A few people around them winced.
Abby sat down on the arm of a chair while she waited for Drake to pull himself together. It took a few moments. When he finally managed to pull himself back into a standing position, she said, “How are you, Drake?”
Drake stood next to her – though he was careful to stay out of range of any more knee attacks – and tried to smile. Abby saw that his fall had knocked his sunglasses off and he had the loveliest stormy gray eyes she had ever seen.
“Well,” he said stiffly, “I was doing pretty well right up until you kneed my balls into my stomach.”
“You can’t tell me that you didn’t have it coming.”
“Fair point,” the big man said, his voice strained. He cleared his throat and pulled himself back up to his formidable height and breadth. “Now that the tearful scenes of old friends reunited have played out, let’s get you along to see the boss lady.”
“Who?”
“Gods, just shut up with the questions and go with the man, will you?” Pea huffed. “Everything will be explained!”
***
“Ah, you must be Abby. Abby Hall.”
Must I? Abby thought bitterly.
The woman in front of her was dressed head to toe in blue, wrapped and swathed and layered in blue silks, lace and other cloth that Abby didn’t recognize. Whereas some people mixed up their outfit with different colors, this woman had kept her getup interesting by combining different fabrics, patterns, and textures. It was made bluer by the fact that the woman, smiling in that particular way only those who wield great power do, was also blue of skin and blue of hair. Her hair was the color of the tropical deeps that Abby had seen in books but had never gazed upon in real life. It was piled up on her head in a towering beehive of dreadlocks, which looked heavy. Her skin was a pleasing azure and glowed with radiance, as if it was lit by some concealed fire within.
“Hi,” Abby said, feeling for the first time that she was a little underdressed for the occasion.
“I,” said the woman, “am Miss Delphine Hightide. I am the queen of this buzzing hive.” She gave Abby a long look and Abby saw that the sapphire eyes had neither white nor pupil.
“Look,” Abby said, “this is all very impressive and everything – I mean it, it’s crazy – but can someone tell me, in as few words as possible and with the least amount of mystical pauses, just what in the hell is going on, please? I’ve just managed to get my head around the fact that there is such a thing as magic, and that’s fine. But I’m a chemist, and I’d love to have all the data in front of me before I start making any decisions. Or completely freaking out.”
“That,” said Miss Delphine Hightide, “is very wise.” She gazed at Abby for a few seconds longer.
The two of them, along with Drake, Cherry, and Pea, who stood against the wall, were in a large office. Abby and Miss Hightide stood in front of the desk and looked carefully at one another.
“You are special, Abby,” Miss Hightide said.
“Special how?” asked Abby.
“Special in the way that you have the ability to unlock the supernatural part of yourself, to free power within yourself that few people know how to access.”
Abby had seen a few superhero movies. She always got frustrated with the hero’s initial reluctance to embrace their power when they found out what it was, but she’d seen the ball of light form in her hands. She’d seen the way that it had launched that fiery monster straight through a brick wall. The scientist inside her told her that this was, indeed, some sort of defense mechanism – something triggered by stress, perhaps, but something originating from within her nonetheless.
“The light?” she asked. “The light that formed in my hand the other night, when that thing appeared? What was that thing anyway?”
“That was a red-eye demon.”
“Right. Is that what blasted it then, some sort of magical ability that was released due to me being about to die?”
Miss Hightide gestured for Abby to take a seat and then sat opposite her. “Yes and no,” she said. “Yes, the light was a source of supernatural power released from your body. No, it wasn’t the stress of the situation that unlocked it, but the caffeine from the brew that your colleague made. The caffeine activated a part of you that has lain dormant all your life.”
“So is this, like, the usual operating procedure for when you find someone new who has discovered their caffeine powers or whatever you call it? Do you send in a red-eye demon to test them out and then send this guy”—she jerked a thumb at Drake—“to go and chuck them off a building and scare the shit out of them? Then you bring them down here? Is that the way it normally works?”
Abby hadn’t realized how angry she had been until she finished speaking.
“No,” said Hightide. “No, that isn’t the usual modus operandi. For one, we don’t control, or have anything to do, with demons. They’re a dangerous and merciless foe and, to be honest, the fact that you survived an encounter with one – let alone your first encounter with a demon of any sort – is nothing less than a miracle.”
“Well, that’s about as comforting as a kick in the crotch,” Abby said.
Miss Delphine Hightide flashed her a quick grin, showing off teeth that were, surprisingly, a bright white.
“What I should have said, or maybe followed it up with, is that for you to have the sheer power to defeat a demon at the very moment that you unlocked your powers is exceedingly rare. I’ve never heard the likes of it.”
Appearing at Abby’s side, Drake handed her a small glass coffee cup. There was only about a shot of hot, brown coffee inside. It was so dark that it was almost black.
“What is this?” Abby asked, tentatively taking the glass cup from him. “It’s not some sort of buzzy magic coffee that’s going to have me enter some heightened dream state through which I unlock my full potential or some raven shit like that, is it?”
Drake gave her a puzzled look. “No. It’s a demitasse of pure Arabica. Not too potent – nothing like that brew that you and your friend bathed your tonsils in the other night. It’s just to get you used to taking caffeine into your system every day.”
Abby knocked back the shot of coffee and instantly felt a warm surge swell out from her stomach. It seemed to flow along the pathways of her body, getting gradually weaker as it reached her fingertips.
Drake carefully took the little glass back from Abby. “It also,” he said, “gives me your fingerprints and another sample of your saliva.”
“Jeez, how much saliva does one man need?” Abby said with a half-smile. “I’ll fill a bottle if that’s going to make you happy.”
Drake didn’t answer, but he set the glass on a small pad by Hightide’s computer terminal and pressed a button. The pad holding the glass sank into the desk and out of sight.
Miss Delphine Hightide got up and took her place behind her desk, leaning forward and studying the computer screen with serious intensity. Abby could see numbers and letters reflecting in the great sapphire eyes, but couldn’t make anything of the reflections.
“Tell me, Abby,” Miss Hightide said, “do you know anything about your father? Do you know who he was, where he came from, anything like that?”
Abby smiled sadly and looked at her hands. “No,” she said quietly. “No. I never met the bastard. I never knew him. I don’t even have a picture of him. Why?”
“Well, it’s just that the more we know of your parents the easier it is for us to trace back to where your supernatural abilities originate.”
“Why does that matter?”
“It doesn’t. Not really. It’s just interesting to know where these traits and skills came from. Like anything inherited, there are those characteristics and talents that are more beneficial when it comes to the good of our world than others.”
Abby replayed this sentence back in her head.
“You mean that there are some supernaturals who go bad? There are some people who have the ability to do real magic tha
t may be more inclined to go off the rails? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Broadly speaking, I suppose you could say th–”
But the self-proclaimed queen of the hive’s words died in her throat. She was looking fixedly at the computer screen, the text of which had stopped scrolling now. The test had come back with its results.
For a moment, Abby saw astonishment and dread, shock, and disbelief all on Miss Hightide’s face. Then, as if she’d thrown a wet towel over a campfire, her features were once again obscured, cloudy, and unreadable.
Miss Delphine Hightide had seen many results pop up on her computer screen. But she had never seen results pop up the likes of which were displayed on her monitor now. She tried to hitch a smile onto her face, but the fact remained that, according to the state-of-the-art genetic reader on her computer, the girl sitting casually in front of her was half-demon – and not just a demon, but a power-demon.
“What did you see?” Abby asked, her eyes not leaving Miss Hightides.
“What did I see?” Hightide muttered to herself. “What did I see?” She blinked and turned back to the other three people in the room, as if she’d only just remembered that they were there. “Your results. Just your results, Abby. Everyone’s results are different, just as everyone’s genetic codes are subtly different.”
“Yeah, but –” Abby began.
Miss Hightide cut her off with a gentle, but unarguable, raising of her slim blue hand.
“Now I’m afraid that going back to your old life is an impossibility.”
“Why?”
“Because you are one of us, and you have now unlocked your supernatural powers. There’s no going back to what you considered normalcy. You must stay here with us for a time. You must learn to hone your skills and abilities, build up your tolerance of caffeine so that you can more easily and safely harness it. Does that sound agreeable to you, Miss Hall?”
Abby considered her options. There weren’t any, at least not any that she was eager to explore. She’d rather take a chance in a world in which it was common practice to be tossed off buildings and sucked through floors than go back to a life behind a counter pouring decaf for the masses.
“Yeah, all right,” she said.
“Good,” Miss Hightide said, beaming.
“Besides,” said Abby, “I don’t think Flick the Bean will be taking me back any time soon, not after I made that big mess of their wall.”
Miss Delphine Hightide gave her a thin smile. “Indeed. If that is all settled then, I think it best that you start your studies right away – as in tomorrow.”
Abby nodded, her chin held up and her eyes steady. “Wait. What about my sister, Casey? She saw me dragged out by…”
“She fled,” said Drake. “After escorting you off the roof, I went down to administer a cocktail that would wipe her memory of recent events, but vanished.”
Miss Hightide cocked an eyebrow, “Sister, eh? Any idea where she might be?”
Abby shrugged her shoulders and raised her palms, “I haven’t a raven-fucking clue. Probably at a bar to getting a stiff drink after what she witnessed.”
“The S.B.A. will locate her, rest assured Miss Hall. We need to test her for similar abilities. Any other siblings?”
“Nope, just Casey. You’ll let me know when you find her?”
“Of course, “said Miss Hightide. “You have my word.”
Chapter 4
The next morning, after spending the night in a dormitory somewhere within the caverns of the Supernatural Barista Academy, Abby emerged into the vast subterranean cavern through which she had been walked by the blue-haired fae sisters the day before. She realized now, after a good ten hours of dreamless sleep, that there were several important questions that she had neglected to ask the previous evening. She’d been so exhausted by everything that she’d only been able to stagger along behind Drake, dragging her feet, while he led her through a series of passages and heavy doors, eventually leaving her outside an iron-studded door.
“Okay,” Drake had said, “here’s what you need to know about tomorrow.”
His mouth had opened and then a sort of buzzing had filled Abby’s fatigued mind. Thoughts of dragons playing barista, buzzed-out humanoids in giant glass tanks, and vampires drinking lattes laced with bodily fluids floated through her mind like cobwebs on the breeze.
“Have you got that?” Drake had asked.
“What? Oh, yeah,” she had replied, not having a clue as to what he had been saying.
The athletic man had given her a skeptical look and then said, “All right, if you say so. I’ll see you tomorrow then.”
“Yeah, right, see you.”
Abby had gone through the door – assuming that Drake had left her outside it because it was, in fact, her room – and found a lovely, neat double bed awaiting her. It had seemed to beckon invitingly to her as she stood in the middle of the little room’s floor. The lighting was dim and there appeared to be a bathroom in a little room off to one side. She’d only had the presence of mind to slip off her sneakers, note that there was a pair of jeans, a stack of shirts, underwear and socks and a hooded sweatshirt on a small desk, before crashing fully-dressed onto the bed.
And now, as she stood in the strange light of day, which seemed to emanate from everywhere and nowhere, she realized that she had no idea where to go or what to do. It wasn’t the slick start that Miss Hightide or Drake would be expecting.
Abby put her hands in the pockets of her new jeans and turned slowly on the spot, hoping to see something that would point her in the direction that she needed to go. As she finished her gradual three-sixty, she came face to face with none other than Drake – well, face to chest, to be more precise – who seemed to have materialized out of nowhere.
“Oh,” Abby said. “Hi.”
“Morning,” Drake said. “You look a little lost.”
Abby raised one of her shapely eyebrows at him. “You’re as perceptive as you are good at tossing girls off roofs.”
To her delight, Drake squirmed uncomfortably. “Look,” he said, “I never meant to hurt you. It was meant to test your resolve, to see how tough you were.”
“Oh, that’s okay, then,” Abby said stonily.
“Do you think you’ll be able to forgive me?”
“Possibly.”
Drake nodded and a sticky silence stretched out like freshly-made pizza dough.
“Any idea how long that will take potentially?” he finally asked.
Even though she had decided to try and stretch out Drake’s guilt for as long as possible, Abby laughed. “Well, that’s up to me, isn’t it? But what would suit you?”
Drake started to answer and then cut himself off at the look on Abby’s face. “Yeah, it’s, uh, up to you, I guess.”
“Great,” Abby said. “I love to watch a man writhe.”
She and Drake held each other’s gazes for, perhaps, a little longer than necessary.
He does have gorgeous eyes, Abby thought.
Drake cleared his throat and looked away.
“I’ve, uh, I’ve been assigned as your supervisor,” he said.
“My supervisor?”
“Yes.”
“What do you supervise me doing, may I ask?” Abby asked innocently.
On the outside, Drake’s face remained an inscrutable mask but internally, his mind was flicking through a whole multitude of possible things that he wouldn’t mind supervising Abby doing.
“I think Miss Hightide expects me to be a guide of sorts. Show you the ropes and whatnot. Give you a finger in the right direction – I mean, point a finger in the right direction!”
Drake’s face went scarlet.
Abby, for some reason, found herself endeavoring to keep a straight face and spare the man a little embarrassment.
“Well, that sounds nice,” she said evenly. “Where are you going to… point me first?”
Abby thought that if Drake blushed any more deeply, he would be in danger
of spontaneously combusting.
“Well, we need to get you to class. Obviously. Yes, your first class, which is this way.”
The two of them set off down a corridor that looked to be cut out of solid stone. It was wiggly and uneven.
“These passages look like they were burrowed out of the earth by some giant mole.”
Drake, eager to regain the upper hand in the conversation, smiled at shook his head at her. “A giant mole?” he said. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Well, excuse me,” Abby said, nudging him with an elbow. “I didn’t mean to sound ridiculous. Not in a place that employs dragons as baristas and gods know what else. Anyway,” she continued a little defensively, “I was just trying to make a point that these tunnels aren’t smooth. I didn’t mean that there was some enormous mole that you’ve got locked up somewhere that you use to dig out the renovations when you need them done.” She snorted derisively, trying to make it clear that Drake was a dumbass for thinking that she meant what she said.
“You’re right. They aren’t dug by moles,” he said.
“How’d you do it then?”
“Gophers.”
Abby stopped walking. Drake kept walking for a few steps before he realized she was no longer with him and then turned. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“Gophers?”
“That’s right.”
“You use loads of gophers – like animals?”
“What? No, don’t be stupid.”
Abby shook her head. “I just thought –”
“We don’t use heaps of them, just a couple of giant yellow-crested gophers. They’re great for excavation work, as well as subterranean agriculture. Now would you hurry up or we’re going to be late.”
“What the hell am I going to be learning in these classes anyway?” Abby asked as they set off again, pushing giant gophers to the back of her mind. “I still don’t know what it is I’m here to learn, or why I’m here to learn it.”
Drake took a deep breath.
“Okay,” he said, glancing at her from the corner of one gray eye as they continued to stride along. “All you need to know at this point is that you’re here, essentially, to learn how to fight.”
Caffeinated Magic: Supernatural Barista Academy Page 5
