Chapter 4 #2
The Assjacket Diner was aggressively quaint, like your grandma’s tea party had a scandalous one-night stand with a Pinterest board and then got tag-teamed by every contestant in a glue gun battle at a fairy convention.
The tables were all heavy dark wood, smothered in pastel shabby chic-ish tablecloths that looked like they’d been sewn from the ghosts of discarded prom dresses.
Kitschy mismatched napkins perched beside floral teacups, daring you to drink your coffee with an extended pinkie or risk divine judgment from the Shabby Chic Council.
What I didn’t expect was for every head to turn when we walked in, like a magical version of Cheers, if Cheers had more shifters and fewer bar tabs.
“Is that her?” someone whispered.
“My petunias started singing this morning!”
“My cat spoke French!”
I tried to shrink behind Baz, which was difficult given that he was still shirtless and drawing his own attention. Pretty sure I was gonna have to fight a bitch tonight. They were looking at him like he was a tall drink of water and they had just stumbled out of the desert.
“Zelda!” A woman behind the counter waved. She had the look of someone who'd seen too much and decided to open a diner because of it. “Heard we had some excitement yesterday.”
“Dee Dee, meet Tansy. Tansy, Dee Dee owns this place with Wanda.”
Dee Dee looked me up and down, then nodded. “You’re the one who enchanted the Thompsons’ cow to moo in Morse code? Apparently, their secrets are pretty juicy.”
“I…what?”
“Your magic,” Zelda explained, guiding us to a booth, “has been pulling from the town's ley lines. Every spell you cast sends ripples. Most of them have been surprisingly helpful.”
“Most?”
“Well, the library basement may have developed a taste for blood, but we told it it was gaining weight and convinced it to switch to tomato juice.”
I put my head in my hands. “I'm a walking disaster.”
“You're a walking miracle,” Dee Dee corrected, setting down coffee without being asked. “This town's been stuck in the same patterns for much too long. You're shaking things up.”
That's when it happened.
When I reached for the sugar, my fingers brushed the tabletop jukebox, and suddenly the entire diner filled with music.
Of course it wasn’t normal music…
Every person in the room suddenly had their own personal soundtrack playing from the speakers, all at once, creating a cacophony of sound.
The businessman in the corner's theme was “Money for Nothing” mixed with what sounded like circus music. A teenager near the door was broadcasting “Teenage Dirtbag” at volumes that suggested his emotional state was exactly what you'd expect.
But the worst, or best, depending on your perspective, was when the music hit our table.
Baz's theme was “Sex and Candy” by Marcy Playground. Every note screamed barely contained want.
Mine was worse. It was literally the wedding march mixed with “Let's Get It On” and what I was pretty sure was the music from Psycho during the stabby, stabby shower scene.
Gary got elevator music, because of course he did.
And Zelda? Zelda got “Walking on Sunshine” so loud and cheerful that she covered her face with her hands.
“Turn it off!” She laughed. “This is absolutely mortifying!”
“I can't! I don't know how!”
The couple in the next booth—their themes were both different versions of “I Touch Myself”—made eye contact and immediately excused themselves, practically running for the door.
“Sounds like they're going to have a good time tonight. Alone, or together,” Gary observed.
Then the worst possible thing happened. A new song started playing, louder than all the others. “Let's Get Physical” began blaring as a man walked through the door, and his eyes locked directly onto our waitress.
She dropped an entire tray of dishes.
“Randy?” she squeaked.
“Martha,” he said, his voice rough with emotion. “I came as soon as I heard the music.”
“This is private!” Martha protested, but her own theme had shifted to something that would make romance novelists blush.
“Twenty years, Martha!” Randy declared, apparently deciding the entire diner needed to hear his confession. “Twenty years I've loved you!”
“I'm married!”
“To a man whose theme song is literally 'If I Only Had a Brain'!”
We all turned to look at the cook, whose music was indeed the Scarecrow's song from The Wizard of Oz.
“Harsh,” Baz murmured.
“But accurate,” Dee Dee added.
“This is incredible! Your magic isn't just revealing emotions, it's forcing honesty through musical expression,” Zelda said.
“Make it stop!” I begged.
But it was too late. The music had awakened something in the diner's patrons. People were confessing things left and right, driven by their suddenly audible emotional states.
“I stole your pie recipe!” one woman shouted to another.
“I know! But I stole yours first!” the other replied.
“I'm not really a vegetarian!” someone else announced. “I just wanted to seem interesting!”
“Nobody’s ever thought you were interesting!” someone replied.
A man stood up suddenly, his theme music shifting to “I Will Survive.” “I quit!” he announced to no one in particular. “I don't even work here, but I quit!”
“Gerald, you're retired,” his wife, presumably, reminded him.
“Then I quit retirement!”
Baz leaned closer to me, and his music got louder, something about the way it thrummed making my skin feel too tight. “You need to calm down.”
“And how exactly do I do that?!” I whisper screamed at him.
“Think of something boring.”
“Easier said than done. Plus, you’re still shirtless. Which is distracting, and definitely not boring.”
His music shifted to something smugly satisfied. The butterflies (had they followed us here?) formed suggestive shapes again.
“Oh, for the love of…” Zelda stood up and clapped her hands once.
The music cut off instantly.
Everyone in the diner stood frozen for a moment, processing what had just happened. Then, as one, they all turned to stare at me.
“That,” said Dee Dee slowly, and I braced myself for a scathing rebuke, “was the most honest this town’s been in a century.”
Martha, the waitress, was still staring at Randy. “Twenty years?”
“Twenty-three, actually,” he said sheepishly.
Her husband, the cook, poked his head out from the kitchen. His expression was resigned. “I know, honey. In my mind, your theme song has been 'Torn Between Two Lovers' since our wedding day.”
“You knew?”
“Everyone knew.”
“Then why?”
“Because you chose me, and I love you anyway. Even if you love him too. I know you’d never cheat on me. I trust you completely.”
The diner went dead silent.
Then someone started a slow clap. Then another person joined in, and another. Soon, the entire diner was applauding the cook's emotional maturity.
“This town is so weird,” I muttered.
“This town is perfect,” Zelda corrected.
She turned to address the room. “As you've probably figured out, this is Tansy. She's the one causing all the magical disruptions.”
“And the gravy flood?”
“And the singing flowers?”
“And my truck growing feelings?”
“All me,” I admitted. “Sorry?”
“Don't apologize!” An older man stood up. “My truck and I have never been closer. We had a real heart-to-heart this morning.”
“Your truck talks?” Baz asked.
“More like communicated through honks and engine revs. Very emotional. We’re exploring alternate conflict resolution. Mostly with jumper cables.” I must have looked at him funny, because he got awfully defensive, “Don't judge our love!”
Zelda turned back to me, grinning. “See? You're not a disaster. You're a catalyst. This town needed shaking up, and you're doing it perfectly.”
“There's a dragon coming to kill everyone tonight.”
“We know,” Dee Dee said. “Zelda sent out the magical emergency alert. We're all preparing.”
“You're all insane.”
“Welcome to Assjacket,” everyone said in unison, which was creepy as hell.
* * *
A couple of hours later, back at the cabin, I lay in bed unable to sleep. Not surprising with everything going on, of course, but a girl can hope.
The house had finally fixed the door. Sort of.
It was more of a beaded curtain made of little glass skulls, but it somehow kept the wind out.
The last time I’d seen Baz, he was wearing a shirt.
I was a little disappointed, having grown used to the sight of him half-naked.
And, I had to admit that I quite liked it.
I must have dozed off eventually, because suddenly, I was somewhere else.
Not physically. This was deeper. The place behind dreams where curses liked to live.
The landscape was a twisted version of the cabin. With walls that breathed, floors that bled, and windows that showed bad memories instead of the outside world. And in the center of it all, sitting in a throne made of crystallized heartbreak, was the curse itself.
Of course, it looked like me. Or rather, like what I'd look like if I'd been carved from ice and bitterness. Its eyes were the gold-green of Illanya's dragon form.
“Finally,” it said, voice layered with echoes of every fight Illanya and I had ever had. “I was wondering when you'd visit.”
“I didn't mean to.”
“You never mean to do anything. That's half your problem.” It stood, and I realized it was taller than me, stretched thin, misshapen like a shadow at sunset. “You stumble through life leaving destruction in your wake, then act surprised when it follows you home.”
“That's not…” I stopped.
“True? Look around you.” It gestured to the windows. Each one showed a different memory. There were my apartments on fire, Illanya crying, me running away again and again. “You destroy everything you touch.”
“That's the curse talking.”
“I AM the curse, you idiot. And I'm trying to save you.”
That stopped me cold. “What?”
The curse sighed, sounding exactly like Illanya when she was disappointed in me. “Do you know what happens when you mate with him? Really mate?”
“The curse kills him?”