42 Witches v2.: chapter 1, Father's Day

“Your seventh child is going to kill you.” That’s how she opened conversation when we first met at the bar. She’d just ordered two shots of liquid courage and fought through both before calling the flirty bartender back and ordering a third. She slid the third drink in front of me as she let me know that I was going to die if I got busy.

“Okay,” I answered like an idiot. I should have said something smooth, or at least edited the past so I sounded smooth when I told the story.

Margaret tapped the tequila she’d slid in front of me to remind me that it had my back. I took a deep breath and then the shot. “Okay?” she asked. I could admit that ‘okay’ wasn’t an interesting answer but I hadn’t expected her to question it.

That’s where the story falls apart, because I finally got a good look at her and I distinctly remember thinking that she wasn’t the prettiest girl in the bar that night, but by now I know that she’s my definition of ten so I don’t know what I was thinking. That being said, she’d walked up to me and I needed a response. “Yeah, okay,” I said. I was knocking it out of the park.

“That all you got?” she asked.

“What do you want from me?” I shot back.

“Shock,” she answered, “maybe confusion.”

I was already pretty close to shock, but I wasn’t about to let confused take over, “So you’re magic?” I asked.

“What?” she did her best to sound offended.

“Don’t bother,” I waved off her false shock, “I know how it all works.” I’d been through this rodeo before with other witches. My Dad had magic blood and he’d passed it onto me. Magic blood didn’t mean that you had magic, it just meant that you had a pool of energy. She was hitting on me less as a nightstand and more as a gas station. I didn’t mind, it wasn’t like I was using the energy and I could use the break from the dry spell.

“Well that’s not as fun,” she said before trying to wave the bartender back over. The girl pretended to ignore the woman who’d bought three shots in the past minute.

“No. No it’s not,” I agreed, “but I was going to figure it out eventually.”

“Happens a lot?” she asked before continuing her quest to wave down the bartender.

“Most of the girls don’t open up by telling me that my kid is gonna kill me.”

“Figured it’d be a good way to get your attention.”

“You’re not wrong-“ I started.

“But I’m not quite right,” she finished my sentence for me. I spent most of my time cutting other people off instead of having them jump in. I hated it.

“I wasn’t going to say that,” I protested.

“I know how it goes,” Margaret argued.

“I wasn’t going to say that.”

“Yes, you were.”

“How would you know?” I snapped. Several people at the bar turned to look at the man who’d broken the rule of cool divebar silence.

“I’ve been listening to you other nights,” she pointed out.

“You’ve been stalking me?” I asked.

“Watching,” she offered as an alternative.

“Stalking is just professional watching,” I volleyed back.

“Well, I’m sure as hell not getting paid,” she said.

The banter continued for a while, with a handful of drinks to shake off the feeling that she was just using me for my blood. After way too short, the bartender cut back into the conversation with a bill in her hand.

“We’re closing,” she informed us. As it turned out, ‘After way too short,’ meant three hours later once the alcoholics had already decided to go home. Somehow Margaret and I managed to talk through the whole night, then have fun until morning. I missed work, she missed brunch with her mother, and I still didn’t get her fucking number.

I got the number three weeks later at a work party that she got brought to as a +1. Which brought us to the core of the argument that we replayed every year around Father’s Day. ‘Is our dating anniversary that night at the bar or the night I got her number?’

It was a dumb argument, it was obviously the bar which was why I always brought Margaret out on Father’s Day even though we could never have kids. She never said no to the dinners but-

“It’s not our anniversary,” she said to the cheque once she’d cracked it open to see the message and smileyface that our waitress had left beside the mints.”

“Melissa thinks it is,” I pointed out.

“You told her it was,” Margaret shut the cheque and slid the little black book across the table to me. It wasn’t like it mattered which credit card we used, but we both preferred when it was mine.

“Because it is.”

“We already talked about this.” Margaret sighed as I gasped at the bill.

“I thought the reviews said this place was reasonably priced,” I sneered.

“It is.”

“That’s not a reasonable number,” I shout-whispered across the table to keep a passing busboy from hearing. “Are cow’s suddenly endangered?” I asked.

“It’s fine,” Margaret said, “it’s not like it matters.” She was right, we didn’t have kids, there wasn’t a budget to worry about.

“Yes, it does,” I hissed anyway, “it’s the principle. I’m going to-“

“If everything ready?” Melissa asked after sneaking up on our table. She must’ve been happy because she was making a killing in tips after undoing an extra button on her blouse. Didn’t she know that was annoyingly taken?

“Perfect,” I lied, “credit if that’s okay.”

“I’ll get the machine,” Melissa chirped before bouncing away.

“Perfect?” Margaret asked.

“Well I’m not going to leave without paying,” I sighed before trying to get my wallet out of my back pocket without getting out of the chair.

“I thought you were going to complain,” Margaret commented. Last time she’d been this self-satisfied there’d been toys involved.

“To you,” I corrected, “you know how it is.”

“Mhmm.”

“You do it too.”

“Mhmm,” Margaret repeated as I managed to extract my wallet and visa out.

“Love you,” I added before Melissa got back with the machine.

“You said credit, right?” Melissa asked. Had she undone another button? Really? She- Margaret kicked me from under the table and I focused on the card reader.

“Visa.”

“A-okay!” Melissa turned the machine to me and I set about destroying my band account. Right after I’d agreed to the Blue Bicycle’s highway robbery, it asked me about a tip. I knew it was rude to do anything under 15%, but the meal had run us- “And happy anniversary!” Melissa continued.

20% it was.

Margaret scoffed at the waitress as she skipped toward the kitchen. She was much too happy to be stuck in a part time job like serving nobodies like me and Margaret. You couldn’t trust someone who was that pleased with themselves, they were probably hiding something. “You want to go?” Margaret asked.

“It’s early,” I pointed out.

“I just don’t wanna wait at the table,” Margaret explained before she eyed and killed the half-glass of wine in front of her.

“What should we do?” I asked as I folded the receipt from the meal and pretended like I was going to file with away somewhere.

“Don’t you have something planned?” she asked.

“What?”

“You don’t?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“I thought you were going to make a way bigger deal out of this anniversary thing,” she shrugged before leaning back in her chair. The black dress I’d forced her into matched the table cloth a little too well.

“I brought you here, didn’t I?”

“Yeah,” she nodded, “but you tend to have a plan.”

“I tend to have a plan?” I never thought Margaret was going to admit that.

“Only when you’re trying to piss me off,” she corrected, that was more in character for her.

“I just wanna have a nice anniversary dinner on the right day.”

“Then we should come back to this in-“ Margaret began, I pushed my chair away from the table and shot up.

“Let’s go. I thought you wanted to go,” I said as I held a hand out to help her out of her chair. She took it while rolling her eyes.

“Where’re we going?” she asked.

“Ice cream?” I improvised. I couldn’t have kids, but if I ever had a son I would have told him that ice cream was the secret to keeping everyone in life happy.

“That’s not fair,” Margaret sighed as she stood out and smoothed out her dress. I flashed her a smile and she matched it. Ice cream it was.

Margaret and I took down the stairs, out of the dimmed lighting and into the obnoxious noise of the city. The past eight years and really done a number on the downtown core, it used to be so cool to hang out down here, and now the only people were obnoxious drunks and teenagers pretending they fit in with them. I frowned at the ground and Margaret grabbed my hand.

“Where should we go?” I asked her, Margaret shot me that look.

“You work down here; you think I know?”

“You might,” I answered.

“I don’t,” she let go of my hand, “I know you’ve gotten icecream down here without me. Where’d you go?”

“I haven’t,” I answered. It was most of the truth, I’d gotten frozen yogurt but that didn’t count.

“Yes, you have,” she punched me in the arm, “don’t lie to me.”

“Ice cream isn’t Atkins.”

“You aren’t doing Atkins,” Margaret sneered.

“Yes, I am.”

“You just had a burger,” she snapped back at me, “that’s not Atkins.”

“That was a steak.”

“Lunch.”

“Right,” I frowned. I honestly knew atkins more as a buzzword than a diet. The ‘diet’ you were on seemed to be more important than actually following it in the office.

“You don’t need it,” Margaret said to break the silence. “You wanna look up the place?”

“Place?”

“Ice cream.”

“Right,” I nodded. I yanked Maragret out of the doorway we’d been blocking and pulled out my phone. I mistyped the password once before getting it open and jumping into the internet to find and answer. “Is frozen yogurt Atkins?” I asked.

“Why?” Margaret asked.

“No reason.”

“You had frozen yogurt down here?” she asked.

“I didn’t think it counted as ice cream.”

“It doesn’t,” Maragret said, “but it’s definitely not part of your-“ she trailed off for a moment as I was getting the answer for the ice cream, “dammit. Do I want frozen yogurt or ice cream?”

“I don’t know,” I said before wrapping a hand around her waist and pulling her close in as a group of younger guys pushed by. A drop of water landed on my phone.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“I don’t care,” I answered. How the hell was I supposed to trust reviews from people I didn’t even know?”

“You’re not listening to me,” she said.

“Uh-huh,” I answered. Margaret put a hand over my phone screen, and I cued back into life. “What’s up?”

“Do I want frozen yogurt or ice-“ Margaret was cut off by the light spitting of rain turning into a sizzling downpour. She shoved me back into the doorway of the Blue Bicycle to stay dry. “Fuck.”

“Wanna wait it out?” I suggested as a group on the other side of the street tried to pretend the rain wasn’t bothering them.

“No, let’s just go home,” Margaret sighed, “I think I have something in the freezer.”

“But-“ Margaret squeezed my arm, which was the universal sign for ‘I don’t want to get wet Graham.’ “Fine, I”ll call a car.”

“No,” Margaret moved her hand down from my arm and onto my hand before whispering something under her breath. I recognized the language without knowing the words, she was speaking arcane, the hidden language of witches and the one way to channel magic.

There were laws about magic and when you were ‘allowed’ to use it. Of course, the laws were just suggestions that Margaret tended to not give a damn about any of them. Sure, they were supposed to keep magic hidden to avoid getting burned at the stake, but at the same time, most people weren’t paying attention. Margaret finished whispering and we winked out of reality. I felt cold breath on my skin and then we were out of the rain and in a circle of runes that Margaret had drawn on our basement floor a week after we’d bought the house. Margaret peeled herself off of my arm and started for the stairs.