Seven
MORGAN
I spend my week definitely not thinking about Zach. In no way do I remember that fleeting instant when his lips were against mine, or how good they felt. I absolutely, positively do not think about how right it felt to kiss him.
Nor do I lie in bed every night and get myself off by imagining where things could have gone between us if I'd been sober. I wasn't that drunk, and given how much I'm attracted to him, I probably could have consented to sex. But I do have to respect that he has that boundary, low bar though it is and assuming that’s why he turned me down. I probably would think less of him if he'd stayed Saturday night.
The week plods along, seeing clients at work, helping them contact their loved ones for various reasons. I like my job, in a dark, twisted sort of way. I help people get the closure they otherwise might not have. And I've met some fascinating people, both clients and spirits.
Celestial Alchemy is doing a big concert in Milwaukee this coming Saturday, and it gives me something to look forward to. Grant is driving me, Bronwen, Sirona, and Sirona's best friend, Evan. We're staying overnight and hanging out in Milwaukee on Sunday before we drive back. Since they're our cousins, we have backstage passes, which is always a great experience.
And I'm totally not bummed Zach isn't coming to the concert with us. I know he likes the band, even if they are openly witches and he's a dumbass about that. And now that I know he's in a band of his own, I can't help thinking he'd enjoy the backstage treatment.
But I'm sure as hell not going to be the one to invite him.
Friday I get home from work and Bowie is perched on the porch railing. "Hey, bud," I greet him as I unload my work bag from the basket on my bike.
How was work ?
"Same ol' same ol'," I tell him.
You spent half the day thinking about Zach, didn’t you?
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Go away.”
I don't exactly know how familiar animals have the ability to learn human languages, I just know that when I was twelve, my first owl familiar died, and a few days later, I heard Bowie talking to me, perched outside my bedroom window.
When I say "heard" I don't mean it like Bowie talks out loud. I just think his words in my head, like my own inner voice. Except it's a different voice from mine, and I just know it's Bowie.
Witch sense, I guess.
I used to be pretty jealous of Sirona, whose familiars are cats. I wanted a familiar I could cuddle with. But I was assigned owls by the deities, so I get owls. At least I don't have to clean up goat poop, like Bronwen does.
I'm dropping my bag in the entryway when my phone chimes with a text message. I check it to see a message from Sapphire, in the cousin group text we have going.
Sapphire: MAJOR EMERGENCY
My heart stops. Did something happen to Nana? Or Sapphire's mom, my aunt Sarah? Sapphire is not given to dramatics so this has to be truly serious. Not like Bronwen texting "major emergency" for something like her favorite author pushed back the release date for their next book.
There are dots on the screen, indicating Sapphire is typing, so I wait.
Amethyst: Richard quit. Today.
Garnet: We have a huge concert TOMORROW and no drummer .
My pulse slows back down. Yes, this is an emergency of a sort, for them. But Nana and Aunt Sarah are fine.
I immediately think of Zach, remember his hair and arms and sticks flying as he pounded out a rhythm on the drums that night I saw him perform.
I definitely don't think about all the tattoos covering his chest and back that I want to explore with my tongue. Thinking about that would be inappropriate for the situation.
Sapphire: Cousin meeting at Cheesy's in fifteen.
I sigh. I want to help out my cousins. And I don't have dinner plans so Grilled Cheese Diner isn't a horrible place to be. But I'd really been looking forward to crashing on my couch with some mindless reality TV.
Instead I text back.
Morgan: on my way
I stick my phone in my pocket, ignoring the series of dings that are likely the rest of the group responding. I grab my bag and head back out.
Where are you off to?
"Emergency cousin meeting at Chessie's. Don't wait up."
I'm nocturnal. I always wait up.
I nod in Bowie's direction, conceding his point .
Fifteen minutes later, I'm parking my bike at the diner. I head in and find most of my cousins, plus Bronwen and Sabrina, there.
They've staked out the big round booth in the corner, and there's just enough room for me to squeeze onto the end, next to Lavender. The Gems are the farthest in, with Sapphire at the center of it all.
Because Sapphire is often the center of it all. She's a take charge personality.
"OK, I need everyone thinking hard," she says. "I'll take just about any drummer we can find on 24-hour notice."
Again Zach's face pops into my head. This time it's the frown on his face as he pulled back when I tried to kiss him. My cheeks heat at the memory and I shove it away.
Besides, I don't know if he's really any good. Sure, it seemed that way, for a band of a bunch of scientists who practice probably once a week. But to keep up with a group as talented and huge as Celestial Alchemy? That's a whole different level.
"Couldn't Nana put some sort of spell on one of us, give us drumming skills for a few hours?" Honey suggests.
Sapphire makes a face like she's considering it while Garnet nods and Amethyst shakes her head.
"We'll call that plan B," Sapphire finally says.
Amethyst rolls her eyes.
"Even if we can find a drummer on such short notice," Sirona says, "who's to say if they know your songs."
Now I picture Zach in his Celestial Alchemy t-shirt. He wore it the first time he came to Sunday dinner at my mom's. And I've seen him in other ones at various times. He's clearly a fan.
Shit.
"What about Zach?" The words are out of my mouth before I know I'm going to say them. Except I did know I was going to .
"Zach, as in Gary's son?" Amethyst asks.
"That's right!" Bronwen snaps her fingers.
"Az ite!" Sabrina tries to snap too, but isn't coordinated enough. Her face screws up in concentration as she works her tiny fingers to imitate her mom.
OK, I can admit, my niece is pretty cute, with the same brown ringlets Bronwen had as a kid, and big brown eyes. I'm not really into kids, and I'm definitely not into babies, but I like Sabrina. I suspect I'll like her even more when she gets older.
"Yes. We went out a couple weeks ago and he's in some band with his coworkers. He plays drums." Sirona shrugs. "Seemed good to me."
"But does he know, or can he learn, Celestial Alchemy songs in one day?" Honey asks.
I catch Bronwen looking at me, and she quirks an eyebrow. I want to ask her why she's staring, but I don't want to interrupt the conversation.
"Morgan, do you think he knows any Celestial Alchemy?" she asks with a goading note in her voice.
Sometimes sisters are the worst.
"I mean, he has worn concert t-shirts to dinner a few times," I say. Against my will, my cheeks heat up as I talk about Zach. "I think he mentioned once that he's a fan." The last few words come out as a mumble. Which is embarrassing.
Amethyst doesn't look convinced, but Garnet is nodding her head and Sapphire claps her hands and says, "Perfect. We'll start with him. Morgan, can you get in touch with him right away?"
Shit. Why me?
Except of course me. He's silent and not very friendly with us, and I'm the only one who's spent time with him. Against my will.
Ugh. I managed to avoid him for an entire week—I even skipped family dinner at Mom's last Sunday, saying I was still hungover—and now I have to call him?
"Fine." I get up and pull my phone out as I'm walking outside. I need to give myself something to do while we talk.
He answers on the second ring. "Some kind of wedding planning emergency?"
"An emergency of sorts, but not about the wedding." Might as well dive right in. "Would you like to sub in as drummer for Celestial Alchemy tomorrow?"
I wait for his answer, but when he doesn't say anything, I add, "At their concert in Milwaukee."
Still silence. Stretching out so long I say, "Zach? You still there?"
He clears his throat. "Uh, yeah. I'm here. I'm just kind of stunned. Why me?"
I explain what happened and why we landed on him.
"I mean, uh, sure, I guess. I've never played anywhere bigger than the brewery so?—"
I cut him off. "Great! Sapphire will be so thrilled. I'll give her your number and she'll be in touch."
Before I have to listen to his deep, sexy voice caressing my damn ear anymore, I end the call.
Then I take a moment to compose myself before heading back inside. My palms are a little sweaty and my heart is thumping out a beat like he's drumming in there.
Now my weekend away is going to involve Zach. I know Sirona will invite him to hang out with us Sunday, sightseeing before we come back. And Bronwen will go along with it because she's got this ridiculous idea that I should be with him. And I will be stuck.
So much for a nice weekend escape.
ZACH
Holy shit.
I mean, seriously, holy shit.
How the hell did I end up in this situation? How is this my life?
It's Saturday morning, and normally I'd be putzing around at home, maybe reading, maybe doing work around my apartment. Instead, I'm riding shotgun in Morgan's bright yellow VW Bug, which is totally at odds with her personality, with my legs squashed into the footwell. I'm six-foot-two, and all leg. To say it's uncomfortable would be a massive understatement.
Of course, some of the discomfort is sharing a small space with Morgan. I'm not sure how it all happened, but for whatever reason, the group, consisting of Morgan, her sisters, Grant, and Evan, decided I was the one who should ride with Morgan, since Grant's truck only comfortably seats four.
I think Bronwen is trying to get me and Morgan together. And I hate how much that idea has appeal. How could I possibly be with a woman who's living such a huge lie?
Not that it does anything to dampen my attraction to her. However fleeting it was, I haven't been able to shake the memory of her kissing me. Or the memory of how much I wanted to kiss her back.
Now I'm stuck in this too-small car with her, entirely too aware of her nearness. All while trying to process that this is really happening. I'm really on my way to a huge Celestial Alchemy concert. Where I will be on stage playing with them.
I can only assume Morgan is the one who threw my name into the hat, since she's the one who called me. And I might be an asshole, but I'm not that big an asshole.
"Thank you, by the way," I say, breaking the heavy silence that's been hanging in the air since we left Owl Cove.
Her eyes cut to the side to look at me, then back to the road. "For what? "
"I assume it was you who suggested me."
She nods tightly. "Yep."
"So thank you. To say this is a dream come true wouldn't be quite accurate. Because I never even considered this a possibility to dream about."
She shrugs. "No problem."
That's probably as close to her accepting my thanks as she'll get.
More silence, at least five minutes of it. Finally I say, "Do you mind if I put on some music? Amethyst gave me the set list, so I made a playlist and I figure it wouldn't hurt to brush up my memory of them."
She waves her hand toward the stereo. "Go right ahead."
I use Bluetooth to connect to her car stereo, then put on the playlist. The eerie strains of "Don't Go Back Underground" fill the car and my foot automatically starts tapping against the footwell. The drums kick in, and almost of their own volition, my hands start to mimic the motions.
It feels like second nature, the way the music rolls through my body, down my arms, and into my hands. I've always loved music. My dad bought me my first drum set when I was five, and I've been playing ever since. I'm way too practical to have ever considered music as a career. Success like Celestial Alchemy has is the exception, not the rule. And I'm good, but I'm not superstar good.
Except for tonight, I will be. Just one night.
Excitement and something that feels almost like giddiness—light and effervescent—surges through me, and my hand hits the dashboard as I'm air drumming.
I stop, my cheeks going hot. "Sorry."
She glances over at me, her gaze as weighty as it is brief. "No problem," she says as she turns back to the highway. "You need to practice. My dashboard can take it."
So I go back to drumming, losing myself in the rhythm. I only hit her dash a few more times .
I've lost track of how many songs have played; even without drums, I'm working up a sweat, the back of my t-shirt sticking to me. Good thing I brought a fresh one for the concert. Which I'll end up removing at some point, like I always do.
My mind flashes back to a few weeks ago, when Morgan and her sisters were at my gig at the brewery. I shouldn't, but I like the idea that she was watching me with my shirt off. I'm not huge, but drumming keeps me in shape.
What did she think of my tattoos? All she'd seen before that were my arms, but my back and chest are covered in ink.
It may seem odd, but I find getting tattooed soothing. I have a high pain tolerance, and on occasion have actually fallen asleep during a tattoo. So when I'm getting way too stressed, I schedule another tattoo and it always unwinds me.
The track changes, and the first bars of "Naughty Girl Anthem" pour from the speakers.
"Naughty Girl Anthem" is from their latest album. And it's sexy as fuck. After finding out that Morgan often writes lyrics for the band, I looked it up, and sure enough, she co-wrote it with Sapphire. Now, in my head, the song is inextricably linked to Morgan.
And I'd be lying if I said I haven't, more than once, listened to the song while jerking off. So sex is intertwined with the song too. And Morgan. Because lately, she's all I can think of when pleasuring myself.
The sexy words roll over us, and the tension in the car ratchets up to nearly unbearable levels. I again remember how soft her lips were against mine, and how sweet, even in that brief kiss.
"Leather and lace, your hands roam," Sapphire sings. "In the echo of our screams, we find home."
I want to make Morgan scream as I find home with her. My skin is suddenly too small, too tight. My cock is not unaffected and I have to shift in my cramped seat to keep it from being obvious.
I hazard a glance at her. She's gripping the steering wheel so tightly, her knuckles are white. The lines of her face are tense. Nothing like the relaxed driver she was a few minutes—a few songs—ago.
An overwhelming urge to tell her to pull the car over so I can kiss her comes over me. My fingers dig into my thighs to keep myself from reaching for her. Even just to brush my fingers over her soft skin. Or I could reach over and loosen her grip on the wheel, let her know it's OK.
Except it's not OK. Because I still can't stand this woman.
I think.
The more time I spend with her, voluntary or not, the more she's growing on me. I almost... like her.
Which makes absolutely no sense. Her career, her family's fortune, are directly in opposition to what I believe. So how can I like her?
I understand being attracted to her. That's just physical. But liking her, as a person, even as I know she's lying to me and everyone else, makes no sense to me. It makes my temples throb.
I scrub my hands over my face, then shove them into my hair.
"Something wrong?" she asks.
"Starting to feel some nerves about tonight." It's not a lie. I am petrified of screwing up and making my favorite band look bad.
"Much as it pains me to admit, you were good that night we saw your band. What are you called again? The Splice Boys?"
That surprises a laugh out of me. "Nice."
She flashes me a sarcastic smile that makes my insides heat. "Thank you. "
"We're the BioRhythmics. And thank you. I'm glad you liked us."
"I wouldn't have suggested you if I didn't think you could handle it." Her eyebrows draw down into a frown, like she hadn't expected to say that.
"I appreciate that," I say sincerely, my ego inflating just a little that she liked my band.
"Anyway." She shakes her head. "You'll be adequate."
And my ego deflates again. "Just what I aspire to."
We lapse back into silence, and the song has changed to the band's first big hit, aptly named "Celestial Alchemy." It introduces the band as a trio of sisters who are witches. It's not my favorite of theirs, given that it talks about magic. But I practice the drumbeat anyway, since it's on the set list.
"Have you thought about what I said last weekend?" Morgan asks somewhere in the middle of the song.
I pause with my arms askew. "You said a lot of things last weekend." And she kissed me. Not that I'm dwelling on it.
"About magic. How it's really just science we haven't yet 'discovered'." She makes air quotes with her fingers as she says discovered .
"I have, in fact." Again, not a lie. If I wasn't thinking about her kissing me, or jerking off thinking about what could have happened if she hadn't been drunk when she kissed me, I was probably thinking about her assertion.
"And?" Her tone suggests my answer holds a lot of weight. Like it matters to her.
That's an uncomfortable thought and has me again shifting in my cramped seat. "And I still don't think magic is real. There are too many things you claim can happen that simply don't work with the laws of the universe. Ones that we know. That are discovered, proven fact."
"Like what?" There's challenge in her voice.
"Like..." Of course my brain goes completely blank. "Like... I don't know. I can't think of something right off the top of my head."
And then the obvious answer pops into my head. "Oh, of course. The fact that you can't talk to dead people."
There's a pause before Morgan says, "I agree, Maria. Very rude." She glances quickly at me. "Maria says that was just rude of you to say when she's sitting right here."
I close my eyes as I have another how is this my life? moment.
"What law does it violate?" There's challenge in Morgan's voice.
"It... Uh... OK, that one I don't actually know. But we all know ghosts aren't real."
"Spirits."
I roll my eyes. "Spirits. Dead people. Whatever. When you die you die and that's it!" My voice raises at the end, more forceful than I meant to get. “Nothing else makes sense.”
"Well, you're wrong. But whatever." She shrugs. "Maria says I don't have to prove anything to you, and she's right."
I don't have a comeback, so after a moment, I go back to my practice air drumming. But I don't get as lost in the music.
All I can think about is how can I be so desperately attracted to—and starting to like—someone who is either a conwoman or delusional?
The time passes as southern Wisconsin flies by. I check the clock and we're almost an hour into our three-hour drive. My arms are tired, so I've stopped drumming. It's better if I rest them for tonight.
The monotony of the passing scenery has me close to dosing off when Morgan's voice cuts into my thoughts.
"I have a proposition for you."