Witch's Jewel

by Kater Cheek

  We knocked on the door and after a moment found ourselves face to face with the door guard, another vampire. She wore a tailored beige linen suit with a distinctive holster bulge under one arm.

  “Yes?”

  “We’re expected.” I handed her the note.

  She read it, then gave a curt nod, allowing us inside. We stepped into the elegantly appointed foyer, then to a sitting area that had a Persian carpet and plenty of oil paintings in gilded frames. Fenwick and I perched on the edge of cream-colored upholstery, as if expecting a grown-up to yell at us. We waited in silence long enough to alternate between nervous and frightened and back again before a vampire who looked like a secretary entered the room.

  “Miss Melbourne?”

  I stood.

  “The Guild Leader will see you now. Follow me please.”

  She led us back through a hallway to a carved wooden door, knocked twice, and then opened it. “Sir? Miss Melbourne is here to see you.” The secretary ushered us into the Guild Leader’s office, and closed the door softly behind us.

  Like the rest of the house, the Guild Leader’s office radiated tasteful money and power. Wood paneling covered the room’s windows, and an ankle-deep wool carpet muffled the sounds of our nervous feet. A huge mahogany desk claimed the center of the room, encircled by bookshelves. An empty chair waited in front of the desk. Behind it, a whippet-thin vampire with short blue-black hair stood next to her boss. She wore a black suit and enough guns to scream “bodyguard.”

  As for the Guild Leader himself, he was not what I expected. I think ‘head vampire’ and I think of a dramatic fashionable Goth king, or perhaps a hideous monster, depending. The Guild Leader of Seabingen was coarse, average looking, more like a union boss or a police chief than the leader of the undead. He wore a tailored suit, and appeared middle aged.

  Appeared, but if the bindi showed me a darker blending-into-darkness-smudge for an older vampire, then this guy was very, very old. Very old, and very creepy. The Guild Leader wore intimidation like an aura, pressing us down by his mere presence. I tried to think of a greeting but my mouth was dry, so I just bowed, like we do to Kishimoto-sensei. Fenwick must have agreed with the creepiness, because he bowed too.

  “Miss Melbourne. Good evening. I’d ask you to sit, but as you can see, there is only one chair. I expected you to come alone. Who is your friend?”

  “I’m Alan Fenwick, sir.” Fenwick introduced himself as if proving he had a right to be there.

  The Guild Leader nodded and turned back to me. Jolene had a tendency to eschew gestures, but Holzhausen and his bodyguard took her trait to extremes. They were so motionless that their infrequent gestures seemed scripted.

  Would Jolene act like this when she was a hundred, two hundred, or however old these guys were? The bodyguard vampire had just begun to fade to gray on gray, but Holzhausen’s face was a dark charcoal mass of motionless shadow.

  “I have been informed that you are the heir of Frederick Edgerson’s famous bindi.”

  I nodded and swallowed. “Yes, sir.”

  “You are reluctant to sell it?”

  “Yes, sir. My uncle asked me not to, said it could cause trouble in the wrong hands.”

  “And yet you surely suspected my interest.”

  “Your note was very polite, sir. I thought you deserved the courtesy of a personal call.”

  Half his mouth quirked upwards, then fell again before it became a real smile. “You have come because you are interested in learning what powers this bindi is capable of. I have invited you for the same reason. I wish to discover if this jewel you bear is a threat to me and my people.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that, and resolved to show him the fake bindi.

  “Please allow me to inspect this jewel of yours.”

  I peeled the lower one off my brow and handed it to him, sliding it sticky-side up across the mirrored surface of the desk. I tried like hell to keep my face neutral, but it didn’t matter. He took one look at the felt paisley and set it down again.

  “This is a fake.”

  I stared at the desk. He knew. He knew at once. How? Was he a mage? He must be. He was on that committee, after all.

  “You thought perhaps to fool me? Perhaps this is not the first fake you have passed off as real?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Miss Melbourne, I have been nothing but cordial with you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I believe a certain measure of frankness is in order. Tell me everything.”

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to gather my thoughts and my courage. “Okay, well, sir, it’s like this. My uncle gave me this bindi in his will, but he didn’t include a list of instructions or anything. After a few days I figured out that I was supposed to wear it on my forehead. That’s when I started seeing things.

  “The only trouble is, Uncle Fred was pretty well known in this town, and there were a lot of people who knew about the bindi and knew it was magical. One of the first people to ask about it was a guy named Mr. Hall.”

  “My employee.”

  “I didn’t know that, sir.”

  He gestured as if it didn’t matter.

  “Well, sir, then I went to an appraiser downtown. He said that a woman called Madame R. had hired him to find me. I went to see her, and she gave me a couple hundred for the bindi. Well, for a fake bindi.”

  “A fake?”

  “Um, yes, sir. I was wearing one that I bought earlier that day at an import store.”

  Fenwick stepped closer to me and put his hand on my shoulder.

  “And then, when I went back to my apartment that night, I found that it had been ransacked. Fenwick and I questioned the landlord, and he said a couple of guys named …” Here I looked to Fenwick. “What were their names again?”

  “Eddie and Jojo.”

  “Right, and Madame R.’s place was trashed the next week too, so I figure whoever hired Eddie and Jojo to search my place also hired them to search hers, thinking she got the real one. That’s my guess anyway, sir.”

  He nodded.

  “And then the first woman came back—”

  “First woman?”

  “Monica Delcourt, sir. She came to see me just before Mr. Hall did. She told me that the bindi originally belonged in her family, and that Frederick bought it. She offered me a lot more than the other two did, but I turned her down. Well, she came back with a gun and wouldn’t take no for an answer, but by that time I had already made a convincing replica. She mugged me for it.”

  “She robbed you at gunpoint for a replica?” Laugh lines around his eyes deepened with repressed humor, making him appear almost human, except that the darkness had not yet vanished.

  I nodded. “I’m sorry if I tried to mislead you, sir, but people haven’t been very nice to me about it.”

  “I assure you I am not a thief, Miss Melbourne.” He shook his head as though clearing it of laughter. “Please show me the real bindi.”

  I peeled the bindi off and slid it towards him on the table. As soon as I took it off, the dark smudges vanished. Both vampires looked completely human. Holzhausen picked the jewel up gently and cradled it in his palm, motionless as a snapshot. He began to whisper softly to it.

  Fenwick and I shifted our weight from foot to foot, but still neither one of us took the chair.

  The Guild Leader set the bindi on the table and slid it back towards me. “Interesting. Tell me what this jewel reveals to you.”

  “I see through glamours, sir. I can see faeries and foxes and kappas.” The bodyguard had moved closer to her boss while we weren’t looking, close enough that when I put the bindi back on the Guild Leader appeared to be her shadow.

  “As can those who know the knack. What else can you see?”

  “I can see spells working and runes of power.”

  “Indeed. And tell me what you see when you look at one of our kind.”

  It might have been better to lie, but I don’t lie ver
y well, and if he caught me, he might not be so understanding the second time. “You have a smudgy black aura, sir. That is, uh, you sort of blur into the darkness. It fades over time, faster for, I guess it's faster for younger vampires.”

  “You can spot us at once?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The bodyguard had drawn closer to us. I hadn’t seen her even move. She glanced at her boss, but he held up a palm and she crept back to his side.

  “It is as I feared. Frederick Edgerson was correct. Perhaps if he had kept it for a few more decades it would have become weak, but an item such as this gains in power when it becomes accustomed to its wearer, as a pearl gains luster when rubbed against human skin.”

  Holzhausen leaned back and tapped his lips, a disconcertingly human gesture. “On another forehead, this jewel would pose us no threat. On yours, it does.”

  “Why me?”

  He stared at me silently instead of answering, one of those long awkward silences which only farmers, backwoodsmen, and police interrogators seem to be any good at. It made me want to blurt out something, anything to make noise, but I bit my tongue and waited for him to continue.

  “This bindi is extremely rare, Miss Melbourne, and you court death by keeping it.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t understand.”

  “Do you carry the blood of Frederick Edgerson in your veins?”

  “Ah, I’m his niece, sir.”

  “And he has named you his heir?”

  “Yes, sir, in the will.”

  “Someone did indeed cast an inheritance spell upon this most valuable item, and now it will work for none other than you, its rightful owner. Until your death, that is.” He smiled, though it wasn’t very reassuring. “No, don’t look so afraid, Miss Melbourne. I, after all, am not a woman, and would not be able to use it in any case. However, there are others who desire this jewel of yours greatly enough to kill for it.”

  “Kill?” This from Fenwick, who stepped forward slightly. “Sir, are you just saying this to scare us?”

  “No, Mister Fenwick. I am a mage, I scry the future. Someone will try to kill Miss Melbourne, and if he or she succeeds, it will cause me a great inconvenience. I can’t allow this jewel to fall into the hands of my enemies.”

  Fenwick didn’t have a response for that, and neither did I. The Guild Leader wasn’t lying. I already knew someone was going to try to kill me. Someone had already been trying.

  “Sir, if I sold it and left, I’d still have to stay away forever, wouldn’t I?”

  “You would not get a chance to leave. No one is willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a magic jewel whose powers are broken. With you alive, the bindi is nothing but a worthless bauble.”

  “So, what you’re saying, sir, is that because of this thing, and because of the spell on it, I’m going to have to dodge death threats for the rest of my life?”

  “If you retain this in your possession, eventually the inheritance spell will bind to you so tightly that the bindi will never work for one not of your line.”

  “Eventually? How long is ‘eventually’, sir?”

  “A few years, should you survive that long.”

  If what he said was true, this whole situation totally sucked.

  “What do you think she ought to do, then?” Fenwick asked.

  I squeezed his hand. I’d almost forgotten he was there.

  “I propose that Miss Melbourne give me the bindi for safekeeping and become a Guild initiate. After two years, if you have managed to court a sire, you will be put on the waiting list to become of the blood. Once you are a vampire, you will be safer. We protect our own.”

  Jolene had told me about this. First of all, initiates were humans, wanna-be vampires. No one in the Guild gave them the least amount of respect. Secondly, the waiting list to become a vampire was currently thirteen years long. I needed protection now, not when I was thirty-five. And thirdly, that plan also assumed that I wanted to be a vampire, which I didn’t. Yuck. Blood.

  “I have a counter-proposal, sir.” This was kind of ballsy, but what choice did I have? “I propose that I keep my bindi, and you allow me to join the Guild as a human.”

  “A human Guild member?”

  “Yes.”

  He tapped his finger against his lips and didn’t reply for a long moment. “It goes against our tradition.”

  “You’re the Guild Leader, sir. Can’t you change tradition?” I asked. “You want the bindi under your control, and I want the Guild’s protection.”

  The Guild Leader tapped his lips again. There was no way of judging his mood. Had we pissed him off? Was he happy? Except for that lip tapping thing, he was as emotional as a crash test dummy. “You will not accept my other offer? Mister Fenwick, you could become an initiate too, if you liked.”

  Fenwick and I looked at each other. Fenwick shook his head.

  “We’re grateful, sir, it’s very generous, but no, thank you.”

  “Very well.” He gave the barest hint of a nod, as if this is what he had expected all along. “Perhaps we will be in touch. Chen will see you out.”

  The bodyguard was already at the door.

  ***

  Fenwick didn’t speak until we were in the van again. When he shut the door behind himself, he let out a huge sigh. “Man, I’m still shaking. That guy is creepy.”

  “Yeah. Thanks for coming. I’d hate to have done that alone.”

  “Hey, that’s what friends are for, right?”

  “Yeah.” Friends. At least we were still friends. And what else? Were we going to end up at his apartment? Was he going to mention the other night when we slept together? Or maybe he wasn’t even thinking about it, maybe it meant nothing to him at all? I didn’t look at him.

  Fenwick was still going on about our interview with the vampire. “Do you think he was serious about someone trying to kill you? You think he could see the future?”

  “I’m not really sure if I believe what he said about being able to see the future, but James always claimed he could.” And James had been predicting the same thing for months. “At least he didn’t say succeed in killing me, just try.”

  “Why didn’t you take his offer?”

  “What, become an initiate? I couldn’t live with losers like Jolene sneering down on me. Besides, I don’t want to be a monster.”

  “Yeah, me neither.” Fenwick sounded almost pissed off.

  Traffic was pretty heavy for a Friday night, so I had to concentrate on the road, but when we got closer to Northridge I realized that he had been quiet for a long while. I turned to see what he was looking at.

  Me.

  He was looking at me with an expression that said that he wanted to talk about something serious. Uh oh. Here it came.

  “Kit, we need to talk about the other night.”

  “Yeah. Yeah we do.” My fingers gripped the steering wheel. It was like waiting for test results. Did I make the grade? Did I make the good-enough-for-a-girlfriend cutoff?

  “Look, I don’t know how you feel about it, but I guess it was a bigger deal to you than to me, you know? I mean, for me it happens all the time, but for you, well, you know.”

  Bastard. Sure, fine, point out that he had all the girls panting after him, and I was social poison. It’s hard to sound normal when your jaws are clenched. “No, it wasn’t a big deal, really.”

  “I know it’s a lot to cope with. I’m sorry. I made a mistake showing you that side of me. It will never happen again.”

  The most incredible sex I’ve ever had, and it was just a mistake. A night that turned me upside down with confusing emotions and it’s fine, because it will never happen again. I didn’t trust myself to speak, so I just shrugged.

  “This isn’t going to affect our friendship, is it? Can we just pretend it never happened?”

  “Fine,” I spat.

  “You didn’t tell anyone, did you?”

  “James knows.”

  “What, you told someone already?”
he half-yelled incredulously, causing me to flinch.

  “James knows everything about me. I didn’t tell him, anyway, he just guessed.” And why was he being such a prick about it? “Why is it a big deal? You’re not ashamed, are you?”

  “Ashamed? No, I’m not ashamed.” Fenwick was lying, it was obvious in his voice. He was ashamed. He was fucking ashamed of me.

  “If you’re not ashamed, then why is it such a big deal if I tell people?”

  “It’s just, it’s going to mess up my relationships with other people if everyone knows.”

  He actually came out and said it. What a slime ball. I wanted to beat the crap out of him right then and there, but since I was driving (and he could kick my ass any day of the week) I settled for deep and bitter sarcasm. “Oh yeah, wouldn’t want to do that.”

  Fenwick tapped me on the shoulder to make me turn to face him. “Hey, I’m not mad at you, just don’t tell anyone else, okay? I don’t want it common knowledge.”

  “We’re here.” I never expected to have Fenwick hurt me so badly. And James was wrong. It didn’t make him attractive to me.

  “What?”

  “Your apartment. Get out.”

  Fenwick shut the door. “You gonna come up?”

  “For another pity fuck? I don’t think so.”

  I drove away without looking back.

  That’s the trouble with being lonely and heartbroken; you start to imagine potential romance with all kinds of people. Jesus. I was such an idiot.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Out of cigarettes again. The flowerpot next to the basement door was already half full of dirty butts. So much for quitting. Our place was only a five block walk to the minimart, (not that I needed any more cigarettes,) but it was a good excuse to get some exercise. My legs already felt flabby from not going to the dojo. Damn him. Damn them both, my former best friends.

  After locking the door, I began to cast the closing spell that Elaina had taught me. Every roommate has quirks, and Elaina’s was security. First thing, lock the door. Elaina said the act of locking it showed an intent to keep it shut. An unlocked door was fine, but only if the door didn’t have a lock. An unused lock was bad. Sounded like crap to me, but she was the witch, so she should know.