by Aya DeAniege
She’d think the world was ending, that Baal himself was trying to claw his way out of Hell. She’d make mountains out of ants.
I slipped out of the office and straight into a waiting car. The car drove me to the destination and stopped just down the block from the cafe. I was early, because Mike and Ralph said that women wanted the man early and definitely not late.
It had once been fashionable for a man to show up late because his business was keeping him busy. That had swung back around and now a man showed up early to show that he wanted to be at the coffee date.
The fashions changed quickly in the modern age, I just hoped that the others hadn’t fallen behind.
Slipping into the cafe, I found Grace already seated. She was wearing a black button up shirt and black pants. Blouse, was that what they were called?
Not supposed to be late.
Except I wasn’t late, I was very certain of that. I was at least twenty minutes early. That meant that Grace was a great deal earlier than I was, but she didn’t seem irritated at my walking in.
She wasn’t screaming, nor was she making a face and looking away. Which was typically the response I received when I showed up to something and the woman was already there.
I sat across from her and tried not to sigh because women didn’t like that. She might see it as my being dismissive, or believe that I thought it was a waste of time.
Only a few decades before, a man could sigh dismissively and have panties flung at him from across the room. But then women realized they weren’t sex objects and that they had a choice of men. They figured out how to use their knees, and that there were men who were more than willing to follow their rules to succeed in life.
So, I didn’t sigh even though I wanted to. I didn’t huff or puff or say anything untoward about her being early.
Because only dicks did that.
The urge was still there, however, because it had been ingrained in me. I had used that tactic a great deal to do my job.
Grace blinked back at me with those big, brown eyes. Her hands tightened around her coffee cup.
“I don’t drink hot beverages,” I said with a small nod.
“Because Lilly likes to put stuff in the tea?” Grace asked.
I stiffened, then forced myself to relax. Sighing, I looked away.
I needed the moment to collect myself.
After the night before, I expected a great deal, but I never expected Lilly to tell Grace. Let alone explain the connection between us. I suppose I should have seen that coming, but I didn’t think their relationship was like that.
“She told you,” I said with a shake of my head.
“That you’re her ex? Yeah. If this is some way to try and get her back, just skip me.”
“It’s not that,” I said. Again, I hesitated, to give myself time to make it as vague as possible. “Lilly and I had a great time together. We loved one another, but in the end, we knew that it would be best if we went our separate ways. I have nothing but respect for the woman. I wish her the best.”
“You didn’t know she was my friend?” Grace asked, looking like she didn’t believe me. “You don’t have cameras in the club?”
“Cameras in the club, that’d be smart,” I said.
We had cameras outside of the club, not in it. The magic didn’t work if video recording happened. Images taken of the place would allow others to view the inside of the club and I couldn’t have that happen.
“Your brothers didn’t see her?” she asked.
I smiled. That one, at least, was easy to explain to a human, even if she didn’t believe me.
“No, they were focused on you.”
Of course, it was a lie.
They had all given different descriptions of Lilly. If it had been even a decade before, I would have made the connection before inviting her friend. Even then, though, I probably would have suspected a witch with several illusion spells.
“She wants me to move in with her,” Grace said. “And then last night she sprung a little crazy on me. I expect wine and even sex.”
“Lilly is asexual,” I said quickly.
“Wow, so that’s… real. That’s really real. You guys never had sex. Which means that you had sex with other people while dating her?”
“That I did, she knew about every one of them and approved them. There were a couple that she became jealous over. I stopped seeing them. Relationships are about compromise. Before me, Lilly wouldn’t even look at a naked man.”
“She says that she enjoys touching the form of a man, but completely naked is where she draws the line,” Grace said with a slow nod. “Shouldn’t you have just accepted her the way she was?”
“No, I knew that Lilly was asexual, I knew that she had no interest in going all the way. However, we met when I caught her looking at me.”
“Oh, looking at a man. That’s quite sinful.”
It took me a moment to recognize the sarcasm and bit of bitterness in her voice. Grace wasn’t being serious. She was, instead pointing out something that she had a problem with.
“Her father was,” I hesitated and hissed in a breath, “let’s just say that he was strict. She believed sex was for procreation and not optional. She also wasn’t allowed around men. I don’t view it as changing her. I just view it as showing her what she wanted and then holding her hand and letting her know that what she wanted was perfectly okay. It’s all right to be asexual, but still enjoy the form of the opposite sex. It’s okay to want to touch, but not to ride.”
“You can pet a horse, but that doesn’t mean you have to get up in the saddle.”
“I don’t like saddles,” I muttered, grimacing at the thought of the feel of leather and how it always seemed to chafe.
“The… horse is metaphorical,” Grace said.
“I know that. There’s no horse in the cafe.”
“The saddle is also metaphorical,” she said, sounding a little strangled.
“Yes, if the horse is metaphorical, of course, the saddle is too,” I stopped speaking as it dawned on me what I was saying.
Sometimes I was a little slow at catching the nuances of such things. I didn’t use sexual euphemisms. I didn’t have to with the women I typically bedded.
They called it a dick, cock, penis, were straightforward about what they wanted it, how they wanted it, and how hard. The few who did try to use flowery terms typically only maintained the ruse for a few sentences before they devolved into tits, pussies, and blowing me under the table.
I shifted, uncomfortable as my pants tightened at the idea of Grace slipping under the table. There was no table cloth on the table, and the lights were quite bright, along with the sunlight coming in the windows. Such a thing would be highly noticeable.
That didn’t stop me from thinking about it, though.
“I’m not her,” Grace said.
“No, she would have told me to use the saddle,” I said with a slow nod of my head. “That euphemism would also be over her head as we’ve both ridden horses before. We just think of actual horses.”
That sounded like a real reason, right?
“How often does she give you tea?” Grace asked.
“How many nights have you slept there?” I asked.
Tea was new.
In the modern age, it made more sense to offer a hot beverage, or water, juice even. None of us offered tea any longer because of all the things we could slip into tea. Modern drinks kept those things from being effective.
Which made tea new.
I could guess at the use of it, probably something to do with magic. I knew Lilly was powerful, but I wasn’t fully aware of how far her magic went, or what she could do with it. I had to guess and try to give advice based on what I was told in the conversation.
“I don’t know, I’ve lost track.”
“And last night was the first night that she offered you tea?” I asked. “That’s probably a pretty good indication. Lilly knows her stuff. She knows how to handle thin
gs.”
“Yeah, but a tea for bad dreams?” Grace said. “It wasn’t even a bad dream.”
I straightened slightly, leaning in just a little as I realized that stiffening and straightening might tell her that I was overly interested.
When demons were involved, dreams were rarely just dreams.
“Yes, okay, yes, I had a—” Grace stuttered and struggled to get it out.
About me.
“You dreamed about me?” I asked, smiling just slightly. “What, uh, what did we do in this dream?”
“Well, we were at your club…”
And she proceeded to tell me about her ‘dream.’
At first, I was flattered, but then the bits in the background began to disturb me. It was the things that she had noticed, the way she rubbed at her shoulder as she spoke. The little things that she did as she spoke and how tired she appeared.
It all spelled disaster.
A demon was trying to crawl into her mind, using my image to do it. I would have thought that a demon, taking on my form in my club, would have known who they were tangling with.
“I didn’t think a tea was necessary,” Grace said. “Maybe waking up afterward, you know, to clear my head.”
It was no wonder Gabe couldn’t do what I had asked him to do. If a demon had already captured Grace’s sleeping mind, Gabe couldn’t use his dream walking abilities to slip in and give her pleasant visions.
I sat there in the awkward silence that followed, trying to come up with a way to convince Grace to do what Lilly wanted. Whatever she wanted.
Have to call Lilly.
If Lilly had done what I thought she did, that meant that she had taken on the dream herself. I had to make certain that she was all right, that there wasn’t something riding her, instead of Grace. At least if it had gotten its claws into Grace, I might have been able to banish it.
With Lilly, what in the Hell was I supposed to do? Recite some damned poetry and dump dirty water on her in the hopes that it scared a demon off?
Then again, given my history, doing that might just scare it enough to make it flee in fear of its life.
“Well, what do you think?” she asked.
“Is she charging you for rent?” I asked.
“Yes,” Grace said quickly.
“Is she really charging you for rent?” I asked. Grace made a face, then looked away and shook her head. “Okay. Take the tea as your rent. Lilly is a little odd at times, but she’s completely harmless. And a little mint and chamomile tea never hurt anyone. Unless you’re allergic.”
“I don’t have any allergies,” Grace said with a shake of her head.
“Good, that’s good. Then, drink the tea and pretend that she’s not taking your money, and putting it into high return investment funds. Just remember when she gives it back to you, that that is all your money and she’s not added anything to it except what the investments brought back in.”
“She’s going to what with my what?”
“She’ll be taking money from you. She won’t just put that into an account.”
My phone beeped twice, then vibrated three times in my pocket. Grace looked down at the table, then up at me expectantly.
“It can wait,” I said.
It was just the early warning omen alert going off. I already knew I had a problem, and I was sitting across from her. Even though I knew she was a problem, that this was going to hurt when I met Grace’s eyes, I didn’t feel like there was an option.
There was always that one little option. The one I was most known for.
I am not an executioner, I am a mercy.
I had never had a problem with using that option, but then the other humans I had sat across from, weighing their lives in my hands, had dug their own graves. They had been the reason they were in that position. They had invited the demons in, attracted them and even bedded them.
Grace was an innocent.
So, what did the demons want with her?
“You don’t need to ignore a call because of me,” Grace said.
“That’s just Mary. She’s worried because I snuck out and didn’t tell her where I was going. She worries if I slip out. Let’s talk about something else.”
“All I do is work. I don’t have much to talk about,” Grace said with a shrug. “Outside of work there’s really just Lilly, and she’s got a weird sense of humour. Told me there was a war being fought over my soul.”
I stiffened.
Grace laughed it off, but it was a nervous sort of laugh that didn’t reach her eyes. She was waiting for me to laugh with her, or to shrug it off. I couldn’t do that, though, because I was having difficulty wrapping my head around that fact.
If Lillith had known that, she should have said something to me, not just thrown me into coffee with Grace like it was a regular coffee.
“She probably meant because my brothers might be fighting over you,” I said finally.
There were shadows in her eyes, but they were all her own. She didn’t believe me. Grace couldn’t wrap her head around the fact that four men might be fighting over her. Or she was very good at reading people and knew that the others weren’t exactly interested.
They’d make certain she stayed involved and felt wanted, but she would have seen through them too quickly.
“They aren’t fighting anymore,” I said. “I set them straight.”
“Set them straight?” she asked.
“For starters, you are not to be fought over. There’s no need for us to hurt ourselves, considering the fact that we aren’t the ones making the decision, you are.”
“No fight over my soul?” she asked.
“No, goodness no. You’re the one who makes the decision. You’re the one who has all the power, all the say.”
“Then why did you agree to coffee with me?” she asked. “Shouldn’t you just wait for me to decide?”
I hesitated, because, yes that was the way it was once done. Four suitors presented the option and then left the woman alone to make her decision without harrying her. We might slip in little notes or tokens of affection to win her over, but not go to unchaperoned coffee.
Dear Father, it’s been far too long since I loved a woman.
“I’m old fashioned, but not that old fashioned,” I said. “I’d have to be crazy to turn down coffee with a beautiful woman.”
She blushed and looked away. It was endearing, how she glanced back at me to see if I was watching her. I smiled when she did, watching the blush deepen.
“You want to get out of here?” I asked. “You know, since I wasn’t drinking a hot beverage and you haven’t touched yours?”
She blushed again.
“And go where?”
“I could drive you to your job,” I said. “I assume that’s why you’re wearing what is clearly a work uniform?”
“Yes, just picking up a shift,” she said with a shake of her head.
A confirmation verbal answer with a shake of the head meant she was lying. I didn’t understand why she would lie about heading to work.
Unless she wasn’t lying about having to work, instead lying about picking up a shift. It may have been a regular shift for her, and she was just trying to seem nonchalant about how much she worked.
“Let me drive you over.”
“Sure,” she said, standing.
I led her out of the cafe and opened the door to my car. She frowned at me, then climbed in. I went around the car and climbed in the other side.
“Do you not drive yourself?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “That might be dangerous, having a beautiful woman sitting beside me as I attempt to navigate the complex laws and social interactions that are involved in driving. Tell him where you’re going.”
Grace gave the address, then gave me a snotty look. It was the look of a woman who didn’t believe me or thought that I was overstepping my bounds.
Or maybe that was the look a woman gave a man who was being stupid.
I still
smiled in response. I was even so bold as to move just slightly closer. She blushed again, looking out the car window as the buildings flowed by.
That wouldn’t do, but I wasn’t about to do something stupid.
I heard a little sound, the buzz of wings.
Turning my head slightly, I looked at the fly in the rear window, bumping up against the glass and trying to escape through the invisible barrier.
Swallowing hard, I turned to Grace. She was still facing the window, but there was a distance to her.
I reached out and slipped my fingers around her face, drawing her toward me. Her eyes were glazed over, and pupils dilated, her skin was cooling quickly.
Considering the fact that I didn’t feel a presence, I was concerned. Normally without a presence, that meant a seizure of some sort, a neurological problem and a health issue. Which meant a real live problem that needed a real doctor.
But that fly.
I might have been making mountains out of ants, but I didn’t want to take the risk.
I kissed Grace and felt a spark of something. A bit of recognition as she kissed me back, the flutter of heat as her skin warmed under my fingers. As she warmed more, I deepened the kiss. I didn’t have to at that point, but I didn’t want to let go.
Her existence sparked back to life, and she shoved me away. She put her fingers over her lips and stared at me.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have,” I said, pulling away. “That was rude of me.”
“Look, you want to make out or something, then just say it. Don’t lie to me and say that you’re driving me to work. I grew up in the foster system. I know the payments. I just thought you were different.”
“Payment?” I asked.
“Ass, grass, or cash,” she said. “Stop the car. I’ll walk.”
“What did I do?” I asked.
Confused, that was what I was. I was definitely confused because nothing of what she had just said had any context for me.
I had kissed her because of the fly in my back window, and the glazed look in her eyes. But even thinking that, I knew there was something even more wrong about the situation, because how did I explain my position to her without sounding crazy?
