Elijah Delomary steps into a whirlwind of challenges that test his strength, his identity, and the depth of his relationships. Confronting Zid'dra, the diabolical king of the menacing Gloom, Elijah faces a web of deceit spun by the sinister force, luring him toward his demise. However, his escape is orchestrated by the intervention of the Áuqala, who guides him back to Earth with a crucial message—to believe in his innate magic. Meanwhile, Elijah's mother undergoes a profound transformation, shifting her focus to support her son, amend past mistakes, and discover a newfound love for herself along the way.
Elijah's journey isn't just about reclaiming his powers and rekindling his relationship with Austin, his boyfriend; it's a battle against Zid'dra's relentless pursuit. As he struggles with his identity and seeks reconciliation, he becomes entangled in a dangerous game with Zid'dra, all while being shadowed by Devlina, his nemesis. An unfortunate accident sidelines Elijah, forcing him into a period of introspection and healing, where he grapples with self-acceptance and finds his true essence.
Amidst a summer blooming with rekindled love, Elijah is drawn into a chaotic conflict as the battle between Zid'dra and Devlina escalates into a full-blown war, pitting the coven against Devlina. Faced with a terrifying revelation, Elijah is pushed to protect his family, Austin, and the very fabric of existence. The weight of these challenges tests Elijah's strength, forcing him to confront the darkest forces while proving the unwavering strength of his love to Austin.
Excerpt:
Resurrecting My Magic
Timoteo Tong © 2024
All Rights Reserved
Prologue
Long, long ago, under a layer of red and brown smog in the sprawl of the San Fernando Valley, northwest of downtown Los Angeles, before Elijah Delomary lived in the purple-and-white Victorian mansion at the top of Magnolia Boulevard in Burbank, a terrible event happened that changed the trajectory of his life. His mother, Belinda Delomary, made a mistake, setting in motion the course of events culminating with him in a field in Homer's Glenn watching Devlina, the Queen of the Gloom, battling monsters named Henges, or "Zusqoe" in the Dark Language. His mother was very much the reason why Devlina was at war with the Gloom.
Belinda Delomary stood in the dining room of the tiny ranch house painted olive green—not her choice, but rather her ex-husband's. Ex—that described him. Gone from her life. And yet, here, in the fading light of another terrible day after he walked out on her and their young children, he was present, still able to inflict pain on her.
"Notice of foreclosure," emblazoned on top of the official document, with the seal of the court and signed by some bureaucrat in a courthouse downtown, instructed her the sheriff would evict her and her children from the house in the next week due to nonpayment of mortgage. Belinda fumed, balled up the paper, and tossed it in the trash can. She went to the kitchen, opened the back door, and walked across the rutted, overgrown backyard to the detached garage, closing the door behind her. She proceeded to scream at the top of her lungs for ten minutes.
When her red-hot anger subsided enough for her to not use her magic to smite the world, she marched out of the garage, back across the knee-high grass. Larry, her ex, had promised to give her a wonderful garden, but instead, she had a weed-strewn mess. Just like Larry, all promises and no action. She stumbled over a worn tire he had left among the weeds.
"Goddamn it!" she cursed out loud. "I hate you and your very birth, Larry Eugene Smith!" She walked carefully up the rutted, concrete steps—another item from the honey-do list Larry had never completed—and back into the house. She went to the den, Larry's preferred room—with the awful paneled walls, stone fireplace, and mini-bar filled with bottles of whiskey, his drink of choice. The room smelled of his cologne, Brash, a foul-smelling holdover from the eighties. She sat down at his little desk and stared at the landline. She hated the thought of making this call. She had ignored her mother's warnings to not marry the man, to be smart, to be a "Delomary."
"Be better. Think twice, girl," her younger sister Lisa, the pragmatic, brainiac one, had warned her.
"I love him," she'd told Lisa and the youngest sister, Christine, the afternoon before they were set to elope and get married in Vegas.
"He looks like a crook," Christine, the no-nonsense sister, said, filing her nails at the kitchen table in their parents' mansion in Holmby Hills. "And he smells like mothballs."
"That's his cologne," Belinda had said.
Christine gagged, "Brash? That's a sign. He buys his cologne at the chain pharmacy. No good. No good."
"Elitist," Belinda had said.
"Brainless."
"Belinda," Lisa had interrupted them, "I think you know we're right. He's not right for you."
"I love him," Belinda had said, then stood and stalked across the large, sunlight-filled kitchen. "You're either with me or against me!"
"Bye, fool," Christine said.
"Bye, haters."
The joke, of course, was on Belinda. She married Larry at a drive-in wedding chapel off the strip in Vegas and then they honeymooned at a motel far off strip, infamous for being a hotspot for homicides
Her sisters and mother warned Belinda and yet she married him and he had ruined her. She had no money and was about to lose her children's home because she believed him when he assured her he'd pay the mortgage in lieu of child support. She gritted her teeth, prepared to hear her mother's words, "I told you so." Still, she had to hear them. Her mother wasn't wrong, and now she needed the family money and the family lawyers to save her—from herself and her bad choices. She was terrible at making decisions. She was terrible at love. She had fallen for a con artist. A man who pretended to be something he wasn't. A prince in shining armor. Instead, she got a magician of sorts. No, he wasn't magical. Instead, he was good with sleight of hand. He paid the mortgage with one credit card, then opened another to pay the first credit card. He never worked; rather, he lived off credit and a game of cat and mouse with the creditors until the game ended, and he lost. She lost. The kids lost. In a few days, the sheriff would come and evict them from their home.
Late at night, as rain thundered off the roof from a late season storm from the Gulf of Alaska, Belinda accepted defeat and called her mother.
"Delomary Estate."
"Hi, Martha, is my mother in?"
"Hello, Miss Delomary."
"Mrs."
"Your mother was clear you are to be referred to as Miss Delomary."
Belinda's face grew red.
"Fine." She fought back her anger. "Can I speak to her?"
"She's having drinks with John Stewart and Oprah."
"It's almost midnight."
"You know your mother doesn't keep track of time when she's networking."
"Fine, Martha, then can you tell her I need to speak to her urgently?"
"More urgent than Oprah?"
"Yes, because I am her daughter."
"But Oprah won't like it," Martha said, "and your mother doesn't like to mess with Oprah."
"Martha."
"As you wish," Martha relented. "Hold the line."
A peppy, jazz version of Valley of the Dolls played while Belinda waited and waited. Yes, her family had music playing while the call was on hold. Talk about excess.
Her mother picked up after ten minutes.
"I was having an enlightening talk with Deepak about reincarnation, dear."
"Mother, I'm in trouble."
"Magicals can reincarnate; you know this."
"Mother."
"Belinda, we are our having port. Oprah loves port."
"Mother, I'm losing the house. I need your help."
Her mother paused on the other end of the line; Belinda imagined a smile creeping across her face.
"You need my help?"
"Yes."
"Well, well, well," her mother said. Belinda imagined her walking across her elaborate study with the fussy Louis XIV gilt-edged furniture, paneled walls lined with original works by Picasso and Cassatt, to close the double doors and sit behind her large desk where she deftly managed the numerous tentacles of the family business.
"Mother."
"So, you've finally come to your senses," her mother said in the same voice she used to the affiliates of the family's television network when instructing them to air a "must run" op-ed denouncing the moral majority or attacks on abortion healthcare rights.
"We're being evicted."
"Serves you right," her mother said. "Why would you want to live in a ranch house?" her mother said in a disgusted tone. "What is it, fourteen hundred square feet? Yuck."
"Not everyone wants to live in a mansion masquerading as a French chateau."
"And that's the problem with America."
"Mother."
"Fine," her mother said. "I'll help you, not because I think you deserve my help after all you've done to wound me, snub me, embarrass me. You are my famille—my family." Her mother paused. "I will sacrifice my pride to help you."
"That's big of you."
"You'll have to work, of course."
"Fine. I can be a vice president? I was good at managing staff before I left the company to take care of the kids."
"Oh, Bel." Her mother chided her, "You can't be an executive."
"Let me guess. I'll be a secretary?" Belinda could see it now, sitting outside her mother's office in the soaring glass and steel skyscraper on Wilshire Boulevard in West LA, fetching coffee, delivering mail, answering the phone. Being punished for daring to live her own life.
"No," her mother said, "you are not fit to be a secretary."
"Please tell me I don't have to work in the mail room."
"No," she said, "actually you'll be my assistant."
"Isn't that a secretary?"
"Executive assistant."
"Executive assistant is code for secretary. I'm terrible at typing, just so you know."
"You'll use a laptop. My goodness, you act like you'll be doing stenography and taking diction on a pad with a pencil. Times have changed."
"You haven't."
"The mouth on you."
Belinda relented. She needed money. She could use her magic to make the eviction notice disappear or spirit away the judge who signed it. But she had taken an oath to use magic for the good of humanity not her own gain. Stupid oath.
"Can I do something else? Maybe something in the creative department. I majored in graphic design."
Catherine Delomary laughed. "Oh, honey, aim higher. I'm not having you create flyers and mailers or spending your day creating, what are they called, viral videos?"
"Mom, you sound outdated."
"Keep being obstinate and I'll hang up."
"Fine, Mother, what do you envision me doing?"
"Well, you learn to be me," Catherine Delomary said. "Teddy, Lisa, and Christine are not fit to take over for me when I retire."
"You're never going to retire."
"I have to," her mother quipped, "per the Delomary Corporation bylaws."
"Surely you don't follow the rules."
"That is the only rule I have to follow. When I turn sixty-five, I must step down."
"Aren't you sixty-five already?"
"No one is the wiser."
"Breaking your oath to change time?"
"Do you want my help or not?" Catherine grumbled. "Anyway, you can start tomorrow."
Belinda gagged.
Her mother complained, "I am not a bad person!"
Yes, yes, she was. Overbearing, opinionated, short tempered, possibly narcissistic, and definitely insane to one degree or another.
"Belinda?"
"Yes, sorry, Mother."
"This will be good for you."
Belinda knew better. She glanced down at her nails, painted bloodred. She'd have to remove the color and apply light-pink nail polish, also known at Delomary corporate as "Delomary Pink."
"Or for you?"
"Don't be ridiculous," Catherine said. "This is good for you. Return to the fold. Ride in limousines, live in penthouses, have money, power, and control."
"Not everyone wants to be like us."
"A million women would kill to be us."
Belinda groaned. "What if you just loaned me some money?"
"Oh, stop," Catherine said. "You've been living like some hobo in the Valley. You will return at once to the estate."
"Mom, I like this house. The kids call it home."
Catherine grumbled, "It's a ranch house!"
"Mother."
"Fine," Catherine said. "You'll learn the ropes. How to be me."
Belinda almost hung up the phone.
"Are you sure Lisa or Christine or Teddy can't be groomed to take over?"
"Teddy is too busy living it up. Lisa is in law school. Christine is working the graveyard shift at a supermarket and singing in a band. She's written off."
"Mother!"
"You're the only one who can do it."
"I don't want to."
"I don't care what you want. If you want money to pay for your house, you will accept my terms. And those are my terms."
Belinda wanted to summon a hurricane to swirl over the estate in Holmby Hills and blast the mansion apart and suck her mother through a portal to Old Earth where she could wander around alone for a few years and leave her be.
The wind howled down the chimney of the fireplace. Rain pattered against the windows. She thought of the kids down the hall, fast asleep in their beds. She couldn't let them down.
"Fine, Mother, fine."
"And, you'll need a makeover. Get a sensible haircut. No more sundresses from the thrift store. No more sandals, for crying out loud. You'll wear heels and an array of pantsuits."
"Mother."
"Powerful women don't have luxurious auburn hair falling to their shoulders."
"I'm not going to have a coif like yours. No helmet hair for me!"
Her mother fell silent. Belinda imagined her touching her silver hair, spun like a bird's nest on top of her head.
"It's not a helmet."
"Well, you do your hair your way, and I'll do mine as I like."
"Fine."
"Fine."
"Good. I'll have the lawyers draw up our contract and pay the bank and maybe threaten them a little for daring to foreclose on a Delomary."
"Mother, don't."
"Why not? It's what we Delomarys do. Show our strength. Threaten, intimidate. It's who we are, dear."
"Mother."
"Actually, I think I'll just buy the bank when the markets open in a few hours, then fire everyone from the CEO to the janitorial staff as revenge. And whoever signed the eviction notice will get their just desserts as well. Surely, the judge is up for reelection sometime soon." Catherine sounded excited. Her mother loved revenge. She chuckled through the phone; ice sloshed in a glass. Her mother must be drinking whiskey.
"I thought you were having port."
"I was until I heard you called, dear. Then I poured myself a stiff one."
"Goodnight, Mother."
"Night, darling."
A while later, she switched on the turntable. She always listened to Dionne Warwick when she was upset. She pulled a bottle of Chivas Regal off the shelf. An hour later, she crawled into the attic and fished out a box labelled: NEŃUNSO TOCÃ! PÉRÁIGO! Carrying it back down the hall to the den, she noted the box smelled of cheap cologne sold at the drug store. She realized she was probably not thinking clearly, but she hated Larry so much right now. She read the words written in the Old language in her sister Christine's blocky writing: "NEVER TOUCH! DANGER!"
She stirred the logs in the fireplace, then went back to the box, opened the cardboard top and rummaged around—pushing aside a skull, some femurs, dried shrunken heads, souvenirs from Disneyland, a dried bat, a souvenir from one of Christine's creepy goth boyfriends, until her hands settled on a cold, leather-bound book. She pulled it out and carefully read the old English script stamped in gold on the front of the book:
Livris De Malacins Malactanenans or Ixotei sie Malac Malactańena or simply, "The Book of Black Magic."
This book was forbidden by the Alliance, her family, her ancestors, the Áuqala, everything sacred and holy in the universe. And yet, she was very angry at this moment—angry with Larry for fooling her, angry at herself for being played, and angry that, for all her attempts to live her life, she found herself on the verge of living her mother's plan for her.
She shook her head and cried out, "I WILL NEVER BE CATHERINE DELOMARY!"
She opened the book. The lights flickered. The flames in the fireplace leapt and crackled. Groans and moans sounded in the shadows and corners of the room. This book was a gateway to the monsters and covens of the Gloom, the darkness of the underworld.
She paused for a moment. She could close the book and put it back in the box and hide it in the attic. Seal the door and forget about her need for revenge. That was the sensible thing to do, but Belinda, in her current state, was not in a mood for being sensible.
Thunder sounded in the distance. She noticed the foreclosure notice balled up on the floor. She gritted her teeth. She wasn't a victim. "Nunma in viacadeima," her ancestor Dirk Delomary had whispered on his death bed. She flipped through the book to find the spell she wanted. She knew of a Malevolent, a fallen Immortal, who lay trapped under the Oceana sie Tranqauilimenta, between the Ilxas sie Tubo and Minerva, confined by magic after a great war between herself and the Magicals. This Malevolent was terrible and lusted for power and destruction. Perfect. Belinda lusted for the destruction of Larry! And this Malevolent would do her bidding and ruin Larry.
She cleared her mind and pricked her finger with a needle, then drew the words of the Malevolent on the surface of the desk. She lit one black candle and said the spell. She remembered one part of the spell, very important for it to work correctly.
"Should I use my blood?" she whispered. "If I use my blood, there's always the chance the Malevolent will turn against me. Maybe I'll use one of the kids' bandages in the trash."
She stood and went to the bathroom where she found a used bandage.
"I'm an asshole," she said before grabbing a used bandage from the trash. The drop of blood would link the spell to Larry. She returned to the table placing the bandage on top of the name she scrawled on the Livris de Malcins Malactanenans.
"Compellum Malactans Sujurat!" she said the spell again, dripping black wax on the bandage.
The fire cracked and popped in the fireplace. The groaning and moaning disappeared. The thunder dissipated. She opened her eyes.
"Puxhàredo!" she cursed in the Old Language. "Jesus, I can't even work dark magic right!" She closed the book, returned the box to the attic, wiped the table clean and put out the fire. She crawled into bed, pulling the covers over her head. She was a total failure. She couldn't even cast a spell to punish Larry. And in a few days, she would be a servant to her mother—her worst fear realized—thanks to dear old Larry Smith.
Over the next seven years, Belinda graduated with a Master's Degree in Business Administration and Graphic Design, and finally put her degree to use. She preferred working at the cooperative grocery in Reseda and singing in a piano lounge on occasion. That had been the good life. She worked to live. Now she lived to work. Following her mother from meeting to meeting, traveling in the family jet across the globe, making deals, schmoozing with unsavory foreign regimes to ease "regulatory issues," thwarting the competition, and learning the art of managing a corporation nicknamed the Octopus of Death.
One time, she returned home after a day of meeting with a group of men who were part of a shadowy operation that fixed "problems" for the family. The dark underside of the family business that protected the family and its interests, no matter the cost or legality. She had signed off on doing something highly unethical and possibly bordering on illegal, immoral, and wrong. This was her new life. She hated the New Belinda.
Belinda walked in the door, tired after the long commute over the 405 from the West Side, kicked off her heels, and undid her bra.
"Mom!" Elijah called to her from his bedroom.
"Hi, hon," she said, sinking into the oatmeal-colored, overstuffed sofa in the formal living room fronting Kittridge Street. She closed her eyes.
She dreamed of the piano lounge, the flickering candles in red glass holders on tables leaning one way or another. The smell of wax and scotch. The good old days when she crooned at the Lamplighter Lounge on Vanowen Boulevard. Only the smell changed in the living room to…farts?
Her eyes flew open. A woman stood in front of her wearing black stilettos, black fishnet stockings, a black leather miniskirt, and black bodice. She had very pale skin, tinged green, with dark eyes, and hair cut in a severe bob, framing her face. She was smirking.
"I'm here, baby."
Belinda lifted a hand to bind the monster. The woman raised her own hand, holding a riding crop. "My power is stronger than yours, nave!"
"Who—who are you?"
"Your best friend. Come to avenge your husband!"
"Come again?"
The woman rolled her eyes irritably, "You conjured me!"
"That was a long time ago!"
"Time is different on Old Earth."
"You're the Bane of Biscayne? Pàràsafàna! Máu Licuria, the Goddess of Lust!"
"IT IS I!" the woman shouted, the sky outside darkening. Crows sounded. "However, turns out I have no desire to punish a man—I am sympathetic. I have seen this ex of yours. He looks like Neil Diamond run over by a metro bus, dropped in the ocean, left to be eaten by sharks, raised again and reincarnated, then beaten, stabbed and left by the side of the road…"
"He's not that bad."
"He is no Ryan Gosling."
"Fair."
"Anyway, Mrs. Delomary—I applaud you changing yours and the children's last name back to your maiden name after the divorce. This should be standard. Children tend to go with the mother, so why carry the deadbeat's family name?"
"Right?" Belinda reached for her phone to text her sister to come and help her. Paràsàfàna was the Queen of the Gloom, a powerful Malevolent. She had meant to summon an entity named Péraseana, a Malevolent more like an Áucúitu—a wraith of sorts to do her bidding. Mainly haunt Larry for six months and then vanish without a trace. She knew Larry was scared of his own shadow. Some chain rattling at night, doorknobs turning on their own, and sounds of moaning while he used the bathroom would be enough to turn him into a nervous wreck.
Paràsàfàna raised her hand, pulling Belinda's phone toward her. "Trying to call someone?"
"To be honest, I meant to summon someone else. Not you."
"Why?"
"Because you're the Queen of the Gloom."
"You got the best, baby!"
"Mom? Are you talking to yourself again?" Elijah called from the back of the house.
"No, honey. I mean yes."
"Look, Belinda, plans have changed. I need to conquer Old Earth, and you, as the former Queen of Minerva are my key."
"I was the Queen only because no one else could do it. And I passed the mantle to someone else right away."
"Bore someone else with the details of your life. You will come with me."
"No, I have my kids. My work. My macramé?"
Paràsàfàna looked at the orange and yellow macramé plant holder hanging from the slanted ceiling and waved a hand, turning it to dust. Belinda watched the sand fall to the white Berber carpet, the pothos plant tumbling to the floor.
"Hey, my macrame took a long time to make!"
"Well, here's the deal. You summoned me, and, well, I need your help, so think of this like Thelma and Louise. Two badass women about to shake things up."
"I'm not helping you conquer Old Earth!"
"Are you sure?"
"Yes!"
"Fine, then I will vovo compùlsa. Compel you!"
"No, think about the kids!"
"You should have thought of that before opening the Malac Malactańena when you were drunk. Now come with me!" A black portal opened near the fireplace, black jellylike light flickered. "Go!"
"Mommy? Are you okay out there?"
Belinda lamented about what to do. Why had she been so stupid? Devlina grew impatient.
"Fine. I will suck your soul into the other dimension!" Devlina lifted her hands, which produced a black light, tugging on the white aura of Belinda's soul. Belinda screamed as her soul was pulled from her body and into the portal. Devlina laughed maniacally as the portal popped and disappeared.
Belinda's body fell to the floor. Elijah came out from the hallway.
"Mom?"
Elijah stood in the front hallway, holding his stuffed lion, named Tubby, in one hand, squinting his eyes, trying to see what was lying on the floor in the dark formal living room.
"Elijah!" His older sister Victoria "Tory" Delomary pushed past him. "Call 911 right now!" She hurried into the living room. Elijah dropped Tubby and ran to the kitchen to call 911 on the landline.
A week later, heavy rain fell from black storm clouds hanging low over the San Fernando Valley—a late season storm. Elijah stood at the doors of the white chapel perched on the side of Forest Lawn Cemetery, on the eastern side of the famous Hollywood Hills. To the west, stood the aluminum-and-steel sign luring dreamers for over a hundred years to Hollywood, seeking fame and fortune. Elijah stood in the rain watching the rows of grave markers stretching down the hillside. LA was a mirage. In the abundant sunshine, there was life, and in the darkness, death, magic, and monsters. Too many monsters.
Timoteo K. Tong grew up in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles dreaming of living in a rambling Victorian mansion. He currently lives with his husband and way too many plants in San Francisco. He is obsessed with cheese pizza, drinking cola, and daydreaming about magic. He sold his first book when he was age eight, a story about his beloved stuffed animal named Crocker Spaniel. He is a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators International.
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