Malia Page 5

  On top of that, it would have required magic being real, for the story to work. Which it wasn’t. Everyone had always told her that.

  Taking a shuddering breath, there was a slow smile from her mother. The uncertain kind.

  “No. It’s… real. After that, our summoning, begging for help, you started to play with Malia. No more than a day or two after the sacrifice. A goat, before you ask. We shouldn’t have been meddling, but there had been signs. Signals that something was going on. Dark things. Anyway, your new friend showed up and at first, no one thought anything of it. Even in our group, most of them didn’t think it was important. Even after Reid and I saw her. We all thought she was just a ghost or something. It happens. Kids don’t filter things as well as adults do, so they can make friends that way.”

  Jessica tapped the bottom of her mug on the glass table, very softly. The ceramic made a tink every time it hit. She looked over at her mother and shrugged.

  “Okay, so if this isn’t a joke, and you’re an asshole if it is, then you all summoned Malia and then she… did her job? I mean, both Debbie and I walked out of there alive and the bad guy, Mark, didn’t. I guess I can see not telling me about all of this. I mean, I might have told on you, or ended up being locked up for half my life, because frankly, that story sounds totally insane. More than I am, even.” There was a soft smile to go with the words, which sounded a bit dour.

  They got closed eyes and a nod.

  “The thing is honey, when you call up something like that, you don’t always know what you’re going to get. That thing, outside your window? That could be related. If it is… Well, we need to protect you.”

  Jess winked then. As if it were a game, even if her mother didn’t seem to be playing.

  “Witness relocation? If I get a choice, I opt for Hawaii. After all, who doesn’t want to live on an active volcano.” She more or less meant it. Not really though. Hawaii sounded nice, but had too many tourists for her blood.

  There was a very deep breath then.

  “It isn’t that easy. If it was, we would have moved further away to start with. I’ll need to make some phone calls. Can you be home this evening? Call it eight or so? I don’t know if anyone will come.” She looked away then, at the far wall. “Rather, I do know they will. Since I’m asking. It’s just that we’re a secret organization. There are people from town here that you might recognize and you aren’t a member. Still, this is our responsibility. Your father and I. The people here weren’t in on that other thing, so we can’t really hold them responsible for any of that now. They might help anyway, since it’s how we work. We do for each other, even if it isn’t convenient. That… Well, I’ll make those calls. We might need some of them as well.”

  “Um… Mom… Let me… First, are you actually saying magic is real? Because people get locked up for that, so you might want to hedge on that one a bit. Second, you and dad still practice it? That sounds like the kind of thing that you might mention at some point.” After a moment, Jess realized that she just had.

  It could have been useful a bit earlier though, to tell the truth.

  Rather than blush and stammer, there was an eye roll in response to her daughter’s words.

  “I suppose it could have been. Except that, yes, magic works. Not all the time and it’s different than people think. The idea of controlling the world using your own will is… Well, that’s pretty much horse droppings. You can influence things a tiny bit, but only the most powerful can do anything worth noticing and even that tends to be so small that it’s not worth it. Things that used to be called magic, like herb lore and alchemy were replaced by science over time. They did a better job of it too, so it wasn’t some small thing. Some things though, like invoking other types of beings… That not only can work, but is very powerful. You have to do it right. There are rules, too. If you make contact and bargain correctly, you can master such a being. If you mess up too much, you might find yourself possessed or even just dead. So, it works.”

  There was a tense shrug then. The white cup in her right hand not moving as it rested on the flat tabletop.

  “Sometimes. Half the time it doesn’t work at all. You just can’t make contact. No one knows why, really. I tend to think it’s about everything being out of range or something like that. If I call you on your cell, but you’re in a dead zone, then you can’t answer it. When it does happen and something shows up, you have to get things just right, or it can backfire. I can’t stress that part enough. Even if you don’t do that kind of magic yourself, you need to understand that factor. The thing is, if you get the right being on your side, you can do incredible things. It’s how your father got ahead in business during the last depression. I’m pretty certain it’s how the President got into office as well.” She grinned, having been against the man pretty staunchly. “I mean that too, I’m not just making accusations to put him down. There were some things that were way out of place. The polls said the other person was going to win, by a landslide, then… Well, you were there. My point is that it works, but sometimes things can go wrong.”

  Jessica nearly asked her mother if she was done with the joke yet, but didn’t. After all, if it was a gag, then her mother had truly gone over to the dark side anyway. Possibly not in a magical sense, but still, you didn’t kid your mentally ill daughter about certain things. This seemed to fall into that range of being for her. It was an elaborate joke, if it was one, but the kind of thing that no one was going to end up laughing at.

  Rather than yell or fight about it, since she didn’t really do that kind of thing and lacked most of the required skill set for a really good argument, Jess stood up. Halloween was coming and she could passive-aggressively toss some eggs and toilet paper, if it turned out to be a lie. It nearly had to be.

  “Okay. Well, I’ll be home this evening, I guess. Eight or so. Probably earlier than that, like most nights. It isn’t like I have a hot date or anything. Even if it is Friday. If nothing else, I can get to bed early.”

  That seemed to be fine with her mother, no matter what else was going on at the moment.

  If it really was a game, then Jess was probably going to be more than a bit pissed, later. If it was all real, then she was going to have to make certain she hadn’t actually lost it in an incredibly complete fashion. There weren’t a lot of other options, after all.

  Seeing faces in her window and covens that summon creatures like that… Including her childhood imaginary friend. It made far more sense that she’d gone over into la-la land than that it was real.

  “For now, I need to catch a bus. I have that test in a few hours and don’t want to be late.”

  “I could drive you?” She started to stand, only to be waved back down.

  Jess shook her head.

  “No. I need to think. Without you being right there, talking to me. I mean, this can’t be real. If it is, then… What do I need to be doing, you know? Do I run and hide? Report you to the local priest? The options are limitless. I just don’t know what any of them are.”

  There was a tiny, slightly rueful, look on her mother’s face then.

  “That’s the thing, Honey… you actually can’t do much of anything at all. Beings like this, you don’t order them to do things. You ask for their help, you cajole and befriend, then become their master. If they don’t want to let you go, or if they have orders not to, then you aren’t going to get free of them. All we can really do is get a group together and ask about it. If anything will even answer us on the topic. Like I said, half the time it doesn’t work.”

  Standing, Jess nodded.

  “Oh? Well, that sounds promising then. Still, there’s always the idea that I’m just a nut bar, right? So, on that note, I’m off to class. History will repeat itself if I don’t get a hundred percent on each test. I’m pretty sure that’s the saying.”

  It wasn’t and she knew it. Her mother didn’t even crack a grin at the words.

  She just waved her away.

  “Good luck
on that. Be back here this evening. I’ll try to have something set up. We might have to drive, back to the old area. Be ready for that.”

  Then, not looking back, Jessica left the house.

  Muttering to herself as the white front door closed behind her.

  “Sure. I’ll keep myself ready. Then run away into the night, screaming. After all, there’s only so much bullshit I can take.”

  The problem was that she didn’t really know if it was BS or not. It should have been. Then, some of it fit a little too well for her to trust in that idea at all.

  Chapter three: Someone that I used to know…

  The history test had been remarkably simple that day. Professor Carry had told them all to read chapters seven through fifteen since the test would be taken from that, not the lectures themselves. She’d studied her notes from that too, figuring the man was trying to trick them, given he had a shifty demeanor about him most days but paid most of her attention to the text, since the two things had actually overlapped nicely.

  Besides, Etruscan pottery techniques were fascinating.

  That meant she’d finished the whole test before almost anyone else, then spent the rest of the time allotted going over each answer, refining them, to a point where even she had to wonder if she was going to lose points for being too brainy. The Prof would just have to suck it up, she decided. After all, the man hadn’t docked her for doing good work on the last test, so might not on this one either.

  In a way, that part of her day had been restful. Tense, because it was a test and that always set her sphincter to puckering, just a little bit. It was distracting though, and less confusing than what her mother had been telling her.

  Mainly because, while she’d seemed sincere, the line of bullcrap that Jessica had been fed held too many weak points. Obvious ones that kind of meant something wasn’t right with the story at all.

  For instance, no one sane would use a real sixteen-year-old girl as bait like that. Especially not with a rapist who was also a murderer. No, what they would have done was simply grabbed the man when he’d shown up, then tortured the truth from him. That or simply killed him outright. Even if they’d wanted to do it differently, they would have used an older woman who could pass for younger. They also wouldn’t have left a real child in the house, in another room.

  No, they would have had some of the men there, waiting, ready to attack in a few moments, instead of half a minute. That last part might be her using hindsight, of course. It would have worked out better, so it was easy enough to see it as valid. At the time people might have been worried that having someone there might tip the guy off. That still didn’t explain risking her life as well.

  She thought about that fact as she walked to the library, since there was time between history and her advanced calculus class. Jess had the work for that done, being boring like she was, what with all the studying instead of having friends or getting dates like ninety odd percent of the other people at the college managed to do. It did make for good grades, even if she was starting to realize that her life really wasn’t amounting to much so far.

  Being defined by something that had happened to her at five wasn’t the greatest plan in the world. Worse, now even that seemed to be changing on her. What she’d thought she’d known and understood about that situation and the whole of reality, wasn’t working any longer. Even if her mother was just planning a prank for later in the evening, jumping out with a clown mask on and yelling gotcha, just to mess with her, something had well and truly shifted in her life. After all, her mom wasn’t a stick in the mud, but she wasn’t an asshole about her jokes, most of the time. Really, she tended to be a bit too sympathetic. It came off as being phony, a lot of the time. Over acted, as if she were playing a part in a play, rather than just living her life.

  Now, her father loved her, and let that be known, saying it often, and he could whip out the occasional dad joke or pun with the best of them, but he was even less likely to mess with her that way than her mother was. It was probably the discipline of having been in the military, before she’d been born, that added that component for him.

  Which gave her a test to use then. If her father agreed with her mother, then it probably wasn’t meant as a joke, strictly speaking. In that case, well, she still needed to be careful. If they both claimed it was real, then there was something badly wrong with the whole thing. On a level that made it far more likely to be a lie, than anything else.

  Well, if that was the case, she didn’t know what to do, really. After all, the supernatural didn’t exist. Even if it clearly did. Everyone knew that. Society had pretty much agreed on that point, hundreds of years in the past. People that believed in ghosts and psychic crap were mainly nut jobs, or idiots.

  Magic was even worse than that. She could buy a person having a hunch, she guessed. A lucky feeling or warning of danger. Really, that was more or less what fear was. That didn’t mean she was going to believe in fairies and the boogie man. Even if she had seen the guy the night before.

  The library was, as usual, rather quiet that day. There weren’t a lot of people there studying, but some were, since the college had about five thousand people on campus, attending lessons. About half of the people actually using the facilities were older. People who, after years in the work force had gone back to school for some reason. Mainly to learn about computers. At least that seemed to be the common thread, as far as she could tell.

  A few people looked up at her when she walked in, but only one of them waved. That was odd, having never happened to her before there. She recognized the kid, too. Nick Walsh. They’d gone to high school together, but, as far as she could recall, even if they’d sat near each other at lunch for three years, they hadn’t spoken more than twenty times.

  Most of that was the boy awkwardly saying hi to her. Which had been an improvement over a lot of the other people she’d known for most of her life. A few times it had been more than that. Then, Nick had come to Elroy in the ninth grade, so hadn’t been raised with her in classes for years before that. Everyone else knew each other too well to be her friend, really. She had always been the strange one. The one everyone avoided.

  Walking over, she smiled, her face working hard to sell the idea, even if she didn’t feel that way inside. She was used to faking her life, after all. Over time she was even getting better at it, she thought.

  “Nick. I didn’t expect to see you here. How are things going?” She didn’t know enough to ask after his family or anything.

  Turning his head a little, his glasses glinting in the overhead light, the rather thin, ginger haired guy smiled back at her. Seeming actually pleased to see her.

  “Not too bad, apparently. I mean my ex-girlfriend just walked in, and here I already have a hottie ready to sit with me and pretend we’re close, right?” He seemed hopeful about it, instead of like he was being a smarmy jerk. Glancing at the door, there was indeed a woman standing there, staring at them, rather openly. She did not seem pleasant about it, kind of sneering, in fact.

  It was actually kind of rude of her. She wasn’t that great looking, either. Made up well enough, but her long face and sharp nose didn’t help. Plus, while she’d made an effort on the fashion front, her aim had clearly missed. She was in the ugliest cream and off tan fleur de lis print shirt Jess had ever seen. Her hair was fine. Not special or anything, but the makeup she was wearing wasn’t the best she could have managed.

  In short, she was starting out as kind of plain, and had just barely raised herself from that mark. Being a bit heavy set wasn’t doing her any favors either, though a lot of people were worse off, so Jess didn’t bother judging her too harshly on that. If losing weight were easy, everyone would be doing it.

  So, a bit conspiratorially, she settled across from the boy. A man now, if still youthful seeming, even to her. They really had sat near each other for years at lunch after all. That meant he was practically her best friend, from school. He wasn’t Malia of course, with her haunting
in the mirror and all, but they were pretty close, at least for Jess’s life. A thing, she realized, which was both true and incredibly sad at the same time. Without being playful, she reached out and took his hand. Not to shake, but to hold, as if they were meeting on purpose. She gave it a gentle squeeze, after a bit, Nick smiling at the action as if it were real. In fact, he did it back, with his warm, dry hand. Looking down at her, he nodded, since he was a good foot taller than she was. He was really tall, instead of her being particularly short. That was his most distinctive feature, if being slightly nerdy wasn’t going to be counted as a factor.

  Rather confidently, he faked a sigh and spoke softly.

  “See, I should have asked you out in tenth grade. Handholding on the first date… That’s pretty advanced, isn’t it? Not that I’m complaining. About a tenth of my old fantasies started this way, back in the day. Well, at least the more innocent ones.”

  Given the day, she didn’t even pretend to be shocked to hear that. It could be teasing, or just confident honesty. Either way, she didn’t let go of his hand immediately. Normally she didn’t get to do things like that, after all. It was desperate of her to milk the situation like that, probably. She just didn’t care.

  Instead she nodded a bit and leaned in.

  “Is she still looking?”

  His eyes had tracked to the right, meaning he was watching someone go over to the largest set of tables, most likely. After a moment, he locked eyes with Jess and winked a bit.

  “Off and on. I probably shouldn’t tease her like this, but she announced that we were breaking up by text, after sending me a picture of her sucking off another guy. It wasn’t done by mistake, either, so, I figure, you know, screw that cunt.” He looked around and grimaced. “Sorry, I meant bitch. I need to watch my language, I know.”