Gypsy Witch: A Paragon Society Novel (Book 2)

by David Delaney

  The interior of Tinkerbelle's living room was even more comically set-dressed than the first time Jimmy had visited. The room was once again only lit with candles, but the furniture had all been pushed against the walls and draped with black throw-cloths. The area in the middle of the living room had been cleared; the area rug was rolled up and set aside with the furniture, revealing an honest to goodness pentagram etched into the hard wood floor. Jimmy looked closer. No, it wasn't etched. It was some kind of inlaid metal. Silver, maybe?

  "Well, that's going to hurt the resale value," Jimmy commented before he could think better of it.

  "Don't be a smart ass," Tinkerbelle said, as she entered the room. "I told you before, Jimmy. Your attitude and energy are very important aspects for this spell. So, show some respect."

  Jimmy nodded. "Sorry."

  Tinkerbelle held out her hands. "Is that the sacrifice?"

  "Yes," Jimmy answered, happy to be handing over the box.

  Tinkerbelle opened the box and smiled. "Perfect," she said. "And the personal item from your intended?"

  Jimmy pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and gently unwrapped it, revealing a pen. "I wasn't sure if I was supposed to touch it or not, so I kept it wrapped in this the past couple of days. It's her pen; you can even see where she chewed the cap. So we even have DNA, if that's helpful," said Jimmy.

  Getting the pen had been easier than Jimmy had imagined. He had simply waited outside of the Physics class that he and Maddie attended and bumped into her – hard – making sure she spilled her messenger bag. While apologizing and helping her pick up her things, he'd palmed the pen.

  "DNA isn't necessary, but I appreciate the effort," said Tinkerbelle.

  "Let's get this show on the road," Dahlia said, dancing from foot to foot.

  Tinkerbelle gave Dahlia a pouty smile. "Patience sweetie, patience."

  Tinkerbelle started gathering items and setting them inside the pentagram. She started with a leather bound book.

  Of course, Jimmy thought. What kind of witch would she be without a magic book of spells? He had to suppress another giggle.

  Tinkerbelle added an ornate wine-goblet-cup thingy, the box with the chicken and – Jimmy gulped – a very sharp looking dagger, with a fancy handle.

  "Alright, it's time to begin," said Tinkerbelle, focusing a super serious look on Jimmy. "For the rest of the evening, Jimmy, I'm going to need you to do whatever I ask, no questions or snide comments. Spell-work is very precise, and I can't be distracted in any way."

  "Okay. Yeah, you got it," Jimmy assured her.

  "Good," said Tinkerbelle. "Now, take off your clothes."

  Jimmy froze. She wanted him to get naked? No, no, no, no. That was so not going to happen. No ma'am. No way.

  "Jimmy, you just agreed to do whatever I asked. Now, take off your clothes," Tinkerbelle said menacingly.

  Jimmy began to protest when he noticed movement from Dahlia. He glanced over at her and all most fell over when she pulled her shirt off and dropped her jeans, kicking them to the side.

  Dahlia was naked.

  "They're just boobs, Jimbo. This is how it's done," said Dahlia.

  The musical tinkling of Tinkerbelle's bracelets helped Jimmy break the trance that Dahlia's nude body had caused him to slip into. When Jimmy turned back to Tinkerbelle, he knew he was dreaming, because she had pulled off her multitude of silks and was also naked. Jimmy had never been in the presence of even one naked woman. He was sure he was going to pass out. He swayed on his feet, his eyes having a hard time focusing.

  "Are you serious, Jimbo?" Dahlia sounded disgusted. "You need to calm down and focus. Now."

  The room was spinning around Jimmy, but he managed to start unbuttoning his shirt. Even if witchcraft and love spells turned out to be complete nonsense, having naked time with two hot women was worth the money he'd paid. His friends would never believe him. He wondered if he could sneak his phone out at some point and get a picture or three? He made sure that when he dropped his pants, the pocket containing his phone was facing up. Jimmy blew out a breath and turned around to face the two very naked ladies.

  Dahlia gave Jimmy's naked body the once over, her eyes lingering below his waist. "Not bad, Jimbo. Not bad at all," she said, smiling.

  "Dahlia, stop it. We're gathered here for serious business," said Tinkerbelle.

  It was hard for Jimmy to concentrate. Tinkerbelle had Jimmy stand in the middle of the pentagram while she and Dahlia both began to chant in a language Jimmy couldn't place. It kind of sounded like Latin, but not quite. At some point, Tinkerbelle had Jimmy drink something thick and bitter out of the goblet, and then things got real fuzzy.

  Drugs.

  Tinkerbelle has slipped me a mickey. That's how she does it, Jimmy thought. She gives her clients some drugs and then claims the ensuing trip was a magical vision. Pathetic . . . That was the last cogent thought Jimmy had.

  Jimmy swayed, his body alternately cold and hot. The girls were still chanting in the screwy language, but now the sound was muffled, like he was underwater. He tried to focus his vision, but the more he concentrated, the more everything seemed to be melting – the walls, Tinkerbelle and Dahlia . . . He held his hand up and the skin dripped away like candle wax. That's not something you see every day, he thought.

  His world was now flashes of perception.

  Dahlia, the goblet raised in front of her . . .

  Tinkerbelle, her hands wrapped around the chicken . . .

  Jimmy's own hand grasping the dagger . . .

  The blade slicing through the squirming chicken . . .

  Hot blood spilling over Jimmy's fingers . . .

  Tinkerbelle and Dahlia using the blood to paint symbols on his body . . .

  A dark shadowy, presence engulfing him and the girls . . .

  And deep, maniacal laughter . . .

  Jimmy jerked awake. He was lying in his own bed. It was still dark outside. He checked his phone: it was just after 3:00 am. His head was killing him, and he stumbled to the bathroom in search of Advil. He avoided turning on the light, sure that any increased brightness would increase the sharp pain knifing through his skull. What had Tinkerbelle given him?

  Tinkerbelle.

  The spell.

  It had only been a dream. The girls had drugged him and sent him packing. They were probably still laughing at him.

  He reached back and, closing his eyes in preparation, flipped the light on. He cracked open one eye just enough to check himself out in the mirror. Both eyes flew open wide, the light causing a fresh burst of pain through his aching head, but he didn't care. He stared at himself in the mirror: he was dressed only in his boxers and as far as he could tell, every inch of his body was covered in weird symbols. The symbols had obviously been finger-painted onto his skin. He touched one of the symbols and his finger came away sticky.

  Chicken blood.

  He was covered in chicken blood.

  He spun around just in time as vomit exploded from his mouth into the toilet. He collapsed, hugging the cool porcelain of the toilet bowl, as he continued to vomit until there was nothing left in his stomach. Then the dry heaves erupted until his body finally gave out from exhaustion. He fell back onto the bathroom floor and passed out.

  CHAPTER 7

  We hit the Stanford city limits at dark. The investigation at the In-N-Out had burned through our day, and we didn't pull into our hotel until after 8:00 pm. On the drive, Lucy had received periodic updates from the Containment Team, and it turned out the ogres hadn't just been joyriding the scenic byways of California in search of ripe, juicy brains. Directions to Stanford, along with detailed maps of the campus, had been discovered inside the Winnebago. The ogres had been headed to the exact same spot as Lucy and me. This unsettling piece of information amped up an already tense situation.

  "Damn it!" Lucy said, as she ended yet another call.

  "Let me guess. The council doesn't want us to abort?" I said.

  "No," Lucy said,
drumming her fingers on the dashboard. "Their reasoning is that we're already here, and we can at least make contact with the accident survivors. When the Containment team finishes sorting through the In-N-Out mess, they'll meet up with us."

  "So, the cavalry will arrive . . . what do we think . . . tomorrow sometime?" I asked, hopefully.

  Lucy, obviously sensing my apprehension, stopped drumming her fingers. "They're not the cavalry. Our mission remains simple and easy: check out our four students. If there are no magical shenanigans going on, we're good. The Containment team is coming to follow up on the ogre situation."

  "And troll," I added.

  Lucy sighed. "Yes, and troll."

  The hotel Lucy had booked us into one of those cookie-cutter Marriotts, the kind that served a rubber-egg-and-waffle breakfast every morning. The clientele was a mix of families with small kids and business people in town for trade shows or sales meetings. Lucy had scored us adjoining rooms. I keyed myself into my room, dropped my duffel and backpack on the floor, and flopped onto the soft bed. I stretched and my back popped and snapped as it decompressed from the long ride in Lucy's Mini-Cooper. I heard Lucy fumbling with the adjoining door, and then she started knocking. I dragged myself from the comfort of the bed and unlocked the door.

  Lucy stepped into my room. She had swapped her shorts for jeans and was buckled into her leather jacket. I didn't sense her daggers, so she must have decided that we weren't in imminent danger of another ogre attack.

  "Lucky for us, college kids consider sleep optional," she said. "I say we make initial contact with as many of our targets as possible tonight. Are you ready to go?"

  I sighed. So much for the hot shower and enormous room service order I had been contemplating.

  "Sure," I said. "Who are we starting with, and how do you want to do this? Do we just walk up to them and ask if they can, you know . . ." I waggled my fingers in my impersonation of a mage casting a spell.

  Lucy shook her head, clearly not impressed with my most excellent impersonation. "Seriously? Just walk up and say what, exactly?"

  "I was kidding," I chuckled. "But unless our possible recruit has a weirdo telltale aura, I don't know how we're going to figure out if someone is a secret Gandalf."

  Lucy rolled her eyes. I knew my constant pop culture references tweaked her, but she had given me the fake identity of Jacob Black. I had no remorse for my constant verbal poking.

  "It takes a bit of nuance on our part." She eyed me. "Of course, with your size, you're about as subtle as a tank, so I'm not sure how much success you'll have."

  "Hey, I can play it cool," I said, trying to strike a more casual pose.

  "Sure," Lucy patted my arm. "Just follow my lead. We're headed to a couple of dorm rooms first, so try to act casual, like you belong. You know, kind of college-y."

  College-y," I repeated, unconvinced. "College campuses are paranoid about personal space and making sure everybody feels safe. What if we trip alarms?"

  "Orson." Lucy imitated my ridiculous finger waggle. "I can do magic, remember?"

  I can be such an idiot. With Lucy's abilities, we would be like the ultimate spies. She couldn't make us invisible, but she could cast a spell that would cause people to look past us. If pressed, a person would recall that they'd seen someone, but they would be unable to come up with any details – skin tone, hair color, even style of clothing would all just be a jumble in their memory.

  I saluted. "Private Orson, reporting for stalking duty, ma'am."

  Lucy rolled her eyes again, and I smirked as I followed her out of the hotel.

  * * *

  Our first stop was to the dorm room of Marcus Feld, a sophomore majoring in bio-science. He was pre-med, but apparently that didn't stop him from indulging in some recreational pot use because the dude was beyond high when he opened the door.

  Marcus squinted at us as if trying to decide if he was supposed to recognize us. He finally gave up and said, "Yo, what's up?"

  "Hi, Marcus. It's me. Lucy," Lucy said, pushing her way past the bewildered young man.

  I followed her inside, trying to smile reassuringly.

  The dorm room wasn't anything special – two beds, two desks, textbooks, and a pile of clothes ready for the laundromat. We had interrupted Marcus' gaming time: Grand Theft Auto was paused on a small flat-screen monitor.

  "Um . . . who are you?" I could almost hear Marcus' brain trying to process this intrusion into his happy time.

  "Lucy. I'm Tracy's friend," Lucy said brightly, as if that explained everything.

  "Oh. Um – okay." Marcus was clearly a nice guy and didn't want to offend us, plus Lucy was an attractive woman and even though it sounds totally caveman, as a general rule, most guys are nice to pretty girls, especially pretty girls that show up in your dorm room, at night.

  Lucy caught my attention and pointed from her eye to the surrounding room. I got the hint and switched on my magic sight. I was instantly fascinated by Marcus's aura. Little tendrils of energy snaked from his aura into the surrounding energy. It wasn't magic, but it was something I'd never seen before. It was like he was an open book to the energy around him. It had to be the pot; it had blown his receptors wide open. Interesting. The room, however, was clean – zero magic. I gave Lucy a slight shake of my head, and she nodded back.

  "Hey, Marcus. We got to split. Say hi to Tracy for us," said Lucy, pulling open the door and waving over her shoulder.

  "Yeah, for sure," Marcus called after us.

  "No magic," I said, after the door closed behind us.

  "Nope. Just poor stoned Marcus," Lucy agreed.

  "Do drugs always do that to auras?" I asked, following Lucy out of the dorm.

  "To some degree, yes," she answered. "That's why drugs like peyote and others have been used in religious ceremonies throughout history. They open people up energetically. The problem is, if not done properly, in a controlled environment, drugs can have bad side effects."

  "Like what?"

  "Possession," Lucy said, stopping outside the front door of the building to verify the address of the next student we needed to check on.

  "Seriously?" I was stunned. "Like the Exorcist? That kind of possession?"

  "Well, in real life," Lucy emphasized, "there's less head spinning and more brutal murder, but yeah, kind of like that." Lucy pointed toward our left, "We need to go this way."

  Brutal murder? "So, are we talking demons? You know – Beelzebub." I made horns out of my index fingers and wiggled them for emphasis.

  Lucy sighed. "The short answer is 'we don't know.'"

  "We don't know?" I repeated, appalled. "What the hell kind of secret society are we? We're the freaking Paragon Society! Aren't we supposed to be the ultimate knowers of things?"

  Lucy snorted. "Orson, I've told you before: the Society likes to think they're all knowing, but the reality is far from that." Lucy stopped walking, "Look, possession is rare. Not everyone who gets high gets possessed. I mean, if that was the case, we'd be swimming in psychotics. But when it does happen, it's bad. It's a dark, nasty energy that invades the host, and while not specifically a demon – at least in the way you're thinking of it – it is intelligent and it has one goal. Chaos."

  Lucy gave me a moment to process what she had said before giving a nod in the direction we'd been heading. She turned and started walking again.

  I followed, quietly considering what I had just learned. "So, the exorcism rituals, the kinds portrayed in books and movies – you know, that are supposedly based on the real thing – do they work?" I asked.

  "Sometimes."

  "And the other times?" I asked, already pretty sure of the answer.

  Lucy didn't look at me. Her answer was soft, but matter-of-fact. "We can't have possessed people running wild through the streets."

  Possession is a Society death sentence. It was good for me to be reminded what kind of organization the Society was. No matter how much they reassured me, if I stepped outside of the lines they had create
d, they wouldn't hesitate to kill me.

  They would be foolish to follow such a path; we would destroy any that dared come against us.

  This time, I didn't shush my inner-crazy. It was reassuring to understand that the magic the Society used to enforce its law was not super-effective against me. I was the Ollphiest, and while I could and did play well with others, I would never let the Society order me to do something I didn't agree with.

  Ever.

  "Orson." Lucy was trying to get my attention.

  I realized that she had stopped in front of another dorm building and I, lost in my thoughts, had kept walking.

  "Sorry," I said.

  Lucy gave me a penetrating look.

  "What?" I asked, trying to play it cool.

  "Are you good?" she asked.

  "Hundred percent," I confirmed.

  Nobody answered when we knocked on the second student's dorm room door. Lucy checked the hallway to make sure we were clear and then gave the locking mechanism a little zap. The door clicked open. We entered the room, quickly shutting the door behind us. I switched on my sight; there was nothing magical in the room.

  "Another bust," I said.

  "Looks like it," Lucy agreed. She picked up a picture frame with a group photo of smiling girls. She pointed at one. "Aarushi Patel, looks like you're clean. We'll have to swing by again tomorrow, just to get our eyeballs on her so we're positive, but I don't think she's our girl."

  We left the room as quietly as we entered. There was no spell that zapped a lock back together, so Lucy just pulled the door tightly closed behind her. I hoped Aarushi was coming home soon; she had a laptop and few other pricey things in her room.

  Back outside the building, the night was dark and chilly. The new moon made the night sky actually sort of visible, with the stars doing their best to shine through the light pollution of a modern city.

  "What do you think? Check one more and then head back to the hotel?" asked Lucy.

  "Now that's a plan I can get behind," I said, yawning.

  Lucy led the way to yet another dorm. This building was larger and had a ton more activity going on – this seemed to be where the party people lived. We had to focus on blending in more, which was hard for me on account of the fact that I towered over everyone.