Random Acts of Sorcery (8 page)

On Sunday morning, Miri didn’t go straight to Cassie’s house from Sam’s apartment. Instead, she went home, showered and changed. She had been planning to wear her favorite stockings that day (the ones with the little silk bows), but she just wasn’t feeling very festive. Instead, she opted for frayed black jeans and a slate grey T-shirt. As she took out her copied key to Cassie’s house, she couldn’t help noticing that it felt odd to actually be wearing pants. How did Cassie wear pants all the time? They were just so…constraining.

Once in the house, she immediately began making coffee. Not the black sludge that Annette favored, but the toffee-flavored blend that she knew Cassie preferred. Dimly, she could hear music and electronic bleeping sounds from down the hall; on weekends, the boy woke up before anyone else in the house and played videogames for hours. Sometimes she worried about him overhearing her conversations with Cassie, but she highly doubted he would get up from his games anytime soon.

She paced back and forth in the kitchen while the coffee brewed, with her arms crossed. Aside from that one time Miss Angelfood Cake had cut off her head (it was a long story) she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been this angry.  Well, she’d been angry for sure while Quentin was tormenting Nyesha, but that was entirely different kind of anger. That was soul-crushingly depressing; now she was just pissed.

When the coffee made the pleasant bubbling sounds indicating that it was done, she poured some into a large mug with a picture of a dolphin on it, adding just a bit of milk. She also picked up a nearby measuring cup and filled it with cold water from the tap. With the coffee mug in one hand and the measuring cup in the other, she walked up the stairs.

Cassie didn’t stir in bed when Miri opened the door with her hip; so much the better. Carefully, she put the steaming coffee mug down on Cassie’s night table. Then, she overturned the full measuring cup over Cassie’s sleeping head.

Cassie shot up in bed with a thoroughly satisfying shriek.

“Miri!” Cassie sputtered once she had gotten her breath back. She shook her wet hair, and water droplets went flying everywhere. “What the hell?”

“I brought you coffee,” said Miri, pointing to the night table.

Cassie looked at Miri with rage-filled eyes, but eventually picked up the coffee and began to drink it. Miri knew the girl wouldn’t just bolt out of the room if there was fresh coffee involved. She was beginning to regret not pouring a cup for herself actually, but she felt better standing over Cassie with her arms crossed. Sipping from her own mug companionably wouldn’t have created the same atmosphere.

“Now that you’re awake, just what did you do to Sam? He’s a mess.”

Cassie slammed her (already half-empty) mug down on her night table. “What I did to HIM?” she said, with all the indignation a 17-year-old could muster, which was a lot. “What did Sam tell you about last night?”

“Not much, since he was pretty much out of his mind by the time I got there. You obviously did something.”

Cassie looked like she would have strangled Miri with the bedsheets, as if that would have done any good. “You’re blaming the victim here!”

Miri rolled her eyes at that. “Did he do anything to you that you didn’t want?”

Cassie’s eyes dropped from Miri’s face. “Well, not really, but….”

Miri sighed. “Look, all I know is that things were going fine,
then you suddenly had the mother of all freak outs and bolted. You wouldn’t even let him take you home. You’re going to have to tell me what exactly happened. Otherwise, I won’t know if he’s in the wrong or not.”

It seemed like all the anger had gone out of Cassie. She pulled her knees to her chest and hugged them, turning her face to the side. “He isn’t human, Miri! I tried, I really tried, but I couldn’t go through with it.”

Miri knelt at Cassie’s bedside. “Tell me what happened. We’re both girls, you don’t need to be embarrassed about anything.”

Cassie swallowed, still not meeting Miri’s eyes. “Well for a while, it wasn’t bad. We were just talking,
then we started kissing and stuff. That part was…nice,” she said, her face flushing crimson.

I’ll bet it was
, thought Miri. Most men didn’t really get her “Restraint is Sexy” lesson, but Sam wasn’t most men. As clueless as he had been in the beginning, he’d proved a quick study.

“After a while, he picked me up and took me to the bedroom. And that was okay for a while too, we were just holding each other, and you know…stuff. But then—”

At that moment, the door swung open.

“I wanna play
Car Fights 3
. Do you still have it?”

“Hunter, knock!” Cassie yelled. Miri had to give her credit; she recovered her composure quickly in front of her little brother.

“Are you going to apologize for throwing it at me yesterday?”

Hunter just looked at her with a sullen expression,
then looked surprised when he noticed Miri in the room.

“Why are you here?” he asked.

“Little boys who throw things at their big sister’s faces don’t get to ask questions,” said Miri.

Hunter turned back to Cassie. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? It was stupid.”

Cassie wasn’t mollified. “Are you really sorry? Or are you just saying that so I’ll give you the stupid game back?”

Hunter looked down. “I’m really sorry. Throwing it at you was really babyish. I won’t do it again.”

Cassie sighed. “Okay.” She got up and walked past Miri to open a dresser drawer, pulling out the game case. She walked to the doorway and handed the game to her brother. “You can have it back, but if you ever do that again, I’m taking all the
Car Fights
games and throwing them in the lake.”

“I won’t, I won’t,” said Hunter, clearly thrilled to be getting his game back. However, he frowned when he took a good look at Cassie. “Why are you all wet?”

At that Cassie closed the door in his face.

“Hey!” he shouted through the door, but then he must have remembered that he had
Car Fights 3
in his hand, because they soon heard his footsteps pounding down the hall.

“Miri, I can’t talk about this here. Not with Hunter and Mom in the house.”

Miri uncrossed her arms. “Then let’s go somewhere else. But you are not getting out of this.”

The Sunday birdwatchers were some of Dwight’s favorite customers. They were unfailingly cheerful and polite, tended to order simple drinks, and always put their change in the tip jar. More than that, they all seemed to be genuinely nice people, who were happy to spend their retirement appreciating life’s simple pleasures. Just talking to them was like listening to a relaxing nature CD that soothed his nerves.

And when you worked seven days a week most weeks, those nerves could invariably use some soothing.

This Sunday morning was different however, as the birdwatchers were on the warpath. They huddled together as they waited on line to order, speaking in hushed, angry tones.

“They’re taking over the entire preserve. I already wrote a letter to The Audubon Society, and we should all be calling the mayor’s office,” said a woman with short-cropped white hair and binoculars around her neck.

“Can the city government do anything?”

“The city owns the preserve, if they pass some kind of “save the birds” initiative, I’ll bet they can start shooting those bats on sight.”

“Do they have to shoot them? We don’t want to kill the bats, we just want them to go back where they belong….”

“They’re encroa
ching on the black tern’s habitat, Sophie! The
endangered
black tern, I shouldn’t have to say.”

“I know that, but bats are an important part of the ecosystem as well.”

“Not THIS ecosystem.”

Dwight exchanged glances with Khalil, who was in his regular post at the espresso bar. They didn’t know exactly what the birdwatchers were talking about, but they thought they had a good idea.

“Wait, so,” Dwight began as he handed a cup of dark roast to Esther, one of the few he knew by name. “A bunch of bats have invaded the nature preserve?”

“Yes, it’s terrible!” said Esther, jamming a five-dollar bill into Dwight’s tip jar. “There’s always some bats in the preserve, but they don’t interfere with the birds. This year though, there’s this giant pack of them that came up from down south, and it’s completely unnatural. They don’t belong here, and they’re competing with the birds for nesting sites. By this time next year, the local populations could be decimated.” She sighed. “And to think there are still people that don’t believe in climate change.”

A very elderly man behind Esther was nodding vigorously as she spoke; he was wearing a “No Bats Allowed!” T-shirt, picturing an evil-looking vampire bat with a red X over it.

Dwight was at a loss for words, because he knew too much that he couldn’t tell them. The bats had followed Sam and Vladmira up from North Carolina, so maybe Sam could send them back? Sam would probably insist that he had no control over what the bats did, but Dwight had realized a long time ago that Sam tended to claim he couldn’t do things in order to duck responsibility, even if it wasn’t necessarily true. He’d have to have a talk with him about it; enraged bird watchers messed with his typical Sunday
zen state.

Khalil finished two drinks and brought them over to the counter, face impassive. “Personally, I hope they kill all the bats, every single one of them. Ugly buggers don’t belong here, and if they didn’t want to die, they should have stayed down south where they belong.”

Even Esther seemed slightly put off by Khalil’s antipathy towards the bats. “Oh, well we don’t really want to kill them, they are God’s creatures too of course. We’re just concerned about the environment.”

Khalil smiled and showed his teeth. “The environment will go back to normal as soon as they’re all dead, right?”

“Khalil, can I speak to you in the back for just a minute?” Dwight said through a forced smile. He had a feeling that Khalil wasn’t really talking about the bats at all.

Fortunately, Francesca was there to cover the register for a few minutes, so Dwight could motion Khalil into the break room without much trouble. When he had closed the door and was confident the customers couldn’t hear them, he narrowed his eyes at Khalil.

“What exactly is your problem?”

Khalil shrugged. “I
care about the black tern.”

“Yeah, okay,” said Dwight. He wasn’t going to dignify that with any further response. “What are you so mad about?”

Khalil sat down in a plastic chair with a nonchalance that Dwight could tell was entirely forced. “I’m not mad.”

“Then why do you keep talking about killing the bats like you want to do it yourself?”

“It’s like the ladies are saying; they don’t belong here. I want things to go back to normal,” he said, and then looked away. Dwight took a moment to process that.

“You mean, before we knew about demons and vampires.
Before there was an entourage.”

Khalil just shrugged.

“Did something happen with Miri last night?” Dwight ventured. At that, Khalil colored.

“It’s not about her! I’m just sick of all this supernatural bull–” Khalil started,
then remembered the dangers of cursing.

“–stuff.
I don’t know if I want to have to be a part of it anymore…and as long as I’m working here, I can’t get away from it.” He exhaled and looked off to the side, clearly considering what he had just said.

Dwight stepped back and leaned against the sink, putting his elbows on the counter behind him.
“So what now? You wanna quit?”

“I don’t know,” said Khalil quietly.

“You want to run back to med school, and make Daddy proud?”

Khalil’s head snapped forward at that “Hey man. That’s below the belt.”

“If you go back to school, he’ll pay your way, right? Tuition, rent, everything?” Dwight leaned further back over the sink. “You should just do it.”

“It’s not about money, okay?” said Khalil, clearly frustrated now.

“It’s not about money for you,” Dwight corrected, pushing forward so he was standing unsupported in front of Khalil. “Far as I can tell, there’re only two people who work here who actually need this job: me, and Francesca.”

Khalil looked away at that, but even without seeing his expression, Dwight knew he’d scored a hit.

“Some of us actually need to work for a living, Khalil, and I don’t have time for your self-pity act. You can do two things: be my assistant manager, and help me and Fran out front like you’re supposed to, or you can get out of here and stop bothering me.” With that, Dwight turned to go. “I’ll give you ten minutes to calm down, and if you’re not ready to be an adult by then, you may as well just leave.”

“Dwight….” Khalil started. He could hear the regret in the younger man’s voice, but he couldn’t afford to soften now.

“Ten minutes, Khalil,” he said, closing the door behind him.

He had come back to the front just in time, since the register had given Fran a code she didn’t recognize and the transaction was being held up. As he helped sort out the usual register confusion, he hoped that his tough-love act had worked, because he really wasn’t prepared to lose Khalil. They were friends, but more importantly, he really did need the help.