“Hey, are you all right?” Chaz said, recognizing suddenly that this was the perfect time for him to play the role of knight in shining armor or at least the knight in a striped apron. He came over and laid a hand on Abby’s shoulder. The hand, seemingly of its own accord, slid down her back, so that it was as close to Abby’s ass as Chaz could get it without actually leaning over her.
“Yes, thank you, Chaz. I’m just a bit fucking shaken up, you know. Fuck my ass with a raven! It’s not every day that some whacko comes in and points a gun in your face, you know?”
Chaz gave her a reassuring pat on the back, looking gravely at her with such nauseating concern that Abby had to fight down the inclination to kick him in the shin.
Her nineteen-year-old manager smiled and then snapped his fingers. “Hey, you know what we need?” he said, peeling his unwilling hand from off her back. “A little pick-me-up.”
Abby stood up and reached for a napkin to dab at her eyes. She was annoyed at herself for getting weepy, but if there was ever a time to let a few tears go free, it was probably after being held at gunpoint.
“What kind of pick-me-up?” she asked.
Chaz, pouncing on this flash of unaccustomed interest by Abby like a cat on a ball of string, said, “You just leave it to me, babe.” He gave her ass an overly lingering squeeze as he said that last word.
“I just hope it’s not a strong cup of dark roast,” Abby said, “because I’m pretty sure that I just brewed up a fresh batch of that in my panties.”
Chaz’s hand leaped from the seat of her skirt as if he’d just touched a hot stove.
Giving her a reproachful look, Chaz disappeared through the door to the back, and Abby could hear him rummaging and clattering around in the staff lockers. When he returned, he was carrying a little gold-foil bag. Without looking at her, Chaz poured out a measure of beans from the bag – as black and rich-looking beans as Abby had ever seen – and went about the exact and careful business of getting his brew on: grinding the beans not too fine and running the machine for the precise amount of time.
Abby watched him work. There was something different in the way he moved around the machine, as if he actually gave a shit about what he was doing – which was probably the case. Usually, Chaz’s main aim when filling a customer's order was to produce a brown, vaguely coffee-like beverage that wouldn’t start them spewing until they were at least five minutes down the road. Now, however, he was all strict attentiveness, making sure that the temperate was just so and that the water only passed through the grounds for a certain amount of time.
Abby had to admit, the care and attention to detail that Chaz was bestowing on this particular brew was slightly attractive.
Eventually, Chaz seemed to be happy with the result. He gave the two cups of coffee a long, deep sniff, whipped up some milk and poured it over. Then he handed one to Abby.
“Thanks,” she said, taking the proffered cup.
Chaz grinned at her. “You’ll be feeling like a million bucks in a minute or two, don’t you worry.” He tapped her absentmindedly on the rump, giving her asscheek only the most cursory of squeezes.
They sipped their drinks in companionable silence. It was late, verging on early in the morning, and there had been no one else in since Drunk Willy had left.
The coffee was rich and deep in flavor, mellow with a sharp, dry note that built on the back of the tongue.
“This is good shit,” Abby said grudgingly. She closed her eyes and exhaled slowly. She was very aware of the breath moving in and out of her body and her heart starting to beat a little faster. She opened her eyes and saw Chaz regarding her over the edge of his mug. His pupils had dilated and the corners of his mouth were turned up in a knowing grin.
“Fucking good, huh?” he said, licking his lips.
Abby felt great. She realized that she was tapping her foot on the floor to some unheard beat. Then she was suddenly struck by a ludicrous thought.
“Holy hell, Chaz, is this shit –” Abby lowered her voice. “Is this shit caffeinated?”
Chaz gave a nonchalant shrug, but the caffeine jitters had gotten him now and he couldn’t hide his grin. He moved his stool closer to Abby’s so that their legs were touching. “Maybe,” he murmured, watching her intently.
“Raven shit,” Abby said disbelievingly.
“What? You don’t think I can get my hands on a little caffeine if I want, babe?” Chaz grinned at her.
Abby took another sip of her coffee, feeling the jitters flooding from the top of her head to the tips of her fingers.
“Me and my uncle Trev went fishing the other night out at Pixie Cove and we were pulling the boat out at the end of the session when Trev saw this chest washed up on the beach, right?”
“And you opened it?”
Chaz raised his eyebrows at her cup. “I showed some of it to this dude I know – kind of a shady dude that I give a free mocha to now and again, you know? Slip a little honey-foam pastry to now and again – and he said they were the pure, uncut beans from the slopes of the hidden coffee plantations on Mount Hypo.”
“Raven shit,” repeated Abby.
“I swear to the gods.” Chaz squeezed Abby’s knee. “It’s fucking good, right?”
Abby had never had caffeine before. It did feel good. It felt like crackling ribbons of electric, neon energy was coursing through her synapses and along the pathways of her veins and muscles. She was imbued with a feeling of goodwill to all men – even Chaz didn’t seem as much of an excrescence as he usually did.
“You know,” Chaz said, his hand inching higher up her smooth thigh, “I’m stoked that you started working here, babe. Something about you brings out the best in me, I think.”
Abby laughed. “I’m glad that we’re having the clichéd, soppy, sentimental chat that drugs are supposed to make you spout.”
“I mean it, babe,” said Chaz, inching closer. His hand was now well above her knee and seemingly intent on heading north until it was off the beaten track and in uncharted bushlands. “When was the last time you got laid, anyway?”
Abby wanted to ask Chaz whether he’d ever been laid, but found that the caffeine had robbed her of her usual sting.
“Well,” she said, “ironically, since I’ve been working at Flick the Bean, I’ve been doing a lot of bean flicking in my time off.”
It was true. With the arduous semester before graduation and then going straight into this shithole job, she hadn’t had a good fuck in about a year.
“What? No way. A babe like you?” Chaz’s hand found its way to the hem of her miniskirt, on the edge of uncharted territory. “You know, usually I like my women the way I like my coffee: dark, full-bodied and rich, but I think me and you would have a really fun evening, babe.”
Abby marveled at the way the coffee repressed her instinctive reaction to laugh in Chaz’s face, what with these cheeseball lines. She watched as if she were outside of herself as Chaz leaned in to kiss her, the absurd handlebar mustache moving closer and closer.
The door exploded inward for the second time that evening. This time the bell didn’t even have time to go off, the force of the impact bending it upward on its little metal arm. The door crashed into the wall, glass shattering as it knocked the plaster out of the wall and almost came completely off its hinges.
Another man stepped through the doorway, ducking as he strode through the splintered threshold. He was covered by a sweater, just as Drunk Willy had been, but his hood was pulled up to disguise his features completely.
“Fucking, goddamn it, Willy, what did I tell you about coming in and trying to rob the place again tonight!” bellowed Chaz peevishly. He’d thought he was about to get into Abby’s pants, and this second interruption seemed to fill him with bitter resentment. Without looking away from Abby’s face, he said, “It’s not fucking funny, Drunk Willy, and you’ll pay for whatever the fuck you just broke.”
Without deigning to glance at the figure, he got to his feet, walked around t
he counter and stopped in front of the towering dude.
Only then did Chaz look up and realize that this guy was most definitely not Drunk Willy. In the shadows under the hood, a pair of eyes flared red like distant stars going supernova. Chaz froze.
Then, quick as a whip, the big man picked Chaz up with one hand and hurled him backward. He flew across the room like he’d been fired from a cannon and smashed into the far wall, a good twenty feet away.
It was a superhuman effort. Chaz wasn’t a big guy, but Abby knew that it wasn’t just anyone who could throw an average-sized human across a room with a ferocity that could knock the pictures off the wall.
Chaz slid to the floor, wheezing like a punctured set of bagpipes. His eyes were huge and shocked. Before he could even stir, the figure was on him, striding across the room in a few giant steps. He grasped Chaz by his hair and lifted him effortlessly off the ground. For a moment, nothing happened.
And then Chaz started to scream, a pitiful, tearing wail that seemed to echo out from some deep reservoir of despair. Before Abby’s eyes, Chaz’s handlebar mustache burst into flames, then his eyebrows and then his hair. Horror-stricken, Abby watched as Chaz started to smolder and disintegrate from the feet up, like a stick of incense sped up. In the space of a few seconds, the nineteen-year-old manager had been turned into a pile of ash and dust – ironically taking the shape of his handlebar mustache.
“Holy raven-balls!” Abby screamed.
The looming figure, drawn by the sound of her exclamation, turned, taking off his hood as he thudded heavily toward her.
His oversized head looked like a boulder carved from red granite. The skin was dark and burned-looking, with cracks across it through which Abby could see bright orange light. His cranium was topped with a pair of stubby, pointed horns.
He looked down at Abby as she cowered on her stool. Her legs might have been a couple of sticks of quivering mush, such as the likelihood of her being able to run away.
When the imposing beast spoke, it was in a voice of rolling boulders and cracking mountainsides, of bubbling molten rock and falling grit.
“Give me the stuff,” it rumbled.
Shaking like Jell-O, Abby reached under the counter and pulled her wallet from her bag. There wasn’t much in it; a few coins and a solitary silver piece. She placed it on the counter and then withdrew into herself.
The giant prodded the wallet and then flicked it angrily aside. Steam rose off his horns. He pointed to the two empty cups on the counter and sniffed long and deep, then pointed at the coffee grounds that lay scattered about the machine.
“You want the coffee?” she managed to squeak.
“The caffeine. Now!”
Abby glanced over at the gold-foil packet that Chaz had left at the other end of the counter. She couldn’t believe that Chaz was gone – as annoying and frustrating as he’d been – and was now only a pile of dust on the carpet.
The huge humanoid figure followed her glance, spied the packet and grunted. Then he reached over the counter, plucked Abby up by her head and pinned her against the wall. Her feet dangling in mid-air, Abby looked down and saw the pile of ash that had been her boss. She knew that she was about to join him.
In an animalistic fit of panic and rage, Abby shoved against the creature’s muscular chest – over which it wore a T-shirt bearing the words, ‘You had me at frappuccino’ – and screamed. She may as well have tried to move a bus.
A ball of light, nearly six inches in diameter, formed in her hands. Trying to get it off, Abby screamed and thrust it into the creature’s chest. As soon as the ball of blue light touched the hulking thing, it was propelled backward – so fast that it might’ve been attached to some invisible bungee cord. It shot across the room and punched cleanly through the wall – plaster, brick and all – and disappeared into the alleyway behind the coffee shop. Abby dropped heavily to her feet and collapsed onto her knees.
She stayed frozen for a moment until she realized the soft powder below her knees was the ash of her former manager. Elevating unsteadily to her feet and staring in disbelief at the gaping hole where the beast had been ejected, she clenched her fists until her knuckles turned white.
“You’ve just been percolated bitch!” she belted in a high, hysterical voice. She wisked the ash off her knees and took a calming breath.
Not knowing what to do next, she grabbed her bag, the gold-foil packet of caffeinated coffee – as well as a foxberry scone – and raced out of the store.
Chapter 2
There are a variety of sounds that can instantly be recognized and identified, even though you’ve never actually heard them before. In humans, these sounds are hard-wired into brains in an attempt to help preserve our fragile lives. They are the sort of sounds that make you crouch and be quiet before you know what you’re doing, the kind of noises that result in your legs being kicked into gear so that you find yourself running from danger before you know that there is a danger. The sound of the saber-toothed tiger stalking outside of early man’s cave must have been one of these sounds, for example.
A more modern sound that transcends experience and learning is the sound of the law hammering on your door first thing in the morning.
Abby’s eyes snapped open. The continuous noise of some determined person knocking had her hind-brain in action before she’d even gotten to her feet.
All that Abby knew when she woke up was that something was wrong. For a few seconds, the details of the preceding evening refused to come to her mind. All she could remember was that, for some reason, she’d bolted – not home to her place – but to her sister, Casey’s apartment.
Sitting up and rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she realized that there was someone else sharing the room with her on this fresh morning. That someone was a naked dude sitting on the opposite couch from the one that she had slept the morning away on. He was sitting, in his birthday suit, and eating Mint-N-Mushrooms cereal out of the box.
“’ Sup?” he said.
Abby opened her mouth; although, she was stumped as to what you say to a naked stranger munching breakfast cereal. Thankfully, she was spared the effort when she heard someone emerge from a room down the hall and her sister, Casey, stumped into the room with a frown across her dial. She was wearing an oversized T-shirt and not much else – nothing else, in fact, as Abby could see the bare bottom of her butt cheeks peeping out from under the hem of the shirt.
“What the fuck are you doing, man?” Casey demanded of the naked guy on the couch.
“Eating breakfast,” he replied.
“Casey,” Abby said, “who’s the nude dude?”
Casey, realizing for the first time that her sister was in her apartment, said, “Abby! What the hell are you doing here? Uh, this is… This is… Who are you again, man?”
The naked guy said, through a mouthful of Mint-N-Mushrooms, “Derek.”
“Right, this is Derek. A man, admittedly, I have known for less than twelve hours, but am now intimately acquainted with.” She turned to Derek, raising her voice to be heard over the continued knocking, which had now risen in volume. “Derek, why are you eating my cereal out of the box, and why the hell is your bare asshole in contact with my whale-fur couch?”
Derek swallowed hugely. “Technically,” he said, “I’m not actually on the whale skin. I’m sitting in the blow-hole.”
Abby and Casey looked at Derek, and then at each other.
“Abs, why are you here?” Casey asked, deciding to erase her one-night stand from her mind for the present.
“Case, I got into some trouble last night, I think. Only I don’t know what the hell happened! I just needed to get somewhere safe, and I didn’t want to be alone, and the first place I thought of was here. Then when I got here, you and Derek were going at it so loud that I couldn’t make myself heard, so I crashed on the couch.”
Casey, seeming to be struggling with so much batshit crazy information first thing in the morning, shook her head and jerked her thumb
toward the entrance. “And who the fuck is playing the role of a giant woodpecker at the front door?”
Abby opened her mouth to say that she didn’t know when a deep, commanding voice answered for her.
“This the RCPD! Open the door! I repeat, this is the Ravencharm Police Department! Will the owner of the property please open the door!”
After giving her sister a searching look, Casey padded slowly back out into the hallway and opened the door a crack. The knocking immediately ceased. Speaking past the chain that kept the door bolted, Casey asked, “Can I help you? We don’t often see the cops bothering to show their faces down here in Rotwood Harbor.”
“Where’s the girl?” said a firm but polite voice.
“What girl? Who wants to know?”
“My name’s Drake. I’m part of the RCPD. We’re looking for a young woman in connection with an incident in Rotwood late last night.”
Casey gave the man through the gap in the door the once over, from top to bottom. He was tall – at least six foot four – and built like a professional football player. His arms were crossed, revealing biceps that bulged – not in the excessive way of a vain bodybuilding-type, but in the way that gave the impression that this was a man who had become muscular through such wholesome daily exercises as busting perps’ heads against steering wheels and throwing handfuls of criminals into police cells.
He looked every inch the respectable, modern lawman: well-groomed, square-jawed and handsome to boot. Casey – suddenly very aware that she had no underwear on – imagined that, under the tight-fitting black T-shirt, this cop probably had a set of abdominal muscles she’d love to eat her breakfast off.
Then, abruptly, she realized that, although the young man looked like the very epitome of a diligent police officer, he wasn’t wearing a uniform.
“How do I know you’re a cop?” she inquired. “You’re not dressed like one.”
The man forced a smile. He wore sunglasses, so Casey couldn’t read his eyes. “I’m part of a special undercover unit,” he said.
Caffeinated Magic: Supernatural Barista Academy Page 2
