Mireya waited before talking to Jeff again. This sort of thing needed to be done carefully, she knew. The boys' story was heart-wrenching. Losing both parents to a warlock hit too close to home. Though her father Domingo was still alive, and she could still pay a visit to the old man, the loss of her mother Maribella was a terrible blow. She knew personally how hard it could be not to wince when someone offered her condolences.
She also knew that Jeff, who was new to the city, would want time to find his place and get used to it, and she also suspected he would be slow to relax into it. Even after all the time he had spent with John, Marty stuck close to home, which at least made it easier to keep an eye on him. If Jeff was like his brother, he too might take awhile to adjust, and Mireya preferred to wait until he was settled more comfortably into his new situation before running the risk of disturbing him.
In the meantime, Jeff was studying privately at home. He was a senior, and the year was more than halfway done, so John was preparing him to undertake the GED and the SAT while also extending Kali's instruction in the history and lore about the Stellae. It would also allow the two brothers to spend some time together before Marty went off to spend a summer with Kali.
Mireya recalled the arduous training she had undergone just to become an associate. The Stellae often gave their associates a training similar to that given their own members, and similarly tailored to their own talents. Mireya recalled the time she spent with John very fondly, but it was from Rick Bredon that she had learned the most—not just the basics of investigative work and monster hunting, but how to deal with the trauma of facing fearsome creatures that could have once been human. It had taken her some time to get used to some of his more unpleasant personal habits, and she wasn't sure she'd ever get used his calling her Bonita in that nasal gringo accent of his. But he'd given her a few good words in those hard days after her mother's death, even though he hadn't been able to attend her wake.
Perhaps she wasn’t a Stellae, and just someone very skilled, but she knew Jeff needed a friend in this place (other than John, of course). But there was one more thing. Marty was very easy to decipher; his heart was on his sleeve, and though wary at first, once he opened up, he turned out to be a very bright young man. Jeff, on the other hand, was an enigma; a mystery to be solved. And she hadn’t spent years in the police academy to have an eighteen-year old baffle her.
Thus, it was in early spring, start of April, with the flowers at full bloom, that Mireya decided to take Jeff for a spin around the neighborhood. It was one of her off-duty days, and Marty was working hard on the science project and becoming a bit more independent, better acquainted to his new life. It was obvious that he was smitten by her, for the first thing he did was blush as he answered the door. "Hello, Jeff", she said, with a pearly-white smile.
"Oh, uh..." Jeff looked at her with wide eyes and a jaw half-slacked. "Mireya! Uh...nice to see you. Marty’s not here. He’s, well..." He stammered hard, his brain a scramble.
"I wasn’t looking for him. John told me you don’t know the neighborhood. How about we go around and have a chat while you and I get to know each other?"
Jeff looked like he was trying to reboot. "Sorry, you said?"
"Go around the neighborhood, have a chat, maybe eat something--"
"L-like a date!?"
"What, you never had a date before?" Mireya snickered, wrapped her arm around a baffled Jeff’s shoulder, and dragged him out. "Yeah, it sounds like a date. Doesn’t mean it has to be romantic, though."
"Oh." Jeff deflated. "Yeah. You’re right."
"Don’t feel sad." It was obvious that Mireya had struck Jeff down hard. "It can be a good practice date for when you find the right one", she said, ending with a wink. "Now, get into the car, and I’ll show you the place. Then, we could go to the same bodega where we found each other the first time and eat something. How about it?"
"Yeah, yeah; that sounds right." Jeff didn’t seem to be one to have a motivation; he went with the flow, rather than set off his own. Whether it was the trauma or his own personality, he had a shell built around him. Mireya hoped she could at least crack it a bit, to find the true Jeff Harrison within.
--
"So", Mireya started, as they waited for their sandwiches to finish. "Tell me a bit about yourself."
"Oh, well..." Jeff seemed intimidated by the prompt.
"We'll start with what I know", Mireya said. "Your name is Jeffrey Harrison and you're studying to join the ‘firm’, and you’re gonna take your GED and stuff, and you’re here with John to do that. I wanna know a bit more about you besides what you’re doing now. Where are you from? Everyone has to be from someplace, you know."
Jeff hesitated. "Oh, just a little nowhere town called Saratoga Falls."
"I know Saratoga Falls."
"You do?" Jeff looked startled.
"An interstate runs through it, and I've driven through it a couple of times." Mireya prompted Jeff to tell him more about his home town. Gradually, he relaxed.
But it was still nearly twenty minutes before she reached across the table to grasp his hand. He blushed as she did so.
"I know how hard it is to lose your parents," she told him. "I lost a parent too. Marty told me about what happened. I know it hurts", she said as Jeff averted his eyes, "but--"
"But Marty didn’t tell you the whole thing," Jeff blurted out.
"He didn't?"
"He doesn’t know the whole thing." Jeff stared at the table. "I don’t know what he’d do if he knew I’m the one that caused everything."
It was the crack Mireya had been looking for. "Why do you say that?"
Jeff sighed.
"It all started last September," he said. "I was looking for something for a school project, and I found a book of magic on a used book store."
"That’s quite a find", Mireya said, but Jeff only flinched. "Go on."
"I took the book to my dad, since I wanted his opinion on it. At first, he thought it was a fake book or something, because the pages wouldn’t turn, but then I did what the book said to do, and it gave me a spell. I tried it, and ... it worked! So, I showed my dad the spell, and we tried it together, and--"
"Was it dangerous?"
"Not immediately. It’s...I dunno, I could explain it to you, but--"
"Well, not now. Just go on."
Mireya’s words seemed to calm Jeff a bit. "Not long after, Dad decided to take the book to some guy, a professor of Archaeology that apparently knew something about the occult."
"And he turned out to be a warlock?" Mireya couldn't help sharing her quick deduction. Jeff nodded. "Good hiding place for one," she said, and when Jeff winced followed it with, "Sorry, that was uncalled for. Go on."
"Well, after that, things began to ... Everything went wrong. Dad forced me to sell the book to the ... warlock. But before that happened, I made something with the book and got in trouble with one of the jocks by trying to use it at school."
"We all make mistakes," Mireya said. She didn't want to chide him anymore strongly than that. "But what matters is that we learn from them."
"Yeah", said Jeff, though not with confidence. "I guess."
It was on that back and forth that Mireya listened to the rest of Jeff’s story - about how he tried to take it against the warlock, how he befriended the jock and together they rescued a girl that he had captured, and how he met Frank and Joe, with the terrible conclusion. Mireya easily noticed why Jeff felt so guilty, and suddenly, many things made sense – why he was so overprotective of his brother, as he brought him to the fight with the warlock by accident, and how his attempt to uncover the truth about his father ended up in disaster.
Mireya knew when pressing a subject went too far, and by the time she could confirm Marty’s story, she called it a day. There would be another day to delve into Jeff Harrison’s tale of woe, but at least she knew how to handle him. And yet, despite telling his tale, Mireya had the sensation that there was more to Jeff than meets the eye.
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