The Problem With Black Magic
Read The Problem With Black Magic Online
Authors: Karen Mead
The Problem With Black Magic
By Karen Mead
Text Copyright © 2012 Karen Mead
All Rights Reserved
Table of Contents
Cassie gave up hope of getting into her book about two chapters in. The 800-page fantasy tome kept mentioning "spells", and that kept making her shiver, despite the fact that she was positively toasty in her pink hoodie.
She tossed the book on
the coffee table next to her haphazardly, where it made a dangerous sounding thump, and stretched out on the leather couch. Maybe she would have to switch genres for a little while; her mom seemed to be fond of mystery novels lately. Cassie had never really cared about "who done it," but reading about magic-- even fanciful, old-fashioned stuff with castles and unicorns-- was a little too close to home right now.
Across the room, her father was watching a local news discussion show while he went through the mail, his typical weeknight routine. Cassie had been trying to ignore the voices coming from the TV for the past ten minutes, with little success.
“It’s been almost a week, and still we’ve heard nothing substantial,” said a commentator with brassy blonde hair in a dark red power suit. “Washington wants to pretend the situation doesn’t exist, Greenwich is MIA, and who does that leave? CERN? MIT? They’re mystified.”
"What can they say? We lost time
--it ain't coming back," said Cassie's father, looking up from the bills he was sorting. He seemed to be talking to the commentator, but he spoke loud enough that his wife in the next room could hear.
"Enough with that, we did not "lose time," that's ridiculous and you know it," said Cassie's mother, almost yelling to be heard over the roar of the dishwasher. "It was a computer error, that's what they're going to find."
Cassie's father threw the business-folded letterhead into his lap, annoyed. "Yes Annette, it was a computer error-- every computer and watch in the city at the same time! For no reason! That makes perfect sense!"
Cassie rolled her eyes when her mother barked a reply, shivering again and pulling her knees up to her chest. Her parents had been having this argument nonstop since the aberration was discovered, going back and forth on whether the fact th
at the city had become 17 and a half minutes behind the rest of the world was a glitch, a prank, or some grand conspiracy. Cassie knew, but she wasn't sharing.
"The fact of the matter is, time stoppe
d here: for almost 18 minutes," said a scholarly looking man with a grey beard on the discussion panel. "If you don't believe what the computers and every analogue clock within a 10-mile radius tells us, there's all those phone conversations that mysteriously stopped on our end. The fact that we don't know why, or the fact that some keep saying it should be impossible, doesn't change the fact that that's the simplest, most logical explanation."
The smiling moderator began to explain that the bearded man taught physics at the university, accompanied by some unnecessary footage of the sunny Sterling College campus, when the TV was switched off by Cassie's mother. Her father rolled his eyes and went back to sorting the bills on his lap. Annette bent her ample frame to put the remote in its holder and looked over at her daughter. "Are you okay, honey? You look a little pale."
Cassie felt the heat rush into her face, and hated herself for it. Why was she even nervous? Even if she did tell them why the news had made her jumpy, it's not like they would believe her. "I dunno, it's just...this whole time-skip thing. It's weird. I wish they would stop talking about it already."
"Not until we get an answer, they won't," said her father, half under his breath. Of course, Annette still heard.
"There may not be an answer, Jon! Can't you just accept that? Can't you just, for once in your life--"
"But what about the people on the phone!
Dozens of people, conversations just stopped-- Cassie?"
Cassie had jumped to her feet, siding past her mother. She stomped down the hall in her socks, slamming the door to her room behind her. For once, she was happy she and her mother didn't always get along; slamming the door was shorthand for "let me cool off," and her mother would respect their unwritten codes, developed over many years of heightened screaming matches over Cassie's clothes, her friends, the status of her homework-- basically, her entire life. Annette could be trusted not to barge into her room for at least an hour.
Cassie dropped face-down on her bed, hooking her arms under her pillow for comfort. The mild buzzing between her shoulder blades that had started last Sunday was annoying, but she could ignore it. She smirked to herself: at least she'd changed the topic of conversation between her parents from the stupid time-skip to what they'd done to piss off their "sensitive" daughter now.
At least sensitive is what her parents’ ma
rriage counselor had called her, though Cassie herself wasn't so sure. A bit of a tomboy when she was younger, still more comfortable around boys than girls, she was anything but a shrinking violet. She had enough of her mother in her to usually speak her mind, although she could only hope that she didn't sound anywhere near as annoying while doing so. The whole "sensitive" angle only came about when she hit puberty faster than everyone else, and suddenly felt like the whole world was calling her fat.
Unable to get comfortable, Cassie got out of bed and walked to the mirror. She knew she wasn't fat
-- in fact, it was debatable whether or not she was even overweight-- but a size twelve was hardly considered the ideal teenaged girl's body, and she knew it. She had been told she was pretty enough times to believe it, and she was a little vain about her eyes, unusually large and dark blue in color. Her glossy jet-black hair, which she always kept short for convenience, was also something she took pride in. It was her shape that was the problem, or so she thought.
Still, looking in the mirror, Cassie saw a norma
l, and not unattractive, 16-year-old girl; one that could maybe stand to lose ten pounds, sure, but not a big deal. She had obsessed over her appearance a few years ago, but she was more accepting of it now; so she would never be a supermodel. Big freakin' deal, most people weren't and they seemed to get over it. She could too.
Besides, if anything, she w
as losing weight. One benefit of being so worked up over the past week was that her stomach was in a constant clench, when it wasn't churning with nerves. It made eating seem unappetizing, and she'd only picked at her food lately. Cassie turned to the side, noticing that she had some wiggle room in this pair of jeans for the first time she could remember.
A few weeks ago, Cassie wouldn't have believed that she'd turn down the opportunity to lose weight effortlessly, but now, she'd gladly trade in her old appetite for some peace of mind. For going back to the belief that magic wasn't
real, and that it wasn't scary as hell.
Cassie stepped back from the mirror and rubbed her temples; she hadn't been responsible for the time skip, but she knew who was. She had seen him stop time, so that people on the street in front of the shop were paused mid-stride. She had seen a building, leaning sickening to one side and about to
collapse and crush dozens of people, if not hundreds, paused at an impossible angle, pulled out of time before it could fall.
It barely took any time after the earthquake before people realized that a
circular area, approximately 10 miles in radius, was out of synch with the rest of time. At first, people dismissed the incorrect times as slow watches and computer errors, only to realize that everyone around them was also resetting their clocks. Wristwatches, MP3 players, game consoles- anything with a time function was exactly seventeen minutes, thirty four seconds behind. The banks had discovered it first, and then somehow it went viral- social media networks were ablaze with "Are you in downtown Sterling? CHECK YOUR WATCH!" in a matter of minutes.
Of course, some people found out instantly; anyone who was on the phone with someone in Sterling and heard the other end of the line suddenly go deathly silent knew something was up.
Cassie sat down at her computer, feeling tired even though she'd done nothing but laze around ever since she'd gotten home from school. If she had seen this alone, she could convince herself she was crazy, and that would be that. As it was, she couldn't go five minutes without hearing about the stupid time skip.
Worst of all, the one person who could possibly explain this to her was gone, and probably wasn't ever coming back. Cassie tried to distract herself with an online game, but gave up after only thirty seconds, logging out. She pushed the keyboard out angrily, and rested her head in her arms. Unbidden, thoughts of that Sunday morning began to take over. Mostly, it was the image of Sam reaching out to take her hand that her mind kept repeating.
Leaning back in her chair, Cassie decided then and there that she was going to return to work the next day. It was unlikely going back to the coffee shop after school would clear anything up, but it was better than stewing in her room indefinitely.
Sam.
The guy at the shop who always seemed to hate her. Where did he go?
That Sunday morning had begun as a typical shift at The Daily Grind, a downtown coffee shop where she had worked for eight months. Cassie usually did short, four-hour shifts on school nights. It was rare for her to do an opening shift, but she liked to work the occasional Sunday for the money. Early on, the customers were mostly retired people who walked to the shop for coffee as part of their weekly routine, some staying to read a newspaper. The early weekday morning rush-- that gaggle of caffeine-craving commuters who kept the shop in business-- was something Cassie had never seen. Dwight and Khalil sometimes complained about it, speaking of lines wrapped around the block, but she had reason to believe they were exaggerating.
The Daily Grind was somewhere in between a typical chain coffee shop and a funky independent outfit in appearance. Technically DG was part of a chain, but the franchise was mainly focused on the west coast; isolated from management, Dwight, the wiry musician who managed the shop, had the freedom to make his shop a little less generic. He
had dressed the place up with pieces from local artists and his tropical fish tank, which Cassie was sure must be some kind of health code violation.
Dwight himself was busy stocking the fridge with
juices from that morning's delivery, his coppery red strands pulled into his typical ponytail. Khalil, their assistant manager, was doing some paperwork at one of the cafe tables, his dark head bent over the clipboard in front of him. If she asked, he would probably say he was doing inventory; she had no idea if he was ever actually doing inventory.
Sam, their barista, dishwasher and espresso-machine-fixer extraordinaire, was in the back, cleaning a few dishes from the previous shift. Their sanitizer, which cleaned the plates, had broken several weeks ago, and they were still waiting for a replacement. Normally under these circumstances the shop would have to close, but Sam had taken it upon
himself to clean all the plates, by hand, to hospital-level standards of cleanliness. It meant that he spent a fair amount of time in the back room, but since Dwight had made it clear that Sam was not to do customer service under any circumstances, that was pretty much fine with everyone.
Really, four people (assuming Sam even counted as a person) was too much staff for a Sunday morning, but sometimes Dwight liked to put on more people
than strictly necessary so there would be time to get the place organized and sparkling clean-- one of the reasons, perhaps, why the shop managed to stay in business while the chain stores nearby both had larger menus and undercut their prices.
Cas
sie herself was on the register. She had counted out her till, and technically she was supposed to be pricing the merchandise in a cardboard box on the counter while she waited for customers, but she really wasn't doing much; just enjoying her (complimentary) cafe mocha and the smell of baked goods--which she totally wasn't going to eat, because they were unhealthy. Very unhealthy. Right.
Because she was basically doing nothing, she was the first to notice
Serenus enter the shop, despite being across the room.
"Good morning, Dr.
Zeitbloom," she said in her best happy-cashier-girl voice.
"
Helloooo, Bette Davis!" said the thin, nearly bald man in a pinstriped gray suit. Serenus gave her a big smile as he made his way slowly to the counter, balancing on his silver cane. The professor had a habit of calling her the name of a different old-time movie star every time he saw her. She supposed it was flattering, but she usually didn't recognize the names he came out with; at least Bette Davis, she'd heard of.
Khalil and Dwight both said good morning to their regular customer, Dwight with a warm smile and Khalil barely sounding human. Khalil had a friendly personality normally, but he wasn't himself before nine in the morning. That was about how long it took for him to absorb all the free-floating caffeine in the air, he said. One would think someone who helped open the store at six a.m. almost every morning would be used to being up early by now, but apparently not.
"So, what'll it be today? Five-pump iced vanilla latte with three shots of regular, four decaf, and soy milk? Mocha brewed to exactly 201 degrees?" said Cassie, naming some of the professor's famous drink orders. The man was notorious for ordering drinks that were nearly impossible to remember or make. Most customers who did that sort of thing were considered worse than criminals by the staff, but for some reason it wasn't as infuriating when Serenus did it. Maybe because he didn't get mad at them if it took them three tries to make his stupid drink; in fact, it seemed more like he was rooting for them to get it right above all else.
"Hmm, what to drink, what to drink today
...small daily blend, Betty Davis Eyes," he said.
Cas
sie raised her eyebrows, "Just black coffee? That's it?"
He gave a small shrug. "I'm feeling old fashioned."
Cassie smiled as she grabbed a small paper cup from under the counter for his coffee. True, he normally ordered ridiculous drinks, but he also normally came in when Sam was on the espresso bar. It figured that without his favorite barista to torment, he just wanted a cup of coffee like everyone else.
In the four months Sam had been working at DG, Dr.
Serenus Zeitbloom was the only person who seemed to be anything like a friend to him-- hell, the only person who even seemed to know him outside of the shop. If Khalil was to be believed, the professor had gone on academic sabbatical from his job teaching biology at a prestigious university elsewhere in the country just for the pleasure of tormenting Sam on a regular basis. How the two knew each other wasn't clear, and Sam certainly wasn't talking, but most of the staff at DG guessed that he was Sam's former teacher at one point-- at least, before Sam decided to devote himself to washing dishes like nobody's business.
"So, what are you doing up this early
, Professor?" she asked as she set his coffee on the counter. Serenus didn't have a regular time you could set your watch by like some of their customers, but she was pretty sure that 8:15 on a Sunday morning wasn't one of his typical visiting hours.
Serenus
frowned as he got out his wallet. "I wish I knew," he said, fixing his narrow gray eyes on her with a seriousness that surprised her. "I'm up today, and I'm never up this early on the weekend. I wonder why that is?" he said slowly, as though he was expecting her to know the answer.
"Uh...too much sun in your window?" said Cassie, taking his offered bills and putting them in the register.
"I doubt it," he said, picking up his coffee and taking a small sip. He looked at her over the rim. "Cassie."
She jumped; it was the first time he had ever called her by her actual name. She wouldn't have thought he knew her name, actually. "Uh, yeah?" she said helpfully.
He leaned down so he was at her eye level, careful not to spill his drink. "Just be careful today, alright? Pay attention."
"
Oooo...kay..." said Cassie. Well, that was creepy. Even for Serenus, who was definitely on the creepy side, as much as she usually liked him.
He nodded
like he'd said his piece and moved to go.
"Hey, uh, Sam's in the ba
ck. I can get him if you, uh...wanna say hi," she said awkwardly.
"No, that's alright
; he's probably cranky enough this early in the morning without my contributions." And with that, he gave Khalil a friendly nod, and left the shop. Once again, they were customer-free.
Cassie picked up one of the
cream-colored tumblers she was supposed to be pricing and felt the weight of it in her hands, thinking. What had that been about? It had been like Serenus had come in to talk to her specifically, but for what purpose? Other than the fact that she sold him coffee at times, they had no connection that she was aware of.
As she played with the large cup
, suddenly the door to the back room behind her slammed, causing Cassie to nearly drop the thing. "Hey, no slamming the door!" said Cassie, turning around.
Sam stood before her looking annoyed, one hand clutching a beverage packet. "This was on the wrong shelf. Did you put it there?"
Cassie looked at the packet. "There was no room left on the UBB shelf, so I put it on the CB shelf. Why, does it matter?"
Sam looked her like she was
either two years old, an idiot, or both. "There is plenty of room on the UBB shelf. You would have realized that if you ever spent five seconds looking before you just shoved things in anywhere they'll fit."
Cassie opened her mouth to respond to his attitude in kind, but Khalil's sleepy voice interjected before she got a chance to.
"Seriously, guys? It's a little early for this."
Cassie swallowed what she was going to say. "Sorry," she said, not meeting Sam's eyes. It just wasn't worth arguing with him.
Sam gave her an incredulous look, like he couldn't believe she had the nerve to apologize to him for the heinous crime of putting a beverage pouch on the wrong shelf, and went off to start his work behind the espresso machine. Cassie glared at his retreating back: they always got on each other's nerves, which in and of itself wasn't so bad-- she was used to getting on people's nerves and vice-versa-- but the fact that she had a crush on him somehow made her feel like he had won every argument, and that was really starting to bother her.
Stop crushing on him!
She yelled inside her head
. No one is hot enough to act like he does and me still have a crush on them! What the hell?
He was attractive, that she didn't deny. An inch or two over six feet, he had a slender frame with broad shoulders and narrow hips- not bulky and muscular, but he had just enough meat on his bones to keep him from looking skinny. He had deep-set eyes that seemed to look through everyone, so dark brown they looked black unless you were standing very close to him, and pale hair that she'd
assumed was dyed when she first saw him. His eyebrows were almost as dark as his eyes, usually a tip off that someone was a bottle blond.
Now though, she knew better; as he reached toward the top of the espresso machine to put fresh beans in the hopper, the morning sun streaming through the window reflected on the soft down on the parts of his arms that weren't covered by his white button-down shirt, giving him a golden sheen.
Apparently he was one of those rare natural blonds with dark eyes, something she found simultaneously alluring and obnoxious. Continuing to watch him work out of the corner of her eye, Cassie suddenly remembered the other reason she enjoyed working Sundays.
Of course, it wasn't just a question of looks; there were plenty of good-looking guys around at school, teachers and students alike, and Cassie didn't feel the heat rush to her face whenever they were in the room. No, there was something about Sam that intrigued her, even when she wanted to scream at him. He had a way of doing work, even the most menial chores like sweeping and washing dishes, that made it seem as though doing them was his choice, as opposed to a job he had to endure. Even though his rank in the store wasn't any higher than hers, he was treated like another manager
, and no one took issue with it; it just felt right.
Plus, there was that smile…
not his typical smile that was half a sneer, but his rare, warm smile that reached his eyes...
No, bad Cassie! Bad!
She thought,
He's the enemy!
Just as Cassie was vowing to try to imagine Sam covered with bugs from now on, so she could muster up the proper look of disgust she'd like to fix him with (and hopefully distract his attention from the fact that she was usually blushing when he spoke to her), she started to feel something odd beneath her feet.
For a fraction of a second, Cassie thought that the vibrations she felt might be due to someone jumping up and down for some strange reason, before she realized that, no, the ground was actually shaking; everything was shaking.
Khalil met her frightened eyes for a second before jumping out of his seat. "
This an earthquake?"
"I think so," said Dwight, who moved gracefully under a table, motioning the others to follow him.
Khalil positioned himself, putting his hands on the bottom of the nearest table as the vibrations intensified. "Do we even have earthquakes here? I don't remember one.”
"We do, just not often," said Dwight.
"Should I move?" Cassie called out. She was still standing at the register- she could go out to the cafe area and take shelter like they had, but she wasn't sure if moving was safe. Maybe it would be better to stay where she was and wait for it to pass. She bit her lip as the shaking seemed to intensify. She put her hands on the counter to keep from falling over.
In the cafe, a French press displayed on one of the shelves teetered and fell, shattering into a hundred
glass pieces on the tiled floor. Several other vessels followed suit, and soon the rumbling noise of the earthquake was punctuated by the sound of breaking glass. In a matter of seconds, the checkerboard floor was covered with glass shards and other debris. Cassie held onto the counter with a white-knuckled grip; it definitely wasn’t safe to move to the café now. She thought the giant coffee carafes bolted into the walls behind her were too solidly attached to fall, but if they did, she was probably dead. Vaguely, as though she were only partially conscious of her body, she noticed her teeth were chattering.
