John's apartment was inconspicuous, but fairly easy to find off the directions I had been given. I wandered into the dingy bowling alley with some curiosity, holding a small sheaf of papers- copies I'd made from mythology books and books of black magic, all concerning Balthazar. It was time for John and I to compare notes. I wasn't about to wait for him to show up in my front yard again. My dreams, that was one thing. But River's safety was at stake now. The very last thing I wanted was for the demon to take an interest in my resourceful, headstrong and powerful brother.
It had been so fleeting, honestly. But even only seeing him outside, looking in through the windows, was jarring. I hated the fact that instead of doing something, I'd just cowered in my kitchen, afraid to move until he left... all for fear of attracting attention. I picked my way across the alley, worming around groups of elderly men who jeered and teenagers who looked bored. The place smelled of lemony cleaning agent, cigarettes and mildew.
This elevator hadn't been updated for decades, yet somehow I found myself lifted to John's floor in one piece and without getting stuck. The hallway was narrow, not well lit, and tiled in dusty black and white. At one point, it would have been the epitome of style. Now, the effect was dismally nostalgic. My footsteps echoed because there was hardly any furniture except for some beaten wooden chairs, and there was no rug to absorb the sound. I reached the door at the opposite of the hall and knocked apprehensively. While I waited for an answer, I eyed the frame, which was scratched with sigils I didn't recognize. About a minute passed before I started to get impatient.
I reached out and tentatively opened the door, which creaked forbiddingly but still opened. As I stepped through the threshold, some wards chittered at me angrily, then fizzled out like they'd accepted their new visitor. "Shit," I muttered to myself.
The whole flat was about as outdated as the elevator and the outer hallway. It was basically one long room, with a sort of glass entry set in front of what I thought was the bedroom. Big windows were set with old-fashioned, heavy slats that were controlled by one thick metal rod. The walls were lined with big jugs of water. Given John's profession, they were most likely holy water.
The effect was not homey. And further discouraging me from getting too comfortable were the very rough sex sounds coming from the far end of the apartment. Okay...
First instinct: back out and return later. Second instinct: be a bitch.
I walked forward with a grin. The sight that greeted me was pretty much what I'd expected, if not with whom- Ellie: I remembered her as the succubus from Midnite's- was splayed on the bed in exactly a position I'd call inhuman. Wasn't that the point? It wasn't until she smirked over at me smirking down at John's admittedly nice ass, that John himself ceased and desisted. When he wrenched around, I had the satisfaction of seeing surprise flash across his usually cool features. Even keeping my gaze resolutely near his face, I saw that he had many tattoos inked over a very defined physique.
"We need to talk," I said.
Well, I'll give him that- he recovered quickly. He leaned back on the bed, completely uncovered, while Ellie scowled and arranged herself under the white down comforter. "Nice to see you," he said at length.
I shrugged. "I knocked."
"The door was locked," he said, rolling to one elbow. I frowned.
"No it wasn't," I slowly insisted, letting my eyes meander. "But that's your problem." Ellie was growing bored with this exchange, and with the body next to her, I couldn't blame her for allowing her attention to wander back to it. She slowly started to busy herself with kissing John's neck. To his credit, it took a bit for him to show a reaction.
Granted, I still wasn't looking too far down. But she was a succubus. I'd cheer the man who wouldn't respond to her for any reason other than a medical inability to respond. I was really trying not to laugh, which I knew showed on my face. Fixing me with his brown eyes, he said, "You broke my wards then." It was halfway between a statement and a question. And it won back some of Ellie's attention.
She stopped gnawing at him and stared at me. Not good.
"They fizzed," I said, exasperated. "I figured that just meant they had cleared me, or whatever. If they were there to guard the door for your sex games, well, sorry for interrupting. Some of us actually use our wards to ward off dangerous things because we can't fight them. Anyway-"
Ellie was chortling at me. "John, she's like a loaded gun with the safety off." To me, she said, "Honey, you are one of the dangerous things, cute as you look."
That was news to me. I hardly felt dangerous at the moment, only aroused and blundering. "Er, what?" I asked. I didn't have anything against her personally, and I should be thanking her for the impromptu peep show I was currently receiving, but she made me feel... uncomfortable. Not quite intimidated. She smiled, and twisted her long, reddish hair back from her face. I guess, if your raison d'etre as a demon was sex, sex and more sex, you'd hardly be ashamed to be found in someone's bed.
She laughed a low, disconcertingly chilling laugh. I blanched. "Get someone to school you, hon, that's all I'm saying. Things are shifting too fast for anybody to be stupid enough to stay ignorant of her own abilities."
"Ellie..." John said warningly, whether for my benefit or his, I didn't know.
She rose gracefully, giving us the benefit of seeing her entire nude, gorgeous form. Languidly, she slipped back into a pretty, black silk dress. Of course, she wasn't wearing any undergarments. "Call me later, John." Her eyes glittered red as she eased her feet into dainty silver sandals, and he nodded mutely. "I can show myself out, thanks to doll-face."
And with that, she faded from sight. A nagging remnant of sulfur clinging to the air was all that was left of her.
"Whatever," I sighed. Doll-face. I look much, sometimes too much, younger than I am. Particularly as a woman, that doesn't bother me very much, not usually. Now John was glaring at me, hopefully because I was a pigheaded interrupter. "I don't trust her, not with what I want to talk about." Continuing a related train of thought, I asked, "Wait. Isn't she with Balthazar?"
To my slight disappointment, John was now searching for his pants, which were actually on the ground directly in front of my feet. "She's not with anybody," John said to my feet as he wrangled his clothing. He stood, dwarfing me by at least a head. I gulped. He was too close for me to not take notice of him, really, which was probably his aim anyway. "This is just what she does. She's with everyone." That was certainly a nice way of saying she was a whore. "It's never personal."
Yeah, and it was probably easier for him to fuck a demon because they weren't as fragile as pesky humans. I counted to ten in my head. He had great arms. To keep from fixating too much, I tallied up our difference in ages. Sadly, it wasn't enough to forestall me. "I know. It's her thing." Everyone had a damn thing. "Same as yours is being a ghost magnet and mine is being a nightmare. Aren't you going to put those on?" I gestured to the jeans he had in his hands. Jeans. He had actually been wearing dark, stonewashed jeans. He pursed his lips as though he was trying not to smile. "Not that I mind seeing the full... view." I gave myself a kind of mental shake for even going there. "I really do need to pick your brain about something."
Slowly- a little too deliberately if you ask me- he clothed himself. His lower half, anyway, which allowed me to concentrate better. "What about?"
He straightened up the bed, picked up a white blouse that was still on the floor. I breathed out when he stepped away- I hadn't realized I'd been holding in any air.
But I'm romantically unattached and my sex life is not that exciting, so I can blame my physical needs much more than I can blame my mind. He was lean, but built, and he obviously took care of himself, except for the insane amounts of cigarettes he consumed. Also, not that I would admit this under torture, but sarcasm and coldness will attract me far faster than any courtesy and warmth.
"First- what do you mean I broke your wards?" I was puzzled about that one. He straightened back up, glanced over while giving a funny sort of "tuh" sound, possibly amused because nudity had fried my attention span.
Patiently, he explained, "The wards wouldn't have let anyone in at all. They make the door lock." He shrugged in a fluid gesture. "I usually lock the actual lock too, but I didn't this time. When I shut the door, the spells kick in. Did you know how to crack them?" He brushed passed me and meandered into the kitchen, which turned out to be extremely compact and just as rundown as the rest of the place. The walls were an ugly mottled, olive green. "Now that I'm paying attention, they feel dead."
I followed him to a splintery table, studying the intricate glyphs that stood out in black against his stark white skin. "No. I didn't crack anything." He poured himself a generous glass of what looked to be scotch, stopped, and poured another, slid it over to me. "I doubt I could do it even if I learned. They're yours," I said pointedly. He downed half the glass with barely a flinch.
"But you did. The fact that they were mine didn't stop you. There was no way you could have gotten in otherwise," he said firmly. "Ordinarily it takes a demon- or an angel- to break them. A half-breed, which you decidedly aren't. But it takes a while. And after that, I can put them back up relatively quickly. But right now? You're interfering. Psychic static."
Desperately, after a little scotch, I asked, "Okay- how am I interfering- or doing- if I don't know I'm doing it?" I put my hands up to placate his annoyed look. I was still holding my many papers; they fluttered like huge feathers. "What I don't know about shadow walking could fill books. I'm not saying I can't do what you're saying, because obviously I have, but I'm painfully ignorant. No one else in my family- that I know of- does what I do. They're like you. I understand you because I understand them. I don't understand what I'm capable of. Ellie was right." John considered my outburst quietly, turning from me to light a damn cigarette. "I don't like not knowing things."
"Loads of people who practice voodoo," he mused, "work for years to do what shadow walkers do. Half breeds love you." He was gentler towards me when he faced me again. "What did you really come here to talk about?"
I downed the scotch with a little cough. "Your favorite friend was in my front yard last night. My brother and I have warded our entire property, yet he could make it within ten feet of our house." I felt my temper flare as I spoke. "Thankfully, he didn't seem to realize how strong of a psychic my brother is. I don't want the shit that's touching Angela touching River. I know you have ways of... evading him. And hurting him, if it comes to that. He didn't even say anything. It was really late, and I had been up to get something to eat. I just saw him out the window."
The cigarette smoked from between the fingers of his right hand. Luckily, he was no stranger to sarcasm and understood my reference. "Yes. You don't have the background to use them." John paused to amend himself. "Well, other than the obvious. Holy water. Sermons."
I stared at him. "Just like that?"
A fly buzzed on the ceiling while John and I watched each other. He had a glint to his eyes that I didn't like; it made me feel like a science experiment or a challenge to work past. "No," he said. "I'm saying you have your own ways too, even if you don't know what they are."
"John, that's kind of my point," I said through gritted teeth, letting my glass sit with a clatter and dropping my paper to the table in a flurry of sheets. "He gets to me in a very acute way. Look, are you just pissed about your wards? Because I can help-"
"No," he said again. "I'm not pissed. About that. Being interrupted mid-coitus does get to me." I thought he was making a joke. He took a long puff, breathed out an obscene amount of smoke. "And actually, I'd be interested to see how you would help set them back up."
"You're kind of evading my main problem here," I said dryly.
"Did it occur to you that Balthazar could drop in any time he wants? You saw how Ellie just went out of here. That's not normal," John snapped. "He's fixated on you, he's been fixated on me for years- we are two people he can pretty much track however, whenever he wants. Especially you." I guess I wouldn't be napping here for the evening then. "Help me get the wards back up, then we can talk. I wouldn't be surprised if she's skipped over to him, complaining that you came here."
"I'll bet," I grumbled.
I was passed out, halfway between sleep and wakefulness, on the ratty couch in the front part of the apartment when Chas burst through John's door. I squinted over to see him come in with an armload of books and a cardboard mug of Starbucks coffee in his other hand. "Meh," I said intelligently. My limbs were sprawled in all directions, and I barely had the ambition to lift my head. Damn spellcrafting- it really took it out of you when you were out of practice. My muscles felt like jelly, and my brain was buzzing the way your ears do when you've come out of somewhere very loud. And I smelled like grassy herbs, which made me sneeze.
Chas jumped, but not enough to spill his coffee or dump the books. "You found it," he said. It occurred to me that John hadn't needed to physically let Chas into the apartment, which meant that the wards knew him. That was interesting, and it cemented my theory that they were, or had been, romantically together. If not romantically, then sexually. Chas and John, not Chas and the wards. You know what I mean.
"Yep," I said succinctly. He disappeared for a second to put the books down in the kitchen. Then he sat on the end of the couch that I wasn't occupying.
"What did he do to you?" I must have looked a hot mess.
I blinked at him. "Made me fix the wards. 'Cos I broke them."
"Alright... moving past that feat- did he at least help?" Chas asked. "If he didn't, that's a bastard move."
"Believe it or not, he did, and I think that's why I feel this way," I confessed. "I can do my own wards just fine without feeling like I've run a freaking marathon." He drank some coffee, which I could smell from where I was. Starbucks just burnt every bean it had, and called it gourmet.
"Yeah," Chas said thoughtfully. "It's been a while, but he tends to have that effect the first time." Even he could here the rampant things that were wrong with that statement, and he blushed a little once we realized how weird it sounded. I patted his arm.
"If it makes you feel better," came John's voice from somewhere over my head, "you gave me a headache." I looked up to see his face looming over mine.
What we had done was fairly standard- sanctified circle, burning sage and raising energies- so I couldn't for the life of me see why we sounded like we'd just been having crazy sex for six hours. Nothing seemed out of the blue, or different from what River and I did. Obviously another person's flavor of energy took some getting used to, but that shouldn't have... wait. "You... sucked me," I accused, using a derogatory term for somebody who borrowed psychic energy without asking another person. Chas looked at me sharply. Then he looked at John.
I could sympathize if he felt slighted: taking and exchanging energy was incredibly, well, personal. You had to "click" with the other party, meaning that not everyone could use everyone else as a magical battery. In some ways that was very reassuring. I wondered if John had ever borrowed from Chas. I didn't yet have the motivation to be angry, but I felt I should have been.
John looked to be somewhere in the realm just shy of sheepish. I wasn't going to get an apology, was I? "When else am I going to get the opportunity?"
"You could have asked, you know."
"And what would you have said?" Yes, he genuinely wanted to know. He was clearly used to hearing "no" a lot. Well, if the favors he asked weren't life-threatening, that could change.
"I probably would have said yes. If you'd asked," I said. "Although I suppose you're going to say that this is the first time you've gotten to suck from a manipulator. And the last, if I snuff it any time soon. I feel like shit. Thanks for that."
Here was the asshole behavior I'd been promised. This was something that should have been consensual, at the very least. It brought two people- or a group, if you went really communal, like some covens tended to- closer together in unpredictable ways. At times that was good. In others, as I'm sure you can imagine, it's just plain detrimental. I was used to that already, seeing as my sleeping hours were like a rush hour commute for the supernaturally inclined. Should I have been used to it, then? People taking without asking?
"I was trying," he said very slowly, "to find a way to help you." Logic was in that. I didn't have to like it. If I was the only person of my kind we both knew, I was the only resource we had. He was the person to mine the resource, that was for sure. "And the wards are tight."
I resisted asking what I felt like. It just sounded dumb even in my head. "They do feel different," Chas agreed reluctantly. John met his eyes and nodded. I sensed some nonverbal communication going on between the two men. "John, the books are here. If you want them. For Angela and stuff. Some are from Bee- the rest are from the store." The police still hadn't found the Bible the nothing man had stolen, which didn't surprise me one inch. Problematically, John assured me that that was what we really needed, if only because the demon had wanted it. What could be so important that a demon would steal it? Beeman had said that maybe he could find another copy. I wasn't holding my breath, but if he could, then more power to him. I hoped it would be of some use before anything went very wrong.
"Thanks, kid," John said, a warmth to his ragged voice that made me happy. He really cared for Chas. That was good; it meant he was human like the rest of us.
"No problem," Chas said wryly.
"I wish I could take a nap like normal people," I groaned.
John chuckled. "Try," he advised.
I raised an eyebrow at him, which was the most eloquent indication of disbelief I could manage while lying down. "No."
"One of the reasons I, uh, sucked you," he said, "was to see if I could build-in a ward against trespassing. It was you screening Angela's dream that gave me the idea."
"What?" I asked blankly.
"You think you're the only one who gets invaded while she sleeps?" John said down to me, grimly amused. "It happens to us laymen too, sometimes. I'm thinking that since you can facilitate it so well, you can also block it the best if you know where- or how- to direct the block. I know you didn't have the training to do it on purpose, so I borrowed and did it for you. I don't have the patience to cultivate anyone right now. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. But I'm not usually mistaken. I fed the intent into my wards. You can be the guinea pig."
"Oh," I said in an extremely small voice. Who would have thought he'd think of that? Not me. It wasn't blatantly selfish, either. Maybe we were making some progress.
