Natural Consequences (40 page)

Lorelei waited for Diana to formulate a reply. Instead, the pack leader stood and stalked out of the coffee shop without another word. Her packmates rose to follow, though Lorelei caught noticeably different moods in their eyes.

Sally ventured a final exchange. “You said that Hell cannot touch a mortal who still has an angel’s protection.”

“Correct.”

“Then why does he still have an angel over him?”

“I’m not sure if you noticed, but that particular angel is quite insane.”

*   *   *

Matt Lanier woke up to the sound of the apartment door opening. He sat up on the couch, rubbing his eyes and feeling guilty for sleeping. He’d gone to the apartment with that in mind, but it was difficult to rest while everyone else was working.

Amber came in and closed the door behind her. “Hey,” he said, “we’ve been worried. You okay?”

“Physically? Yeah. Listen, where is everybody? We’ve gotta talk. We read this whole situation all wrong.”

“They’re all out running around,”
Matt mumbled, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “Doug and Paul had stakeout duty. I guess something went wrong with the surveillance gear last night, though.”

“Yeah, you can tell them to pack up the cameras and come back. Lorelei knew the apartment was being watched. She just didn’t know by who, but she had some friends of theirs do some magic to hide everything, so that’s probably a wash. What about Hauser?”

“He and Colleen are both out, too. Amber, what’s wrong?”

“Oh, y’know,” Amber said, nervously crossing her arms over her chest, “got kidnapped by vampires, shot a bunch of people, had my whole world-view turned completely upside-down. And I stood by while Alex and Jason assaulted and handcuffed a couple of cops last night.”

“Yeah, we know about that. They weren’t cops. Hauser got ‘em. Amber, listen, we all know what a crazy situation we put you in. Nobody’s about to throw any stones—“

“And I’ve been making out with a suspect.”

“…oh.”

“Yeah. So, I’m
gonna tell everybody the answers to a bunch of deep questions about the true nature of the whole universe,” she said, crossing her arms uncomfortably, “and then you guys can all decide whether to put me in handcuffs or a straightjacket. Either way I’m pretty sure I just lost my job.”

Matt
knew wouldn’t be getting to sleep after that.

*   *   *

“I’m totally about to put my foot in my mouth here,” warned Alex. He kept his voice low so as not to draw too much attention to himself in the open, brightly-lit store. Before him was a row of large white bins, each with clear plastic lids over them. He held a clear plastic bag open beside one of them as Molly scooped out some of the bin’s contents with a plastic trowel.

“You do that a lot with us,” Molly smiled, pouring the white flakes into the bag. “Are we special? Or do you do that with everyone?”

He considered his answer. “Yes.”

“Go ahead.”

“This is not how I expected magic to work.”

“How so?”

“We’re in a store, buying materials out of plastic bins and putting them into plastic bags.”

“How else did you think we got our materials?”

“I dunno, I just figured it was more labor intensive than this. I figured you had to go out into the world and gather stuff by hand or something. What? Don’t look at me like that.
Obviously
I don’t know what I’m talking about, that’s what I’m saying. I only know magic from fiction, and that’s not a reliable source. I just figured you had to, I dunno… gather your stuff yourself instead of buying it all in a store?”

“Who says this wasn’t gathered properly?” Molly grinned. “You think we’re
shopping at McMagic’s?” She took the bag from him and sealed it shut with an ordinary twist-tie, then wrote a bin number on it with a marker as she spoke. “Half of learning to practice magic is simply learning to
believe.
After a while you get the hang of identifying other believers and separating them out from the pretenders and the dreamers and the quacks. And the scammers.”

Alex glanced up at the woman behind the counter. She wore a black apron over her faded sweatshirt and busily typed away at her iPad. Onyx stood nearby, providing a visual contrast as she focused her attention on a display case of jewelry. Though Onyx
carried a cell phone, drove a car and went to college, Alex hadn’t had the slightest hesitation in believing the Gothy girl he’d always seen in black silk and lace was a witch. The woman behind the counter, however, might as well have been working at a hardware store. “So is she a believer?”

“Who, Cheryl? No. But she’s open-minded
, and that’s enough. For most of her customers, this is all just aromatherapy and meditation aids. It has perfectly ordinary uses. That’s how she thinks of it. But she also knows it has religious uses. She’s not the sort who thinks that the five major faiths are the only legit ones.”

“This is religion for you?”

Molly nodded. “Practicing magic means understanding the nature of the world and how to live in it. You learn it to make sense out of life. What else is religion but that?”

“Makes sense,” Alex conceded.
He followed Molly and helped her gather more bits of powders and crystals from the bins.

“We call ourselves witches ‘
cause that’s the closest term, but we’re not true wiccans. We do stuff differently. We’re pagans, and not fluffy-bunny pagans, either. They’re who I meant when I mentioned pretenders and dreamers.

“We don’t go to church on Sundays, or any house of worship on a specific day of the week. We don’t have idols
. We hardly ever do what you’d call praying. But we have our ethics and our taboos. We have a strong sense of spirituality.” She paused, considering her words carefully. “We have a belief as to what happens to us when we die.”

His eyes had wandered down to a rack of merchandise as she spoke, but they came up to meet hers again. Molly had vibrant green eyes. “Do I fit in with that?”

“You’re kind of walking proof, actually,” she said. “Most people would freak out over meeting an angel or a demon, ‘cause it’d kind of confirm things they always believed but
knew
they’d never see proven, right? Didn’t freak us out one bit. You, though…” Molly shook her head. “It’s one thing to meditate or cast a spell to try to get in touch with a past life. You’re a whole ‘nother level.

“Our Practice holds that souls can come back, at least sometimes. That’s part of why we think we can help you. But we’re not a hundred percent on that. The spells we want to use… they’re not designed for your specific problem. We’re gonna have to tweak them a little.”

“So my issue isn’t common enough that someone already made a spell for it?”

Molly shook her head.
“Like I said, we’ll have to tweak what we know. On the bright side, you’re already a believer. Accepting that magic is real is critical. You don’t have to follow our Practice or any other. Magic works fine on non-believers, but it’s much easier and more effective on believers. You’ve already had more than enough experiences to overcome your doubts.”

“I know the magic is real
,” Alex nodded. “I’m just not sure I can accept that there’s a spell to just make all the problems in my head disappear. Seems too easy.”

“Wait for it,” Molly smiled, and not without sympathy.

“Okay, we need eleven hundred bucks,” said Onyx as she rejoined them.

“Huh?” blinked Alex.

“Eleven hundred. That’s how much the jewelry’s gonna cost.”

“Jewelry for what?”

“The ceremony. We need silver. The kind you eat off of won’t make the grade.”

“What, are we melting them down to make bullets or something? I thought we were gonna work on getting my head straight.”

“We are. We need a bunch of small, pure bits of silver,” Onyx explained patiently. “And we gotta throw it all away when this is done.”

“You were saying about this being too easy?” Molly
asked. He pulled out his wallet with nothing more than a rueful smile as she poked him. “Anyway, Lorelei will cover it. It’s her money, right?” Then she saw him grimace. “What?”

“Not sure I want to talk about it,” he mumbled.

“Alex,” Onyx said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Full disclosure. You’ve gotta trust us with absolutely everything if we’re gonna do this. We have to bring down every barrier we can. You’ve gotta be ready to bare your soul here.”

“That’s a two-way street, though, right?” he asked. “We keep talking about me and my issues. I don’t want to sound ungrateful, because the fact that you two are even trying is a lifesaver here. I was
just kinda hoping the first time we got to hang out wouldn’t be the All About Me Show.”

She tilted her head curiously. “What do you want to know?”

“Lots,” he shrugged. “Molly just told me that this is religion for you. What is it that you believe? How did you two get together? All of it.”

Molly looked at Onyx and didn’t even need to see a nod to read the consent in her eyes. “
Playing ‘Twenty Questions’ is fine, but it’s not exactly the way to build the sort of connection we need.”

“I’m not sure we can take shortcut
s now, though,” Molly replied.

“No, but at the same time… I mean, y’know?”

Alex had looked from one to the other as they spoke. “I don’t know. Whatever it is that you two know, I don’t.” He watched Molly turn her head this way and that, taking in the whole shop with her vision. So did Onyx. That had him doing it, too. Farther back in the store were a couple of customers, but none within a direct line of sight. The store manager, several rows of merchandise away, seemed completely disinterested in them. “What’s going on?”

“The thing is, Alex,” Molly began, “if you hadn’t backed off on us, we probably would have already built the sort of intimacy we need. We’re not afraid of sharing anything with you. It’s just that right now, things really kinda
are
all about you. We know how to open up. We need you to be able to do it, too, at least to us.”

“Okay?” he asked. Like Onyx, his eyes kept sweeping the store. He heard Molly fumble with something.

“Gimme your hand,” she said softly, stepping closer to him. “Hold it open.” She took his right hand in hers, and guided it down. He felt the fabric of her shirt at first—and then her belly, and the satin of her panties, and the soft hair and warm, tender flesh beneath them.

Easily aroused as always, Alex felt his body come alive at this sudden turn of their conversation.
Molly met his surprised look with a naughty smile. Onyx seemed not the least bit bothered; the grin on her face indicated that she found this amusing, but beyond that she didn’t look their way. She kept watch to enable this.

“This is the
level of intimacy we need with you, Alex,” Molly said quietly. “You know we want you, and you want us, and not just as a fling. Maybe it’ll turn out that way in the end, but I don’t think so.”

Her breath grew heavy, as did his. She put the smallest of kisses on his lips.
He knew this was rapidly arousing her, too. “Is this part of what we need to do?” he asked, hoping she’d say yes.

“Not to fix your head, no,” Molly told him, warming to his touch. “
This
isn’t a magic thing. It’s not part of our beliefs. It’s just to make a point.”

“What point is that?” His voice was just as low as hers. Molly had his heart pounding in his chest.

“This
will
happen,” she said, pressing a bit on his hand to encourage his touch and, shamelessly, to heighten her own enjoyment. Molly gasped a bit as he moved his hand gently, palming her flesh with all the practice she’d hoped he would demonstrate. “We’re already on our way emotionally. It’s just timing. All three of us, naked, in bed together. No secrets, no barriers. No inhibitions. Wow, you feel good.”

“So do you,” he nodded. They breathed all the same air.
“So this… is this how Practitioners bond?”

“It’s one way they can,” Molly winked. “There are lots of others, but this gets the job done if you open your heart along the way. We don’t want to be your live-in girlfriends. We do want to be intimate with you.”

“But we want you to have your head straight when it happens,” Onyx told him, stepping in close. “We want you without all this baggage weighing down your soul. You’re loaded with grief and anger and confusion. You’re scared of losing your identity. That’s not a healthy place to start.”

“Can you get there, Alex?” Molly asked him. “We can’t bring you there with magic. This has to be genuine. But can you accept that we’re already in a close, stable and sexual relationship? That we can share anything, including each other?”

“We have no problem with who you are, Alex,” said Onyx. “We’re not asking you to change. We’re asking you to open up to us.”

“Even if it involves other people? There’s stuff I’m just plain not supposed to tell anyone.”