My neighbor, No Good Mikey, stood on his back porch looking into my backyard. His face was devoid of expression, but his eyes were rounded and his fingers had a white-knuckle grip on his banister.
“I’m a circus performer,” I blurted, sitting up. I rubbed the knot that was quickly forming on my head.
He shook his head slowly. “Nope. Try again.”
“I do magic. I learned it in Vegas and I’m practicing for a comeback tour. Neat tricks, right? I’ll crush it.”
He wiped his hand over his face. His gaze landed on the rocks spread around the yard. I’d even gotten the big one off the ground. A first. I needed to figure out what that cold sensation was. That seemed like the key.
His gaze shifted to the sides of my yard protected by the shielding spells, something he could clearly see from his vantage point. The air was filled with a sparkling purple haze reaching high into the sky. From the other side, it wouldn’t be noticed. In fact, the eyes would slip right past it, hiding the things behind the spell in plain sight.
“Have you done this before?” he asked through a tight jaw. He was clearly trying his damnedest not to freak out. He had balls of steel, that guy. If only he were magical, we’d make one hell of a team.
“Would you like the truth, or something that sounds good?” I asked.
“Don’t fuck with me.”
“Right. Yes, I’ve done this before. Not to this extent, because practice makes perfect and all, but…”
“Those rocks aren’t part of some shitty OCD decoration scheme?”
“Not really, no. Though thanks for pointing out my poor taste in decorating,” I said sarcastically.
“I haven’t heard or seen this before because…” He motioned at the shimmering purple air.
“I was better at keeping it under wraps, yes. I ran out of the…” I hesitated. “Hell, I’m just going to say it. Spells. I ran out of the spells. I only had two, and I needed three.”
“I ain’t never seen a witch in that cemetery light shit on fire without touching it, not to mention throwing shit around like that,” he said in a strangely accusatory voice. He swore a lot in general, but when his brain was bending, he apparently pushed it to the next level.
“Say, listen, why don’t we take this conversation indoors? People like you aren’t supposed to know about people like me. It could get me in trouble and you dead.”
As though I’d flicked a switch, Mikey bristled and straightened out, turning his meaty shoulders toward me. His hands flexed and then curled into fists at his sides. All hint of I’m freaking out left his eyes and demeanor.
“I’d like to see them try,” he growled.
We’d definitely make a helluva team. And Darius wondered why I didn’t want to move…
“Well, I wouldn’t. I’d have to kill them all, and then we’d both have to move.”
“Open your front door. I’m coming to you. I don’t want you to burn my house down like you did yours.”
“That wasn’t me, and you know it.”
He was shaking his head as he turned. I distinctly heard, “Looney tunes,” before he disappeared around the edge of my house. I heard his back door slam shut.
If only I’d heard it open.
Weak and shaky, I moved into my gloriously air-conditioned house. I heard the knock at the door, two fast raps, and ignored it. I needed to put something on that wasn’t drenched in sweat. A moment later, I heard another two raps, followed by the handle jiggling. I assumed my door was opened directly afterward.
“You gonna let me in, or what?” Mikey called through my house.
“Clearly you just let yourself in,” I yelled back, peeling off my leather pants. That material was the absolute pits in the summer weather of Louisiana, but it did prevent me from buying a bunch of new clothes. “Don’t let the air conditioning out.”
“Girl, you need a lesson in hosting,” I heard him mutter.
I threw on some yoga pants and a T-shirt before heading out to find Mikey standing against the closed front door. He was looking around the new digs with a straight face.
“So?” I asked, gesturing at the living room. “You like?”
“Fancy,” he said. He’d seen the place when it was a half-burned ruin, and he was the reason the second half hadn’t also gone up in flames. Since then, we’d gone back to normal, which meant he did his thing, I did my thing, and our paths didn’t often cross. “Didn’t peg you for the type that bought that kind of stuff.” He jerked his head toward the closest oil painting on the wall.
“Surely you must’ve seen the outrageously gorgeous woman who was hanging around after the remodel was done.” I paused by the archway to the kitchen, waiting for his answer.
“Yeah, I saw her.”
I’d bet. Every man in the neighborhood had probably noticed her, even though she hadn’t strayed far from my house.
“She did all this.” I gave a sweep of my hand.
“And you let her have free rein.”
“Obviously. What do I know about decorating?”
He huffed out a laugh as he filled half of the entrance to the kitchen. “About as much as me, I reckon.”
“Exactly. Want something to drink?” I asked, getting myself some water. Part of me wondered if I needed water to live. For that matter, did I need food? I got hungry and thirsty, but I felt the need to breathe, as well. I’d proven that I didn’t need to, so maybe I didn’t need those other things either. Maybe the pain of not having them could be endured.
Truth be told, I didn’t much want to find out.
“I’m good,” Mikey said, crossing his arms.
“Want to sit?” I pointed at the table in the corner of the kitchen.
He shook his head, so I leaned back against the counter. He wasn’t much for formal conversation, I gathered.
“Did Smokey tell you what he saw in the cemetery?” I asked, trying to figure out a good place to start.
“Yeah. Sounded insane.”
“It is insane, yes. Most of the witches who come to the cemetery aren’t very…magical. Some aren’t magical at all—they just wish they were.”
“This is going to be the worst conversation I have all day, I can already tell.”
“All month, at least.” I took a few gulps of my water. “But some of those witches are real. They can do crazy stuff with plants and spells and whatnot. That aswang Smokey saw was magical, and very dangerous. The people he suspects are supernatural are, indeed, supernatural. There are lots more, as well, all around. You’ve met more than one in your lifetime and had no idea they weren’t—” His eyes glimmered with a warning and his body tensed. I changed the word I’d planned to use. “—normal.” He relaxed somewhat.
“So you’re one of those witches who is… Who can really do stuff?” he asked in a rough voice.
“I’m not a witch, no. And here’s the tricky part of our relationship.” I finished my water and refilled my glass, trying to figure out how to say this delicately. “Even as far as magical people go, I’m not normal. I’m not like anyone else, which is very dangerous for me. Only a few people have ever seen the things you saw, and those few could get me in big trouble. Now, you couldn’t get me into hot water directly, but loose lips might get heard by the wrong sort of people, and then I’d be up shit creek, do you hear what I’m saying?”
“I know how to keep my mouth shut.”
“Yes. I know you do. But occasionally someone might come around asking questions, and I can’t have anyone knowing the answers to those questions. Do you hear what I’m saying?”
“I know a threat when I hear one.”
“Good, yes. Because this is definitely a threat. Usually I would kill you without question, but what can I say? You’ve grown on me. I’d hate to move, and it would suck even worse to be a suspect in a murder investigation. Cops are annoyingly hard to shake. You’ve put me between a rock and a hard place.”
A smile spread across Mikey’s face. He looked out the front window in the kitchen. “What a strange fucking day.”
“Sometimes meeting one’s neighbors isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.” I sipped my water, watching him over the rim of my glass. I wasn’t lying—I really didn’t want to kill him any more than I did the captain. In all honesty, I liked him. He was blunt and grumpy and violent and completely honest. He was good people. My kind of people.
While I knew I shouldn’t be expanding my bubble of acquaintances, after the incident with Darius and the unicorns, it had just kind of happened. And, to be honest, I didn’t want my life to go back to the lonely way it used to be. It would probably bite me in the ass in the end, but that was nothing new. I knew this semi-normal life I had was on borrowed time.
“Smokey thinks you’re one of them,” Mikey finally said.
“Who, a vampire?”
“No. One of them magical types. He’s onto you.”
“Oh. Well, he saw me carrying a really big rock one time. It was super early in the morning, so I didn’t think anyone awake would also be sober. That was my bad. It’s fine that he thinks I’m magical. My community knows it. It’s the exact nature of my magic that is the secret.”