is over. Welcome your sister and her little family into your home. Enjoy the financial security he has provided for you. Try to have a nice life, Victoria. Say good-bye. He will not trouble you again.” Mr. Magnus got up from her bed and adjusted his clothing. “I leave you a parting gift.” He took a book from one of his wide sleeves and set it on the nightstand. “Good bye.”
She almost expected him to leave in a poof of sparkling smoke, but he left like normal people do, through the front door. She stood at her window and watched him walk to his truck and listened to the sound of the diesel engine rumble and the sway of the panel truck as it backed out. She watched him drive away. Then she watched the empty road for a long time before she picked up the little book and looked at the title.
A Tale of Two Cities. She had read this one in high school. Dickens again. She frowned as she turned the pages. This book was about love. Every book is about love if you think about it. Victoria set the book down again, remembering the story. It was also about resurrection. Have a nice life, he had said. She felt herself getting angry. Have a nice life? Her life was far from nice, and financial security only made her worries go away. It didn’t make her life nice. What the fuck did “nice” mean anyway. She grit her teeth.
Her whole life seemed to be spent in a dream. Her memories were of a person moving from one event to another day by day. She had friends she met for coffee, and the wilder ones she met for tequila shots weekends. She had lovers. Sex partners, she corrected. Men who came over and messed up her sheets and her bathroom and left hair in the sink and then just…left. The others she sent away.
Her jaw started to hurt and she realized she was grinding her teeth. She had never been in love. With anything or anyone. She went to school to learn the most boring profession of all, accounting. Her friends were boring. They only wanted to discuss the latest thing on television or in the malls. The men she casually fucked were more interested in their own gym memberships and their video games than in her. Nice life indeed.
When she tried to think of her life in terms of whether it was nice or not, she saw herself putting the good parts and the bad parts in columns just like she did at work with debits and credits. She needed a life accountant. She smiled grimly. What other people considered a nice life was one free from worry enough to allow them to engage in even more selfish pursuits. Her wealthiest friends were the ones who spent the most time shopping and clubbing and hours at the salon talking about themselves. Her less fortunate friends spent their time doing more interesting things, and talking about things and events rather than people.
She tapped the book on the nightstand. I will not go back to bed and wake up in a nice life, she promised herself. She marched over to the chalk circle and drew another one next to it. It wasn’t midnight. There was no incense. There were no more shoes. Instead there was a burning desire to get to the bottom of her visitations. She felt the heat of Hell behind her eyes as she scratched the symbol in the center. She wanted Marcus and Jack and Torgal. While she browsed the latest fashions they were dying over and over again. While she lay in a soft bed and complained to herself about being lonely, they were calling for her to help them. The thought of a nice life filled her mouth with the nasty taste of a skinny latte, tall with nutmeg sprinkled on tip and finished with the snotty glare of an underpaid barrista. She pointed at the center of the circle and growled, “Jasper!”
The monkey demon appeared as though he had been dragged kicking and screaming through a keyhole. His big eyes recognized her and before he could tell her “no”, Victoria had him by the throat and spat, “Shrewsbury. Now!”
She was ready for the flash. She stood outside the familiar thatched cottage. She looked down at herself to make sure she was not still in her nightgown. Good. She wore a simple woolen dress