Having been caught completely unawares, the girl sprang up, spun around, and threw her arms up into the air. She had brown eyes that looked black in the low light and pretty pink lips shiny with lip gloss. I also spotted a paper bag on the sofa; the corner of a wrapped-up Christmas present was poking out of it.
The moment hung, suspended, and then her face lit up. “Well hello there, stranger” she said, smiling wide, “Guess what you’re getting for Christmas.”
Wait, what?
Damien was rooted to the spot. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, and couldn’t stop her from wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him tenderly on the lips. She kissed him on the lips! I thought I was hallucinating again, but a quick pinch on my right forearm convinced me that I wasn’t imagining any of this.
My heart may as well have stopped.
The room started to spin. I had to prop an arm against the door frame to stop myself from going over. And then the chest pain came, dull and hard and constricting, followed swiftly by a bright, hot flash of sobering anger.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was coming,” said the brunette. Unless people did things differently in San Francisco I was sure this girl thought Damien was her boyfriend. Was she high? “But I didn’t want to spend Christmas without you.”
Damien hadn’t said a word since we busted into the apartment, apparently dumbfounded by the events taking place before his eyes. He and I both. But I sensed a kind of dread coming from him. It was as if I could taste the fear in the air; fear and guilt and, again, dread. The taste was bitter and cold and brought back memories of sitting outside of the principal’s office, waiting to be reprimanded for fighting in the playground with some kid who had decided to pick on me for being ginger.
When the moment of introduction came and went and Damien was still silent, the brunette flicked her hair around to look at me and extended her hand in friendship. “Sorry,” she said, “I haven’t introduced myself. I’m Natalie. We haven’t met.”
Oh, but I knew now who she was.
It wasn’t the name that gave it away, although of course the name helped. No. It was her face, her perky little face. The puzzle piece finally clicked. I had seen her in a bowl of water a lifetime ago, exposing her perfect breasts. I wanted to rip her arm off and beat her over her stupid face with it, but I shook it. Hard. “Damien’s… girlfriend, Natalie?” I asked.
Why did I ask?
“Yeah, I hope he’s only said good things about me?”
“Oh, yeah, totally, loads. He can’t shut up about you, in fact.”
Damien was in shock.
“You’re Amber, right?” she asked.
He told her about me! My breathing quickened. The walls were closing in. I had to get out. “Yeah. That’s me,” I said. Holy hell. A draft blew into the house from the open door to my back, cold and fresh and crisp. It was an invitation to leave, to go out into the night where it was safe.
“Did you want to hang out with us?” Natalie asked.
“No,” I said, “I should go and let you catch up… bye.”
I turned tail and escaped out the front door, flying down the stairs and bursting into the cold night streets like a bat out of a cave. I staggered toward the nearest car and lay my hands on the window to catch my panicked breaths, but the angry heat buzzing inside of me demanded to get out. Emanating at the central point in chest, racing through my arms, and into my palms, there came a bolt of power which I was helpless to stop. The car frame dented beneath my hands and the windows cracked, sending a blaring alarm off into the quiet night streets.
I retreated from the siren and bumped straight into Damien who had come out after me. Without a second thought and before he could get a word out, I spun around and slapped him hard across the cheek with a loud crack. There must have still been Power in my hands because he staggered back a few steps from the impact.
“You’d better stay the fuck away from me,” I said, low and predatory.
“Amber wait!” he called, but I was already running down the street.
I had to get away. I wasn’t sure what I would have done if I would have stayed. The last time someone did this to me I ruined his life, maybe forever. Did I want to do that to Damien? Probably not. Even after what had just happened—what had just happened?—I couldn’t do to Damien what I did to Kyle. I wouldn’t.
So I ran, and despite it all, my mind circled back to the fact that I still hadn’t called Aaron.
Chapter Twenty
But I couldn’t call Aaron.
Going to Aaron would’ve resulted in the exploitation of a moment of vulnerability; and not by him, but by me. Aaron would have most certainly become my vehicle for getting back at Damien’s infidelity.
No.
I couldn’t go to Aaron. So, instead, I went to the only man I was safe with and tried desperately—before I got there—to get ‘video killed the radio star’ out of my head. There wasn’t any logical explanation as to why, or when, the song had gotten stuck in my head but it was there all the same, and it was all I could hear as I headed for Frank’s apartment.
“Don’t tell me they came to Damien’s place too?” Frank asked once he had opened the door. A slow, melancholic Marilyn Manson song was playing, only this time the music wasn’t nearly loud enough to aggravate the neighbors. When he saw my angry scowl he let me in and brought his hands up in surrender.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Do you mind if I stay with you for tonight?” I asked, “I don’t feel safe at my place.”
Frank was almost afraid to ask. Frank… afraid. “And Damien?”
“I’m the other woman,” I said.
He didn’t need to have it explained. Frank knew the story. But I explained anyway given that the event was still fresh in my mind.
“Men are pigs,” he said to me after I was done. “And I would know. I’ve had my fair share.”
“I thought Damien was better than that,” I said. “Different.”
“Honey, they’re all different when they’re trying to take your panties off. But then they get complacent and that’s when the façade fades like a mirage. Which is a shame. I really did believe the façade too. Guess he managed to fool the both of us.”
Frank took me into a hug and escorted me to his sofa, where I sat down and ran my fingers through my hair. Ouch. That still hurt.
“Let me get you some herbal tea,” he said.
Herbal tea?
“Yes, tea, witch. You got a problem with that?”
That’s when I looked around and realized that Frank’s house had gone through a major face lift since the last time he had invited me over. There were no dirty shirts on the ground, no dirty dishes in the sink, and no ugly posters on the walls. He had even given them a fresh coat of paint; if you can count splashing the basic cream walls with splotches of purple.
We didn’t normally hang out at his place so his letting me in tonight truly was an exception, and one I was happy for. But, herbal tea? I never pegged Frank as the type to offer someone herbal tea. Maybe a fifth of vodka and a smoke. I wondered if the tea would in fact be laced with vodka, or Sambuca. Or heroin.
I didn’t care.
“No,” I said, “Tea will be fine. Thanks.”
Frank disappeared into the kitchen and returned after a while with two steaming cups in his hands. It was a little colder in his apartment than it was in my house, and now that I had come down from the adrenaline rush I was starting to feel it. So my fingers welcomed the warm cup and my nose enjoyed the feather steam rising from the liquid within.
“You’d better not tell anyone about this,” Frank said.
“About your hospitality?” I asked.
Frank let out an exaggerated sigh. “I’m not normally the hospitable type, I understand. But I make an exception for damsels in distress.”
“Only damsels?”
“Boys can be damsels too. And princesses. And queens.”
A faint hint of a smile inf
ected my lips. I couldn’t help it. Frank was, in many ways, like a drug. His brand of dry, sarcastic humor always put me on a high.
“Thank you,” I said. “Really, Frank. This means a lot.”
“You just caught your boyfriend cheating on you. Or… well, his girlfriend caught him cheating on her… with you. Or, wait, no one actually caught anyone cheating, so… fuck. The whole thing just sounds absurd.”
“Right? I’m not crazy for having stormed out.”
“You’d have been crazy to stay. Not because of the awkwardness of it all, but because I’m sure you would have had a hard time controlling that Magick of yours.”
I almost couldn’t. Whoever owned the car I smashed probably wasn’t having the best of nights.
“I wouldn’t have hurt her,” I said.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Oh.”
I wouldn’t have hurt Damien, though. I tried hard not to, in fact. I mean, he deserved the slap—Gods know I needed to relieve all that pressure—but I wouldn’t have hurt him intentionally. Do bad things and bad things come back to you; this was part of the Wiccan philosophy. Damien would get his without my need for intervention as part of karmic law, only you try telling that to a woman scorned.
Frank grabbed a sweater from a basket of clean clothes he kept near an ironing board. An ironing board! It was black, baggy, and smelt like fresh apricots, and when I pressed it against my face it was like stroking a rabbit with my cheek. Who was this man and what had he done with the sarcastic, chain-smoking alcoholic I had come to know as Frank Stone?
“This is for you,” he said, “Slip it on and keep warm. I wouldn’t want you dying of hypothermia on me. Not when there’s trashy TV to be watched and a broken heart to fix.”
I removed my coat and boots and slipped into the fluffy, warm sweater. Frank had decided I would spend the night, and there was nowhere in the world I would have felt safer than with him. Frank was a kind spirit, if a little rough at the edges. But who likes a clean cut guy, anyway?
I thought I did, but then that didn’t explain my attraction to Aaron.
“My heart isn’t broken,” I finally said.
Frank sat down. “Oh?”
“It isn’t. I wasn’t in love with him or anything.”
“You could have fooled me.”
“Really? You saw love when you looked at us?”
“No, but I saw love bubbling around in that little mind of yours, though.”
“You read my mind?”
“Not in so many words, but I’m good at reading people.”
“And?”
“And… I think part of you did love him. Or at least loved the idea of him. The man saved your life once, maybe twice. You’d been through hell with him. You could relate to him.”
“So, what about the other part—or parts?”
Frank paused and analyzed my face. If he was reading my mind I couldn’t tell. But the pause hung for a moment. “I think he’s hurt your pride.”
“Pride, huh?” I took a sip of herbal tea and the liquid warmed my insides as it traveled to my stomach. “That rat bastard,” I said.
“At least you’ve learned your lesson.”
“And what’s that?”
“Don’t shit where you eat.”
“Oh. That.”
That.
I hadn’t considered Damien and I may have been heading into dangerous territory by getting involved with each other. Maybe I thought we were invincible? It didn’t seem like a stretch considering how our relationship had grown and evolved since that first time we had met in class. Gods how it stung. He hadn’t even left her. Damien had been lying to two women for months! How long did he think he was going to get away with it for?
“We still need a third, you know,” Frank said. Watching him drink with his little pinkie raised up made me giggle.
“A third what?” I asked when the giggle stopped.
“A third Witch, witch.”
“Right. Three makes a Coven.” A poor one, but a Coven nonetheless. “So you’re saying we need to find another third?”
“It’s not exactly like we’re spoiled for choice around here. There are three witches in the Glen. Three. Tres. Just because you’ve fucked one third of the population doesn’t mean we must exclude them from the Coven.”
“I don’t want to see Damien again,” I said.
“Why? Because he cheated on his girlfriend with you? Because he’s a liar? Let me tell you something; no one likes a cheat—I certainly don’t—and I’m totally on your side, but we need him.”
“So, what, I’m supposed to forgive him and move on?”
“No,” Frank said, “You’re supposed to trap him.”
“Trap him?”
“By blood and by oath, Witches are bound to each other. He can’t just leave, and you shouldn’t just let him.”
“I don’t get you.”
Frank shifted into the lotus position… somehow. His legs were incredibly long, but he made it look easy. Fluid. Like a praying mantis. “You know what? It can wait.” He grabbed his TV remote, flicked on the big screen and queued up the first episode of Friends.
“That’s it?” I asked, “You aren’t going to finish what you were going to say?”
“No,” Frank said. “You’ve had a long day, and we’re perfectly safe as long as we stay here.”
Safe. “How do you figure that?” I asked.
“Like I said. I have my ways.”
I finished my herbal tea, ground the balls of my hands into my eyes, and settled into the sofa with Frank.
Friends probably wasn’t the best show we could have watched—Ross and Rachael totally weren’t on a break—but sitting with Frank eased my nerves somewhat. Maybe it was the tea or maybe it was his presence, but whatever was going on it helped me relax and take my mind off the woods, the hooded men, and even Damien. Aaron lingered in my mind for a while, but that was only because I was anxious about the fact that he might be worried about me. I hadn’t called him yet and I told him I would.
I should text him, I thought.
But my mind and body rebelled against the thought of picking up my phone and writing a text. And as the figures on the screen blurred into themselves, and the glow dimmed and dimmed and dimmed, I drifted into what would be the best night’s sleep I had had in weeks.
Chapter Twenty One
I didn’t dream that night. At least, I don’t think I did. I also didn’t wake up in a cold sweat, panicking and fighting phantom monsters. Maybe it was the exhaustion? Ow! The bright, sharp pain all over my head reminded me of what had happened the night before as if to confirm that it wasn’t a dream.
“That’s right,” the pain would have said if it had a voice. “Someone dragged me by the hair yesterday.”
Any normal girl would have been able to go to the cops about it and get police protection, but I would have to suffer in silence because—well—what was my story? A bunch of Witches are trying to fuck with my life and the life of one of my friends. You should come to the woods with me, with guns. Oh, and by the way, we should probably get a priest too because there’s a Demon involved.
No. That would have been too easy, wouldn’t it?
The room was cast in darkness when I swam into wakefulness. Frank, beside me on the sofa, lay motionless. But even though the windows and shutters were closed so tight that not even a faint streak of light could break through, the swallows singing in the sky told me that it was morning so I sat upright and checked my phone.
No messages. No calls.
Frank stirred and opened his eyes. “What time is it?” he grumbled.
“About seven,” I said.
He rubbed his eyes, stood up on autopilot, and staggered to the kitchen. I watched him switch on the coffee maker and pour two hot cups of coffee, but we took our warm drinks in silence. I guessed we both needed a little coffee to help us wake up, though I needed it less than he did. Somehow I felt fresh today.
??
?Well, we can’t stay here all day,” Frank said after finishing the last of his coffee.
I nodded. “I didn’t want to stay here all day either,” I said. “Actually, I wanted to go to the bookstore.”
“Bookstore? I thought it was closed.”
“Ah, but I have keys.”
“And what would we be going to the bookstore for?”
“Answers.”
Frank didn’t argue with me. He slapped on a pair of black leggings, a long Metallica shirt, and pulled on black pea coat with the collar up. Me? I had no choice but to wear the same clothes I had worn the day before because Frank was impossibly tall and none of his clothes would fit me. My hair was a tangle of copper wires, my eyes still had bags under them, and my clothes were creased, but today I honestly didn’t care what I looked like. So we made our way out and set off toward the bookstore.
Dawn was breaking by the time we left the apartment, and the snow and ice hadn’t yet thawed. It was like we were walking in some kind of winter wonderland. Without a cloud in the sky, the world seemed to glitter and sparkle under the morning light. Most of the cars parked on the side of the road were partially concealed, if not completely covered, with snow, and the buildings didn’t fare any better.
We decided to swing by Joe’s on the way to the store. Joe opened early every morning to capitalize on the night-shift workers in the office building on the other side of the road. It was a call-center—tech support—though I had never been inside and I had never worked a night shift, but I knew what it was like to be hungry in the wee hours of the morning and Joe wasn’t a stranger to seeing me at early hours. Not these days. So he wasn’t surprised to see me.
The warmth of the building, the hissing of steamed milk, and the smell of ground coffee and sizzling bacon greeted us as we entered and I started to salivate. I wanted to stay there, wrapped in a blanket of delicious smells, warmth, and, more importantly, people. Safety in numbers, and all that. So we stayed, ate, and headed to the bookstore with full stomachs and warm bodies.