She closed her eyes and waited for whatever happened when you hit the ground at terminal velocity.
Suddenly, the feeling that the bottom had dropped out of her stomach lessened and then stopped, and she felt herself rising.
Abby cracked open her eyes and saw that the street was, inexplicably, falling back away from her. It seemed as if she wasn’t going to end as a smear on the sidewalk after all. How this had happened, though, she couldn’t guess. As she dazedly watched the streets of Rotwood fall away from her, the people and streets turning into toys, she became aware of a slight pressure under her arms, and also a pleasant humming sound. She looked to her right and saw that one of the tiny, blue-haired women had taken her companionably by the arm and was flying alongside her. She turned to her left and saw the other little woman doing the same. The woman winked at her.
“So I’m not going to die,” she said impassively.
The woman on her right chuckled. It was a high-pitched, snickering sound, full of potential mischief and delight.
“Oh, you will, dear,” she said. “We all die; don’t you know? But your number isn’t up yet. Not just yet anyway.” She giggled again.
“Oh, well, isn’t that comforting,” Abby said and allowed unconsciousness to swallow her down its velvet throat.
Chapter 3
Abby came to sitting propped in a wonderfully comfortable and plump chair, in front of a grate in which a cozy little fire was crackling merrily.
It only took her about six seconds to realize that the fire was purple.
She sat up, instantly as awake and alert as if she’d just been dunked in a vat of the coffee that Chaz had whipped up for her the night before. With full consciousness, total recollection poured over her. Her last shift at work, Chaz crumbling to dust, that fiery thing, the lion creature, the hammering at the door, Drake, the roof, falling…
“Great feathery raven-balls, what the hell is going on?” she asked herself dreamily, turning around in her seat. Her gaze swept her immediate surroundings.
She was sitting in what appeared to be a coffee shop. But this was like no coffee shop that she’d ever set foot in, like nothing one could expect to find in Rotwood Harbor or the other parts of town that she’d ever explored. The counter was a great slab of gleaming ebony wood, as long as half a football field, by the looks of it. Behind it a vast, gleaming copper roaster sparkled, puffs of fragrant steam billowing sporadically from it. It was covered in glinting glass gauges and myriad shiny copper pipes snaked out from it in all directions – some as thick as your wrist, others pencil-thin – and disappeared into adjacent walls and through the floor. The ceiling was an ornamental glass dome through which fingers of sunlight occasionally probed whenever scudding clouds the color of dirty wool let it. There was a big open space in front of the main counter. Carved into the dark, wooden boards was a huge mug of coffee – about twenty feet wide – engraved to look like it was being viewed from above, and in the middle of the cup was the classic barista’s feather. Scattered about the place were comfortable chairs and low tables, fire-pits and magazine racks, and footstools.
But, as pleasant and comfortable as the room was, it was the two figures sitting casually on the sofa opposite her that commanded all of Abby’s attention.
The two tiny, blue-haired women sat on the brown leather couch, their short, stumpy legs swinging in mid-air. One of them had her head buried in a newspaper. Behind both of them, their kaleidoscopic wings shimmered in the light coming through the glass dome.
“Ah,” said the other, “Sleeping Beauty awakes.”
The other woman finished reading whatever it was she was perusing in the paper, folded it and placed it neatly on the table in front of her.
“You’re awake then, dear?” she said.
Abby nodded. “I think I am,” she said. “Although my eyes are telling me that you two tiny chicks have wings – which is impossible – so maybe I’m hallucinating?”
The other woman cackled. “Hallucinating? Hallucinating she says, Cherry! I wish you could give us some of whatever it is you’ve taken!”
The other, calmer individual raised her hands to quiet her friend. “Do excuse my sister,” she said. “She’s been on a bit of bean bender the last couple of days – hasn’t imbibed anything but straight café mocha for the last forty-eight hours. If we hadn’t been roped in by Drake to go and help him with your extraction, she’d probably be in the decaf tank right now.” The little woman held out her hand and, because human beings are funny things and have all sorts of behaviors pre-programmed into them, Abby took it and shook it.
“I’m Cherry,” the woman said with a brief smile. “And this is my sister, Pea.”
Pea nodded a greeting, her beady eyes flicking around the room so fast they made Abby feel ill.
“I’m Abby,” Abby said.
“That’s right, dear,” said Cherry.
“Um, where the hell are we?”
“In Ravencharm, dear.”
“Ah, I see. And you do have wings there, sprouting out of your back sort of thing. You know that, do you?”
“Yes, dear.”
“Nothing, um, nothing strikes you as weird about that at all?”
Cherry gave her a puzzled look. “Weird, dear?”
“Well, you know, humans don’t usually have wings, do they? Moths, yes. Ravens, yes. But not your average human.”
Pea started cackling maniacally. “She thinks we’re humans, sister!” she choked. “Gods, can you imagine how dull that would be!”
Cherry waved Pea into silence again. “We’re not human, dear,” she said gently, as if explaining to an infant that a doppio was a two-shot serving of espresso.
“No, we’re definitely not!” Pea said. “We’re fae, and proud of it.”
Abby’s brow wrinkled. “Fae?”
Pea rolled her eyes. “Fairies, if you like, but fae is the term we prefer, so make sure you use it.” Her wings gave a brief flurry, sending rainbow sparkles dancing across Abby’s vision. “Hence the wings.”
“And if I may say so, dear,” Cherry said, “it’s a good thing we have wings. Otherwise, we’d probably be scraping what was left of you into a bucket right about now.”
“Yeah,” grunted Pea, “and not a big one either. Humans sure do tend to splash when you drop ‘em from a height.”
Abby opened her mouth to ask a host of questions that were clamoring at the back of her head, but with their hands raised, Cherry cut her off.
“Well, dear,” she said, fluttering into the air so that she came to rest on her feet. “Now that you’re back in the world of the living, shall we move on?”
“Move on?”
“Yes, we were told to wait here until you’d had a little sleep and then take you down to the Hopper.”
“What the hell is the Hopper?” Abby asked.
“It’s, like, the central hub of – well, you’ll see soon enough,” Pea said.
The hyperactive little woman clapped Abby in the middle of her back, which was as high as she could reach, and the two blue-haired sisters walked her over to the long ebony counter.
The air was thick with the smell of roasting coffee and Abby suddenly felt invigorated, in the same way that one is filled with energy and life when standing on top of a cliff and taking a deep breath of sea air.
There was a wizened older man behind the counter, dressed fashionably in a waistcoat, flat cap, and tarnished brogue shoes. His sleeves rolled up, exposing his collection of rather trendy neo-traditional sailor tattoos. On his top lip was a brimming white mustache that you could’ve cut off and used to sweep the floors. It might’ve been a trick of the light or the sleepy haze that still cloaked Abby’s mind, but she could’ve sworn that the man’s tattoos stirred and slightly shifted as he moved.
“Well, well, well, if it ain’t my two favorite flying foxes!” the old man wheezed enthusiastically as the two fae led Abby over.
“Picklewick, it’s nice to see you,” replied Cherry.
“And who the dickens is this young lass, wide of eye and slack of jaw?” Picklewick asked. On closer inspection, Abby noticed that the eyes under a couple of snowy white eyebrows were a washed-out shade of blue and practically white.
“This is Abby,” Pea said, letting out a little cackle. “She’s a newbie, you know. Thinks she’s hallucinating.”
Picklewick peered closely at Pea. “Dang it, Pea, when was the last time you had a decent sleep?”
“Who needs sleep when there’s such a thing as ristretto!”
“Woman, you want to lay off so much of the brown juice, unless you want to spend a spell in the decaf tank again,” Picklewick said. He looked at Cherry. “I’d try and sort her out if I were you, calm her down a bit before you go and see Miss Hightide.”
“Unfortunately, there’s no time,” Cherry said. “Speaking of which, would you be so kind as to let us down, Picklewick?”
“Of course. It’d be a pleasure. You three go and assume the position in the middle of the floor there.”
“Thank you,” said Cherry. She led Abby over to the center of the great carving that was set into the floor, so that all three women were standing on the barista’s feather.
“Ready?” called Picklewick.
“Ready when you are,” called Pea.
Abby looked around. “Ready?” she repeated. “Ready for what?”
Pea gave her a wink and then said, “You haven’t eaten recently, have you?”
“Eaten? No. Why do you ask?”
“I just wanted to know whether I should move away from you when we get to the Hopper, that’s all.”
At the counter, Picklewick was making a coffee. If anyone had been watching, they would have seen him pour in the frothed milk and decorate the top of the brew with a perfect little door.
Abby frowned down at the little fae. “What the hell are you talking about, Pea?”
Pea gave her a grin as sharp and fine as a knife wound. “You’ll see,” she said.
Abruptly, Abby had the unpleasant sensation that she had hopped onto a carousel that was going out of control. The walls around her blurred and it felt as if she had left her stomach a few miles behind her. Looking down, she saw the floor was warping, becoming streaked with white—the same color, in fact, as the top of Picklewick’s freshly made coffee. She tried to speak, but the words were stolen out of her mouth before she could even utter them. Next to her, the two fae seemed frozen, standing quite unconcernedly with their eyes closed.
And then it was over, and Abby found herself on her hands and knees on another, entirely different floor. This floor was as starkly white as the one in the great entrance space of the coffee shop had been dark brown.
Abby managed to suck in a deep, shuddering breath and then said, “What the fuck was that?”
Cherry, clucking like an old hen, put an arm under Abby and pulled her to her feet – she had to get airborne for a moment to properly accomplish this, as the tips of her spiky neon blue hair barely tickled the underside of Abby’s chin.
“Sorry, dear,” she said, brushing Abby down. “I should’ve remembered that you probably hadn’t done that before.”
“You should’ve remembered that I probably hadn’t ever been sucked into the vortex of a giant cup of coffee and magically transported through the floor into – where the heck are we?”
“We are now in the Hopper!” Pea said, twirling theatrically on her heels and fluttering her wings.
“The Hopper,” Cherry explained, “is deep under Ravencharm, and is the base of our organization.”
“And what is the organization?” Abby asked.
“This,” Cherry said, indicating three huge letters, S.B.A, that were white and speckled with brown, like the color of the foam on top of a coffee, “is the Supernatural Barista Academy.”
Cherry might’ve been expecting a wide-eyed round of applause from Abby, but Abby held up her hands in a helpless gesture. She was in dire need of a mental time-out.
“Hold on, hold on,” she said. “I know that what we just did doesn’t faze you– to you, getting sucked through a floor and swirled about and spat out somewhere completely different is probably as run-of-the-mill as me getting into an elevator – but that was a big deal to me, okay? What is going on? And I mean generally, is all this magic or something?”
Cherry cocked her head to the side and then said, “It’s more what we call ‘supernatural,’ but your interpretation of the term magic sounds like it amounts to roughly the same thing. The supernatural world is one that doesn’t necessarily obey the laws of nature or physics.”
“Yeah,” Abby said, “that’s what I thought. Fucking magic.”
“Are you all right?” Cherry asked.
Abby nodded, straightening her miniskirt, which had ridden dangerously high up her thighs when she had fallen to her knees. “Yeah, I’m fine,” she said. “It’s just I’m a chemist, you know, a scientist. I just needed a blanket term to explain all this wacky shit that I’ve never seen before and can’t understand and magic – or supernatural, I guess – will do.”
“Can we go now?” Pea asked. She was hopping from one foot to another in the manner of a toddler who has overdosed on cookies, her wings flitting and fidgeting.
“Sure,” Abby replied, pushing her hair out of her eyes. “Lead on.”
It seemed that they were in a vast atrium on the ceiling of which, barely discernible in the shadowy heights, was carved the underside of a saucer. Cherry and Pea led Abby past a huge ivory desk that mirrored the one in the entrance hall of the coffee shop from which they’d just been transported. Abby’s head oscillated from side to side, her gaze snagging on one bizarre sight after another. The thing that occupied most of her attention, and kept her jaw hanging open in perplexed amazement, were the people. The men and women strolling around, leaning against tables and sitting in chairs chatting to each other over steaming cups and mugs and glasses of fragrant java, were like something out of someone's overactive imagination.
“Will you stop pointing and gawping at people, human?” Pea hissed, grabbing Abby by the arm and hurrying past a group of tall, pale figures who were standing around gossiping over mugs of red-flecked foam.
“But those are – they were vampires, weren’t they?”
“So? When you think about it, we’re all the same in that we’re different, aren’t we? Just let ‘em enjoy their bloody lattes in peace.”
“Bloody lattes…”
“Just hurry up.”
Abby caught sight of the lion-like creature that had pinned her in her seat at her sister’s place. As she watched, the creature flowed upward and turned into a good-looking man with green and brown skin. She was about to comment on this remarkable bit of shifting when a flash of flame at the back of the hall arrested her attention.
A massive head sat atop a long sinewy neck, whipped out of a cloud of flames, and disappeared behind a vast pile of green beans.
“Pea?”
“What now, gods damn it?”
“That’s a dragon.”
“Wow. Your powers of deduction continue to dazzle me. No wonder Drake was so keen on finding you.”
“There’s no need to be like that. It’s not every day that you see a fucking fairy-tale creature, is it?”
“Maybe not for you.”
“Is it dangerous?”
“Of course it’s fucking dangerous. It’s a fucking dragon.”
“Why’s it here then?”
Pea managed to gain control of her twitching eyes just long enough to roll them. “How else would we roast all the coffee beans this place runs on, do you suppose?”
They walked past a series of tanks – enormous aquariums they reminded Abby of – in which a few jittery folks were, quite literally, bouncing off the walls.
“Why are those guys in there?” Abby asked.
Pea, her eyes twitching spastically, said, “Those are the decaf tanks. It’s where you’re put if you suck back a little bit too mu
ch juice of the bean, if you get me.”
Abby gave her a blank stare. Pea snorted. “It’s where they put you when you drink too much coffee – too much of the pure caffeinated good shit – and get a little bit too revved up. You stay in there until you’ve cooled off a little. Saves on damages around the place, you know.”
Abby watched as a young guy with yellowing skin and dark rings around his eyes leaped off the couch he had been bouncing frantically on and charged at the transparent wall of the decaf tank. The tank seemed to be sound-proofed because Abby couldn’t hear a thing as the young man smacked into the wall with terrific force. His head flew off and disappeared behind an armchair. Abby yelped, but the few people who were bothering to watch chuckled and went back to their coffees.
“Did you see –”
“Relax,” Pea said, dragging her onward. “He’s a zombie. They’re always losing their heads when they get all buzzed out on caffeine.”
Pea and Abby hurried to catch up with Cherry, who had gotten a little ahead of them, what with Abby’s continual stopping and starting. When they caught up with her, they were suddenly hailed by a familiar voice.
“You three!” it said. “There you are. I’ve been waiting down here for ages.”
It was Drake.
Without hesitation, Abby marched straight up to the tall, muscular man and poked him hard in the chest. She noticed that prodding his pectoral muscles was like trying to stab a finger into a block of oak.
“Well, hey there!” she said. “If it isn’t the swell gentleman cop – if you are a cop, of course – who threw my ass off the top of a building! How are you, pal?”
Drake had started to turn an interesting shade of red from the neck up. Clearly, he had been expecting a reaction, thought Abby, but not this one.
Maybe, she thought, it was this one.
And she drove her knee as hard as she could into his groin.
Drake, as mentioned, was a big man, and this made it all the more satisfying for Abby when he slowly folded over, like a tire with a hole in it. He didn’t make much noise, just a sort of hissing wheeze as he collapsed onto the floor.
Caffeinated Magic: Supernatural Barista Academy Page 4
