Chapter Four
The promise of the coming weekend had lulled the Halliwell Manor into a peaceful clam, although the sense of urgency and mild dread lurked underneath it. Bridget couldn't remember the last time things were quiet there. Usually the sisters were shrieking around demanding to know who borrowed whose new shoes slash earrings slash lipstick or screaming because of a demon attack, which would mean crashing and breakage etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. All in all, not quiet.
It's ruined my life and when, for once, I want to try and do a little damage control on the tattered wreck my life has become, you hate me for it!
Bridget's stomach rolled unpleasantly at the memory of Nixa's harsh words and she leaned back in her chair, sullenly glaring at her geometry book as if all of the notes on the page would squiggle into one big pile of sense. Well, they usually did if Nixa helped her because Bridget and math? Not pretty. Now though? Nixa was probably sleeping peacefully in her bed and ignoring things that go bump in the night while she was here struggling with stupid shapes that she had no need for. Passing geometry or not, she already knew her deal: High risk, sub-minimum wage, pointy and sharp things (a plus of her own invention). The guidance counsellor had been pretty explicit in laying the cards on the table.
Didn't 'sealed in fate' mean anything to Nixa? Bridget bit her lip and began tapping the eraser end of her pencil on her book, quietly musing without seeing anything on the page. She sighed. Obviously not.
Why was she stuck here doing this? This was stupid and pointless in the grand scheme of things anyway. She should be helping Ben and Chris who, she noted, were neglecting their schoolwork to look up the demons. But she had felt obliged to do it, because it was Friday, and Friday was always one of the days that Nixa came over and helped her through the shapes scrawled on her textbook's pages. Well, she didn't need Nixa. Look, here she was, doing her homework all by herself, as she normally would on a Friday night. She didn't need Nixa. The formulae were all in her notes. Look at her, the Math whiz, go.
"So what's a girl like you doing in a place like this?"
She was glad that her Hunter senses were working even when her brain was apparently not, because, otherwise, Wyatt would have startled her and embarrassment would have ensued and she'd have to kill the blond for sneaking up on her. So, as it was, Bridget barely paid Wyatt a look as he swung the chair across the table backwards and sat down. "If you try the whole 'you're a unique creature unlike any other' line, I will end you," she said dryly, continuing to stare at her tapping pencil, a slight sneer marring her features. She dropped the expression and looped a loose strand of hair behind her ear before taking a last glance at the page's figures and putting her head into her hands and groaning into them. "Listen, Wyatt, I've got a lot of work to d—"
"Where's Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee?" he interrupted with a grin, purposefully trying to break her out of her trance.
That was Wyatt for you. Bridget finally looked at him, brow raised in amusement. "Huh… See, I was leaning more towards Dumb and Dumber but hey, whatever."
Wyatt snorted. "Which one's which?"
"Depends on what day it is," Bridget shot back dryly, sinking lower into her chair and holding up her pencil, wiggling it so that it looked like she had magically turned her straight pencil into a bendy one.
Wyatt laughed at that. "Where are they anyway?"
Bridget shrugged, glancing over to the foyer. Her pencil suddenly escaped from her finger and thumb and flicked across the room. She watched it fall behind the wicker loveseat and cursed lightly to herself. "Uh… they're looking at the Book of Shadows about some demon or… something. I don't know; didn't really listen."
Lie. Total lie. You were listening — you want to be up there with them. You're just stuck down here because you have a point to prove. Besides, it's your demon, anyway, not theirs.
Wyatt's eyebrows rose slowly. "Bridget Vance not listening up about demons?" he asked in disbelief, polishing an apple on his shirt. "Cosmos stopped spinning while I was out? Where's Hack 'n' Slash Barbie?"
It was Bridget's turn to give a small snort and she looked wistfully over at the place where her pencil was, wishing she had Chris's powers so she could zoom it over to her She looked down at her book, tracing a finger around the three sides of a triangle, trapping her lip thoughtfully between her teeth. "How do you do it?" she finally asked, looking back at him curiously.
Wyatt looked confused at the sudden shift in conversation. "Do what? Geometry?"
Bridget sighed, already half-regretting mentioning it. "Be normal. You know, since you're the 'Chosen One'…" She emphasized with air quotes. The blond looked a little thrown at the unexpected question and didn't say anything and Bridget wasn't sure if she had done something wrong. "I didn't… Sorry. Stupid question, I know, it's just… forget I said—"
"It's hard."
His voice was quiet and matter of fact. Bridget looked at him in surprise but he wasn't looking at her, finding his green apple much more fascinating.
He slowly and deliberately twisted the stalk until it popped off, and then flicked it across the room. "To know that you're different? Hard. To not let your differences set you back normal-wise? Harder. It… I mean, it just takes a while to accept that you're never, ever going to be like those other teenagers and then you're set for a lifetime of loneliness and bitterness." He raised the apple into the air and toasted her with it before biting into it.
"So you think it can be done?" Bridget asked.
Wyatt shrugged, chewed, swallowed. "Sure, why not? I just don't know if it's worth the effort, especially when you've always got that little voice telling you that there's no point anyway."
"Do you want to be normal, though?"
Wyatt paused, taking another bite before answering. "Look at it from my point of view. Half of the magical people in my life don't look on me as a person; they just look on me as this huge concentration of power. It's just, like… hello, I have a face! You know what I mean?"
"Ooooh yeah. You have no idea how many guys I've said that to… Coincidentally, it's nearly the same amount as how many guys' noses I've broken… Huh."
Wyatt laughed. "What's with the questions, anyway? Are you thinking about getting all normal? 'cause I have money. I'd pay for that experience."
"Sure. You might as well start paying for your 'experiences' now. Get practise in for later on in your life."
"And what's wrong with that? A prostitute never whines about you calling her afterwards."
Bridget gave him an amused but withering look. "Yeah, because all girls want to be called afterwards. Not one girl is in it just for the sex, right?"
Wyatt's face lit up. "Is that an offer? 'cause, like I said, I've got money."
Bridget scoffed. "You couldn't afford me," she said airily, sniffing as she pushed back her chair across the tiles to go and retrieve her pencil. "And, on the off chance that you could, even a whore has to have some standards." She stuck her arm underneath the loveseat and was about to grab the pencil when it disappeared in a cloud of orbs and reappeared in Wyatt's hand.
"You dropped this."
"Oh, gee, thanks, Wyatt. It was so gentlemanly of you to make me get down on my knees— she caught Wyatt wiggling his eyebrows "—EW! Just… ew. Seriously." She paused. "Ew."
Wyatt grinned lopsidedly and flicked the pencil point over eraser through the air at her. She caught it deftly and rose to her feet with all of the dignity she could muster, adding a small, 'Hmmph' for emphasis to show how totally above this whole situation she was.
Wyatt had eaten the apple down to the core so he got up and tucked the chair back under the table. "Thank you for your audience," he told her with a half-bow, "I feel honoured now." He left through the dining room, pushing the swing door into the kitchen and vanishing from sight.
Bridget walked back over to the table with her pencil, twirling it between her fingers absently like a miniature baton. She flipped two pages in her textbook before looking up. "Hey, wait!" she yelled. "Do you know anything about geometry?"
Monsters of the Deep End
Stupid Wyatt. For all his powers, he had no clue about Geometry. Stupid bastard. She looked out of the window and suddenly realised that it was dark out. She'd spent waaaaaaay too long on this already. She slammed her textbook closed, rattling the table, and began cramming everything into her schoolbag at her feet. It could wait until she could steal the answers off someone.
She sighed, groaned and led her head down on the cool metal of the table, trying to force it to soothe away her headache. She had got no Math done, but she had got a lot of thinking done instead. Had she been wrong to blow up at Nixa like that? Should she have been kinder, more understanding towards her friend?
No. No, because Nixa was wrong to want to be normal and to not do anything good. She was right, and Nixa was wrong; there was nothing simpler than that, right?
Right?
She huffed in annoyance and turned, hearing footfalls on the stairs, announcing the arrival of Ben and Chris. Ben was cramming potions into his pockets and Chris was sliding an athame into his waistband and arranging his hoodie over it as he ran.
"Okay, Geometry. Pythagoras: Triangles, right?" Bridget asked hopefully, needing to clarify this before she could move on.
"Um, what?"
"Geometry. Pythagoras is for triangles, right? I always get it confused."
Ben frowned. "Um… Yeah. The sum of the first two sides squared is equal to the hypotenuse squared. Why?"
"THAT'S Pythagoras! Oh, crap. I'm gonna fail math… Ugh. Wait… Do I need it for a job in construction?"
"Um, well, let's think. 'How many more tiles do we need up there, Bridget?' 'I don't know, I failed Math'. Yeah. Yeah, something tells me that you will need it," Ben said over his shoulder, grabbing his car keys. "That's just a hunch, though."
"Ugh. Why couldn't you have just said 'Yes'? Why do you always resort to sarcasm?"
"It annoys you," Ben answered simply, grinning as Bridget narrowed her eyes at him. "What? I figure that's as good a reason as any."
Bridget stuffed her pencil case in her bag and zipped it up. "Where are you two going all weaponed up anyway?"
"Josh's party," Chris said quickly, grabbing his jacket. "Want to come with?"
Bridget rolled her eyes heavily. "Um… No. There is no demon at Josh's party. You're both just jealous and want to find any excuse you can to stop it. You've jumped to conclusions and are going to storm the place and look ridiculous and end up… taped naked to the diving board. Or whatever to frat-boys-to-be are doing to gatecrashers these days."
"The girl you found?" Ben said. "The cheerleader? She knew Josh, right?"
"All the cheerleaders know Josh," Bridget duhed, "what's the big deal?"
"Look, there's not enough time to explain. If you're coming, we'll brief you en-route," Chris said tensely. "Basically, you know how weird it was that he invited you and Nixa? And we just thought it was because you'd look good in bikinis?"
"Yeah…"
"Well, we think it's because he has… some kind of detection method for good people. I don't know. There are certain demons that have it."
"Oh, Chris, for God's sake," Bridget said tiredly, rubbing her temples. "Josh. Is not. A demon. Josh Muse is in no way demonic. He's mean and rich, sure, but that doesn't make him a demon. You just don't like him because he beat you up."
"Oh, sure, Chris. What a petty reason to dislike him."
"And, again, sarcasm. Get a new shtick already."
"So you're not coming?" Chris asked, looking into her eyes. She shifted uncomfortably on the chair, knowing full well that he was asking her to come. She wasn't, however, going to be dragged halfway across town because of her crazy friends' heavily biased opinions. For one thing, on the tiny, slim chance that Nixa was in danger she could more than handle herself. Perhaps that would make her thankful for her gift.
"To vanquish the school's baseball star? Sure."
"Oh, and I'm sarcastic?" Ben asked, shaking his head as he shrugged on his jacket. "Fine. Don't come. We will do this on our own. When we get back and the demon is dead, we expect a full apology."
"Take your time. There's a movie marathon on TV that I wanted to see, and I hate it when people steal my popcorn."
Rolling their eyes, the witches left the Manor.
Everyone had gone insane. Ben and Chris were going to vanquish Josh, for God's sake. She got up, stretched, and flung herself on the sofa in the parlour, scattering the throw cushions. She began searching for the remote, tearing the couch apart and not finding it. Chris and Ben were going to go and vanquish Josh. And Nixa… Well, Nixa was a bitch.
A bitch that she couldn't help but feel guilty over.
Guilt. She hated guilt. Guilt sucked ass. Its clutches fully encircling her, she sighed in frustration and stomped off to the attic. She'd look over Ben and Chris's research, just to see what a load of dumb fabrications it was, and then she'd start the movie marathon. That way, maybe she could sit there and enjoy the movie without the niggling guilt.
Monsters of the Deep End
Okay, so here she was in the attic. Take that, guilt. Here she was, taking an interest in her friends' ridiculous research. Maybe then, when she found that they were grasping at straws, she could go and watch the movies. Maybe the remote would even turn up — Karma and all. The Book of Shadows was open on its pedestal. The glass door to the potions cabinet was still ajar and moving slightly, creaking as it did so. Annoyed at the way its eeriness had made her shudder, she crossed the room with long, purposeful strides and slammed the door.
Ben's laptop, trailing its power cord, sat humming dejectedly on a table, its screen blank. Phoebe's printer sat next to it, its light blinking green at her. As she crossed to it instinctively, not knowing why, she kicked a sheet of paper on the floor. Next to the printer was a small stack of printouts, the top page of which was missing. Retrieving the sheet from the floor and replacing it in its rightful position, she caught sight of the pictures on the page.
The first picture on the page was of a man with bulging black veins covering his face and neck and gouge marks in the side of his face. Dead. He was dead… Her breath catching in her throat as she was hit with a nasty déjà vu, she reached out with shaking hands and picked up the entire stack of papers. Her eyes skimmed frantically over the text, barely taking any of it in. Instead of words, all she could see was that picture, that awful, awful picture of that poor man, and then of that poor cheerleader…
She dropped the papers to the floor and ran.
Monsters of the Deep End
The knot in her shirt had slipped, and Nixa toyed with the ends, tickling them against her palm. Here she was. Being normal. Being selfish, mean but totally normal. She sighed. Bridget should be here. Bridget would be an excellent companion. But Bridget didn't want to be normal. Bridget was kind and selfless and she… wasn't.
She couldn't quite bring herself to go near the party yet. She was quite content looking into the plate glass of the sliding door on the side of the house, loathing her reflection. She reached back and yanked out her ponytail, letting her hair tumble down her shoulders. This was Nixa. This was evil bitch Nixa who craved normality but totally didn't deserve it.
Or did she? The imbalance in her thinking was driving her nutty. She put her hair back up in a ponytail and reached into her bag. Her hand brushed the cold steel of an athame that she had brought along just because she always brought it along. She took it out of her bag and held it up, twisting the blade so that the light coiled around it like mercury.
This knife was for the old Nixa. The one that would be home on a Friday night helping Bridget with her Geometry homework. The one that was a glutton for punishment. The one that wouldn't be here now. Gripping its hilt hard she spun and rammed the point of the blade into the fence post so hard that it emerged the other side. There.
She reached back into her bag and pulled out a clip, twisted her ponytail and fastened her hair. She took out a pair of sunglasses and slotted them neatly onto her head, their arms disappearing into her hair. Shouldering her bag, she viciously retied her top and, head high, began stalking off to the back of the house and the pool. Where the fun was. Where the normalcy was.
"Nina!"
The rumbling of the sliding door made her turn on her heel. She nearly lost a flip-flop and her balance but managed to regain composure. "Josh! Hey! Am I late? I'm late, aren't I? I'm sorry…"
"No, no, hey, don't worry about it. Come in, let me show you around."
Nixa blinked, but then smiled again. "Sure." The blonde stepped over the threshold. The room had a high ceiling made entirely of glass panels, and the mid-evening light flooded in through them. It would have been called a conservatory if it had had glass walls, but it didn't. There were, however, numerous plants scattered around the room, some hanging from the ceiling others growing up from the floor. The air was humid and damp, and there was actually soil under her feet instead of a floor. Josh rolled the door closed behind her and suddenly she was no longer in San Francisco, but in the Amazon. "Wow…"
"Yeah, this is my mom's… greenhouse, garden room… place. She likes to look at the plants, but she doesn't take care of them. Seriously, if social services saw what she manages to do to plants, they'd take me away."
Nixa laughed, surprising herself with how genuine it came out. She had only intended to force a laugh but she was actually laughing. Carefree and fun-loving laughing. "I bet the plants wish there was a foster home for them, huh?"
"Probably. Juan looks after everything in here anyway. I don't touch anything on pain of death."
"Good call."
"Okay, through here…" He opened a door that led out into a corridor. The walls were bedecked with pictures of him on the baseball. Trophies sat in a large, glass-fronted cabinet. In another cabinet, the one closest to them, an array of signed baseballs and bats were displayed on stands. "Through here, if you'd like to close your eyes to my parents' shrine to me, because it's more than a little embarrassing…"
"You're lucky your parents realise that you've achieved something," Nixa said dryly, starting up at the fifty or so Joshes sliding into the home plate or hitting homeruns or being carried on his team's shoulders or having bottles of water emptied over him in the dugouts.
"Yours don't?"
"Yesterday, my mother called me Felicity. Three times. Which is the name of her sister that she's been too busy to see in five years. The day before that, Dad asked me what I wanted for my fourteenth birthday. So, yeah."
"Oh, ouch. That sucks. Sorry for bringing it up."
Nixa shrugged. "It's nothing. Seriously, they are amazing parents, they just love their jobs so much, that's all. When they're not working, we spend loads of time together — it's fun. But yeah. Basically? No shrine of me."
"Well, this isn't all a shrine to me anyway," Josh said, crossing to the cabinet with the autographed baseball paraphernalia. "I get to have my own shrine." He reached in and pulled a bat off its stand and gave it some practise swings. "This bat is signed by Carl Everett for the Seattle Mariners." He swung it again. "I was practically falling out of the bleachers begging him to sign it. Pathetic, yeah, but he was one of my childhood heroes, so—" He swung the bat suddenly, cracking it against Nixa's skull. The blonde didn't even have time to react and went down, hard, her bag spilling its contents all over the floor.
Embry -- Thank you. I daren't say more on pain of death. And the same goes to everyone else. Despite the fact that I already have this written and am not writing it as I post it, I'm still getting an immense amount of enjoyment out of it. Go figure. Thank you all for your continuing support.