Residing in coastal Virginia, Alex spends her days wrangling words and children, and on occasion a sassy cat (or three), a bull-headed Labrador, or her old, cantankerous horse. Her husband has figured out that towing the line is easiest in the long run. He’s a smart man.
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Takin’ It Back
Ash Krafton
Takin’ It Back © copyright 2017 Ash Krafton
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This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Takin’ It Back
Think there’s no fate worse than becoming your mother?
Try being possessed by her spirit.
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Twenty-year-old Aerie Pathering hates her job: she’s the repo man for her father’s magical supply shop. She’d rather be the new Acquisitioner but Pop says that’s a job for someone who finds things, not loses them. Totally unfair, since the only thing she ever lost was some crummy old book when she was a kid. Now, he’s giving that job to her worst enemy. When she finds a file on a mysterious amulet, she sees the perfect opportunity to prove her worth to her father and goes after it, unaware that there is a nasty spirit trapped inside.
Collateral recovery is a nasty business. What makes repossession even nastier is when the collateral possesses you. Sure, demonic possession comes in handy during a repo or when battling one’s nemesis, but no one flirts with damnation without being tainted. And, if that doesn’t suck enough, turns out the spirit may belong to her mother.
And, wait, it gets better. The spirit wants Aerie’s father—the only family she has left—dead…because he’s the one that trapped her in there.
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Gonna be one Hell of a family reunion.
Lara Croft meets The Magicians in this tale of magic, adventure, and hidden truths…
1
Aerie shifted the van into park and double-checked the address against the list on her clipboard. Sunlight glittered through the maples and sprinkled the quaint Cape Cod with dancing light, like butterflies in a garden. Just once she’d like to pull up in front of a sinister-looking shack. Even better if she got to kick in the door.
She sighed and passed the picture-perfect mailbox, the white picket fence, the idyllic ivy-covered trellis. None of this made her job any easier. She tucked her shirt into the back of her Dickies, tugged down the brim of her cap, and rang the bell.
“Just a minute.” The sing-song voice of an old woman sounded from within.
Just great. Someone’s dear old granny. She’ll probably have a plate of cookies on a doily and offer me a glass of milk. Aerie huffed out a breath. Just once.
“Who is it?” The curtain parted and revealed powdered wrinkled cheek and pale blue eyes.
“Mrs. Dra—” Aerie squinted down at the clipboard, struggling to decipher the boss’s writing. “Dray Conalla?”
The door opened and Aerie’s stomach fisted. Just as she feared. A sweet old lady wearing a flour-spotted apron smiled out at her. What had Aerie done to deserve this?
“Who?” The woman tilted her head, brows drawn together. “I’m sorry, dear. There’s no one—”
“Cut the crap.” Aerie flipped open her jacket to reveal an ID badge clipped to her breast pocket. Above her photo and name read Pathering’s Sorcery Supplies. “I know who you are.”
“Oh, oh.” The old woman clasped her hands together and looked at the floor. “Then I suppose you better come in.”
The cheerful kitchen reminded Aerie of fairy tales with happy endings. Trying to ignore the flowered wallpaper and the knick-knack shelf full of nauseatingly cute kittens, Aerie consulted her clipboard once more. “You are in possession of a crystal ball, classification M20, purchased from Pathering’s forty-three months ago.”
“Can I offer you a cup of tea, dearie? Or a slice of lemon cake? My mother’s recipe.”
“Uh, no, thanks.” Aerie tapped her pen against the back of the clipboard. “You stand in forfeit of aforementioned item. Surrender it now. Please,” she added, as an afterthought to manners. No reason to be rude.
“Here, honey. You eat. You’re much too thin.” The old lady ignored Aerie’s refusal of tea and sweets and hefted a slice of cake onto a saucer. “And that crystal ball was paid in full, with legal gold. I even have a receipt.”
“Your contract states that use of the device to locate other magical devices is strictly prohibited.” Aerie trained her gaze firmly on the woman’s face, trying to ignore the temptation on the plate. That icing had to be at least an inch thick, with sugar blossom decorations. “The terms of use are limited to soothsaying, fortune-telling, and prophesying, with only limited ventures in fraud.”
“Fraud? Why, I never!” Mrs. Conalla’s injured tone warned a good spanking might follow. “And I recall no such contract. Fraud, indeed.”
“Contract, Mrs. Conalla. Signed, dated, and ratified by blood.” Aerie pulled a sheet of parchment from the clipboard, shook it open, and waved it in front of her nose before leaning towards the woman. Sniffing the air, she grimaced. “Your blood. Indisputable.”
The woman turned wearing a bright bubbly expression that lifted her penciled-on eyebrows. “Oh. That contract.”
“Exactly. The item, please?” Aerie held out her hand.
The granny tsked. “It’s all just a silly little mix-up. But, really, dearie, I didn’t think anyone would notice. It was just an egg. Eggs aren’t magical. Just—let me—” She lifted the laden tray with difficulty, trying to set it on the counter.
No small wonder. That huge teapot weighed a ton. How much tea could one woman drink?
Aerie slipped the clipboard under her arm and took the tray from her. “Chicken eggs, no. But you’re not a chicken.”
“No.” The woman smiled and her teeth gleamed, wicked points a sharp contrast against too pink a shade lipstick. “No, I’m not. And it’s not Dray Conalla. It’s Draconal.”
With a speed that couldn’t possibly belong to a ninety-year old granny, she grabbed the pot and swung it at Aerie’s head. It grazed her cap, knocking it off and yanking her messy bun loose.
Steaming tea flew in a wet arc overhead as Aerie ducked. She flipped the tray up like a shield, smashing it into the woman. Draconal caught the cake full in the face and stumbled backward in her thick orthopedic shoes.
Shaking her blonde hair out of her eyes, Aerie gathered herself into a defensive crouch.
The woman screamed through a face full of lemon frosting, rearing back and raising suddenly-clawed hands.
Great. Aerie eyed the talons with apprehension. Claws.
Wait—Aerie reconsidered. Great! Claws!
She grinned and readied a roundhouse, bouncing her balance onto one foot. The granny act was over. Her sense of good manners and propriety evaporated as the adrenaline sizzled through her. Finally! A little bit of action!
“You mess with the dragon, dearie, and you’re bound to get burned.” Draconal hunched her back, shuddered, and sprouted brown leathery wings. They crackled like old shoes as they spread out behind her. “And you seemed like such a nice girl, too.”
Aerie hesitated, estimating the woman’s wingspan. A roundhouse would do no more than i
rritate the old dragon. Were dragon talons poisonous?
Did it matter? They were long enough to skewer her. “Ah. You want to hand over the artifact?”
“No.” The old woman huffed a hot breath at her and pawed the ground like a bull before the charge.
Ew. She waved at the air in front of her face. Brimstone breath. “You don’t understand Spanish, by chance?”
“Of course not.” A thin tendril of smoke curled out of the corner of her mouth. Draconal hissed and snapped her wings in an imperious spread. Fifteen feet, easy. “I’m Romanian.”
“Whew.” Aerie backed up to avoid the talon-tipped wings. “In that case…no se mueva.”
Aerie formed a circle with her forefinger and thumb. A pale green glow appeared within the circle of her fingers. With a gesture like cracking a whip, she flicked her wrist. The spell orb shot toward the old lady and hit her in the chest, glowing for a moment before fading.
Mrs. Draconal slowed to a frozen stop.
Aerie sighed and leaned back against the table. “Pathering, you bonehead,” she muttered. “Dray Conalla? What part didn’t scream dragon?”
The statue-stiff woman managed to produce an indignant squeal.
“Oh, don’t even act like you didn’t see this coming. You had a crystal ball, for crying out loud.” Aerie pulled a compact from her back pocket and cast a guilty-looking glance at the spell-bound woman. “Sorry about the suspended animation. You didn’t leave me much of a choice.”
A ribbon of drool dripped from Mrs. Draconal’s mouth and she made a despairing whine.
“But I had to involve your throat. Couldn’t risk you blistering my behind the minute I turned around.” Aerie flipped open the compact to reveal a flat blue mirror, a copper needle floating upon its face.
Raising it, she whispered. “Lead the way.”
A point glowed on the face, indicating a direction. Aerie swiveled until the needle lined up across the spot of illumination. “Time to get what I came for.”
Using the compass, she found her way to a hallway closet. The door was sticky and she had to use both hands to tug it open. Not magic, just a little warped wood. Instead of dowdy woolen coats and flowered umbrellas, the closet contained a card table draped in a red tasseled tablecloth. On it sat a dark cherry wood box.
“Reveal iron.” She held her breath but, when nothing happened, she let it leak out between her teeth. Iron would have been bad. It tended to bend magic and cause devices to malfunction. No iron in the casing meant there was a good chance the device was still viable.
More importantly, no iron meant one less thing to make the boss angry.
She opened the box, revealing the large crystal ball within. When the light hit it, its center stirred, forming a murky cloud within, a rosy glow that swirled and bloomed.
“Stop that.” She flicked it with her fingers and it calmed, looking like a ball of clear glass once more. “Sheesh. Show-off.”
Cradling it with both hands, she returned to the kitchen. Mrs. Draconal remained motionless, the only movement that of her eyes over smears of frosting that dripped slowly down her cheeks.
“One more thing. The contract states that anything gained in violation of the contact is also forfeit. But that’s not my job.” Standing out of sight behind her, Aerie made the thumb-and-forefinger ring again and drew a line. A hole opened in the air, a dark void. She set the ball carefully inside before closing it again. “It’s best if you return that egg to whence it came before the other team shows up.”
Aerie dropped her voice to more forbidding tones. “They’re not union.”
Mrs. Draconal whimpered.
Aerie’s resolve crumbled a bit. Little old ladies really got to her.
“I knew you’d understand. Well, our business is concluded. The holding spell will dissolve once I’m gone and will leave no residual effects.” Aerie scribbled across a receipt and tore it from the pad before dropping it on the table.
After a moment’s consideration, she lifted an untouched slice of cake on her way to the door and licked a finger. “Thank you for choosing Pathering’s. We appreciate your business.”
2
Pathering’s Sorcery Supply occupied a three-story building on the corner of Back and Behind streets on the lower east side of town, next-door to a television repair shop and across the street from the Indian grocery. Both streets were several blocks away from the town center of Vanguard, Pennsylvania; considering that the town itself was several miles away from any city of respectable size, the store stood off the beaten path, indeed.
Vanguard was still a very nice place to be. It boasted two strip malls, a movie theatre, and a Starbucks knock-off. And, like any decent American town, it had a thriving population of sorcerers.
Unlike secret societies and clandestine cults, Vanguard’s sorcerers were normal people. They bought their groceries at Price Chopper (or the Indian grocer), rarely wore robes or pointy hats (unless it was Halloween), and drove Chevys (not broomsticks). Magic was as commonplace as the morning newspaper.
True, a sorcerer rarely engaged in a tremendous display of crazy magic in front of their non-magic neighbors but, then again, there was no need. Magic had a practical usefulness. Grand displays were simply unnecessary. Unless it was the Fourth of July.
For the residents of a small town like Vanguard (and countless others across the nation) there were no sorcerer or non-sorcerer types. People were simply people.
For the most part.
“Hey, Greysen.” The front door banged shut behind Aerie as she waved to the pale-skinned clerk behind the glass counter. She turned to tug the “Help Wanted” sign out of the front window. Again.
Ripping it in half and in half again, she drew a deep, controlled breath. This time. This time, she’d tell him.
Greysen Jaymes had managed the store-front for as long as Aerie could remember. He stood a rock-solid six feet tall, his height made more monolithic by his smooth complexion, his long limbs, his peculiar manner of dressing.
Aerie wrinkled her nose. She loved the guy, but he really needed to bring his closet into the modern age. Too much preference for druidic robes and loosely belted tunics. He never scrimped on material, though. She had to give him snaps for that. Flowing gray silk left him looking like a stand of polished granite.
Turning to look at her, Greysen adjusted his glasses, thin wire frames holding translucent square spectacles. Another bold fashion choice, though they were necessary. The lenses were made of mica, the only material capable of shielding his sensitive eyes yet thin enough to see through. Without them, he’d be vulnerable to injury from the Earth’s sun.
Plus, they would give him away as one of the Stone Clan of Elemental folk. He may be capable of weathering much, but no Elemental would choose provocation, least of all that gentle giant.
Passing the counter, she paused to sniff at an incense stick burning in front of a large display. “Guava?”
“Close,” Greysen said. “Mango-mandrake.”
“Ooh.” Aerie smirked and tapped the stick, causing the thin stream of smoke to waver like a ribbon. “There’s a good time. Pop around?”
“In the office.” Greysen admonished her with a wave of a slender alabaster finger. “Tread lightly, child. He’s in that mood today.”
“Yeah, when isn’t he?” She jogged to the back of the sales floor. Pulling open a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY, she took a deep breath and headed up the stairs. Following the sound of classical music down a narrow, dark hallway, she tapped on the door at the end of the hall before pushing it open.
A man sat behind a desk, talking on the phone and scratching occasional notes. He didn’t even look up at her arrival. His dark hair was clipped short on the sides, giving the top of his head a boxy look. A thin mustache, trimmed with military precision, gave him an intense look, even when he wasn’t trying.
Even with the mustache, Charles Pathering looked too young to be the father of a twenty-year-old daughter. When asked about his yout
hful secrets, he’d laugh and point the way to the De Leon line of beauty tonics. Charles had no hint of gray hair, no lines to crinkle his forehead. Each gesture and action shone with strength and vibrancy and energy.
The only sign of his years were the lines around his eyes. These lines deepened into creases whenever he looked at Aerie. It wasn’t hostile, per se, but it certainly wasn’t an expression that made one believe hugs were forthcoming.
Aerie didn’t fault him. That’s just the way it was.
He’d always been strict—forbidding, even—but he had to be tough. A single parent with a headstrong daughter. That’s because her mom died and left him to raise her from a small child. A hard job, especially when the child was someone like Aerie.
But, still. It sucked being so uncomfortable around her father. He was her only family—there had to be something better than constantly feeling like at any second, he’d blast into her. Walking into his office always felt like walking into a mine field.
The late summer afternoon sun poured through the wide windows, making the room sauna hot, the air too dusty-dry to breathe. A single wire-cased fan slowly swept the still air in an invisible arc, fluttering a paper on the desk, the notes on the bulletin board, Aerie’s bangs, and back again. Each time the breeze retreated, the stifling sensation returned.
Aerie lingered in the doorway, waiting for him to finish. Pop didn’t like to be interrupted.
Apparently, he didn’t want to be interrupted, either. Without looking up from his work, he cleared his throat. “And?”
“And—I got it. No problem.” She stepped into the room and settled into the wooden chair near the desk, swinging one arm and cocking her head in what she thought was an imitation of Indiana Jones.
“I find that hard to believe.” As usual, Charles did his impression of the Doubting Boss Who Most Likely Would Pull Indy’s Funding. What a party pooper.
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