I could already tell it was going
to be a bad day.
I’d roused at four a.m. to the high-pitched cackle of the Wicked Witch
of the West. Dave, my boyfriend, had gotten
hold of my cell phone several days ago, downloaded the ringtone as a joke, and
I had yet to figure out how to change it.
The caller had been Gwyneth, one of my regular clients, begging me to
meet for breakfast in a 24-hour bagel shop one street over from the
office.
It didn’t seem to matter to Gwyneth that we were noshing on cinnamon
bagels with cream cheese before the sun was even up. Bleary-eyed and bed-headed, the cashier had
to ring up the order three times before he got it right. The only other customer was a
homeless-looking fellow with stringy gray hair and a shopping bag full of old clothes,
nursing a cup of cold coffee and scanning the Jobs section of the
newspaper.
“Couldn’t we have done this during your regular Thursday appointment?” I
murmured, barely suppressing an eye-roll/yawn combo that I knew probably made
me look like a morphing werewolf.
Gwyneth was well-known around the office as a D.Q. of infinite
proportions, albeit a likeable one, and she knew how to get under my skin. All she’d had to do on the phone was utter
the name ‘Geoffrey’ and I’d come running.
Gwyneth ran one ridiculously long purple fingernail around the rim of
her double-latte. “By Thursday, if you
don’t help me fix this, I’ll either be dead or sucked into the demon dimension.” Her lipsticked mouth quivered poutily.
Ignoring the thinly-veiled threat, I sighed. “Tell me again what he said.”
“You mean Geoffrey?”
“Yes, Geoffrey,” I snapped. “Your
chief Warlock, or whatever he is.”
“He said if I didn’t give him my love potion he was going to tell Frank
about Mortimer.” She blew a tendril of
silky black hair out of her face in exasperation.
“The guy you’ve been seeing behind Frank’s back.”
“Yeah. But I can’t give him the
potion. It’s not written down. It’s all in my head, and it’s mine.
Anyway, it wouldn’t work for him.
He’s a warlock.”
“Did you tell him that?”
“Only a thousand times. Warlocks
never listen.”
Suddenly I had a thought. “You
didn’t use your potion on Mortimer, did you?”
The witch’s body stiffened visibly.
“Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous.” Her eyes flicked to the left, indicating she
was lying.
I let out another sigh. “Oh,
Gwyn, you always say you want to be more ordinary—‘live more like a regular
human’ I think is the way you put it—and then you tamper with one of the most
beautiful, natural things in the universe.
Love can’t be bought with a potion, sweetie.” I felt my therapist training kicking in,
despite the earliness of the hour and my body’s urgent need to retreat to a
horizontal position for at least another couple of hours. “You’re manipulating Mortimer the same way
Geoffrey’s manipulating you.”
Gwyneth laughed. Not quite a
cackle, but close. The homeless man’s
head swiveled around to stare at us.
“That’s rich. Geoffrey’s also threatening
me with Lilith if I don’t give him the potion.
Can you believe it? He hates Lilith.”
If there was ever a classic love-hate relationship, it was the one
between Geoffrey and Gwyneth. As chief
Warlock of the greater Phoenix
area, Geoffrey had ties to Gwyneth’s coven.
He’d dated at least half the witches there and helped most of them out
of one jam or another over the years. (From
what I could tell, witches were notorious for getting themselves into sticky
situations.) He was mostly a good guy. Okay, his yellow cat-eyes were slightly
unnerving, but he had a gorgeous smile.
The only times he acted irrationally—sometimes violently—were the times
when he felt someone had crossed him.
“You know what happens when you get sucked into Lilith’s realm?” Gwyn
asked casually, nibbling one of her fingernails. “Bite marks.”
“Bite marks?”
“All over,” she said, running her hands over the length of her well-kept
physique. “Lilith bites her…subjects.”
I sighed. Half the time I didn’t
know what to believe. “You need to talk to him, Gwyn.”
“I—”
I held my hand out. “He cares
about you, Gwyn. Remember that time he
helped you draw that protection circle around your house? When your ex got out of jail and was on the
rampage?”
“Yeah, Geoffrey was actually pretty great then. He stayed with me all night while Tippy stood
outside, yelling and screaming and throwing things. We watched True Blood reruns and ate four
frozen pizzas.”
I’d heard the story. It still
seemed a little cold-blooded that Gwyn wouldn’t at least hear her ex out. Granted, Tippy’d been as drunk as a skunk and
was back in jail by morning, courtesy of the Phoenix police department. “Or that time Sadie used that deep voice
potion on Frank and he thought she was your dad on the phone? She practically had him peeing his pants in
fear.”
Gwyneth cackled again, remembering.
“And Geoffrey reprimanded Sadie.
Told her she was breaking the Wiccan Rede. She had to go to his cabin in Vail for three
days, basically under house arrest, although I didn’t really see it as
punishment at the time. Still
don’t. I mean, Vail? C’mon.”
“The point is, Gwyn, Geoffrey is not
going to send you back to Lilith.
He’s not cruel.”
Gwyn seemed unconvinced. “He
really wants that love potion. And if he
tells Frank about Mortimer, I might as well move back to New Jersey.
You thought Tippy was bad?
Frank’ll kill me.”
“Who would you rather have trying to kill you,” I persisted, “a lazy
human who can barely get off the couch to make his own sandwich, or a
half-insane Warlock who’s made deals with demons and killed at least three
people—”
“—that I know of—”
“—in order to get his job?”
Gwyn dug her palms into her eyes in frustration. Her heavy makeup was already smeared, and her
hands were shaking.
I pulled one of her hands away from her face and brought it down to the
table, squeezing with affection. Even
though Gwyn drove me bonkers on a near-weekly basis, I still considered her my
friend. “And if your love potion isn’t
going to work for Geoffrey anyway, then what’s the big deal?”
A light came on in her eyes. She
smiled. “You’re right, of course, as
usual, Meredith.” She leaned over her
bagel and kissed me on the cheek.
I was just coming out of my
office on Thursday, starting a beeline for the fridge for some serious
foraging, when Gwyn flew at me from out of nowhere.
“Your appointment’s not until three, Gwyn,” I reminded her, glancing at my
watch.
“Yeah, I know, but I really need
to talk to you, Meri.”
“I’m on break right now. Come
back at three,” I insisted. Stubbornly,
I eyed the fridge.
“Everything okay, Meredith?” Norm asked, coming out his door, trailed by
the sloping figure of T.J. Vanderschmidt.
T.J. was another regular client in our office, a vampire who spent his
nights writing pulp-fiction and seemed to have no friends. Social anxiety was the official
diagnosis. Norm insisted T.J. was a good
guy, but whenever I tried to engage him in the usual conversation, he never
made eye contact. His red-rimmed peepers
always hovered disconcertingly over my neck area. He usually answered my (I thought) engaging
questions with barely audible groans.
“Just reminding Gwyn of her scheduled appointment time.”
“And how is the lovely Lady Gwyneth today?” Norm asked, kissing Gwyn’s
hand. He always laid it on thick with
the better-looking female clients, although he had no interest in the trolls,
with their misshapen heads and squashed, bulbous noses, or the fairies, with
their peculiar, pointed features. At
least he had some standards.
“Horrible,” Gwyn admitted. “And
Meri’s more interested in stuffing her face than helping me,” she added,
reading my mind. She gave a half-hearted
wave at T.J. as he shuffled off to the front desk.
Norm was technically my boss here, since he recruited me originally, but
all five of us were equal partners in the business. Norm handled anxiety and bipolar disorders,
Micah handled alcohol and substance abuse, Veronica handled the pervs, and
Tyrone handled eating disorders and depression.
I dealt with pretty much everything else, which mostly amounted to
marriage and grief counseling, trauma and PTSD, that kind of thing.
Now Norm gave me a raised eyebrow, his idea of a performance
reprimand. “Client first, ice cream
later, Meri…” he intoned in a sing-song warning.
I gave him an eye-roll, an expression I’d perfected over the years of
working here. Grabbing Gwyn’s hand, I
dragged her over to the battered fridge and opened the freezer
compartment. “How about some Ben and
Jerry’s Cheesecake Brownie, Gwynnie?”
After finding a couple of plastic spoons, we went back to my office,
where I slammed the door in Norm’s face for good measure. Gwyn plopped herself down on my sagging couch
and stared moodily at the ceiling.
I took my customary spot in the armchair next to her, kicking up my feet
on the coffee table and digging into my ice cream. The pleasure center of my brain fired off
virtual exclamation points as my taste buds did their two p.m. happy
dance.
“I can’t believe this is your job,” Gwyn said accusatorily. She once worked as a playground aide and
she’d come to her sessions bruised, battered and highly sensitized to the
shrillness of small voices. We’d spent
two months honing her negotiation skills.
“I have to do paperwork too,” I reminded her.
She made sudden eye contact. “You
don’t keep a record of anything we say,
do you? I wouldn’t want that. Our conversations should be confidential.”
“Nothing like that,” I assured her.
“Good.” She went back to staring
at the ceiling.
“Aren’t you going to eat your ice cream?”
“Men are such insensitive Neanderthals.”
Which one are we talking about
today? I wondered vaguely, but my near-frozen tongue and the sugar-induced
haze combined to make it difficult to speak.
“I’m talking about Mortimer, in case you care,” she snaps grumpily. “He says he needs more space. He’s thinking about taking a camping trip. A boys-only vacation with some of his
buddies.”
Mortimer was a lycanthrope, and I knew for a fact that the full moon was
right around the corner. I wondered what
that vacation would look like. Gallumphing around the forest with his
werewolf friends, howling at the moon and ripping the heads off of squirrels,
no doubt.
“My best advice is to let him go.
Let him enjoy himself,” I said. I was almost halfway through my tiny carton
of ice cream now, and the chunks of cheesecake brownie were getting thick. Trying to focus, un-sticking my tongue, I added,
“Then, when Mortimer gets back, tell him you want to go to Florida.
Stay somewhere really posh. Like
the Breakers. Or the Edgewater. Plan it all out ahead of time, buy the plane
tickets, everything. Really treat
him. He’ll never want to go camping
again.”
“I can’t afford that.”
“You have your parents’ money.
You know, the trust fund?”
“Daddy would kill me if I used it so frivolously.”
“Your father’s ninety-two and lives in a nursing home. He barely speaks. How’s he going to know?”
“It just seems so disrespectful.” Her ice cream was starting to drip.
“If you want to save your relationship, sometimes you have to be willing
to make sacrifices,” I intoned. “Anyway,
what about Frank? Have you broken up
with him yet?” Breaking up with Frank
was one of the goals we had set for her last week.
“He hasn’t invited me over to watch TV in a while. I think he might be mad at me.” I knew from previous conversations that Frank
was the one currently paying Gwyneth’s mortgage, a situation she was reluctant
to meddle with.
“You really need to come clean with him, Gwyn.”
“I don’t pay you to tell me how to live my life,” she retorted, even
though she and I both knew that was exactly
what she was paying me for.
I sighed, scraping the bottom of my
carton. “Are you going to eat that?
Because if not—”
She slammed her carton down on the coffee table and slid it over with
one hand. “So I take Mortimer on the
trip of a lifetime. Maybe he’ll ask me
to marry him if I play my cards right.”
“You sure you want to do that?” From what I gathered, inter-species
marriage was usually frowned on by most covens.
And Gwyn would have to steer clear of Mortimer every full moon. It would be inconvenient, to say the
least.
But Gwyn wasn’t listening to me anymore.
She had that gleam in her eye again.
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
I started in on her ice cream.
Even though it was melted, I found myself practically swooning. Glancing at the calorie count on the back of
the carton, I realized I needed to get myself a life. Or better yet, a treadmill. “What about that thing with Geoffrey? Did you give him what he wanted?”
“My love potion?” she cackles.
“Sure did. He was so smug about it, too. But it’s not gonna take him long to realize
it doesn’t work for him. Whoever he thinks he’s got on his hook is never
gonna get reeled in.”
“Will he be angry?”
“Probably. But then maybe he’ll
listen. If not, I’ll just get Mortimer
to deal with him.”
There she went, playing her men against each other, as usual. Who would win? In a fight between a fangy werewolf and an
all-powerful, demon-slaying Warlock, I was pretty sure I knew.
“Just be careful, Gwynnie,” I said, reaching out for her limp hand on
the coffee table. “You know how Geoffrey
gets.”
Two weeks later I was just leaving the office when my phone rang. Or should I say, it cackled at me, because I
still hadn’t changed my ringtone. The
other counselors had already left, except for Tyrone, who often stayed late. He was still leading his vampire Overdrinkers
Anonymous group, and their eerie chants—“I
will not overindulge in the delights of the flesh”—were giving me the
creeps.
“Hello, who’s this?”
“It’s Gwyn.” Her voice sounded
panicked. “Remember that little vacation
you suggested I take with Mortimer?”
“Yeah? What—”
“Bad idea! Very BAAD idea!” she shrieked.
In the background I heard the sound of glass breaking.
“What’s going on?”
“Well, we’re at this nice little out-of-the way Bed and Breakfast,
relaxing by the pool, when guess who shows up?”
“Frank?”
“No, Meri. Not Frank. It’s Geoffrey,
and he’s wringing Mortimer out like one of those bathroom sponges!”
“They’re fighting? But why?”
“Not fighting. Geoffrey’s trying
to kill him!” More crashing, splashing, yelling.
I thought fast. “Can’t Mortimer
just turn into a werewolf and defend himself at least? Where’s the manager?”
“They all bolted as soon as they saw Geoffrey. He was throwing sparks and snarling like a
rabid pit bull. Then he threw open a
portal and—”
Oh no. Not a portal. “A portal to where?”
“Heck if I know! To Andras,
maybe? Geoffrey used to be friends with
him. Or Lilith. He seems to have a thing for her. Anyway, it’s not the full moon until
tonight! Mortimer’s transformation phase
is very time-sensitive. Please, Meri! Tell me what to do!” Now I could hear the swirling power of the
portal, a conduit to the deepest depths of hell.
Good grief. This was way above my
pay grade. “You have to try to stop him,
Gwyn. Use one of your tricks. That’s what you do, right? Some sort of blabbing spell. Make him talk. Find out why he’s so mad at Mortimer. Make them call a truce. Or the love of your life is going to get
sucked into oblivion!”
In the background, the whirling noise grew louder. CRASH!
BANG! Then, with a terrific POP,
Gwyn’s phone went dead.
It was three weeks before I saw Gwyn again. I hadn’t heard a peep from her and had almost
written her off. Now here she was, coming
out of Zales at the mall. She seemed to
be practically floating with happiness, dressed in a crimson high-necked blouse
that covered much more of her flesh than usual.
“Meri!” she cried, throwing herself at me with her trademark
over-the-top enthusiasm. Hugging me
tightly, she seemed unaware that people were stopping to stare.
“I thought you were dead,” I said numbly.
That cackle again. “You’re such a
kidder! I’ve been busy, to say the
least, and I…well…I guess I won’t be needing your services anymore.”
“You’re dumping me?”
“Just as my shrink. Not as a
friend, of course.”
I stood there, flabbergasted. How
could she do this to me? I’d become so
invested in Gwyn’s day-to-day emotional upheavals that I’d never stopped to
consider she might actually outgrow her need for me.
Then I saw him coming out of Zales behind her, carrying a tiny bag, grinning
widely with his small, pointy teeth.
“Geoffrey,” I said warily.
Immediately I was captivated by that golden catlike stare.
“Meredith,” he nodded. Handing
the bag to Gwyn, one arm encircled her waist possessively.
“You’ll never guess what we just did, Meri!” Gwyn chimed in, blushing as
Geoffrey planted a kiss on her cheek.
Dumbfounded, I watched as she pulled a tiny velvet box from the bag and
opened it to show me. “Isn’t it
gorgeous?”
A gargantuan diamond ring, the kind that says—doesn’t ask—MARRY ME.
Glancing back at Geoffrey, I suddenly realized why he’d wanted Gwyn’s
love potion. A self-satisfied smirk was
plastered across his feline face.
“Uhh…just for the record, what happened to Mortimer?”
“Who?” the two of them asked in unison.
The mall echoed with Gwyn’s cackles.
Geoffrey’s mesmerizing eyes held mine in their amber glow, challenging
me.
That’s when I saw the collar of Gwyn’s blouse shift slightly, revealing
several round abrasions decorating the delicate pale skin beneath.
Puffy, raised bite marks still tinged pink with blood.
