It Happened One Doomsday

by Laurence MacNaughton

  He leaned in, waiting.

  Inwardly, she squirmed. She had spent hours this morning studying up on his monster dream, sifting through a stack of dusty, old books, most of them handwritten in Latin. Everything she had found indicated the worst. But she hadn’t really believed it until she saw the decimated petalite crystal.

  Greyson still waited, his patience clearly running low.

  “You don’t have a demon,” Dru blurted out finally. “You’re turning into one.”

  His expression didn’t change. “Uh-huh. Okay.”

  “You still don’t believe any of this, do you?”

  His silence was answer enough. His disbelief was obvious.

  She waved the salad tongs in frustration. “Just don’t go away yet. Ordinary petalite is not going to cut it, apparently.” Dru dropped the crystal into the lead-lined box she kept under the counter for magical contaminants. After considering it for a moment, she tossed in the salad tongs, too, then slammed the lid.

  Later, she’d lock the box in her safe, hidden in the back room behind a framed picture of Ming the Merciless, where she kept anything that gave her the heebie-jeebies. But for now, she just had to get the crystal off her counter.

  “Well, obviously the crystal works,” Greyson said. “Just sell me another. Or a boxful.”

  “Wish it was that easy. But it doesn’t work like that.” Dru launched herself down the aisle, heading for the locked cabinet containing the most potent crystals she had. “Hope you don’t have any other plans for today.”

  Greyson followed her, looking utterly unconvinced. “I’m telling you, I feel fine.”

  “Well, that’s just dandy, but it won’t last long. That petalite crystal?” She gestured toward the counter. “It should’ve lasted you for life. Instead, you burned through it in less than twenty-four hours.”

  “I take it that doesn’t happen much.”

  “That just doesn’t happen. Ever.” She shook her head. “You know, I blame myself. I should’ve seen it yesterday. The way you reacted to that galena.”

  “You mean this?” He pushed back the sleeve of his leather jacket to reveal a swollen red burn mark on his wrist.

  “Sorry.” She grimaced, then unlocked the cabinet and started pulling out armloads of ingredients. “This time, let’s try a more nuanced approach. This is going to require some meticulous experimentation.”

  “Is all this really necessary?”

  “Do you want to avoid more nightmares?” She gave him a meaningful look. “Have a seat.”

  As the afternoon unfolded, she mostly relied on trial and error, using branching patterns of magic she’d learned through years of nose-in-the-book study, if not a whole lot of actual experience. That required methodically laying out different combinations of herbs and crystals. Some in their pure form, others reduced to their essences and blended together.

  She ground up herbs into fine powders and applied them as poultices, looking for a reaction. She immersed crystals in purified water to transfer their properties into liquid form. From time to time, Opal offered advice from her perch at the register or dug up hard-to-find ingredients from the storage room.

  Every so often, Dru checked her progress by pressing a rectangular ulexite crystal to her forehead, over her spiritual third eye, and gazing at Greyson. Ordinarily, the most she ever saw through the ulexite crystal was the change in someone’s aura. But with Greyson, she could clearly see darkness surrounding him.

  The tips of his fingers became shadowy claws. At the edge of his hairline, dark crescents seemed to jut upward, like horns. The sight gave her a chill.

  The better she narrowed down the mix of ingredients, the more his shadow faded, leaving him looking more and more normal. It was an exhilarating feeling.

  For the first time in a long time, Dru felt like a true expert. Charts and intersecting circles of magical properties laid themselves out in her mind’s eye. She calculated proportions and combinations faster than she could explain them. All the while, Greyson patiently sat and tried every cure she handed him, one swallow at a time.

  By the end of the day, Dru had finally concocted a potion that made Greyson’s demon shadow vanish. Exhausted but triumphant, she decanted it into a skull-shaped glass bottle and slid it across the counter to him. “There. This will keep you safe for now. Take a shot every two hours. And stay as calm and focused as you can at all times. Meditation would help. This isn’t a cure, but it’s progress.”

  He gave her a tired smile. “You know, I just stopped by to bring you coffee.”

  An idea struck her, something she should have thought of before. “Oh, you know what else? I should probably get some sage and bells, and go clear out the energy in your apartment, too. In fact, if you have time, we should go over there together, so I can check you out and make sure you’re all good.” Dru caught the eyebrow Opal cocked at her and felt herself turning red for no reason. “Just a precaution.”

  Greyson glanced at his watch. “Maybe we could grab some dinner, too. Do you like Italian?”

  Dinner. The word hit Dru like a splash of cold water. “Oh, fudge buckets. What time is it? We have reservations at Chez Monet.” She surveyed the clutter of potions, powders, and empty boxes that covered the counter. “Like right now.”

  Opal stirred from her chair, where she had been experimenting on her nails. “Go, girl. I got this. Don’t you worry.”

  “Really?” But she didn’t dare risk giving Opal a chance to change her mind. As she hurriedly scribbled down a receipt for Greyson, she added her phone number. “Call me if anything changes. You’ll be fine, Greyson.”

  He nodded. “I’ll call you.”

  A little voice inside her insisted that she wasn’t done here. That she needed to test the potion more thoroughly and make sure its effects would last. But she didn’t have time if she wanted to make her dinner date.

  She just had to trust that the potion would work, and nothing would go wrong.

  7

  HIGHWAY TO HELL

  Dru stepped into the dining room of Chez Monet and took in the intoxicating scent of roses, peonies, and countless other flowers. “This place is magical,” she whispered. But for once, she didn’t mean it literally.

  The crisp white linen tablecloths and softly glowing chandeliers were pretty much what she had expected. But she hadn’t counted on the endless vases of flowers in every imaginable color.

  Brilliant blues. Romantic reds. Delicate yellows. They stretched in all directions, framed by elegantly draped weeping willow branches. Like Monet’s garden spectacularly brought to life.

  Dru felt as if she’d stepped into a different world. As if she’d become someone more special, more fabulous. Someone with refinement and taste and wealth. And a dress with a neckline considerably lower than that of her usual T-shirts. She resisted the urge to tug it upward.

  “You look stunning,” Nate said softly. “Where did you get that dress?”

  She’d had it in her closet for a year now. She’d even shown it to him when she bought it. Not that he’d noticed, apparently, but his appreciation now made up for it.

  This dress was the only decent thing she owned: a burgundy satin number with spaghetti straps and a designer label. She’d been hoping to wear it if Nate ever got around to proposing.

  When he got around to proposing, she told herself. When.

  In the meantime, this might be the only chance she’d get to actually wear it. So she made an effort to enjoy it. And to project an aura of confidence that she desperately wished she felt.

  Nate wore suits all the time. But she’d never seen him dressed quite this sharply before: a tailored charcoal-gray suit with a sky-blue Oxford shirt and matching blue tie. He looked like a movie star. Walking beside him gave her a warm glow.

  As they crossed the dining room, she leaned closer to him. “After dinner,” she whispered, “do you want to take a stroll through the gardens out back, just you and me?”

  “Oh, there’s Dad.” Nat
e walked on ahead to greet him, leaving her behind. Dru felt a brief stab of disappointment. But they were here on business, after all. Meeting the filthy-rich investors from Switzerland, who apparently had an interest in expanding Nate’s dental practice into a multimillion-dollar enterprise. No pressure or anything.

  For the moment, their table was empty except for Nate’s dad, Jack. When he stood up, he was easily the shortest man in the room, and his thick nose was accentuated by heavy glasses and a steel-gray beard. But he made up for his gnomelike stature with a tailored suit and an ever-present smile. He clapped an arm around Nate’s back, then turned to kiss Dru on the cheek.

  “Dru, my dear, you look younger and prettier every time I see you.”

  When she smiled, Jack gave her front teeth a critical frown. It was just a momentary glance, a mere instant of disapproval that vanished just as quickly. But the effect was enough to make Dru’s hand fly to her mouth in embarrassment.

  “Why does he always do that?” she whispered to Nate, as his dad spoke briefly to the maitre d’. “There’s nothing wrong with my teeth!”

  “Honey, we’re a family of dentists,” Nate whispered back. “He can’t help it.”

  But that didn’t mean she had to be happy about it.

  Across the dining room, Tonya the hygienist appeared, smiling with dazzlingly perfect teeth, leading two bone-thin old men with paper-white hair and three-piece suits. She sauntered through the dining room toward their table, turning heads in her slinky red dress.

  “That’s them,” Jack said over his shoulder to Nate. “They’re brothers. Did I tell you that? Klaus and Wilhelm Zubriggen. Twins.”

  As they waited for Tonya and the investors, Dru leaned close to Nate. “If there was something wrong with my teeth, you would tell me, right?”

  “Dad’s a perfectionist,” Nate muttered back. “He’s never happy. Just focus on making nice with the Swiss twins.”

  Tonya, meanwhile, seemed to charm everyone around her the moment she opened her mouth. Absolutely no one frowned at her teeth, Dru noticed.

  They all shook hands. When it came time to sit, Nate held Dru’s chair, which he’d never done before. It was a nice touch. She tried to focus on that instead of how frazzled she already felt.

  And then he held Tonya’s chair for her.

  Something about that simple act sent a stab of jealousy through her. No one else at the table seemed to notice. They were all smiles and nods, eagerly getting acquainted.

  Dru appeared to be the only one who wasn’t utterly charmed by Tonya’s incandescent smile and eager attention. It occurred to Dru that there were plenty of other women like Tonya—women who didn’t seem in the least bit as weird as Dru—who would be beside themselves with happiness to be sitting at this table with Nate.

  Dru shook her head. She was driving herself crazy. She had to lighten up.

  “So,” one of the Swiss twins said to Dru in his thick accent, breaking her runaway train of thoughts. “You are ze wife of Jack?”

  Eww. “Um, no. I am the girlfriend of Nate.”

  Klaus, or maybe it was Wilhelm, cocked his head. “Why do you say it like so?”

  “Like so . . . what?”

  “‘Ze girlfriend of Nate.’ So very strange. You are not from America?”

  “Oh, I am totally from America.” Dru smiled, then realized Nate and Jack both looked distressed, while Tonya looked slyly amused. “I was just . . . Never mind. I’m from around here. Where are you from?”

  The twins traded glances before giving her a puzzled look. “We are from Switzerland. You do not know of Switzerland?”

  “No, of course, I know—”

  “No?” The man tsked his disapproval. “It is the finest country in Europe. You should know this fact.”

  “Yes. Thank you,” she said, louder than necessary.

  After a moment of awkward silence, Tonya said breathlessly, “I’ve never been to Switzerland. What’s it like?” Which brought a new wave of enthusiastic chatter from the investors, sprinkled with occasional phrases in German.

  Dru pretended to study her menu until they had ordered, then excused herself and headed for the ladies’ room. As she passed by the hostess station, she heard her name.

  “Dru! Over here!”

  She turned. There, squared off against a broad-shouldered, sweating maitre d’, was Greyson. The only person in the whole place wearing jeans and a motorcycle jacket. Here, he looked even more out of place than he had in her shop.

  The look on his face told her something was terribly wrong.

  She rushed over to him, peering around the bulk of the maitre d’, who looked as if he was trying to body block Greyson from taking another step inside.

  “Greyson, what are you doing here?”

  “What was in that drink you gave me?” His pupils were obviously dilated. His unusually pale skin glistened with sweat. “Something feels really wrong with me.”

  The maitre d’ shot Dru a surprised look. “You know this . . . gentleman?”

  Greyson held his hands out, staring at them as if he’d never seen them before. “I feel so funky.”

  Dru pulled Greyson a safe distance away from the maitre d’s deepening frown. That was when she noticed Greyson was wearing a black AC/DC cap that proudly proclaimed Highway to Hell.

  She glanced pointedly at his cap. “What’s with the hat?”

  He looked over both shoulders to make sure no one was standing nearby, his motions exaggerated as if he’d been drinking heavily. Then he leaned close and growled under his breath, “Look, I don’t know how to say this, but I’m getting horns.”

  “Horny?” Dru nearly choked.

  “Horns.” He lifted up his cap and pointed at his forehead. Just above each temple, a peaked lump showed through his dark hair. “I thought they were bug bites, at first. But they just kept growing. I don’t believe this is happening.”

  She reached up and, after a moment’s hesitation, felt the inch-tall lumps jutting from his head. Smooth ridges, rounded points, and hot to the touch. “Yeah, hmm. Those definitely seem like little horns.”

  “I don’t care how little they are,” he whispered fiercely, tugging his cap back on. Another couple came in through the doors behind him. With wary glances, they circled around at a safe distance.

  Dru tried to project confidence she didn’t feel. “Don’t worry. Everything is going to be okay.”

  He shot her a dark look. “There are horns growing from my head. Nothing about this is okay!”

  That potion should have done away with any sort of demonic symptoms. Or at the least, things should have leveled off, not gotten worse. She’d never seen anything like this before. What vital clue was she missing?

  “There’s got to be something constantly re-afflicting you, accelerating your transformation. Your connection to it is only getting stronger. It’s not the potion.”

  “You’re sure about that?” he said.

  “The potion might be helping, but not enough. Something else is getting to you. It could be a charm, an icon. A physical object that the potion can’t touch. Maybe a cursed artifact of some kind.”

  His eyes narrowed. “What, like a voodoo mask?”

  “I don’t know! That’s why I was going to check out your place, see what I could find.”

  “What was in that drink, anyway?” He belched suddenly, drawing another dark scowl from the maitre d’.

  Dru winced and steered Greyson closer to the exit. “Well, to stabilize your spirit, I needed to use spirits. Like, actual spirits.”

  Greyson’s eyes widened. “You mean I was drinking ghosts?”

  “No, no, I mean alcohol. But special alcohol. The stuff I used was distilled from berries ritually harvested under a blue moon and filtered through Herkimer diamonds. Good stuff, and it should cleanse your spirit.”

  He belched again. “Urrp. So not ghosts?”

  “Mostly vodka.” A blast of stinky breath washed over her, and she tried in vain to wave it away.
“Jeez. You didn’t just slam down that entire potion, did you?”

  The expression on his face warred between total denial and befuddled pride. “Maybe.” He quickly added, “Tell me you wouldn’t do the same thing, if you started sprouting horns.”

  “Are those getting longer?” She reached beneath his hat and squeezed his stumpy horns. “Does that hurt?”

  “Who cares? No. They’re horns. Get rid of them!”

  “Dru!” Nate said behind her, making her jump. She spun around, suddenly guilt-ridden, although she had no idea why. She rubbed her fingertips together, still feeling the unsettling texture of Greyson’s horns against her skin.

  Nate approached them with a mystified look on his face. “Hey. Aren’t you the guy with the old car?”

  Greyson blinked unfocused eyes at him and turned to Dru. “Who the hell is this?”

  “My boyfriend. Be nice.”

  “Him? Really?” Before Dru could reply, Greyson gave Nate a pained smile and held out a hand. “Hey, bud. Name’s Greyson.”

  Nate looked him up and down, then reluctantly shook his hand. “Dr. Nate Corbin. How do you do?”

  The handshake went on longer than it needed to. Dru watched the tendons flexing in both men’s hands as each one tried to out-squeeze the other.

  Her stomach did a flip-flop. She had no idea how she was going to explain this to Nate. “Honey.” She took his arm and pulled him away from the testosterone-fueled squeeze contest. “Look, I hate to do this, but I need to get Greyson back to the shop. Right now. I’m so sorry.”

  Nate tilted his head in the direction of the table. “Maybe after dinner? Tonight is important.”

  “I know. I know. Big night for you, and I get that. So . . . how about you stay and talk shop with Hans and Franz? I’ll go get Greyson cleaned up.” She held up her hands. “I wouldn’t do this unless it really was an emergency.”

  “Emergency? What’s wrong?” Nate pulled out his phone. “Do we need an ambulance?”

  “Probably not a good idea.”

  Nate hesitated, and his worried look turned into a frown. “Or maybe a cab, so he can sleep it off.”