A Witch, a Fairy, and an Esper

by Ross Homer

  When Roy Bob was fifteen, he had his first real sex encounter; one that went all the way. He’d done the oral thing and the hand job thing, but this girl wanted it to seal their romance. She was two years older and had been around. Roy Bob wasn’t the first kid she’d initiated into the world of sex. But he was kinda cute, so she let him think she was in love with him.

  A couple of months later, she was hooking for him. He had heard two older guys on the football team say they’d give about anything for a shot at her. He almost lost it before he thought about what they’d said. He then asked, “How much you got?”

  They laughed at him until they realized that Roy Bob was serious. They said, “Kid, we’ve got about sixty bucks between us. You really think she’d screw both of us?”

  “I’ll find out.”

  She said, sure, for a hundred bucks.

  A quick phone call and Roy Bob had become a pimp. The next afternoon they met behind the bleachers. The two guys even let him watch.

  At sixteen, Roy Bob got his girlfriend’s sister to join them one night. It was his first foray into group sex. Even better, she, too, had no problem screwing a couple of guys. Even though she was well underage, he discovered that not only was she better looking than her older sister, she was better in bed, too. The upshot was that now he had two girls on his string.

  The next big change happened a week after he’d turned seventeen. He had four girls now and had scored his first kilo of Mexican marijuana. He dealt that around school and the pool hall where he hung out. A year passed and he was now a bonified drug dealing pimp in Boise, Idaho.

  That was also the year he murdered his first two people; a young man and woman. The couple told Roy Bob that they’d take some product over to the oilfields to sell. Instead, they drove to Seattle and unloaded the lot of it at a pretty good profit. They’d done better than they would have selling it to roughnecks. Their mistake was keeping what they made and lying to Roy about where the product went. Years later, the authorities would find their mostly rotted bones in the back end of an unused pigsty on Roy Bob’s property.

  Roy Bob enjoyed making the girl watch as his big ol’ boar killed and began eating her boyfriend. He and his men then took care of the girl before her dying body was dumped into the sty along with what was left of her boyfriend. He also discovered something else he enjoyed: taking a souvenir from his kills. Their right hands. These two were the first in what would become a collection of over twenty hands. All were preserved and nailed through the palm to a sanded and polished oaken board he kept in a locked vault. Some people even went so far as to wonder about the dark brown leather computer bag he carried and its odd round designs where the two latches were located. But no… That would be just too much. Or would it? These people knew what kind of monster Roy Bob was so…why not?

  By the time Roy Bob reached twenty-one, he controlled the lion’s share of the drug and human trafficking trade throughout the Rocky Mountain states.

  He’d learned how to deal with people at his daddy’s knee. His father ruled the household and ranch with an iron fist. Roy Bob watched as his daddy would drink half a bottle of Early Times or some such and then beat the shit out of his wife for some infraction or other. One day, after one of these rages, his mother disappeared and a new, younger woman took her place. Killing people was no problem for him because of this. Roy Bob hated his old man with a passion. In fact, that’s his right hand there, fourth from the left.

  Roy Bob had a very large ranch with lots of forests and mountains, and some of the largest hogs west of the Mississippi. Despite his crimes, he never once was indicted for anything other than a speeding ticket which he gladly paid after apologizing to the officers who stopped him. Of course, the apparent sheriff-for-life was none other than his lifelong friend, Carl.

  Besides all his other less than decent attributes, Roy Bob was also a major racist. If you weren’t a white, Sunday go to meeting, Protestant, you didn’t belong in his world. There were no minorities working for him on his ranch or in any of his various businesses. He had a penchant for black and brown women, though. Asians he sent to Portland and Seattle to work as prostitute slave labor. They performed or they disappeared.

  Decades passed and he had the world by the balls by the time he was fifty-seven. He was going to run all the organized crime west of the Mississippi and was on his way to accomplishing it. And then one day, a fifty-three-foot container of his was hijacked. Inside were four tons of cocaine, two tons of meth, and a ton and a half of heroine. The big three. All that was in the front of the trailer behind a false wall. In the back part of the container were twenty Korean and Chinese women.

  All of it disappeared somewhere in the mountains east of Seattle. The driver and two guards were found dead and the trailer was missing. The tractor had been burned with the bullet riddled bodies of his men inside.

  Roy Bob was as angry as he’d ever been at any time in his fifty-seven years. The young woman he was currently sleeping with decided that morning she needed to be elsewhere. When what was left of her was eventually found, most of her was in the pigsty. Her right hand was missing.

  He screamed at one of his close associates, “Jim…find that fucking trailer! Something that big just doesn’t disappear like that. Someone leaked what was in it and someone else took it. I want to know who. Immediately!” He smashed his fist into his desktop, making the pens there jump. Jim didn’t flinch because he’d seen this performance before and was prepared for it.

  He nodded and replied, “I’ll get right on it, sir. We think we know who, but you’ll want solid proof.”

  “You’re goddamn right I do. Now get out there and find him.” Hands shaking in extreme anger, he pulled a bottle of Early Times out of the bottom drawer of the desk and took a strong pull from it. The man he was screaming at knew that this was a bad sign and heads would roll. Literally. And the hogs would dine well when the person who hijacked the trailer was found.

  A package came via express delivery two days later. In it were two things: the preserved hand of Jim Smyth, the man Rob Bob had tasked to find the hijacker, and a note.

  Staring at Jim’s hand, Rob read the note, hands shaking in anger again when he was done.

  My Dear Mr. Miller.

  I am sorely afraid that your messenger lacked certain courtesy to me and mine and had to be taught a lesson. Unfortunately, he resisted. I am so sorry, but I hope his enclosed appendage will tell you that I mean business.

  I know who you are and that in your world, you are a powerful man. In my world, I am head and shoulders above you. Instead of killing each other’s people, I suggest a strong partnership, one that will sew up the entire West Coast from Vancouver to Baja California and east to that river you are always talking about.

  If you join with me, we will be more powerful than our enemies can possibly imagine. Please text me at 555-867-5309 soon.

  Jura Sato.

  Over the next month, Roy Bob sent several of his best hitters to take care of this slant-eyed asshole. Their hands came back unattached to any other parts of their bodies. This was causing some unease among his men and unhappy men meant mistakes were made.

  He didn’t know if it was raw luck or God’s amazing handiwork, but his new girlfriend was of an exotic mixed race. She was an interesting shade of dark brown and had a taut, dynamite body. She was something unbelievable in bed and elsewhere and smarter than any woman he’d had in years. She could read him like a book, too. Her name was Gaelle Pelletier and she was in the right place at the right time to meet him.

  Gaelle was finally where the action was and that was her goal in life. A small-town girl from central Florida, life and circumstance led her to the bar in Boise where she captured Rob Boy’s eyes and heart. She wasted no time at all chasing off the two other women trying to get close to him and he admired her temerity for it.

  Out in the parking lot, she proved how amazing she was in his pickup. She was so good at it, that he was unable to drive so she drove h
im home as that had never happened before.

  Gaelle was living full time now at the ranch after only a week of sharing the front seat of his truck and then his bed.

  “Roy Bob,” she said over coffee one morning, not long after a third hand was delivered, “something is bothering you. I can feel it here.” She put her hand over her heart. “This is not good. Will you tell me? Maybe together we can solve the problem.”

  One of the many things Roy Bob loved about this incredible woman was the strange, lilting accent she had. He didn’t know it was something she had practiced for years. Otherwise, she sounded like a central-Florida hillbilly. Cep’n they ain’t no hills in central Florida.

  “Gaelle,” he replied as he stared at this astounding beauty across from him, “I don’t want you involved.”

  “Roy Bob! I am involved, in case you hadn’t noticed. Something is bad wrong inside you and it will kill you unless we, you and I, take care of it. Please tell me what I can do to help.”

  He took in her shapely body in a peach colored negligée that was not much more than slightly peach-colored air. All of her was visible to anyone who came in. His men knew not to stare although she didn’t care if they did or not. She spent as much time as she could at the pool out back, nude.

  “Okay. Someone is trying to cut into my business. I can’t seem to find him and so far, the three men I sent to do exactly that…didn’t return.”

  The look in her velvet brown eyes said she was with him all the way. He made an instant decision. “Okay. Come with me. You need to see this if you’re going to become more involved with me and what I do.”

  They stood and he took her hand and led her to a place that not one other of his women had ever seen. The only person other than himself, until today, to have been in the vault was Carl.

  As he suspected, she took one look around and almost fainted. There were all those hands, including the three belonging to his hitters. There were also a number of heads. Seeing those almost made her turn and run out. But she was stronger than that. She knew that those people had run afoul of Roy Bob Miller. She wouldn’t be one of them no matter what. She knew when she had it knocked, and she definitely did here.

  He took her to the hands belonging to his hitters. “These guys were three of my best. Absolute best! And this Sato asshole killed them and sent their hands to me. What a motherfucker! I want him gone out of my life, but I can’t get to him. I don’t know where he lives. All I have is a letter from him telling me I need to join him and a number to text to. Not the other way around. Slant-eyed bastard.”

  She turned him to face her. Pulling him close, she whispered, “What is it worth to you? I think I know somebody who can take care of this for you, but it will not be cheap.”

  Without a second thought he snapped, “Ten million bucks!”

  “Oh! Wow.” Gaelle stepped back in surprise. “That much? Hell, I’d give it a shot for that much.”

  “No, you will not. I love you too much to take the chance of seeing you end up like my guys here. But if you know someone who you think could do it, let’s go for it.”

  Anger erupted in his voice. “I want this Sato guy’s head right here, in the middle!” He pointed at his collection. “His goddamn wife and children, too, if he has any.”

  “Roy Bob, let me see what I can do for you. But first, I think you need to settle down some.” She slipped the negligee off her shoulders and for the next hour, Rob Bob was settled way down.

  Chapter 7

  Gaelle Pelletier is a pretty woman from an unpronounceable town in central Florida. As a kid, she lived with her momma and poppa. Her grandmother lived in a small house a block away. Gaelle was too smart and too good looking for her own good in a town like that.

  Even at an early age, she had a surprising penchant for mechanical objects. She could tear down a big-block Chevy engine when she was ten years old. A year later, she could tweak the same engine to put out more horsepower and surprisingly, get slightly better gas mileage.

  Like many mixed-blood girls, she got the best of both sides of her gene pool. When she turned eleven, her mother presented her with her first real bra. No more training sizes. She had started to grow curves and people noticed. Some too well.

  Not long after she turned twelve, her poppa, about half in the bag on rotgut rum, decided she was old enough and took her. When Momma came home from the packing shed where she worked, she took one look at her raped daughter and everything changed for Gaelle, as if it hadn’t already that day.

  Momma found her husband half-drunk out in his so-called workroom, trying to refinish an old chair. She and Poppa then left for most of the rest of the day and into the evening. Gaelle cleaned herself up as best she could and walked slowly to her grandmother’s small house.

  Gram comforted her and told her about the facts of life and how some men hid behind alcohol and did horrible things to girls like her. She also made sure that her twelve-year-old granddaughter wasn’t pregnant. At around nine that night she went home. Momma was there, Poppa wasn’t, and she never saw him again.

  As she grew into the pretty woman she became, she began trying to lose her flat southern drawl. By the time she hooked up with Roy Bob, she sounded exactly as she wanted: French with a touch of Caribbean Islander of some kind.

  Gaelle couldn’t do office work worth a damn. She knew it and accepted that sitting on her shapely butt all day, typing and filing, wasn’t for her. She had friends but they, like her, didn’t work in an office. They were carpenters, warehouse workers, shippers and receivers and the like. She was the only one who had a Certified Master Mechanic certificate, though. The older she got, the more she enjoyed working with cars, trucks, motorcycles, and surprisingly, bicycles. She also had a remarkable right hook, as more than one grabby man discovered the hard way.

  She had just turned forty when she found herself in Boise and met Roy Bob Miller.

  Gaelle was there as a mechanic for a strong American mountain bike racing team. She kept the team’s bikes in perfect condition and their vans and cars running.

  She was also unattached at the time. After the first set of races, she and some of the team members went to a popular bar for beer. She could drink most people under the table if she wished but rarely did. The exciting life she had wanted in Florida never seemed to quite materialize and, like office work, was accepting that it would never happen to her. In the last several years she’d mostly been looking for a place to settle down and open her own garage or bike shop. Maybe even get married and have a couple of kids.

  But the right person never seemed to come along nor did the right location. That was before she met Roy Bob Miller.

  That night, she saw him in the bar, laughing and having a good time. The place was hopping, and the local country band was not bad. A couple of local low rent sluts were teasing him, and he appeared to barely be putting up with them and their attention.

  Carrying her beer, she went over and chased them off. It wasn’t hard to do at all. One of them got mouthy and all Gaelle did was smile and take the girl’s right hand and squeeze. Hard! They left her and Roy Bob alone without any further persuading necessary.

  Once they were gone, she dragged Roy Bob out to his truck where she showed him another talent she had. When she was done with him, his knees were so weak he couldn’t walk. He let her drive his custom hundred-thousand-dollar truck out to his ranch. She didn’t know at the time what an enormous privilege it was to be allowed to drive anything of his.

  Gaelle had found the door into that upper-class life she craved, and Roy Bob opened it for her. While there wasn’t much for glitz and glamour going on in Boise, it was amazing over in Seattle. A short plane ride in his private jet and they were there. Or in San Francisco. Or…she couldn’t believe it, front row seats in the Hollywood Bowl for one of her favorite singers.

  Gaelle Pelletier was also something that Roy Bob would have never believed in a million years. She was dark Fae, and not because of her skin color. While
she didn’t have any particular Fae talents other than in bed, her mother was a fair to middlin’ dark Fae witch.

  She sold spells to bedevil people. None of her spells or talismans or amulets were usually fatal, but you could be as sure as ants at your picnic they would cause havoc to someone you were angry with. Should that horse your ex bet his rent on run in a highly anticipated race, it would go lame by the third furlong. Or if the guy or girl you wanted to date turned you down, his or her car wouldn’t start. That hot interview that someone climbed over you to get? That person would come down with a nasty cold the night before. Or fail a big test.

  She did alright in her small business.

  However.

  Her mother was a cat of a different color altogether. Her spells could kill or maim or destroy someone’s house or business or enemies. As the years passed, she became well-known in certain underworld circles. While she wanted no fame or riches, she had both that she kept under tight control.

  But she wasn’t at the top, or bottom, depending on your point of view, of dark Fae magic. Not even close.

  There was someone…or something she knew about who could do things and go places normal people couldn’t or never wanted to.

  Its name was Aato.

  He, or it, or whatever Aato was, lived in a small but extraordinarily expensive villa-style home overlooking the Pacific Ocean just outside of Seaside, Oregon. He was the man, at least Gaelle’s grandmother thought he was a man, she needed to contact.

  She’d only dealt with Aato a couple of times over her life and hated it. He, or it, never changed or aged. He, or it, simply was. For lack of a better pronoun, Aato was a ‘he’ to her. She would contact him, ask how much for this or that, pay the amount and whatever she needed done was then taken care of.