Open All Hours (Carnival Magic 2) (5 page)

* * *

Working behind the bar at Ground Up was a perfect activity to test her patience. While most of the clientele were carnies from the Show, some of them were non-local bikers who came in at all hours. She had to temper their surprise at seeing Chicken Kiev burgers, foie gras sliders, and semolina pancakes with fig compote. Vol definitely loved to exercise his culinary training by having a few outrageous items on the menus. Leesa and the other staff reassured the more timid clients that they had never had a bad meal here, but the chef could also turn out a mouth-watering bacon cheeseburger and crinkle fries for the less adventurous clientele. The steady flow of diners ensured that Leesa never was bored.

“Hey, I was wondering,” she asked Vol one afternoon. “Why you don’t advertise this place? You could be making money hand over fist.”

Vol looked up from scraping fond -- the crusty stuff that formed during cooking, Leesa now knew-- off the flat-top grill. “Think so?” When she nodded, he rubbed his chin, considering. “Maybe, but I’d need to hire more chefs, and they don’t come cheap. Not the good ones, anyway.”

“Just a thought.” Leesa had written her article for the paper regarding the cult, but she had no real concrete information in it, so it sat on the desktop of the borrowed laptop. The pictures she’d taken had automatically uploaded to the cloud feature, so she’d been able to review them. Even with the high-powered camera, they’d come out fuzzy and grainy, like shots a muckraking tabloid would publish. What kind of story was that? Sure she could say how she found their hideout in the woods, but she knew nothing about why the robed women were there or to what end. She left out the cat shifting completely. Unsure of how to present the exposé, she’d left the file alone for a day to marinate.

Vol’s phone rang in his pocket and the tune to
The Imperial March
, Darth Vader’s entrance music, filled the space behind the bar. A few diners clapped while Leesa groaned. “Still not better than
Star Trek
!” she announced.

“Keep dreamin’, darlin’,” he responded as he took the call with the phone pressed between one muscular shoulder and his chiseled chin. His joking manner turned serious within moments.

Not wanting to look -- or be -- too worried, Leesa tuned away from the man at the grill and busied herself with making coffee. The industrial-size coffee machine was enormous and required that she stand on a stepladder to change the Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee beans.
Stop running,
she said to herself.
What’s wrong with watching him on the phone?
It isn’t creepy. Okay, maybe it’s a little creepy. But this is your future. Face it.
Her hands trembled and she suddenly felt cold. The desire to lean against the counter next to the roaring hot grill to absorb its heat consumed her.

He came over to her and whispered low. “Arthur might have something. He wants me to come over to the carnival.”

“Great, I’ll come too.”

“No, you need to stay here.”

“Why? That’s not fair, this is --”

Vol yelled to the other short-order chef, who was just coming back from the walk-in pantry, interrupting the beginnings of her rant. “Tone, can you cover this?”

Tone waved a thin arm in dismissal. “Man, I can handle some damn hot dogs and pancakes and sausage while you gone. What’d you think I do when you upstairs snoring?”

“I don’t snore.” Vol’s voice held a note of hesitance.

Two Tone sucked his teeth until they made a smacking sound. “Umph. And I’m a cover girl. Man, go on.” He set down the jar of pickles and the tub of mustard, then turned to warm his hands over the grill.

Leesa grabbed Vol’s arm. The muscles underneath his firm skin were taut and the dusting of hair on his arm felt almost silky against it. “Why? This is important to me.”

He bent until they were face-to-face. “I know it is, but you’re out of your element now. You have very little control over your shift, and if the wrong person sees you, it’ll be big trouble.” Vol took a deep breath. “And I’m worried… I mean I’d be too worried about your safety. I couldn’t focus on getting the information we need.”

“Why are you so worried?” That was new for her; usually she was the one who worried about others and spent her dwindling free time helping her mother and sister out of predicaments -- usually financial ones. She felt humbled, cared for. “I’ll be fine with you.” Surprised at how much she believed that statement, Leesa agreed without further argument. She’d always been independent, to a fault some… like her ex and her mother -- would say. She started lining up water glasses and filling them for the wait staff to take out to the tables. “I thought you were concerned they would come back for me and I’d be safer with you.”

She knew she sounded peevish and whiny, but her hard-won control of her life, her body even, was gone and she burned with anger. Partially anger at the cult, and then at her boss for making her think she had to stoop to rummaging around in the woods in the dead of night for a story to keep her job. But mostly at herself. Leesa knew she could have left the paper. With her credentials, she could have started her own online magazine. For years, she had been gathering the know-how, planning the formats, and the distribution. She had enough contacts for the project to be successful, but it was just safer to collect a steady salary working for someone else. Now that steady income was threatened. Shame at her lack of initiative to follow her dream made her give in. “Okay, fine. We can talk about it when you get back.”

Vol nodded. “Don’t worry. If anything happens, Tone will handle it. He’s ex-Army.”

Leesa watched the wiry, thin man attack an onion as big as a baseball with a wicked-looking knife. Perfect rings fell away like fall leaves. With one smash of his hand, he forced whole potatoes through an ancient-looking slicer. Portioned fries thudded into a metal bowl with a sound like a head falling into a basket at the bottom of a guillotine. Looks could certainly be deceiving.

When she turned back, Vol had already taken his broad shoulders and oh-so- great to grab ass out the door. She heard his motorcycle start up, one he had pieced together from scrap parts, and peel out.
He could have walked,
she thought.
Wonder why he took the bike?
But a large table of diners came in asking for the drink special and Leesa busied herself with pouring.

After she’d served the run of Bloody Marys, Leesa’s attention drifted to what Vol might be doing. All she had to do was keep the coffee fresh and pour juice and iced tea for the wait staff. Occasionally someone would sit at the counter and order food, but Tone usually heard the order before she was able to write it down and stick the ticket in the window. Those diners were the ones in a hurry, who departed soon after eating their short stack of pancakes or Ground Up’s special hangover cure breakfast sandwich. Which, she had to admit, was taste bud staggeringly tasty. Grilled buttered bread filled with bacon, scrambled eggs, and house-made pesto, topped with your choice of cheese.

The grill hissed as Tone added sausage patties and corned beef hash. With Vol’s patient training, she could appreciate the abilities her cat side left her with even as a human. She was now able to distinguish the sounds of food made in the diner. Sausage popped and spat. French toast made an almost inaudible whoosh, followed by the metal on metal clink of a spatula. Eggs started with a sharp sizzle that ebbed away as they cooked. All of the sounds in the diner were comforting and while not usually cold natured before her change she was drawn to the warmth of the kitchen. One of the coffeepots was almost empty and she poured the remainder in a cup for herself, while she made a fresh batch. Leesa added two sugar cubes, a quaint nod to Vol’s culinary training and old-fashioned sensibilities, into the thick-walled white mug.

Straannggge,
she thought, picking up the tiny pitcher of cream and tipping it out over her coffee cup. The white liquid slid out of the pot like a stream of molasses. Leesa stared at it, the long line of cream finally touching its tip to the deep brown coffee, bringing it ever so slowly to a latte color. Moments later, the stream shortened and caught up with the rest of the cream. It was like a slow-motion camera shot used on TV to replay sports footage. Why was everything going so…

“Good morning, kitty.” The voice held wonder as well as amusement.

Leesa looked up from her coffee into eyes she would never forget as long as she lived. They were the eyes of the woman from the woods, the cult leader or whatever she was. Those eyes were a pale, dead blue like the skin of hypothermia victims as they bored into her and in turn, Leesa froze. Involuntarily, her hand closed around the coffee cup and the residual heat sank into her skin.

“I’m -- I’m not --”

The woman laughed and shook her head as if Leesa’s denial was as silly as a child’s riddle. Up close, she looked like one of those powerful, expensive women who remained chic and refined until the day they died: tall and slender with tight white skin that could only be achieved by surgery. “What you are, my dear is exactly that. Although I’m impressed you aren’t on all fours at the moment.”

The prickle under her skin rolled over her body. Under those cold eyes, heat fired in her system and the change was ready.
Run, hide! Save yourself
!

Leesa breathed in the cold ebbing off the woman to calm herself. Now was not the time to give in to it. Fiery pain pierced her and she struggled to contain the animal.
You’re safe, you’re safe. Later you can come out. Not now. Let me handle this
.

Leesa reached out to the ambient sounds around her and drew them close: the laughter and chatter of the diners, the metal on metal clinking of spatula on grill. The scuff, scuff of the servers’ shoes as they grabbed plates. The liquid hiss of the faucet the dishwasher used to rinse off uneaten food and the resulting click of stacked plates.
Safe. It’s okay
. The cat calmed and Leesa raised her gaze to the older woman, knowing and not caring that it was full of hate.

“What do you want?” Leesa forced the question out between clenched teeth.

“Impressive. Very impressive. You’re a strong woman.” The woman took a paper-wrapped straw from the holder and tore off the end. “That was a warning to stay away from us.”

“Who is ‘us’?”

“You don’t know? You were quite interested in watching us and getting pictures.”

“Cults need to be exposed.”

“Cult?” the woman laughed again and blew through the exposed end of the straw. The torn paper wrapper flew off and fluttered across the counter. It was an unusual gesture for someone who looked so old. “We are a movement, my dear. Though we are small, we will prevail. Men killed our kind once, but no longer.”

The word fell from Leesa’s lips. “Witch.”

“Wise woman,” the elder corrected.

“Then if you are so hot on strong women, then release me from this…curse. I get it. No more messy with witchy-poo.”

“Not so quickly, dear heart. I’ll make you a deal. If you’re able to reverse my spell on your own, then enjoy your freedom with my compliments.”

The noise in the diner receded to a dull hum. “And if I can’t?”

“Then you’d better get used to being a pet.” She stood to leave. “Although, black cats don’t fare too well out there. Bad luck, it seems.”

As she left, the rhythmic clicking of her heels was the only sound Leesa heard. As she passed through the door, time snapped back into place like a rubber band.

Instantly, sounds came back full blast, shocking her now sensitive ears.

“Ugh,” she groaned, clutching her ears. Her knees buckled and she sank to the floor.

“Hey, hey… what’s the issue?” Tone’s voice was right above her and he lifted her from the floor onto a stool from the customer side of the bar. “You look strange in the face.”

Where else would I look strange? “I -- I’m fine. I’m okay.”

The dual-pigmented man’s face was impassive, but somehow he was able to communicate his disbelief of her statement.
Don’t depend on anyone. Especially not a man. Only yourself
, her inner critic scolded her, even as she opened her mouth to speak. She silenced it quickly this time.
It’s magic. Witches and curses and spells. What can I depend on myself for
?

“She was here.” Leesa knew Vol had mentioned she was attacked in the woods to the thin man, but she didn’t know how much Tone knew. “The woman from the woods. She threatened me.” Her words came out forced as she pushed past her hesitance.

Tone nodded. His face showed no sign he thought she was weak or helpless. It said: I know that was hard. “Why didn’t I hear anything?” The question was directed to himself, but Leesa answered.

“Some kind of spell. Everything slowed down, went quiet, except her and me.”

“She gone now?”

Leesa nodded and dragged in a deep breath.

“You stay here.” He sniffed as if congested. “I’mma do a sweep, see what I can find. Five minutes, okay?”

“Okay.” How the hell had this become so complicated and crazy? A sweep? Good Lord. Her mother would be saying, “If you had only taken that kindergarten teacher job I had lined up for you, this wouldn’t have happened.”

He looked her over again, clinically -- assessing her wellness -- then took the tie from her hair. Her braids fell forward, gently beating against her cheeks until they finally stopped against her shoulders. Then he was gone.

One of the servers came up and ordered a vodka gimlet for a customer. “Bit early for the hard stuff, isn’t it?” Leesa curled her upper lip in a disdainful manner.

The bald woman shrugged. “Not really. It’s after eleven.”

Leesa made the drink and as she shook it vigorously, she saw a few of her braids swing away from her face in the reflective metal of the cocktail shaker. Trembling, she poured the drink into a glass and pushed it at the young woman. As she touched her cat ears, she drank the rest of the cocktail in one shot from a coffee mug.

Tone and Vol returned together a few minutes later. She’d heard the motorcycle pull up when she was mixing the drink, but she presumed they wanted to have a private conversation. Fine by her. As long as they could come up with a way to get this cat curse out of her. She wanted her life back.