nancy werlocks diary s02e12 Read online

  Nancy Werlock’s Diary: Last Rites

  By

  Julie Ann Dawson

  Episode Twelve of the Nancy Werlock’s Diary Series

  Features Three Nancy Werlock Stories:

  Couples Counseling

  With only a few more days until Samhain, the last thing Nancy needs is to find Houston straddling a succubus.

  Interview With the Vampire

  Nobody wants to be stalked by a vampire…even if it is just an ambush-style job interview.

  Last Rites

  Nancy is unexpectedly confronted by the widow of the man who killed her mother.

  Bards and Sages Publishing

  Bellmawr, NJ

  www.bardsandsages.com

  © 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.

  Digital License

  This digital product is licensed for the enjoyment of the original purchaser. Please do not engage in file-sharing or illegal duplication. While we do not rely on DRM, we do employ DAP (Digital Arcane Protection). Illegal file sharing may result in gremlins or other mystical creatures overtaking your computer or ereader. Such infestations would be considered “acts of gods” and most likely not covered by your warranty. We thank you for your understanding and cooperation.

  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 Th
ree 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.”

  “So Max couldn’t be swayed?”

  “I offered him money. Told him he could just summon another succubus. But you know how men get when their pride is bruised.”

  “Yeah, which is why this entire thing is so bizarre. No offense, but in his mental state shouldn’t she be actively wanting to get back to him now that he is vulnerable. I don’t mean to encourage possession or anything, but for a succubus this seems like a no-brainer.”

  “Toranala is aspiring to something more.”

  “She’s hoping to evolve into a more powerful demon form?”

  “Honestly, Nancy, I’m thinking of retiring. I’m grooming her to take over the club.”

  “Retire? What are you going to do if you aren’t running the Hellsmouth?”

  “I have some…opportunities that have opened up.”

  “Maybe you can talk to this Max guy?” says Houston. I roll my eyes at him. “Seriously. A call from you would probably scare the crap out of him.”

  “You do have something of a…reputation,” says Toranala.

  “What is that supposed to mean? I ‘have a reputation’?”

  Vash interrupts for the save. “Well, you do have training as a counselor. I’m sure you’ve dealt with possessive ex-boyfriends and such before.”

  Toranala’s body spasms again against the summoning. Houston resumes concentrating his energies to shield her.

  “That little bastard is getting through my anchor? Give me his number.”

  Vash gives me Max’s phone number and I call him from my phone.

  “Max Tarken,” he says. He sounds like he just finished running a marathon, but that should be expected considering he has spent the last couple of hours trying to summon Toranala against her will.

  “Warlock Tarken,” I say in my ‘yes, I am pulling rank’ voice, “This is Rank Two Warlock Nancy Werlock of the Philadelphia Evocation Academy.”

  “Madame Warlock!” he exclaims. “I…I am honored.” I hear him fumbling with something. “This is an…unexpected surprise.” I hear the faint sound of a keyboard. “The Philadelphia Academy, you say? Still early in the day there on the east coast, yes?”

  “Brunch time around here. You know why I am calling, don’t you?”

  “Um…” I hear more furious typing at a keyboard. “I can’t imagine what a warlock of your stature would want with a humble practitioner like me.”

  “Just stop.” I say. “I’m assuming you have my WitchNet profile pulled up on your laptop by now to try to figure out who I am.”

  “Ah, yeah. Yeah I do. I have it…right here. This is about my succubus, isn’t it?”

  “As a matter of fact, it is.”

  “If she is causing you trouble, just send her home and I’ll deal with her.”

  �
��When you dismissed her she stopped being yours. And now she wants you to leave her alone.”

  “I didn’t exactly dismiss her. I told her we needed some time apart.”

  “You dumped a succubus for a Hooters girl, and now you’ve been dumped by the Hooters girl and you want the succubus back.”

  “You say it like that makes me sound shallow.”

  “Look, your confused and frustrated because of your break up. That is a perfectly normal, healthy response. What is neither normal nor healthy is trying to overcome that confusion by summoning Taranala and attempting to forcibly rekindle…whatever you think the two of you had. You are looking backwards instead of moving forward. That isn’t good for either of you.”

  “I just…I just miss her. I was stupid for dismissing her for Connie. I didn’t have to hide my powers around Tora. She was supportive of my career. And the sex—”

  “Yeah. Succubus. I get it.”

  “I was stupid. I didn’t realize how good I had it until it was gone. And now I wish everything was back the way it was.”

  “And do you think forcibly dragging her away from her friends and life is going to make everything okay?”

  “I…I don’t know.”

  “Let’s be honest. If this was just about an obedient sex servant to fawn over you, you could just summon another succubus. But if you genuinely care about Taranala, you have to consider her needs in this relationship, too.”

  “That would be a switch,” says Toranala. She leans forward and raises her voice so Max can hear her. “I went above and beyond for him, Nancy. I learned how to cook so I could make meals the way he liked them. Like those little homemade egg rolls with the chicken that he loved. I cleaned his apartment. I did his laundry. I took care of his dog. I read scripts with him so he could rehearse his lines.”

  “Tell her Rocky died last week,” says Max. “He got off his leash and ran into traffic.”

  “He wants me to let you know that Rocky passed on last week. It was an accident apparently.”

  Toranala’s eyes widen and glass over with tears. “Oh no! Poor Rocky. He was Max’s little buddy. He got him when he was a puppy. That bitch left him while he was mourning Rocky? I’ll kill her!” She stands up and almost knocks Houston over.