I went upstairs to the bedroom I used and made sure that all the windows were blocked from any light. With a simple whispered spell, I snapped my fingers and caused a flicker of light to appear on the candle, and it caught.
I took down a belt from the back of the door. I wrapped it around me – it barely fit around my waist. It would have to do, and I would have to wear it under everything. Next, I drew the runes, chanting a song of power to imbue them. Blond hair, perfect white skin. Blond hair, perfect white skin. I envisioned it as I drew, my own runes that I had created with Grimalkin’s help; runes that I knew now like the back of my hand because I had practiced them so much, knowing my livelihood would depend on it.
Over and over, thrice times thrice I drew the runes on the belt, completing it at the buckle. I took off my pants, sucked in my gut, and put the belt on. Not comfortable, even on the last hole, but I didn’t have much of a choice until I would get to Wal-Mart – if I got back there again.
I doused the candle and was in the pitch black room. Except it wasn’t pitch black to me. I could still see shapes and shadows, though they looked fuzzy and monochrome to me. I felt my way to the bed and lay down on it. I wondered what was going to happen next when I literally passed out.
=============
Someone shook me awake. “Mike,” said a man’s tired voice. “Wake up.”
I mumbled something and turned over. Quintin sat there, looking horribly tired, and even more horribly sad. I sat up in bed, rubbing the sleepy seeds out of my eyes. “Hey, man, what happened?”
“She’s slipped into dementia,” he said, sounding very sad. “She knew me for about ten minutes and then when her sister came in she called her mom.”
“Is that from the accident?” Or the curse, I wondered. I would have to see if my seed took fruit today.
It was Sunday. I didn’t even know if the store was open.
He nodded slowly. “Her sister’s next of kin. She’s taking care of her now.” He sighed, looked up at the ceiling. “They’re going to put her in a home and move into this house.”
“Was she…did she do that on purpose?”
Quintin shook his head. “No, no, Chrissy’s and Jose aren’t like that. They’re good people. This is their mother’s home and they don’t want to lose it.”
I wasn’t so sure, but I kept my mouth shut.
“I can’t just leave her,” Quintin said. “Though even Jose said that he would never blame me one bit if I did.” He gave me a rueful sigh. “I’m old fashioned, I guess.”
“She could live on for a long time and not know who you are.”
“One day at a time, Mike,” he patted my knee through the blanket. “Get your ass up. I’m taking you out to breakfast.”
============
The Breakfast Nook – that was the name of the place – was crowded with people on this early Sunday morning. Well, early for me. Eight o’clock mass had just let out in the church down the street, so everyone streamed in here.
We squeezed into a newly vacated booth and shoved aside the dirty plates to look at the menu under the glass on the table. “Get whatever you want, Mike. I’m getting the Lumberjack Special.”
“I think I’ll stick with pancakes and bacon.”
I ordered that and got coffee that could put hair on a newborn baby’s chest, so I doctored it up even more than usual.
“Look, Mike,” Quintin began. “I’m sorry I’ve been a real dick to you. I thought about what you’d told me, and what you said last night, and I can understand why you feel that way. I don’t agree with it, but I think I understand it now.”
“Okay,” I said, sipping the leaded oil they called coffee in these parts.
“I know what you did last night.”
I looked to both sides and then back to him. “What did I do?”
“You released a spirit from the Stewarts.”
“Shit,” I hissed. I’d hoped I left no traces. This ruined everything.
“That spirit was a friend of mine.”
“He – it – it was very old.”
Quintin sighed and leaned forward. “I worked with spirits,” he said. “Setting them free from tethers, reassuring them of the afterlife, getting them to move on. This spirit was a guide for me, a helper. I called him Hermes, but he wasn’t the real Hermes. He’d forgotten his name and his original purpose over the centuries.”
The food came and Quintin sat up. “Spirits exist on this world for a whole host of reasons, and one of them is they have ascended. In life, they were true holy men and women, like Mother Theresa or Buddha. Sometimes they return to earth to help human men and women, to help their souls ascend also.”
“Like what I have?”
He glowered. “What you have is no where near as perfect as them.”
I didn’t want to start that argument up again in a crowded restaurant, so I caved by eating some pancake – which was a heck of a lot better than the coffee. “That spirit was a helper?”
Quintin nodded. “I lost track of him. I knew where he was because I could sense him. But the Stewarts and I…we don’t get along much.”
“Because you’re not a commercial magician.”
He chuckled. “That’s one reason. The other is that I won’t bend a knee to that damn witch.”
Something told me I could not see that happening.
“They must have snagged him somehow – she has some strange ability or device that does that – and used his energy to feed the line. He was dying by degrees. He came back to tell me that a ‘magus black’ had set him free, and I knew it was you.”
“How?” I said with a smirk. “There must be tons of black magicians around here.”
“If he meant a black magician, he would have said a black magician. He said magus black – mage first, black second.” He drank the coffee without a wince. “Besides, it sounds like something you’d do.”
“Well,” I said, “I was going to see the Stewarts today.”
He stopped eating.
“Not like you were going to teach me anything, so I figured they would.”
He shook his head. “Don’t, Mike. They’ll chew you up and spit out your bones after they suck the marrow out of them.”
“Besides,” I said, and this time I leaned forward. “Dottie’s curse.”
His brow furrowed in confusion. I looked at him, wide-eyed. He didn’t know?
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Too damn tired otherwise.