Benjamin Cantrell

"You were very mean to CJ," a woman's voice said behind me.

I turned around to see a brown-skinned woman, one meter seventy-five, sixty kilos, and sporting a wonderful red mane of hair. "Excuse me?"

"No excuse," she shook her head. "I felt her heart break two kilometers away."

"Then you should have gotten the hint that I don't want any...magicians around me."

"Suit yourself," she shrugged. "But you didn't need to take your anger at gaia out on CJ. It's rude."

She was insolent for her apparent age, I had to give her that. "Who are you?"

"My name is Grace Stone. My mom, you know her, Siobhan Stone nee Vanuana."

Siobahn was one of the other owners of the club. "Please leave me alone."

"You should give CJ another chance. Just sayin'."

Before I could retort, Grace had vanished with the sound of a rubber band snapping against skin.

Well, that's something.

***

Johan Birch showed up for lunch at the club the next afternoon. "Can we have a conversation?"

I sat down at his table. "I thought I made it clear last night that I didn't want any magicians around me."

"So you are going to double-down on the bad decision you made last night," Johan shook his head. "In any case, I'm not a magician. Petra is, that's why she's not here."

"Do I need to change my demand then?"

"You should," Johan nodded.

"Why?"

"Fully a quarter of your patrons are magicians in one way or another. They have friends, etcetera and so on. From a business point of view, that decision could cost you half your customers." He put up his hand. "I'm not trying to threaten you, our group will keep its distance and let you do your thing without bothering you. As a businessman to another businessman I just wanted you to know."

"Fine," I sighed. "Magician customers are just fine, but stay out of my personal life."

"Good enough. And you don't need to worry about CJ, she's in New Zealand for the foreseeable future."

Huh? "What?"

"Do you really want to know?" Johan raised an eyebrow.

"Sure, why not?"

"Chicago Jane has been keeping track of you for years. She tried to get away from you, but couldn't, hence her three failed marriages."

Oh.

"Since you basically told her to fuck off," he held up his hand again, "CJ has made a formal request of our clan."

"And?"

"She asked for what is called a stage-five forgetfulness spell to be cast on her. This spell is applied to the soul, and will even carry on through death. She wants to forget about you, forever."

"Uh, okay."

"You're pretty flippant with someone else's life. What if I told you that what happened to your wife was not only not gaia's fault, but beyond her ability to cure?"

"Huh? I thought gaia was supposed to be all-powerful, all-seeing and all-knowing."

"She's not," Johan shook his head. "CJ repeated to me what you told her, and I'm very sure that a wasting spell was cast on Louise. That kind of spell is dark magic, not something white magicians can normally see, certainly not something mortals can see."

"So you're telling me that there are people out there more powerful than your goddess?"

"Not in the way that you think. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that you are wrong. Very wrong. Now, it takes time and resources to cast the kind of forgetfulness spell Chicago wants, so everything will take about a week to get together. That gives you both time to reconsider your decisions, should you develop a soft spot in that hard fucking head of yours."

Wow.

Johan pulled a card out of his pocket. "A week, starting now."

I took the card and watched him walk away. Johan found his assistant and settled the bill with her. The way her face lit up, he must have given her a hell of a tip.

Juanita snapped me out of my thought-train by putting her hands on my shoulders. "We need the table, boss."

"Okay, I'll go up to my office." I got my bearings and shuffled upstairs. A moment later, there was a knock on my door. "Yeah?"

Juanita let herself in carrying two Screwdrivers. Mine would be heavy on the vodka and hers would have just a touch. "It's not like you to be speechless, boss."

"Yeah, Johan gave me a lot to think about," I admitted. I hoped that she wouldn't ask what or why.

"Drink up," she indicated my glass with hers.

It was good. "Nice and smooth. How much did you put in there?"

"Same amount, different manufacturer. It supposedly is imported from a family distillery in the middle of Russia."

"Supposedly," I chuckled.

"It tastes good, but I personally have an issue with the woman who brought it in," Juanita produced a card and held it out to me. "She gave me this card after our drink together. I politely told her that I would get back to her, but really wanted to tell her to get the fuck out of the place."

The name on the card was 'Alexandra Hitler.'

"What the fuck?"

"I know, right? It's not like someone would intentionally change their last name to Hitler or even keep it," Juanita observed. "But the vodka was smooth, and I thought I'd give you a taste, thinking that the name was a gimmick."

Something is wrong.

She went to take another drink from her glass. "Don't," I ordered.

"Okay."

"How many people have had this to drink?"

"Just you and me. I only have the one bottle as a sample. She brought it in yesterday afternoon and I was going to surprise you last night. Of course you brought in CJ and I was too amazed to mention it."

"Did you have any to drink last night?"

"Alexandra and I just shared a glass when she came in to promo it."

"What time?" I demanded.

"Fifteen, maybe fifteen-thirty," was her reply.

"Damnit." I only knew of one person to call about this, there were just too many coincidences. I dialed the number on Johan's card.

"This is Petra."

"Petra, this is Benjamin Cantrell. I need to speak to Johan."

"Not much for stretching things out, are you? Don't you have seven days or something?"

"Petra, please," I pleaded.

"I think I'm going to make you beg," Petra snapped.

Self control. "If you don't let me talk to Johan, one of my employees might die."

A shuffling sound. "Johan."

"Johan, I think someone just poisoned myself and one of my employees."

The receiver was covered, but I still heard him. "Turn the fucking car around!"

"Give me the skinny," he ordered.

"Yesterday, as you probably know, I took my ring off at thirteen hours. At fifteen hours, a woman shows up at my bar, bringing a bottle of supposedly Russian vodka. Her name was Alexandra Hitler."

"I was wondering if she was going to show up again," Johan grumbled. "You need to rescind your curse about letting magicians onto your property."

"Come on in?"

"Good enough. What did she look like?"

"Johan, I'm going to put you on speaker. Juanita please give Johan a description."

Juanita was in a state of shock. I was too, knowing that I had just been poisoned. "Tall, one meter eighty-five, maybe sixty-five kilos, quite a bit of that in her hips. Blonde hair cut in a bob, ice-blue eyes."

"That's her," Johan sighed. "We're here."

Sure enough, I saw Johan, Petra, and another woman with them on the surveillance camera monitor. I thumbed the intercom to the front door. "Geoff, they are my guests."

"Sir."

"Benjamin, what is going on?" Juanita half-demanded. The last few minutes probably hadn't made any sense to her.

"Wait till Johan gets up here. Hopefully it will make sense to me as well."

A minute later, there was a rapping at the door. I opened it up and Johan lumbered in, followed by Petra and the other woman. "This is Nora," Johan said.

Nora didn't immediately say anything. "Yes, Juanita has been hexed. Juanita, please listen. You've been infected with a kind of virus. We can help you, but it has to be right now."

"Okay. Is Benjamin okay?" Juanita asked

"Benjamin is fine," Nora said. "Johan, please call Aysun, tell her we need a capsule."

The next thing I knew, there was a woman in my office, a human-sized capsule appearing a moment later. Juanita fainted, and I wasn't feeling too stable myself. Johan helped the woman load Juanita into the capsule and then both capsule and woman vanished.

"How did you key to her?" Petra asked.

"Just hearing the name by itself wasn't enough, there was something else. Call it whatever you magicians call it, sixth sense, but I definitely felt something was off," I shrugged.

Petra and Johan shared a look, like I should have known what I was feeling. "Sixth sense," she said. "In case you were wondering, all magicians have that."

Huh?

"This woman, the woman Juanita described, I think I've seen her before." I called up the security video from the previous day and started going through it. Sure enough, at a quarter past fifteen, the blonde showed up.

"That's her," Johan said. "That's Alexandra."

"She hasn't aged a day," I whispered. "She came up to us at the track in Columbus, ran some laps with Louise. Soon after they finished they were doing their cool-downs and Louise came over to me and pulled me away. She never told me what had happened then. I know now."

"I wouldn't want to be too close with someone with the last name 'Hitler,' either," Petra observed. "To hear mom tell the stories..."

Johan pulled out his phone and dialed a number. "This is Johan Birch. I need to speak to Morena." A pause. "No, this is important, life and death important, so put her on the fucking line, Leigh!"

"Leigh Landreau," Petra filled in that blank for me.

"Morena! So glad you could take time out from your busy schedule! Have you seen your guest Miss Hitler recently? Oh, she promised to be good huh? Well, lead bracelets aren't working because she's killed one woman and hexed another with metastatic cancer. I'm taking the gloves off and sending Joshua after her. Fine."

Nora got a terrified look on her face. "Shit."

"Care to share?" I asked Johan.

"Go ahead, Johan," Petra nudged him in the side. "You did tell Benjamin to listen."

Oh this is going to take a while.

"Have a seat," I indicated the sofa and chairs. I thumbed the intercom and asked the nearest assistant to bring up two orders of my favorite appetizers and four glasses of the house wine and the naughty bottle of vodka.

Everything was delivered in minutes, the assistant, Ashley, asking where Juanita was at. I told her that Juanita was taking a sick day and that she was in charge for the evening. Her face fell, knowing that she was going to be missing out on Friday tips. I promised that I would make it up to her.

Ashley closed the door, and I was alone with three of them. "Who's Joshua?" I asked.

"Really? You're leading with that?" Nora asked in disbelief.

"Settle down, kitten," Johan commanded. I took a quick glance at Petra, and she had a little smirk on her face. Johan was involved with Nora! Not only that, Petra encouraged it! "Joshua is a Revenger," Johan answered.

"What does he look like?"

"He's two meters tall, one hundred ten kilos," Johan answered.

"Hangs with a bald, black guy, about the same size?" I asked.

"Yes."

"I was in Chinatown two years ago, looking for something specific. I had heard someone in my club mention that over a dozen Triad lieutenants had suddenly gone missing."

"Oh, that," Johan muttered.

"There was a bunch of racket, and I turned just in time to see those two chasing another two men. I only smelled the woman behind me before she knocked me out. I had thought it some crazy dream, but you just confirmed it."

"You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time," Johan nodded.

"So you just ordered the death of Alexandra Hitler."

"Yes."

"She's obviously some kind of supernatural being who tried to kill me and Juanita. So these Revengers, they are supernatural as well?"

"They hunt other supernatural beings who do wrong, as well as the occasional human who manages to escape justice," Johan replied.

"Example?"

"Tell him about Hillary," Nora prompted.

"Hillary Milano, is a good friend of mine," Johan began. "Her husband attacked her and did his best to maim her chest. There was a joke of a trial, and then he got released on a technicality. I asked a Revenger named Athena to give him Hillary's memory of the attack every six hours before it drove him crazy or he killed himself."

"Oh, my goddess," I muttered. "This obviously isn't common practice."

"No," Johan shook his head. "But there can't be stars without darkness."

"That's very hypocritical. You have a group of supernatural assassins who play judge, jury, and executioner. Well, you play judge."

"You're correct. Supernaturals police themselves."

"And selected humans," I added.

"The humans judge themselves. One of the Revengers' original mandates was to police humans as a whole. When civilization finally emerged and humans started making their own laws the Revengers hung on the fringes to 'catch the ones who got away.'"

"And how do they determine their guilt?" I was fascinated by this lesson.

Nora, who had been percolating at the edge of my vision, stood up. "Johan, why are you humoring this fool? CJ, by her own admission, said that she was sorry to have wasted our time, and here you are wasting more!"

"Nora!" Petra shouted.

Before I could blink, Nora was straddling me, a knee in my balls, hands on the sides of my head, claws digging in. "You didn't deserve her! All of the time she wasted on you and you stomped away like a little schoolboy! Feel what she felt!"

Inside my head a sadness I had only felt once before unfurled. It was CJ, crying, and crying and crying. Nora wasn't finished: "With just one kiss she gave you a great gift and you spat in her face!"

"Nora." Johan was behind her, gently tugging on her shoulders. "Let go."

She let go, and climbed off me. "You don't deserve her," she whispered. "You're an asshole."

Suddenly I felt like an asshole.

"We'd better go," Johan said. "Can I have those glasses and the bottle?"

"S-s-sure." A second later the cursed vodka bottle and the screwdriver glasses disappeared.

"This is goodbye for now," Johan said. "The number on the card won't send your call to me unless it's a supernatural emergency. The address on the back is the hospital where Juanita is being healed. I'm assured that she will be okay and ready in an hour. We had to drop a forgetfulness spell into her head."

"Yeah?" I eyed Nora warily.

"Forgetfulness spells come with a narrative: Juanita had some vodka from a possible vendor that made her sick and she rode to the hospital with you. Just take her home and the rest will set in. Okay?" I nodded. "Seven days. Tick-tock."

"Johan, what gift did CJ give me?" I asked.

He took a second in thought. "She made you immortal with a kiss. Goodbye."

The three of them left, then I realized I had a lot to think about, and I didn't know where to begin. Firstly, I looked at the card Johan had given me. The telephone number had changed, and there was now a hand-printed address on the back . How the hell had he done that? The last two days had shown me all kinds of supernatural crazy, stuff I had caught on the edges of my vision, but had not really understood until now.

Until I met CJ.

The one thing that didn't feel right was the seven-day limit that Johan had given me. It seemed arbitrary, like he had just picked it out of thin air. The forgetfulness spell on Juanita that he had told me made sense. It was probable, something short and sweet.

What didn't make sense was a forgetfulness spell that erased nine years of a person's life. How in the world could you write a narrative for that? It was magic, I supposed that anything was possible with magic. I had a feeling that he was trying to fuck with my head.

And who was Alexandra Hitler? Was that her real name? Juanita had described her as tall, blonde, big hips and blue eyes. Did she think she was some model for 'The Master Race?'

In any case, she had tried to kill Juanita. Even though that put her on my shit list, I didn't know what to do if she crossed my path. Was she trying to kill me too? Why did it seem to coincide with my taking off my wedding band? Had my vow to Louise been protecting me from Alexandra? I needed more information.

Juanita was at the hospital, and I had to go pick her up and take her home. I grabbed my keys and went for the door. Someone was on the other side of my office door, and that person was the man I had seen in Chinatown. Joshua.

"Hello, Benjamin. I'm Joshua, but you know that already."

"Are you here to kill me?" I asked.

He chuckled. "Benjamin, if I meant to eat you, you never would have seen it coming. I'm just going to hang around you for a little bit, okay? Just pretend I'm not even here."

Eat me. Important lesson there.

"Yeah, uh-huh."

***

I pulled up to the address that Johan had given me, and was amazed. I had been down this street dozens of times and had never seen the building before.

There was a tapping on my right arm. I turned and saw... "Marti?"

"Yep. It's called a dazzle, by the way."

"What's called a dazzle?" I asked.

"The spell that allows the guardian of this building to hide it from prying eyes. Since Johan gave you an invitation, an actual written invitation, you can pretty much come here anytime you want unless the invitation is revoked."

"That's what he meant," I mused. "I actually would have prevented magicians from entering my club?"

"Except me. I'm your guardian, so I don't have to follow that rule."

"Guardian?"

"Let's go get your manager," Marti gave my arm a tug.

Minutes later Juanita was in my car, apologizing for getting sick on the job. I had to promise her a dozen times that I wouldn't hold it against her. It was just some bad vodka, after all. She swore that she'd find that vendor and kick his ass.

His ass. A narrative in Juanita's head to make her think that Alexandra was a man.

After I dropped Juanita off at her house, Marti reappeared. "I'll bet you have some questions."

"I thought Johan was pissed at me, so why are you here?"

"Benjamin, I am a guardian. I was assigned to watch you by Kyle, not Johan."

"That doesn't make any sense," I admitted.

"Just think of the two of them as stepbrothers. Their differences will become apparent soon enough."

"Okay," I shrugged. "Can I give up my immortality?"

She wrinkled up her cute little nose. "Sure, but why would you want to?"

"I'll get back to you on that. Do I die if I'm beheaded?"

"Any major damage to your brain will cause your soul to eclipse," Marri answered. "No, damaging your brain intentionally will eclipse your soul as damaged. Suicides make their own hell at The Wall."

"Is that heaven?" I asked.

"Benjamin, let me tell you this: All souls go to The Wall. The soul makes their own heaven or hell. And..."

"Yes?" I prompted.

"Yes, Louise is there. I sense from you that she left in peace, so she is with family and friends. That is the way I have heard it works."

"'Heard that it works.' Obviously you haven't experienced it first-hand."

"Some souls possess the power to come back. It is brief, but they can converse with loved ones here on Earth and then they return to The Wall. I have only heard stories, so I cannot tell you for sure."

"That's fair," I admitted. "You say that suicides make their own hell. What happens if I'm trapped somehow?"

Marci sighed. "Please promise me that you won't do this just to go to Louise, that is something I am afraid you will do. Please just wait to see how your life works out, that you won't be a coward."

"Tell me why you are so afraid," I countered.

"Because I would hate myself if, as your guardian, I let you go like that. I am supposed to protect you from danger, not to protect you from yourself."