"Then my mom asked why I wasn't going to the funeral," Amber said quietly as her frown deepened. "She thought we were friends or something? I told her he was definitely not a friend of mine, then she said I should still go anyways. I explained he was a transmisic bigot who constantly deadnamed me and misgendered me, and she got all bent out of shape about me being disrespectful of the dead."
After pausing for a sip of her root beer she continued, "Anyways so I told her he didn't show me any respect while he was alive, I wasn't going to show him any just because he was dead."
"Fuck," Melissa said quietly. "That sounds really awkward and unpleasant. So was that the end of it?"
The cute brunette shrugged, "We argued a bit more but the bottom line is I'm not going. And I think, or at least I hope my mom would understand better if I could tell her the whole story?"
She lowered her voice and continued, "Like if mom knew Rahul tried to attack me in February then again the other night, maybe she'd be less of a bitch about me not wanting to go to the guy's funeral. But I can't really tell anyone about that stuff. Especially not what happened Friday night."
I sighed, "No. We can't mention any of that stuff. I guess it's the thing with uh, supernatural stuff or whatever. We have to keep it all very secret."
Melissa and Amber both nodded quietly, they knew what I was getting at. We couldn't risk exposing ourselves or Lily, and if people knew about any of that stuff we'd probably be in loads of trouble.
Even talking about this stuff in the cafeteria was probably a bad idea, but we were keeping really quiet and there was nobody else close enough to listen in. And we were still careful not to say too much.
It was Tuesday, me and Melissa and Amber met up for lunch as usual, but everything felt strange and awkward today. In fact the whole situation felt really strange and uncomfortable, and I realized why Lily was maybe reluctant to take action in the first place. Like I finally understood why she probably hoped the problem would go away on its own if we just avoided those guys and I didn't make the situation worse.
Normally when Lily fed, none of us had any idea who it was. And probably most of the people she fed on would be complete strangers to us, or at least to me. The only exception was last summer when I sent her after my dad, but even that wasn't too different from a stranger. Like I'd only seen the guy twice since I was five years old, and both times he acted like an asshole and threatened my mom. And after he was dead we never heard about it, we never went to his funeral or anything. I don't even know if we were invited, mom sure never mentioned it to me. The bottom line was, Lily never fed on anyone who was part of our regular daily life before.
This was different. None of us liked Rahul, but we all saw him fairly regularly at college. Amber hung out with the guy for a year, because of her friendship with Matt. And now we had to deal with the fall-out from what happened Friday night.
The official story was, Rahul was driving drunk. Traffic cameras caught his car speeding and weaving along Finch Avenue just before midnight, then he lost control and hit a telephone pole. They said he wasn't wearing a seatbelt, and he was killed instantly. Apparently he had twice the legal limit of alcohol in his system, there was an open container in the car with him when he crashed.
The funeral was scheduled for tomorrow, and a bunch of his friends and teammates would be there. He wasn't even that popular over-all, like he was just another second-year college guy. He was on a few of the sports teams but he wasn't captain or anything, he wasn't very charismatic. But he had friends, folks knew him, and having him suddenly die like that left people shocked and upset.
And it left me worried about what might happen next. Jim still wasn't back to school yet after his latest concussion, but he was supposed to start again next week. And he was basically the main instigator as far as I could tell. I worried he'd blame Amber or me for his friend's death, even though as far as anyone else knew we had nothing to do with it. But Jim basically sent Rahul to attack Amber, and the guy never came back from that 'mission' or whatever.
I was worried there'd be another confrontation next week, or some time in the near future anyways. And I was worried things might escalate even more. Like last time Jim brought two friends and I kicked all their asses. Next time he might bring a weapon or something.
I wasn't really worried about myself getting hurt, Lily was always with me, but I worried what could happen if he went after Amber or Melissa. And I knew whatever happened, Lily would probably put an end to the whole thing the same way she did with Rahul, then we'd be going through all this awkwardness and stuff again while everyone was quietly talking about another funeral.
There wasn't really anything else I could do about this stuff though, so for now I just focused on my lunch. Same as Amber and Melissa were doing. The three of us all ate quietly for a little while, before Amber broke the silence.
"Not being able to talk about this with anyone but you two and Susan is..." her voice trailed off for a moment, then she sighed. "Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for everything you've done for me, and everything Lily's done. It's just, I'm not used to keeping secrets like this from my family. I didn't realize how hard it would be. And it's not that hard when everything's going great? But with stuff like this, it's a lot more difficult."
"We get that," Melissa replied. "Even though Sam knows a lot about us and Lily, he doesn't know everything and I can't tell him everything. Same with Mara and her mom. But we've got each other, we can always talk with each other. Mara and Susan and me, we'll always be there for you Amber."
The cute brunette smiled, "Thanks Melissa. I know, and like I said I really appreciate that. I kind of wish I could talk with my sister about some of this stuff though. Tracey can be a pest sometimes, but we've always been able to talk to each other? I even came out to her before anyone else. Before I was even fully out to myself, for that matter. I wish I could talk to her about some of this, just to get her opinion or insight."
I sighed, "I don't think that's a good idea, and I'm not sure Lily would want you to..."
"Don't worry Mara," Amber said softly. "I can't tell Tracey any of this stuff. It's part of my contract with Lily, like even if I wanted to tell my sister I literally can't."
That made me sigh again, I forgot that was something Lily put into her contracts. Melissa, Susan, Amber, none of them could discuss Lily or their contract with anyone who didn't already know about Lily. Which meant the only way they could talk to people about any of this stuff was if they first got me to tell that person about Lily.
"I'm sorry Amber," I leaned over and gave her a quick hug. "I'm sure Lily is listening, maybe we can all talk about this back at the house later? Figure out if it's safe to let Tracey know about things, so you can talk with her."
Melissa reminded me, "Tracey's been pretty keen on magic and everything, and when Lily was drunk she offered to turn Tracey into a succubus. It might not be a good idea letting Tracey know too much about what's going on, she might start clamouring for her own deal with Lily."
"Right," I sighed yet again. "This whole thing just keeps getting more and more complicated."
Amber and Melissa both agreed with that sentiment, but there wasn't much more conversation after that.
We all finished our lunch in silence, then as we got ready to head back to class I asked "Amber do you want to come back to the house with me and Melissa after classes? When Sue gets home from university we can order something in, or maybe even go out somewhere? Like try and do something fun, for the four of us?
She shook her head, "Thanks for the invite Mara, but it's Tuesday. I have work this evening."
"Oh right," I nodded slightly. "Sorry, I forgot about that."
Melissa added, "I'm pretty sure Susan's going to be out tonight too, I think she's got business planned."
That made me grimace, "Yeah you're right. She mentioned that last night, didn't she? Oh well. Maybe we can all do something tomorrow night instead."
We parted ways outside the cafeteria, Amber went to her next class while me and Melissa went to ours. And the rest of the afternoon went by slowly and quietly. We met up with Amber again afterwards and gave her a drive home, but there wasn't time for her to stay and visit with us.
Same with Sue, she came in from uni and had time to get changed and stuff, then as soon as she was ready she went straight back out again.
So me and Melissa had a quiet dinner together, then I went downstairs and spent some time at my computer. I distracted myself with some homework and studies, then when that got boring I went back to hunting for a cottage or cabin that we could rent somewhere.
I hadn't had much luck with that so far, but I figured it was a good way to keep my mind off other stuff. Finding the ideal place was harder than I originally expected, but I figured it was because our requirements were a little complicated.
Like it had to be somewhere remote, so preferably there'd be no other cottages or neighbours right next door. We needed privacy, we needed there to be no humans around to witness things or potentially get hurt if the magic went haywire. But we also needed it to be a place we could get to by car at this time of year, which meant cleared roads and stuff like that. And preferably we didn't want to have to drive two days to get there, so it needed to be somewhere in southern Ontario, like we weren't going to Quebec or Manitoba or down into the USA or whatever.
And finally, it had to be available which was the kicker. There were cottages that fit all the other requirements, but there weren't many of them so they tended to be booked long in advance or whatever. Like if Lily was willing to wait till next October we could book something immediately, but she was looking for something in the next few weeks not the next seven months.
So I kept searching, and I tried different search engines and different real estate websites with short-term rental options, and those other websites that were like ride-shares but for apartments and stuff.
After almost two hours I was just about ready to give up again. I started thinking maybe we could just find a hotel or motel in the middle of nowhere, or even buy a tent and sleeping bags and do some hiking and camping. I didn't really know much about camping but I figured it couldn't be that hard if we could use Lily's magic to take care of some things.
I was bored and frustrated and decided when I hit the two-hour mark I'd give up for the night. I tried a couple more searches, and just five minutes before I was planning to quit I actually found something.
According to the listing it just came available because of a cancellation. So it was like a last-minute thing, but it looked ideal. It was available from Tuesday April twenty-first to Friday April twenty-fourth, so it was exactly two weeks away. That covered the new moon which I remembered Lily said was important back at the solstice, so I figured that was another advantage.
The pictures and the description sounded great too, and I quickly checked on a map to make sure I wasn't accidentally booking us somewhere a million miles away. But no, it was only about three or four hours away which was almost perfect.
It was a two-bedroom cottage with year-round access, it was on Lake Muskoka which was a bit north-west of Gravenhurst. It had two beds, a washroom, living-room, kitchenette, fireplace, and outside there was a fire pit and a dock. The lake wouldn't be suitable for boating or swimming or whatever at that time of year, like potentially there might even still be ice in some areas but either way the water would be super cold. That was fine though, we weren't going for the water, we were going for the isolation. And it had lots of that. The nearest neighbours were several kilometers away.
I quickly went through the booking process and put in our credit card and contact info and stuff, and hopefully by tomorrow we'd get a confirmation email. Then I'd have to talk to my girlfriends and let them know so they could make arrangements. We'd all be missing a week of school, and Amber would have to miss a week of work, but I was excited.
With that out of the way, I shut off my computer and hurried up to the living-room to tell Melissa the good news.
Seems like a bit of a trap, likely by Amaro (I think that was his name) to recover his "girlfriend."