Random Acts of Sorcery (6 page)

When the two got off the bus near Sam’s new apartment, his nerves were already tested, and the night hadn’t even started yet. It wasn’t Cassie’s fault; he could tell she was trying to be laid back and agreeable, which he did appreciate. It was just that knowing how their night was supposed to end seemed to color everything around them. On the bus, he noticed that some men were looking at Cassie, clearly wondering what kind of a figure she had under her bulky coat. It angered him, but he knew he had no reason to be angry; they weren’t being aggressive, weren’t obviously leering, just subtly appreciating the sight of a pretty girl nearby. They were harmless, so why did he have a strong urge to smash their faces in?

He had ridden on a bus with Cassie once before, back in the fall when he needed to curse her house to protect her from being familiar-napped. Back then, if any men had been looking at her, he hadn’t noticed or cared. Even before she was his familiar, he did get irritated on the frequent occasions when male customers at the shop addressed their orders to her chest and not to her, but he thought that was just common decency; he would have been offended for anyone being disrespected that way. When did he become so hyper-sensitive to her?

What does it matter?
He thought as he took his keycard out of his back pocket.
You are, whether you like it or not. Learn to deal with it, or make a fool of yourself. Those are the only two choices.

“This is an old one,” said Cassie behind him, breaking the silence. She took a generous step back and craned her neck to see the top of the building. “I’ll bet this is one of the originals, from when the city was first built. It even has gargoyles. That’s pretty cool,” she said with appreciation.

Sam smiled as he ran his card through the reader. “Actually, that’s Vladmira and some of her friends up there.”

“Really?
No way!” she said.

She was quiet as they made their way through the lobby, taking in the sight of the building’s antique furniture and trimmings. Frankly, it was all a bit too upscale for Sam’s tastes, but as Khalil had pointed out, it was certainly much better than having to take the poor girl to the likes of Bob’s Motel.

“So how many bats do you have now?” she finally asked in the elevator.

“Well, I only really have Vladmira,” he said. “She’s the only one who flies in and out of the apartment. The others just seem to like being on the roof for some reason.”

“Kind of adds to the whole gothic-charm thing this building has going on.”

“I suppose.”

The elevator binged, and they got off.
This is great, if we can just keep talking about bats all night, it probably won’t end with her screaming.

He got out his keys and went to open the door to Apartment 12B, feeling strangely vulnerable with his back to her. For some reason, he wanted to be able to see her face at all times.

He opened the door and gestured for her to enter. She did slowly, taking in the sight of his living room. Despite the building’s aged façade the apartments—or at least Sam’s apartment—were modern in style. He had sleek black furniture, a big, flatscreen TV fixed to one wall, and a nice-sized eat-in, open kitchen overlooking the rest of the apartment. The furnishings were a little sparse, since he really hadn’t added anything to what had already been there when he arrived, but what was there was quality.

Cassie took a few steps forward, her large blue eyes taking measure of the place. She came to stop just in front of his low mica coffee table.
“Pretty nice. Could use some rugs though.”

“I like the hardwood floors. But I can’t take credit, Eugene set it all up,” he said gesturing to the furnishings with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Let me take your coat.”

As she slipped out of it, he realized that he probably should have walked over to her and helped her off with her coat in proper gentlemanly fashion, but it was too late now. She tossed it to him and he caught it with one hand, then went to hang it up in the closet next to his sole winter jacket. The two jackets looked almost companionable together, all alone in the closet….

I need to stop thinking so much before I lose my everloving mind.

“Can I sit down?” she asked, pointing to his leather couch.

“No Cassie, I expect you to stand at attention for several hours. Of course you can sit down.”

“I was just being polite.”

“It’s a bad habit,” he said, then turned toward the kitchen and stopped. “I have to make the food now, but um, you can…you’re free to….” he trailed off. He really hadn’t thought this part out.

Luckily for him, Cassie had found the TV remote and wasn’t even looking at him. “It’s fine, I’m busy, go be a kitchen demon,” she said, waving him away.

“Are you
sure? I can get you a book, or something.”

“Shhhh!
Cupcake Empire
is on, go cook food,” she said, seemingly enraptured by all the colored frosting on screen. He didn’t know if she was really as captivated by the show as she was pretending to be, but having her occupied was a relief.

He actually didn’t go directly to the kitchen, instead stopping in his bedroom quickly to change. He didn’t want to spend the whole night smelling of coffee and milk if he could help it. He briefly entertained the idea of putting on his black suit for court, and smiled at the thought of it. He would look ridiculous, puttering around his kitchen in satin and white gloves while bread crumbs got everywhere. He settled on tan slacks and a black T-shirt, then hesitated and changed to a black button-down shirt. He was on a date, wasn’t he? He was pretty sure that shirts with collars were generally preferred on dates.

He also changed his briefs and undershirt; it was amazing, how deep that coffee smell could penetrate.

In the kitchen, making dinner went smoothly, the innocuous babble from the TV in the living room mixing well with the sizzling sounds from his pots and pans. He had made chicken parmigiana at least 100 times before, which was why he was making it tonight; he had enough to worry about without screwing up some complicated recipe in an attempt to impress her.

It probably wouldn’t work anyway
, he thought.
Didn’t she say once that her favorite food is hamburgers? Not a lady of particularly refined tastes, my familiar. But I like that about her.

The forty-five minutes it took him to cook seemed to fly. “Food,” he called, confident she would hear him over the TV. It sounded uncouth, even to him. But what was he supposed to say?

Milady, I have finished preparing our most sumptuous repast. Now, if you would be so kind as to join me in the dining room at your leisure…

Cassie entered the kitchen,
then stopped short when she saw the spread on the table, which included the chicken, a bowl of pasta, and freshly-baked garlic bread. “Wow, that looks good. I’m impressed.”

He smiled, motioning for her to sit. “I told you I can make a few things. You shouldn’t be so surprised.”

“Yeah, but I thought that the people who told you that your cooking was good might have just been afraid of you. No offense,” she shrugged as she sat.

He considered how to respond to that as he took his seat. “I know this may come as a shock to you, but most of the people I associate with have no idea what I am.
Until recently.”

She began cutting the golden-
brown chicken breast on her plate. “Yeah, but you’re pretty scary even when people don’t know what you are.”

He paused, knife and fork in hand. “What is that supposed to mean?”

She shrugged again. “Just what I said. We were all a little scared of you, you know. Before we knew anything. We just didn’t know why we were scared.”

Hearing that hurt.
He’d took pride in his cultivated ability to blend in, to be unremarkable. He’d thought for years that he never gave his coworkers at most jobs any inkling of what he was, but maybe he’d just been seeing what he wanted to see.

As Cassie began bolting down the chicken, a more immediately pressing thought occurred to him. “Oh wait…I forgot to make the salad,” he said, feeling foolish. “I knew I forgot something.”

“Oh, I’m so heartbroken,” Cassie deadpanned as she chewed. “This is so yummy, why ruin it with vegetables?”

They talked mostly of work while they ate: the new byzantine cleaning standards that corporate was imposing, the new spring-themed pastries that no one was buying, and the usual rogues’ gallery of customers that all the employees hated. Cassie felt as close to relaxed as she had all day, in no small part because dinner was so good.

It was the perfect chicken parmigiana: crispy and crunchy on the outside, moist on the inside, and with just enough cheese to feel indulgent without crossing the line into greasiness. She knew it was probably so delicious because Sam had made it a billion times rather than learn to cook something else, but still, tasty was tasty.

After dinner, she sank back down onto the comfy living room couch while Sam cleaned up, amused to find that another episode of
Cupcake Empire
was on. The channel seemed to be having some kind of cupcake marathon. When Sam emerged from the kitchen, he set a large black mug down in front of her on the coffee table.

“What’s this?”

“Chamomile tea. I know we’ve both had enough coffee today, but a heavy meal like this goes down better with a hot drink at the end.”

She cradled the mug in her hands and smelled the steam rising out of it. She briefly had an absurd thought that maybe Sam had put some kind of love potion in it, but that was ridiculous. Why would he even need a potion? She was his familiar; if he commanded her to do anything, she couldn’t say no.

She frowned, letting the warmth from the mug soothe her nerves. She used to be a lot more concerned about being compelled to do things; she’d even had nightmares about it. But she just didn’t believe that Sam would ever force her to do anything against her will without a very good reason. The few times he had done it, it had been in the attempt to save her life. He’d never said so directly, but she got the distinct impression that he found the very idea of it distasteful. Whether that was on moral grounds, or just because he considered that particular kind of magic beneath him, she was relieved that she didn’t really have to worry about it anymore.

Much.

Still, the idea reminded her of what she and Sam were ostensibly going to do that night, which she’d done a good job of ignoring for the last hour. As she sipped her tea, her thoughts briefly settled on the time she had thought a demon was going to rape her. West coast demon lord Bennet Marcus had kidnapped her, had even had her bathed and dressed and delivered to his bedroom (in that order, fortunately) but had been entirely unprepared to commit actual violence against an underage girl.  Still, at the time she had been resigned to it, less afraid than simply sad.

Was this the same? Not really. There was an obvious element of coercion, since she and Sam wouldn’t even be doing this if it weren’t for the Western Court, but it wasn’t just her; Sam didn’t want this either. If there was any violation, really it was both of them that were being violated by the court in general. But did Sam really count as a victim
since, well…he was a guy getting sex? All her life, television had been telling her that men always, without fail, wanted sex, but how could it possibly be that simple?

Sam sipped his own tea and reached for the remote, turning off the show right when they were getting to the Holy Tower of Cupcakes challenge. There was silence for a few moments after the screen went dark. The light of the day had long since faded, and without the blue glow of the TV, there was very little light in the room.

“You probably hate dumb reality shows like that,” she ventured finally. He was sitting on the other side of the couch from her, around an interior corner, so he was pretty much facing her. In the dim light, she could still see him, but the rest of the room had faded to black.

“Less than you might think. Sometimes I leave them on in the background these days. The sheer stupidity of it is kind of comforting, in a strange way,” he said, not looking at her. He sipped his tea quietly.

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” she said.

Silence.

Cassie flushed and looked at the floor. They were supposed to talk, that had to have been Sam’s intention when turning off the TV, but about what? They’d used up all the good Daily Grind-related topics over dinner.

“Hey Sam, can I ask you something?” she ventured after the silence had grown intolerable.

He gave her a tired smile. “You can ask—”

“—anything I want, but whether or not you choose to answer is a different story, blah blah blah,” said Cassie dismissively. “I’m used to your whole literal-Nazi thing.”

“Then go ahead.” He put his mostly empty mug down on the coffee table, stretched and leaned back into the couch, putting his arms behind his head. The fact that he finally looked comfortable lessened the awkwardness a little, Cassie thought.

“Why do you work at The Daily Grind anyway? I mean, not DG specifically,” she said gesturing quickly with her hand, realizing he might misinterpret the
question. “I mean, why do you only work minimum-wage jobs? You went to college, right?”

Sam thought for a while before he answered, looking at the ceiling instead of her. “You’ve met my mother,” he said finally.

“As if that explains everything.”

“Doesn’t it?” Sam chuckled softly and took a deep breath. Cassie figured that he was gauging how much he cared to reveal. “Helen, I think she was always disappointed in the world…that she couldn’t have everything she wanted from it. I think she wanted to use me to fix that; to create someone who could have the world as their oyster,” he said. He squinted, as though trying to see through to the core of his mother’s soul in his memories.

“She planned for me to have everything. That’s why she summoned a demon to father her child; just being human wasn’t enough for what she wanted for me. I think she wanted to make me King of the World, or as close as someone can be to that.”

“That seems like something she would do.”

“It was stifling,” he said, shifting in his seat. “I hated it. I just wanted to know why the other kids in town were scared and wouldn’t play with me, but she was too busy trying to mold me into this…this monument to perfection, that she didn’t care how I felt. She started teaching me calculus in the third grade,” he said, eyes glazed over with reminiscing. He took another deep breath. “I was so bored in school, but she wouldn’t let me stop going, because I still needed ‘proper socialization,’ as she said. The other kids resented me, started to bully me. I fought back once, and the kid nearly died, so the bullying stopped, but then they wouldn’t even talk to me.”

Cassie
exhaled, trying to imagine what the horror of a childhood like that was like. To her surprise, it hurt to hear it, not so much for Sam’s sake—although she did feel sorry for him—but because it made her think badly of Helen. She hadn’t consciously realized it, but she had seriously idolized the older witch. Cassie herself so often felt powerless, yet Helen ordered Lords of Hell around like it was no big deal, and even better, they
listened to her
.

Of course, it made sense that a woman like that would have a dark side, but that didn’t make hearing about it any easier. Cassie hugged her shoulders, though it wasn’t cold.

“So…did you ask her to stop? To let you have a normal life?” she asked, although she felt she knew the answer already.

“Only a million times.
But my opinion on the matter was not considered relevant,” he said, with a cold bitterness that seemed to slice the air between them in two. “Eventually, I realized the only way I could get back at her was to fail. I tried failing my classes, but the teachers passed me anyway because they were scared—more of her than of me, I think—so that didn’t work. When I took a job at a gas station though, that’s when I really started to get to her,” he said, smiling at the memory. “The lower the job was on the social scale, the more it bothered her. It became my perfect revenge: take everything she’d given me, and do nothing with it.”

Despite the wonderful meal, Cassie felt slightly nauseous.
Helen turned him into this, because she’s crazy. He’s had a horrible life because she never let him just be himself. This is sick, this is just so sick.

She cleared her throat, trying to find a way to phrase what she wanted to ask next without offending him.

“So, even now...even though you haven’t lived with her in years…you’re just living to get back at her?”

He cocked his head as though the question intrigued him. “That would make me pretty stupid, wouldn’t it?”

“That’s not what I meant,” she said quickly.

“No, it isn’t just about her. I find I’ve adapted to this…lifestyle.” He said, moving to lean forward in his seat. “Never having a secure job means never being tied down to any one place…I can leave at a moment’s notice.
Which is just common sense for me, really. Everyone knows I don’t belong, so they mostly leave me alone, and I can keep to myself with my books and be reasonably happy.” He finished with a shrug, as though daring her to contradict him.

She didn’t though; she sat back in her chair, awestruck. After a moment’s pause, he broke the silence again.

“Do you want to run out the door screaming now?” he said with a weak smile.

“No, I just…I mean, I thought my Mom was bad,” said Cassie looking at the floor. He laughed then, but there was no real humor in it.

She was about to speak again, to talk about how Annette put so much pressure on her to do well in school that she could relate to Sam’s situation at least a little bit, when he surprised her by interrupting.

“It’s not an excuse,” he said, looking down again. “What she did to me isn’t an excuse for how I treat other people, how I treated you when we first met.
That’s a choice I made. But…” he said, finally looking at her again. “…maybe you can see why it’s so hard for me to be what other people want me to be.”

“And what is that?”

“Someone…reliable. Someone who can be trusted with other people’s safety. All I ever wanted was to be left alone,” he said, so quietly she could barely hear.

Cassie didn’t remember her eyes welling up, but before he had even finished speaking, hot tears were running down her face. She was sad for him, true—but as he said, how he lived was his choice. She believed that. It was more the idea that someone could have so much, yet be rendered completely incapable of enjoying
it, that made her cry. She wiped her eyes on her sweater, even though she knew it would just make her eyes itch.

Through her blurred vision, she saw Sam stand up. “Let me get you some tissues,” he said. When he came back, he knelt in front of her place on the couch and began wiping her face himself.

Acting on a sudden impulse, Cassie put her hands on the back of his head and pulled him close so she could kiss him. It felt strange, tasting the saltiness of her own tears as well as his mouth, but her heart started pounding as she felt that queer mix of nervous excitement that she only felt around him. She had surprised him, and his obvious surprise only made her heart pound more. The fact that she could feel him breathing, so close to her, seemed dangerous somehow.

It was a long kiss, but eventually, he pulled away. “No.”

She couldn’t talk without sniffling now, which made her feel ridiculous.

“Why *sniff* not? That was the idea of inviting me over *sniff* right?”

He put his hand on her knee. “But I don’t want it to be because you pity me.”

“It’s not pity,” she said in a reedy, wavering voice. She hated the way she sounded when she cried. “It’s
just, I wanted to do something to show I understand….”

His hand tightened on her knee. “That’s called pity.”

“No, it’s not,” Cassie started, then gave up. Maybe it was pity, she didn’t know what she felt anymore. Everything seemed crossed, confused.

A strange sensation came over her and then she remembered the last time she and Sam had been in this position, with him kneeling on the floor before her. It had been at court, the night before proceedings where they’d had a big argument that led to him throwing something at the wall.

“Hey, remember that fancy hotel in New York?” she said, barely knowing what she was saying. “You were in front of me just like this, telling me why you didn’t like me.” Even out of the corner of her eye, she could see his eyebrows shoot up at that.

“Cassie—”

“That I would be nothing if I didn’t have magic, that I was shallow, that I was just an average girl who wanted an award just for being av—”

She stopped talking then, because his mouth was on hers. While her kiss had been tentative, exploratory, his seemed hard and desperate, to the point that it almost hurt. He moved closer to her, and faster than she would have thought possible, they were both on the couch, with him on top. She struggled for breath when he broke the kiss.

“No,” he said again, his dark eyes searching her face. “Too soon.”

He moved quickly again, and somehow, she was in his lap, facing forward. He pulled her close to his body so her back was against his chest, and began to caress her arms and shoulders. Even through her sweater, she felt vibrations in her skin. She shivered, and found that the shiver made the sensations more intense.

Then she gasped as she felt him kiss the nape of her neck. The kiss, light and gentle as a feather, sent ripples of sensation down her back. Slowly, carefully, he began to shower her neck with gentle kisses, all the while continuing to caress her arms and shoulders. She kept waiting, breathless, for his hands to move and touch her in a more intimate place, but he continued; almost innocent in the way he handled her.