The Boy Band Curse: Chapter Two
Upon cleaning my shattered healing salve off the floor and disinfecting my sunstones at least ten times each, I sat down to re-analyze the cloaking spell. And then noticed Cam’s jizz all over the other couch.
“Those fucking…fuckboys,” I grumbled as I stalked into the kitchen to retrieve more disinfectant potions. I would probably need to conduct a full ritual to rid the house of their scent. Part of me wanted to just burn it all down.
Simone hopped on the back of the couch, sniffed Cam’s semen, and hissed. “They were not my type. Too toned.”
“Too toned?” I repeated, rummaging through the unorganized cabinets. “That was your problem with them? Not the fact they were beyond obnoxious and idiotic?”
“I’ve dated worse. You’ve dated worse.”
“Galen wasn’t stupid,” I said far too defensively. Especially considering we’d been broken up for three years and he was the dictionary definition of evil. “But, you’re right, he’s worse than literally everyone. Those bozos weren’t far behind, though.”
“Uh huh.” Simone swished her tail through the air, clearly unconvinced.
I gripped the cabinet door handle hard enough the wood splintered. “Don’t even suggest it.”
“You could easily track them down.” She hopped from the couch to the island to give me her cutest kitty cat eyes. “They flirted with you even though you look like a moldy toe! Besides, you are the only one who’ll ever really know them now.”
“I don’t know them—”
“But you could. Come on, Nini. You don’t want to be a cat forever.”
“Maybe I do.” I slammed shut the cabinet and marched toward the couch with a potion bottle in hand. “I’m sure they’ll both find someone they trust enough to reveal their true identities to eventually. Well, maybe not, considering their personalities, but that’s not my problem.”
“Uh, it is your problem because of the curse. Remember the curse?”
“I can’t force myself to fall in love with either of them,” I insisted, dousing the couch in as much disinfectant potion as possible. “And I don’t want to anyway. I’ll never know another moment of peace with them around.”
“You won’t know another moment of peace as it is.” She leaped onto the only dry portion of the couch and glowered at me. “You’re miserable and lonely. Maybe…maybe Mom had a point—you know, by cursing us. It was her backwards way of making sure we wouldn’t end up like you are now.”
“I will never give in to Mom’s ‘perfect’ plan for my life.” I blew an agitated breath onto the couch, magically evaporating the potion and making the fabric good as new. It still didn’t feel right, though. Nothing did these days. “I believed in true love for five years, and look how that turned out. Mom is wrong. I’m too old for her to still have so much authority over my life. I’m going to reverse this curse.”
Once more, I plopped onto the couch and sifted through all my open books until I found the one on counter curses.
Though I’d scoured the whole text already, I hadn’t actually tried any of the spells myself. I’d figured since my more powerful friend hadn’t succeeded, I couldn’t either, but the arbitrary ceiling I’d placed over my own abilities had cracked with the cloaking spell. Energy crackled through my nerves, attuning me to the supernatural in a way I hadn’t experienced since my breakup with Galen.
“Ah, the passion infatuation instills in you,” Simone said with a wistful sigh.
“More like the passion of annoyance.”
I flipped to a ritual designed specifically to counter emotion-based curses. Considering Mom’s curse was about love and she’d certainly utilized no logic when casting it, this had to be the one.
Maya had failed when we tried it last year, but she wasn’t personally connected to the curse. Maybe my magic, my energy, my emotions had to negate my Mom’s.
“Good luck with that one,” Simone drawled, peering over my shoulder at the ritual. “You’ll have to actually dredge feelings out of that cold, dark heart of yours to make it work.”
“I have emotions—particularly strong ones regarding the curse, actually.”
After setting down the book, I crossed the room to the front bay window, where I kept crystals to be cleansed in the moonlight. Though I would have preferred green tourmaline, all mine were probably embedded in the couches, so I opted for the biggest chunk of rose quartz gleaming in the afternoon sun.
“You don’t need to have feelings about the curse itself,” Simone said, still scanning the ritual. “You’ll need to feel as if you’re in love.”
I paused at the cabinet of essential oils, staring numbly at the vials. “I’ve felt it before. I can pretend.”
My sister’s cat lips pursed, but she didn’t question me as I retrieved the neroli and returned to my seat.
“I’ll anoint you also.” I dabbed the oil onto a cloth and rubbed it over each of our hearts. “That way, maybe the counter curse will affect you too.”
Simone purred but didn’t reply, clearly having zero faith in my abilities. She did follow me to the floor behind the couch, though, flopping onto her back like a starfish beside me.
With the rose quartz pressed above my heart, I lay supine and closed my eyes, drowning out the tickle of Simone’s fur against my arm, the hum of the refrigerator, the citrusy floral scent of neroli.
The magical realm pressed against my eyelids with force this time, dragging me into the endless dark. I recited the words to summon a conduit for my emotions, and a river of liquid rose quartz snaked into view, close but just out of my hand’s reach.
This was the part where I had to open my heart, had to attract magic with the power of love—romantic love, as per my mother’s specification. Other than the few crushes throughout my youth, my relationship with Galen was my only reference, so I unlocked the door I’d sealed three years ago and let the memories flow.
Our first stargazing date, when he warmed the chilly autumn air around us, thinking I wouldn’t notice the subtle magic.
Our first Christmas together, when I finally admitted to him that I was a witch, and he thought it was cute that I’d believed he didn’t inherently know.
The late nights we studied together, applied for jobs together, practiced rituals together.
And then all the other things we did together, but not really.
Watching movies while he spelled shirts to make himself appear more attractive—as if he needed it.
Walking through the park while he hypnotized humans into innocuous acts.
Eating at restaurants while he bewitched the waitstaff into believing we were owed anything we wanted for free.
I could never come close to doing any of the magic he so flawlessly executed, and at the time I thought I felt love, felt admiration, but recalling the memories now revealed the truth.
Because I’d felt then exactly as I did now. Loneliness. Longing. Inadequacy.
Galen had always been like the rose quartz river, enticingly beautiful but untouchable. Right there but impossibly out of reach. Everything I wanted but nothing I felt like I deserved.
I still tried. I tried to imagine what it would’ve felt like to love him and not just want him. Imagine that warmth filled my chest in his presence instead of a desolate chasm. But the only heat I experienced was rage, and the more I acknowledged it, the farther away the rose quartz river slipped.
If I wanted this ritual to work, I couldn’t envision Galen. Frankly, I needed to perform another spell to first banish him from my psyche. And then I needed to conjure the perfectly lovable person. Someone who saw me, who understood me, who dwelled at my level instead of hovering above me. An imaginary someone, obviously, because no man that ideal could exi—
The rose quartz river snapped toward me, wrapping around my throat like a noose.
I thrashed within the confines of my mind, kicking and screaming into the void until sensation finally restored to my body and my eyes flared open.
Only to find two figures looming over me, two dark demons dotted with stars, like human-shaped windows into the cosmos.
Shit—had I summoned magical entities here? Had I somehow conjured the embodiment of magic itself?
Their knees pinned my nightgown to the floor, and one had its fingers snared in my hair to prevent my head from moving. The one with its hand around my throat leaned closer, a sinister smile in its voice as it uttered a simple, “Hi.”
A scream built in my chest but couldn’t push through my throat. The creature’s grip was too tight.
“Are you scared?” the other one crooned in my ear, and this time the familiarity of their voices hit me, knocking out what little oxygen remained in my lungs. “You know how we fucking feel, then.”
The cosmic darkness of their forms receded, revealing the calmly enraged faces of Cam and Blaze. They remained nearly as invisible as before, two ghosts back to haunt me—or kill me, judging by the vice-like hold Cam had on my neck.
“Pl…pllll,” I wheezed out, trying to smash the rose quartz against his arm, but he had my wrist restrained against the floor. Blaze had secured the other one, rendering me helpless.
“You tricked us,” he snarled, tugging on my hair. “You tricked us into thinking you were a witch. So fucking stupi—”
Simone flew out of nowhere, her claws easily latching onto Cam’s chest. They sunk into his shallow wound, and he cried out, flailing backward as he tried to pry her off.
Sucking in a desperate breath, I instinctively moved to sit upright, but Blaze kept my hair held against the floor, his face hardened without a hint of concern for his friend.
“Let me go,” I demanded hoarsely. “I didn’t trick you.”
Blaze let out a low laugh. “Unluckily for you, I’m officially a murderer now, and you’re pissing me off.”
The scuffling sounds came to an abrupt halt, and a second later, Cam planted his feet on either side of my torso. Squatting over me, he held Simone by her scruff, his near-invisible arm extended out as far as possible. “The minute we stepped into civilization, we were recognized,” he said with false enthusiasm. “Wanna tell us what that’s about?”
I swallowed, eyes flickering toward Simone’s panicked face. Part of me wanted to summon my dagger and stab these dickheads for how they were manhandling us, but I couldn’t kill them in the middle of my house. I’d run out of disinfecting potions.
“I won’t talk to you until you put down my cat,” I said. “She won’t attack you again.”
Simone’s eyes narrowed like she disagreed, and Blaze’s lips twisted like he’d rather torture me into talking than heed my demands, but Cam reluctantly set her on the floor, braced for another onslaught. My sister only hissed, though, before prowling toward the kitchen to wash her bloody paws in the sink.
Dumbfounded, Cam watched her turn on the faucet, but Blaze was too aggressively fixed on me to care about my cat’s strange behaviors anymore.
“Did you tell anyone we were here? Did you call the cops?”
“I told you, I don’t want anyone snooping around here—I don’t want any attention at all. I hoped you two would never come back here, but apparently my wards are still malfunctioning—maybe even doing the opposite of their job, at this point.”
The guys exchanged a look, and Cam loudly whispered, “Do you think she’s schizo?”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not schizophrenic. You saw the glowing orange orb, didn’t you? You felt the magic throw you across the room—you fear came from it!”
“It did feel magical,” Cam admitted pensively. “But not in a good way, though.”
“Whatever that was, it didn’t disguise us,” Blaze said. “We walked into a gas station, and…and our faces were on the TV—everyone’s looking for us. The guy behind the register spotted us immediately. We had to run all the way back here—”
“Were you followed?” I peered through Cam’s transparent body at the open front door, and his brows furrowed when he noticed my line of sight.
“Who cares?” Blaze finally released my hair to slump against the back of the couch in defeat. “It’s only a matter of time before they find us.”
Scooting out from beneath Cam, I sat up to massage my scalp. “Yeah, and if they find you here, I’ll be accused of harboring fugitives.”
A spiteful smirk spread on Cam’s lips. “Good, then you can come to jail with us.”
“You have no reason to be this cruel to me,” I argued. “I tried to help you, but you didn’t listen to—”
“We did exactly what you said—envisioned how we wanted to be seen.” Blaze death-gripped his own hair this time. “We even came up with whole new personas for ourselves. I was gonna be Brad, he was gonna be Chad.”
“Oh, yeah, I was gonna be such a douche,” Cam enthused as he sat back and folded his arms on his knees. “My thing was gonna be pretending people said things they didn’t. Like if the gas station guy said, ‘Hey, how are you?’ I’d be like, ‘Damn, why you gotta be so rude?’ and walk away all disappointed in humanity.”
“Yeah, we were excited for that, but it didn’t happen because you lied to us,” Blaze complained, one hundred percent serious.
I glared back and forth at them, wishing there were an easy way to magically expel them from the house. “I should’ve known that cloaking spell wouldn’t work with ego-maniacs. You two wanted people to see you as yourselves, didn’t you? If not consciously, then subconsciously. You can’t bear the thought of being anyone else because you love yourselves too much.”
Blaze shook his head in disgust. “You may not be a witch, but you are a bitch, you know that?”
My dagger soared from the kitchen to my hand with barely a thought from me. “Say that again.”
“Hey, hey, stop that.” Cam gently lowered my wrist, and I just barely resisted the urge to jab him. “We like bitches, okay? It wasn’t an insult.”
“We do, but it was still an insult,” Blaze grumbled.
As soon as I angled the blade at him, Cam’s grasp on my wrist tightened, his translucent blue eyes staring at me intensely enough that they almost seemed opaque.
“You’re wrong about us,” he implored. “Even if we hadn’t created our sick new personas, I wouldn’t have had to put any effort into wanting people to see me differently. I…after what we…we did, I don’t want to be looked at—I don’t want to be me anymore.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “You expect me to believe that?”
Blaze sat forward to get in my face, and I didn’t have to see him clearly to sense his ire. “Do you think we enjoy being famous—being swarmed wherever we go? I’ve fantasized about faking my death and going incognito for years, but even in disguises I’m too recognizable. This trick you played on us was my dream, and…well, you must really be a witch for that—for knowing exactly what would give me hope and then snatching it out from under me.”
My agitation wilted a little, but I refused to feel empathy for these guys after they’d barged into my house twice.
“I told you I’ve never done this cloaking spell before,” I said, “and I told you to put the sunstones on your hearts, not your dicks. Something went wrong with the ritual, but…it still had an effect. You…you both look…like nothing. You’re almost invisible.”
Their eyes darted toward each other, and Cam’s jaw dropped. “You made us invisible?”
“Don’t listen to her, dude,” Blaze dismissed, his anger returning. “She’s messing with us. Do I look invisible to you? Did we look invisible to the gas station guy?”
With a breathy laugh, Cam twisted my wrist to point the dagger toward my own heart. “You’re a little con witch, aren’t you? What are you trying to gain he—”
“Nini,” Simone interrupted, and I hesitantly took my focus off Cam to see her waiting in the doorway to her old bedroom, the only one on the first floor. She nodded for me to join her.
Blaze peered around the couch at her in bewilderment. “What kinda meow was that?”
I cleared my throat and sat a little straighter. “I need to go…consult my cat.”
Cam’s whole face scrunched. “Your cat.”
“My books, I mean.” I dropped the dagger and pulled his fingers off my arm. “You can keep the weapon if it’ll make you less…volatile. Don’t move. And don’t touch anything.”
Scrambling to my feet, I shot them each a warning look and then hurried into the bedroom.
“Are you okay?” I asked as soon as the door was shut.
“I’m fine.” Simone jumped onto her old queen size bed, which I’d covered in books…and shoved into the corner to make floor space for more piles of books. “But you’re screwed. You botched the spell.”
“Obviously, because they decided to jerk off with my crystals.” Crossing my arms, I glared out the window at the green forest trees. “How did that gas station guy see them if they’re mostly invisible, though?”
“They don’t look invisible to me. They look like meat sticks. Probably because I’m hallucinating from hunger.”
“Do they actually? Wait, is that why you attacked Cam—not to save me, but to eat him?”
Simone glanced heavenward. “No, dumbo. I was saving your ass. And they don’t actually look like meat sticks, but…they do look different. Older. Hotter. A little less fuckboy, a little more dad-bod. You know, my type.”
“Your type,” I echoed, processing. “So you’re seeing them how you want them to look—and I’m seeing them how I want them to look, which is not here… And the gas station guy… Do you think he just wanted to see them—the fugitives on TV—so he saw them as themselves?”
“That would be very coincidental, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, but…still possible. Either way, the spell isn’t working as it should—the guys should be in control of how they look.”
“Well, if we’re talking about should, they shouldn’t have rubbed one off mid-ritual, and the magic shouldn’t have hit you like it did.”
I glanced down, knowing I wouldn’t perceive myself differently, but checking anyway. “Do you think it cloaked me, too?”
Simone’s cat nose wrinkled. “No, you look as grody as usual, and I’d love to see you dressed and ready to get us groceries. You’re not cloaked, but…you might be required. Your presence, I mean. The magic won’t work if you’re not there. With them. Always.”
“No,” I said as Simone snickered to herself. “No, it can’t—they can’t—the gas station guy seeing them as themselves was a coincidence.”
“Oh, yeah, I’m sure he wanted to encounter two murderous fugitives.”
“Some people are crazy like that. They crave danger or drama or—”
“Girl. Chill. The situation’s not that bad, seriously. It could be so much worse. They were rubbing their dicks. The spell could’ve, like, sexually tethered you to them or something.” Her mischievous eyes sparkled like ice. “You would hate that.”
“Shut up. Even you don’t find them attractive. They’re brainless assholes.”
“We have brains,” Cam’s voice sounded from beyond the door. “I mean, I’ve never seen mine, but I have a headache, so I’d say it’s there.”
Brimming with frustration, I threw open the door, revealing Cam leaning on the frame and Blaze admiring the black gemstones on my dagger’s hilt.
“Who were you talking to?” Cam gave a knowingly cheery smile as he waved his fingers at Simone.
“My…self,” I answered, blocking my sister from view. At this point, I wouldn’t have had a problem explaining her predicament to them, but Simone didn’t even like that Maya knew about her embarrassing condition, let alone two human strangers.
Blaze’s amber eyes rose from the blade. “Really? You get into character when you talk to yourself, huh?”
I clenched my jaw and summoned the dagger back to my hand, startling him. “I have bad news.”
“Okay, okay,” Cam said, steeling himself with a nod. “Give us the good news second.”
“There is no good news. It’s all bad news. You two screwed up the ritual, and now…everyone sees you how they want to see you. On top of that, the magic only works if I’m…in the vicinity.”
Blaze’s eyebrows drew progressively closer together while Cam blinked himself into oblivion.
“So…we’re stuck with you—forever?” Blaze clarified.
“You want us to be invisible?” Cam asked with an exaggerated frown.
“I want you to be gone so I can be alone, but seemingly, that isn’t happening now.”
Blaze dragged his gaze over me suspiciously while Cam pivoted to survey the living room and kitchen with fresh appreciation.
“Well, I always kinda wanted to live in a creepy abandoned horror house, so—”
“Cut the bit, Cam.” Blaze snagged the collar of his friend’s ripped velvet shirt. “We’re not staying here.”
“Oh really?” Cam shoved him away. “What’s your solution, then? Prison?”
“No, we make her fix this.”
I tapped the flat side of the blade against Blaze’s pec, and he flinched away. “How do you intend on doing that? Gonna assault me again?”
He attempted a smile. “We’ll…ask nicely?”
“It’s not so simple, dipshit,” I huffed, shoving between them to retrieve the book on cloaking spells, still on the couch, open to the failed ritual. “I’ll need to figure out a counter spell for one that’s been misconducted. Even most powerful witches and wizards can’t do that.”
“Then let’s try another one.” Cam appeared on the other side of the book and flipped it to the next page. “We won’t wank off this time. Promise.”
I scowled up at his faintly visible face and slammed shut the book. “Even if I trusted that you wouldn’t, you can’t be cloaked by two different spells at once. This is your one and only.”
Blaze folded his hands atop his head, sucked in a breath, and then kicked the coffee table, raining crystals on the floor.
“Dude,” I griped, half-heartedly aiming the knife at him.
The finger he pointed back was arguably more menacing. “I’m not apologizing for that. You screwed us.”
Indignation clawed up my throat. “I helped you when I didn’t have to. And nothing bad has actually befallen you, anyway. You can walk out of here exactly how you walked in. I didn’t turn you into monsters.”
Blaze stepped even closer to me than Cam, nostrils flaring. “You didn’t have to. I did.”
Cam backhanded his friend’s chest, but his face was all sadness. “Don’t do that, man. You didn’t have a choice. You saved us.”
“And fucked us.” Blaze glued his gaze to the shelved wall, throat bobbing, and I knew it wasn’t an act. He didn’t seem comfortable enough with his emotions to cry in front of others even as a manipulation tactic.
And, lamentably, it did tug at my dormant heartstrings.
“I should erase your memories and banish you from my house,” I began as I tossed the spellbook onto the coffee table.
“We’ll call the cops first and tell them where you live,” Cam said, eyes darting around in search of a phone. “We’re not going down without you.”
“Did you not hear the ‘but’ coming?” I questioned impatiently. “I was about to actually say something nice, and now I don’t think I will.”
Cam’s face fell. “Oh. I was…kidding. Ha-ha. We would never betray you. Swearsies.”
He held out his pinkie to me, which I ignored, and Blaze pinched the bridge of his nose.
“If you…want,” I began again, “you guys can…stay here…for a few days. A few days, that’s it. Just so we can figure out some long term options.”
My offer was not met with gratitude, but rather slivered-eyed skepticism.
“Are you gonna do mad-witch experiments on us in the middle of the night?” Cam asked.
With an eye roll, I threw my dagger back toward its holster in the kitchen. “I won’t do anything that’ll require you stay here longer than necessary, least of all make you my permanent test dummies. I might create a voodoo doll of you, though, if you irk me.”
“Can you actually do that?” Cam whispered in alarm. “Shit, you already seem irked—”
“What’s the catch?” Blaze spoke over his friend, arms crossed like a tough guy. “What do you want in return?”
“Nothing except the obvious: don’t tell anyone I’m a witch, don’t send angry townsfolk to my door with pitchforks—”
“Nah, nah, you want something.” Blaze took another intimidating step toward me, voice dark and low as he added, “Everyone always wants something from us.”
Cam licked his lips into an evil smirk. “A personal serenade, perhaps?”
My body jolted into flight or fight mode. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
Snickering, Cam rested an elbow on his friend’s shoulder. “At least we know how to torment you.”
“Which we will if we find out this whole thing is some elaborate creepy scam,” Blaze said.
“Trust me, I don’t want you here,” I reiterated, already regretting my weak moment of benevolence.
“But the door always opens for us,” Cam singsonged, leaning a little closer as he gestured toward it.
Heat permeated my face, from their proximity, from their collectively jeering expressions, from the truth of Cam’s words. “Yeah, well…that’s a magical fluke.”
“Suuure.” Cam winked at me before strolling to close the front door.
Blaze retreated back a step, less brazen without his other half. “What should we call you? The Evil Bog Witch? Boggy for short?”
I pressed my lips together to stifle any hint of amusement. “My name’s Aennika. Aennika Malum.”
“Annika?” Cam wrongly pronounced as he hopped over the back of one couch and sunk into its cushions.
“Eh-nnika,” I corrected, sitting stiffly on the empty couch. “You have to say it with an accent.”
Instead of joining his friend, Blaze took the spot next to me, trapping me between them again, his legs spread wide enough his knee almost touched mine. “What accent?”
“I don’t know, just an accent—you have to say it with an accent.”
“All right, Annie,” Cam said with a thick country accent.
I snorted. “Okay, fine, some sort of European accent, probably. My father was a foreign man, and my mom didn’t know exactly where he was from, but he had ‘an accent,’ so she named me Aennika with an accent. Pretty sure it’s on my birth certificate.”
Blaze pulled a carnelian crystal out from under his ass and inspected it. “Witches get birth certificates?”
“We try to blend into human society as much as possible, yeah. I went to public school, went to college, had a few jobs…” I trailed off, and they both looked like they had a million questions waiting on the tips of their tongues, but they were smart enough to pick up on my reserved demeanor, at least.
“I’ll call you Annie, as long as that’s not okay with you,” Cam said as he lifted one knee to rest his elbow on.
“I’m debating between Nikki and Mally.” Blaze’s eyes slid from the carnelian to me, and a sly grin followed. “Based on your increasingly horrified facial expressions, Mally’s the winner.”
In truth, Nikki was far worse since it’d been Galen’s nickname for me, but I wasn’t about to tell him that.
“I guess I don’t even need to ask your names, then. I’ll just call you Brainless and Asshole.”
“You seriously don’t recognize us?” Blaze asked in disbelief. “I’m Blaze Zamoro. Blazamoro.”
“And I’m Cameron Nuxley.” Cam rested his head sideways on the back of the couch. “You know, Cuxley.”
“Cucks-lee?” I repeated slowly, feeling like I had heard their names somewhere before.
“Yeah, Cuxley.”
“Your name has the word ‘cuck’ in it,” I pointed out, unable to hide my amusement this time.
Cam sat up, mouth agape. “What? No, no way.”
I stared at him for a long minute, wondering if his brain was permanently fried from drugs or something, but then Blaze burst out laughing, tipping sideways onto the armrest.
“Okay, okay, fine, you got me.” Cam held up his hands in faux guilt. “I know my name has ‘cuck’ in it, but that’s the bit. I pretend I don’t.”
“It doesn’t seem like you have to pretend very hard to be an idiot,” I commented.
“He’s the dumb twin, yeah.” Blaze sat upright again, his knee brushing mine in the process. Frazzled, I crossed one leg over the other in the opposite direction—and then almost kicked Cam, flustering me further.
Far too many months had passed without any physical contact, apparently.
Once my heart stopped panicking like a teenage virgin, I registered what Blaze had said. “You’re…not twins.”
“Another bit,” Cam explained. “We pretend we’re convinced we’re twins even though we’re clearly not the same race.”
“Some fans are actually convinced,” Blaze said. “Like, they write theses and shit about how we could maybe be fraternal twins with different recessive genes.”
I burrowed deeper into my corner of the couch, reluctant to ask, “What kind of fans do you have? Are you comedians or something?”
They exchanged incredulous smiles, like they’d discovered a rare new species.
“We’re The Blazin’ Cameras,” they said in unison.
The name rattled through my brain, as grating now as it had been all throughout high school and college. The heartthrobs no one would stop gushing about, the popstars at the top of every chart—“You’re a band,” I said dumbly.
Cam gasped as if I’d dropped a slur. “We’re a musical duo.”
“You guys are a boy band,” I said, the horror burgeoning as I recalled the few times my ears had fallen subject to their music.
Blaze practically gagged. “We’re not a boy band. We are men. We’re thirty-two, for fuck’s sake.”
“Little old to still be in a boy band, huh?” I taunted, too shocked to react any other way. Two of the most famous people in the world had barged into my house and were now beholden to my good graces. What the fuck.
“We’re not—well, okay, maybe it started out similar to a boy band,” Cam conceded. “But we’ve matured—we lost two of our members—and now it’s just us, making dope tunes.”
“We write dark music now, okay—it’s dark,” Blaze said defensively, actually shying away from my judgmental gaze.
“Oh, really? What’s the darkest thing you’ve ever written about?”
Cam snapped his fingers a few times as he thought. “There was that one song when we referenced Ham Burgliboo’s death.”
“Don’t give her more ammo to mock us with,” Blaze said through his teeth.
I covered my mouth to hold back a giggle. “Whose death?”
“Oh, the band hamster we brought on all our tours the first few years—until he died,” Cam said solemnly. “Sorry, Annie, I forgot you’re pretending you didn’t stalk us when you were a teenager.”
My smile evaporated, because even though I’d truthfully never been a fan, a pathetic part of teenage Aennika had secretly found them attractive.
And a pathetic part of present day Aennika had been ogling them since they first arrived.
But that part needed to wither and die immediately if they were going to be staying under my roof for any length of time. No way in hell would I feed their egos.
“I’m a witch—I didn’t listen to boy bands. I liked the angsty, emo, screaming stuff. You know, dark music.” I jumped my eyebrows at Blaze, who shifted like he was ready to physically prove me wrong. “That’s still my taste, actually. I don’t think I’ve had the misfortune of hearing any of your music in at least three years.”
“That’s bullshit,” Cam scoffed. “You can’t go out in public without hearing our music.”
“Yeah, well.” I glanced down at my nails, the tips stained green from the last potion I concocted, and the sensation of their quizzical eyes bored into either side of my face.
“You have speakers over here.” Blaze stood and gestured toward the giant stereo I’d acquired at a yard sale years ago. “Give me your phone. I’ll put on our latest masterpiece.”
“You don’t need my phone.” Which was for the best, since I didn’t actually know where it was. “The stereo’s spelled to play whatever I want.”
Cam sat forward, intrigued. “Really? Do we still get royalties?”
“Uh…”
“We’re never getting royalties again, so who cares?” Blaze pressed the power button, his eyebrows arching when it actually turned on. “Tell it to play ‘The Bottom of the Bucket.’”
“It’s also spelled to only play music I’ll like,” I said, preemptively cringing.
Blaze stared at me for a solid twenty seconds. “So tell it to play ‘The Bottom of the Bucket.’”
“Okay,” I said through a sigh. “Stereona, play ‘The Bottom of the Bucket.’”
“Stereona?” Cam barely managed to repeat through his laughter.
“I cannot play that song, Aennika,” said Stereona’s melodic voice. “You would hate it.”
Cam’s smile instantly plummeted into gaping outrage. “What? No. C’mon.”
“Well,” Blaze said with a bitter smirk, “if your taste is so refined, Mally, show us what superior music sounds like.”
“I think I’m too old to subject myself to bullying from the cool kids.”
Cam grimaced sympathetically. “It’s that bad, huh?”
“I think it’s time we all go to bed—separate beds,” I emphasized, sweeping a hand toward Simone’s old bedroom. “You guys can stay in the spare room.”
“Me-ow,” Simone practically growled, sitting defensively in the doorway.
Cam craned his neck back to look at the microwave’s clock, and his whole face scrunched. “It’s four PM.”
“It’s that late already? Wow.” I started toward the staircase, but Blaze’s voice stopped me before I reached the first step.
“Do you have any food?”
“Meowww,” Simone moaned.
“Is the water safe to drink or will it turn us into frogs?” Cam asked as he walked to the sink. “I guess it doesn’t matter, you can just kiss us back to normal.” He winked at me before tilting his head to drink straight from the faucet like a dehydrated dog.
I massaged my forehead. “That’s not even a witch-related fairytale.”
“We can make you dinner,” Blaze offered, joining his friend in the kitchen. “If you have anything that’s frozen and microwavable.”
“There…is no food,” I admitted as he opened the near-empty fridge. Only a few condiments had survived my self-imposed famine. “I need to go to the store.”
“Oh, that’s fun,” Cam gurgled through the stream of water. “We haven’t gone into a store since we were nineteen. When do we leave?”
“You’re not coming,” I said flatly. “You’re fugitives.”
Crouched at the barren fridge, Blaze shot me a grin over his shoulder. “Not when you’re around. You make us so pure and innocent.”
“I feel like a virgin around you.” Cam wistfully twirled through the kitchen, and Blaze snickered until his friend bumped into the fridge door, knocking him over.
“If you break out into boy band dance moves in front of me, I will summon a demon to eat you,” I warned.
“We’ll refrain as long as we can come to the store with you,” Blaze said as Cam pulled him to his feet. “We have to come. We have allergies.”
“Allergies,” I repeated, unswayed.
“We’re allergic to staying inside all day,” Cam confirmed, nodding until I finally rolled my eyes.
“Fine.” I trudged up the steps. “Give me ten minutes.”
if you wanna get a vibe for what blaze and cam’s music might sound like, i made a playlist <3