Salmon Fit for a Sophisticated Grizzly Bear

CHAPTER 4

It’s near closing time at the shop and the place is mostly deserted. I park Lucas at the counter and pull him my favorite, a Black Magic.

“It’s not real black magic,” I explain when he raises an eyebrow. I leave off the part where I admit I am perfectly capable of filling it full to the brim with such magic.

“It’s a double shot of espresso with sweetened condensed milk. The caffeine and sugar rush are enough to make your head spin, so eat this,” I push an orange-cranberry scone at him. “And now, I’m off to face my family.” I back away toward the kitchen door. “If you hear screaming, just turn up the music.”

Nana and Miranda and Hector are going over some inventory on my aunt’s iPad.

“How did it go? You return the wallet?” Miranda asks.

“Yup.”

“I’m sure he appreciated it.” Nana is smiling at me but I can feel that she knows I have more to say. “And then what?”

“What, what?” I ask, stalling.

Miranda looks up from the screen. “Jesus; what have you done now?”

I fold my arms across my chest and pretend she’s not making me squirm. My aunt has always had an uncanny knack for terrifying me.

“I was a good person,” I explain.

“There appears to be someone unfamiliar in the shop,” Nana observes. “But I don’t...I can’t quite get a read on him.”

“Him?” Miranda asks.

“I may have brought the boy home.”

Yoriko, Hector’s wife, comes out of the storeroom. “I thought you were off boys,” she observes.

“I am.” Or at least I was. Having decided that there is nothing darker than the heart of a teenage boy, I announced my resolution to remain forever single rather than put myself through a lifetime of misery. In retrospect, maybe I should have kept my proclamation to myself.

“He sure looks like a boy,” Yoriko giggles, “and a cute one, too.”

I roll my eyes. “It’s the kid with the wallet. Lucas.”

“You were supposed to drop it off,” Hector says, “not bring him with you.”

“He seems to have a suitcase,” Yoriko adds. This woman is totally not helping.

“It’s a garbage bag,” I clarify. Also not helping. “Just as I pulled up his dad came out of the house, totally wasted, and tossed out Lucas and his stuff.”

Miranda makes an exasperated sound. Hector heads to the door to check him out. My aunt follows.

I turn my grandmother, hoping she’ll appreciate the virtue of my actions.

“What was I supposed to do? It’s freezing outside. I couldn’t leave him in the snow. Besides,” I wait for Yoriko to be out of earshot. “I’m pretty sure we can take care of him if there’s a problem.”

Nana smiles and pats my arm. “You did the right thing.” She pauses. “I feel as though there’s something else you should tell me, though.”

There are quite a few things I am not telling her. She may know all of them, or only some. He has no aura, I tried to pull his thoughts from him by touching his hand, there is some negative force that seems to be targeting me. I go with the one least likely to pose a problem.

“His aura?”

“Indeed. He doesn’t appear to have one. Is that your take as well?”

“I thought it might be me.”

Nana covers a tray of cinnamon roll dough with a towel.

“On the contrary. No aura.” She smoothes the edge of the towel, considering. “It’s unheard of - at least in my experience. Perhaps the aunts…”

The aunts. Six eccentric old women living together in a brownstone in Brooklyn where they run a lucrative tarot business for assorted hipsters and financial people. Weird doesn’t begin to cover it.

I groan. “Do we have to?”

She can’t disagree with me on that one. “Perhaps you’re right. Let’s see what we can dig up first, shall we? Miranda and I will discuss it while you entertain the young man.” She pauses and puts a finger on her lips. “You can entertain him, correct? I know your aversion…”

“Yeah, yeah. It’s amazing what not knowing anything about a person can do. Where should I stash him?”

Nana’s eyebrows pull together. “You can keep him in the shop for a bit. Have him help you straighten up and then feed him.” She reaches over and wraps her hand around the protection charm around my wrist. “Make sure you call me if you need me.”

Back in the shop, Miranda’s boyfriend Graham is showing Lucas how to work the espresso machine. Graham is probably the most good-natured person I’ve ever met, which is no doubt how he deals with my aunt’s less-than-sunshiney temperament. He’s also the world’s best looking man which is for sure his selling point for Miranda. I can see he’s doing his best to make Lucas feel welcome. The two of them look happy and distracted and I feel like Lucas is in good hands. I head over to Miranda who is laying out tarot cards at her corner table.

My aunt flips the cards without looking at them, her sharp gaze focused 100% on Lucas. I can’t tell if she’s trying to figure him out, or making sure Graham is safe.

“I can go get him away from Graham if you want,” I offer.

“Graham can hold his own. It’s your boy there I’m working on. I don’t understand it. No aura - at all - like totally blank. I’ve never seen that before.”

“I thought maybe I was losing this delightful gift,” I say, sliding into the seat across from her.

She snorts. “No such luck, niece. Besides, it’s all of us. I wonder…” she drums her fingers on the table. “Do you think he’s doing it on purpose?”

“Blocking his aura? People don’t even know they have one.”

“Right,” she agrees, “but maybe he’s blocking his feelings.”

I almost ask why anyone would do something like that, but I do it all the time. It’s a lot safer to keep my emotions to myself than to discover, too late, that the person I’ve shared them with is unworthy. People do it all the time - with varying degrees of success. Lucas would be successful beyond anything I’ve ever seen before. But then it seems like he has a lot of things he might want bottled up.

“Speaking of…” Miranda breaks out her “disdain” expression, “some friends of yours are coming.”

I peer into the darkness beyond the window. “Nick?”

“Sorry.”

The bell over the door jangles followed by a burst of cold air and the sounds of teenagers. By friends, Miranda clearly did not mean friends. These are kids from the neighborhood, the ones I went to middle school with, the ones who tormented me, who called me spooky, devil worshipper. These are the people who taught me to turn into myself.

There are five of them tonight: two girls and three guys. Jannelis, Lauren, Mohammed, Henry, and Omar. They’re loaded down with bags from GameStop and Bath and Body Works and, of course, McDonalds - because you should bring food into a cafe. I groan knowing I’m going to have to tell them to take their dinner someplace else. No. I groan because I’m going to have to communicate with them in any way.

“Ooh. It’s the witch and her little witch family,” Lauren says. She makes no effort to lower her voice.

Mohammed makes a shush sound, but the others laugh. In the final war between good and evil, I will try to remember to spare him.

“Charming,” Miranda says. “Why don’t you go...take care of them,” she suggests. “Just try not to break anything.”

Much as I would love to take Miranda up on her suggestion, I know there isn’t really anything I can do that won’t bring unwanted attention to us. I can scramble their emotions. I can pit them against one another. But I can’t do any of that without them attributing it to me, the one they already think of as a witch. It’s better just to ignore them and get them moving as fast as possible. I let out the world’s most despondent sigh and push back my chair.

Before I’m on my feet, Lucas is heading their way. I don’t know what he has in mind, but I can’t imagine anything good will happen as a result. Unless, of course, he actually knows these kids. Oh God. What a disaster that would be.

It’s obvious from the way the girls shift and smile at Lucas that they don’t actually know him. It’s also obvious from their auras that they would very much like to change that.

“Hi there,” Lauren says. That amount of lip gloss should be illegal.

“You’re new,” Jannelis adds. “When did you start working here?”

Lucas smiles at them and their auras explode. Apparently Yoriko isn’t the only one who thinks he’s cute.

“I just started,” he says looking them over. “And since it’s my first day, I’m going to have to be the one who enforces the rules. You guys can’t bring that in here.” He gestures at the fast food bags with a nod of his head.

“Since when?” Henry asks.

“Since always.” Lucas takes a step closer, reinforcing the fact that he is way taller than all of them.

“No worries,” Lauren answers. “We weren’t going to stay. We were just stopping by for coffee and to say hi to our friend, Tristan.”

Lucas smirks. “You guys are friends?”

“Of course,” Jannelis says.

“Yeah? ‘Cause I’m just not getting that vibe.”

Jannelis steps up closer and whispers in a way that people across the street could probably hear. “You do know about them, don’t you?”

“Know what?”

Sweet Jesus. Here it comes. These idiots are going to tell Lucas, who so far only thinks I’m weird, that I’m a witch. He seems like a smart guy. In seconds, he will put it all together: the strange behavior, the tarot cards, my all black wardrobe. The first person I even sort of like in forever is about to discover the one thing I would have hidden for as long as I could. Magic tingles along my arms into my fingertips, but using it will only prove their point.

Lauren leans in and says, “They’re witches. All of them. Tristan is a witch.”

Lucas runs a hand across his mouth as he digests this interesting piece of information. He seems to turn it around in his mind, sorting out what he’s seen and what they’re saying. Finally he looks down at them and says, “Funny. I don’t think she’s the witch here.”

Jannelis and Lauren jump back like he’s smacked them. The guys almost double over laughing.

“Nice one,” Miranda mutters next to me.

“Also,” Lucas adds. “We’re closed now and you can’t eat that in here. I’ll let Tristan know her friends stopped by.”

He folds his arms across his chest and watches as they scramble back into the night.

Miranda laughs. “I think I love this kid.”

I turn away, my face burning bright red. Lucas may have blown them off. He may have stood up for me. But now that the thought is in his head, how long will it be before he starts to actually believe them?

Lucas turns toward me and grins. I guess the expression on my face suggests I’m not quite as amused, because he apologizes.

“Sorry,” he says, pulling his eyebrows together. “I didn’t actually get the feeling you guys were friends. Was I wrong?”

I blink at him a few times as the energy pulsing through my core dissipates. Lucas has seen something I definitely did not want him to, but then didn’t I just witness one of his most personal moments as well?

“I hate them,” I say honestly. “And they hate me probably just as much. So thanks for getting rid of them.” My voice is tight as I fight to push down the embarrassment.

“Shall we go up for dinner?” Nana has suddenly appeared in the room.

“I can lock up here,” Graham announces pulling Miranda to her feet.

“That’s alright,” she says. “Let Tristan do it. You and Miranda go show Lucas where he can put his things and get cleaned up.”

Nana smiles at me. This is her way of letting me have a few minutes to get myself together. “Don’t be too long,” she tells me.

They head to the stairs, leaving me alone.

I flip off the overhead lights and start straightening tables and chairs in the dark. What does it matter, anyway? It’s not like I brought Lucas here to make friends. I brought him here to save him from a cold night out on the streets. In a few days, his father will snap out of it and, for better or worse, we’ll each go back to living our normal lives. So what if he thinks I’m a witch? At least he doesn’t seem like the kind of person who’ll use that against me.

“So many petty annoyances.”

My heart leaps into my throat at the sound of someone in the room with me.

“Shi…,” I trail off. Cursing at the customers is bad for business. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize anyone was in here.” I laugh. “You scared me.”

The speaker sits in the darkest corner of the shop. I take a quick scan of his aura and, immediately, understand I’m in trouble here. He’s not Lucas; he has an aura. But the one he has is a jumble of darkness, the mingled colors of danger and despair.

The adrenaline coursing through my body makes my head spin and my knees tremble.

“My apologies,” he says from the shadows.

I back up against the counter, nearer the stairs and my family, and force myself to answer. “No worries.”

His aura is a shifting thing. I picture it, my mind creating an image of deep space, a place without light, without sound, without air. It is a black hole swallowing everything in its path, swallowing my courage, my common sense, my ability to concentrate.

The voice speaks again. “I couldn’t help overhearing that exchange, Tristan. How irritating that people can’t appreciate how truly special you are.”

My breathing speeds up to match my pulse, my hand sliding to the protection charm. Each word he speaks sends a chill down my spine. The darkness swirls around him, fragments of despondency and hopelessness breaking over to fall at my feet. I’ve never encountered anyone completely without redeeming qualities before, but this man is a monster.

“You know we’re closed,” I say struggling to keep my voice level.

“Yes,” he says. The chair scrapes across the floor as he stands. “I wanted us to be able to speak without distraction.”

There is nothing in that statement that isn’t ominous. He waited until I was alone, separated from my family, in the darkened shop. This is the beginning of every true crime show I’ve ever watched, and standing around waiting to be kidnapped or murdered doesn’t seem to be the way to go. I will all the magic I can find together. The multiple strings of fairy lights flicker and come to life, one after the other.

The man is revealed to me in the dim, pastel toned lights.

Like many of the worst things in the world, he is attractive. Age is hard to determine. On any given morning I would think he was just a businessman on his way to work. But his face, his face is completely without emotion; his eyes, an icy blue, are almost white. The only unattractive part of him is his mouth which is twisted upward in a grin. He is enjoying how freaked out I am.

“No need for theatrics,” he says without looking at the lights.

“I think there’s every need for you to get the hell out of here,” I answer. The words are brave, even as I scramble to figure out how I’m going to back them up.

“As I will...momentarily. But before I go, I want to leave you with this: your family is lying to you, Tristan. They are lying to you and in doing so, denying you untold power and strength. These little children, the ones you find so annoying, could be done away with with the mere lifting of a finger. But they won’t tell you that. And why? Because they are afraid, afraid that they will no longer be able to control you.”

I’m vaguely aware of the sound of heavy footsteps above the shop. A minute later, boots take the stairs two at a time.

“Remember what I’ve said, Tristan. And when you’re ready, you and I will talk again.”

“Tristan?”

I jump and turn around. Lucas stands in the doorway. He looks into the shop and back at me. “Everything OK in here?”

My heart beats so hard I’m afraid I won’t be able to answer without choking on my saliva. I ball my fingers into fists and force myself to respond.

“Yeah. All good. What’re you doing here?”

“Dinner’s ready. Your grandmother sent me to see if you needed help,” he says.

I take another look around the room. It’s empty. No person, no aura. Everything is still.

“No,” I say, flipping off the lights again. “Thanks. I’m good.”