“Won’t help,” Molly smiled. “Anyway, I’m Molly, and I’m a witch. Hi.”
“Ah,” Amber nodded. Her tone conveyed neither surprise nor belief.
“Onyx,” Molly called over her shoulder, “tell her we’re witches!”
Still behind the bar that separated the living room from the kitchen, Onyx held up a bundle of dried leaves on long stems in one hand and her ebony wand in the other. She calmly slashed the wand across the top of the bundle, which ignited with a flash of blue flame. Within a heartbeat, the flame died and the leaves were left gently smoldering in her hand.
Though startled by the flash, Amber didn’t jump much. Her hand went to her gun but didn’t pull it out. She forced herself to take a deep breath. Behind her, Molly began hammering the nail into the overhead corner. “That could be done without magic,” Amber said.
“Yeah, probably,” shrugged Molly.
“I’m just saying.”
Molly gave the nail a few awkward whacks, irritated by the angle. “You saw an angel tonight. And the werewolves. And the vampires, for what they’re worth.”
Amber frowned. “And yet here I am wanting to argue with this ‘magic’ stuff.”
“Sure,” Molly nodded. “When you live your whole life believing you know how the world works and then you see direct evidence proving that wrong, it’s tough to deal with at first. Ayn Rand fans have the same problem. But you’ll adjust.”
Amber watched as Molly stepped down from her chair, picked up her tools and moved to another corner. “Just sayin’ I’d like more evidence than a stage trick,” she muttered.
“Might not get a lot more of that. Most of the magic I’m gonna do tonight involves a hammer.” With that, she turned back to her work.
Amber nodded, turned and found Jason in the living room. She pointed at the couch. “Okay, no more stalling,” she said. “You need to explain. Everything.”
* * *
Across the street from the apartment sat a dark, mostly empty office. A lone table stood near a window partially obstructed by curtains. Behind those curtains lay a pair of high-powered cameras, a laptop computer and an external hard drive.
All night the rig on the table had sat alone, left unattended in light of the Halloween party and the absence of the apartment’s residents. It sat alone still, with the rig’s owners now scattered and focused on more immediate concerns. Yet the rig was set to keep rolling all night, and well into the next day if need be.
There was little to record once the apartment’s residents returned home and the blinds to all the windows were shut. Still, the rig kept recording.
Then a lovely young woman in Renaissance-era dress stepped out past the curtains, bearing a bundle of gently smoking leaves and soundlessly reciting words in old tongues.
Unbeknownst to her, the rig kept recording… until her ritual took effect, and the whole rig powered down on its own.
* * *
Neither her time at UW nor the FBI Academy led Amber to rely solely on her memory. She tended to carry a notepad along with her iPhone and utilized both. As a favorite instructor at Quantico frequently told everyone, “Paper has a long memory.” Investigations, interviews and interrogations had all emphasized the need to take recordings or notes whenever possible.
She had no chance to do that here. That happened all the time, but in such an event she would simply write her notes as soon as she could. Yet she was quite convinced from the start that she wouldn’t forget a single detail of Jason’s story.
“So we thought that was gonna be it from the vampires,” he said, facing her on the couch with a somewhat penitent, hunched-over posture. “We were all pretty careful for the first couple weeks, but the more time went on, the more it looked like Lorelei had been right and they weren’t gonna be out for revenge. She said predators don’t look for prey that they know will fight back. But even so, it’s just… what else should we do? Hide for the rest of our lives?”
Amber’s brow furrowed. “But you haven’t done anything to provoke them since?”
“No,” Jason answered. “I’m pretty surprised by it all.”
“They seemed to know who you were,” she noted skeptically.
“Yeah, well, social media, right?” he shrugged. “The Internet’s an archive. Everything lasts forever.” The pair fell silent. The sound of Molly driving another nail into a corner elsewhere in the apartment carried through the living room. “I’m sorry about all this,” Jason told her glumly. “I didn’t know you’d be in any danger. But you can understand why I couldn’t just be up front about all this, right?”
“It doesn’t make me feel any better that you were keeping secrets from me. Stuff that could actually affect me, y’know? I mean it’s not like you just didn’t want to tell me about your action figure collection or something.”
He frowned. “Okay, that’s fair, but still.”
“I’ll grant you I don’t know how you broach this subject,” Amber continued, “because it sounds pretty strange to me and I believe every word of it. So I’m not sure how you tell people that your friend’s girlfriend is an angel and his other girlfriend is a sex demon and you all just hang out.“
“Y’know,” Jason muttered, “now that I hear you say it, that sounds like kind of a crappy thing to call her.”
“I’m sorry?”
“The sex demon thing.”
“That’s what she is, isn’t it?”
“She’s my friend,” Jason shrugged.
Amber glanced around their surroundings, wondering whether to push this thought on him or not. She leaned in and dropped her voice lower. “How many people has she killed?”
Jason shrugged. “Bad people, you mean? ‘cause from what Alex and Rachel have said, that’s how it works.”
“Uh-huh. Has it occurred to you that she might be manipulating all of you?”
“Sure.”
“And?”
“I don’t think so. She’s never done anything to make any of us suspicious.”
“Jason, you said it yourself. She’s a demon,” Amber pressed quietly. “She’s, like, literally from Hell.”
At that, he scowled deeply. “Maybe you should point that out to Alex. He might not have noticed. While you’re at it, you can ask him if he ever noticed that his three best friends are a black dude, a country hick and a Jew. Or that those two chicks he met in his photography class are both dykes. Maybe he’ll realize that’s more important than how people actually treat him.”
Words failed her. She tried to come up with some counter, but only felt worse for it. “I’m sorry,” she said. “That’s not what I meant at all. But you don’t think all this is dangerous?”
“Well, yeah,” he mumbled, bumping his fists together awkwardly. “So that’s all there is to tell you. You can ask whatever of whoever you want now. You’re in the know. But if you want to go, I totally understand. I mean not tonight. I’m not tryin’ to kick you out or anything. I think you should stay the night with us at least. But after that, if you want to just get away from us and never see me again…”
She shook her head. “Stop it.”
“I’m serious. You could’ve died tonight. Or worse.”
“You didn’t bail on your friend when demons were after him, did you?”
“Alex and I go back to elementary school. You only just met me. First real date and look how it turned out. Wasn’t exactly romantic. Or chill.”
“I think I found out my date’s the kind of guy who stands by his friends even when the shit destroys the fan,” Amber said, allowing a bit of a smile. “I can’t say all this stuff makes me comfortable, but… no. I don’t want to ditch you.”
Tension escaped from him with a long breath. “Okay,” he said.
“Okay.”
He gestured toward the hallway. “I’ve gotta go hit the bathroom.”
“I’ll be here,” she nodded.
Jason stood, hesitated, turned and bent over to kiss her on the lips. She found she wanted it more than she would’ve expected. Rather than shrink away or put him off, as part of her knew she should, Amber sat up and brought a hand to his face. She knew she shouldn’t do this. Her body and her heart promptly overrode her brain.