Secrets The Walkers Keep: A New Adult Urban Fantasy (Casters of Magic Series Book 1)

by J. Morgan Michaels

  I walked into the kitchen and grabbed two water bottles out of an otherwise empty fridge. As I looked around, I started to get dizzy and lightheaded. A cold sweat slithered down my spine and my mouth dried out completely. I started chugging water, spilling it all down myself and onto the floor. But the more I drank, the drier my mouth seemed to get.

  Then it all began.

  My stomach churned as the room started to waywardly rock and spin around me. Everything in sight decayed into a blur. My eyes widened as I fought to focus on anything that could steady me. There was nothing. What was left of the light was bitter and harrowing, and each shard carried with it a thousand indiscernible images.

  Breathing became arduous, and the harder I fought the sensations the worse they got. Spasmodic noises followed, howling at me from every direction. Each carried a unique, and equally potent, emotion with it. Mixed together, they ran through my veins like a barreling train, desperate to find an escape and leaving wakes of spasms throughout my body.

  I was rattled. Confused. Scared even. In the deepest of those moments, I held my breath, certain that it would be my last. Whatever was happening, I had no control over it, and it owned me completely.

  Just as my grip on sanity started to slip, salvation came, and the lights and noises slowly faded away. Left in darkness and the silence, I was alone. I felt almost weightless as I oscillated between perception and reality, reason and truth. I had been stripped of every internal defense and left to deal with the magnitude of my situation, exposed. With that, however, came a calmness and clarity that I had never before achieved. I had been forced to the primal depths of my soul and was surprised by the serenity that waited for me there.

  As my sight started to return, I could see I was still in the kitchen, but something wasn’t right. It felt different. I felt different. Still wobbling from the experience, I reached for the counter to steady myself, but I couldn’t see my hands. Panicked, I looked down and realized I couldn’t see the rest of my body either. I wasn’t really there; I didn’t exist. There was no time to put the pieces together, though, because a scene unfolded before me.

  A woman walked into the empty kitchen. She had an ostentatious blond wig covering her thinning hair, which poked out inadvertently below it. Oversized and overpriced jewels sparkled all over her, as if to distract you from the expensive, yet ugly, fur-lined shirt and leopard print, skin-tight pants that covered her aging body. Her glory days were long gone, but she used copious amounts of money to clutch onto what little youth she had left.

  “Luz,” she yelled.

  She couldn’t see me flinch, because I wasn’t really there.

  “Luz! Where are you? I’m ready for my afternoon cocktail,” she yelled again, standing next to a crystal martini glass and a half drunken bottle of vodka. She longingly stared at them, waiting impatiently for Luz—apparently the only person in the house who knew how to lift the bottle and pour it into the glass.

  Luz, or the woman I assume was Luz, finally came into the kitchen, dressed in a maid’s uniform. She silently ignored the obstinate glance she got from the other woman and began making a martini.

  Past the fur-lined woman’s insufferable demeanor, something screamed sadness to me; her eyes were glossy and mellow, and her lips curled downward in the corners, almost unnoticeably. I wished she could have seen me so I could have told her that no amount of liquor, jewels, or clothing would make her feel whole.

  And just as quickly as it came, it left—whatever it was. The weightlessness returned for the briefest of seconds. Then the lights and noises, swallowing me whole and pulling me from that scene. I closed my eyes and held my breath again, and when I could no longer keep it in, I exhaled sharply and opened my eyes. It was over and I was back, in full form, in the empty kitchen.

  What the hell was that? A hallucination?

  Whatever it was, I was still caught up in it. Sensations of extreme nausea crept up from my stomach, and I reached the trash can just before I started dry heaving uncontrollably. Who knew how long my head dangled in that trash can, as I tried to regain control over my gagging, and tried even harder to make sense of what I had just experienced.

  “You alright?” Liv asked as she walked into the kitchen, dropping a set of binders loudly on the counter.

  “I’m not sure,” I said, pulling my head from the trash can and looking out the kitchen door. I’m not sure who I expected to find, Luz and the other woman maybe.

  “Who are you looking for?” Liv asked, giving me a ‘you’re crazy’ smile. “No one’s here except us.”

  “I don’t know. I thought I saw someone.” I ran my hand from my forehead to my cheek to check my temperature before resting it on my neck.

  I’m losing my mind.

  Feeling normal was not a sensation I was familiar with anyway, but I had never questioned my mental stability before that day.

  “Perhaps a ghost?” Liv asked, giggling.

  “Yeah. A ghost.” I finished wiping up the spilled water on the floor and made my way to the door. “Never mind; I guess I just need to have them increase my dosage.” Telling Liv about my hallucination crossed my mind, but how could I? It was only going to make me seem crazier than I already appeared to be.

  “Hey, it happens.” Liv shrugged. She pulled an apple out of her purse and bit into it, casually leaning back against the counter.

  It happens? Sure, it happens—to mental patients who steal their guard’s keys, break out of the hospital and wander around the city, petting their scarf and asking people if they’ve seen their talking garden gnome.

  Liv was either used to being around people who regularly questioned their sanity, or she had already called the ‘nice men in the lab coats’ to come get me. “Are you going to that client mixer at Graham’s house tomorrow night?” she asked.

  I threw my head back to my shoulders and let out a moan. “Fuck! I completely forgot about that. He roped me into it last week before . . . before everything else.” I took a deep breath. “I guess I have to.”

  “Meh . . . maybe it won’t be so bad.” Liv’s mouth was still full of apple. “We’ll dress up, maybe have some tequila . . . make a night of it.”

  There wasn’t enough tequila in Mexico to turn a client mixer into a good time. Mixers were like trying to iron your shirt while you were still wearing it, but Graham thought they were fun and considered client facetime invaluable. I hated the thought of forced socialization with people I didn’t know and cared very little about. I avoided the thought and went into the living room to finish unpacking.

  When we were ready to leave, I bent down to close the last box of Liv’s stuff and noticed a lone picture on an expensive end table. In it was the woman from my hallucination, maybe a few years older than how I had seen her. She stood at the base of a dock, a fleet of boats in the water and a flock of birds in the air passing by behind her. Although she was smiling, she looked just as sad as when I saw her in person.

  I must have seen that earlier, I told myself. Seeing that woman in the kitchen was some kind of daydream, or hallucination, caused by restless sleep and disharmony of mind. Wasn’t it?

  Chapter 7

  A wet pillow soaked from a sad and fitful night’s sleep woke me the next morning, hours before I had to be at work.

  It’s Mom, Hat. She’s dead.

  I sat up and opened my phone, dismissing a day’s worth of missed calls and text messages from my ever-persistent family. I appreciated their love, but I wasn’t ready to engage with them yet. Everyone would have the best intentions when they peppered me with questions about my well-being and whether I lied or told the truth, but I couldn’t answer without being reminded of my mother’s death. It landed me in a small boat within that heavy storm, and I always did get seasick a little too easily.

  I wasn’t ready to see anyone yet, either. Each of my mother’s sisters, in their own way, reminde
d me of her. One liked to wear the same kind of clothes. Another one crinkled her face in the same way when she smiled. Camille was the hardest; her hair was identical to my mother’s, and from behind you’d be certain it was her. I couldn’t stand that brief moment of hope that it would be my mother when she turned around.

  Through it all, though, I did wonder about my siblings. If I could have pulled myself out of my own cloud of sorrow, I could have found out just by asking. I was a bad brother, but I had to let myself do the only thing I could do: survive and let my world carry me forward.

  I curled up in my favorite chair with Cat and pulled out the package from my mother’s lawyer, debating whether or not I could handle looking at it. When I finally did open it, a heavy ball of tissue paper rolled out onto my lap as I shook out the stack of bound papers. Cat immediately began sniffing it, cautiously pawing at the paper with his claws.

  Why do I have this?

  I ran my fingers over my mother’s necklace, pulling it free of the tissue. I’d almost forgotten about the necklace, its memory lost in the bottomless pit my mind had become. It was probably meant to go to my sister or one of my aunts when she died; but having it meant I had my very own piece of her.

  Remembering what it was like to look at it when she still wore it, I studied the necklace closely. The stone itself was an erratic mixture of intense blues, greens, and turquoises, and if you looked at it hard enough you could almost see the colors move. It sat at the center of the necklace with six mesh metal petals blooming out around it like a flower. My mother claimed it was much rarer than any stone you could buy at a store, an heirloom in a family that rarely had anything of worth to pass down besides love.

  I missed her so much in that moment, more than any moment since she had passed. I wanted to call and talk to her. I wanted things back the way they were. Most of all, I wanted her not to be dead.

  Tears started, and then subsided just as quickly as I slipped on her necklace. Despite its feminine features, I liked having it draped over my chest, close to my heart, where she was still fully alive. I fell asleep with Cat in my lap and my hand pressing the necklace firmly against my chest.

  * * * * *

  “Welcome!” Graham said as he ushered me into his home that night. His eyes were already sparkling; he was always in his element when he was entertaining.

  “Go . . . go mingle!” He handed me a glass of something fizzy and hurried off into another room.

  Graham’s townhouse was in one of the posher neighborhoods on the east side of Providence. It had a strict industrial feel, but with splashes of lavish and abstruse accents. The wall’s exposed brick was the highlight of the room, and the most pristine, light cherry wood floors below them could have been laid just days before. Calm but oversized metal lighting fixtures extended down from the ceilings ribbed with exposed beams. Fresh flowers filled vases atop every available surface, and open-air shelves displayed their colorful contents proudly. You could practically smell money float through the air as you moved through the rooms.

  But that was Graham. He was professional, polished even, but also a little flashy. He’d have a new, exorbitantly priced car every few months, and he told me once that all of his suits were custom made. He believed in spending lots of money and making sure everyone saw him do it.

  “Hat, you know Mr. Szela, right?” Graham asked later when I walked by him. “Frank, this is Hat Walker, one of our best assistants.” Graham pushed Frank toward me and walked away again.

  I threw on my best client-friendly smile and pretended to look interested. “How are you tonight?” I asked.

  “Just fine,” he said. His eyes didn’t move from a waitress’ small ass as she sashayed past us. The extra-large ice cubes in his glass clinked as he sipped on his drink. The whiskey was so strong that as it drifted up my nose it almost knocked me over. He wasn’t acting like he wanted to talk business, so I wasn’t surprised when he followed the waitress into the kitchen without saying another word to me.

  “He’s sleazy,” Talia came up to me and said, “I caught him looking down my shirt at the two ladies earlier.”

  “Well, that’s just lovely,” I said.

  “I better go in there and watch him before we have another sexual harassment case to deal with.” She downed the rest of her glass of champagne and disappeared into the kitchen.

  Liv was in the corner talking to another client, an older woman who owned a small boutique dress shop in the financial district. That woman had no use for our services, she just had more money than most small countries and not enough things to spend it on. I met her briefly once, when I was sent to her shop during a food truck festival. My job was to chase birds away from her stoop. And I did. I spent twelve hours in the beating sun getting shit on, and not figuratively.

  Liv nonchalantly ended her conversation and walked over to me. When I dropped my eyes, she ducked a little to force me to look at her. “So you made it?”

  “Yeah. I guess we didn’t have much of a choice though, right?”

  “There’s always a choice.” She grabbed my glass and placed it on a nearby serving tray. “Besides, I kind of like these things. Let’s get you a real drink.”

  She took my hand and guided me through the crowd. An elaborate bar was set up in the game room, complete with bartenders better dressed than I was. I ordered a Kettle One, on the rocks, with a few splashes of pineapple juice and leaned up against the bar to wait for it.

  On the other side of the room, a tall crystal vase filled with lilies caught my attention. I found it gripping, maybe because it was something my mother would have liked, or maybe because the lilies were the most brilliant shade of purple I’d ever seen.

  As I walked over to it, a cold sweat formed and trickled down my spine. Breathing became hard and my stomach churned. I was taken hostage by another deluge of lights and noises. My stomach flipped inside my body in every direction as the vibrations of my internal struggle shook every inch of me. The brief moment of weightlessness and serenity came, but only after my world had been extracted of any control I once had.

  When I opened my eyes, I was still in the game room, but no one else was. I looked down, and just as shocked as the first time, I realized I wasn’t really there either. Just then, Graham walked into the room.

  “Can we please have a drink and talk this through,” Graham asked someone. He walked past an empty crystal vase and sat near the pool table.

  A stocky Indian man followed him into the room, shuffling quickly behind with his short legs. “You know I don’t drink,” he said with a deep voice. It had just a hint of accent, but I don’t think it was Indian. “I don’t think you understand what you’re asking me for,” he said, folding his arms and leaning up against the pool table.

  “Of course I do,” Graham said, a sly smile opening up his mouth.

  “We’re talking a lot of money here. A lot, a lot of money. I just don’t think it’s worth it.”

  “Look around you,” Graham said, scanning the room with his eyes. “Does anything here look like it was cheap? That table you’re leaning on was nearly $50,000 and I don’t even play. Now imagine what I’m willing to pay for something I’m actually going to use.”

  Breathing heavily, I opened my eyes. Liv’s hand touched my shoulder, and I jumped . . . at least a foot into the air. I wasn’t sure that the hallucination was over.

  “Jumpy?”

  “Yeah, sorry,” I said, looking around nervously to see who else had noticed.

  “Come here,” she said, grabbing my hand again.

  She pulled me out of the room and through the house. We passed by a string quartet in tuxedos, a double set of bathrooms, and a library that was bigger than my entire apartment. We moved beyond the heart of the party to the end of a long hallway, just in time to see a red-faced woman charge out of Graham’s study. A short and apologetic-looking man ran after her, carrying t
wo coats.

  “That didn’t look good,” I said, as Liv locked the door behind us.

  The study didn’t even have a computer, which led me to believe it was more for show than anything else. The large metal desk blended in against the slate colored walls. The only non-neutral color in the entire room was a small, bright red couch that sat in a low loft next to shelves filled with untouched books.

  “So, what was that about?” Liv asked. She moved aside a few decorative bottles from the desk so she could lean on the corner of it.

  “That couple just now? No idea.”

  “No, not the couple,” she put her hand to my chest and playfully pushed me. “I’m talking about whatever happened before in the game room.”

  “What?” I asked. “It was nothing.”

  “You don’t have to hide from me. I know something . . . special happened. I could feel it when I came up beside you. I know what you did and you know what you . . .” She stopped for a second to look at my blank expression, pushing her tongue up against the back of her teeth and giggling. “You don’t really know what happened, do you?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Maybe I should just go,” I said, moving toward the door.

  “Shhhh. Wait. I have something to show you,” she said, pulling me toward the door.

  “Why do you have to pull me around everywhere? What are we doing?”

  “Have you ever heard the saying ‘if these walls could talk?’”

  I nodded.

  “Okay . . . well, what if the walls can talk and you just need to know how to listen?”

  “You know, I think I am going to go.” I tried to move toward the door, but she held onto my shirt and pressed her hand against my mouth to keep me from saying anything else.