3. Jeffrey
Chapter three
Jeffrey
T he streets aren’t dead yet this time of night, but it’s still about the most daunting thing I can imagine seeing Mrs. Sherman impatiently waving me to the door after trying the handle five times in full view of me. As if once isn’t enough to know that, yes, it’s locked!
I am extremely grateful I took my makeup and costume off before this encounter, because I have seen the snide look it creates on this woman’s face, and I do not need that added dose of agony tonight. Mrs. Sherman owns one of the first new businesses in this neighborhood that bought out an old one. She runs a Curves gym. The Cold Stone Creamery that is now across the street from her knew exactly what it was doing when it chose locations a few months later.
I open the door but don’t move, preventing any assumptions that she is invited inside. “Yes, Mrs.—”
“I saw your light was on.”
Her inconsiderateness always throws me. “Yes, um, we just closed, Mrs. Sherman. Mr. Bevilaqua is gone for the evening.”
“You’re here.”
“I live upstairs. I’m always here.” It’s perhaps a little ruder than I’d usually allow, and the purse to Mrs. Sherman’s lips says she is not a fan. I hate that it makes me feel bad for even mildly snapping at her when she is the one knocking on my door after eleven at night.
“Yes, well, I assume you’ll see Mr. Bevilaqua tomorrow, won’t you?” There is something about her that is everything you’d expect of someone who runs a Curves gym. Not to disparage anyone who does or who goes there to have a safe place to work out without gawking men, but she has that Real Housewives look that screams she is this fit and this blond and trying to look twenty-five when she’s actually twice that age because she has money and thinks she’s better than everyone. “You can show him this petition then to help move things along.” She thrusts a clipboard at me with maybe two or three pages on it. “I would apologize for stopping by so late, but I was on my way home after a rather long evening, and again, I saw your light was on.”
I would apologize, as if the rest excuses her from needing to be cordial.
I stare at what she’s handed me, at first only really registering a list of names. Names of our neighboring business owners. Even faculty from St. Mary’s is included. I scan my eyes back to the top, and it has the most convoluted paragraph of explanation I have ever read.
Petition to unify as a business-minded community to reject all negative influences threatening current and future patrons of our establishments, pertaining specifically to the solicitation of immoral activity, merchandise, or historical reference.
“What is this?” I ask. The following sentences are even less clear.
“It is your neighbors saying we do not appreciate negative influences that might affect our businesses or brand image.” She crosses her arms with a haughty huff.
I look again, and at the very bottom of the first page in tiny lettering it lists examples of these supposed negative influences.
Mad Madame Mattie’s is cited first.
“There is no way most of these people realized what you were trying to say with this. Not Tony!” Tony from the antique store loves Madame Mattie’s. He sends referrals to us all the time, and we’ve let him sell historical pieces we no longer needed plenty of times too. “You manipulated these businesses with confusing language on purpose. This is bullshit .” I feel a sharp dip in my stomach as soon as the word leaves my mouth. It is bullshit, but if I wasn’t riled up from everything that happened tonight, I would never be that blunt .
Even if I did say it to Mr. Bevilaqua earlier.
But he’s like family! It’s different!
“Excuse me?” Mrs. Sherman moves her hands to her hips, standing taller to achieve full Karen mode. “How dare you use such language with me. It’s no wonder. Negative influence indeed. Cursing, promoting the unsavory practices of this place—”
“We are not promoting anything, and… and…”
“And what, young man?”
Her tone makes me flinch. So much bubbles up in me to spew back at her. We are not promoting the practices of what happened here. It wasn’t exactly as hygienic back then as would have been ideal, but Mattie tried. She kept her seamstresses protected, helped secure futures for them, gave them agency they wouldn’t have had without her. That means something! And this is about history, about preservation and remembering important truths of the past. Plus, there is nothing wrong with someone selling their body if it’s by their own choosing!
But I doubt giving a sex positive, especially sex worker positive speech would sway someone like Mrs. Sherman. Even if I wanted to, and no matter how angry she is making me right now, I just… freeze. Sure, I can blow up at Mr. B, because I know him and love him, and I know he cares about me back, but real confrontation…
I always crumble .
“Obviously, it has nothing to do with any lifestyle choices of those who work here,” she says.
Her tone makes me seriously doubt that.
“It is simply a matter of decency and the type of environment we want for our customers.”
I can’t handle this. I push the clipboard back into her arms and start to shut the door. “We’re closed, Mrs. Sherman.”
“Hold on—” She tries to wedge her foot in the door, but I manage to force her out and hear the door click. “Young man!” She knocks loudly, and it makes my ears ring, since I am right there holding it shut and trying to lock it. “This is a serious matter! I will be back tomorrow to give that petition to Mr. Bevilaqua myself! I only wish the best for my business!”
“And I wish you’d go away ,” I hiss under my breath.
The knocking stops immediately.
I look up, but through the glass of the front door, I can’t see her anymore.
I lurch backward, looking from side to side at the windows lining the storefront. I can’t see her out of any of them. It’s like she vanished.
“Granted,” a voice says from behind me, and I whirl around ready to swing.
My arms drop in disbelief because it’s the incubus but also… not? He’s wearing the same loincloth. It’s lavender, I can see now in normal lighting. All the gold is still there, the cuffs and armbands and necklace pieces from the feathered mantel on his shoulders. He has gold earrings now too, three hoops, two helixes each, and one in each lobe, like replacements for his horns.
Because his horns are gone, and his wings, claws, fangs, and raptor feet. His eyes aren’t glowing purple anymore but are a dark brown, almost black. His purple skin is a normal shade too, also dark brown, like he’s… I can’t even begin to guess his origin, but how he looks human like this, with that faint accent, and being possibly ancient makes me think Babylonian.
And he is just as hot as when he had wings.
But not hotter, so there are some new kinks I now know I have.
“Did you not mean your wish, beautiful one?” he asks from where he stands off the top of the staircase leading to the tunnels. “Shall I return below?”
I’m just standing there staring and quickly close my mouth that is probably drooling. He has a really nice chest, and hip grooves, and thighs. And he is barefoot and practically naked in the middle of the room. “You look human,” I state the obvious.
“Yes.” He smiles, and wow, he is seriously gorgeous. His skin is perfect, and his hair, while only black now, not with any tinge of purple and not floating like a candle flame, is long enough on top that it falls to one side like a mimic of Cas’s asymmetrical cut. “The wings do tend to make people stare.”
I laugh because the insanity of this night is not stopping. He’s funny! “I think people would still stare at you. ”
His smile widens to show pearly white teeth, and I kind of miss the fangs. “I see that many years have passed since I breathed free.” He looks me up and down, and then past me out the windows at the cars and newer buildings and people passing by. “More than I first realized.”
“I’m… sorry?”
“This is not the first time I have woken in another age.”
Wow. What am I dealing with here? He really could be from Babylon, another ancient civilization, or even some alien or otherworldly dimension.
But to any casual onlooker walking past the windows, he is an almost naked man who absolutely makes it look like I have a male prostitute or stripper and that we are trying a whole other approach to our tours.
“Windows!” I race over to him, grabbing him below his armbands, and drag him behind a jutting of the wall. His arms feel like steel beneath my grasp, he is so nicely muscled. “Human is good! But, um, you’re still a little out of place. We’ll need to get you some modern-day clothes.”
On normal human feet, he’s maybe 6’4”, and for someone who was down in the musty underground for over a hundred years, he smells like jasmine and spices.
He smiles down at me with the cutest tilt to his head like when I first called him an incubus. It makes my heartrate quicken, like… like usually only being Madame Mattie causes. He peeks around me toward the windows. I peek too. It doesn’t seem like anyone caught sight of us or cares enough to be staring, but a few more people do pass by, including a hipster in a henley, harem pants, and a scarf.
“There we are,” he says. “Is this better?”
I look at him and watch his loincloth transform into a set of brand-new clothes, identical to the hipster’s but in shades of lavender, purple, and black. It suits him. Especially since he still has the gold earrings.
“ Nice . Perfect, I mean! And amazing. You can conjure clothes?”
“I can conjure anything you desire, beautiful one.” His voice is still deep and rumbly but softer somehow, more intimate. More comfortable? After all, he isn’t chained anymore.
“Are you going to keep calling me that?” I ask.
“Would you prefer… master?” He eyes me again, and it’s difficult to tell his reaction other than curious. “A very different person appears before me than the one I tasted below.”
A voice that sexy should not say things like tasted , referring to me and… below . “This is still me.”
“Yes, but much more is changed than whether your lips are painted.”
“L-listen…” I finally pull my hands from his now clothed arms and dart my eyes down, but he tilts my chin up a little too reminiscent of how I tilted College Boy’s chin up with my fan.
“You needn’t stutter with me, cleric.”
“Cleric?” That’s a new one .
“A cleric of desire, aren’t you? Like Mattie and her seamstresses.”
“I am not like Mattie! This place is… it’s a museum now. It’s not a brothel anymore. I live upstairs and give tours in the tunnels explaining the history of what happened here.”
“Ah.” He releases my chin, and I immediately miss the warmth of his fingers. “So, you were playacting before?”
“Yes. Exactly.”
“You made a very ravishing seamstress, master. More so, I dare say, than any of Mattie’s impersonators.”
“Impersonators?”
“Men who dress as women. Or are you one who is a woman? I have known all kinds and can easily adjust to master, mistress, or otherwise.”
No one has ever blatantly asked before if I identify as a woman or if I prefer being a woman, not even Cas. I should have more of an answer than rambling, “Uh… um, thank you? But no. He/him is fine. I mean, I don’t think I… I just… I like dressing that way. Sometimes! It’s not important right now. What is important is you. Mattie really used you to achieve her success?”
“She did. We were partners, she said. Until she locked me back where she found me.”
He was chained. The implications remind me to be wary that I am alone with a stranger with magical powers. “Um… why did she do that? ”
“Because she was done with me. I could fulfill no more for her.”
“That’s awful.”
“It was not the first time.”
How many masters and ages has he known? But I have to focus on what this contract means. “Is this like Wishmaster , and every accidental desire out of my mouth, you’ll take literally?”
The reference makes his brow pinch.
“Sorry, Wishmaster is just, um… it’s a story about an evil being who grants wishes but always twists them around and has sinister intentions.”
“I understand. My only intentions are to satisfy you,” he says, close and quiet where we’re still tucked behind the wall. “That satisfies me. As does the satiating of any desires, yours, mine, carnal ones most of all.”
Right. Incubus . “So sexy things and, um, fulfilling my wishes is really all you want from this contract?”
“It is all I need. That, in turn, feeds me. I apologize if I overstepped before. I will make no moves again unless you explicitly request so, master.”
“Jeffrey. You can call me Jeffrey.”
“I am Odai, Jeffrey.” He bows his head. “Here to grant your every desire.”
Wow. I keep thinking that word, but wow . Maybe there is a little purple in his eyes still, a faint hint of it in their dark color .
I’ve never really played that game of wondering what I’d do if I found a genie or won the lottery. All I’ve wanted lately is to stay here, keep doing the tours, and forget people like Mrs. Sherman exist.
Mrs. Sherman!
“What did you do to her?” I demand as I remember she vanished.
“The unpleasant woman? She had a change of heart and strode immediately back to her own building. All you wished for was that she go away. So she did.”
Not Wishmaster then. She went home. She didn’t, like, implode or anything.
“However, Jeffrey, if such a suggestion would ever be too much against someone’s nature or put them in direct harm—such as to command them to dive in front of a galloping horse or one of those new vehicles I saw outside—I am afraid my influence would be ineffective. Where my powers can penetrate, I will always find a way to grant what is asked of me.”
“Okay. So, for argument’s sake, could I… wish for this building to become a castle?”
“No.” He chuckles. “While I can conjure things, I cannot grant something that might call attention to my existence.”
“Oh. That’s smart!”
“Thank you.” He bows his head again.
“It makes way more sense than most wish logic. Getting Mrs. Sherman to go home, that wasn’t too hard, because she was about to leave anyway, but you probably couldn’t, say, get someone to no longer want to buy this place if they really wanted to buy it?”
“Likely not.”
I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. “Some people want to buy this building, demolish it, and smooth away all its history. I don’t want them to. I wish to find a way to keep this place intact so I can stay here.”
“Then I shall help you however I can.”
This is real. This is really happening. But there is still plenty I don’t know, and I can’t shake that it feels too good to be true.
Mattie died young. She didn’t get much of a happy ending. Why would she lock him up, thinking she’d never need another wish?
“Can I ask why you want a master? You get something out of this too, okay, but the amulet makes it feel like you’re chained to it the same way you were chained downstairs. Like you’re trapped.”
For the first time besides a little confusion over a movie title, his brow crinkles with concern. “To answer that, you will need to ask the right questions.”
“What do you mean?”
“My magic binds me from saying more.”
“Then you really are a genie. A djinn. There are rules and consequences, but you can’t outright tell me what all of them are, huh? ”
“Correct. You are very wise, Jeffrey. My past masters and mistresses sometimes went weeks without questioning what comes next.”
“Next? After I make wishes, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Are there limits to how many?”
“No.”
“What happens if I keep asking for more?”
“I continue to want more too.”
I’m not sure what that means, but there is an inkling of dread that settles in my gut.
“I want to fulfill your desires, Jeffrey,” Odai says, “but the more I do, the more I want to do so again and again.”
“Oh…kay. That doesn’t sound so bad.”
“Is there any other desire I can fulfill for you tonight?”
How tall and handsome and just… perfect he is has my mind whirring with a whole list of possibilities, but I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it has been a really long night. “I’m going to need to think about that. This is, um, a lot. I am going to take a shower, bathe, and then go to sleep. Do you need to sleep?” I realize I’m still not sure what to do with him.
“I do not. But I shall watch over you, Jeffrey, should you need me. Or, if you prefer that I give you privacy, I can explore this new world and return when you call.”
Do I want to be responsible for unleashing an incubus on the city? “Maybe stick to only this building and the underground for tonight. Okay? ”
“As you wish.”
Wish. I could wish for almost anything.
Tomorrow.
Tonight, I hope watching over me doesn’t mean watching me in the shower, because I really need to get off again or there is no way I am getting any sleep.
“Okay. Goodnight… Odai.”
“Goodnight, Jeffrey.”
Odai
Jeffrey has not asked the right questions yet, not all of them, but maybe this, finally, is the owner who can free me from my torment.
Although, I have thought that before.
As he retreats upstairs, I set to exploring the building that I once knew so well. It has changed much. Aged. Modernized. Things that would have been common trinkets are under glass and displayed as historical artifacts. They are, I suppose. Entombed as part of the past, like everyone I knew from back then. Like I was until Jeffrey touched my amulet and woke me .
I do so look forward to when he asks me to taste him again. I know he will. His desires, some familiar to him, some yet unknown, drip from him like honey, and I will lap up every drop, fulfil every wish, every whim. While I hope and pray to whatever gods might still be watching me, if gods even exist, that Jeffrey is not doomed like all those before him.