Small-town_Wright

Sorry to those who cannot abide misspelling. I think my finger slipped on the 'z' key or something...

Life sucks. Just ask high-power Chicago attorney Mercedes Chloe Jenna Grayson-Lupus, or Mercy as her friends call her. She was orphaned only two months after her birth and raised by the nuns at the Saint Giles Home for Orphaned and Abandoned Children.

She leads a dual life, the life of a provocative wizardess named Paige. So that makes her life rather... complicated. At least she thrives in her challenging environment...

She has finally found some happiness in life: her friend and live-in companion, Max. Then she finds a different kind of happiness from him, and her life complicates further.

Follow Mercy through hell and high water....


And then tell me what you think!

I caution: There is some ADULT content....

__________________

Small-town_Wright

I could feel every movement in the bar, the movements of the dancers on the dance floor tingling in my fingertips and the music tingling on my lips. However, the only thought in my head as I looked across the table was that Lestat Desman had left out a bit in my education. Mostly, that little part about the magnetic appeal of male wizards. I really think I should have picked up on it, considering my mentor was 50 and still sexy when I was 16. Somehow, I hadn’t. He used to keep me safely locked in his warded basement every night, saying that girls shouldn’t be cavorting with boys. Now, I knew it was because of the coolly seductive appearance that covered a hot flow of power, but at that age, I thought it quite cruel.
“You want me to do what?” I asked, thinking he’d been pulling my chain.
“I want you to introduce me to a vampyre,” he replied.
Nope. Not kidding. “No way in hell,” I blurted.
“But Paige-” he started.
“No ‘buts’, Drew. They’d rip you apart and thank me for the gift,” I replied, blunt as ever. I got up from my stool and left the table, leaving him with a beer, two empty shot glasses and the tab. I left the bar quickly and quietly.
Pay no mind to the name he used, because I am no one’s fool. Any wizard can use my name to conjure if they get it from my lips. Therefore, I took extensive measures to protect myself. My name is Mercedes Chloe Jenna Grayson-Lupus, but my friends call me Mercy. I warn you, don’t let the nickname fool you; I tend to be the antithesis of merciful.
To the average observer, I could be any other woman walking the streets of Chicago. Especially after I learned to control my power’s interaction with all things electrical or involving advanced technology. I have a job, a house, a mortgage, and a compact car. I tend to take the El, like everyone else. I never really did the tourist thing when I first moved here, and now the sights and the skyline have become both familiar and unexciting.
I’m a practicing attorney of six years now, and I finally paid back all of my student loans. I measure in at six-feet tall, leaving me towering over a lot of women and some men. My hair is unruly, curly, and dark brown, and my eyes are green. I’m just an average attorney in the middle of the Midwest. And the most exciting thing I’ve done in three months was see Fall Out Boy in concert in Indy.
Of course, I’m probably the only attorney who has caller ID only for the purpose of knowing which name to answer with. I just don’t want my friends and my boyfriend Logan to find out about Paige the Practioner, nor my contacts to find out about Mercy the Attorney. It would really suck if I answered with the wrong name. The whole thing would come crashing down around my ears. Thus, caller ID became a part of my life.
My alias is Paige Anderson. Whenever I go out to meet someone as Paige, I use a glamour. Paige is a bodacious blond babe with big blue eyes. Guys tend to fall all over themselves for her. Most start out talking to her breasts, but she’ll set them straight in a New York minute.
Suave Mercy replaced bubbly yet moody Paige in ways no one but me would ever know. Mercy was strong and self-contained. She had to be. However, Paige was ruled by her emotions. It made her magic more effective. They were two halves of the same whole.
But I was both halves, and I was aware of my split personalities. Usually, people are unaware of other personalities. Not me. I like to consider myself perfectly sane. But I figure that’s a huge lie I tell myself so I won’t call the psych ward on myself.
Sane people don’t have a second personality they hide from people who know the other one. Sane people don’t hold all their emotions in until they manifest as a second personality. Because that’s just insane. Plug up all your emotions, and they’ll find a way out eventually. My emotions found a way out in Paige.
I hurried toward the nearest El station and hopped on the first train downtown. I was relieved to see I had the entire car to myself. I quickly removed my glamour and made myself nauseous in the process. Let me just say, glamours should be removed slowly until you know what your doing, because you will barf. I’ve been doing it for two years now, and I still get nauseous. I stared out at my reflection in the window across from me. Reflected was a perfectly groomed and in-control attorney who looked just as I had when I’d just gotten off work.
For the first time tonight, I felt a smile work its way across my lips. No one would ever know it wasn’t Mercy who stepped on the train, but Paige. My Paige persona had completely disappeared and I was here in her stead. Back in control. Right where I needed to be.
Fifteen minutes later, I hopped off at the station downtown. Looking forward, I spotted the Borders about a block down. I lengthened my stride and hurried to my favorite store. I dodged people with speed and ease. Six years of city life can do that to a girl.
I took a deep breath as I entered the store. Something about the smell of books calms me. I can get so busy sometimes that my muscles will clench, ache, and stay that way. But one whiff of ink and pages and my muscles never felt looser. I’ve also found there’s no way to replicate that smell.
Trust me, Lana and I tried it a lot when we were younger. Brent got the closest of the three of us. I grew up with Brent and Lana. Ever since Lestat adopted them a few weeks after me. I guess they became my family, especially since I’d never had one before. Nevertheless, that didn’t stop me from adopting them.
The nuns at the orphanage found me at the corner where Grayson Street met Lupus Avenue, thus my last name. The nuns found me dress warmly and wrapped in a blanket with a small silver cross clutched in my hand. My mother, I suppose, tied a satin scarlet scrap gently around my wrist with a tag on quality stationary. The small tag read “Mercedes Chloe Jenna,” , with a small notation that said I was born on October 13, which had fallen on a Friday that year. The nuns found me where they routinely took their morning walk in the fall on November 10th in the year I was born.
My first six years were spent in solitude at Saint Giles Home for Orphaned and Abandoned Children. I remember kneeling every night and whispering a prayer to Saint Giles, praying that he’d send me a family that loved me. And he sent me a family. Just not in the way I expected. No one could have dreamed it quite the way it happened.
It was a cool autumn day in my sixth year at Saint Giles, in early September. Each child was assigned specific duties to perform daily. I was assigned the library, for solitude. The library was dank and heavy with a thick blanket of dust, but I loved the room for its quaint charm. There was quite a bit to do in that library.
I’d discovered early on that if I whispered “Lumine” and focused on my cross, it would glow with an eerie blue-white light. I was dusting the stacks by that light that fateful day, when I heard footsteps approaching. Out of paranoia, I stopped focusing and the light faded. No one ever came into the library. They were all scared of me.
I watched, hidden deep in the stacks, as he came into my domain. He appeared to be in his early 30s, distinguished and filled with a gentle and yet enticing spirit that made his masculine beauty glow. Never will amber eyes glow with the same joy and love of life as Lestat’s, nor with silver highlights in thick black hair ever looked so distinguished and handsome. He appeared to be searching for something, someone. When his hand touched the dustless oak desk I used and a finger brushed the silver bell, I began to work my way out of the stacks.
When I stood before the startled gentleman, I asked softly, “Can I help you, sir?”
He smiled a warm, true smile. “I’m looking for Mercedes. Are you her?”
I gave him a sad little half smile. “That’s what they call me. Or what there supposed to call me, anyway. The nuns call me ‘Mad Mercy’, and the others call me ‘Devil’s Spawn’ or some variation therefore of.”
A worry wrinkle creased his brow as he raised as eyebrow. “Why do they call you that, ma chérie?”
I turned back to my work. “Because of my eyes. They say that they are dull. Lifeless. And I was born on October 13th, on a Friday. And because of this,” I added, grabbing my cross necklace. I whispered my word and it glowed with a silvery light.
He smiled at me again, his face alight with his smile. “That’s not madness, ma chérie. That’s magic.” He offered me his hand and I took it without any reservation.
Lestat adopted me, and became my mentor. I was quite the eager student when he told me that magic was hereditary. I had no real clue where I came from, but there was a connection to my past deep within my power. I was a little lonely for a few weeks, but then he found Lana and Brent, and I was lonely no longer. My new family was mismatched and yet a whole unit, strong enough to endure many storms.
Withdrawing from my reverie of thought, I looked about the bookstore. I found the section I visited most often, and headed for it. The best books, I’ve discovered, are about those things no one really believes exists but I know for a fact do. I love the books by Sherrilyn Kenyon, Kinley MacGregor, Kerrylin Sparks, and Kim Harrison most because they depict the “fantasy” creatures so vividly. They all point out the vampires as devastatingly handsome, and to an extent, they are correct. Who are they to know the difference between “vampires” and “vampyres”?
I quickly gathered all of the books in the Rachel Morgan series by Kim Harrison, which I had been debating on buying for about three weeks. Unfortunately, for me, I’d been in dire need of a new suit jacket because of a clumsy new paralegal. White out will not come out of a “dry-clean only” Armani suit jacket. At approximately $2,000 a suit, replacements do not come cheap. So I had to save for three weeks to buy a jacket that cost me $1,400 before I could buy my books.
I hurried to the checkout and bought the books, before the money suddenly evaporated from my pocket. It could, too, because I have bills to pay, like everyone else. You can’t exactly conjure real money; you can conjure very good fakes. Also because of the unsavory crowd “Paige” hung out with is liable to contain several pickpockets. In addition, my assistant is known to be quite mischievous.
I met Marcus Erick Alexander (I read his full name, he didn’t say it), my apprentice and assistant, when he picked my pocket just over eight years ago. I bailed him out of jail a few times, contesting charges and such. I even anted up once and paid the bail to have him released to my custody. When I realized his unrefined talent with magic, I took him on as an apprentice and gave him a place to live.
Max (I have no clue where it came from) is on of the only ones to know both Mercy and Paige. He even gets a laugh out of it occasionally. He really notices when I “change”, because Paige is very bossy, and quick to anger, too. When I’m me, I’m so patient I can’t stand it. He’s really smart, has the letters “M.D.” after his name, and never bats and eye when I come home with a gunshot wound. He’ll tend my wounds, kiss my forehead, and remind me he’s a PI, and no longer a practicing doctor
I have found he is good at keeping his mouth shut. That’s why he’s my closest confidant and friend. No one understands me quite like he does. He’s learned how to read my moods, how to blast past my stony self-isolation isolation, and just what to say to make me smile. He is an invaluable friend.
He can be very sweet at times, and at other times, very, very dense. Like with the ‘laughing-at-my-mentor’s-multiple-personalities’. I let you guess which one that was. But he never forgets a day that’s special to me, and he makes certain to help me remember it. He knows when he needs to ‘disappear’ and let others have the illusion that I live alone. I don’t really know what I’d do without my sensitive assistant. Nevertheless, I could live without his dense counterpart.
He’s extremely peculiar and he likes disco music, which I would happily die rather than listen to it a lot of the time. He also can’t dance to save his life. He remembers my favorite flowers –crimson roses- and he remembers my birthday, which is better than can be said for some on my ex-boyfriends. Therefore, I forgive him the disco music obsession. Also, because he’s very tolerant of what I want to listen to.
I love that he’s always home when I get there, even though we’re not involved with each other that way. Eating Chinese take-out alone can be depressing sometimes. I haven’t had to eat alone for eight years, and I appreciate it. Mostly, because I had to eat alone for about 20 years. Thinking about that time depresses me!
I paid for the books and took the offered bag before hurrying to catch the bus that stops about a block from my house. I walked slowly, enjoying the appearance of the sunset hovering above the high-rises. Nature at its finest meets man-made towers. God must be terribly upset that we’ve screwed up his creation so badly, I thought as I walked. Looking around, I realized that I needed to hurry and get home before Max worried too much.
Quickening my stride, I was a few yards off from my home and found that I’d arrived in time to see a man hurry down the stairs of my home. I knew it wasn’t Max. Max wasn’t blond. Couldn’t be Logan, either, because his hair is longer, and also not blond. The man was tall –approximately 6’7”- with dirty blond hair that was cut like he cared about his fashion, and ice-blue eyes that chilled me to the bone. He was dressed expensively, more so that I. His posture and movement suggested to me that he belonged to upper class society.
When he saw me coming toward the step, however, he stopped.
“Are you Mercedes Lupus-Grayson?” he asked, high breeding noticeable in his baritone. To describe his voice in two words, ‘scuffed leather’ is close.
“Depends on who’s asking.” I replied, shying away from the question like the pro I am.
“Jay Harrison.” He extended his hand. I took it and shock in once, firmly.
“Please state your business,” I replied crisply.
He smiled at that. “Spoken like a true attorney. I’m on business from Alexander Kirkland. We understand you are the one we need to talk with to contact Paige Anderson.”
I tensed marginally. He didn’t notice, or he pretended he didn’t. Alexander Kirkland was the Lupin -or leader- of the Chicago pack. Werewolves, if you hadn't guessed. Paige and I know him well. However, he never felt the need to contact us by emissary before. He always just called. Something was up.
“What does he need?” I asked my voice soft and quiet.
“A meeting with Paige.”
“Where?”
“Quimby's Bookstore. Is Paige familiar with it?”
“Nope,” I replied, praying he knew the way.
“It’s at 1854 on West North Avenue.”
“When?” I asked.
“In four hours.”
“Okay. I’ll let her know.”
He turned and walked away from me. After he covered a few feet, he glanced back over his shoulder at me and added, “Oh, and the boss says to wear something sexy and elegant.”
Great. Just what I need: an excuse to expand Paige’s wardrobe. We’re not exactly made of money, here! I thought as I watched the man walk away. Okay, so actually, I was checking out his ass. And what a fine ass it was!
I proceeded to my front stoop and up the steps with my thoughts elsewhere. I was still wondering where I was going to get something sexy and elegant in a hurry.

__________________

WriterJohnB

This, although not my prefered genre, was a delight to read. Very well written and an engaging character, to boot.

Although, I almost passed on reading it. Why? Because I'm a believer that you may not be able to judge a book by its cover, but you can certainly judge a book by the blurb, since the author wrote both. When I saw "duel," rather that "dual," and the two Z's in wizard I figured I was in for the usual beginner hash of bad grammar, poor spelling and stock situations. I was also worried by the "Lupus" in the blurb because decent werewolf stories are rare. But you proved me wrong.

My point is, about the duel, that you have to carefully line-edit the blurb, book proposal, synopsis, etc., because they reflect on your writing ability as much as your book does, in that an editor might not even bother to read the first chapters submitted. Having said that, I certainly hope I didn't make any errors in this critique.

I enjoyed this a lot and took the time to edit a bit, mostly just typos but I know that I prefer my typos pointed out. Good luck with this project.

Take care,

JohnB

__________________
http://www.johnbushore.com

Small-town_Wright

Thank you so much for taking the time to read it anyway! And thank you for corrections! I'll get on those right away.

I am very glad you enjoyed it, and also very glad you did not pass on reading it!

Sincerely,
Kisten

__________________