Chapter Two
Angel was used to visitors. He had become, quite unintentionally, the "go-to" guy for questions about demons and the occult. Having not only seen and done more than most, but also read extensively, Angel had become a resource more valued than a library to the local witches, magicians, and demon-fighters. Though not a people-person (had he ever been?), he didn't mind the occasional inquirer, and in fact enjoyed the process of solving problems.
He was neither surprised nor vexed, therefore, when someone knocked on the door one evening, interrupting his musings. He opened it, frowned in puzzlement when his eyes met the blank wall opposite him, and looked down.
Two boys stared eagerly up at him, eyes shining with nervous excitement. One of them was William, the boy he'd saved just over a week ago; an incident Angel had nearly forgotten. He didn't recognize the other boy, who was taller, slightly blonder, and more solid-looking than William. The boy wasn't heavyset, but where William's frame gave the impression that a swiftly-moving stream would whisk him away like a leaf, this boy would be able to stand sturdy as a rock against the current.
"Hi Mr. Angel!" (Angel hated being called Mr. Angel.) "This is my best friend, Calder." The other boy waved cheerily at him. Angel gave the slightest of nods in return. "Can we come in?"
"What do you want?"
"We want to hear about how you fight monsters!"
Angel shushed William quickly. "How many people have you told about that?"
"Just Calder."
"Hey, I have an idea," Angel said, "let's not tell anyone else."
William shrugged. "I wasn't going to. No one else would believe me."
"So can we come in?" Calder interjected. Angel looked over at Calder.
"I'm busy right now." It was half-true. "And it's getting dark." He turned back to William, "You should know to stay inside after sunset."
The boys' faces fell.
"Yeah, I guess so…" William said reluctantly. "Okay…Well, I guess we'll see you later then." He and Calder turned gloomily and ambled back down the hall, leaving Angel to worry about William's usage of the phrase, "See you later."
Angel's flat was quiet as usual one afternoon a few weeks later. He read peacefully in his favorite armchair (in truth, both of his armchairs were exactly the same, but this one gave him a better view of the whole room), enjoying the tranquility of the flat, the rich, woody, slightly musty scent of his book, and the warmth of the sun streaming through the necro-tempered window (now standard as a melanoma-prevention measure; he couldn't tan from it, but at least he wouldn't burn up, either).
The book was one of his favorites: a collection of essays by German philosophers, dating prior to the 20th century. The concepts wove like vines through his mind, seeking and grabbing hold of the places that invited intellectual challenge. He breathed deeply, as though the words were in the scent so that they would seep further into his mind as paper soaks up water.
BANG!
The gunshot-like noise wrenched Angel back to his flat; his book crashed to the ground as Angel snapped to attention like a soldier caught slacking off. A sobbing child ran past him in a blur from the door (which he was sure must be broken) to the couch under the window. It took several seconds before Angel realized that the child was William. He took an extra moment to breathe—he didn't need to, but it helped settle the adrenaline faster.
The room was eerily quiet again, except for the ragged gasps of the 8-year-old boy who had somehow seen Angel as a fit person to cry to. Angel ran a hand through his hair. What should he do? He couldn't toss the kid back in the hallway (could he?), but neither did he want to let the kid stay—especially not if he was going to cry all over Angel's furniture. Why had the kid come back to him? Where was his mother? Or do all kids these days burst into strangers' houses whenever they pleased?
William peeked out from behind the now-wet pillow that he'd buried his face into and looked expectantly up at Angel, his eyes still red and glistening, and his breaths heaving in the regularity and smoothness of morse code.
"What?" Angel asked.
"She called me a stupid, ugly, moron-head."
Angel's brain went on temporary shut-down. What was he supposed to say to that?
"She's so dumb." William said bitterly into the pillow.
"Er… Who?"
"Jamina. She lives downstairs." When Angel didn't say anything, William continued. "Why would she do that? I said her hair was a pretty color of brown, like fresh dirt, and then she got really mad and called me a stupid, ugly, moron-head." He gave a great sniff and wiped a few tears off his cheeks. He stared at Angel, and it took Angel a few moments to realize that William's question was not rhetorical, and that William actually wanted advice.
"Oh." Advice? All Angel wanted to do was live a quiet life, away from human problems. Was that too much to ask? "Well. Girls like to feel pretty, and dirt…isn't. So…" Angel finally bent to pick up his book, which was crushing its own pages under its weight.
"What should I say her hair looks like instead?"
"Er, I don't know." Angel sat down and carefully began to unbend the worst of the pages. "Maybe something like cinnamon, or mahogany."
"What's mahogany?"
"That kind of wood over there." Angel pointed to one of the bookshelves without really looking at it. The damage to the book was not as bad as it could have been.
"Mahogany… Okay, what else?"
Angel hesitated. "What else what?"
"What else can you tell me about girls?"
"Oh…." Angel closed the book and set it down on the apothecary table in front of him, letting the book's own weight finish re-flattening the pages.
"Will we be friends again after I tell her her hair is like mahogany?"
Angel didn't answer right away. Personally, he felt that such an argument would be forgotten in a few days' time, but he thought it was probably wiser not to say so. He sighed. "I don't know how she'll take it, William, you'll have to find that out for yourself."
William slumped back into the pillow. Something in him, long-forgotten, reminded Angel that humans liked to end on better notes. He reluctantly continued, "Maybe if you apologize first for insulting her she'll want to be friends again sooner."
William looked thoughtful. "Apologize….okay. I can do that. I'll say, 'Jamina, I'm sorry for saying your hair looks like dirt when it really looks like mahogany.' Will that work?"
Angel bit his lip. "Maybe you can try explaining things from your point of view instead." Angel shifted his weight and gestured awkwardly. The motion felt creaky and shuddering, like the hinges of a door that hadn't been opened in years. "Something like, 'I was trying to compliment your hair and I didn't realize that my compliment would insult you. I never meant to do that and I'm sorry for hurting your feelings.'"
William nodded. "Okay, that's good. Thanks, Mr. Angel! I'm going to go try it right now!" William hopped off the couch and sprinted out the door, calling as he did, "I'll let you know how it works out!"
Then he was gone.
Angel stood up and closed the door, which William had forgotten in his haste to close properly. It was not, in fact, broken. The flat was soothingly quiet again and Angel breathed a sigh of relief. Not bad for his first truly human encounter in a few centuries. He walked back over to the couch and picked up the damp pillow.
So these were the problems of eight-year-old boys? Had his ever been so trivial and amusing? He couldn't remember. He hadn't been in such close contact with a child since his sister was born. His own son…well, he skipped right from cranky it's-time-for-my-nap tears to a case of teenage angst worse than Angel's himself.
A knock at the door brought Angel back to the present; much gentler than his last caller's announcement. He set the pillow down, making a mental note to not forget to clean it, as he had been about to do. Angel answered the door.
"'ello, Angel," his visitor, a short, portly man, said and stepped in. "I was wondering if you knew anything abou' a little demon wif purple horns and smells like rotten cabbage? I seem to 'ave one in me garden…"
Angel half-wondered if he should move when, a few days later, Calder, William's friend, knocked on Angel's door and marched in with an air of self-confidence. He turned to face Angel once he was properly inside and stuck out his hand as Angel closed the door uncertainly.
"Mr. Angel, I don't believe we've been properly introduced. My name is Calder Gabriel Lauchley."
Angel took his hand hesitantly and asked Calder to address him as "just Angel."
"Wow! Er, okay, Angel. You can call me 'Calder,' then, or 'Cal,' if you want. Well, I guess we should get down to business, huh?" Calder drew himself up. "I need a spell."
Calder correctly interpreted Angel's shocked silence and said, "It's okay, I know magic is real. I wanted to find out what kind of monster attacked William and if you can really fight monsters for a living, because that would be so much cooler than working in an office like my dad, so I went to the weird-smelling store that mum told me not to go in that one time when she was taking me to Will's and it turns out that the Korean guy with the goatee there knows you!" Angel was doing his best to keep up; run-on sentences like this kid was cranking out were not his forté. "He said you sometimes you buy stuff from him and he said you don't only fight monsters—only he called them demons—you also help people that come to you when they need information on something about magic or demons and stuff. So," Calder finally arrived at his point, "can you help me? I need a spell to help me do well in school."
Angel narrowed his eyes. "No."
Calder's face fell. "Why not?"
"Magic is dangerous, Calder Gabriel Lauchley," Angel said, using the boy's full name for better effect. "It's not to be used for anyone's stupid whim. I've seen a lot of spells go wrong, kid, and doing better in school can be fixed by working harder."
Calder frowned and shuffled his feet, only slightly abashed. Then he glanced up with a gleam of curiosity. "What kind of things go wrong?"
Angel knelt down so he was eye-level with the boy. "The kinds of things that can go wrong with magic are not the kinds of things I would tell an eight-year-old."
Calder puffed out his chest in indignation. "I'm not eight, I'm almost nine-and-a-half!"
"Oh, well that makes all the difference," Angel nodded like it was his simple mistake. He leaned in conspiratorily. "Alright…sometimes the best thing that can happen to you if you've done a spell wrong," Angel paused to let the tension build, "is a quick, simple death. If you're really lucky, they'll even be able to recognize your body after it's been turned inside out."
Angel stood and guided a silenced Calder to the door. He opened it and ushered the boy through.
"Oh, by the way, Ferguson's? I would stay away from there. It's not the best place to get your information."
The bell above Ferguson's door tinkled and Calder looked up. It sure was a strange thing to do, putting bells above doors, when an electronic sensor was much quieter and easy to install, but magical folks themselves seemed strange, so he supposed it fit.
Ferguson's was a small, dusty shop with more wood than Angel's flat. Calder wondered if wood somehow helped magic spells. Though everything was dulled by the dust, hints of the richly-colored books on the shelves in the middle of the shop still shone through, and various jewel-toned powders, liquids, candles, orbs, dried flowers and herbs, and other unidentifiable objects lined the walls. The sun filtered through some deeply-colored glass vases by the window, temporarily painting the floor like a stained-glass window in an ancient church.
To Calder's right and behind the counter, an old Asian man in very worn Irish military attire slept in an old rickety wood chair. Up ahead, another Asian man, younger, though still balding, with a jet black goatee emerged from behind a door. Upon seeing his customer, he chuckled to himself.
"You again? Used to my bell now?"
Calder didn't say anything. The last time he was there, the bell had (embarrassingly) startled him, much to the amusement of the storekeeper.
"So are you actually going to buy something this time or have you come to ask more questions?"
Calder stood up straighter. "I'm just looking today."
The man chuckled again. "Look away. I warn you, though, some of these things I don't sell to kids."
"Like what?"
"Like the stuff you can't reach."
Calder scowled and turned away to peruse the shelves.
"I'll be around if you need anything," the shopkeeper called, and went back through the door, this time leaving it open.
Calder wandered around, trying to appear purposeful even though he had no idea what most of the things he saw were used for. He walked past various canned animal parts (which he stared at in grossed-out fascination for a long time), odd flowers, sparkling powders, shimmering liquids, carved wood boxes, and sharp crystals. He sniffed strange salt-scented and dream-inducing candles, fingered smooth rocks, and gawked at the shrunken heads.
What captivated him the most, however, were the old demon encyclopedias and basic spell books. He sat on the floor and leafed through volume after volume, staring at the gruesome pictures and imagining casting some of the milder spells on certain friends as jokes. He giggled inwardly at the thought of Sean with frog hands.
Keeping an eye on the clock on his Palm, which was inching toward the dinner hour, the time came when Calder finally decided it was time to leave. There were days when Calder arrived home an hour late and only got a mild scolding, and other days when he was ten minutes late and was sent to his room without supper at all. Calder's stomach rumbled and he put the encyclopedia he was looking at back on the shelves. He didn't want to take the chance today.
He was just about to stand up when a short, somewhat hefty book caught his eye: Favorite Vampire Legends: Frightening Tales Concerning the World's Most Notorious Vampires. He pulled it off the shelf. Under the title was embossed: Volume III, Year 1000 to Present. Calder opened the cover and flipped over the first few pages. It was copyrighted 1962. So much for the present. Still, it intrigued him.
Calder checked the price. He'd been planning to buy a new game with his summer chores allowance, but he could actually afford this book now. He had desperately wanted to buy Simple Spells for the Starting Sorcerer, but it was far out of his price range. He stared at the book in his hands, biting his lower lip, and made up his mind quickly. Standing, he strode over to the counter.
"Excuse me?" he called. The old man in the corner stirred and shouted something in Korean before giving a few snores and drifting back off to sleep. The shopkeeper emerged from the back.
"Yes? Found something, have you?" Calder handed the book to him. "Oh yes, I nearly forgot I had this. You sure you can handle it, now? These really are quite frightening tales." He winked. "Very well, very well, would you like a bag for it?"
"No thank you." Calder held out his wrist so that his silver Palm bracelet would be within the short range of the payment kiosk. The actual device - a thin rectangular tablet - fit easily in his back pocket, where it stayed most of the time. It was linked to the bracelet on his wrist, which, when tapped, projected the screen holographically onto Calder's palm, fully interactable and everything. The actual tablet only came out when Calder wanted to use both hands to use it, like for playing games, or if someone else needed to use it. Some people chose the ring accessory instead of the bracelet, but Calder's mum had insisted on the bracelet because it was less likely to get lost.
The payment kiosk beeped and the shopkeeper handed the book back to Calder, who tucked the book under his arm.
"Come back again," the man called after Calder as he dashed out the door for home.