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Danielle nervously twisted her scarf between her fingers.
It was past nine o’clock in the evening, and normally she’d be getting ready for bed at this time, as her job required her to spring awake at five in the morning every day. Instead she was seated in the middle of a pub, absolutely deafening in noise from a bunch of rowdy students celebrating the end of the university year. They were shouting and singing, waving about drinks and splashing sticky alcohol everywhere.
This wasn’t her type of scene at all.
She was a plain, middle-aged woman – her hair and eyes were a dull brown, and her figure was homely. Compared to those young, vibrant youngsters shrieking with joy not too far from her, she felt like an invisible speck on the wall. It just hammered home to her all the more how she hadwasted her life. No, not wasted but, missed so many opportunities. Take the safe route, had been her motto. She had a stable, yet dull office job, she had a small yet like-minded group of friends, and her hobbies were reading and sewing. Nothing exciting. Nothing… just dull, and it was…
Danielle sighed, plucking at a loose thread on her scarf. That was why she was here. She had been offered an opportunity to change that, to take one last swing at a chance to have something exciting to talk about for once, but at this point she was beginning to think that she had been stood up (nothing new there). She had been told to sit here and wait for a man named ‘Nate’, but it had almost been forty minutes and-
“I’m so sorry! Sorry, sorry, sorry! Are you Miss Danielle?”
Her gloomy thoughts interrupted, Danielle looked up to see a handsome young man standing at her table. He was quite tall with a lean physique, and dressed in what seemed to be his pyjamas; a loose hoodie and a pair of equally loose shorts that looked suspiciously like boxers. She daren’t to lean over to see if he was wearing shoes either, eyeing the curly, white mess of hair the man possessed – it looked like he’d just rolled out of bed.
“Um, yes, I am,” she replied after a pause. Then, hesitatingly, “Are you, um… Mister Nate?”
“Yup!” The man, Nate, was cheery, and he yanked out a chair to drop himself into it. Nate leaned onto the table with his elbows, fingers linked together and chin propped on them, lips curved into an easy-going smile. It was enough to put Danielle at ease, some of her nerves settling at the soothing aura the man just naturally emitted.
She had come here, expecting to meet a severe, professional man (for what she had heard of their… ‘profession’, a level of seriousness was to be expected), but instead she got what seemed to be a little ball of sunshine.
“You’ve got pretty eyes,” Nate said abruptly, watching her closely. There was something odd with his smile, now. “Has anyone ever told you that?”
“O-Oh, no…” Danielle quickly looked away, fighting the urge to cover her face up. She could feel his stare like a physical burn, “I don’t… really, ahaha…”
“Hmm…” Nate sounded unconvinced, “Anyway, so,” he straightened up, clapping his hands and attracting her attention again, “Your wish. Let’s discuss it.”
The nervousness came back full force, and she swallowed, nodding mutely. Thankfully, Nate continued on without requiring verbal input.
“I don’t have your notes with me now, I was in a bit of a rush because of- well, it doesn’t matter, but correct me if I’m wrong,” Nate spoke rapidly, like he was in a state of excitement that prompted him to get his words out as fast as possible. Danielle struggled to keep up; “Your wish it to have… an exciting life, yes?”
“Yes, that’s right,” Danielle could feel heat crawling up her cheeks. Having it said allowed made it seem… foolish, “I… well, up until now, I lived my life modestly, safely. I didn’t dabble in any of that magic business, and all my friends and hobbies are Mundane,” the word used for those who didn’t have a drop of magic in them or their lives, “And now, I’m…well…”
Nate was nodding, “I understand. It’s hard to live in a world where magic’s embraced so openly, and held above those that are more grounded,” his voice was so fluid, so kind, that Danielle found herself nodding along to his words, “You shouldn’t be ashamed of living a life like that, y’know. There’s nothing wrong with it.”
“I know, but,” Danielle hesitated, briefly doubting her decision. That’s right… her life was fine as it was right now. She was happy, even if a little bored, and she had staunch friends that stayed with her since childhood, and she had none of the nonsense that disrupted or destroyed the lives of so many who dabbled in magic. For all of its allure and power, no one had a happy ending with it.
She worried her bottom lip.
“Perhaps you’re right… I, there’s nothing wrong with my life now…”
Nate hummed in agreement, “Right. You know how fickle magic can be – my work is flawless, but, well, anything can happen…”
Danielle looked over at the rowdy group of students not too far from her. They were all cheering on a fellow student chug a fishbowl of brightly coloured liquid that swirled and glittered – one of the ‘potions’ that the bars could legally sell. It apparently had more kick than alcohol, and brought about strange, yet delightful effects without the downside of a hangover afterwards. Danielle wouldn’t know, though, she had never tried it.
She was thirty eight years old, and had never tried it.
She chewed on her fingernail.
Was she truly happy? If she was yearning for something so stupid and useless, could she honestly say she was satisfied with her current life? Content, maybe, to drift along with it, until she died a mundane, ignorable death- ah, that was it. When she had been a child, she dreamt of being someone who could do something life-changing, she didn’t know what, just that it would be amazing, and-
“But… I still want to do it,” Danielle whispered, feeling something resolute form inside of her. Yes. She sat up straighter, looking Nate right in the eyes. The man was smiling at her still, expression open and patient. “I want to become great.”
“Ahh, well, if you’re sure…” the man lifted his shoulders in a shrug, and buried his hand into his hoodie pocket. He pulled out a rumpled piece of paper, and a pen, and pushed them across the table, his smile still in place, although it bared a glint of sharp canines.
“Sign on the dotted line with this pen,” he said cheerily, leaning back in his seat and linking his fingers behind his head. He looked utterly satisfied, but Danielle didn’t let doubts crowd her thoughts as she resolutely picked up the pen. She wanted… she wanted to grasp that childhood dream of hers, and… and it couldn’t… turn out too badly…
She signed the first strokes of her name, and felt an odd twinge of pain in her chest as the red ‘ink’ shone in the fluorescent light of the pub.
“I’m such a nice person.”
Nate’s voice echoed in his storeroom, his breath misting in front of him from the chill. He was rolling a jar between his hands, the pair of brown eyes within bobbing in the thick preservative fluid. Medicine had gotten a lot easier once someone figured out how to preserve organs for yearsthanks to a nifty little potion. Easy to make too.
“Nice must’ve changed its definition in recent years,” a hoarse voice rumbled, and Nate glanced over his shoulder with a pout. Poised atop of a metal operating table bolted down in the middle of his storeroom (it also doubled as his workroom, since space was so limited in his poor little shop), was a large, ragged looking raven. Its beady eyes stared at Nate with something like exasperation, until it looked away to preen at a wing.
“Shut up, I am nice,” he grumbled, turning away to slot his eyeball jar onto his self. It was between two other sets of eyes, one blue, and the other a dark, gleaming red. Hey, he didn’t discriminate – he accepted organs from all different species and creatures. “Did you see how happy that woman was when she left? Absolutely overjoyed.”
The raven let out a wheezing cawing noise, “That’s because you tricked her, you little demon. I notice that you never tell these people about theside effects to your ‘flawless’ work.”
“Ugh, look, it just keeps slipping my mind, okay?” Nate said, turning away from the shelf and walking over to the operating table. Aside from the decrepit old raven ruining its polished surface, it was absolutely immaculate. He made sure to disinfect and wipe down every possible surface after each job – even if it took a ridiculous amount of time. “They find out eventually, anyway.”
“Once they’re hunted down by the police as man-eating monsters, yes,” the raven clacked its beak, and Nate just rolled his eyes and scooped the bird up into his hands. It didn’t resist him.
“They should have read the fine print in my contract. I say it all there; ‘May have chance of becoming a cannibal to sustain the body’. Really, I wouldn’t have this problem if people just read up on Necromancy before contacting me…” To Nate, it seemed perfectly logical. Why dabble in an art you knew nothing about? Everyone knew how dangerous magic was, and yet they came to him, utterly ignorant on Necromancy, and then they got all mad at him and accused him of all sorts of hurtful things when it backfired on them. What did they expect? Not even his flawless work could protect them from everything! Magic was fickle like that.
“This one’s going to be a bad one, I can sense it, Nate,” the raven continued, its croaking voice growing weary, “Soon, the police will lose patience with you.”
“My business is legitimate and my contracts air tight,” Nate said dismissively, walking towards the heavy, steel door of the storeroom. “I’ll be fine, Micah, don’t worry.”
“Hrmph,” Micah clacked its beak again irritably, “That overconfidence makes me do nothing but worry. Don’t forget what happened to your predecessors.”
“Yeah, yeah, one got eaten by a client, another dragged into hell, the other imprisoned, I get it. I get it,” Nate sighed, pushing the door open and stepping out. He slammed the door shut behind him, hearing the automatic lock click, and moved down the hallway to the backroom of his shop. One room to live and eat in, it was pathetic, but, his business wasn’t one geared towards profits.
“I think experience will be the only thing you’ll listen to,” Micah said sourly. “Fine. When the police come tearing down your door, boy, know that I warned you of these things.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Nate rolled his eyes, but, truly, he was taking Micah’s advice to heart. He knew how to dance around the police that came sniffing about his shop time to time – honestly, he didn’t know why they bothered to do their unnecessary posturing. They knew they couldn’t snare him, he was much too wily and clever for that – even if they had evidence that he cast Necromantic magic, and that he was (inadvertly) responsible for his many clients’ descent into cannibalistic madness, he wasn’t entirely to blame. Under the recent Magic Consequences Act, so long as Nate warned them of the effects and put them in his contacts, and ensured that they were of sound mind and body when signing, he couldn’t be touched. Wasn’t his fault, the clients knew what they were getting into you know how magic is, etc, etc.
He gently set the raven down on his coffee table once he entered the back room, and lifted his arms high above his head, hearing several joints pop and crack. This job had been a difficult one, though… god, such a demanding client. ‘I want to be great’, huh? It had been tricky, but… well, he had to take a lot out of her, and a lot in, he hoped she would be okay… even he had doubts that his work had been flawless this time.
He dedicated about two seconds of worry before ejecting it firmly out of his mind. No matter. Not his problem anymore. If things went sour for his client, then, well, they only had themselves to blame.
He was only trying to help, after all.