Tammy's parents let Chad come over to the house for regular tutoring sessions. Despite her unexceptional grades, it was a plausible reason: Chad's grades were even worse. Her parents even let them be alone in her room as long as the door was open a crack.
Very little tutoring went on in Tammy's room. Depending on how educational someone might consider Chad copying Tammy's homework. He sat at her desk and busily copied her history homework while Tammy flipped through the latest edition of Crazy Ctharl's Hard-To-Find Sorcerous Emporium. The catalogue was a necessity for the modern high priestess. In the Dark Ages, finding fresh mandrake root or the spleen of a virgin wasn't all that hard. In the twentieth century, who had the time to dig around beneath a hangman's tree or figure out what a spleen even looked like. Crazy Ctharl's catalogue was a lifesaver. It offered reliable delivery, though it didn't use the mail. Somehow, whatever you ordered found its way to you. Usually wrapped in discreet brown paper. Though there was that time Tammy ordered a bag of Hitler's ashes and found it under her pillow before she'd even sent in the order.
Best of all, the prices were reasonable. She was on a tight budget and finding the glittering scales of Hecate for only three dollars a pound made things so much easier. The cover boasted "Prices so low, you'll question the collective dream of sanity." Beneath that, another line declared, "The darkness approaches, and Ctharl says everything must be sold before the Lords of Doom swallow the world!" Crazy Ctharl always said the world was ending. This once, he was right.
Tammy skimmed through the pages. There were lots of things she wanted. The fang of a shadow, candles made with the Wax of Vorgo, and a wide assortment of sacrificial daggers. She didn't let these items distract her. She stuck with only what she needed. Her savings still fell short. She marked off the items she could scrape together with a little effort on her part, and still needed a few more dollars.
"How much money do you got, Chad?"
Chad stopped copying. "What?"
"Money," she sighed. "How much do you have?"
He reached into his pockets and pulled out a couple of bucks.
"Not on you, stupid. I mean, how much do you have saved?"
"My grandma gave me a hundred bucks for my birthday, but I'm saving it for a trip."
"I'll need it."
"But I'm saving it for a trip," he whined, in case she hadn't heard him the first time.
Normally, she would have called upon her feminine wiles to persuade him. She wasn't in the mood. She frowned and squinted hard in his direction.
Chad went back to copying. Even with his back to her, he could feel her icy stare. "I thought, uh, maybe after graduation we could, y'know, go somewhere." He glanced over his shoulder. Not at her, but in her general direction. "Together."
Tammy smiled. It was not a good smile. Then again, her good smiles weren't really very good either if someone knew the dark thoughts behind them.
"A road trip?" she asked.
"Uh. . yeah."
"After graduation."
"Uh. . yeah."
"Together."
He bit the inside of his cheek and tapped his pencil against the desk. "I was thinking we could maybe go to Vegas. I've always wanted to go to Vegas."
She smiled wider. "Sounds like fun."
"Yeah. We could go to the strip. Maybe see one of those big shows. I mean, I know we won't have much money by then, but we can still have a good time."
Her face fell blank. The pencil in Chad's hand snapped in two.
"Man, you are such a dumbass," she muttered.
"But I thought. ."
"You didn't think, Chad. You never think."
He slammed his fist into his palm. "Goddamn it, Tammy. Stop callin' me stupid. You're always callin' me stupid."
"That's because you are stupid."
"You're such a bitch." He crumpled up his copied homework, stuffed it in his pocket, and headed toward the door.
It slammed shut all by itself.
"Sit down, Chad."
"Fuck you."
He reached for the knob and got a jolt that numbed his forearm and stopped him cold.
"I said, sit down."
Chad obeyed. He massaged the gooey muscles of his wrist.
Her father shouted from the living room.
She pointed to the door, and it opened wide enough to suit parental regulations. "Sorry, Dad!"
Chad blew on his deadened fingertips in an effort to revive some feeling.
"Stop being such a wuss," she grumbled.
He hunched over, holding his numb hand to his chest. He stared at the floor, unable to look her in the eye. Chad didn't really understand any of the black magic they dabbled in. She just told him what to do, and he did it. It'd started with naked chanting which he had thoroughly enjoyed, even if it did involve memorizing long strings of tongue-twisting syllables. And it just kept getting weirder and weirder. None of which bothered him too much as long as he and Tammy got to spend time together. Although the sex had a lot to do with it, it wasn't the only reason. He liked her. Or, at least, he had at one time.
He still did, he had to admit to himself. Even if she did scare the crap out of him more and more every day as the darkness in her soul grew with her unnatural powers. She had a knack for burying that darkness beneath a schoolgirl's facade, but either it was beginning to overwhelm her or he was just better at spotting it. Either way, he didn't know how much longer he could pretend he didn't see it.
And there was that whole end-of-the-world dilemma to add to his problems. He wasn't a big fan of the world, and the part about becoming living gods sounded cool enough. But he had doubts.
"What if it doesn't work?"
"It will."
"But you said that this ritual thing we're gonna do will bring these badass demons to Earth."
"Old gods," she corrected. "Not demons."
"Whatever. So these old gods come to Earth, and they're gonna be so grateful that they'll give us all this power 'cuz we freed them."
"That's right." She grinned a thin, patronizing sneer.
"But you said that they'll also destroy the world."
She rubbed her eyes with her palms. She was tired of explaining it to him. "They shall remake it, undo the corruption of man, and forge it in their image."
Chad struggled to find a distinction. "No more Vegas?"
"No more Vegas."
"And these old god guys, they're, like, evil, right?"
"Good and evil are mortal constraints. The old gods are beyond morality."
"Uh. . right. So, I guess what I'm trying to ask is, if these god dudes are so powerful and so unconstrained, then how do we know they'll carry out their end of the deal?"
"They will."
"But how do you know for sure?"
Her voice dropped to a rough whisper.
"Because I know."
Chad hardly felt reassured.
Tammy could sense his doubt. She had little patience for unbelievers. Her abridged Necronomicon had a brief chapter on cult maintenance. It laid out a simple and effective method of dealing with skeptical followers.
It is inevitable that any cult will eventually find itself beset by the occasional disciple of questionable faith. These lost children should be herded gently back into unswerving loyalty. If this does not work, experience tells us that while a loyal follower is preferred over a dead follower, a dead follower is preferred over a skeptic. One bad apple spoils the bunch. Using a lost soul in a ritual sacrifice, particularly one involving the rest of the cult, can not only squeeze one last drop of usefulness out of a discarded member, but can also serve to bring about a unity to your happy family and dissuade any more skeptics from emerging.
It was good advice, but she couldn't afford to sacrifice Chad. Not yet. He was her only follower. And, though she was slow to admit it, she'd actually grown a little fond of him. He was handy to have around at times, and she was saving his death for a special occasion.
She was left with only one other alternative. She swallowed her revulsion and put forth the soft smile she saved for these moments.
"Baby, come here."
She patted the spot beside her on the bed. He hesitated. She crossed and uncrossed her legs to help him along. When that didn't work, she ran her fingers along the inside of her thigh. That did the trick. He sat beside her, and she took his jolted hand.
"I'm sorry, baby. Did I hurt you?"
"It's okay."
"I shouldn't have done that." She gently kissed his fingertips, one by one. "Do you forgive me?"
He stuck out his lower lip and kicked his heel against the bed. "I don't know. Maybe." He still refused to look at her.
She leaned close to his ear and called upon the sultry voice she'd honed through hours of practice. "C'mon, Chad. Don't be mad."
His head slowly turned toward her until their faces were inches apart. She pulled back just a little. "Let me worry about the details. That's my job."
She could almost hear every drop of saliva evaporate in his mouth. "But what's my job?" he asked dryly.
"Your job is to keep me happy."
He swallowed a deep gulp of air and opened his mouth to say something else. Tammy put a finger to his parted lips.
"Can you do that, Chad? Can you keep me happy? Because if I'm happy, then you'll be happy." She suppressed a gag. "Very, very happy."
If she could kiss him, he would be hers again. But her father had strict rules about things that were allowed in her bedroom. Making out was not on that list, and she didn't take needless chances.
Chad's hormonally deluged mind struggled to form a single, cohesive thought. Tammy gave him the time he needed to extract one. Finally, he made eye contact, and from there, his gaze rolled down to her lips, then chest, then all the other good parts along the way to her toes.
"Okay, but I don't like it when you call me stupid."
"Of course. I shouldn't have done that. I won't do it again."
Chad grinned stupidly, confirming he was hers again.
Her bedroom door opened, and her father poked his head in the room just long enough to tell her it was half past nine. No boys after nine-thirty. It was another of her dad's dumb rules. She could hang out with Chad late at night, just as long as it wasn't in her bedroom. Never mind that it was the one place in the world they'd never do any of the things her dad objected to, and never mind that out of the house, she and Chad had screwed around plenty of times. Parental rules had little to do with logic. They were just regulations they'd had to suffer through when they were kids and now had to inflict on their own offspring. Existence was merely an endless rotation. A led to B led to C all the way to Z which looped back to A. The world was a bad TV show stuck in reruns and in desperate need of cancellation. Which was why she was so looking forward to ending it.
Chad gathered up his books and homework, and she walked him to his motorcycle.
"Hey, how come you never use any of your magic stuff on your parents?" he asked as he climbed on the bike.
She almost called him stupid again but bit her lip.
"Because that magic stuff isn't as easy as I make it look."
"Yeah, but I bet you could do that mind-control thing on them real easy. Just to get them off your back." He wiggled his fingers at her and made a serious face.
His ignorance was almost cute in a ridiculous sort of way. For one moment, she forgot how much he annoyed her.
He started the engine. "So you wanna do sumthin' tomorrow?"
In Chad's lexicon, "Sumthin'" translated into hanging around somewhere for an hour or so before finding a place to screw. He was due for a maintenance jump anyway.
"How about tonight?"
"What about your dad?"
"He won't care." She chuckled. "Just as long as we're not in my room." She hopped on the bike behind him, wrapping her arms low around his waist, resting her chin on his shoulder and breathing on his ear.
"Can't we put off the apocalypse until after graduation?"
"Chad."
"Alright, alright." He revved the engine. "I was just askin'."