Illusory

When I woke up the next morning, it was to the sound of my phone vibrating obnoxiously on the mahogany nightstand next to my bed. I slid my hand onto the table, my fingers wriggling around in search of the source of that evil noise. They finally closed on it near the middle of the stand, only an inch from the digital clock that read in red, evilly bright numbers: 7:47. I should not have been up yet.

"Hello?" I grumbled groggily into the receiver without even bothering to check the caller ID, rolling onto my back and rubbing at my eyes.

"I think I might have found out who took your books," came a deep, thunderous voice that could only belong to Rick. He sounded excited, almost proud of himself. "One of my magician friends recently stumbled upon an entire collection of dark texts and powerful light texts. There's no way he could afford to buy them, so he has to have stolen them from someone."

"Do you have any idea what the titles are?" I asked eagerly as I sat up on the bed, much more awake than I had been only a second ago. "Or maybe one or two of the spells that they contain?"

"I haven't made it quite that far yet," he said, his voice losing all of its cheer. He sounded almost dejected now, like I'd crushed his entire spirit with that single question. "I only caught wind of this information this morning."

"Well, why don't you check it out some more, then called me back later?" I suggested, swinging my legs over the edge of the bed and letting my feet rest on the shaggy red carpeting. It was cold against my feet; I already missed the warmth of my blankets. "I don't want to fly all the way down there and find out that he really did just happen to come by a few good books."

"Will do," he said, and I could almost hear him nod through the phone. "Hey, ah..." He lowered his voice, whispering now as if someone else might be listening in. "Next time you're in town, do you think you might want to go get a drink with me?"

This took me by surprise. I stopped mid-stretch and said, "Well, sure, I guess. I mean, if we have the time. We'd only come up there for business purposes, so..." I trailed off, and he seemed to understand where I was going.

"Oh, yeah. Of course." His voice had returned to its normal volume, and he cleared his throat loudly. "Well, then, I'll give you a call once I find out more, and we'll just see what happens."

"Sounds good," I said with a light laugh, a smile on my lips that I thought would never leave. "Be careful."

"Will do," he said, then hung up.

I flipped my phone closed and grinned down at it as the screen faded to black. It was only 7:49 in the morning, I'd only been up for two minutes, I hadn't seen anyone in person, and I'd already had my day made. "Sweet."

Quickly, I brushed my teeth and my hair, threw on a pair of faded blue jeans and a cute black top, twisted my hair into a tight braid over one shoulder, then made my way down the stairs, a slight skip to my step. I felt like singing or doing a little dance, but I restrained myself. Van was already going to question my never-ending smile; I didn't need to give him more to ask about.

"Good morning," I chirped pleasantly upon entering the kitchen. He was sitting at the stainless-steel center island, a cup of black coffee next to an open book before him. He glanced up just as I leaned down to give him a light, friendly peck on the cheek. "Whatcha readin'?" I asked as I glided to an overhead cabinet. Coffee cups clanked against one another as I pulled free a mug of my own, and Van watched me with an eyebrow arched in a mixture of confusion and suspicion.

"Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter," he said, and I turned to him with my own look of confusion.

"Don't you usually read real history books?" I asked, recalling the many times I'd walked in on him reading biographies about presidents or memoirs about the Holocaust or stories about any of the many wars that had happened since the beginning of mankind. I don't think I'd ever seen him with anything that was even slightly fictional.

"It could be real," he said while turning his eyes back to his book. "I mean, if magicians exist, why can't vampires? And if anyone could be a vampire hunter, why not Abraham Lincoln?"

"True," I agreed with a brief nod, nearly spilling coffee onto myself as I poured it into my mug. "Lincoln did seem like a bit of a badass."

He laughed lightly. "You should read this book sometime," he said. "It's right up your alley."

"Let me know when you're done with it, and I will," I said, continuing to grin as I poured six spoonfuls of sugar into my coffee with just a dash of cream.

"Why are you up so early this morning?" he asked as I sat down across from him at the counter. There was a perfectly good kitchen table not five feet away, sitting in a delightful little nook with several large windows, but we never used it. I couldn't quite remember why, but I was sure it had something to do with antique wood carved by some special relative of Van's.

I shrugged, attempting to make my expression more casual, though my attempts failed miserably. "I got a call this morning, and it woke me up." I took a sip of my coffee, which I discovered to be scalding, but even a severely burnt tongue couldn't take my smile away.

"Is that why you're so chipper?" he asked, eyeing my grinning face with disgust.

"Maybe," I answered teasingly. "But you'll never know."

He sighed and returned his attention to his book once more. "Did Rick call you?" he asked dryly.

"How did you know?" I would've looked surprised, but my smile just wouldn't allow it.

"Just a lucky guess," he answered, eyes drifting along the lines of the page. "What did he say that made you so unbearably happy?"

I was going to lie about it, but seeing him so annoyed was giving me an even greater joy than Rick's phone call had. "He asked me out," I said, "when we come back to town. He wants to go out for drinks with me."

"Does he know that I'll be tagging along, too?" he asked in that same dry tone, turning a page with the loud crinkle of paper.

"Well, he knows that you'll be coming with me to town, if that's what you mean."

His eyes slid to my face, though he didn't tilt his head back from its bent position over the book. "No, that's not what I mean," he said, and my smile finally fell, unable to withstand the weight of his heavy, unrelenting stare. "I mean that I'll be going wherever you go, whether its out on a date with another man or not." My entire face drooped in a sad frown, and his eyes fell back onto his book, having done their job and done it well. "Besides, we're not going up there for pleasure; we're going for business. There's no reason for you to be going out on dates."

I slouched over my coffee, staring into the dark liquid even as it spit hot steam at my face. "You take everything too seriously."

"And you don't take everything seriously enough." He turned another page calmly, casually, as if he hadn't just sucked out every ounce of happiness I'd had in me. There was only silence for a moment, each of us focused on our own thoughts, but I soon felt his eyes on me. I turned my face to his, and he asked much less harshly, "Would you like to begin learning some magic today?"

"The advanced stuff?" I asked.

"Yes," he said with a single, solitary nod. "The advanced stuff. I was thinking that we could start with a few defensive spells, then work our way into the offensive ones. The defensive type tends to require a lot less energy than the offensive, excepting, of course, the spell you cast last night."

"Will I be learning anything...black?" I asked hesitantly, unsure of his feelings on the subject of dark magic, We'd never really talked about it, but I'd always assumed that dark magic was bad magic and that light magic was good. Of course, he'd gone and screwed that logic up when I found out that he'd gone to retrieve a dark spell book of his own for use in developing a new set of tricks for a freaking show, in public, around people that could possibly get hurt. I no longer knew where the line was drawn. Was black magic good or bad? Were there just certain types that were bad? Were some white spells bad, too, then? It all made my head spin.

"Of course not," he said sharply, scowling at me in rebuke. "You're never to perform black magic. Ever."

"But why not?" I asked innocently, taking a slow, careful sip of my coffee. "You were planning on using it for our next tour, weren't you? Isn't that why we went to that house to begin with?"

His look didn't lighten; neither did his tone. "I wasn't going to use any of those particular spells," he explained. "I was merely looking for inspiration for a new line-up. Once you perform black magic, you can't recover from it. It's not like white magic. I would never risk the damage just for a cheap trick during a magic show."

"What do they do, exactly, these black spells?" I asked. The more he berated them, the more I wanted to learn them. "What kind of 'damage' are you talking about?"

"Besides the face that dark spells have a tendency to go horribly, horribly wrong, there's also a lasting effect on the mind and even the body of the user." He spoke calmly, clinically; this was something he'd been told before, likely by his own teachers of the craft. "Magic comes from the massive part of the mind that many humans don't take advantage of. White magic exercises this part, using only what can be replenished and making it stronger in the process. Black magic, on the other hand, damages it, drawing from it a power that cannot be replenished but through even darker means than the darkest spell." I'd stilled, mesmerized, and he'd grown even more intense, his face taut with hatred. "In the long run, one who practices dark magic will lose his or her mind."

"But you said the mind could be replenished," I pointed out, "only through dark means. What means are we talking about here?"

"The drinking of human blood or the devouring of human flesh," he answered bluntly, finally returning to his book. His face slowly drained of its gathered intensity. "It's not something that can be done easily, even if you have no conscience. Someone would likely find out and stop you, or one of your own dark spells would backfire and stop you even sooner."

My breath had stopped coming long ago, and my eyes were wide as I stared at Van's down-turned face. "But in small doses it would be okay, right?"

"In theory," he said without looking up, "but the chances of becoming addicted to the power or becoming the victim of one of your own spells before you have the chance to give it up are much too high. You should never practice black magic. Ever."

"So just white magic for us, then?" I asked, finally sucking in a mouthful of sweet air.

"Of course," he answered coolly. "Only the whitest of the white magics, especially for you."

"Yes, sir," I said aloud, but in my mind, I was already going about figuring out how to get my hands on some dark spells. He probably had some spell books in the study that contained dark magic, and since they weren't in hiding like the books that had been stolen, they probably contained only the more innocent of dark spells.

I sipped at my coffee, my eyes fixed on Van's unknowing olive-green eyes.

I just wanted a taste.