The independent command, p.32
The Wizard's Familiar (Supernatural Southwest Book 2), page 32
THE WIZARD’S FAMILIAR
By: M.J. Michaels
This book is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © M.J. Michaels 2025
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
* * *
ONE
Sometimes you get everything you ever wanted, and it still isn’t enough. Deep down, you know it isn’t what you were meant to do. At least, that’s what I kept telling myself. It was a mantra, or maybe an excuse. Hard to tell the difference after the hundredth time.
I’ve been a lot of things in my life—a roughneck, construction grunt, line cook sweating in kitchens that smelled like old grease and broken dreams. I even wore the stupid floppy hat once and pretended it made me a chef. I worked at country clubs where the rich members treated me like a walking drink dispenser with less dignity than the golf carts who carried their golf bags.
Eventually, I wound up behind the bar for good. And not just any bar. Oh no, I ran one of those upscale joints. The kind with ship wood paneling so polished you could see your future disappointments reflected in it. Mounted elk heads stared at you like you were the punchline to a joke only they got. A walk-in humidor so the cigar guys could strut around as if they were kings of Cuba, and a whiskey list so long you needed a bookmark to get through it.
We sold $25 old fashioneds, not because they were any better than the ones your granddad made in his kitchen with a chipped glass and bottom-shelf rye whiskey. Ours were special because we lit a cinnamon stick on fire and spritzed the orange peel with unicorn tears. A gimmick. But damn if people didn’t line up to hand me their wallets for the privilege.
It was creative work, sure. That’s why I stayed as long as I did. I got to play mad scientist—three-month aged eggnog, Bloody Marys so clear you could mistake them for water, thanks to a centrifuge I spun like I was auditioning for an internship at NASA.
After a while, the fun curdled into routine. The same faces came in, day after day, wanting the latest bullshit they saw on their social media reels. I’d smile, I’d shake, and I’d pour—dancing like a monkey with a shiny cup, hoping for tips tossed like peanuts. That's when the fun turned into a cage.
I’d done everything, learned every trick, perfected every pour, and now I hated the soulless parade of trend-chasing customers.
The day started the way most of mine do. I woke up with a hangover. Nothing dramatic. No blackout, no “oh God, where are my pants?” kind of night. Just the slow, throbbing reminder that when you clock out at two in the morning, the only thing left to do is pour yourself a drink and pretend you’re unwinding. One drink turns into three, and before you know it, you’re negotiating with your body about whether it’s worth the effort to find your bed.
Maybe that’s why I've been restless lately. Drinking wasn’t fun anymore, it was homework I never stopped getting assigned. Either way, I was dreading going back to work.
Around noon, my phone buzzed. A text from the boss’s wife—never a good omen. She’d seen some posts from an influencer in a neon-lit kitchen shaking up a glowing monstrosity that looked like radioactive windshield fluid.
It was all crap, of course. Cheap liqueurs, enough food coloring to choke a rainbow, gummy bears bobbing like drowned corpses. Probably tasted like fake sugar and cough syrup, but she wanted to stage another snapshot of her glamorous, curated, and totally-not-dead-inside life for the followers.
Which meant I had to figure out how to make it. Once upon a time, I might’ve welcomed the challenge. These days? It was just another hoop. A tired trick for someone else’s applause.
I dragged myself through my usual morning—well, afternoon—routine. The ritual of pretending like I gave a damn. As I unlocked and pushed through the bar’s heavy door, I already knew what kind of night this was going to be. The evidence was all around me. I walked the length of the bar, eyes scanning for what the closing crew “forgot to do.” Sticky rings on the mahogany tables, bottles left out, trash bins half-full and swarming with fruit flies.
Amateur hour.
I sighed, dropped into a stool, and drank my coffee. Should I even bother bringing it up? They didn’t care. And honestly, I didn’t either—not anymore. But with the owners coming by tonight, that crap had to vanish before they arrived. Which meant it was my problem to fix, like always.
I drank my coffee quietly, listening to a new audiobook, which was one of my few joys in life. After my pre-work meditation was over, I knew what waited for me.
Paperwork.
Inventory, scheduling, and invoices. The unglamorous dark side of the bar industry nobody thinks about when they imagine life behind the bar. Everyone pictures some rogue charmer slinging drinks, flirting with pretty girls, and collecting tips like candy on Halloween. Reality? Most nights, it was spreadsheets, migraines, and math.
After paperwork came the opening duties. The glamorous part of bartending. And by glamorous, I mean cutting fruit until my fingers smelled like a Jolly Rancher factory. Limes first. Always limes. Half the world wants them in their beer, the other half wants them in their gin and tonic, and the third half—yeah, I know the math doesn’t work—just wants them for aesthetic purposes.
Then jalapeños, sliced paper-thin so some hotshot could feel tough ordering a spicy margarita and then cry into his sleeve. Cucumbers shaved so wide and thin they could wallpaper a glass. Next came the orange peels, curled into neat little spirals like citrus origami. Cinnamon sticks, brandy-soaked cherries for the old fashioneds—the only thing that made those $25 drinks actually worth drinking.
It was peaceful work. A sharp, methodical contrast to the chaos that would roll through the door in just a few hours.
Thursday night. Technically, not a busy night. But “not busy” still meant live music, and live music meant a different kind of chaos—half-prepared bands dragging in drum kits, sound guys yelling about feedback, and customers who showed up to support local artists but mostly just wanted to shout over each other and drink. So I rushed, tried to get ahead, because nothing drove me crazier than serving customers while still running setup. It felt like being caught with your pants half-down.
Fifteen minutes to opening. Four hours of warm-up drinks before the real circus began. That’s when my favorite guys came in. The regulars. The ones who made the job tolerable. Older crowd, forties to sixties, the sort of men who carried a permanent chip on their shoulders. A couple of beers before heading back to spouses, kids, or whatever fresh hell awaited for them back home.
They were easy. Order a drink, slide over a twenty, tip well enough that I didn’t have to grit my teeth. No Instagram nonsense. No, “can you make this glow?” Just a whiskey, a draft beer, maybe a cigar if they were celebrating something. They liked to talk, too. Nothing heavy. Sports, politics, and women—sometimes all three in the same breath, which usually ended in a heated debate about whether boxing or marriage was the bigger scam.
Thursday usually meant Mr. Orwyn would probably stop by. He was one of those older guys who had the presence you couldn’t fake—long grey beard, weathered face, steel-blue eyes, and a voice that rolled smooth as bourbon but carried the weight of someone who’d yelled at soldiers or sailors once upon a time. He always dressed… strangely. Like he’d just stepped out of a different world or out of a university lecture hall, depending on the day. Either way, he wore the clothes instead of the other way around.
Mr. Orwyn had stories. Thousands of them. He could rattle off tales about card games in Macau, safaris gone sideways in Kenya, a monastery in the Himalayas where he once learned to make tea like a Tibetan monk. Some stories were probably true. Some were probably complete bullshit. The trouble was, I could never tell which was which. And the more he told them, the less it mattered.
Unlike most regulars, Orwyn flipped the script. He didn’t judge when I laid out my problems on the bar instead of listening to his. Half the time he gave good advice. The other half? Well, let’s just say “fortune cookie nonsense” and leave it there.
He had his little quirks, too. Peculiarities that set him apart. He wanted six olives in a rocks glass—no more, no less, exactly six. Then he wanted a tall Guinness, poured properly. Not the sloppy way most bartenders crank it out when they’re slammed, but the right way. Two-stage pour. Let it cascade and settle, nitrogen doing its thing until the dark pint crowned itself with a marshmallow-white head.
That was what made him my regular customer. That pour. The first time he walked in, I poured it for him the right way. Not because he asked, just be cause it was the proper way to do it. Few bartenders in the US know how to pour a Guinness correctly, but I take pride in the small things. Or maybe I just needed someone to notice I gave a shit.
Either way, since that night, Orwyn became a fixture. Every other Thursday, like clockwork. We’d talk about history, whiskey, and life. He’d ask about the new bottles on the shelf, and I’d skip through the marketing fluff, “same old stuff, but aged in a warehouse a few feet to the left, so obviously it’s worth thirty bucks more.” He’d listen like it mattered, the conversation meant more to him than anything else.
And just like that, I saw his beat-up old van lumbering down the street, pulling into the lot. Rust chewed at the edges. Dents mapped out its history like battle scars. It looked like it belonged to a junk dealer, not a guy who tipped a hundred bucks every time he came in.
“How does a man who supposedly has serious money drive a van like that?” I shook my head, muttering to myself as I walked toward the door to unlock it. “I’m in the wrong industry.”
Mr. Orwyn wasn’t my first customer of the night. Two guys I didn’t know wandered in, the type that read the menu like they were decoding a treasure map. After five minutes of agonizing waiting, they settled on the safest choice possible, beer, and shuffled out to the back patio.
Next came Jim and Craig. I knew them well. Rich older guys, men who could retire tomorrow if they wanted, but still kept an office a block down just so they could feel important and get away from their wives. Oil money. They walked like they owned half the city, which they probably did. And every day, without fail, they came here and ordered the cheapest happy hour beer I had on tap.
Millionaires drinking discount piss water. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere, but I try not to think too hard at work.
They pushed through the door, already smirking.
“Jesus, you’re still here?” Jim barked. “Thought they’d have fired your ass by now, David.”
Their beers were already on the bar before they even made it to their stools. I leaned against the counter, arms folded, and waiting.
Craig squinted at his pint, frowning like he’d just caught me stealing his wallet. “You poured it too fast. It’s already warm.”
“Not my fault,” I said. “You’re both getting so fat it takes you half an hour to waddle down the bar.”
That got a laugh. One of those deep belly laughs that makes you wonder if someone’s about to keel over.
“Son of a bitch,” Jim wheezed.
“Back at you, old man.”
They clinked glasses and shuffled to their usual spot at one of the tables.
I turned back to the counter, fiddled with the fruit trays, wiped down a clean spot that didn’t need wiping. Looked busy, the way bartenders do when there’s nothing to do but you don’t want anyone to notice.
So far, so good.
Mr. Orwyn was ambling past the front glass; same old battered coat, same old beat-up van parked outside like an old dog that refused to die.
I turned around, already reaching for the right glass. Room temperature Guinness tulip, not one of those frosted mugs we use for everything else. A frosty mug was a sin in Orwyn’s book. Might as well spit in the pint.
I tilted the glass at a perfect forty-five degree angle and pulled the tap, letting the dark beer cascade down the side in that hypnotic waterfall motion and stopped just as it hit eighty percent full—or, as Guinness intended, right at the bottom of the golden harp logo. The rest would wait.
Rush it, and you ruin the magic.
By the time I set the glass down and turned back around, Orwyn had already slipped onto a stool. He gave me that wide, crinkled smile of his, clapped his hands together, and shook them twice in front of him like he was accepting a lifetime achievement award.
“Yes, my boy! You always take care of me. Good lad!”
He said it loud, too—like he wanted the entire empty bar to know we were doing some sacred ceremony together.
I smirked. “Someone’s gotta keep you from drinking shit beer.”
“Bah,” he waved a hand, eyes twinkling. “Shit beer is for men who never lived. But you, you understand the craft. You have respect for the process.” He tapped the counter twice, like sealing the statement with a judge’s gavel. “That’s why I come here.”
“Sure,” I said, grabbing a rocks glass and tossing in his six olives. Any more or less, and he’d look at me like I’d insulted him. “That, and the fact that I’m the only one patient enough to listen to your stories.”
He chuckled, low and satisfied, and leaned in on his elbows. “Ah, but you do listen. That’s rarer than you think these days.”
I slid the rocks glass with his six olives across the bar. He didn’t even look down—just plucked one out and popped it into his mouth.
“You look tired, David,” he said around a chew. “Too much drink, not enough sleep, eh?”
I raised an eyebrow. “You say that like you’ve been spying on me.”
He wagged a finger. “Not spying. Observing. There’s a difference.”
“Sure,” I muttered. “That’s exactly what spies say.”
Orwyn chuckled, that raspy, satisfied sound that made it hard to stay annoyed. “Careful. Suspicion makes a man old before his time.”
I poured the last inch of his Guinness, watching the creamy head crown perfectly at the lip of the glass. I set it down in front of him. He gave it the approving nod most people reserve for their firstborn child's graduation.
“You see?” He lifted the pint, tilting it toward the light like it was a gemstone. “This is civilization. Not machines, not skyscrapers, not the internet. Civilization is when a man can walk into a tavern and know the beer will be poured properly.”
“Right,” I said. “Forget medicine, electricity, and indoor plumbing. Guinness is the cornerstone of humanity.”
Orwyn grinned at me over the rim before taking a long, careful sip. When he set the glass down, he sighed with real contentment, like the pint had restored his faith in life.
“You mock,” he said, wagging the glass at me, “but you understand. That’s why you pour it right, and that’s why I tip you well. The small rituals, the little details… they matter. Most people rush through life and never notice. But you do.”
I gave him a look. “You sure do notice a lot.”
He laughed again, loud and unapologetic, then tapped the bar with two fingers. “Good lad.”
We fell into our usual rhythm after that. Baseball, the weather, and me griping about customers who tipped badly. He listened, nodding solemnly like a Catholic priest at confession, then occasionally cut in with some one-liner that either made me laugh or left me wondering if he was serious.
Weird guy, Mr. Orwyn. Charming, sure. Generous, definitely. But weird.
I excused myself from him with a nod, he waved me off like some king granting leave to a servant. Two businesswomen had just walked in, sharp blazers, hair up in tight buns. They asked about the first two guys who’d wandered in when I opened. I pointed them toward the back patio, where they were waiting. They ordered next. One wanted white wine. The other? An espresso martini.
Of course… there’s always one.
I pulled the wine first. While I poured, I tossed in a quick quip about how pinot grigio is just grape juice with ambition, and it got me a smile.
Then I put on a little extra show for the martini by throwing the shaker into the air. I shook the cocktail tin like I was a bird of paradise dancing for a mate, strained the drink slow and steady, and used tweezers to place three espresso beans across the foamy white top as if I were finishing open heat surgery. What can I say? The one ordering had a whole cute milf thing going on, and I’m only human.
She took a sip, nodded her approval like a teacher grading homework, and slid a five across the bar for my trouble. Not bad for a minute of flirting and exercise. Then the two of them disappeared to the patio to track down their quarry.
When I got back to Orwyn, his glass was half-full, which in his world meant it was dangerously close to a crisis.
I grabbed another Guinness glass and started the first pour, watching the liquid cascade into that slow nitrogen storm.
“You’re pretty good with the ladies,” Orwyn said, his smile tugging up like he’d just caught me sneaking candy.
