Who: James and Phanuel What: Stargazing and Drinking When: Today, Dusk Where: Searchlight
Say one thing for the Old Man. He knew how to paint a sunset.
The mix of ochre, blue and blazing red stretched across the desert sky, tendrils of cloud occasionally sliced through the horizon; and light from millions of miles away, from long dead stars, twinkled above.
Dancing in the near dark.
It made her want to dance. Which meant.
She kicked off her sandals, landing them under her lawn chair, just outside the double-wide. Phanuel plugged in the Christmas lights that adorned the awning that stretched out from the trailer. A portable cassette player, a working model from the early 1980s, perched on a wooden crate, came to life as she pressed play.
And as Van Morrison crooned, the Angel danced.
Well, it's a marvelous night for a moondance With the stars up above in your eyes A fantabulous night to make romance 'Neath the cover of October skies And all the leaves on the trees are falling To the sound of the breezes that blow And I'm trying to please to the calling Of your heart-strings that play soft and low And all the night's magic seems to whisper and hush And all the soft moonlight seems to shine in your blush
Surprisingly, the former Face of God found herself in not an unpleasant mood.
That called for a drink.
Maybe not called.
But it did tentatively knock and ask to be invited inside.
And who was Phanuel, but to oblige?
Sick as a dog. Green around the gills. Two steps from the grave. All of the expressions made sense and all seemed to apply to how James Hutchins was riding out this day. He rounded the trailer sloppy, careened off the side with a loud thunk, and put his hand out to right himself. The look was pure embarrassment and disbelief.
”Your, uh… your house bumped into me,” he said. His hand went up in greeting.
James, in an old Judas Priest t-shirt and jeans, seemed to have made an attempt to clean himself up. He was freshly showered, hair combed back and wet, but he hadn’t shaved and the whole effort of it all — standing — seemed to have taken a lot out of him. He took a load off in the nearest chair and took in the look of things. Christmas lights in July, naturally.
“You look like shit, Hutchins.” Phanuel was nothing if not observant. And vocal. She brushed back a tuft of hair that had fallen into her eyes. While she hadn’t expected to see him stumble across her yard, he wasn’t unwelcome. She could count on both hands the number of people that would be accepted without announcing themselves first.
The blonde checked that her bandages were still wrapped tightly under her flowing garment. She didn’t want to accidentally flash her wings. Confident that everything was in its place, she took a seat opposite. She reached underneath the lawn chair and pulled up a bottle of half-empty tequila. She blew off the sand before she unscrewed the cap, and held the bottle toward the visitor.
“When the dog bites, you snap back,” she continued. “No, that’s not right. Hair of the dog that bit you. That’s what you humans like to say.”
“Not that kind of hangover.” Still, he gave the bottle a long look. Figured it couldn’t hurt.
James tipped his head back on three gulps of tequila and for the brief period of time when it burned his mouth and throat, it was a relief to feel regular rough and not the other kind. He set the bottle midway across the distance, wiped his mouth on his forearm. “I can’t remember the last time I drank tequila straight from the bottle. You need an intervention?” James looked the angel up and down, taking in the bare feet, the Van Morrison situation. “I’m not gonna stay for it, but…”
“I don’t get many visitors. I don’t get any visitors. Like I should break out the fancy gas station tumblers for you?” Particles of sand fell away as Phanuel pulled up her left leg and placed her foot in her lap, then repeated the process with the right.
“What drags you to my shithole tonight?”
“A second opinion.” James leaned back in a chair that settled unevenly in the loose Nevada soil. If it tipped over, the spellcaster predicted, he’d just go with it. He wouldn’t even try. “Ahhhh---I don’t want to say too much,” he sighed, rubbing the backs of his eyelids. “I need a clean read and you’re the only one I know who can do it. I need to know if anything’s,” he reached up and waved his hand around his general vicinity, “Hitchhiking.”
Gods, it killed him to ask anybody to double-check his work, but Phanuel? An angel? That wasn’t even his pantheon. It was precarious, but James went into his pocket and fished around, turning up a piece of white bone. He tossed the phalange Phanuel’s way. “Oh, I meant to give you this. From your friend William.”
The rumors around Shakespeare’s resting place were the stuff of legend. It was said that the author was so terrified of grave-robbers that he cursed it himself with an epitaph on his marker: ‘The Good friend for Jesus sake forbeare, To dig the dust enclosed here. Blessed be the man that spares these stones, And cursed be he that moves my bones.’
Phanuel picked up the bone, pressed it between her hands. “You’re fucking mad. You’re a fucking, mad dog, Hutchins. What game are you playing at?” That was her whole Doctoral Thesis on humanity, summed up perfectly. Fuck the consequences. “You made the proper wards first, yes? Unless you like syphilis.”
She sat back in her chair, and exhaled. “You probably meant well.” The Angel made a note to return the phalange to its proper resting space. Which she would’ve done in that moment, until she noticed the blood dripping down Hutchins’ nose.
“What magic did you call down?”
The spellcaster felt the trickle and sat up abruptly, knuckling it away. “Conjuring spell,” he said. The blood was dark under his inspection in the waning sunlight, nearly black in comparison to the skin of his hand. His face was inscrutable. “I needed to put somebody right. Broken bones.”
James didn’t have a tissue, so he leaned forward and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I syphoned off what I needed from myself, but I needed a go-between to make the connection. You know the deal.” He shook his head. The weight of wet curls landed on his forehead. “They don’t answer the phone for herbs and a scented candle. And then it’s… who’s pulling your strings? The demon you called, or the sad fuck whose blood you used for fingerpaint.”
“So you thought,” the Angel paused, leaning forward to take the tequila bottle from her visitor. She made no attempt to find him a cloth to stem the flow of blood. “So you thought, ‘I’m doing a good thing for someone, so a little blood magic wouldn’t hurt’. There’s always a price, Hutchins.”
She took a swig from the bottle, wiping the few drops that escaped onto her chin. “This is why you need a reading. To see if something, or someone, came along for the ride.”
James gave her an annoyed look over his bleeding nose. “I mean, I knew it would hurt. C’mon.”
It didn’t bear explaining to the angel that some things were worth the cost, like making good on a promise, or building trust with people who didn’t look like they ever had it. Or making up for the fact that he gave Celeste an occult road map when she didn’t know how to drive the car. He hadn’t even charged her for it. And all of that dodged the larger point in his behavior pattern. He might as well put it in the air before Phanuel did.
“Get it out of your system. I’m a cocky piece of human... fill in the blank. But I need to know if this is a hangover and I need to give it a few days to get out of my system or if something’s tailing me.” James sat up and sniffed.
Phanuel’s face held stern. Lecturing him wasn’t going to solve his problem. Which was a shame, because she had three immediately come to mind. “Sit very still. This is gonna hurt.”
She stood then, and placed the tequila back on the ground. She walked over to him, licked her right thumb and pressed it to the middle of his forehead.
The immediate feedback loop pushed her back onto the balls of her feet.
James pictured a spark, his chair flying back, a spray of loose rocks and sand as the ground erupted beneath him. Arms and legs floated in the disrupted atmosphere. But none of it happened. He froze; even the drop of blood stood still, arrested in its escape from right nostril to upper lip. In all the time he’d known Phanuel, he’d never acknowledged the angel’s place in the hierarchy of Christianity, never borrowed from it, never dug past the surface. But this was like the angry finger of God jamming into his skull.
When it was over he stood and staggered a few paces back. “What the fuck was that?”
“An answer,” Phanuel retorted. “Good news, it’s not a hangover. Bad news. You’ve got a very hungry hitchhiker licking at your lifeforce. Fucking blood magic.”
That was good news?
“Nice visual.” James touched his head. It still felt cold. “Is it more like a parasite or a shadow?” The specifics would determine the best course of action, and he would prefer to get the ball rolling before anybody else figured it out. Nothing could be more damaging to a spellcaster’s reputation and safety among humans and spirits, alike, than exposing a weakness.
James looked at the tattoos on his forearms, designs meant to prevent this kind of consequence, but magic wasn’t foolproof, and he couldn’t work spells through an impenetrable barrier. A bad thought crept up from his subconscious: what if the hitchhiker had gotten a good look at Celeste? No. There was no use borrowing worry.
“Shadow,” she confirmed. Phanuel settled back into her chair. More stars appeared in the quickly darkening sky. Now that she concentrated, the shadow came into focus. Like wisps of smoke, encircling her visitor.
She looked down at her hand. A tiny, vortex swirled on her thumb, from where she’d touched Hutchins. It sensed her energy, another meal to slowly consume. Her voice shifted tonally. ”I’m not your dinner.” Phanuel pursed her lips and expelled a short breath onto her hand. The smoke cringed, and wisely retreated back to its original host.
The Angel’s voice returned to its natural timber as she addressed her visitor. “Hungry fucker. Surprised you’re standing.”
“Sheer force of will,” he confirmed with a wry smile. “It’ll pass.” James leaned over, wiped his hands on the thighs of his jeans. He started making mental calculations of the materials he’d need to pry the shadow off himself. The ritual would require another witch for the big finish. “This means I have to get Sam involved. You know how much Reiki I’m going to have to sit through for this?”
Somehow welcoming his old man home with an opportunity for self-righteous tongue-clicking was a worse punishment than his shadow-friend. Maybe he would keep it. James lumbered over and gulped another mouthful of liquor from Phanuel’s bottle. “What were you doing out here?” He pointed around. “Before I rolled in?”
It was a little known fact that angels could blush. If this night was recounted in the future, Phanuel would blame the tequila. But the truth was, he’d caught her in a rare moment of peace and calm. “Enjoying the sunset,” she offered, intentionally leaving out the part where he caught her dancing.
“I’d paint it on canvas, if I had the talent for it. Photographs are so neutral. They capture the image as is, and not the feelings it evokes.” She remembered the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence and the man who resided there. A trip to the Museum of Modern Art would be required in the near future, if only to view the painting again.
“There’s a hunter in town who can do that for you. I fixed her carburetor last week.” James went back to his chair. “Any particular reason for the,” he twirled his finger. “I didn’t interrupt the start of dance ministry, did I?” He looked over his shoulder at the darkened driveway beyond.
Dance ministry. The idea made Phanuel chuckle. There were worse religions. “No proselytising here. And not the beginnings of another dancing sickness either.” She waited for his reaction. “Strasbourg, fifteen eighteen. And I don’t care what any historian thinks, Saint Vitus had nothing to do with it.”
“Leave me her number or whatever…” she waved a hand, “social media you all trade in these days.” She reached out for the bottle. The buzz was wearing off. “I might look her up.”
James pictured Rhiannon’s reaction to him giving her phone number to—
Anybody.
“Nah, I heard mass hysteria, but it had to be a warlock with a wicked sense of humor.” James chuckled. If you had to catch a plague, there were worse kinds to get. He scratched the back of his neck and stood up. “I hate to ask for help and go, but I might have to cut it short. I’m a little uneasy knowing we’ve got a third wheel.”
“Don’t stick around on my account.” Despite her delivery, she smiled ever so slightly.
The last of the evening sun passed beyond the horizon. A warm breeze kicked up and fluttered her Christmas lights. She thought of adding wind chimes to the double-wide. Phanuel remained seated. “It was good to see you, Hutchins. Try to take better care of the blood magic in future.”
“Yeah, anytime you want in, give me a call. Thanks for the tequila.” James waved and started back to his end of the neighborhood.
Bottle now in hand, Phanuel took one more sip before putting the cap back on. With the absence of a dialogue, the music from her portable player came into focus.
And we'll send you glad tidings from New York Open up your eyes so you may see Ask you not to read between the lines Hope that you will come in right on time And they'll talk to you while you're in trances And you'll visualize not taking any chances But meet them halfway with love, peace and persuasion And expect them to rise for the occasion Don't it gratify when you see it materialize Right in front of your eyes That surprise