by Lynn Red
“Because I have a magic book, you dolt,” Langston shot back. “I recall something about the Jorgenson name in this town. Some particular—”
“They’re the police. This bumpkin town has a police force made entirely of hyenas. That one, she has a sister. If it’s the dangerous side of life you want, that would... Oh who am I kidding? No one here will ever even notice you’re doing anything.”
But once again, Langston was already past him. “Sister, hm? That could be interesting.”
“No,” Eldred cut him off. “Well, they are, in a way. I don’t quite understand how you people determine sibling relations these days.”
After ten years of dealing with Eldred’s I’m-way-older-than-anything shtick, Langston had learned to decipher his fake confusion.
“Meaning she’s adopted? The older one,” he said.
“Taken in, adopted, removed from an orphanage? I can’t tell the difference.” Eldred let out another of his impatient sighs. “Give me a moment.”
Immediately, four magically-implanted visions started dancing in front of Langston’s eyes of four girls, all of them with their own insecurities and unsureness... all of them ripe for the picking. Except that last one – Lilah Jorgenson – didn’t look all that insecure or uneasy. Her hair was pulled back, like it was usually hidden by a hat or something, and she had a white streak running down the top, pulled into her ponytail.
“Dark... dark past,” Eldred said slowly, as though he were channeling his answers. “She’s... parents are either dead or missing, or maybe abandoned her. Can’t tell.”
“Are you a magic eight-ball?” Langston spat. “You can read the very fabric of reality. And you’re telling me that you’re not sure of something?”
“It does take a little more effort to read the threads of fate and time than it does to copy a lecture from a guide book and spew it to a bunch of children who don’t look away from their Walkmans for more than thirty seconds at a time.”
“Walk... what are you...? Oh their phones. Mobile phones, Eldred. Seriously, you should turn that considerable mental prowess of yours to updating yourself at least a little.”
The book grumbled. “The fumblings of mortal men have no hold on me, mortal.”
“You talk about mortals this and mortals that more than a movie vampire, Eldred,” Langston said obviously growing weary. He checked his watch. “Can you hurry it along a little bit? I’ve got class in ten minutes, and the worms always like me to stand around and act friendly beforehand.”
“Why do you take this so seriously?” Eldred asked. “Why should you care if they give you good write-ups? You’ll be done and gone long before it matters.”
“Get on with it,” Langston growled. “Tell me what I want to know or I’ll put you in the dark again.”
“You drive a hard bargain.”
“Hurry up.”
“Fine. It... it is hard to see, but likely because she wants it that way. This girl – Lilah – she has buried her past as far as she can. She doesn’t think about it, doesn’t admit it, not even to herself. Also, she’s fallen for a... oh,” Eldred trailed off and grumbled a laugh.
“What is it? Spit it out, djinn.” The storm outside raged, black clouds swirling as rain dumped down, pounding hard on the window. In the distance, lightning flashed, punctuating an intersection light going from red to green. In the hall outside his shut door, Langston heard students wandering around, muttering – probably about something inane, he thought.
“This girl has more to her than you probably think. The younger one is mundane, just a growing babe. Her choice in hair color is curious, as is the thing she has through her nose, but she’s nothing of interest. This other one is connected to someone from your past.”
Langston furrowed his brow, searching his memories. There weren’t many of them. Everything before he found Eldred was a fuzzy shade of brown, like he’d been clouded or like something was interfering with his brain’s functioning.
“My past,” he said, thoughtfully. “It’s hard to remember.”
“From your past that matters, mortal,” Eldred said. “Not the one from before you meant anything.”
That sent a shock through Langston’s spirit. Something from way in the back of his mind reverberated uncomfortably, like a wave working its way out from his lizard brain and through to the front of his imagination. Something dark spread its horrible tentacles through his mind, and then even the images of his past – whatever it was, he couldn’t quite remember – vanished into inky blackness. He shook his head, a little confused, a little concerned... but then that, too faded away like something was relaxing him.
“Don’t worry about all that,” Eldred said. His voice was soft, suggestive, and velveteen. A marked change from the normal rough, uncaring anger he showed.
Langston didn’t react though. He was dazed, almost in a sort of trance. “Yes,” he finally said. “I suppose there’s no point to trying to remember things that are dead and gone.”
“Dead,” Eldred whispered. “Yes, that’s it. Dead, gone, and buried. We need think only of the present. Of the time at hand. And what we must do. Our mission, it gives us purpose.”
“Mmm,” Langston said. “Yes, that... that was strange.” He shook his head and gathered the folder where he kept his lecture notes. “It felt like my head went strange for a moment there. I was trying to think of something, but then – no, never mind. Just a passing headache. Although my head doesn’t hurt.”
“Must be nothing,” Eldred said, his voice growing dimmer by the second. “Remember – these girls – they’re the path to you gaining the power you so desire. Lure them in, enthrall their fragile, youthful spirits.”
“Yes,” Langston whispered. “Enthrall... confuse... and then take.”
The book-bound djinn groaned his assent. “That’s it, dear friend. You’re starting to understand.”
The words on the cover rearranged, and once again, Eldred was nothing more than a very old book in a glass box. Nothing remotely uncommon in a professor’s office. And moments after that, Langston Graves opened his folder and made sure he had the right notes for Mesopotamian architecture and art in them – the subject of the day’s lecture.
But more important than that, he thought as he studied the paper, was the class roll. Very important, of course, because he had to turn in the attendance list to the university, but also... well, he realized as he looked over at the dusty book inside the glass box, he wasn’t quite sure why it was so important, just that it was.
-14-
Lilah
“Look, I’ve gone as far as I’m going,” I said, trying not to roll eyes as Winter drew a rainbow figure-eight in the air with a fingertip. It’s a unicorn thing, sure, but one that I just can’t force myself to get over.
“Why do you keep looking at me? Want me to sign my name with one?” Winter asked in her airy, half-present voice. She never liked to let on that she was anywhere near as smart as she was. Really though, I figure she’s got an IQ higher than the rest of us combined.
As if to prove she could do it, the unicorn girl signed her name in the air, punctuated the i’s with hearts. A moment later, she blew at the rainbow, which vanished in a puff of sweet, sugary-smelling sparkles. That time, I rolled my eyes before I could stop myself.
“Come on,” Dezzy urged her. “Parking’s only three bucks if you go to the visitor lot. And if you do that, then you can come in and check out the new professor.”
“What in the hell was that?” Mitzi, in the back seat, asked nervously. “Nervous” was kind of synonymous with “Mitzi” but she seemed shakier than usual.
“Thunder,” replied Winter, very helpfully. “The lightning came first—”
“Thanks, kinda got that part,” Mitzi said. “But this isn’t the time of year for storms like this. We only get these sorts of blowouts in the late spring.”
All three of them looked at me like I was supposed to have an answer. I just cocked an eyebrow and shrugged.
“Low... pressure? System? High, uh, pressure?”
“You’re really smart,” Mitzi said.
“She’s full of shit,” Dezzy sighed. “Stop believing everything everyone says, Mitz. There’s your life lesson for the day.”
Another crash of thunder and an almost immediate blast of lightning caught my attention again. There was something wrong about this storm. This kind of swirling wind and brutal downpour just wasn’t right. My slightly dubious meteorological knowledge notwithstanding, I had never seen a storm like this in Jamesburg.
Mitzi apparently forgot her earlier misgiving, and was frantically searching through her giant blue faux-python bag. “Did any of you see my umbrella? If your sister’s gotta drop us off this far from the building we’re gonna get soaked.”
“Whoa,” I said. “You can’t go out in this. If you do you’ll end up with pneumonia.” I’m not entirely sure when I became a mother, but there you go.
“Rain totally doesn’t cause illness,” Winter said. “That’s, like, not a real thing.”
“I could handle her easier if she actually were as high as she sounds,” I said out the side of my mouth to my sister, who stifled a giggle.
Dezzy squeezed her lips together, pressed her fingers on top of them, and finally got control. “We can’t miss, not today. It’s drop day.”
Slowly, I nodded. Drop day, when the professors took final attendance and then everyone who wasn’t there got tossed out like a sack of garbage. To be fair, if a person couldn’t make it to drop day, they probably weren’t very serious about the class in the first place.
I’d know – I missed about ten of them, only half on purpose.
“I can’t send you guys out in this shit storm,” I said. “I’d feel terrible about it for at least an hour.”
“An hour? Is that when you’re seeing your boyfriend?” Dezzy said, helping herself to a little scratch behind the ear.
I opened my mouth, half shocked and half about to reply, but she cut me off.
“Anyway,” she said with a sly grin. “If you go over by the Daniels building, there’s a special parking garage. It’s a little more expensive, but none of us will have to go out in this, uh, what did you call it?”
“Shit storm,” I grumbled. “I don’t have any cash.”
That much was true – and I couldn’t even blame using credit for everything. I hadn’t been able to get one of those since I started college and got a little too excited about high interest credit cards. That wasn’t a mistake I’d make twice. There are plenty of mistakes I’ll repeat – Rex being a prime example – but that one? Nope, not a chance.
“I got it covered,” Winter offered. “Although I don’t mind walking through the rain.”
“I’m sure you don’t,” I said. I was already making the turn toward Daniels.
“Since you’re coming so close to the building,” Dezzy said, “you may as well come inside. Otherwise you’re going to have to either come back to get us, or I guess you could just leave us hanging.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s totally my style.”
I took a deep breath and adjusted first my bandana and then my glasses. Everything in place, I felt like I was on track, or at least not falling apart. For right then, anyway.
“I don’t know why I’m doing this,” I said as I turned off the car. “I really don’t. Although yeah, you’re right. I’d rather sit through a lecture than have to deal with sitting in a garage for an hour and fifteen minutes.”
Dezzy was supposed to react to that, but instead she just smiled and said that was good. “You won’t regret it,” she added as soon as we were a little behind the others. “Sorry about this, I know you need to work. Got that big show coming up in, what, a month?”
I fended off her questions for a few moments, but by the time we entered the building and started toward the giant lecture hall, I relented.
I shrugged. “Three weeks,” I said. “Also, I sold a painting.” I neglected to tell her what happened after I sold it, but I didn’t think it made a difference what Rex and I had done in semi-celebration.
“You what?” she asked. “Already? That’s great! Sis! You sold a painting! Like, you understand how hard that is, right?”
I shrugged again. Admitting my own successes has never been one of my strong suits, especially when someone else was singing them. “It isn’t the first one, but yeah it’s pretty cool,” I said with half a grin. I’m pretty sure I was blushing so hard the dark was a really good thing.
“How much was it?” she asked.
“I, er,” I don’t know what the hell I was so embarrassed about. It was a great thing. For some reason though, it just didn’t seem real. Maybe it was what happened afterward that I was still kind of shaking from and excited over, but... yeah, it just didn’t feel real. “Twelve hundred?”
“Are you serious?” She almost screeched. “That’ll pay like three months of your rent! Oh my God, Lyle! I’m so happy for you! Life really is going well for you, huh?”
I didn’t really have time to think about what she was saying, but yeah, it was. It really was. This was not my normal sister, I thought, as she grabbed me in a bear hug. Hyena hug, I guess.
“You’re doing it! You’re doing,” she cleared her throat when Mitzi and Winter looked back, impatiently. “Ah, yeah. Sorry. Anyway, that’s fucking awesome! Painting, bear boyfriend and everything else!” she said, somehow squeezing all three words into one syllable.
“I don’t have a boyfriend,” I grumbled under my breath.
“Be quiet!” Mitzi hissed. “Professor Hot Stuff is pissed at something. Can’t you hear him?”
Sure enough, there was angry ranting coming from down the hall. “Did she just say ‘Professor Hot Stuff’?” I asked my sister. To respond, she just shrugged.
“I told you something weird was going on,” she said.
“I’m not sure Mitzi acting like this is exactly weird,” I said, grinning a little as we pushed open the lecture hall door.
*
It always hurts the first time someone yells at you.
I’m not talking about like in the middle of an argument, someone calls you an asshole or throws an “I hate you!” out there just to fish for some raw feels to hook. And I guess I don’t even really mean yelling yelling, since it can hurt just as bad – worse sometimes – if it comes quietly and calmly.
Listening to Professor Graves was a whole lot like I remember it was when I’d listen to my dad. The biological one I mean. I don’t remember much of him, but what I do remember was the way he’d yell at me for nothing and then I’d cry thinking I’d done something wrong to make him upset.
Sorry for the dark turn. Really I hate it when it feels like my mind is getting away from me and going wherever it wants to go. It’s happening more and more though, and nothing seems to be able to stop my thoughts from turning dark and cynical.
Except Rex, I thought, with a gulp. Except him, yeah. For some reason, he didn’t make me feel like everyone else did. There’s something about the way he touches me, the way his kisses taste...
“These ziggurats,” Graves said, “have a thousand different uses. The one everyone talks about is the only one that isn’t real.”
Dezzy turned to me. “I swear to God he wasn’t this boring last week.”
I gave her a half smile and kept right on ruminating, although before I fully buried myself in my own head, I noticed the Winter and Mitzi were both just gawking at the guy at the front of the class like he was some kind of tiny god walking among mortals. He was stalking back and forth, every now and then grabbing the lectern and sorta teetering up on the balls of his feet.
“And so, you see, class, the point is that you can’t go by what you’ve been told.”
The class, oddly, was sitting in rapt silence. Everyone was just staring, gape-mawed, at this doofus in all black. “Is he really still going on about this ancient alien gobbledygook?” I said, before I turned to my sister.
When I d
id, I stared at her for a second, trying to figure out what was going on, but then I realized I was the only person in the class not frozen in place. It was almost like time itself had stopped.
Those eyes. His eyes are like flares pointed straight through my skull.
And then, without noticing, I was caught, too. I couldn’t look away, couldn’t tear my eyes off him. Every strange, jerky, halting move or sound that came out of this guy’s mouth caught my attention and held me enthralled.
“What... the hell is...?” My lips were moving, and I was relatively certain that I was talking, but I couldn’t hear anything coming out of my mouth.
Langston Graves’s eyes pulsed a sickening hue of green, then brown, then silver, over and over again as I stared at him, staring at me.
“Lilah,” his voice came to my ears, a suggestive, velvet covered whisper. “I need, must have, you.” I knew it was him speaking to me, but his mouth was still. He just loomed over the podium, staring straight into my heart. I didn’t want to look at him. My stomach was churning up into my mouth, I felt like there was bile in the back of my throat.
A cold spiral pulled my consciousness to a pinprick three inches in front of my forehead. Outside of that tiny, miniscule tunnel, nothing existed. It was just me, and this professor – or whatever he was – and I was fading... fading...
“Lyle?”
I opened my eyes wide. Darting them back and forth, I tried to make sense of the half empty room, and of the voice in my ear. “Lyle?” it asked again.
A hand on my shoulder shook me. My brain felt like it was rattling loose in my skull. “Lyle? Seriously, this isn’t funny. Snap out of it,” the voice began to demand.
It was detached from anything I recognized, just a voice floating around in empty space.
I felt myself shake again, and suddenly I was back. I was me, and I was sitting in a mostly-empty lecture hall. The man who had possessed my mind moments before was smirking sheepishly at someone who was talking to him at the front, and everyone was milling around chatting.
