The next day Cecilio understood that he spent the whole night drinking alcohol-free mojitos since he felt no headache, nausea, or any other symptoms of a hangover when he woke up. Instead of being angry at this, he texted Cherry a simple 'Thank you' and got ready for his mission. Last night’s party was a failure from an investigation point of view, but a success for what it was, a party. Enjoyable to the point Cecilio himself reminisced about the event as he tidied up his room and prepared granola with milk for breakfast. He still doesn't understand how Alcar and some trolls managed to break the bar in half or about that small fire that started in the ladies' bathroom, but no one was harmed and Cherry was happily collecting Vela’s sign on the bill for the many damages, so you could say the night was a success for everyone.
Now, expecting he could be done and over with that strange energy coming from the mountains from a distance was silly, but Cecilio would be successful, he always was even when he downplayed his capabilities. He took a black knit shoulder bag that was stuffed with the things he would need for the day like a book about English literature history, to pass time, his phone, wallet, and cigarette case, and most importantly a dark oak wooden box holding some special instruments needed for this job. While getting out of his apartment he was greeted by the strong smell of paint that made his nose itch.
Sitting on top of a ladder at the end of the hallway and surrounded by the newspaper on the ground and cans of paint was Danielle, his fourteen-year-old neighbor who was so focused on giving the final details to the orchids in the mural she was almost finished with that ignored someone was there beside her and her friend, a young boy of short black hair and brown skin that for some reason had a big blotch of white paint on the back of his red shirt. He noticed Cecilio’s presence and stopped finishing the marigolds at the bottom of the mural.
“Hey! We thought you weren’t home at this hour!” yelled the boy, scaring Danielle and making her ruin a shading on the petal.
“Paolo! No screaming when I’m doing details, please!” she complained, pulling a cloth with colorful stains from a pocket in her equally stained gray overall to fix the imperfection in the flower. “Good morning Cecilio, don't come closer if you don’t want to sneeze like crazy.”
“It’s fine, I wasn’t planning to. Almost finished?”
“Kinda. You like it?”
“I love everything you do, Danielle. These murals, even if they aren’t kind to my allergies while they’re being done, are my favorite things to see each day.”
She turned her head around, and the black box braids that were in a ponytail fell from her shoulder to her back. She smiled brightly at the compliment. Danielle resembled her mother a lot, from the wide nose to the round lips and that gentleness in her gaze, and at times, when looking at her, Cecilio was slightly nostalgic for the times when he was a child and met Nicole for the first time.
“You got white paint on your cheek, and you all over your back, Paolo.”
Both kids laughed and explained the accident they had not that long ago where they lost some of their white paint. Paolo was lucky that the can fell from the ladder and missed his head, but unlucky enough that most of its content fell on his back. At least he had nothing on his hair or face, but Cecilio could imagine how his moms would get when they found out how he got himself covered in paint and almost got hurt in the process.
“But you kids work fast,” he said while looking at all the flowers in full bloom drawn all over the wall. “How long have you been at it?”
“We started in the afternoon and worked nonstop!” exclaimed Danielle, proud of her work. “We even worked until 1 AM before Ms. Lila came to get us.”
“Didn’t you hear us? We even had music playing most of the time,” continued Paolo.
“At all. I dozed off until this morning.”
“Mom said you might since she got you all those books. Man, those were heavy to unload from the van,” said the young boy as he remembered doing his mom the favor and having to carry such a heavy box. “Hope you enjoy them!”
“Oh, I do. Forever in debt with your mother for getting these out of print editions.”
“Mom pulled some strings with those many contacts with different prints and publishers she got, whatever you need, Avila’s bookshop has it, or we try hard enough to get it!”
Cecilio and Paolo laughed as the oldest ruffled his hair playfully. Lila trained his boy well, thought Cecilio to himself while ignoring how Danielle went down the ladder, cleaning her hands on the back of her clothes and staring directly into Cecilio’s eyes.
“Where were you yesterday? The truth, please,” she asked.
“At home. Sleeping.”
“No you weren’t,” she furrowed her thick brows.
“And how could you know that, miss?”
Cecilio crossed his arms, and so did Danielle, that’s how Paolo knew a battle of the wits was about to commence. He preferred to sit this one out and finish painting his flowers.
“I didn’t even hear you sneeze. Not once.”
“Well, your mother warned me about it a little earlier. So I took my medicine before napping.”
Here Cecilio wasn’t simply half lying, he did forget about everything and fell asleep as fast as he reached his bed, but the opened green pill case and uncapped nasal spray on his night table were evidence that he, while asleep, avoided in time his rhinitis. That’s why nothing interrupted his dream.
Though he would've gladly enjoyed sneezing like crazy rather than dreaming with Theo.
“I could believe that… What I don’t believe is that you didn’t wake up at 10 PM for your bedtime coffee,” she put a finger on her chin and looked thoughtful. “And you skipped the afternoon coffee too. You never skip both.”
This caffeine addiction of his could be his downfall.
“Didn’t want to. I barely slept yesterday, so coffee was a big no-no.”
“Yeah sure,” murmured Paolo.
“There’s also the music thing,” she continued. “You never complain, but we would have woken you up and heard you walk around late at night.”
“What are you trying to prove, Danielle?”
“That you left the building without leaving it, and went to that special place.”
The sparkle in her eyes made Cecilio roll his eyes and let out a heavy sigh. He should’ve seen this coming, especially from Danielle who was quite nosy, especially if it was about her curious and magical neighbor.
“You went there?! The place behind your store!” she exclaimed and even got Paolo to stand up and help her with the fierce questioning.
How could these two children know about Club Kalon when there was a big vow of secrecy in the earthborn community? That was Cecilio’s fault for not being as careful as someone of his rank should be. It just so happens that one day he forgot to lock the door in his apartment, and a ten-year-old Danielle and Paolo wanted to give him some cookies they baked that afternoon. They didn’t find Cecilio there, but did see the floor door open, and, being the children filled with endless curiosity they were, they walked down the stairs and peeked behind the closed curtain to see Cecilio and Cherry working for the first time in that space outside of this dimension were the base for Club Kalon was.
Both of them were over by the time the children arrived, but the kids hid well enough to see with awe how from the tips of Cecilio’s fingers emanated a green sparkling light, and the bright white light that came from the door the lady that accompanied him walked in and disappeared. They saw as the door was closed, and how Cecilio drew some symbols with the light coming from his hands. Paolo had been a little scared, but Danielle always knew, ever since she was a little girl, that her late grandma Amina and Cecilio were extraordinary. She simply didn’t know to what extent they both were until now. The box of cookies fell to the ground, and it was enough to make Cecilio look at the curtain and for it to open wide and show the little kids, startled but intrigued while looking at him.
The only reason they still remembered such a day was that the two of them, in shock and thanks to a little bit of magic, fainted, and Cecilio never had the guts to put a spell over their memories. They believed it was a dream for a while, and he let them be. Then they grew up and Danielle had suspicions, then kept insisting on knowing more about things that should remain occult to regular humans. Your usual occultism books wouldn't quench her thirst for knowledge because both she and Paolo wanted to know about Cecilio and what he was capable of.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he answered while looking the other way, his expression unchanged.
Danielle hit him in the arm, and he tried to act as if it didn’t hurt. “Shut up man! You know! And I think we’re both old enough for you to stop acting like what we saw that day was a dream, an illusion caused by sugar or whatever you come up with!”
“Maybe you guys inhaled too much glue and hallucinated then.”
“We were 10, not 4!” Yelled Paolo, offended. “I’ve never smelled or eaten glue in my life!”
“Fine! I take it back. But you guys didn’t see anything out of the ordinary!”
“If you won’t talk about that then what about the vampire that visits you sometimes? Mr. Elliot was it?” asked Danielle.
“He’s not a vampire he’s just British.”
He tried walking away from this argument, but both kids grabbed him by the long sleeves of his beige knitted sweater. They would not let go easily, they never did, and it took him back to when he used to nanny them both as little kids and they would, as overcurious children, ask him many questions. Some were random, others were personal, but he wished they would be asking him stuff like where babies come from again instead of these delicate subjects.
“Mom says he looks the same way he did ever since she moved here.”
“It’s because his sunscreen’s amazing. I’ll ask what brand it is and let you both know. Can I go?”
Danielle’s hold was tighter on his sleeve. “You know Cecilio? I like you, I really do! You’re one of my best friends.”
“Lame to be friends with fourteen-year-olds at this age,” he scoffed and won himself a kick in the chin by Danielle. He tried not to curse, and only rubbed where it hurt. “Mean!”
“You’re the one being mean! Telling us we are not cool enough to be your friends!” reclaimed Paolo.
“And lying!” yelled Danielle
“Lying too!” continued Paolo. “You think we’re dumb and will forever pretend that we didn’t see that door that one time?"
“There’s not a door there, just the shop’s storage. Both of you have seen it.”
Both kids keep quiet because what Cecilio was saying was true in a way. Danielle and Paolo could swear on their lives about what they saw four years ago, but whenever they went to the store and managed to peek behind that heavy velvet curtain, they would only find the pristine and organized storage with all of the products he sold in Astralis. Whenever this happened, Cecilio would always be behind them, smiling as if taunting them, because he knew that no matter how many times they opened that curtain, they would always find the storage.
“We know you’re a witch,” muttered Paolo. “Easy for you to, I don’t know, alter reality or make illusions.”
Cecilio cackled and ruffled again the boy's hair. “I am a witch! That’s not a secret! But there’s a difference between what I can do and what you guys dreamed! I make essential oils, and sachet bags, and read the tarot for whoever pays. That’s it, only because I do these rituals doesn’t mean that I have godly powers!”
Surprisingly, Danielle let go first, and she seemed frustrated by the way she pressed her lips. But then she relaxed after some seconds. Paolo let go too, and they waited for whatever Danielle had to say.
“Fine, let’s leave it like this for today.”
“Giving up so quickly?” asked Cecilio, fixing his sweater over his exposed shoulder. “Usually you would pester me a little longer. Are you finally maturing?”
“Get out! I’m busy and I dislike stubborn people!”
She climbed back to her place at the top of the ladder and started painting again, ignoring how Paolo whispered that such a complaint was rich coming from her. Cecilio finally left and sneezed two times before leaving the floor. Paolo looked at his friend, concentrating on what she was doing, knowing well she hadn’t given up yet.
“Thinking about changing the approach?” he asked.
“Of course. We are going into that place one of these days.”
They both shared a smile, but Paolo was thinking a lot about this last exchange with Cecilio, and how he’d seemed not as dismissive of everything as usual. Normally, he would’ve avoided the topic, and switched it mid-conversation to confuse them, but for him to talk more about his job was certainly odd.
“And then what? We find that place and the lady that walked in and?”
“We ask her about Theo. If we find out about that place, maybe we will find out what happened to Theo.”
“You know I support you, but don't you think that’s a little far-fetched?”
She stopped her brush against the wall for an instant, thinking back to those fuzzy memories of her childhood, and about that boy that was in it for just one year and who’d disappeared as quick as a shooting star.
“Probably, but I don’t like to be lied to. You also remember Theo, and…”
“And…?”
She sighed, “I miss him, but I mostly miss how Cecilio used to be when he was around.”
“Yeah… I would love to see him doing that cool magic trick again though.”
“Oh hell yeah.”
They laughed and continued their job, ignoring that Cecilio was at the bottom of the stairs, and his sense of hearing was good enough to listen to everything they said. He wished for spring to pass quickly this year, and for Danielle and Paolo to let go of that man too. Finally, he was out of the building and on his way to the mountains. André had been waiting outside the building and inside a black car that he started as quickly as Cecilio sat in the passenger seat. André looked at his boss from the corner of his eyes.
“What took you so long?”.
“Children.”
The demon laughed at the stress emanating from him. “Those two are going to find you out one of these days. I bet on it.”
Cecilio rubbed the back of his neck and pulled the book out of his bag to try and relax on the road.
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