Valcour Enchanted by a Demon

Chapter 3

Brianna took the elevator down to the main floor. It wasn’t until the doors closed that she felt the tension in her shoulders relax. The music in the elevator was soft and unidentifiable. It calmed her as she listened to it, though. Something about how mindless it was.

A noise escaped her throat that quickly turned into a giggle. She was being foolish. Her nerves were getting to her, what with all the stress. That’s all it was.

She was busy convincing herself that she was overreacting to nothing, when her stomach growled. Dinner. She needed dinner. It dawned on her that she hadn’t gotten around to lunch, either. After getting this package, she’d head out. There had been a variety of fast food restaurants on the streets around the hotel, which was perfect, because she just wanted something quick and easy. Maybe a burger and some fries, or a huge salad like the ones that they kept refilling for you. She could spend an hour in a place like that. Afterwards she was looking forward to sleeping the rest of the night away until she couldn’t sleep any more.

The front lobby was open and spacious, with a thin carpet of gold and brown patterns straight out of the 1970s. Against the back wall was a little space fronted by a low countertop of polished dark wood. A door to the side led to an office. Behind a computer screen at the countertop stood the clerk Brianna had checked in with earlier. The woman was dark-skinned, shorter than Brianna, with short dark hair cut into a bob, and a permanently wide smile. Her name tag said that her name was Mary.

“Can I help you?” Mary asked as Brianna stepped up to the desk.

“Um. I’m Brianna Maitland. You told me there was a package? For me, I mean?”

Mary’s smile never changed. “Yes. Here you go.” She pulled out a small and plain brown cardboard box from under the counter and presented it to Brianna.

She looked at the box. The flaps were sealed with clear packing tape. In the upper right corner was her name, written in blocky letters with thick black marker, the name of this hotel and her room number underneath. As the clerk had said, there was no return address or name.

“There’s no postage,” Brianna pointed out.

Mary the desk clerk looked down at the package and then back up at her like Brianna had just said that water was wet. She offered the box again.

Brianna had expected the box to have some weight to it. Instead, it was light and felt empty. She shook it. Something rattled softly inside. Not empty after all. She tapped a finger against the bottom in thought.

“Who did you say delivered it?”

Mary shrugged. “No one that I knew. But we take in packages all the time.”

“Yes,” Brianna mumbled. “You said that.”

She put the box down on the countertop and spun it in her hands. “You wouldn’t happen to have a knife or something to open this with, would you?”

“How about a letter opener?”

“That would probably do it. Thanks.”

Mary plucked the letter opener out of a desk organizer crammed with pencils, pens, paperclips, and other things. Then, she handed it to Brianna. The pointed metal opener slid easily through the tape along the top of the box.

She hesitated, hands poised over the flaps. Then in a rush she opened the top to look inside.

Crumpled brown paper. Like the kind used every day to mail ordinary packages. No ticking time bomb. No cobras coiled and springing the moment they spotted her. Nothing that her imagination had conjured up at all. Packing paper. Just packing paper.

She pulled some of it aside, using just the tips of her two fingers. In-between the folds of the crumpled packing material she saw something glinting. It was a slim gold chain. Eyebrows lowered in deep concentration, she picked the chain up. It snaked its way out of the box, weighted down by something at the end of its loop.

It was a pendant. Brianna held it up in front of her eyes and examined it. The pendant was an oval shape, gold in color, etched with black curling designs that intertwined over each other. There were actually seven interwoven spiral patterns, she saw, arranged in a circle with one in the center and the other six around the outside, thin and wispy arms radiating off each spiral to twist around and over and through all the others. She got lost trying to unravel which line went to which spiral. She would follow one only to find it had become a line attached to one of the others or that she couldn’t follow it back to where she had started with it or that it would continue on without end around the pendant or slip out from under her gaze entirely and leave her staring and wondering where it had gone—

“Miss Maitland?”

She blinked and looked up at the desk clerk. “Oh. I’m…I’m sorry, I got distracted for a minute, I guess.” Brianna felt foolish. What had just happened? The pendant was still in her hand, hanging heavily from its chain. There was something about it that held her attention. It was pretty, she decided. That was it. It was pretty and it had the look and feel of a real antique.

And someone had sent it to her, here.

Stuffing the necklace into the hip pocket of her jeans, she looked through the rest of the box quickly and found nothing else. “Okay, then. This isn’t weird at all.”

“I’m sorry?” Mary asked her with a quirk to her eyebrow.

“Nothing.” Brianna’s stomach rumbled again. Everything would make more sense on a full stomach, she reasoned. “I’m going to go out for some dinner. So, um, hold any more packages that come for me, okay?”

“Will do, Miss Maitland,” Mary said to her with that big smile, completely missing the sarcasm that Brianna had carefully laced her words with.

It was an unseasonably temperate day in April. Stepping out of the front lobby of the hotel, Brianna felt the wind caress her cheek warmly. She decided to walk down the street to one of the restaurants she had seen on her way. There had been a McDonald’s, and several other big-name chains. She was bound to find something.

Walking down the main street she passed any number of people, of all descriptions, busily going about their daily routines. The sun was only just touching the horizon now, behind the hazy clouds, which meant there most people still had a lot to do before calling it a day. She watched them as she passed and imagined a little story line for each of them. This one in the red baseball cap was going to meet his girlfriend. That one in the suit and tie was rushing to a last-minute business meeting. That girl staring in the window of a dress shop had a date this Friday, and wanted something special to wear for it.

Brianna smiled to herself. This was a game she and her mom used to play when she was little. They would make up entire life stories for people, sometimes, giving them lives full of troubles and triumphs that had nothing to do with what was really going on. It was just harmless fun. She missed doing this with her mom.

She missed her mom.

People continued to pass her by and she played the game as she went. That one was picking up bread for dinner. That one was…

Was the clerk from the gas station.

He was just standing there on the sidewalk, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his baggy brown pants, his stringy hair wisping out from his scalp in the breeze. And he was staring at her.

Brianna stopped still, unsure of what she should do. The guy never moved, never spoke, never blinked for all she could tell. Just stood there.

Other people passed by the two of them like a river parting around two islands. No one even noticed them. She realized she was gasping in short little breaths. This was crazy, she told herself. It was just a creepy old man. Nothing to be scared about. Yet there was something like an alarm bell going off in the back of her brain.

Finally she pursed her lips and squeezed her eyes closed. This was stupid. He was just a man. He probably didn’t even mean anything by what he was doing. It was just the coincidence of seeing him twice in one day in a place that she had never been before that was setting her nerves on edge. That and the package at the hotel and the phone ringing and everything she was dealing with back at home.

She was being stupid. There was no reason to be acting like this.

She told herself that a few more times before she finally believed it.

She opened her eyes then and took a step forward to walk by him. Only to find he was gone.

Everyone around her kept moving while she looked both ways up and down the sidewalk. The guy was nowhere. He just seemed to disappear.

“Good. Stay gone,” she said under her breath, walking away again. Still, she checked over her shoulder a few times as she went.

A restaurant advertising a grilled chicken Caesar salad in its front window caught her eye. Her stomach responded to the picture on the poster with a little growl. “Okay. Sounds good to me too.”

She forgot the name of the place as soon as she entered the double doors, but the interior was all done in a contemporary dark-colored wood finish that gave it an upscale look. Wood furniture next to wood paneling on the walls and wooden ceiling fans. Potted plants that were taller than Brianna stood in the corners, and the waiter who met her at the door was wearing a black vest over a crisp white shirt with a white apron tied around his waist. She liked the place already.

The waiter led her to a table in the middle of the room with two place settings. “Will anyone be joining you this evening?” he asked.

“No. Just me tonight, thank you.”

“Very well.” Was it her imagination or did he actually sound disappointed for her? “Would you like a menu?”

“Actually, I think I’d like one of your Caesar salads. With the grilled chicken?”

He must have heard this order a few dozen times already today but he got out his notepad and pencil from his apron anyway and wrote it down as she said it. “A very good choice. Our chef makes the dressing himself. Sometimes I help him chop the lettuce.”

He winked at her, and Brianna couldn’t help but smile at the way his bushy brown eyebrows danced when he did.

“Would you like to start with a drink while we prepare your salad?”

She thought about it. “Do you have cherry coke?”

“We can make it. Straight coke with a shot of grenadine?”

“Ooh, yes please.” She felt her taste buds start to salivate.

The waiter moved away after promising to be right back so Brianna unrolled her napkin to place her silverware and straightened out her plate. Suddenly she realized that she had nothing to keep her occupied until her food came. She hated these awkward moments. Her mind always played tricks on her that everyone was staring at her because she was alone and had nothing to do.

“Cherry coke?” someone asked from a table behind her. “Now there’s a girl after my own heart.”

Surprised, she turned around to politely brush off whoever it was that was trying to hit on her. Brianna wasn’t bored enough yet to have some local interrupt her dinner.

It was him--Jake Valcour; the guy from the convenience store who had tried to hitch a ride with her. The dim lighting cast shadows across his face and darkened the little copper lines through his eyes to a tarnished black.

“You...” she said, and then immediately felt stupid for saying it. So much for second impressions.

But he smiled at her anyway. “Yup. Me. I didn’t realize just how wild you were when I was talking to you earlier.”

“Me? Wild?” She turned sideways in her chair so she could face him without craning her neck.

“Absolutely. Anyone who likes cherry coke must have a wild streak in them.”

Her grin was lopsided, yet perfect at the same time. She couldn’t believe she was flirting with Jake again. Not that she hated the idea of flirting with him and being flirted with. But hadn’t she already turned him down once?

“Weren’t you trying to leave this place?” she asked him.

He shrugged in response. “Couldn’t find someone willing to give me a ride. Figured I needed to eat dinner before I tried again. So here I am.”

“Right where I ended up eating dinner.”

“Definitely kismet.” He picked up his fork and twirled it in his fingers like a magician flipping a coin between his knuckles.

“Kismet? You believe in all of that fate and meant-to-be stuff?”

The fork paused between two fingers, sticking straight up in the air. “Well, of course I do. Don’t you?”

She rolled her eyes. “Well. Maybe I do. Now. Because after all, here you are.”

His smile brightened. “Hey, you want to join me for dinner?”

“Um.” Oh, just say yes for the love of God, she told herself. After all, he couldn’t be too dangerous in a public place. Right?

“Come on. Better than eating alone. If it will make you feel better, I’ll solemnly promise not to try to kill you until after we eat. How’s that sound?”

She laughed. “Best offer I’ve had all day.” She stood and moved over to his table, sitting across from him. There were only a few other people in the place, and a few of them watched her as she switched tables, but they lost interest after that. It was as if she and Jake were alone together in a room full of people. Now that she wasn’t awkwardly alone, it didn’t feel like anyone was staring anymore.

And, somehow, it felt right to her.

Which was confusing. But in a good way.

The waiter brought Brianna’s drink out with Jake’s food, a plate with an open-faced steak sandwich and thick cut fries. When the man saw that Brianna had moved, he simply smiled and put her drink in front of her. “Enjoy your meal,” he said, to both of them.

Jake sipped at his glass of water but didn’t touch his food. “So, Brianna Maitland. Tell me why a girl from New York would be out in this part of the country.”

“Well first of all, Jake Valcour, I’m not a girl. I’m a woman.” It was a pet peeve when people thought she was a teenager. Although that probably was not even what he was insinuating at all.

He never moved his eyes away from hers, but she got the feeling he had just examined every inch of her body in fine detail. “Yes,” he said, “you are. But you know what I mean.”

Goosebumps dimpled her arms. She swallowed and suddenly needed a drink from her soda. It was an odd sensation, what she was feeling around Jake. It wasn’t like they were strangers at all. Brianna felt like she knew him, like he could see inside of her, and she rather liked feeling so close to someone, even if she didn’t actually know him. It was fun to pretend, at least for a short time. Somehow the fact that this flirting was temporary and would soon be over made her feel less stupid for enjoying the moment so much. A pleasant warmth began coloring her cheeks.

“How’s your soda?” he asked her.

“Good.” It was, too. They must do this here a lot, because they had the mix of soda and cherry flavoring just right. She took another sip from it and then mentally laughed at herself for overthinking things, again. She was meeting an interesting, cute guy for the first time. That was all. No need to be nervous.

“You know,” she said to him, making an effort to be herself instead of the jittery teenager he kept turning her into, “you can eat your food before mine comes. I don’t mind.”

He picked up the plastic ketchup bottle from the table and squirted a small pile of it next to his fries. “Don’t have to tell me twice.” He swirled a fry into the ketchup and then popped it into his mouth. “Mmm. Those are good. So, you didn’t answer my question. What brings you out here?”

“College,” she answered him. “I was going to college in Seattle.”

“Oh yeah?” He put another and then another fry in his mouth, then picked up his knife and fork to cut pieces off the steak sandwich. “Which college?”

“The Art Institute.”

His fork paused with a speared piece of cut steak halfway to his mouth. “Really? An artist? No way. What kind of art?”

“I was studying to be a graphic designer.” She realized how very, very boring that sounded. “But really what I like to do is paint portraits. Just, there’s not a lot of money in that, you know?”

“Yup. Money: the root of all evil.” He nodded as if he really did understand and then took the bite of steak. Judging by the way his eyelids lowered, he was really enjoying it. Then he put his silverware aside and rested his arms on the table. “An artist. That’s a rare gift.”

She laughed. “I don’t know if ‘gift’ is the right word. I paint. It’s just something I do.”

“I doubt that. Are you any good?”

Good? She was top of her class and one of her professors had even asked if she might student teach next semester. That was almost unheard of for a sophomore. She knew she was good. In fact, she knew she was great. “I’m okay,” she answered him. She never felt right praising her abilities. It made her feel conceited.

He looked at her in his keen way and she knew he was measuring her answer. Knew he could see the truth behind her words. “Okay, yes, I’m good. But seriously, it’s not a big deal.”

“Some things,” he said, “are bigger deals than we realize.”

The waiter brought her Caesar salad just then and she was glad for the excuse to do something that kept her mouth closed.

The salad was pretty good. The chicken was a little dry but the dressing was tangy and creamy and she had eaten half of the huge bowl of it before she knew it. She pushed at the rest of it with her fork and tried pacing herself.

“See?” he said to her as if she’d made some point without realizing it. “You have an artist’s soul. You savor everything life offers you, whether it’s a good salad or soda flavored with cherry syrup or painting the world you see around you. And that is a gift.”

“A gift? You mean, like from God or something?”

He shrugged, but didn’t answer.

She regarded him for a long moment. “Are you trying to butter me up so I’ll agree to give you that ride?”

“If I was, would you say yes?”

“Maybe,” she said, slowly.

“Then yes, that’s what I’m doing.”

They both laughed at the same time. Though she was slightly disappointed that he said that, even if he was just joking. She’d rather that Jake had told her that he had no ulterior motives, and that he truly thought she was talented. Brianna gave her head a small shake to clear her thoughts. This was supposed to be harmless flirting, nothing more.

Jake went back to cutting his steak, Brianna watching him. A few bites later he pointed at her with his fork without taking his attention off his food. “But I’m also serious. You have a gift. Gifts are meant to be used, not hidden.”

She rolled her eyes at him and reached across the table, stealing a fry from his plate and biting it in half before he could object. “You know, you’re a bit of a dork.”

He stopped, knife and fork in his steak, eyes blinking. “A dork? You think so?”

Oh, damn. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say it like that…”

“No. No, really, it’s fine. I’ve just, well, never been called a dork before.”

She bit her lip and waited for him to say something more, like how he wanted her to go back to her own table or jump in a lake or go play in traffic or something. Something to show just how much he didn’t want her to be around anymore. Suddenly she felt really embarrassed for stealing a fry, that was too forward, and she hardly knew this guy. The fact that she felt so comfortable around him made it hard to keep herself in check.

“Don’t misunderstand me,” he said instead. “I like it.”

“You what now?”

“I like it. See, where I’m from, people don’t talk honestly to me. They talk around me, or over me, or say what they think I want to hear, but they never just talk to me. Ever. So to hear you call me a dork because you mean it? That’s like music to my ears.”

That was just about the weirdest thing she’d ever heard a guy say. And yet he said it with such honesty that she could tell he meant it. “I can honestly say you’re not like most guys I’ve ever known.”

“And a bit of a dork?”

“Yes,” she said, making her expression as serious as she could, “you’re a dork.”

He burst out laughing, head tipping back. The other people in the room looked over, some smiling, before they turned back to their own dinners.

She couldn’t help but smile when she was around him. “So,” she asked, “where exactly do you come from that people can’t even talk to you? Or call you a dork when you really are being one?”

He still smiled at her, but now it was kind of sad. “Somewhere a long way off from here. I’m kind of running away from there, actually.”

“Wait. You’re running away? From home? You’re a grown man, aren’t you? You’re, what? Five, six years older than I am?”

He leaned his head to one side briefly, considering how to answer. “Older than you. How about we leave it at that.”

“Well, I’m twenty. So if you’re older, then…”

“I’m older,” he repeated.

She blinked, then let her fork drop into the salad bowl. “Oh no. You can’t just leave it at that. Like, are you thirty? Fifty-five and just aged well? What?

He cleared his throat. “My life is…complicated.” Then he shook his head and his smile was back. “Tell you what. Anything you want to ask, I’ll tell you all about it on the car ride, if you let me go with you. How’s that? Deal?”

Complicated never looked so good before, in her experience. She stole another fry from him before giving him an answer, grinning inwardly to herself.

“Deal.”

They raised their drink glasses and clinked them together. She guessed she wouldn’t be alone going back to New York after all.