Read The Dead (The Thaumaturge Series Book 1) Online

Authors: Cal Matthews

Tags: #Gay & Lesbian, #Literature & Fiction, #Fiction, #Gay, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Fantasy, #Paranormal & Urban, #Genre Fiction, #Lgbt, #Gay Fiction

The Dead (The Thaumaturge Series Book 1) (8 page)

BOOK: The Dead (The Thaumaturge Series Book 1)
3.4Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

“Four heifers in an hour,” I summarized after scanning the handwritten notes. “I threw up, immediately got an ocular migraine resulting in the loss of vision in my left eye, and had full body shakes for almost forty-five minutes.”

He nodded along to my description. “Yeah. Easy enough to duplicate. I mean, the parameters are different, because you just resurrected two people not twenty-four hours ago, and back then it had been several months, but... close enough.”

I set the notebook back down on the coffee table and concentrated on finishing my dinner. The Doritos didn’t really complement my smoky Scotch ale, but I finished them both, keeping my mouth busy because Leo just sat there looking at me, waiting for me to say something.

Finally, I tilted the beer bottle up, swigging down the last dregs.

“Fine,” I grumbled and Leo grinned. I couldn’t help but give him a shaky smile in response. It could be like old times, I guessed. The two of us out in the forest, the scent of blood on the wind. I’d be lying if I said I hated the practices all the time.

“Not right now, though!” I protested, as Leo made a move to get up.

He just looked at me, questions all over his face, like he had expected us to just go tearing out into the night.

I motioned to the scattered crumbs of my sandwich, my socked feet. “I just settled in,” I said. “Not tonight.”

Leo made a frustrated, vaguely inhuman noise, but gave me a curt nod.

“We can’t just go out into the pasture and shoot a bunch of cows,” I pointed out. “We have to, you know, plan this.”

“Okay,” Leo grumbled.

“How about Saturday night?” I offered. “When I get back from hunting, we’ll head out and do whatever. Drink blood. Tip cows. Whatever you want.”

“Fine,” he said, but his shoulders were still hunched up around his ears.

I took a breath and stretched out one hand, letting my fingers brush against the back of his neck.

“Anyway, I was thinking we could stay in tonight.” I waggled my eyebrows a bit, to add emphasis but he just stared blankly at me, and a tendril of nerves uncoiled in my belly.

He stood up abruptly, fast and fluid, and looked down at me. His eyes were dark, his mouth a tight line. “Not tonight,” he said. “I don’t feel like it.”

I exhaled in the breath I’d been holding and gave a jerky nod. “Sure,” I said and at least my voice sounded steady. At least I could look him in the eye without flinching away. I’d learned a lot over the years.

“I’ll see you later,” he said, and turned on his heel. He grabbed his coat off the recliner and shrugged it on. When he got to the front door, he glanced back at me with an unreadable expression on his face. “By the way, you should take a shower,” he said. “You smell weird.”

The door slammed behind him as he left and I sat there in the empty room, willing the hurt and rejection to compact down into the tight little space I kept under my heart. I set the notebooks carefully back on the coffee table, tapping the edges to line them into a neat pile. As I carried my empty dishes back into the kitchen, I realized that I hadn’t told Leo about the witches. My bruised pride was pleased about that. He didn’t need to know everything. I wasn’t obligated to tell him anything.

I did get in the shower, but I thought about Marcus during and after, as I lay in my bed. If Leo came back that night, he did so long after I’d fallen asleep.

Chapter Seven

 

The next day, Friday, felt weirdly like a movie set into repeat. I got up, went to work, and visited Dahlia and Brittany. My usual customers came in. My least favorite patron, Misty, stayed for an hour and yelled at me for scalding her Maharaja chai. Wordlessly, I tossed the offending tea into the sink, brewed her a new cup, and shoved it across the counter hard enough to make the liquid slosh over the rim of the mug. Her furious eyes flew up to mine, but something in my expression must have cowed her, because she accepted the mug far more meekly than I’d expected.

I waited for her to begin berating me, but instead she just went back to telling me what an incredibly successfully IT specialist her son was. Apparently he didn’t have the best luck with the ladies, but according to her, he was a special snowflake and didn’t need to waste time with those harpies anyway. When she moved on to complain how her private driveway up Blacktail Road never got plowed, I blocked out her droning and settled onto my stool, staring out the window. The occasional gust of wind rocked the sign above the door. Passersby ran for their cars with their collars pulled up. The gray day fit my mood.

Around noon, the door swung open and I glanced up as Dahlia blew in, a scarf tied over her hair like an old Hollywood starlet.

“Hey, you,” she said. “Lock it up for an hour and let me buy you lunch.”

“Uh-” I said, about to decline, and changed my mind mid-protest. “Okay,” I said, and she smiled, all white teeth and pretty red lips.

“You look fantastic, by the way,” I told her as we walked down the sidewalk. She had her arm twined through mine and her head tucked into my shoulder. I did my best to shield her from the wind.

“Thanks,” she said, but the way her eyes stayed down made me pause.

“Hey, you all right?” I asked, squeezing her arm into my chest.

“Yeah, fine,” she said, glancing up and giving me a small smile. “Just a bad night. I wanted to make myself feel better, so Brittany did my hair and makeup.”

“Look’s great,” I said and squeezed her arm again.

I held the door open for her when we got to the diner, and we settled into a booth by the window. Weak sunlight filtered through the dusty blinds, and I absently brushed some scattered salt off the table and onto the floor. Behind Dahlia’s head, an old painting of a forest fire hung crooked on one nail. I took the menu out from behind the napkin dispenser and the cracked laminate flaked in my hands.

I liked Hot Shots better than the Dinner Bell, the other diner in town, but my opinion didn’t seem to be a popular one. Even in the middle of the lunch hour, Hot Shots was nearly empty, with only a few other patrons lined up at the counter and filling the booths. Across from me, Dahlia gazed distractedly out the window, her hands laced primly together on the table in front of her.

“So what’s new?” she asked me, turning to face me with a little sigh.

I shrugged. “Nothing much. You?”

She gave an answering shrug, and then we sat in silence until the waiter came over to take our order.

“Is Leo still in town?” Dahlia asked when we were left alone with our tepid lemon waters.

I immediately felt a cautious prickle in my stomach, just a reflexive tensing when my private life was openly mentioned. There was no good reason to hide, to keep my whole life a secret. Maybe it was habit. Maybe it made me feel like a snail ripped out of its shell.

“Yeah, he’s still here,” I said without enthusiasm.

“Do I get to meet him this time?”

“Uh, I don’t know.” I gave her an apologetic smile and she shook her head good -naturedly.

“You and your secret love affair,” she teased.

“It’s not like that.”

“Is he famous?”

“No.”

“Is he in witness protection?”

“No.”

“Married. He’s married.”

“No.”

She humphed. We’d played this a dozen times, the guess-Leo’s-secret-identity game. Dahlia liked it a lot more than I did.

“Misty stayed for like an hour today,” I told her just to change the subject.

Dahlia snorted. “Oh, I know. I did her hair last week. Lady likes to talk.”

“About her son. Did you know that he personally saved a premature baby by getting some hospital’s computers back online?”

“Ah,” Dahlia said. “Don’t be mean. She’s proud of him.”

“I’m sure she is.”

“You know he attempted suicide when he was in high school.”

“No, I did not,” I said peevishly. “But I still don’t want to fucking hear about it.”

“She’s lonely.”

“Aren’t we all, Dahlia,” I said, a little too tightly to be taken as a joke. Her mouth twisted into an S. She put one of her fine-boned hands on top of mine and gave them a squeeze.

“Do you need to get drunk tonight?” she asked.

“No, I can’t. I have dinner with Mom.”

“Afterward, then? You’ll need something after having to interact with Lloyd.”

“Ugh,” I said obligingly and she smiled.

“But I can’t,” I added. “I’m going hunting tomorrow and I need to get up early.”

She nodded, but there was a definite droop to her shoulders.

“Why?” I asked. “Do you need to get drunk tonight?”

Dahlia looked up and met my eyes. Her eyeliner made a perfect black wing, her red lips a perfect bow. But her eyes were a little too shiny, the corners of them wrinkling as she clenched her jaw.

“Oh, babe,” I said softly, and this time I squeezed her fingers. “Sorry, Dahl. Things bad?”

She looked up and did that little face shimmy thing women do when they are trying not to cry. “I’m fine,” she told me, giving me a brave smile that showed her teeth. She swiped one finger under her eyelashes and dabbed at her lips. I felt a helpless burst of affection for her.

“I know you are,” I said, letting go of her hand. “But let’s plan on a drink next week, okay?”

“That would be really great,” she admitted.

“You can call me, you know,” I said hesitatingly, hoping that she wouldn’t notice my implication. “I mean, if you ever need to get away, or need help...”

She paused, her eyes searching my face. “He doesn’t hurt me, Ebron.”

I exhaled the breath that had felt too hot in my chest. Thank God. The last thing I wanted was to go busting in on their domestic issues.

“Okay,” I said. “But you can still call, three a.m., whatever. It doesn’t matter.”

This time her smile was genuine. “Thank you, friend.”

“Anytime,” I said, and leaned back into the booth as the waiter arrived to set our plates in front of us.

The arrival of the food broke up the heaviness of our conversation and we slipped easily into light town gossip. The diner filled up a little, but I lost track of the people around us, just content to be wrapped up in our friendship bubble. Then Dahlia’s phone rang and she fished it out of her purse.

She made a face as she read the text. “Ugh, sorry, love,” she said. “My one o’clock came early. I got to get back.”

I glanced reflexively at my half-eaten lunch and Dahlia made an apologetic face. “Stay and finish,” she said, already waving to the waiter and calling for the check. “I’ll see you later, okay?”

“Okay,” I said. “Thanks, Dalh.”

“Drinks next week,” she leaned over to kiss my cheek and then she was gone in a flurry of spicy perfume and clicking high heels. I watched her out the window as she hurried down the sidewalk, her chin tucked into her tightly crossed arms. I waited until she disappeared from view before letting my eyes wander back up the street.

I wouldn’t have noticed them if the car hadn’t pulled away from the curb. A Toyota blocked them from view, and they huddled up against the brick wall of the bar across the street. But the movement of the car drew my eye, and as it pulled away, I saw them.

Corvin. And one of the women, the redhead. And they were definitely watching me through the window of the diner. I was certain about that, even as my eyes fell on them. I felt a chill run up my spine and spread across my shoulders and I started with enough force to make the table shake under my clenching hands.

Through the dirty glass, Corvin met my gaze with a triumphant smile. They both dressed in black, wearing long dark coats, and against the grayness of the day they looked like skulking crows.

My teeth clenched and I snarled through them, the chill quickly replaced by anger. My instinctive reaction was to bolt out of the booth, get over there and confront them. I didn’t like his stupid fucking hat and I didn’t like him sneaking around my shop and my town, watching me eat lunch.

Some part of my brain chided me for my overreaction, for my paranoia, while the rest of me urged me to just go out there and beat the shit out of the little fucker. I imagined his smug face crumbling as my fist connected with his jaw, imagined how good it would feel for his lip to split against my knuckles.

I took a deep breath, and then another, and when I looked back out of the window Corvin and the redheaded woman were gone, the sidewalk where they had stood empty except for the swirling leaves. Taking a deep breath, I picked up my Rueben and finished eating.

I got back to the shop right as it began to snow again, light flakes blowing in on the north wind. It felt good to just plop down right onto my stool by the window, with my coat still pulled up to my chin. I let the silence of the empty store relax me, the hum of the heater lulling me into peace.

Corvin’s smug face floated through my mind. Maybe it was a coincidence; maybe he’d just happened to be across the street, with no ulterior motive. Yeah, maybe, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d been watching me, that he’d been trying to scare me. Or unsettle me, at the very least.

I didn’t think I was imagining it. There had been something in his eyes, some sort of challenge that I didn’t understand. Certainly it was possible – probable even - that their visit was entirely innocent, but considering my unusual abilities, I thought that it would be safe to operate under the assumption that the witches were a threat to me.

With that decided, the burning knot of unease in my stomach relaxed a little, and I decided that I might as well spend the day putting together the Black Friday sale I was reluctantly planning. My front was becoming more and more a legitimate business, much to my own surprise.

I grabbed a pen and a notebook and sat down by the window just in time to see a dark figure approaching my door. My butt had barely settled into the seat and I was up again, my spine going rigid and my hands curling into fists.

The bell over the door jingled as Marcus entered and he stopped dead when he saw me standing there, poised and glaring.

“Hey?” He looked me over, leaning back a little like maybe he was going to just back out.

“Are you following me?” I snapped.

“I – you ... no?” he gave me a tentative smile. “I knew you would be here. This is your store.”

BOOK: The Dead (The Thaumaturge Series Book 1)
3.4Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

The Isis Covenant by James Douglas
Unknown by Unknown
The Smoke-Scented Girl by Melissa McShane
Zombie Bums from Uranus by Andy Griffiths
Gone Away by Elizabeth Noble
For Honour's Sake by Mark Zuehlke
Holding Pattern by Jeffery Renard Allen