Chapter 30 Jail Bird Conversations #2
"There's a vampire in Salem? You're shitting me," Cassidy exclaimed with wide eyes then looked around when they shushed her. She lowered her voice. "Okay, I want the full story on that next from you as payment," she pointed to Eloise.
Eloise hiked her thumb to Tilly. "Ask her. She's the one having sex with him."
Cassidy swung her shocked face and open mouth to Tilly who rolled her eyes. "Damn, girl! You're definitely not boring. Okay, best visit I've had yet." She sat back with a grin, arms crossed over her chest.
"Have you had any visitors?"
Her face fell and she glared. "Rude. Okay back to the cougar with bound magic? I didn't mean a literal cougar. The you know, older woman in your group."
"Crystal?" they both said in unison.
"Yeah, dating that guy like twenty years younger than her. I think. Kind of hard to tell how old she is. I mean, she looks like she stopped aging in her early fifties I guess but still with this odd youthfulness."
"Wait, you know about Crystal's magic being bound?"
"Well, yeah. You don't peek into the dark underbelly of magic without doing your homework about any witches within a certain mile radius." She said it like it was a known fact.
"Right," they said in unison again, both drawing out the word and nodding with narrowed eyes.
"Because you leave behind an imprint with dark magic. That other witches, depending on their strength and status, could pick up on."
They stared at her.
She stared back.
"Wow, you really know nothing. I should have gone for two magazines."
"What other magazine would you choose?" Eloise asked.
"Probably Poetry Magazine."
"Really?" Tilly asked disbelieving.
"I like poetry."
"Surprising," Eloise replied.
"See? This relationship is good," Cassidy's hand pointed between them. "We still surprise each other."
Tilly's eyes narrowed. "Yeah, your idea of surprise is framing us for murder and actually murdering some of us."
"No one died," she reminded them.
"You left a legacy of stealing women's husbands in Salem, pretending you were the great great granddaughter of The Lost Souls House, hexing that poor couple after seducing the husband."
Cassidy's face became thoughtful. "The Youngs? Okay, I might have been a witchy tramp and hexed some people, but I did not hex the Youngs because of some sordid affair. I hexed them because they wouldn't do anything about their car alarm going off at two in the morning every day for a month."
"Yeah, that is annoying. I'd probably hex them too," Eloise conceded.
"Alright, before we start empathizing with you," Tilly interrupted. "You get poetry magazine and we get our end of the bargain."
"And vampire sex diaries," she pointed to Tilly who sighed as she nodded.
"But seriously. You guys need a course in this before you go drinking your fruity tooty drinks and chanting weird shit in what I imagine are lowered your voices to make you seem serious.
""Actually pretty accurate," Eloise nodded.
"So what kinds of things are left behind in this dark magic imprint?
I'm imagining animal bones with snakes and the stars turning blood red and stormy weather. "
"Okay, no. I'm way better at this than you," Cassidy said with derision and Eloise dead-panned her as she crossed her arms. "But well the weather thing, yeah. Mine was black plants."
"Oh, the black willow," Tilly said snapping her finger.
Eloise leaned forward, a serious expression on her face. "What do you mean the weather thing? Storms specifically or like seasons changing?"
Cassidy moved her head in a thinking movement and replied, "Yeah, any weird weather thing. Changing seasons, seasons mashing up together, lots of wind, raindrops the size of dinner plates. Snow that isn't cold. I've heard of some weird shit."
A look of dawning covered both of their faces before they looked at each other and then back to Cassidy.
Then a look of dawning covered Cassidy's face. "Oh shit, you guys got dinner rain?"
"That could be poetic," Eloise pointed out. "But no. It's unseasonably cold. Came out of nowhere. Like late fall."
"Which started when Astra and her friends showed up in Salem," Tilly finished, her mind putting those puzzle pieces together.
"That explains the sweaters," she indicated Eloise's black and brown herringbone sweater and Tilly's navy sweater with a large green heart on it. "Oh shit! That means your goody-two-shoes are whoring around with dark magic!" Her excitement was palpable.
Tilly felt her belly tighten pleasantly as her brain felt a spark.
"That was a really weird way to say that, but," Eloise nodded, a look of working out a puzzle, "yeah. Yeah, I think that's what that means.""Well shoot you don't need dark magic then," she said.
"Why not? Wouldn't it be better to fight evil with evil?"
Cassidy's head fell forward a little as her eyebrows shot up and she made a high-pitched sound somewhere between a laugh and a soft scream of disbelief.
"The fuck? You think evil is stronger than good?
Damn, did you have either a complete princess, privileged childhood, or a complete narcissist as a parent? "
"Narcissist sister," Tilly reminded her. "Possibly mother too."
"Right. Sorry. That's rough."
The unexpected softness from the woman made Eloise make an Are you serious look before she reminded her, "You're a narcissist."
Cassidy rolled her eyes. "Yeah, that's easy to forget when you don't believe you are one."
"You don't believe you are one?" Tilly's disbelief filled her voice.
"Hello, narcissist. I'm the best, everyone else is merely here for my story."
"Yikes."
Eloise made a face.
"But seriously," Cassidy went on. "You can't possibly believe evil is more powerful.
Good builds things, grows things. It makes things more palatable and in some cases even beautiful.
Good brings together. Good creates. Evil," she waved her hand through the air with a shrug, "destroys.
It mutates and twists things. It divides and it disables.
Those seem powerful, sure until you realize that evil can only exist and survive because of the good to destroy.
Without some good thrown into the measure, evil would destroy, mutate, divide, and disable itself until there is nothing left. "
Tilly sat back with an open mouth and Eloise said, "Damn. That was poetic, evil Cassidy. So we fight them with what we've got."
A snort from Cassidy. "I wouldn't hex their hair colors. If you think that's a real gotcha" she made finger guns, "then you're so good that I'd put in the application for you to be sainted." She added, "Or to work at Hallmark."
They gave her a look and she sighed. "Listen, it pains me to say it, but you are more powerful together with pure magic that chooses you, than they are with their twisted and coerced magic. They're using dark magic because they know the trump card that you have."
"But how do we use that against them and win?"
Tilly's question was the same one rolling through Eloise's mind.
"Girl, I don't know. That's your job to figure out.
I," she pointed to herself, "chose the dark side.
That magic isn't my specialty. You," she gestured between the two women across from her, "are good.
Or whatever. Our greatest trick is to try and make you good people believe that bad is more powerful.
So, I've just lifted the curtain on the biggest lesson you can learn.
I think I deserve a bunch of peaches and so many magazines for this. "
"Mhmm. Alright, well thank you." They stood and a guard stepped forward to escort Cassidy out of the meeting room.
She turned her head to look at them behind her and said, "You better follow through on our deal."
"Peaches and our delightful company?"
"Delightful is an embellishment."
Eloise smiled big. "Sure."
"You think we're cool," Tilly sing-songed causing Cassidy to roll her eyes.
"See you around, C-money." Eloise gave her the peace sign and they left as Cassidy asked them if they would follow through, to which Eloise just called over her shoulder, "Guess you'll have to wait and see."