Victoria's Demon Lover (14 page)

     Mr. Magnus was
blushing when she looked up at him.  “Have you read much about sex magic?”

     “Not really.  I
wasn’t planning on having sex with Jasper or the harpy or Marple.  Or even
Marple’s fiend, as you clearly saw.  When I discovered my demon was an incubus
I stopped looking for other answers.”

     Mr. Magnus
nodded.  “Well, he is not an incubus,” the old man said.

     Victoria tilted
her head.  “How do you know so much about him?”

     He smiled
sadly.  “He asked me to come here and I did.  He asked me to explain what I
could and try to keep you away from Shrewsbury.”

     “He took me to
Shrewsbury, himself.  Why do I have to stay away now?”

     The old man
appeared troubled.  “He did not explain everything, but it seems that something
happened there some centuries ago that is causing problems in this one.  He is
trying to work it out.”

     “Does the sex
have something to do with time travel?”  Victoria leaned over and took a
notepad and a pen from the drawer in her nightstand.  Mr. Magnus sat up
straighter and assumed the demeanor of a professor.  “Tell me,” she said, pen
poised.

     “Yes and no. 
The sex is how he is able to connect with you between the planes of existence. 
Once connected, he can use that tether to your reality for time travel or
shape-shifting or any other thing he needs in this world of physical forms.”

     Victoria wrote
that down.  “And the shape-shifting?”

     Mr. Magnus
nodded.  “That has to do with how you perceive him, not so much what he
actually looks like.  If he appeared here now,” they both looked around the
room as if he might, “you might see him as the Roman soldier, and I might see
him as the red demon with the ram’s horns.”

     “No kidding,”
she murmured as her pen scratched the paper.  “So which one is really him?”

     “They are all
him.  The forms are like clothing you choose to wear based on your mood and the
occasion.  He selects a form based on any of his previous lives or places where
he has lived.  Including Hell.”

     “Previous
lives,” she wrote, “Like reincarnation?”

     “Right.  Though
it appears he is selecting forms from lives he once shared with you, rather
than others.  Probably so you will recognize him.”

     The pen
stopped.  Victoria looked up.  “With me.”

     “Right.”

     “Recognize
him.”  She remembered his exasperation with her and how he was constantly
asking if she remembered.  “Shit.”

     Mr. Magnus
blushed again.  “Right.”

     “Am I just so
stupid?”  She shook her head.  “I am not usually so dense.”

     He nodded.  “Not
stupid, Victoria, but something is keeping you from remembering and apparently
it is important that you do.”  He looked sad.  “
Was
important,” he
amended.

     “Why did he stop
coming?”

     “That’s just
it.  He tried and tried, but you did not see him.  You made progress.  He
stopped seeming like a monster or a fairy-tale demon to you and started to look
like a man.  You allowed him to begin speaking to you.  Until you saw him as a
human being he could not communicate except through sex.”

     “And then he
stopped,” she reminded him.

     Mr. Magnus moved
to sit beside her on the bed.  He took her hand.  “You are not to think you
have failed, Victoria.  This is hard for anyone, and doubly hard for someone
who has no background in the occult.”

     She let him
stroke her hand, but frowned at the tone of his voice.  He sounded just like
the preacher did when he talked to her mother after her father died.  “What do
you mean,” she asked slowly.

     Mr. Magnus
sighed.  “He was trying to reach you from across that great chasm between  life
and death.  This is possible, but both lovers must extend their hands.  You
would not give him your hand.  He stopped trying.  Or he was stopped.”

     She took her
hand back.  “Lovers.”

     “Yes.  He was
your lover.  Is.  Had been.  Many times.”  Mr. Magnus smiled kindly.  “Always. 
Forever.”  Then his smile faded.  “But no more.  He failed to help you
remember, and now you are lost to him.  Forever.”

     Victoria felt a
twinge of sadness and wondered at it.  “He told you tell me this?”

     “No.  He told me
to tell you to stay away from Shrewsbury.  I told you what I know about him
from his touch, to help you understand.”

     “I wonder what
is in Shrewsbury.”  She took her hand back and rubbed them together for they
had become chilled.  She thought about the man, the Roman, the Norseman and the
blacksmith.  She wondered how many more forms and histories and lives there
were.  “I liked them.  They were handsome and interesting.  If they had asked
me out now I would date them.  But I don’t remember loving them.”

     “That is the
whole issue, here, Victoria.  You don’t remember loving them.  Him.”

     “How can I?  Do
I need to be hypnotized?”

     Mr. Magnus
appeared startled.  “No.  Don’t do that.”

     “Why not?”

     “You become
susceptible to suggestions from the beliefs of the hypnotist and it may lead
you farther away rather than closer.”

     “I see.  Then
what should I do?”

     “Nothing.  It is
over.  Welcome your sister and her little family into your home.  Enjoy the
financial security he has provided for you.  Try to have a nice life, Victoria. 
Say good-bye.  He will not trouble you again.”  Mr. Magnus got up from her bed
and adjusted his clothing.  “I leave you a parting gift.”  He took a book from
one of his wide sleeves and set it on the nightstand.  “Good bye.”

     She almost
expected him to leave in a
poof
of sparkling smoke, but he left like
normal people do, through the front door.  She stood at her window and watched
him walk to his truck and listened to the sound of the diesel engine rumble and
the sway of the panel truck as it backed out.  She watched him drive away. 
Then she watched the empty road for a long time before she picked up the little
book and looked at the title.

    
A Tale of Two
Cities.
She had read this one in high school.  Dickens again.  She frowned
as she turned the pages.  This book was about love.  Every book is about love
if you think about it.  Victoria set the book down again, remembering the story.
It was also about resurrection.
Have a nice life
, he had said.  She felt
herself getting angry.  Have a nice life?  Her life was far from nice, and
financial security only made her worries go away.  It didn’t make her life
nice
. 
What the fuck did “nice” mean anyway.  She grit her teeth.

     Her whole life
seemed to be spent in a dream.  Her memories were of a person moving from one event
to another day by day.  She had friends she met for coffee, and the wilder ones
she met for tequila shots weekends.  She had lovers. 
Sex partners
, she
corrected.  Men who came over and messed up her sheets and her bathroom and
left hair in the sink and then just…left.  The others she sent away.

     Her jaw started
to hurt and she realized she was grinding her teeth.  She had never been in
love.  With anything or anyone.  She went to school to learn the most boring
profession of all, accounting.  Her friends were boring.  They only wanted to
discuss the latest thing on television or in the malls.  The men she casually
fucked were more interested in their own gym memberships and their video games
than in her. 
Nice life indeed.

     When she tried
to think of her life in terms of whether it was nice or not, she saw herself
putting the good parts and the bad parts in columns just like she did at work
with debits and credits.  She needed a life accountant. She smiled grimly. 
What other people considered a nice life was one free from worry enough to
allow them to engage in even more selfish pursuits.  Her wealthiest friends
were the ones who spent the most time shopping and clubbing and hours at the
salon talking about themselves.  Her less fortunate friends spent their time
doing more interesting things, and talking about things and events rather than
people.

     She tapped the
book on the nightstand. 
I will not go back to bed and wake up in a nice
life
, she promised herself.  She marched over to the chalk circle and drew
another one next to it.  It wasn’t midnight.  There was no incense.   There
were no more shoes.  Instead there was a burning desire to get to the bottom of
her visitations.  She felt the heat of Hell behind her eyes as she scratched
the symbol in the center.  She wanted Marcus and Jack and Torgal. While she
browsed the latest fashions they were dying over and over again.  While she lay
in a soft bed and complained to herself about being lonely, they were calling
for her to help them.  The thought of a
nice life
filled her mouth with
the nasty taste of a skinny latte, tall with nutmeg sprinkled on tip and
finished with the snotty glare of an underpaid barrista.  She pointed at the
center of the circle and growled, “Jasper!”

     The monkey demon
appeared as though he had been dragged kicking and screaming through a
keyhole.  His big eyes recognized her and before he could tell her “no”,
Victoria had him by the throat and spat, “Shrewsbury.  Now!”

     She was ready
for the flash.  She stood outside the familiar thatched cottage.  She looked
down at herself to make sure she was not still in her nightgown.  Good.  She
wore a simple woolen dress to her ankles and a thick useful apron tied over the
front of it.  And no wonder.  At her feet was a wicker basket filled with wet
linens.  It must be laundry day.  She bent to pick it up and was surprised at
how heavy it was.  Natural fabrics were much heavier than cotton or polyester. 
There would be no silk here.  At least not on the body of a blacksmith’s wife.

     She did not have
to be told where the clotheslines were.  They were strung between trees on the
south side of the cottage.  She carried her basket there and bent to lift and
hang the sheets.  Her hair fell forward and she saw it was very dark. 
I
must be Maggie, then, and not Victoria. 
She straightened and pulled the
long braid out from behind her and looked at it with interest.   She lifted her
skirt and lifted a leg to look at her foot.  She was wearing a soft leather
shoe and thick knitted stockings.  She heard the clang of metal and turned. 
The forge was on the north side of the cottage.  She grinned and trotted around
the house to see him.  Finally.  Jack.

     There he was. 
He had two young men with him.  They had to be assistants. Only a master could
have apprentices.  He was still a journeyman.  She watched him raise the hammer
and bring it down on something.  Horseshoes, probably.  He didn’t look up. 
Of
course not
, she told herself. 
He sees me every day
.  She tried not
to look as excited as she felt.  Another clang and another.  An assistant
carried fresh water in a wooden bucket and poured it into the barrel where he
quenched the metal.

     He lifted the
horseshoes with the long tongs and submerged it quickly into the water.  He
held it there a minute as a bit of steam drifted up, then lifted the horseshoe
and eyed it carefully before handing the tongs to the assistant.  He turned
back to the forge and nodded to the other man who used the bellows to make the
coals glow.

     Victoria felt
she could watch him work forever.  He was stripped to the waist.  His back and
shoulders moved constantly, the thick muscles under his bronzed skin relaxed
and contracted as he lifted the heavy hammer and brought it down.  He glistened
with the sweat of exertion and with the heat of the forge.  She squirmed.  She
wondered why she had been forbidden to come to Shrewsbury.  She was starting to
feel an excited twinge that her brain told her was happiness.  Maggie had a
nice life.  This was nice.

     Maybe the
laundry basket and what it implied was not so nice.  She might miss electricity
and washing machines and hot showers and movies, but she was willing to trade
them for Jack.  She was his wife.  They were a team.

     She wondered if
she was responsible for feeding his men.  She glanced at the sun.  It was
mid-morning.  There didn’t seem to be any sounds coming from inside the
cottage.  He had assistants but it appeared she did not.

     Reluctantly she
turned from the forge and went into the dim cottage to get her bearings. 
Something was already simmering in the big iron pot suspended over the fire. 
The bed had been neatly made against one wall.  A long table dominated the
center of the room.  Benches were pushed neatly under it, though the table was
full of many items.  She could see a sewing basket, various pieces of crockery,
some broken leather harness needing buckles, and a stack of folded cloth which
reminded her that it was laundry day.

     She returned to
the south side of the house and finished hanging the sheets on the ropes.  She
breathed in the clean air, free from industrial pollution, though she didn’t
need to turn her head to know where the barn was.  The sky was clear and the
sun was warm.  She bent to pick up a pillowcase and wondered how laundry was
dried when the weather was bad. 
I will learn
, she told herself as she
stretched to hang it over the rope.