The Problem With Black Magic (3 page)

Cassie shook her head; even though this place came from her memories, she didn't feel territorial. It felt right to share it. She supposed, now that he'd told her she wasn't really there-- the body she could see in the faded T-shirt and shorts wasn't really her-- everything should feel less realistic, but if anything it was the opposite. In a sudden chilly, late-October breeze, Cassie shivered, watching the flesh of her arms and thighs break out into goose bumps. It couldn't be any more real.

"Also, I have a question for you," he said, turning towards her. She noticed his eyes were back to their typical mahogany color. She supposed that was probably how he chose to look, when he had a choice. "Are you human? Have any
odd relatives that disappear into ether sometimes? Because if you're not, now would be a real good time to tell me."

"Of course I'm human," she said, self-awareness breaking through the current cloudiness of her mind long enough for her to notice that she sounded defensive. "Why wouldn't I be?"

He sighed. "Because I didn't get what I was expecting when I tapped into you. I was afraid I wouldn't have enough magic even with the three of you-- humans have magic, but usually not much. Now I have more than enough just from you, but I'm afraid to use it, because I'm not sure if it's going to work properly. If your energy is from some kind of fae or mystical abomination, I could just kill all of us, or worse."

"I am not an abomination!" she shouted. She would have gotten up out of her chair and walked over to yell in his face, but with the cloudiness in her head, it was hard to move. "I'm human, and if I have a lot of magic, well, I guess I'm just awesome that way or something.
Stop always assuming the worst about me."

He
laughed, mirthlessly. "You're right. It's not like I really have a choice at this point." He got up from the chair, brushing bits of leaves off of his pants. "Listen, assuming you come through this in one piece, I want you to know that I'm sorry. I don't know if I'll be able to tell you that in the real world."

"Sorry for what?" Cassie asked, but then he was gone. Shrugging, she picked up the book. Reading on her grandparents’ front porch was one of her favorite things in the world, and despite the fact that it was a little chilly, she was happy to be here. She wasn't going to let her sour co-worker ruin the opportunity for her. Whatever Sam had been babbling about could wait.

***

When Cassie came to, she was on the fluffy patchwork couch in the Daily Grind's cafe that Dwight liked, saying it gave the place a "homey" feel. A few customers looked up from their newspapers at her stirring.

"Look, Sleeping Beauty's awake," said one elde
rly man with a smile. “I wish I could sleep on the job when I worked in a shop back in the day."

"Don't bother the help, Irv," said the older woman across from him, not looking up from her paper.

"Cassie!" called Khalil, jogging over to her from behind the counter.

With some difficulty, since she still felt a little dizzy, she sat upright and frowned. She wanted to believe her memories of everything that happened
before she passed out were a dream, but one look at Khalil's face told her otherwise.

"Are you okay? Can you stand?"

"I think so...I can't believe Dwight kept the shop open," she said incredulously, taking in the almost full cafe area. She stole a glance at the wall clock as Khalil helped her to her feet: 11:30 a.m. So she'd been out for around three hours.

Khalil shrugged. "He said we were better off doing something normal than sitting here staring at each other in shock and awe for the whole day," he said. Cassie noticed as they passed the front counter that there was a fist-sized h
ole in the bakery display case. The glass shards from all the shattered French presses and espresso machines had been cleared away.

Steadying her, Khalil led her into the back room, where she dropped into a folding metal chair. The back room was divided, half of it set up for cleaning and storing supplies, the other half an impromptu break room with a
round table, chairs, a shelf of lockers and a refrigerator for the employees' use. A short hallway outside led to Dwight's tiny office and the back alley.

"Now are you sure you're okay? Do you need to go to the hospital?" he said anxiously. "I would have taken you there already, but Sam told us not to move you-
- I swear Cassie, I almost choked him to death. When he was finished with you, you weren't moving and for a second I couldn't find a pulse. I thought he killed you."

Cassie swallowed; he didn't talk about it much, but she knew that Khalil had attended medical school for one year before dropping out to piss off his parents. If he was checking her for life signs and he couldn't find them, it must have been a close thing, because he knew what he was doing.

"I'm fine, just a little dizzy. As long as I feel okay, I don’t think I should go to the hospital, because it’s not like we can tell them what happened.” She swallowed, dreading her next question, but unable to avoid it. “Where is he?"

Khalil hesitated a moment before answering, and she knew Sam was gone. "
Dunno. He took off once we were sure you were alive, didn't say where he was going. I don't know Cassie, I want to know what the hell happened but maybe it's better if he never comes back, y'know?"

Cassie wasn't sure how she felt about that yet. "So I take it Sam fixed the building."

Khalil shook his head in amazement. "You wouldn't believe it-- well, I guess you would, but you know what I mean," he said. "After you guys touched and you both screamed, you both were unconscious for a few minutes. Then we were really scared, because we didn't know if that was supposed to happen or not. Then he just got up, like nothing happened, walked outside and like, waved at the building, and it snapped back into place. Then he came back, punched his hand through the display case, and the frozen people started moving again."

"Then he took off," she finished, sitting back in her chair.

"Yeah," Khalil said softly.

Dwight walked into the break room from the back hallway. "You okay?" he
asked, concern obvious on his face.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Cassie lied. She was a mess, but she didn’t see what good upsetting Dwight would do.

"Good." He turned to Khalil. "Just checked online: People are figuring it out. All the clocks were off, and anyone who was on the phone in the area froze too, so a lot of people realized it. I don't know how anyone's gonna explain this."

Khalil knitted his brow in thought. "How big an area was frozen, anyway? It was as far as I could see when
I walked outside, but that was only a few blocks."

Dwight paused.
"A circle twenty miles in diameter. They haven't said, but I'll bet this place was the center of it."

Khalil swore thoughtfully. "Son of a
bitch, and he was busy doing the goddamned dishes all day? I knew the guy wasn't normal, but man...."

"Can I go home?" Cassie asked quietly. Both men turned to look at her. "I mean, I think I'd like to work and take my mind off stuff, but I just feel really...tired," she finished.

"Of course, I wasn't going to let you work the register today," said Dwight quickly, sounding a little embarrassed that she might have even thought he expected her to work. "Khalil, take her home."

"I can get home myself," Cassie said, getting to her feet with a small effort. "I usually do."

Dwight turned around on the way to the door. "Khalil, take her home," he said, smiling for the first time since the earthquake. He nudged open the door with his shoulder, turning around to go deal with the customers.

Cassie told her parents that she might be coming down with the flu, not a hard sell due to her haggard appearance, and spent the rest of that Sunday in bed. By Monday, she felt better, but she still felt that odd buzzing sensation that she'd had ever since Sam froze time; sometimes she felt it between her shoulder blades, sometimes at the base of her spine, but it was always somewhere. When she went back to school on Wednesday, the strange feeling made it difficult to concentrate. She was going to have to actually read the textbook to understand what was going on in chemistry and pre-calc.

She had been scheduled for her typical four-hour shifts at DG on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. She called in Monday and Wednesday, telling Dwight she still wasn't feeling up to coming in-
- really only partially a lie. Physically, she felt almost normal, but mentally, she wasn't sure she could handle being at DG again. Though he didn't say anything, Cassie got the impression that Dwight understood perfectly.

Still, she didn't think it was fair to him to keep skipping shifts because she was mentally scarred; he was too nice to fire her, which is what most normal bosses would eventually do. By Friday, she figured she felt about as normal as she was ever going to get, so she decided to go back to work.

Dwight looked shocked when she came into the back room and took her apron off the hook near her locker. "Hey, you sure you're ready for this? I already called Jay in to cover for you," he said.

Cassie shrugged. "I can't hide in my room forever, and I like having money; I should probably keep working," she said.

Dwight stood up from the circular metal table in the break room and stood before her, putting his hands on her shoulders. Normally that might be a cause for concern between a teenage employee and a thirty-something manager-- especially one who played bass in a metal band with rather filthy lyrics, the main thing Dwight did in his spare time-- but somehow, it never felt inappropriate coming from the small man. His blue eyes, much lighter than her own, made his concern for her obvious; never overwrought and dramatic, but clearly there.

"If you're sure.
But listen, if you start feeling bad, don't be afraid to tell me, okay? You can leave anytime."

Cassie smiled at him, removing his hands from her shoulders with her own. "Dwight, I do not have PTSD, okay? I'll be alright." She moved toward the front of the store, eager to lose herself in the mindless monotony of babysitting a cash register.

Dwight turned around to face her retreating back. "You sure? I think I have some wicked PTSD..." he said, and she laughed, as he intended.

Behind the counter, she went to the espresso bar and tapped Jay on the shoulder.
"Tag. You're it."

"Hey, you feeling better?" her friend asked. She'd known Jay since they were small children, and though he'd gotten taller-
- a hair taller than herself, now-- his huge brown eyes looked at her in much the same way he had when they were in kindergarten together. She had a real little brother, Hunter, but she would be lying if she didn't admit that she often thought of Jay that way as well.

"Much better, thanks," she said, marking a
cup for employee use to make a sugar-loaded mocha. Cassie didn't work the espresso bar often, but she knew enough to make her own drinks. Technically, they were only entitled to one free drink per shift, but Dwight had made it obvious he couldn't possibly care less. As long as they weren't going through the syrup at a breakneck pace, they could have all the drinks they wanted.

She had seen Jay in school over the past few days, but she'd been avoiding him; she wasn't sure if he'd realized it, or just assumed she was keeping her
“flu” germs away from him. They usually told each other almost everything, and while she wasn't planning to tell Jay about what had happened on Sunday morning, she thought she probably should tell him something: what, she wasn't sure.

Jay turned around to face her, wiping his hands on his apron. "Hey, is Sam out with the flu like you were? I've been asking where he is for the last several shifts, but it's like Dwight and Khalil don't want to talk about it."

Cassie felt her mouth tighten as she pulled the shots for her mocha. "Why should they want to talk about him? He's an ass."

"Well yeah, but he works full time and he hasn't been here all week, and the managers aren't saying anything.
I mean, if he quit, they would have said something, right?" said Jay as he cleaned the other espresso machine, looking as lost as she felt.

"I
dunno, Jay, no idea what's up with him," she said quietly as she poured some of the foamed skim milk that Jay had put aside into her cup. She'd lied to Jay before-- normally when he asked her if she thought being into certain games made him seem excessively geeky-- but never so boldly. A slight wave of nausea gripped her, but passed, mercifully.

He
paused his work on the machine and looked at her. "I don't believe you...something happened and you all decided not to tell me," he said. "Something that has to do with Sam."

"Jay, don't be stupid," she said, taking a few sips of her piping hot drink. Well, if nothing else, at least she could still make a delicious mocha, if she did say so herself.

"I'm not being stupid, it's just really obvious. Every time I mention him to Dwight or Khalil, they change the subject as fast as they can, and now you're acting weird, too. Tell me what's going on."

Cassie made a show of rolling her eyes theatrically over her drink. "Okay Jay, you've got us. Sam cast a magic spell over the city, and we're the only ones who know. We have to keep his secret safe, so the vampires won't kill us all," she said.

Jay's eyes widened for a minute, and Cassie wondered if she'd miscalculated; she'd thought that giving him an abridged version of the truth (with the addition of vampires, because why not?) would sound like a joke, but Jay, who surrounded himself with role-playing games and "Magic: The Gathering" might have a different view on the plausibility of magic than most people. Eventually, he frowned and she exhaled.

"Fine, be that way. Y
ou know I'll find out eventually," he said, making his best attempt to sound menacing, and not really succeeding. His voice hadn't quite changed yet, making the tough act a hard sell.

Cassie went to the register, not sure what to do about Jay. She'd
always thought of him as naïve because he was quick to believe in aliens and other urban legends. Not to the point that he was gullible enough to fall for any kind of phony psychic, but he insisted that there was "something" out there that people didn't understand. She thought it was his desire to believe that any of the magic in his beloved games could somehow be real, but now that she'd seen what she'd seen, Cassie wasn't sure who the naive one was anymore. When she thought about it, it kind of hurt that he was right and she couldn't tell him about it.

Putting him from her mind, Cassie looked up to see a gangly college student digging his wallet out of his messenger bag, his eyes fixed on the menu scrawled on the chalkboard behind her. "Hi, what can we get for you tonight?" she asked, with her practiced, fake cashier's cheerfulness. Normally she didn't like it, but
right now, she was just as happy to role play the part of the cheerful valley girl in an apron, with nothing in her head.

***

After closing, Cassie was nibbling at the remains of a rainbow-chocolate cookie while counting up her till. Most of their unsold pastries went to a local soup kitchen in the morning, but the staff was entitled to help themselves to any cookies that broke throughout the day. One might think that policy encouraged cookie abuse, but the big, gooey cookies they sold broke often enough through normal handling, there was no need for sabotage.

Jay was refilling the small refrigerators near the espresso bar with dairy and substitutes, while Dwight and Khalil finished cleaning up behind the counter and in the cafe. Later, they would count out all the money and put it in the safe, and everyone could go home. She wondered if Khalil had worked the entire day; with Sam gone, they could probably use the coverage, but she didn’t know when he’d gotten there that morning.

Cassie stretched, tired; it had been typical annoying
register work, with a couple of mean customers on top of that, but for the first time in several days, she felt tired in a good way. She was looking forward to collapsing in bed in about an hour, more relaxed than she had been since the time skip.

As though reading her thoughts, Jay looked over at her from the fridge. "You know, about the time-skip..."

"I am so sick of hearing about that," said Dwight, his tone showing an unusual amount of irritation from him.

"Yeah, me too," said Cassie, slamming her till closed. Khalil said nothing, putting ceramic plates and mugs in their places quietly.

Jay stood up suddenly, and pointed at her. "I knew it! You guys know something! Whatever you're not telling me, it has something to do with the time skip."

Cassie, Dwight and Khalil, all shared worried glances. What were they supposed to do now?

Jay was grinning like he'd just found out Christmas was coming early this year. "I mean, I wasn't sure, but I saw this video that pinpointed where the epicenter probably was, and I could tell it was this block. Then I talk about it, and you guys all wouldn't look at me, like all three of you suddenly looked really, really guilty! So, what's this amazing secret?"

"Jay..." Cassie started, not sure what to say to calm him down.

"It has something to do with Sam, right? That's why he hasn't been around, and why you guys all get spooked when I mention him. I think--"

They never did find out what Jay thought, since his speech was interrupted by rapt, hard knocks on the glass door of the shop. The four of them turned to the door; two tall, powerfully built men in leather were standing in front of the Daily Grind.

"Hey, we want some coffee," the one in front yelled.

Dwight took a few steps forward so they could hear him through the door. "Sorry guys, we closed half an hour ago. Please come back tomorrow, hours are listed on the door."

The man in front smiled, and Cassie recoiled; through the glass pane of the door, it looked like he had entirely too many teeth. "Closed, huh? Then I guess this is going to be an after-hours visit."

With that, he pushed the door open, there was a sound like something breaking, and they both strove in confidently.

Dwight turned to Khalil angrily. "I thought I told you to lock the door!" he said in a harsh whisper.

"I did," said Khalil, eyeing the men warily as they moved closer. "I know I did."

The taller man was wearing expensive looking-leather boots to go along with his ensemble, and had spiky, dyed-blond hair; under different circumstances, Cassie probably would have thought he was hot, but the fear slowly growing inside her made her regard him with nothing but dread. The other man, with slicked back brown hair and darker, more worn features, was holding what appeared to be a necklace in his right hand. Made of some sort of precious stone Cassie didn't recognize, the pendant seemed to give off its own ghostly light.

The one holding the necklace approached Cassie at the counter, and she took an involuntary step back. He held the pendent up to her eye-level, where its lavender glow seemed to intensify. "See, I told you if we stuck around it would work out," he said, to which the taller man snorted." "Took a few days, but we found the familiar." He smiled, and Cassie realized immediately why his smile had looked so odd to her before: his incisors were entirely too long, and his canine fangs reflected the light from his strange stone.

Cassie took a few more steps back, and felt herself back into Jay.

"Before, when you were talking about the vampires, you were telling the truth?" asked Jay in a panicked whisper.

"Jay, the spell thing was true, but I was totally making the vampire part up, I swear!" she responded. The men laughed, and Cassie realized that these men could hear even their whispers. Maybe they really were vampires.

"You guys aren't here for the money in the till, are you," said Dwight quietly, making it clear from his tone that he wasn’t asking a question. Khalil inched closer, coming to stand next to Cassie and Jay behind the counter. When he met her eyes, Cassie realized he was planning to protect her if it came to it, and she was torn between being touched and wanting to yell at him for being an idiot.

"Listen, Sam's not here," said Dwight, drawing up to his full 5’6 and walking up to their guests. Cassie never would have thought of him as the heroic type, but between being the first to volunteer to attempt to save Sam during the time skip and tonight, it was becoming obvious he was brave behind his quiet demeanor. "Whatever's going on, we don't know anything, and we don't know where he went; I suggest you look for him," he finished, crossing his arms in front of him defensively.

"We don't need him," said the (apparent) vampire, swinging the necklace in his hand like a pendulum.

"See this thing here? It's an amulet that senses latent magic. Barely picked up anything in days, but now that she's here--" he said, motioning to Cassie. "--thing goes ballistic. If that demon were around we couldn't snatch you, but now that he's abandoned you? I'm afraid it's open season on little cashier girls," he said, putting the amulet in his pocket. With no fanfare, he casually reached out a fist and hit Dwight in the face. Dwight dropped to the scuffed tile floor, like a limp rag doll. Cassie gasped and hoped against hope that he was unconscious, not dead.