“Because half the pleasure is in the cultivation,” Roderick murmured. “Ask any gardener, dear boy, and they will tell you the same.”
Then Roderick went inside and murdered a frightened little man whose mortgage payment was overdue. By sunrise the next morning the neighbors wondered just how long that house had been abandoned.
Jennifer knocked at the door of the green house on Morehead Hill. The lines running from the telephone pole to the technopagans’ home were humming with electromagnetic feedback. She smirked. A younger version of her would have considered a house like this to be heaven.
When the door opened it was Xi. “Ah,” he said to her. “Can we help you?”
“Yes,” Jennifer said. “I need to talk to your group.” She paused then went on. “All of the group. At once.”
Xi got out of the way and invited her in. He made some audible bird-like call with his voice, something wordless between a hoot and a holler, and then led her into the living room. The little queen from Duke was sitting there playing a videogame. The rest of the house filed into the small living room in a rush. Apparently the call Xi used meant there was serious business to discuss. Jennifer wasted no time addressing them.
“I need to join your group,” she said. They looked at her, and she at them, and she went on. “The world is full of monsters: ghosts, vampires, demons, zombies, black-eyed kids. I need some advantage in order to fight them. Right now I’m just a normal mortal and that isn’t good enough. I took out one vampire, one time, but he was already injured and I took him by surprise. He was young, too. The ones I need to help deal with are old and that means I need…” She glanced at the TV and the paused game on its screen. “I need a power-up.”
Sheila from Durham Tech shook her head at Jennifer. “We destroyed everything El Diablo manufactured,” she said. “We don’t have any more and, trust me, you don’t want it anyway.”
Jennifer smiled a little. “I don’t mean that shit. I mean I need magic.” She looked around at them. “I was a systems administrator for a while. It feels like a lifetime ago, but I know the tech side. I’ve never been comfortable with the mystical woo-woo stuff. You seem to have figured out how to blend the way you think about technology with the way you think about magic. I think I can wrap my head around that. So, I’m volunteering.”
The group looked around at one another. They didn’t seem to have a formal high priest or priestess. Jennifer recognized the look of well-I’m-certainly-not-in-charge on every face. It was all too common in collective living arrangements. Finally the Duke kid said, “Just when I thought I’d convinced myself they didn’t really say ‘vampires’ last time.”
“Steeplechase zombies aren’t the only big bad critter in the world,” Jennifer said.
“Not everyone even believes those really happened.” He looked a little smug.
“Not everyone thinks 9/11 really happened, either,” Jennifer said, “Because some people just can’t accept a world too big for them to understand. I can. I’ve been living in that world ever since Z-Day.” She paused. She hadn’t actually had this conversation with anyone; not ever. She hadn’t even had it with Tim, and that was probably why they weren’t in each other’s lives any longer. She’d sort of had it with Withrow, but he was a fellow witness. She’d never tried to convince anyone who wasn’t. “I was there. I saved a town. They don’t hand out medals for that, though. Instead, they look at you like you’ve still got zombie on your hands because they can’t face the fears you’ve already bested: they can’t face the world that gave them zombies and they can’t face that they had to be saved when it happened. Fine, then. I’m someone who can do those things. I can save my friends, save the town; maybe now I need to save the world. If what’s going on between vampires is as bad as it seems to be, we’re all in danger and we can’t just leave the vampires to clean it all up for us. I knew there was something going on before, but now I know a lot more. Some of them want us to be at their mercy, and I say fuck that. I say fight. Now that I’ve tried doing it I know I need to be…” Jennifer paused and thought of Adam and Scott. She licked her lips. “Extra.”
“And you want us to give you that edge?” The kid from Durham Tech, the young one, looked scared as hell when he asked.
“No,” Jennifer said. “I want you to teach me what you know and then join me in the war. Here’s my offer: you initiate me into your group, teach me everything you know, and I’ll become your leader. You need one, and some of you already know that.” She drew a quick circle in the air with one finger to indicate the house, the people in it, the whole shebang. “Really, the choice here is whether you are going to be the ones to join me. I’m doing this one way or another, with one group or another. If you sign on with me, you will get to be there when we crack reality wide open and see its insides. You’re already curious about the world around you or you wouldn’t be here, in this house. You’ve approached magic like it’s a laboratory and become experts. Now the question is, are you willing to step out of the lab and into the field?”
They were silent for a long time. Finally, Xi spoke up. “We would need some time to talk about it and take a vote.”
“You have five minutes,” Jennifer said. “I’ll be on the back porch.”
Ten minutes later they started an initiation ritual they had to make up on the fly.
Roderick walked into the bar, heeled boots clacking like stilettos on the old tile floor. There were a bunch of drunks drinking their dinner. The college crowd hadn’t started to filter in yet. The bar had seen better days, of course, but it had also seen worse. Roderick liked it for its simple appeal as a place to get drunk. It was not fancy. It did not have pretenses. It knew what it could offer and it sought opportunities to do so.
Rather like himself, he felt.
Roderick gave Seth what he considered a winning smile: lips pulled back and lots of perfect white teeth.
Seth spoke in a professional tone. “What are you having?”
“You,” Roderick said. “For my team. Now.”
The man’s eyebrows went up, and though he didn’t let his gaze wander across the patrons rowed up around them it was clear to Roderick that Seth’s concern was for the possibility the mortals in the room might hear them.
“These persons,” Roderick said openly, without regard for being overheard, “Do not give a damn what we say as long as you continue to serve them.” He waved with one limp-wristed hand, a dandy in a white pleather suit like he’d just stepped out of a time machine. “Do you accept my offer?”
“I’m not on anybody’s team,” Seth said. “I just look out for myself.”
“Not anymore. My cousin is willing to tolerate a free agent because he thinks himself one as well. This is not so. There is a very long game being played and we are all on the field whether we like it or not. I cannot tolerate those who do not accept this.”
“Does your cousin know you’re here?” Seth’s voice was low.
“No,” Roderick said. He smiled again. “Neither will you tell him.”
“Says who?”
“Says I,” Roderick replied. He reached for an empty glass, abandoned by an early patron, and swirled the ice in it for just a moment. “A year ago my cousin thought himself the gun and me the bullet: he could aim and fire me at a problem. He agreed to let me stay in his domain in return for removing the vermin from one particular corner of it. My cousin does not realize just how great a problem he has, however. I do. It is a problem we all share. I intend to solve that problem and I intend to use my cousin to do it.” Roderick offered Seth a much tighter expression: lips closed, corners curled up. It was not a joyous expression. “He shall be my bullet, and I, the gun. You wish to be on my side in this endeavor because I will leave you to your own devices once the fight is won.”
Seth studied the glass for a moment. “You brought Dmitri here, didn’t you?”
This time Roderick smiled with something like real joy.
About the Author
Mic
hael G. Williams is a native of the mountains of western North Carolina. He is a brother in St. Anthony Hall and Mu Beta Psi and believes strongly in the power of found families. Michael lives in Durham with his partner, two cats and more and better friends than he probably deserves.
Michael earned a BA in Performance Studies at UNC Chapel Hill and works as an engineer. He has been a successful participant in National Novel Writing Month for many years and encourages anyone interested in writing to jump headlong into the deep end of insanity for thirty days. More information can be found at www.nanowrimo.org.
For more information on this work and others by Michael G. Williams, visit www.michaelgwilliams-author.com. For information on Michael’s open-source marketing, visit The Perishables Project at www.theperishablesproject.com.
Other Works by Michael G. Williams:
Perishables
“COMPLICATIONS”
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Copyright 2017 by Michael G. Williams
Published by Falstaff Books
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This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, is merely a coincidence. But you’re so vain, you probably think this story is about you. Don’t you? Don’t you? Don’t you?
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Deal with the Devil (Withrow Chronicles Book 3) Page 29
