It is both true and untrue for me to say that I don’t keep up with the news.\u00a0 I do not watch television, I think newsprint is dead [thanks, Egon!] (although it is still\u00a0an important history from which to learn) and I certainly do not go out of my way on the internet to any news or news discussion pages.\u00a0\u00a0 I have enough things (even leaving my ex-boyfriends out of it) that raise my blood pressure to undesirable levels.<\/p>\n
I talk, and that tells me much.<\/p>\n
I listen, and it tells me more.<\/p>\n
It was in talking to a healer who was afraid she was dealing with a creature that deals in plagued rashes that I found out about E.<\/p>\n
Plagued rashes, in case you were wondering, require blessed creams.\u00a0 Holy water can sting too much alone.<\/p>\n
“I was surprised he let them take him in to the emergency room,” she was saying.\u00a0 “He was completely in shock.\u00a0 Kept reaching over for the ice cream in the passenger’s seat.\u00a0\u00a0 The car was torn almost in two, and there was this, no really, get this, a Dairy Queen sundae completely untouched next to him. \u00a0 Big red spoon stuck in just like it was ready to eat.\u00a0 Since it wasn’t all over the dash we figured it wasn’t the cause. \u00a0 Anyway, he was cute and I wish he had asked for my number.\u00a0 There was just something about him.”<\/p>\n
I don’t think I remember feeling that way.\u00a0 Oh, that’s not true.\u00a0 I remember quite well what he was like.\u00a0 A little shy, a lot geeky, an infectious smile, and he had what I have mentally dubbed the Preacher’s Gene: he became animated, a completely different person when you interacted with him in a place of his expertise.\u00a0 (The Pastor’s Gene is really close to it, but it’s someone who becomes really animated when they interact simply person-to-person.\u00a0 I wonder occasionally how many of those “genes” will not be passed on because of the scarcity of human contacts in the future.)<\/p>\n
“What of the other car?” I asked.<\/p>\n
“Not a bolt, scrap, or stain,” she said.\u00a0 “Well, that isn’t entirely true.\u00a0 There was a black piece of fiberglass that was shaped kind of like this,” she made a semi-circle shape with her fingers, “past the intersection.\u00a0 I haven’t heard of anything coming from the model group yet, but they’re looking for a chewed-up black SUV.\u00a0 It’d have to be something huge like that.\u00a0 I hate it, you know?\u00a0 Drive an SUV because you’re scared of being hit by SUVs.\u00a0 Vicious cycle, unsustainable, and all that.”<\/p>\n
I have been unsuccessful in spelling my GPS to follow leylines instead of streets, but I persevere.<\/p>\n
I also recognize a partial semi-circle shape as a claw.<\/p>\n
I sent her off with some herbs and a blessing, and sat staring at the wall for about twenty minutes.<\/p>\n
Then I started to swear.\u00a0 He should have called.\u00a0 He should have let me know he was in danger, and then that he was just fine.\u00a0 He should have had me pick him up at the hospital and drive him home.\u00a0 He should have…<\/p>\n
…done nothing of the sort.\u00a0 We were over.\u00a0 We didn’t owe each other anything, let alone me acting like his mom.<\/p>\n
I picked up the phone to tell him so.<\/p>\n
I didn’t know what I would have said if it had picked up.\u00a0 I wasn’t going to tell him I couldn’t lose him.\u00a0 He had been a part of my life too long for me to easily shut that down, but words like that were still easily misinterpreted, especially by men.\u00a0 I let it ring.\u00a0 And ring.\u00a0 And ring.<\/p>\n
And a cold bolt of jealousy hit me in the base of the spine.\u00a0 Was he too busy with that Doloise creature to pick up the phone?\u00a0 He always picked up the phone for me.\u00a0 It was written in the depths of his psyche, and not even in my handwriting.\u00a0 I tried again and this time got the “not in the range of service” message.<\/p>\n
That wasn’t jealousy.\u00a0 Oh, alright, the ridiculous thought of him and that exquisite woman was jealousy, but not the cold at the base of my spine. Something had happened to him.<\/p>\n
“Sylvie!\u00a0 Has E called you?\u00a0 Oh, c’mon.\u00a0 I’m his ex-girlfriend, heavy on the ex-, and I have no plans on changing that.\u00a0 I’m just…”<\/p>\n
I didn’t want to say it aloud.\u00a0 There’s “magical thinking” for you.<\/p>\n
“I’m a little concerned about him, that’s all.\u00a0 Like, I had `a bad feeling about this’ kind of concerned.\u00a0 Yes, I know, you’re younger than Star Wars.\u00a0 Yeah, come on over.\u00a0 I’ll start up some dinner.”\u00a0 I heated the cauldron on my glass-top stove anyway.\u00a0 Unless I needed flames, the water didn’t care how it was boiled.<\/p>\n
“Matana?”\u00a0 Her cellphone worked erratically at the best of times, so I called to her blood beast instead.\u00a0 Just one of those magical strumming of the strings things like those that attract spiders in their webs.<\/p>\n
The girls arrived at about the same time.\u00a0 Matana from above, Sylvia from the car she and her roommates had a complex timeshare with, something to do with class schedules and phases of the moons and patterns of dew drops or somesuch esoterica.<\/p>\n
“I’m worried about E,” I said.\u00a0 No prelude, none of the overlong explanations I had been coming up with in my head.\u00a0 “I think something has happened to him.”<\/p>\n
“And rightly so,” Matana snapped.\u00a0 “I lost track of him at the restaurant.”<\/p>\n
Sylvia spun around.\u00a0 “You were… stalking him?” and there was an accusation in her voice.<\/p>\n
I jumped in and repeated it, but with far less shrill concern.\u00a0 There’s no such thing as a vegetarian vampire.\u00a0 The spiritual coin and necessary vintage may differ, but Matana’s was a blood craving.\u00a0 E was safe from her because I had been granted the secret of what blood she needed before agreeing to the exchange.\u00a0 It’s a secret, no, I’m not telling you.<\/p>\n
Matana smiled.\u00a0 If she were being possessed by her creature she might have flashed fang, but her expression was what the authors of those silly urban fantasies meant when they said that.\u00a0 “He was interesting.”\u00a0 She put out a shapely dark hand towards Sylvia.\u00a0 “I sensed the Mark on him.”<\/p>\n
“The Mark?” I think Sylvie and I said it in stereo.<\/p>\n
“For the lack of a better term, his aura had been recently impacted by a number of strong magical effects.\u00a0 You didn’t see?” she asked the last gently.\u00a0 The one thing you never ask another witch is the extent of their power.\u00a0 It’s a big etiquette buster.<\/p>\n
I think “aura” is a dumb term – it’s more like gravity and you get a lot of space debris in it, but then, it takes me a certain level of concentration\/meditation to see them.\u00a0 I’m more of the type to listen to my gut instincts than ascertain the specifics of “Is this because of a psychological change or a sorcerous one?” from someone who is pinging my subconscious.<\/p>\n
I got that term from E, didn’t I?\u00a0 I think so.<\/p>\n
“I don’t think I would have put it that way.\u00a0 What restaurant?”<\/p>\n
“It’s a little more complicated than that.”\u00a0 When a vampire plays coy, you are welcome, nay, required to bristle, and that gentle hand came out to put distance between us.\u00a0 “He was visited by a Power that charged him with something.\u00a0 He may simply be seeking out a way to pay that off.”<\/p>\n
Why does my boy get visits from Powers?\u00a0 Wait, not “my boy.”\u00a0 Deep breath, Mags.\u00a0\u00a0 I only invoked certain Powers when I thought things I was doing would interest them and they might want a piece of it.\u00a0 It’s what made me mostly a witch, not a full-time priestess.\u00a0 “What did he get into?\u00a0 It’s something with big black claws.”\u00a0 I forced myself to stay calm.<\/p>\n
“Like the talons of eagles,” she said.\u00a0 “He has meddled in the affairs of Dragons.”<\/p>\n
“And he’s crunchy and good with ketchup,” Sylvia said, as someone had to.\u00a0 “You guys are serious, right?\u00a0 Dragons?”<\/p>\n
“There are more things in Heaven and Earth,” I half-quoted from memory.<\/p>\n
“So, is he a St. George type, or do we have to rescue him like a princess?” Sylvia demanded.<\/p>\n
I don’t know what about that was funny to the vampire, but both of us broke out laughing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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