The Problem With Black Magic (11 page)

“I’m going to keep calling him that because that’s what he is. You’re used to the fact that, in the human world, you’re your own boss.
In theory, anyway. But when you deal with demons, Cassie, you’re dealing with a culture that has changed very little since the days when women were treated as hardly more than cattle. You don’t have to like it, but you do have to accept it.”

She snatched the dress away from him. “Yeah, I’ll get right on that.”

“You’ll see what I mean when you get to court. Anyway, have fun showing off your new dress to your mother.”

“Err…” said Cassie, suddenly uncomfortable. “I can’t do that. I mean, she doesn’t…know about this whole New York trip.
Yet.”

Serenus
looked at her with an amused expression for a long moment before getting back in the car. “Court is next weekend: You might want to get on that.”

***

“Mom, I’m tel
ling you it’s fine. Jay and Mike’s parents said yes already.”

“And if they all jumped off a bridge…” began Annette.

Cassie put down her fork, ignoring her dinner of microwaved lasagna. Hunter had taken a few disinterested bites and then ran back to his X-Box, so unfortunately, she had Annette’s undivided attention. “Mom, it’s not jumping off a bridge, it’s going to a coffee convention! We’re going to get to taste exotic blends learn how to make all the new espresso drinks.”

“And I’m telling you for the last time, you don’t need to learn anymore about coffee, you need to study for the PSATs. Who’s paying for this, anyway?”

Cassie averted her eyes. She was used to lying to her mother by this point, but this coffee convention story was a whopper, even for her. “The company. They’re paying for the training.”

“Really?” said her father, looking up from his dinner for the first time. She saw the bulge of his amulet under his shirt, and thanked her lucky stars that her family had agreed to wear her “art project”
for a while without too much of a hassle. “A coffee chain is going to pay thousands of dollars for a couple of part-time employees to attend a seminar? Doesn’t sound very cost effective.”

Cassie licked her lips. They’d all come up with this cover story together; had everyone else’s parents asked this many questions? “Dwight and Khalil are going too, and they’re full time. Also, DG is a really generous company. They give a percentage of their profits to help save the rainforests every year.”

“Wait a minute,” said Annette, crossing her arms and fixing Cassie with a harsh look. “You said Mike’s parents allowed him to go. Since when does he work at the shop? Isn’t he the rich brat from Aston Court who doesn’t have to work?”

Could she have screwed this up any more? “He’s
starting, he wants to work at DG with the rest of the gang.”

Her father looked puzzled.
“Gang? You have a gang now?”

Annette brought her plate to the sink and began rinsing dishes angrily. “I’ll tell you what’s going on
Jon, it’s that man from last week. She wants to go to this stupid thing so she has an excuse to stay at a hotel with her older boyfriend, and we’ll get to be grandparents nice and early.”

Cassie blushed fiercely.
“Mom! You’re being totally ridiculous!”

Jon put down his fork and looked at her seriously; always a bad sign. “Cassie, is he going to the convention with you?”

Cassie stuttered; they had decided to keep as much of the story true as they could for simplicity’s sake, but if she told Annette that Sam was going, that would be the end of it. Annette took her silence as an answer, and pointed at her father. “You see, I told you! I was a high school girl once too.”

“And I was a high school boy,” said Jon gravely.
“And however old that Sam fellow is. No, this time I agree with your mother: you’re staying home.”

Cassie looked at them, wanting to scream. If she didn’t go to court, Sam’s claim to her would be forfeit, and then the court would deem her their property by default. If they didn’t let her go to the “convention,”
she would be taken away and they’d probably never see her again, but she couldn’t tell them that.

“Please,” she begged, hearing the tears that were beginning to well up in her voice. “Please, let me go to this thing. You don’t know how important this is.”

Jon and Annette looked at her, then exchanged worried glances. “Why is it so important, Cass?” said her father, getting up from his chair at the dinner table. “You can tell us.”

“It’s…I…” she stuttered, feeling hot tea
rs run down her cheeks. She went to swear, tripping over her tongue when she remembered that curses were dangerous, and jumped out of her chair in frustration. She ran out of the kitchen and towards her room, where she collapsed on her bed. She tried to think of a new angle, a way to convince her parents that the convention was a good idea, but knew it was futile; the moment Annette had mentioned the prospect of Cassie coming home a pregnant teenager, she knew her parents would consider the trip off the table.

After a few minutes, there was a soft knock on her door and her father came in. He sat at the foot of her bed and began rubbing her back gently. “Cassie, you know you can tell us, right? Whatever’s going on, we can handle it.”

No you can’t
she thought immediately. In theory, she could tell her parents the truth, but she couldn’t see any possible way it would help. Either they’d try to get her psychiatric help, which wouldn’t get her to court on time, or worse, they could actually believe her-- in which case, Annette would probably insist on stomping into court by herself to give demonkind a piece of her mind. It might be a cliché, but it really was safer for her parents if they didn’t know.

“There’s nothing going on, Dad. I just really wanted to go to this convention, is
all.”

“Well, there will be other convent
ions. And if anything comes up, tell us-- don’t keep it bottled up. We’re here to help.”

“Thanks, Dad,” C
assie choked out softly.

It was only later, when her father had left and Cassie had resigned herself to the fact that she was going to have to get herself to court on the sly, that it
occurred to her to wonder how Serenus had gotten her measurements for the dress in the first place. Maybe there were some things they were all safer not knowing.

Cassie didn’t tell Serenus or Sam that her parents hadn’t agreed to let her go to the convention. She was afraid they would suggest using some kind of demon magic to “convince” them, and the very thought of that made her feel sick. She did tell Jay, who was going to take her luggage, including her new dress, in his suitcase. If she was keeping it a secret from her parents that she was leaving for the airport after school on Friday afternoon, she couldn’t very well pack an overnight bag.

Sneaking away to court was going to put her in the doghouse with Annette for a while-
- perhaps forever-- but as long as she got to return home, it would be worth it.

The time before the event seemed to pass quickly, with the days filled with school, homework, and shifts at DG. Cassie tried to ask Sam questions at work about witches and the nature of their bond, but every time she approached him, he suddenly found some urgent café-related task that required his attention immediately. She understood that
Serenus wanted her to give him time, but she was beginning to fear that maybe the amount of time Sam needed before he’d be ready to talk to her approached geological.

For the most part it was an uneventful week, but Cassie often felt that she was being watched; men on the street seemed to look at her a little too intently, making her clutch her amulet to feel its welcome buzz of power in her palm. Once outside on the school track during gym, she felt eyes on the back of her neck and turned around to see a muscular man staring at her from behind the chain link fence that surrounded the Silver Crown Academy athletic fields. He had walked away almost immediately, but she had felt jumpy for the rest of the day.

It wasn’t just her, either; when she’d asked Mike and Jay if they’d felt like they were being watched lately, they exchanged worried glances and nodded. With court around the corner, it seemed like the only thing protecting any of them were the amulets. Cassie knew the only reason no one had attempted to snatch her outright again was that they could sense that she was protected.

When the fateful day finally arrived,
Serenus picked up Cassie, Jay, and Mike at school and drove them to the airport where they met Sam, Khalil, and Dwight. Cassie hadn’t flown since a trip to Disneyworld with her family when Hunter was a toddler, and she was expecting to feel nervous, but found herself strangely calm in the terminal waiting room, thumbing through a vocab review book while Jay played a handheld game next to her. She supposed being afraid of flying just felt quaint when she had something so genuinely scary to anticipate on the other end of the route. Besides, if the engines failed, Sam could probably just freeze time again.

She put her vocab book back in her bag and leaned back, trying to relax. Across the aisle from her, Sam was apparently doing the same thing, while Khalil zoned out next to him listening to his MP3 player. She had told her parents that she was going to be covering one of the shifts at the shop while most of the staff was at the convention-
- reasonable enough, especially considering she usually worked Friday nights. Her parents wouldn’t be concerned until after the shop closed and she didn’t come home.

Sam sensed her watching him and met her eyes for a moment, and she turned away; she didn’t know what to think of him anymore.

Mike was busy doing something with his tiny netbook (which Cassie had learned he owned in addition to his laptop and desktop computers), while Serenus and Dwight stood a little ways away from them, talking in hushed tones. What a strange team they had become.

And now we’re called an entourage,
Cassie thought.

“Now boarding, Flight 384 nonstop to La Guardia Airport New York, leaving from Gate 12,” said the calm voice over the loudspeaker, and the group all got to their feet. She supposed Khalil hadn’t been listening to his music very loud, since he got his belongings ready the fastest.

When Cassie leaned over to pick up her book bag, the only piece of luggage she’d been able to take, her amulet popped out of her shirt. Before she could tuck it back in, a large hand grabbed it, making her heart jump in her chest.

She looked up to see Sam staring down at her, holding her amulet under her chin in his fist. “What is this?” he said, something akin to panic in his eyes.

Cassie stared at him. “My amulet. You know, the one you made?” she said mockingly.

He tugged on it, pulling her forward. Before she could protest, he hissed “Look at it!”

Cassie did; where it had once been a pinkish-purple stone, the middle was now a gentle sky blue. The spot of blue she’d thought she’d noticed when she was trying on her dress had been real, and now it took up the whole center of the stone.

Sam turned to
Serenus, who had come up behind him. “What is this? Did I make it wrong?”

“No,” said
Serenus, stroking his chin. “You made it perfectly. But her own magic is seeping into it, changing it.”

Sam looked at her with an expression of frank disbelief. “How is that possible? She’s not even…” he started and then bit his lip. He dropped the amulet, took a few steps back and crossed his arms, shaking his head like he didn’t believe it.
Serenus put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t worry; its function hasn’t changed,” he said softly. “Maybe if she wore it for a year, enough of her magic would
seep in to pervert it, but the spell isn’t meant to last that long to begin with.”

“Pervert it?” said Cassie, staring the now multi-colored amulet on her chest. As usual, she had no idea what they were getting at.

Dwight gestured to the gate. “Look, we have to board the plane. Whatever else is going on can wait.”

Serenus
nodded and motioned the rest of the group forward, and they all moved toward the gate, Sam leaving last with a baffled look before he turned away, tossing his duffel bag over his shoulder with a resigned gesture. When Cassie went to move towards the gate, Serenus put his hand on her shoulder.

“It can’t be helped, Cassie; now that you’ve been tapped, you’re seeping magic
. And this is what white magic does, takes black spells and turns them gray, then white.”

“If that’s what it does, then why is Sam so freaked?” Cassie asked as
Serenus guided her over to the line of passengers waiting to board.

Serenus
smiled, and whispered to her as they approached the flight desk next to the gate. “He’s not used to having his magic interfered with-- well, no one is, really. It’s…a little scary.”

“Scary?” asked Cassie. Sam was scared of her now? That was a laugh. “It’s not like I’m trying to do this, you know.”

“I know,” he said. “That’s the problem.

***

She hadn’t expected to be able to sleep on the plane, but the seats in first class were so comfortable, she found her eyelids getting heavy soon after takeoff. The fact that she had gotten three hours of sleep the night before probably had something to do with it.

She dreamt of running away from demons, demons with glowing red eyes like Sam’s, but it was futile; her feet felt leaden, and every step felt like a chore. No matter how far she went, she never seemed to get anywhere: she was still running down the same stretch of sidewalk in front of the Daily Grind while the pack of monsters behind her walked towards her slowly, languidly, getting closer and closer with no need to run. Their sneering laughter rang in her ears as she stumbled away.

When they were almost upon her, Sam grabbed her hand and pulled her aside, into an alley that ran between DG and the next building over. When they entered the alley she somehow knew, the way one could know things in a dream, that the other demons were gon
e. She felt the briefest whisper of relief before the man in front of her split into two, both turning to face her.

She blinked.
Two Sams?

There was a flicker of light, and they began to change form. It soon became clear to Cassie that neither had been Sam to begin with, and she felt foolish for being
mistaken. Whatever else Sam was, he didn’t immediately register to her as non-human, and these things were as far from human as could be.

While still keeping a
basically humanoid shape, the one on the right quickly morphed into a body filled with eyes, while the one on the left was all mouths. The Eyed One horrified Cassie in particular, its oversized eyes staring in different directions- some blue, some green, some red, some bloodshot with pupils and some without. Some were clearly diseased, or maimed and crusted shut. But a good number of the functioning eyeballs were focused on her face.

She went to back up against the wall of the alley, only to find the familiar scen
ery gone; she seemed to be in a quarry filled with black volcanic rock, broiling under a red sky. She felt reasonably sure she was still somewhere on Earth, but beyond that, she had no idea.

“Look upon her now, for our time is short,”
said the Mouthed One. Several of the mouths spoke simultaneously, all speaking the same words but with slightly different intonation and timing, like an out-of-synch Greek chorus.

Many of the Eyed O
ne’s pupils flicked from Cassie to his companion, and she couldn’t tell where its voice emanated from. Nor did she particularly want to know. “I didn’t wait seventy generations merely to look at her. You will see to it that our time is long enough.”

Several of the mouths made irritated noises, but didn’
t protest further. The Eyed One took a step towards Cassie, the blue-green eyes on its kneecaps drawing her attention. She tried to step back, only to find her back against the rock wall of the quarry.

“Do not fear, little daughter,” said
the Eyed One, continuing to close the distance between them. “They like to say that the daughters of men were fair, but they were also clever: when the waters came, your kind took a deep breath and hid below until they receded. I trust you can keep your head below water for just a little longer.”

Cassie cleared her throat. Though she was terrified, she sensed that these creatures didn’t wish her harm
. The Eyed One had called her daughter; in some way, they considered her their kin. They probably wouldn’t hurt her intentionally, but they were so inhuman she wasn’t sure they could help but hurt her.

“Who are you? Are you my ancestor?” she asked.

The Eyed One turned many pupils to its companion. “As I said,” his inexplicable voice thrummed. “Clever.”

“Who are you?” she repeated, surprised that she sounded demanding. In some strange way she would be unable to explain, she felt that she deserved to know.

The Eyed One turned its attention back to her. “I will ask the questions. There is a part of you that is missing, small one. Can you feel it?”

Cassie knit her brows. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Your kind, when you lose a part of your mortal body, you feel it-- you feel a lack where it should be. Something was torn from you; you should feel its absence even though you can’t remember.”

“Or perhaps, because you
wish to remember,” said the mouths in a sing-song tone.

Cassie’s head was swimming; this was making les
s and less sense the more they spoke. “I don’t understand. What do you want from me?”

“
The child asks when She has been told not to ask,” said a single one of the mouths, located on the Mouthed One’s belly. It was the first time any of them had spoken individually.

“
The child disobeys because She is ours,” corrected another mouth, this time on the neck.

The Eyed One came to a stop in front of Cassie and, to her horror, put its hands on her shoulders gently. The
tiny purple eyes on its knuckles seemed to blink their long lashes at her playfully, coquettishly.

“I cannot tell you, because to explain in words you could understand woul
d take longer than your lifetime; you must remember of your own accord. In the meantime, protect your birthright. It is yours alone.”

Cassie blinked.
“My birthright? My white magic?”

“The time has come!” she heard several of the mouths hiss, this time in unison. “Make haste.”

The Eyed One looked confused. It was strange to see a befuddled expression in a hundred pairs of eyes. “White magic? There is no such thing. There is only Magic.”

With that, he leaned in toward her, several of the lower eyes on his face
dissolving, forming a mouth-like hole. As he kissed her on the forehead, with only a gaping absence where his mouth should be, Cassie lost all sense of herself, knowing only that she was screaming uncontrollably.

She
jerked awake with a start. She felt chilly, her body covered in layer of cold sweat. She pulled her complementary blanket tighter around herself and snapped her head over to the opposite row, and immediately calmed; Khalil was talking to Dwight about something on the private screen on the back of the seat in front of him. They appeared to be watching some kind of cooking show, snorting about how there was no way this particular recipe could be made in “less than thirty minutes!” if you included all the prep. The sheer banality of the conversation was infinitely comforting.