities, because before either of us did anything, there were infinite endings before us.
I liked those quiet moments when we had challenged each other, and then we stood in a quiet standoff. We usually got interrupted, or else one of us broke it off and said we had somewhere to be.
But this time there was no interruption, and neither of us had anywhere to go. We were in his apartment, but we were technically still in my apartment, and I wasn’t sure what the etiquette was on who was supposed to be polite and concede by talking first. Or what that person was supposed to say.
“Do you like ice cream?”
That hadn’t even been on my list of possible topics.
“Who doesn’t?” I shrugged.
We got some ice cream out of the freezer and went to sit on the couch. We worked through the assigned problem set for astronomy together, and then I went to do my women’s lit reading while he opened a math book.
After finishing a strange story about yellow wallpaper, I looked up to see Vince working through his problem set with determination. I tried to keep my book propped up just right so that he wouldn’t see me studying his expressions, but he must have sensed that something was different.
“What?” he asked without looking over.
“Are you planning to kill yourself?” I asked.
He took a deep breath, and then raised his eyebrows and shook his head as he marked another answer with his pencil. “Would I be doing math homework if I didn’t intend to turn it in?”
“You didn’t answer the question.”
“Yes, I did. You just didn’t like my response.”
“No,” I said. “I didn’t. Are you thinking about it?”
“Right now I’m thinking about math.”
“Have you thought about it?”
He paused and gave me a sincere look. “Yes, I have.”
“And?”
“And, I’ve thought about it,” he said with finality. “I haven’t made any plans, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Will you tell me if I need to hide the knives?”
He raised an eyebrow. When he reached over and put a hand on my shoulder, I tried not to blush.
“If the time comes, I would appreciate that.” He stared at me without blinking. “I’m not there yet.”
I nodded. He nodded. We both went back to doing our homework.
When we were done, it was late, but we decided to unwind with a little television. He turned on a reality show and went to take the ice cream bowls back to the kitchen. When he came back, he sat down on the couch next to me instead of sitting at the opposite end.
He looked at me, and I could tell he was waiting for a reaction of some sort, but I tried to play it cool as I leaned back. He sat back, too, and we watched for a few minutes in silence.
“Thanks for offering to hide the knives,” he said.
I wasn’t sure what to say. “Sure. No problem.”
We watched a little longer. I didn’t want to get his hopes up, but I felt like I needed to end the discussion on a high note.
“Martha says she knows some people who might be able to help you,” I said.
Vince looked over, skeptical.
“You know,” I picked anxiously at a nail. “Just if you want it.”
“Do you really trust her?” he asked. “Charlie doesn’t trust her, and it seems like you usually trust him.”
That issue, combined with Stark’s accusation that Charlie was a perpetual liar, wasn’t going to rest in my mind until I had brought it to light.
“I trust her,” I said. “But like I said, it’s there if you want it.”
He turned back to the television, but didn’t skip a beat in the conversation. “Charlie said that you might care more than average if I killed myself.”
I opened my mouth to call Charlie a liar, but I couldn’t do it. “When did he say that?”
“When I picked up a knife to butter my toast this morning. He’s not exactly subtle.” Vince glanced over and smirked. “I said I didn’t think you would. We’ve been just friends for years.”
This time, he waited. And waited. I had to say something.
“Yup.”
“Annie…”
I looked over at him, and before I could stop myself, I leaned over to peck him on the cheek. I got up from the couch and walked briskly to the door, blushing like mad as I turned back to him to say goodnight.
He was
still sitting on the couch, his somber expression a contradiction to the playfulness in his eyes.
“Why did you do that?” he asked. “Now it’s going to be ten times worse if I kill myself.”
“Goodnight, Vince.”
I turned and left, but there was too much residual adrenaline in my veins to go to bed. I went to the little library that Charlie had installed for me. I picked a book and settled onto the chaise, waiting for sleepiness to take over, but it didn’t.
My classes the next day didn’t start until late, and I wanted to drive out to the greenhouse to check on things for Lyssa, but I was won over by the thought that I could stay up late and sleep in.
I wandered out to the living room and found Charlie sitting alone on the couch, watching late night television with a glazed expression. He blinked his feline eyes and the channel changed.
“Can’t sleep?” he asked. “Gates was on the news today. She and her mom got two minutes on the seven o’clock broadcast. Everyone loves a happy ending.”
“Is Martha around?”
“Asleep,” Charlie said, flicking one ear. “And you really shouldn’t let strays follow you home. That could have ended badly today.”
I took a deep breath and sighed. “Yeah, I’m sorry about that. Did you recognize Walter when we first met him?”
“I had never met Walter before,” Charlie replied. Then he looked over at me. “But that isn’t what you’re asking. Did Stark get to you?”
I considered how much I wanted to say, but I figured that lying wouldn’t do much good. If he wanted to read my thoughts, he would do it. “He said you’ve got a thing about werewolves.”
Charlie turned back to the television, but then shut it off. He faced me properly before answering. A table lamp turned on, and I blinked against the bright light.
“That’s true,” he said. “A pack killed my first bridge.”
“The old woman?” I asked. “Why?”
“She tried to help one of them who had been wounded. When she failed, the pack retaliated,” he said. “She died screaming. I was only a child, and it terrified me, and I didn’t know how to help her. And yes, I’m still more than convinced that keeping Vince around is a bad idea. Werewolves are known for being quick to rage, and I would rather not relive that experience. I will kill him if it comes down to that.”
