Chapter 1: A Slimy Proposition

“You want me to do what?”

Quinn Tolentino sipped his café au lait, savoring the hot drink. His eyes never left mine, even when my jaw dropped at the audacity of his proposal. Quinn sat across the wooden table from me, his expression behind the ceramic coffee cup breaking into a naughty grin.

“Are you saying you can’t do it?” He asked holding his cup elegantly in the fold of his palm. There was a sparkle of challenge in the way he regarded me. He has done this before. Vintage Quinn. He would raise his eyebrow ever so subtly, purse his lips in the surface of a pout, and make sure his smile was deliberately playful. As though sexual innuendo was enough to bend my reservations into agreement.

Why do evil people always come in the most delicious of guises? I guess that’s in a rule book somewhere. A grimoire that demands evil to always come with an attractive packaging. In hindsight, how else can they seduce the good?

Which is not to say I’m one of the good guys. I don’t take sides. I go where the thrill is.

“Of course I can do it,” came my blunt reply. “I just don’t think I want to just yet.”

“Three hundred grand,” Quinn said. A ridiculous amount, yet considering the task, it was reasonable.

“Why do you need the book so badly?” I asked, genuinely curious. “Not enough dark books in your vault?”

Quinn chuckled. His soft laughter sounded mysterious. “You’re popular in our circle as someone who gets the job done.” He shifted in his seat and put his cup down. “Unfortunately, you’re also well-known for your questions and your meddling, which is why The Dawn sent me.”

I had needed Quinn’s assistance a couple of times before he joined The Dawn, a mysterious coven that everyone in the Wiccean community thought was a myth. Until it went active about a year ago. Many supposed the coven was newly formed, a copycat group to take credit for The Dawn’s historical dealings with necromanic magic. Others believed the coven never really went away.

“I don’t go in blind,” I reminded Quinn. Never again. “That’s why I ask questions. And as for the meddling, completely accidental on all accounts, whatever you might have heard.”

“There’s a very intricate ritual that is written in that book,” sighed Quinn, indulging an answer. “The Dawn knows the concept of how it’s done. However, it is highly time-sensitive and the litany is very specific. It has to be done down to the letter. If something goes wrong,” he took another sip, “you know the drill.”

“Like if someone stuttered or sneezed in the middle of it?” I raised my own eyebrow. I didn’t regret making the joke, even when Quinn showed the first signs of annoyance. “I’m guessing you won’t tell me what the ritual is for?”

“That is correct.” Quinn’s brown eyes were like glass. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think he was stripping away my clothes with his scorching stare.

“And if I say no, will you leave me alone?” I was aware that a smile was breaking from my lips. I don’t know what it was about danger that I found alluring. Or maybe it was the thought that I’d be attempting to cheat death one more time.

“Scout’s honor,” Quinn’s smile widened.

I laughed. I wanted to dance with him a little while longer. It’s Sunday, after all, a day for church. No need for haste. “You’re neither a scout nor a man with any bit of honor left in him, Quinn,” I told him. “Not even in those clothes.”

Quinn shrugged. He had a proclivity for wearing spiffy-looking suits, always the gleaming executive. Next to him I looked like a teenager misplaced in the company of a sage adult. I was wearing a black vest over a black sheer shirt; and for the wild idea of possibly needing to kick someone’s nuts, I wore a heavy pair of ankle-length boots. To an outsider, it would appear that Quinn was a successful businessman lecturing a younger brother against bad decisions and going further astray.

“So what is it, Hail?” Quinn lifted his hands in a mockery of a weighing scale.

“Wait,” I cocked my eyebrow at him. “Why did they send you?”

“I’m supposed to assist you.”

“That’s hardly necessary,” I frowned.

“The book is a very powerful tool,” explained Quinn, “and we understand the...”

I nodded, beginning to understand. “The Dawn won’t take the risk of having me steal the book for myself.”

“Sounds about right,” confirmed Quinn. “The book has keys to magic of great measure.”

“Enough for me to break your coven apart like a twig.”

Quinn laughed. It was a patronizing sound. Like a father amused at something his four-year-old had said. “I wouldn’t be so presumptuous.”

“We’re talking about a lot of money. What’s to prevent The Dawn from killing me before the exchange? Besides, how am I supposed to trust that you won’t bushwhack me as soon as I deliver the book?”

“This is absolutely insulting.” Quinn sighed wearily. “Do you know why The Dawn is one of the most resilient and finest coven to date?”

“Indulge me.”

“We give, in order to get. We reward our sources when they produce what was promised. We don’t make deals we don’t intend to follow through. Those covens who do otherwise never last. You betray someone, they take revenge, and sometimes it is in the most insignificant people that the most crucial blight is generated. But when they are as powerful as you, then case closed. ”

“I’m sorry, Quinn,” I said. “But, no.”

Quinn was quiet for a moment. Then he leaned forward and engaged me in a conspiratorial whisper. “What if I brought something else on the table? Something more stimulating, should I say.”

“And what, pray tell, would that be?” I said in a capriciously defiant tone.

“Me.” Quinn said. Pure business there.

I think I heard myself swallow hard. The first time Quinn and I crossed paths two years ago, he had just swallowed a potion that allowed him to hear thoughts. No point in explaining what sort of thoughts he heard from my head. What can I say? This guy knows a good leverage.

“You whore,” I said with no trace of contempt or irony. The flirting route? I never back down speeding through it.

Quinn sighed. He stood up and left a check by his coffee cup. I’m so good at what I do that they need to pay me just for showing up, regardless of what my answer might be. In any case, I’m putting my life on the line. No amount of money was supposed to quantify that, but this would do. I’m not a cheapskate. Like everyone else who’s running a business, I’m just an opportunist.

“We need a final answer by tomorrow. The ritual must be done in two weeks.”

“And beyond tomorrow?”

Quinn leaned over to me, clutching the arm rests of my seat. I could smell his expensive cologne. Something sexual and captivating. Dolce and Gabbana, I think. The classic black. Quinn was a little over six feet. Naked, that’s a lot of traveling area for a tongue, a lot of ground to explore. I tried to shake the evil thoughts from creeping right into my head. I tried to control the discomfort in the crotch area of my black jeans.

“I wouldn’t think too hard about it, little boy,” Quinn said. His mouth was only a few inches from my face. And the fact that I was using the word ‘inches’ was enough to sent my mind leering to visions of a bed. And chains.

If Quinn was casting a seduction hex, it must come off from his all-natural charm. I didn’t sense anything else. Except the way his eyes stared as perfectly as a lion’s when fixed upon a prey. Except for the way his mouth was shaped like the fine lines of a bow, and how delicious it must be to hear him rasp dirty things in my ears.

“If I fail?” I barely let out the words.

“We have full confidence that you would succeed,” said Quinn. “Once you’re done you’ll be having a full dinner in your table for as long as you can eat it,” came Quinn’s parting line. Quinn straightened up, his eyes still on me. I bit my lower lip to chase away the lewd images that assailed my head full-force. Quinn turned and left.

As soon as the bastard was gone, the impact of his proposition started to take form.

I am living proof that being excellent at your job isn’t always a good thing.

I happened to know the book Quinn wanted me to steal. It was the Darkreed Grimoire. I’ve seen it before. Very nice leather-work, gold filigree vines in the cover, twice thicker than the original manuscript of the Catholic bible. It also has protective spells cast around it that can incinerate human skin in a matter of seconds.

Neither Quinn nor The Dawn knew that I was familiar with the book rather personally. See, my grandmother showed it to me the night I turned sixteen. That was the night my destiny was revealed to me. That was the night I decided to run away from it.

Now I have to go back home and steal the book from the most powerful Wiccean family in all four realms of the Earth. Not to mention that my grandmother can probably wrestle Voldemort into submission in under a minute.

If I took this job and failed, and I probably would, The Dawn would take measures. Powerful as I am, I can’t take down a whole coven alone. Besides, I have heard talk of The Dawn’s leader. A nasty woman called Old Monique. Her most favorite hobby is to flay someone to death. Or watch people who betrayed her flay each other to death.

I adore risks. But this hacks an entire new meaning for the word. And all I get if I emerge unscathed is three hundred grand and the most satisfying sex I might ever get in my life.

I guess either way, I’m fucked.