Micaela’s Big Bad by Tijan

2

Something Something

“He was in mid-thrust?”

We were an hour into drinking, and Nikki jerked toward me, sloshing her drink on the way.

She didn’t notice.

“Mid-thrust.”

I’d relayed the story of how I came home early from work, heard the moaning and groaning from the bedroom, and thought Jay was watching porn. That was it. That’s all I thought.

I should’ve known better.

I did know better. That was the thing.

I had found texts on his phone three months earlier.

Silly me, right? Stupid me, more likely.

“Four years, Nik.”

She moaned with me. “I know. Four years.”

Fuck.

Four years.

“He was my high school crush.”

“He was. You liked him for so long.”

I did.

I had.

“You were, like, pathetic about it too. Like, really, really pathetic about it.”

“Uh…”

“You wrote him poems. You drew hearts with his name in them on all the desks you sat in. You’d stare at him in every class you both had. You were the water girl for the football team, and had a special bedazzled water bottle just for him.”

“Um.”

“It was pink, with his name in a circle.”

“Okay—”

“You offered to drive him home all the time, and you didn’t have a car. You started taking cooking lessons from his mom, and you don’t cook. You’re banned from your own kitchen by your landlord. Or you were, when you lived with him, I mean…”

An awkward silence.

Not for Nik, apparently.

She was only taking a breath.

And breath taken. “You used to slip him anonymous letters.” She reached for her glass. It sloshed again. “I never told you, but Becca Harris saw you slip a letter into his locker one day.”

“She did?”

“She did.” She took a messy drink. It sloshed down her throat. “She told Jay it was from you.”

She paused, frowning. Her head cocked to the side. “I never told you about that.”

I gritted my teeth. “No. You certainly did not.”

She was still frowning to herself. “I should’ve told you. There was a reason I didn’t tell you.” She went back to thinking. “I can’t remember it now.”

I wanted to growl at her.

Screw it. I did. I bared my teeth too.

She just laughed, finishing her drink.

Shoving her chair back, she stood. “I need another drink—OH MY GOD! I forgot it’s Halloween tonight.”

“Yeah…?”

She looked at the clock, then grabbed for her phone, and she screamed again. “I’m supposed to work tonight.”

“What?! We never do anything on Halloween.”

“No—” But she was off, racing to her bedroom.

She came back, still rushing, and grabbed the whiskey before hightailing once again. She yelled over her shoulder on the way, “Grab my glass and follow me. I’m late, and I can’t be more late.”

“What?”

But I did as she asked.

With my own drink topped off, I took the rest of hers. She was in the bathroom, her make-up scattered everywhere. I grabbed her glass, filling it.

Sitting on her bed, facing her in the bathroom, I gripped my glass tightly. “You said you’d work Halloween tonight?”

I have to stress how this was so not normal.

We didn’t do Halloween.

Halloween was for humans, not for us. Not for those of us who were ‘other’ than just human.

Theydressed up like us, and it was beyond insulting.

Contrary to everyone’s opinion, we weren’t ‘sexy fill-in-the-blank’ all the freaking time.

I watched Nikki finish her makeup (record time) and disappear into her closet. Literally. Nikki was a demon. Not all demons were equal in their powers, but Nik had been working on her teleportation lately. Which was whoa, you know? Teleportation is huge in our circles, and my girl was achieving it. Granted, she could only teleport five feet away, but that’s something in my book.

She came back a second later in black leather pants and a black leather corset. Her hair was up and she whispered a few words. As she did, her hair started braiding itself. It wasn’t something she always did, but only at times like this—when she was late for work.

Her powers were growing more and more.

Not all demons are naturals. When Nik started trying to braid her hair, the scrunchie just kept flying through the hair. There used to be injuries, of everyone in the room except her.

“Nik!”

“What?”

“Why are you working tonight?”

She worked at a nightclub. Bass. All kinds went there, meaning ours and theirs. The humans. It was known as one of the most exclusive clubs in the Western Hemisphere. (That’s our speak, not humans.) Humans don’t talk like that. They’d say it’s one of the most exclusive clubs in the nation or something like that. They only cared about country borders, state lines, county rules. Not us. We paid attention to territory, and Bass was straight up the best on our side of the world.

Nikki had been working there for the last year, and her powers had been getting stronger ever since. It was also known as a demon bar, where most of the employees were demons. I used to question it at first, but when she seemed to have her power in check, I backed off.

Power corrupted, or tended to corrupt, and I didn’t want to lose her.

She hadn’t answered my question. Her mind was distracted, and I could feel her communicating with someone else. It was my thing. I could see, feel, and hear energy, and with Nik right now, her energy was spreading out from her, completely leaving the room we were in.

I shoved up. “Nik! I’m getting alarmed here.”

She snapped back to our room, all her energy focusing back around her. “You didn’t finish telling me about Jay.”

“What?”

“Jay. We were mid-thrust. He was mid-thrust.”

Right. Because that was important here.

My boyfriend whom I’d known all my life, crushed on all through high school, had finally gotten together the last summer before college and had been living with the last two years, had cheated on me. At this point, I was more distracted why she was panicked about missing work tonight.

Her energy was off. Way off and it had turned on a dime.

There was a layer underneath that I’d never seen before. It was dark and swirly, and it surrounded her completely. It was clinging tightly to her body too. Nik’s energy was never that tight usually. It usually just circled her like a fun-loving mist, and she had lots of pastel and sparkly colors intermixed. Good time Nik, almost always happy and content.

Actually, for a demon, she was all about the happy joy joy, you know?

I rattled off, “Jay was in mid-thrust into some vampire. It’s whatever. I threw a fork at him, then a picture. And a few more pictures. I might’ve ripped down his favorite painting. I said a lot of shit, packed my bags, and I showed up at your place to get drunk.”

She was putting on her heels.

Her clutch was next.

She was looking around.

Her phone was on the nightstand.

She grabbed it, and she was heading for the door. She had asked me to finish, and now was so distracted that it was insulting, “Then what?”

She reached for the door, but I was there.

I slapped a hand on it, knowing my eyes were hard when her head snapped up.

I spoke through my gritted teeth, “We stay in on Halloween. I left Jay. I’m your number one, and you’re worked up about going to work, on a night you never work, and you know Benji would let you off.” Benji was Bass’ night manager, and he loved me. Well, he loved my cousin, but he adored me in a doting sort of way. He’d melt if I told him about Jay. “There’s a rumor that a Big Bad is coming to town tonight.”

I said town, but I meant city. We weren’t too far from downtown Minneapolis.

And I wasn’t lying about the Big Bad, but I was lying about the rumor.

I knew there was someone big and powerful coming to town. I’d been feeling his energy. Or her. I didn’t discriminate except this energy felt masculine. Very, very masculine. Whoever it was had massive powerful energy that was already spreading to where we were. It was in the air.

“There’s also a rumor that the new owner of Bass is making a visit tonight too. That got anything to do with you going to work on a night when we’ve made sure we don’t work since we’ve both been born?”

I wasn’t lying about that rumor. I heard it three days ago at a family picnic. The previous owner was a demon that got dead so Bass was sold, but no one knew who it was sold to. Everyone wanted to know who. Vamps. Werewolves. Witches. Demons. Other beings like me…well, except not me. I hadn’t given two fucks who the new owner was.

That all changed now.

It’s the only thing that made sense, and as soon as I said those words, that dark, swirly energy around her spiked. It doubled in size, and it was swinging around her head in a frenzied way.

I hoped that I’d been wrong. The evidence before me was telling me that I wasn’t.

Nikki didn’t answer. She closed her eyes, and I saw all her energy morphing and starting to swirl around her, almost in a protective way.

She was going to teleport.

Away from me.

Me!

This was not like Nikki, not at all. Something was definitely off.

What the hell?

So…

Well.

I did something.

I had to.

I had done it once. The results had been disastrous, so I never did it again.

But I had no choice right now.

So I did what I did.

I grabbed her energy and I took hold.

She started to teleport, and—well, if I’d taken enough and held on, I would’ve too.

I only took a little, enough to ground her so she couldn’t teleport. That, and she wasn’t strong enough to teleport with me yet either.

When she didn’t go anywhere, she sucked in her breath. Her head twisted to me. Her eyes flashed black, and she shoved me away from her.

She hissed, “This is a demon thing. Stay in your lane.”

I relented and let her go, and she was off…but I knew three things.

One, that wasn’t my best friend. Or that wasn’t the best friend I loved.

Two, I should’ve been way more active in doing whatever I could’ve when she started working there.

And three, I didn’t give a rat’s ass about her lane, my lane. We were on this trip together.

I was going to Bass.

I looked around the room, seeing she’d left her glass untouched, and I headed over.

I might need a little something something to soften the edge because damn, humans on Halloween were annoying.

I drank hers. Mine.

I grabbed the rest of the bottle and headed out.