nancy werlocks diary s02e12
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Authors: julie ann dawson
Nancy Werlock’s Diary: Last Rites
By
Julie Ann Dawson
Episode Twelve of the Nancy Werlock’s Diary Series
Features Three
Nancy Werlock
Stories:
With only a few more days until Samhain, the last thing Nancy needs is to find Houston straddling a succubus.
Nobody wants to be stalked by a vampire…even if it is just an ambush-style job interview.
Nancy is unexpectedly confronted by the widow of the man who killed her mother.
Bards and Sages Publishing
Bellmawr, NJ
© 2015 Julie Ann Dawson. All rights reserved.
These stories are works of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living, dead, or undead is coincidental and vaguely disturbing.
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Couples Counseling
October 21st
Scott sits across from me at the kitchen table, staring into his coffee cup while shaking his head. “I just don’t think this is healthy, sis,” he finally says.
“It’s not like I’m going to the actual viewing,” I reply.
“What exactly do you expect to accomplish with this anyway? The guy got what was coming to him.”
“Don’t say that. Nobody
deserves
to die in a car accident. There is a difference between justice and vengeance. I wanted him to pay for what he did. I didn’t want him to die.”
“Neither did I, but maybe this is some sort of cosmic justice.”
“That isn’t how it works.”
“Nancy, there is nothing to be gained by visiting the grave. What are you going to do, perform a séance? Take a necromancer with you to speak to the dead?”
“I just can’t shake the feeling that I caused this, somehow.”
“You are a demonologist, sis. Not a psion. It isn’t like you took control of the guy’s mind and forced him to ram his car into a telephone pole. Didn’t they say they think it was a heart attack?”
“I know. I know.”
“
You know
but you are still beating yourself up over something you had zero to do with.”
The kitchen turns cold and Mom manifests near the sink. “You didn’t tell me Scott was coming over!” she says excitedly. “Did he bring copies of Laurie’s ultrasounds?”
I turn toward the sink. “No, he just stopped over to yell at me.”
Scott looks from me to the sink and back at me again. “Is…Mom here?” I nod. “Oh.” He waves towards the sink.
“Tell your brother after all this nonsense with Vivika is over, he needs to bring Megan by so I can see her.”
“Mom wants you to bring Megan over after Samhain. And copies of the ultrasounds.”
“Um, yeah. Um, sure.”
“Tell him I don’t want to hear ‘um, sure.’ I want to see my granddaughter.”
“We’ll totally schedule something after Samhain,” I say.
“Did...did you tell Mom what you are doing?”
“What are you doing, Nancy?” asks Mom.
“Why did you do that?” I say to my brother.
“Do what? I just asked you a question! I can’t talk to Mom directly! I can’t see her!”
“You are deflecting.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’ve always done that. You would get into trouble or something and you change the subject to me to avoid confrontation.”
“Nancy, stop arguing with your brother. This is why he doesn’t visit more often!”
“
Now
you’re taking his side?”
“I’m not taking sides! Hestia’s Hearth! How old are the two of you and you still sound like five-year-olds? And what is he talking about?”
“I was just…I was thinking about…I might go visit Williams’ grave after the funeral. Make peace with…this.”
“Nancy Clarice. I should have named you Atlas for all the weight you put on your own shoulders.”
“If it makes you feel better, Scott, Mom apparently agrees with you.”
The man who killed Mom in a drunk-driving accident died a couple of days ago in another accident. From what I understand, he had a heart attack and crashed into a pole. I had been so furious at him because the prosecutor had dropped all of the serious charges and he was basically going to walk with a slap on the wrist. I wanted him to pay and I was angry. But after hearing the news, I’ve been unable to shake this nagging feeling that there is something
wrong
about the circumstances of his death. I didn’t actually curse him nor do anything other than yell in my own home. But I still feel like he’s dead because of me.
“Honey, you need to stop beating yourself up over the accidents, both mine and his,” says Mom. “If it makes you feel better,
I’ll
go pay him a visit. If anyone should confront him, it should be me. And it would be cathartic for me to give him a piece of my mind anyway.”
“I doubt he’ll be there.”
“If you don’t think he’ll be there, then why are
you
going?”
“I…I don’t know.”
“I can’t hear Mom’s side of the conversation, but I’m just gonna agree with whatever she said.”
“My smart boy.” Mom blows a kiss at him.
I play-sneer at my brother. “Kiss up.”
Scott shrugs then gets up from the table. “I gotta get to the office. I got a conference call with Sales at 10.” He turns toward the sink and sighs. “I miss you, Mom.”
Mom’s hand reaches out and brushes his cheek. He shivers and turns to me. “I’ll get you copies of the ultrasounds.”
After Scott leaves, I promise Mom I won’t go to the graveyard…at least any time soon. I then head out to the shop. The shop still has the
Closed
sign in the window even though I had talked to Houston before I left the house. I go inside and find Houston in the storeroom straddling a succubus who is lying in the middle of a salt circle.
“This is
not
what it looks like, Boss,” he says.
The succubus waves cautiously at me and smiles. “It genuinely is
not
what it looks like. I wish it was.”
I step into the storeroom and close the door behind me. “Who’s is she? Why is she here? And why are…and why are you standing over top of her like that?”
“This is Toranala. She…works with Vash at the Hellsmouth. And I’m trying to block her energy signature to prevent her from being summoned by her crazy ex.”
“I thought Vash would have this fixed before you got here. My bad.”
“We kinda hoped to have this done before you got…yeah, I should have totally called you.”
The Hellsmouth is an interdimensional pocket domain inside the Philadelphia Evocation Academy. It was formed around a century ago when someone sneezed during a banishment ritual to get rid of a rogue balor. The balor was banished, but the ritual accidentally pulled a piece of one of the infernal planes into the material world. Now it serves as a nightclub for witches and assorted supernatural entities. Club manager Vash is a Jorōgumo, a type of spider-demon that traditionally seduces and then drinks the blood of men. But these days she just drains their wallets.
I made the mistake of taking Houston and Eric there once, as witches below Rank Three can’t even get into the Hellsmouth without an escort. They keep pestering me to take them back. Finding Houston straddling one of Vash’s employees in my storeroom isn’t helping their cause.
Toranala’s body convulses violently. Houston returns to concentrating on holding her in place. Houston has done an admirable job of setting up a circle of anchoring, but whoever is hell-bent on summoning Toranala is obviously stronger in demonology than my apprentice. I activate Third Eye and see a void of energy around the two of them, almost as if they were inanimate objects.
“What exactly are you doing again?”
“Psion trick I learned from Risha,” says Houston. Toranala stops spasming and he takes a deep breath. “Works like Iron Wall, only on a bigger scale. You temporarily seal off your energy and become invisible to scrying and stuff like that. But you have to actively focus on it. If I focus hard enough, I can also hide anything sharing my personal space.”
“Which is why you are straddled over her. Got it.” I grab a box of lead filings off the shelf and use them to reinforce Houston’s anchor. “Okay, that should give us enough time for one or both of you to actually explain this to me. So start at the beginning.”
Toranala sits up, careful not to accidentally break her anchoring circle. But sitting up puts her face about groin level with Houston. She sighs and bites her lip.
“Focus!” I clap my hands in front of me.
“Yeah, yeah. Sorry,” she says. “Max lives in L.A. He thinks he’s an actor but the only stuff he’s ever done are commercials. I mean commercials pay decent and all but it isn’t like he’s doing real acting, you know? I tried to get him into porn because it pays a lot better and he has an enormous—”
“Focus!”
“Sorry. Right. Anyway, he met this model chick a few years back and dismissed me. Well, she says she’s a model but she’s really a waitress at a Hooters and the only modeling gigs she’s done are some lingerie stuff but one of her images
did
get used for the cover of some erotic novel that was self-published but sold really well so there was that.”
“Sweet Hera. It’s like talking to an oversexed version of Anastasia,” I say.
“I wasn’t going to go there,” quips Houston. “But yeah.”
“Continue,” I wave at the succubus.
“Right. Okay, so when he dismissed me I had nowhere to go and you know there is a limited window of opportunity to find a new anchor and all before we get shipped back but I met this dwarf who sells specialty ales to a lot of the guild houses and he was telling me about this kick ass club in Philly so I called Vash and she gave me an interview and hired me as a waitress so I’ve been living there ever since. But Max and his scank broke up because she left him for some jock that plays in the minors for some baseball team and she thinks he’s gonna be her meal ticket when he gets called up to the majors. And now he wants me back.”
“There are a dozen demonologists at the guild. Why are you
here
instead of them dealing with this?”
“Everybody at the guild is going crazy because of the whole gremlin thing. The gremlins got out into the yard during that rainstorm and…well…they all have their hands full. You should have seen the Archmage running around with a net trying to catch the little buggers. And then Gatekeeper was flipping out because some of them were chewing on the iron bars but it isn’t like they can actually hurt the fence or anything and—”
“Why…are…you…here,” I say.
“I’m sorry! Vash said not to bother you and that she would call Max and pay him off but then he started trying to summon me and it is so hard to resist because he still has my old nipple ring as a focus so I panicked and came here but you weren’t here but your apprentice was and,” she rubs Houston’s shin. “He just jumped into action, like a superhero. Only without the tights.”
Toranala’s phone rings. She pulls it out of her purse and answers it. “What did he say?” she says into the phone. “But I don’t want to go back! He doesn’t care about me! He just wants to get back at that slut.”
Houston looks at me and shrugs. I just shake my head.
Toranala sets the phone between her ear and shoulder and folds her arms. “I don’t care if he says that he wants to start making porn now. He had his chance. I even had scripts and a director lined up!”
“Did I just hear a succubus turn down the opportunity to make porn videos?” I ask.
“It’s the principle now,” says Toranala with a firm nod. “Besides, I have a
career
. Vash has been training me for management.” She turns her attention back to the phone conversation. “Um, well, yeah. I sort of might be at Three Wishes?” Toranala hands her phone to me, “She wants to talk to you.”
“Lady Vash,” I say as I try not to laugh too loudly into the phone.
“Madame Nancy,” she says with a heavy sigh. “I do apologize for you getting dragged into this sordid mess. I told her not to bother you with this.”
“On the bright side, my apprentice has gotten some practice with anchor rituals.”
“Good that you can find the bright side to these sorts of things. Toranala is a bit on the high maintenance side, but she’s an excellent employee and I’m just trying to help the poor thing better herself.”