His brow furrowed in confusion. I looked at him, wide-eyed. He didn’t know? “You mean she never told you?”
“I never advertised to her that I – “ he stopped. He never advertised that he was a magician to me, either. Was he a magician?
“What are you?”
“I thought you would have figured that out by now.”
I had an idea, but I wasn’t sure, and I tried to think back to the card reading to see if that could give me clues. Quintin was the King of Swords reversed, I knew that. I tried to think of our conversation that we had on the way to the hospital, but that was mostly me—
Then it hit me. I remembered the lights were going way too fast for us to be travelling at how fast we were going. I remembered no cars on the road. And we got there just as the ambulance was disembarking its cargo, even though it left a good half hour or so before we did.
“You can—”
“Shh,” he hissed. “If you say it, it takes away some of the power.”
I pointed to his watch. He looked to where I was pointing and gave me a real, genuine smile.
I asked, “Then—”
The waitress came over. “How’s everything?”
I ate about half my breakfast, but I wasn’t hungry anymore. Curiosity was more how I felt, and when I got curious, hunger took a back seat every time. “Good,” Quintin said. “I’ll take the check now.” It’s as if he could read my mind, because I was burning with questions.
He got the check and I slid back out of the booth, heading into the fresh air. I started immediately: “How did you—”
“Not here, not now,” he said. He turned to me, and looked me right in the eye. “What are you going to do about this curse?”
“Break it.”
“You have to know what it is.”
“My daemon will tell me.”
He cringed. “If they find out what you’re doing, Mike, you’ll be in real hot water. Those are real witches.”
“So? I’m a real magus.”
Finally he sighed. “Please be careful. Call Dottie’s house and leave a message if something happens.”
“Nothing’s going to happen,” I said and waved him off. “I have an ace card.”
“Where are you going?”
“To the Goode Wytch Shoppe.”
“What about after that?”
“Home.”
He smirked. “And you’ll get in, how?”
I must have looked stunned. I really hadn’t thought of that. He suddenly laughed, and took out his keys. He threaded one off, and tossed it to me. It had a key and a four-leaf clover under glass on the ring. “Don’t lose it.”
I put it in my wallet. I would put a rune on it so that “if lost, return to my pocket within an hour”. I developed that one myself. Well, with Grimalkin’s help. I still carried the black magic marker, and I have carried one nearly at all times ever since then.
Chapter 8
1.
1.
There was a line at the Shoppe that stretched four doors down. Curious, I asked someone. “Alicia’s going to be here today,” said one of the Japanese tourists in purely impeccable English, while the people around her chattered in Japanese.
Alicia, The Witch Of Salem.
I suppose I really had to see this, so I got in line.
If I had brought my cards, I could have made a few dollars, as most of the people there were to get their cards read. From the way these people talked, Alicia was a apothecary, medium, scryer, fortune teller, and exorcist. I knew that was impossible. She probably had “people for that”.
I did wish I had brought something to do, because the chatter around me made my feelings grow into a slow boil. The woman in front of me was talking to the woman in front of her about trying to contact spirits. The man behind me kept complaining about the line, and kept telling his wife/girlfriend that this woman was a charlatan.
To entertain myself, I found the ley line and followed along its route. The spot where the spirit was released was sealed up, but not well – like putting a cheap adhesive bandage over a wide gaping wound – and I could still feel the power coming out of it. I opened myself up and let it flow into me, and I couldn’t help but smile.
“What’re you so happy for?” asked the grumpy man behind me.
I knew at that moment that they were married, and that he didn’t love his wife, and he had a roaming eye. He liked his job, and, in fact, there was this really cute person at work – about his age, no kids, no debt, a real working woman. Not like this cow – and I glanced at the wife. She was okay in my opinion, which is saying a lot since I’m gay. As I looked at her I saw that she wasn’t happy, either; she was coming here to find out whether or not to —
“Leave him,” I said, right to her.
“What?”
Words: 853
Leaving off from “Okay, Grim, talk yourself out of this one.”