Kiss of Tragedy

Juliet arrived at the observatory a few minutes before midnight. It was early October. The weather was chilly, even though the first snow had not yet fallen. She had brought her winter coat as well as her toque to help fight the frigid wind. She didn’t know how long she would be able to sit outside since the observatory was not an enclosed space, but simply a gigantic telescope on top of one of the science buildings. However, the top floor had a comfortable heated room that led out onto the roof, so everyone was meeting there before staring in wonder at the moon.

“Welcome!” Taylor called out in a tone that was almost friendly when Juliet came through the doors. “Glad you found the place okay.”

“Yeah,” Juliet said, shaking hands with Taylor.

“I don’t think I caught your name yesterday,” she said.

“I’m Juliet.”

“This is Fiona and Halona,” Taylor said pointing to two exquisitely beautiful blonde women. They looked like fourth years, or maybe even grad students, and almost exactly identical. They had taken to tinting their hair different colors in order to help people differentiate between the two of them. Fiona had tinted her hair silver, while Halona had tinted hers gold.

“Nice to meet you,” Juliet said politely.

“You know Rylan,” Taylor continued, introducing the people standing around the room.

Rylan was crouched in the corner with his laptop stretched across his lap. The bright screen illuminated his face as he examined something closely. He had quite a bit of equipment with him and a long tube of rolled up paper, undoubtedly her poster of Seth. Her fingers itched to open it.

“This is Blanche, Ceries, and Tawnee,” Taylor said, introducing Juliet to three more women. They were standing in a circle behind Fiona clasping hands and praying.

“Are they nuns?” Juliet couldn’t help asking.

“Not exactly,” Taylor said swiftly. “They are not triplets, just in case you were wondering. Tawnee is still in high school, but since not all of our membership has to be made up of university students, she is welcome to attend. Ceries is a first year like you and Blanche has been a member for a few years. You probably won’t believe this, but they actually make up a small coven of white witches.”

Juliet’s eyes rose. “Really? Are they looking for members?”

Taylor shook her head. “No. Witches do things in threes. They wouldn’t dream of taking you on unless you brought a couple more with you. You would have to help them have six members or nine or twelve. But, you’re not a witch, are you?”

“No,” Juliet said.

“Then you don’t qualify. They only want real witches, the kind with real magic and if you don’t have it, then you don’t have it. It’s as simple as that.”

“So if they’re witches, what are Fiona and Halona?”

Taylor waved to Fiona. “Talk to the president. She can answer for herself.”

Fiona appeared and dismissed Taylor. Then she smiled and explained, “Halona and I are the true Gemini. We’re not two souls trapped in the same body. We’re one soul in two bodies. Our bond is such that we can feel each others’ thoughts and wishes.”

“What about Rylan and Taylor?” Juliet asked, eager to learn as much as she could.

“That’s interesting,” Fiona said, inviting Juliet over to sit down at a small table by one of the windows and drawing the conversation back to herself. “Normally, when I tell someone something about Halona and myself, they think we’re crazy.”

“I don’t think you’re crazy,” Juliet said.

“No, I guess not. You are really into this stuff, aren’t you?”

Juliet nodded eagerly.

“Taylor and Rylan are conjoined twins,” Fiona said seriously, and then she waited for Juliet’s response.

Something in Juliet’s brain clicked and she immediately started up, “Are you sure? Aren’t conjoined twins always the same gender because they are identical twins who haven’t quite separated?”

“Very good,” Fiona praised, although it appeared that she was only slightly impressed. “They say that they were joined at the hip, and I’ve seen their scars from when they were surgically separated, so I don’t think they are lying. They say that one of them is cross dressing, so they might be two boys or two girls.” Fiona glanced over to them. “I’ve been watching the two of them for years and I can’t decide which gender they could both be. Sometimes Taylor’s voice is so husky that I think that it couldn’t possibly belong to a girl and other times Rylan’s cheek is so smooth that I think that he couldn’t possibly be a man. What do you think?”

Juliet glanced at the two of them. Taylor was sitting beside Rylan looking at something he was reading on his laptop. Taylor wasn’t very curvy, but Juliet didn’t feel like criticizing her for that since she wasn’t very curvy herself. Juliet studied Rylan. When Juliet met them yesterday she had taken it for granted that Rylan was a man and Taylor was a woman. It was quite the mystery.

“I don’t know,” Juliet said to Fiona sheepishly. “I wish I could tell the difference.”

“So do I,” Fiona said. “I have a reason for explaining all this. You see, the Occult’s Addict is not a club that Halona and I formed. Back in the day, Halona and I had to prove we had a psychic connection in order to gain membership.”

“Really? How did they test you?”

“They took us into separate rooms and asked us random questions. We gave the same answer for ninety-five percent of their questions. So, we were invited to join. Blanche, Ceries, and Tawnee are witches and I’ve explained about Taylor and Rylan and Halona and me. The thing is, right now you only have a trial membership. You only get full membership if you are or can do something unusual.”

“Like what?”

“Once we had a girl who could bend spoons with her mind.”

“I can’t do that,” Juliet said weakly.

“Let me see,” Fiona said, thinking. “I heard you say you’re not a witch. Psychic?”

Juliet shook her head.

“Rylan said that you like tarot cards. Do you tell an accurate fortune? Having a fortune teller could be cool.”

Juliet shrugged her shoulders. “I could give it a try.”

“Wait,” Fiona said, raising her finger as though she had just thought of something brilliant. “What about vampire hunting?”

Juliet’s eyes opened wide in shock. “Do you mean killing vampires?”

Fiona laughed. “I mean nothing of the sort. I just thought you might have a good time in our club if you researched some of our campus vamps. I might be able to get you full member status for something like that. If you’re good at it.”

Juliet thought about it for a second. She wasn’t sure how to respond. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to give updates to her club on how she was doing pursuing her crush.

Fiona noticed her indecision and said, “Well, you can think about that later. Did you bring your application with you?”

Juliet reached into her bag and brought out the papers.

Taylor sat down next to them while Fiona read through Juliet’s application. Her eyes squinted several times as though she were surprised at Juliet’s answers. Well, Juliet was surprised at some of their questions. They asked the usual questions like: Name? Date? How did you hear about us? What faculty are you in? But then they asked other questions and some of them Juliet didn’t exactly want to answer. For one thing, they wanted a detailed account of where Juliet had lived her entire life. She’d been born in Toronto, but her parents moved to a small town called Clearwater and she couldn’t remember living anywhere else. It was boring and she didn’t like to talk about it. They also wanted to know what her ethnic background was, which she didn’t know. Her last name was Hudson, but her parents never talked about where their family had originally emigrated from.

“So Juliet,” Taylor said, leaning across the table. “I brought you that lovely poster of Seth. Did you bring the money?”

“Yes,” Juliet said, opening her wallet and parting with five very smooth twenty dollar bills that came straight from the ATM. She was going to regret spending it, but she said she would buy it, so she was on the hook.

“Here you go, darling,” Taylor said, handing Juliet the poster. “Unroll it to make sure I haven’t cheated you.”

Juliet scooted the rubber bands off both ends and pulled it wide. She gasped. He was even more beautiful than she remembered. “Thank you, Taylor. This is gorgeous.”

Fiona smiled pleasantly and said, “Oh, and I think Rylan has something else for you, Juliet. That is, if you’re interested in pictures of Seth.”

“There are more!” Juliet exclaimed as she accidentally let go of one of the poster edges. It swiftly rolled back up.

“Yeah,” Taylor said, a conspiring smile on her lips. “He even brought his mini printer. I think he’s selling pics of him for five bucks a pop.”

“Too expensive!” Juliet balked.

“Well, maybe he’ll be willing to give you a deal if you’re going to be a repeat customer. But, I think they’re worth five dollars apiece.”

“Go have a look,” Fiona encouraged. “We’ve got a few minutes. Our little coven is still chanting for luck. Everyone has midterms next week.”

Juliet replaced the rubber bands on the poster and joined Rylan on the floor.

“Hi Juliet,” he said, offering her a piece of carpet. “I feel like a prick doing this, but our club needs my fundraising efforts. Anyway, these are the other pictures I took that day. These ones happen to be in color. Pity, it doesn’t show. He’s very monochrome.”

Rylan made a slideshow of his pictures of Seth on his laptop screen and made them change every twenty seconds, but twenty seconds was not enough for Juliet. After a while, she decided that taking the pictures had to have been a combined effort. Yes, Seth was good looking, but Juliet doubted that he would have looked quite that good if Rylan hadn’t worked hard searching for the perfect shot.

Suddenly, Halona returned to the foyer. Juliet had been so involved in her conversations that she hadn’t even realized that she was gone. “Sorry it took so long, kittens, but we’re finally ready to go.”

Rylan shut his laptop and reached for his toque. “This should be fun for you,” the tone he used was derogatory. Exactly like he could think of a hundred better things for him to be doing with his time, but he had to spend it here.

Juliet frowned at him. “Don’t you like looking at the moon?”

His eyes flashed. “Until you’ve loved the moon, you’ve loved no one.”

“Wow... deep,” Juliet said callously, like she was getting him back for making fun of her.

Rylan swallowed hard and opened the glass door for Juliet to follow the others onto the roof. They all gathered around the telescope while Halona took the reins and led the lecture.

The sky was quite clear, though the light pollution from the city drowned out most of the stars. A few planets were visible. Juliet could see Venus, but she wasn’t sure which one was Mars. The moon was bright too. Most of the face was showing, though it wasn’t a full moon. The shadows of the craters fascinated Juliet. She couldn’t wait until it was her turn to look through the telescope.

“Tonight we’ve got a waning gibbous moon,” Halona said, explaining the shape. “Next week at this time, it’ll be a waning crescent moon. Too bad our meetings are only on Friday nights, or we all would have been able to watch Blanche, Ceries, and Tawnee dance naked under the full moon on Thursday.”

“Har-har,” Blanche said, far from amused.

“Okay, so when you look at the man in the moon, what are the names of the seas?”

Rylan answered without thinking, “The right eye is the Sea of Clouds. The left eye is made up of two seas; the Sea of Tranquility and the Sea of Serenity. The nose is called Central Bay and the mouth is called the Sea of Rains.”

Fiona didn’t look surprised, but Juliet was. “Way to go, Rylan. You really do love the moon.”

He shrugged his shoulders like he didn’t care for Juliet’s praise when something caught their attention. Someone on the ground was shouting, or blowing a whistle, or perhaps both. Juliet went to the edge of the building to have a look at what was going on.

Down below, a man was chasing another across the grass. The man being chased was running awkwardly. Juliet watched as the graceful man pursuing him ran effortlessly and much faster. Within moments, he had overtaken the other. He forced him onto his stomach and pinned his wrists to his back. The man pinned to the dying grass yelled and screamed, but Juliet couldn’t understand what he was saying across the distance.

“That’s your boyfriend,” Rylan said, as he joined Juliet.

“That’s Seth?”

“Yep.”

“But why was he chasing that guy?” Juliet wanted to know.

“Oh, I don’t know. There could be loads of reasons. Seth’s always doing that sort of thing. He’s the director of Safewalk here on campus.”

“Safewalk? You mean that you call him when you want someone to walk you across campus when it’s late? How weird! He can’t be a vampire! A vampire would never take that kind of job.”

Rylan smiled knowingly. “Are you sure? I thought about it a lot too when I first spotted him and suspected he might be a vamp. But after a while, it seemed like the perfect cover. While it’s still controversial exactly why vampires prefer night, it’s still a given that they do. Safewalk doesn’t operate during the day. And it gives him an excellent reputation, because he’s doing something charitable. And he gets to see crazies like that guy down there all the time, so maybe he has a blood supply, though I’ve never caught him doing anything truly suspicious.”

“But Safewalk is so goody-two-shoes!” Juliet whined. “It’s not something a cool vampire would do at all.”

“Maybe not,” Rylan said peevishly. “But it does allow him an excuse to escort vulnerable female university students across campus. He might not have anything more complicated than that on his mind. Who’s to say? Maybe you should ask him.”

“Maybe I will,” Juliet said, still looking over the ledge at Seth, as he helped the officer from Campus Security lift the guy he’d just chased back on his feet. She looked at her watch. It was twelve-thirty. She looked down at the scene and measured how long it would take him to finish up at campus security and head back to the Safewalk office to wait for another call. She squinted and watched them leave. Then she made up her mind. She’d call for a Safewalk in an hour—at one-thirty. But until then, why not have a good time?

She tried to listen to Halona’s speech, but it was challenging. Afterward, the three little witches had brought white hot chocolate which they shared with everyone. Juliet had never seen such dainty little mugs as the ones they served their hot chocolate in. It was delicious. They even had the sense to squirt a little whipped cream on the top of each mug.

Juliet went out to the roof several times and looked through the telescope. She had wanted to learn the names of all the craters and seas, but the atmosphere distorted her vision of the moon. She couldn’t see anything through the telescope clearly, and felt bored with her dream of moon gazing. Instead, she settled for looking at the city lights.

Rylan came and stood beside her. He might have been hitting on her, but Juliet couldn’t get the idea out of her head that he might be a girl and so she couldn’t stop looking for clues that would lead her to the truth of his identity. She was far more interested in unraveling the mystery, but if he was hitting on her, he was going about it the wrong way. He was still trying to sell her pictures of Seth. Before one thirty she bought a small stack that he printed on his mini printer, but none of them were as good as her poster.

A few minutes before one-thirty, Juliet said she was done for the night and that she was going to head back to the dorms.

“Right,” Fiona said, suddenly standing up and commanding the attention of the other club members. “Juliet said she’s done for tonight, so I’ll announce the next meeting. The next meeting will be in the Forestry’s greenhouse. Blanch is going to teach us about the medicinal properties of some of the plants there. Interesting, eh? Don’t forget, Juliet. We’ll meet at midnight next Friday. Don’t miss it.”

“I won’t,” Juliet said as she excused herself.

“Here, I’ll walk you back,” Rylan said, probably using his best gentleman voice.

“No need,” Juliet said with a wink. “I’m going to call Safewalk.”

Rylan clicked his tongue on the roof of his mouth. “I knew that I shouldn’t have told you that.”

“Oh come on! It’s not so lame as all that.”

“It’s way lamer, since an hour ago you didn’t think what he was doing was sexy,” Rylan said blankly. “Well, whatever. I’ll see you next week.” He turned around and went back to the others.

Juliet put the photographs he’d printed in her bag before she realized the hypocrisy of his statement. She wasn’t going to let him get away with it. She went back toward Rylan and said, “Hey, why are you giving me a hard time? You knew I was interested in him, you even sold me pictures of him, so why are you acting like it’s pathetic that I want to meet him?”

“That’s not what’s pathetic,” he said, scratching his ear.

“Then what?” Juliet demanded.

“Hey, just go,” he said in a slightly different tone of voice. “There’s no reason why you can’t call him. Go ahead. I’m sure you’ll have a great time.”

Juliet didn’t know what he was talking about, but she’d had enough, so she turned around and headed toward the elevator. She was pretty sure there was a red Safewalk phone on the main level.