The Magic Within Ch. 01

Hello, Dear Reader! Long-time lurker, getting my feet wet. Please bear with me, this is a slow build story in the genre of urban fantasy. The magic and fantasy part doesn't come right away, but it will, I promise! I wanted to try and write a story that was slow and somewhat dark, but very heavy on mood and sensations. I'd appreciate feedback/comments.

***

I first noticed him in October, when I was fumbling in my purse for my keys. It had been raining, and my hair was wet from the walk from my car to the awning of the apartment building. The window at the end of the hall was dark and lashed with droplets—it looked like tonight was gearing up to be a bad one. All I could think about was a hot shower and eating some of that leftover chili from dinner with Angela the night before. I really should have been thinking about unpacking—I had moved in two months ago, and most of my possessions were still in boxes. But I just hadn't found the energy to sort through my belongings. This weekend, I thought determinedly. I'll unpack everything this weekend. Su-u-ure.

My cold, wet fingers closed around the house keys and I pulled them out, jamming them into the lock, only to find that it would not turn. "Damn it," I muttered, jiggling the key. It was really stuck. I heard the sound of heavy boots and looked up. It was my neighbor, a mountain of a man, at least six foot four inches if that. Dressed in jeans and a leather jacket spotted with rain, he looked perhaps more wet than me.

I met his curious gaze, and then, embarrassed, looked back down at my traitorous key. I heard his door ease open and lifted my head to find him looking at me again. When our eyes locked, he pressed his lips into a thin, acknowledging line and flicked his eyebrows up. A universal gesture of a non-committal smile. Then he was gone, the door clicking shut.

My shoulders loosened. I sighed quietly, staring down in annoyance at the door knob. Giving it one last try, I re-inserted my key and turned it. With a soft pop, the door opened. For a minute I stared stupidly at it, uncomprehending. Coming to with a little shake, I pushed my way into the apartment, turning on lights and throwing my bag onto the couch. As I pulled the container of chili out of the fridge, my stomach let out a loud grumble. Chuckling, I grabbed the orange juice and drank a glass while I waited for my food to heat. I flicked the TV on so there would be background noise, and wandered into the bedroom.

The sofa, TV, and bed were about the only things unpacked. My dishes were still in boxes, and half my clothes had been hung in the closet. I quickly changed into my pajamas and washed the makeup off my face. By the time I was done, the chili was ready and waiting.

I won't lie, it was kind of lonely here. I had moved from my best friend's house to an apartment an hour away, to be closer to work. But tonight I began to wish I hadn't struck out on my own. I missed Angela and her little Scottish terrier. They had been lifesavers for me after my break up. But Angela had just gotten engaged to her long-time boyfriend, and I couldn't stay and be a third wheel. But did you really have to move so far away? A tiny voice complained. You don't know anyone in this city, and this apartment is on the edge of town. It was the only one I could afford, though. I figured I'd move after a year or two, depending on how awful management was. Sure, the hallways had stained carpeting and wallpaper, and yeah the paint job in my bathroom was kind of patchy, but the bathtub was clean, and I had my own deck with a tiny table and chair. It would do until I could afford something better.

Stomach sated, I channel-surfed for a bit before deciding on a whim to move my bookshelf by the window and unpack some books. It was kind of nice to do something instead of sit and stare at the TV. It kept my mind off things—like my own breakup, which still felt raw even though it had been two months ago. Matt cheating on me was why I had moved in with Angela in the first place. Even now, remembering his offending text messages still brought back intense emotions.

You're a sucker for misery, Cara, I thought to myself sternly. I supposed it was somehow true. Why else would I be in a crappy apartment by myself, away from family and friends, a year later? The thought of dating made me feel vaguely sick. I wasn't sure I wanted the emotional attachment yet, and until I made up my mind, it was just going to be me and a stack of romance novels.

Later that night, after I had cleaned up in the kitchen, showered, and was snuggling into my pillows, the shadows from the trees outside gliding along my stark bedroom walls, I thought about the neighbor. Or rather, I thought about his eyes. They were not unusual eyes—but they were very dark. Bottomless. The kind of eyes that seemed to swallow you whole. I feel asleep to the image of them, sleep claiming me as swiftly as the rain that whipped past my window.

Two weeks went by without any sign of the man next door. Then, one Saturday afternoon as I returned from my jog, he was there, exiting the gym across the street. I didn't expect to see him, and only barely managed to avert my gaze as he turned his head in my direction. I registered that my heart rate picked up just a bit, which was a feat since I had just run three miles and was pretty wiped out. Wow, he was tall.

I feigned nonchalance as I fell into step a few yards behind him, making sure to keep a bit of a distance. I watched as he adjusted his earbuds, his pace leisurely, unhurried. He reached the door and held it open for me, giving me the now familiar eyebrow flick that was his version of a smile. I gave a small smile in return and entered, heading to the bank of mailboxes in the back corner.

"Excuse me," the man murmured, sliding behind me. My heart jumped into my throat at the sudden proximity of his body to mine. I could feel the warmth radiating from him as he moved to stand to my right. He had spoken with a trace of what I thought was an accent, it was hard to tell. It sounded German, or Russian. You've never been with a German or a Russian, my mind observed lazily. An image of me in bed with him flickered through my brain. In my fantasy, I saw his hand span the length of my thigh, catching on the bed sheets as it moved up to cradle my hip. There was a jolt of electricity through my mind that caught me off guard as the memory...no, not memory, fantasy, seemed to solidify. I could almost feel the warmth of those fingers on my cool skin.

Up close, he was much bigger than I had first observed. Big everywhere, but not disgustingly so, since he was so tall. Not like Erik Gothward, my first boyfriend. He had been all arms and legs, a graceful giraffe. This man was thick and solid. I felt a blossom of warmth drop from my belly to a place much lower. The man riffled through his letters beside me, oblivious. Desperate to break away, I strode to the elevator, taking deep, even breaths, feeling lightheaded and knowing it wasn't from my run. Those romance novels just weren't cutting it anymore.

The elevator was ancient and on the verge of collapse. It rumbled and groaned its way down to the lobby, reluctantly opening its scratched aluminum doors for admittance. Unfortunately, because it had taken so long to arrive, the man got on with me.

It was the longest ten seconds of my entire life. When the doors finally opened on a ding, I let out a silent breath. He was waiting for me to exit first, so I did, flicking him the briefest of smiles in thanks.

"Miss?" His voice said, close behind me.

I was almost to my door and turned. He held my key fob, which had fallen out of my back pocket. I blushed and took it, mumbling something unintelligible because I didn't want to stare into his bottomless eyes too long. I could feel him standing there watching me as I unlocked the door to my apartment and stepped inside. There was something dark about him, and it wasn't just his hair or the fact that he looked like he should be in a movie about marauding Vikings.

The distance from the front door to the shower was short, giving me a few moments to turn those thoughts in my head as I walked. The shower sputtered reluctantly to life and I drew the curtain closed to let it warm up, making a note to buy more shampoo that weekend. It took forever for the cold water to give way to heat, and I stepped in as soon as I felt the temperature shift, impatient, letting the warmth cascade in delightful ribbons down my flesh.

In my mind's eye, I was showering in his apartment, and he was opening the door to the bathroom. He would give me that sexy eyebrow arch, his dark eyes traveling the length of my naked body—my slicked back hair, flushed cheeks, soap-tipped breasts, the dark thatch of hair at the apex of my thighs—before coming back to rest on my face. I imagined my fingers running through his hair, water coursing down the planes of his back as we kissed...

The hot water was waning. Already? I opened my eyes, droplets dotting my lashes, and groaned in frustration. I supposed it didn't really matter. Masturbation in the shower had never been something I could do successfully. Turning the water off, I toweled myself dry and finished in my bed, under the covers, my fingers rubbing furiously, bringing me to a rending, roiling fever-pitch of pent-up sexual energy. I gasped in pleasure at the apex of my orgasm, his face fluttering before my eyes. I felt perverted, but strangely triumphant, like I had somehow managed to steal a part of him for myself.

I stayed in bed for a little while after, enjoying the quiet, listening to my breath slow. My mind turned back to Matt, and I sobered. He would always play with my hair after sex. He'd bury his nose in it and breathe and tell me it smelled like unicorns, whatever they smelled like.

I quickly sat up and dressed, suddenly feeling cold. Tears pricked the corners of my eyes as I brushed my damp hair. I hated what he put me through. I had gone from being part of a couple, to rooming with my best friend and her now-fiancé, to renting a small, bare studio by myself on the outskirts of a new town because I couldn't afford the nicer ones in the city.

Being single sucks. The only good thing about it was having the freedom to screw whoever you wanted. And I wasn't even sure I was cut out for that. I was just a miserable single girl with sad shower fantasies and a bowl of chili in her fridge.

No, Cara, you are better than this. I had to get myself out of this mental rut. So what if Matt was my first love? So what if he was my first kiss, my first...everything? There were plenty of fish in the sea, and I had to get over Matt and start fishing.

I also had to get out of the house. Be around people so I wasn't alone with my thoughts. There was a bookstore a few blocks away, so I decided to peruse the stacks. The weather was still nice, and evening was still a ways off—it was perfect for a walk.

The bookstore was family-owned, and not as big as I originally thought, but it had a quaint little café in the front where I bought a small coffee. I found myself in the Self-Help section in the back, picking up books titled Own Your Heart Now! and Dating for Keeps. But my attention kept wandering over to the Romance section in the next aisle over. Succumbing to curiosity, I ended up checking out the titles there.

They had a nice selection of contemporary, historical and supernatural romance, to my surprise. A few I had already read. I tucked two new books under my arm and headed toward the registers in the front. There was a table in the center of the store with featured books for the week, and a cover caught my eye as I passed. It was a photography book with a photograph of the intricate whorls of a shell on the cover. The image reminded me of my seventh grade science class measuring shell openings of snails with calipers. It had been one of my favorite classes, and the reason for my acquiring a fish tank in high school and some of college.

I stopped and picked up the book. It looked to be a collection of award-winning nature photography. The images were absolutely beautiful. They were mostly landscapes—stark, icy tundras and burning deserts. As I flipped through the pages, I noted how the photographer managed to somehow incorporate both a sense of isolation and warmth into his images. His photography exuded loneliness and chaos, and yet each had a subtle element to it that suggested a maternal touch, be it an unexpected color or a soft curve to complement a harsh edge. I closed the book and was about to place it back on its stand when something on the back cover caught me eye.

It was my neighbor in black and white, a faint smile on his lips. His hair was shorter in the photo, and he looked younger, but it was him. He took those pictures?

Rex Andreiko is the world's foremost nature photographer and freelance journalist. Born in the Ukraine and raised in Sweden, Rex won his first photography contest at the age of 12. His work has since been featured in National Geographic, Scientific American, The New York Times and many other notable magazines and newspapers. You can learn more about Rex at his website, www.romanandreiko.com.

Even in the picture, his eyes were magnetic. I stared at his photograph, trying to glean a little bit more about who he was. The expression on his face was hard to read, a cross between a smile and a smirk, like he was in on a joke no one else knew about.

It started to rain as I walked home, a light misting that feathered my hair and T-shirt. Angela had been texting me, pestering me to go out with her and Mary-Anne tonight, but I wasn't really in the mood to be social. However, I knew I was going a little stir-crazy, and figured that maybe it wouldn't be so bad to hang out at the bar with my two best friends for a little bit. Maybe it would take my mind off my mysterious neighbor.

***

We'd agreed to meet at a bar called Rusty's, about halfway between where I lived and where Angela lived, on the corner of Maple and Donovan. I'd made some effort with my dress and makeup, which was saying something since I hadn't planned to change out of my work clothes to meet them.

The bar was already crowded when I arrived, and the side tables were all taken, so we were stuck at the bar. It wasn't bad, at first. We had a round of drinks and caught up with each other. Most of it was talk about Angela's wedding planning. The usual stressors were in place: paring down the guest list, picking out the flowers, and trying to decide if they wanted live music or a DJ.

"Just fuck it all," Mary-Anne said at one point with a wave of her hand. "Save a bunch of money and elope to Vegas."

Angela shot our friend a withering look. "If I'm going to elope anywhere," she said, stabbing the olive in her drink with her toothpick, "It's going to be somewhere with a beach and margaritas. Not hookers and chintzy heart-shaped beds." She popped the olive in her mouth, lost in thought. "This is just...not how I pictured wedding planning."

"Why can't you just tell his mom you don't want their neighbors there?" I ventured. "You don't know them and it's already eighty dollars a head. You only have so many seats." Angela was one of my best friends, but she was a people-pleaser, often to her own detriment. Her future mother-in-law, Barb, was a hard woman to please. Put the two of them together and you had a combustible mix. I had no doubt Angela would one day have enough of Barb—when that day came, all hell would break lose.

"Plus, you and Logan are the ones paying for it, right?" Mary-Anne pointed out.

Angela winced. "They're paying for the venue, but that's it." She looked from Mary-Anne to me. "It's a huge chunk of change, which is why I don't know what to do. She'd kill me if we eloped."

Mary-Anne scoffed. "So dramatic, Angie," she drawled, leaning to one side, the drinks seeming to have caught up with her. "Roger!" She was on a first-name basis with the bartender, a forty-something man with a gray-white, close-cropped beard. "I think we are going to need another round of drinks." Out of the three of us, Mary-Anne was the most outspoken, the one with the no-nonsense, dry humor. I liked her because I felt like she would always give me her honest opinion, even if sometimes it stung. She seemed to make friends easily, opening up lines of conversation with complete strangers wherever we were.

Rusty's was a bar she had introduced us to, and Roger a long-time friend, perhaps even a former lover. Angela and I weren't sure—Mary-Anne had a lot of hot-looking male friends. It was hard to tell sometimes.

Roger set down a couple beers for the two men at the other end of the bar and wiped his hands on the bar towel cinched to his belt. "Long day?" he asked her, coming over to us. "What'll it be?"

As he got our drinks, playfully bantering back and forth with us, I relaxed, thoughts of work and Matt swirling into a pleasant gray blur. What I'd do to have my thoughts wiped clean. Blank.

I didn't really feel like something was wrong until later in the night, when nausea swallowed me like a tidal wave. We had ordered food, so at first I assumed I had eaten something bad. But the feeling was wrong. I'd had food poisoning when I was younger, and knew what it felt like. This feeling was different. My head felt like it was swimming away from my body.

"Cara, are you okay? You look really pale all of a sudden," Angela said, concerned.

"I feel a little weird," I acknowledged sheepishly.

"I'm sorry," Mary-Anne apologized. "I was so busy talking about myself I didn't realize how quiet you've been." She cast a look over me worriedly, noting my pale face. "Maybe you should call it a night?" she suggested. We had been out for a little over two hours.

"Yeah, I think I will. I'm sorry," I murmured, getting up. My friends hugged me, assured me it was perfectly fine, and asked if I needed a ride home. "No, I'm sober, thanks."

"Well, text me when you get home," Angela said. "It's raining out, so please be careful."

"I will!"

But my headache was getting worse. By the time I parked I was wincing from the pain. It was raining heavily now, and every now and again a crack of thunder sounded directly above my head. Damn this place and the constant rain. I stumbled toward the awning, doing my best to cover myself with my parka.

Inside, everything seemed much too bright. The lamps flanking the front doors of the lobby, the recessed ceiling lights in the hallway. I took the stairs up, since I didn't want to wait for the elevator. It took me much longer than necessary to find my keys. All I could think about was the Advil in the kitchen. I felt like I was suffocating. Or maybe I was hyperventilating. My fingers closed around the clunky keychain in my purse.

"Damn it!" I swore. The lock was jammed again. I tried to pull my key out but it was stuck, too. My head throbbed painfully. I bent over at the waist, breathing hard and feeling miserable. I wished I were in bed. Being horizontal sounded like paradise right about now. Tears pricked my eyes. What was happening to me?

Someone entered my peripheral field of vision, a large shadow that knelt to look into my face. "Are you okay?" The accent pinged in my brain. It was my neighbor. He smelled like soap and clean linen. He had changed clothes, though he was still dressed for indoors in dark sweats and a T-shirt. A full basket of clean laundry sat in front of his door.

I looked up at those dark, bottomless eyes, wanting to cry. "I feel sick," I managed to say. "My head is killing me."

He was silent, watching me. He got up and tried to open my door. I heard him jiggle the knob a few times before realizing it was jammed.