Halloween I.F. – “Something Rich and Strange” – Day 4

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“Dude, I might take you to meet my boss later, but not if you’re barely going to apologize,” Star said, pretending to be more offended than worried. “You told me that someone’d wanted to speak with you, like, right before you came to meet me, and you took forever, and now you’re saying you just don’t remember?”

Dom frowned with worry at that admittedly concerning statement. He was a handsome man, because Star’s life was torment, with short, tight-curled natural black hair just showing a touch of grey despite him being barely thirty, and his warm brown skin was smooth but for a pock-mark on one cheek. He was even easier on the eyes when smiling, so Star usually tried to make him smile as much as possible, but it wasn’t as if brooding didn’t look good on him. 

“I …don’t know what you mean.” He was definitely starting to sound a bit worried himself. “I talked to someone briefly about something or other and then headed right out. If this is some kind of joke, it’s not funny, Star?” That last failed to be a statement, tilting away from annoyance into a plaintive doubt.

Star straightened his neck almost to recoiling, huffing a sharp sigh. “I called you over and over. Look.” He held his phone out for Dom to see, set to the outgoing calls. He wished, suddenly, that he’d sent text messages at some point or had left voicemails that Dom would also have on his end. If something was so wrong with Dom that he would accuse Star of making this up, of using glamour to hide his actual call list… the problem with being honest with a guy was that they knew all the ways you could be dishonest on a whim.

But Dom believed him, which is what the normal Dom would do. Dom had his back. “What the fuck? Wait, it’s three-thirty already? I can’t believe I lost track of time that much. Hang on…” 

Dom dug his own phone out of the pocket of his grey jeans. The screen was dark, and Star watched as Dom held the power button. It still didn’t turn on.

“Shit. I must have let the battery run out. No wonder I lost track of time and hadn’t realized you’d called…” Dom’s tone shifted, now pure embarrassed apology. “I thought I’d charged it this morning, but my cord’s been finicky lately about fully plugging in. I should have noticed when you called me that it was about to run out. I’m so fucking sorry, dude.”

Star made a face. This was logically what Dom would say and due if he had just missed their meetup time due to a technical error. But the magic smell, now that he’d noticed it, was hard to ignore. Besides, the fact that Dom still couldn’t seem to recall what he’d talked to someone about, especially when someone who had looked a lot like Star himself was there, was warning sign enough that someone had been using magic to alter Dom’s perceptions or memory.

“Hey, guys,” the incubus barista said. “I noticed your friend hadn’t got a drink. Can I get anything started for you?”

Unusual for a barista here to leave the counter to take an order directly at a table, but it was a quiet day, and maybe they were courting more human customers here recently. Dom smiled up at the barista, then blushed and looked down at the tabletop instead. The barista’s nipple, which had slipped out from behind the apron, had previously been in line of sight. “Uh, yeah, just a regular Pumpkin Spice, please.”

“Sure thing.”  The barista accepted Dom’s payment, then inclined his head almost too-politely at Dom, old-fashioned. “I’ll be right back with it.”

“Anyway,” Star said, when he’d left again. “As we were saying…” Well, what should he be saying? Something was weird here. If the magic was making Dom forget or keeping him from answering, then being direct wouldn’t help him get around the spell. “So the phone died. You told me when you came in that something had come up. Can I ask what it was? I’m your partner, after all.”

“Hmm…” Dom sat back against his seat, looking a little worried again. “I can’t seem to remember exactly. I think something about a double booking, something we needed to sort out? I guess I was distracted.”

That was something, anyway. Star doubted Dom was actually given some kind of magical memory wipe about a double booking, because that would be an insane thing to do. But maybe something we needed to sort out could be a hint. To what, he wasn’t sure. Star tried playing along, to see where this’d take them. “What were you thinking about instead?”

This answer came way more confidently, which was either a very good sign or a very bad one. “I was thinking about the offer you made. Sorry if I’m coming on too strong. But you really haven’t invited me into other parts of your life before. The more I thought about it, the more I was like, yeah I do want to meet this sidhe lord.”

That could be true, Star supposed, but he’d seemed awfully nervous and intimidated when they’d talked, like, an hour earlier. It was hard to believe that right after that call took place, Dom would suddenly immediately pivot to getting incredibly excited, instead of getting more and more dubious and dejected at, like, a regular pace. But Dom had also answered this question immediately and with surety, compared to the other, vague and indefinite answers.  “Wow. You really want to meet him?”

“Sure, why not,” Dom said. “And then I’d get to see where you live, too.” 

Star made a sulky face to cover up his own blush, and slapped Dom in the bicep. “You stop that.” But even if that one had hit home, he was getting more and more confident he shouldn’t just take Dom home abruptly and without warning. Dandelion should at least hear about this first, and maybe they could take some time to strategize. “Tell you what.”

“Hm??” Dom had received his PSL while Star was thinking and was now mid-sip. He lowered it quickly, leaving a foam moustache on his upper lip that he quickly licked away.

“When I said to meet up, I forgot that I had something right after this. It’s a fairy thing,” Star said, because any lie he made might be easily checkable; this certainly was vague enough and yet accurate enough. “But I might still be able to swing dinner today. Once you’ve finished your coffee, why don’t you go home and charge your damn phone, and I’ll call you later to let you know if you should come over. I’ll give you the details then.”

To his great relief, Dom just nodded at that, giving one of his usual one-shoulder shrugs, a gesture Star knew by heart. “Sounds good. So…You’re still mad, huh.”

“Lil bit.”

“I’m so sorry,” Dom said, ruefully. “I really don’t know how I let time get away from me like that. We still have time for that coffee?”

“Sure,” Star said. He carefully changed the subject to something neutral. Time to see how deep this mind magic had gone. “Did you catch the new episode of Starry Knight last night?”

As they finished their drinks, Star led the conversation through a variety of topics, trying to make it look coincidental that he was covering things such as Dom’s hobbies, family, recent history, and plans for travel next month. By the time he was through, he was confident that this was still Dom with his own mind, not someone possessed or otherwise being directly controlled in some way, and that the mind magic wasn’t too deep into Dom’s personality as a whole. This was the Dom he knew in every way which mattered. A huge relief, that, but also maybe even weirder, because it made this incident somehow incredibly personal. Why Dom? What about him might be even of interest, and how did just talking to him while casting spells cover it?

They said their farewells, Star reminding Dom one more time just for good measure to charge his phone. As they walked in opposite directions, Star meandered further downward, cutting into the alley behind the Poppedeyes fast food restaurant. 

He’d bought himself some time before potentially taking Dom to Dandelion. Now the question was what he should do with those few hours.

He could go right to Dandelion and the band, interrupt their writing time and see if they wanted to spitball this. He could fully describe everything that happened, and let all four of them together work on the problem. They had a variety of expertises, albeit almost certainly unrelated, and if nothing else, they could work together as a group to come up with a solid plan of action about what to do (or not do). But if he picked this option, what would he say to them? How to lead that conversation, anyway?

Or, instead, he could go to find a witch. Very few creatures knew magic better than witches, so they might have an idea of what was happening, what the spell could be used for and any way to undo it so they could get Dom his memory back and find out what exactly happened there. But the only witch Star knew personally was Vivian Dormer, who was dating one of Dandelion’s friends and thus had gotten absorbed into their biweekly D&D game. But Viv was incredibly bad at being a witch, and probably had very little history with diagnosing and picking apart someone else’s spellcraft, though maybe she had hidden depths. Star doubted it, which left only talking to witches he didn’t know—like the Twilight Council, the largest local witch organization. They kept tabs on their members as part of coordinating work on whatever magical things were needed. If this weirdo was a local, the Twilight Council might have some information. It could, in fact, be the most reliable and connected option. But Star didn’t know anyone there, so he didn’t know who he could trust, or if he’d be able to keep info from getting back to whoever this was. If he did go there, what would he ask them? How would he swing the situation in his favour?

A third option that occurred to him was that he could, right this instant, go to the track. He could see if those mysterious individuals were still there and spy on them or confront them directly or whatever. If nothing else, he could least talk to other people there who might have seen more than Halle did. Though, if those two sussy individuals were still there, there was the risk they might work magic on Star, too. How should he approach them if he saw them, he wondered.

Also, the problem with both options 2 and 3 was that they were more likely ways to get info, but either one of them would take a lot of time, so even if he’d get back in time to warn Dandelion and get a yea or nay, he almost certainly wouldn’t have time to talk out a best strategy with him and let him think through all of his options before deciding if they should see Dom. But he wouldn’t get the info at all if he went to Dandelion instead. Which option was better…?

Why was everything always complicated, anyway?

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