She made her way back to a bus stop she’d passed on the way to the coffee shop and called for a taxi. She was waiting on the bench meant for buses when the ghost of her Aunt Aggie appeared.
“I haven’t seen you in a long time,” Herman commented to the ghost. The ridiculous thought came to her that Aunt Aggie—wearing a thin rust-colored raincoat and carrying her purse, a costume she was never seen without—should be cold.
“You haven’t needed me much lately,” the ghost said.
Herman rocked and shivered like a leaf in the strong winter breeze. People walking by either stared as she talked to her aunt, or made a point not to. At least she was dressed nicely; the cops would probably have been by to pick her up for public intoxication otherwise.
To keep her mind off the cold, she asked Aggie if the baby would be able to see her after she was born. The only members of her family who could see the ghost were Herman and her dad. And Stephen.
“Both you and the prick can see me. What do you think?” “The prick” was Aggie’s nickname for Stephen.
Herman nodded. “Can you see the baby? Can you see her future?”
“I can’t say.”
Herman sat quietly for a while, watching the snow blow past a dark blotch on the pavement.
“Can you see what Stephen’s doing right now?” she asked the apparition.
“Would you believe he’s watching his ex-assistant fuck his brother?”
“Yes,” Herman rocked back and forth with more vigor. “Why can you tell me that? I didn’t think you could tell me anything I don’t already know.”
“He’s not concerned by it.”
“That’s good to know.” She looked at her ghost of a great-aunt sitting beside her on the bench. “Aunt Aggie, does Stephen love me?”
“More than life. But you knew that.”
Herman looked up at the latest gawker walking by, a man with his shoulders hiked up to his ears, and said, “It’s good to hear it from someone else.”
“Merry Christmas,” the man mumbled, speeding up.
CHAPTER 31
It was Beryl’s number that came up on the screen of Stephen’s cell phone as he stepped in from the cold December dusk to the heat of the kitchen. “Mr. Dagmar?”
“Please, call me Stephen,” he said to Herman’s aunt.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “But I spend so much time talking to my sister about you that I’ve come to think of you as Mr. Dagmar, too. She really does think the world of you.”
“Well, thank you. How’s Herman? Is she home yet?”
“Yes, Mr. … Stephen, that’s why I called you. I wouldn’t have bothered you otherwise, it’s just I’m worried about her.”
“Why, what’s wrong?”
“I think she had another fight with her father. She called earlier to say she wanted me to pick her up, but George grabbed my car keys and left before I could stop him. George still isn’t home. Herman took a taxi. She was so cold when she came in, and she was talking to herself. I sent her for a warm bath. I thought I should call you, in case it’s not too late for you to come back. I wasn’t sure when your flight was leaving.”
He checked the time on the clock over the stove and subtracted two hours. It was still too early to say he was already in Kingston. “I’m not able to come back now. I’ll call George and have a word with him. I’ll just get his number from you.”
Stephen ran up the stairs and into his office to write down the number. He took a quick peek behind the curtain to his bedroom to make sure Margaret was safe. She lay on her side, breathing evenly in her sleep.
“Thank you, Beryl, for taking care of Herman for me. I hate being so far away from her.”
“You are a wonderful man, Stephen.”
He smiled even as he thought, if only you knew. “When she comes out of the bath, could you tell her you spoke to me, and if she’d like to talk to me, she should call, please? I don’t want to disturb her now.”
“I will.”
“Thank you. Talk to you again soon,” Stephen said and hung up.
He climbed the three steps to the curtain and entered his bedroom. Taking a seat on a chair in the corner, he watched his best friend sleep while he waited for Herman’s father to answer the phone.
“Dagmar! I was wondering how long it would take.”
“Listen, you fucking asshole. You’ve finally pushed me as far as you’re going to, so I’ll tell you what I’m going to do.
“If I hear that you’ve terrorized my girlfriend in any way, shape, or form again, I will remove you. I have a cozy little room with no windows and no doors, where no one will hear you scream. Unless you would like to spend the next three weeks there instead of with your family, I strongly suggest you back the fuck off.” Stephen was thinking of an underground passage between the kitchen and the barn that was sometimes used during bad winter storms. The doors were hidden, much like the one directly from the hallway to his bedroom.
“If there’s no windows or doors, how will you get me in there?” George asked smugly.
“Magic, smartass. More magic than you can comprehend.”
Stephen hung up and closed his eyes. He breathed deeply for a few minutes to calm himself. When he opened them again, Margaret was looking at him.
“I wish I could be happy for you,” she murmured. “I wish things could go back to the way they were, when it was just us. Or even just us and someone you didn’t really love.”
They regarded each other silently.
“What did you mean when you said, ‘If I hadn’t lost it, I would have had it’?”
She buried her face in the pillow and shook her head.
“What is it?” he asked. He waited patiently for her to speak again.
“The night we were together with Herman, I don’t know how it happened … I was on the pill.”
“And you lost it? When?” He moved to the bed.
“Two weeks ago.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was going to. This week.” She shook her head again. “But I don’t understand. How?”
“Herman was on the pill as well. My father didn’t tell me that the rise of the demon would make me that potent.”
“Maybe he doesn’t know.”
“I’m sorry, Margaret. That I wasn’t there for you. I’m sorry I put you through it in the first place, and that you lost—”
Margaret raised her hand, cutting him off. “Don’t say it. Don’t ever, please.”
“I’m sorry,” he repeated quietly. “With your permission, I’d like to try the spell that we’re going to cast on Nina, on you first.”
She frowned. “You want me to cast spell on myself?”
“No, I’ll present the idea to the other girls tonight, while you sleep this off. But only with your consent.”
“I don’t want to stop loving you, Stephen,” she said with a quivering lower lip.
“I don’t want you to stop loving me. I only want you to stop being tortured by my love for Herman.”
She swallowed again and winced. “Go and get me some water and let me think about it for a minute, okay?”
“Sure.”
By the time he returned with the glass of water, she was gone from his room. He found her lying in the guest room bed. She looked at him through one slitted eye.
“Do I have your permission to cast the spell?”
“It’s probably for the best,” she mumbled, half into the pillow, before she rolled over.
He placed the glass of water on the table beside her and left for the playroom.
When he reached the top of the spiral staircase, it occurred to him that the day seemed bound to have everyone in it undressed. In the flickering light of two dozen candles, with incense burning in smoky commas around the interior of the turret, four women, each with a glass of white wine, lounged naked in the hot tub.
“Fuck it,” he mumbled. He filled a glass for hi
mself and stripped off his clothes. “Nobody touch me,” he said as he eased himself into the heat of the Jacuzzi, trying not to dwell on the fact that the girls hadn’t changed much in any way since their time spent together in the playroom. He detected the fragrance of the perspiration distinctly associated with menstruation beneath the burning incense and the water, and he wondered how shallowly buried his demonic nature lay. He drained his first glass of wine and poured himself another before he related the state Margaret was in, and what they needed to do about it. He omitted to mention that she had been pregnant with his child, though he assumed Charlie probably knew.
It was Charlie who brought him up to speed. “We went through the old tomes, but there isn’t a specific spell for what you want to do. So we’ve agreed to try one that Kerry learned in Africa to start with. I think it will be a good idea to try it on Margaret first, to see how effective it is. If it works on her with the five of us, it can only be better with six.”
She also thought it a good idea to add something outwardly insignificant to the spell. Something that would give them an immediate sign that it had been received, even though it didn’t necessarily mean the spell to fall out of love with Stephen had worked. Bryce suggested that both subjects might have access to the next day’s newspaper, so they agreed to urge both Margaret and Nina to read the first article on the third page of the paper on the morning they woke up from having the spell cast upon them. Stephen memorized the words to the original spell as well as the girls had, and Kerry said she knew what they needed for the extra incantation. Stephen was prepared with an object belonging to Margaret: he removed her ruby school ring from his baby finger and handed it to Kerry.
As they were about to begin, Sarah said to Stephen, “You’d better answer your phone.”
He opened his mouth to say it wasn’t ringing when it rang. He wiped his hand on the jeans he had dropped beside the Jacuzzi and took the phone out of the pocket. It was Herman.
He put the phone to his ear without saying anything, realizing as he did that he had no idea how to explain to her where he was.
“Stephen?” she asked.
“Yes, my love, how are you?”
“I’m okay. What are you doing? Is that the Jacuzzi I can hear?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Please just tell me you’re behaving yourself.” She didn’t sound very worried.
“Exceptionally well.”
“Good.” She breathed outward audibly. “I called to ask you what you said to my dad. He’s behaving himself exceptionally well too. It’s so out of character.”
“I simply told him to leave you alone,” Stephen said nonchalantly.
“Right. Well if you don’t want to tell me, that’s okay. As long as it works.”
He smiled. “That’s all you need to know.”
“I don’t want to disturb you any more if you’re working on the spell.”
“We are,” he said.
“Can you call me when you’re finished, if it’s not too late? Maybe we can talk then.”
“I will. I miss you.”
“I miss you too,” she said. He could tell she was smiling. “Bye, Stephen.”
“Bye-bye, my love.” He turned to put the phone away. When he turned back, he saw that his fellow coven members were staring at him.
“It’s profound how much you’ve changed,” Bryce said.
“Love will do that to a man,” he said, knowing and not caring that he was grinning like an idiot. He reached around to turn off the hot tub jets, which revealed the titillating truth that they were all, indeed, nude. “So why don’t we get these spells taken care of so I can go and do something about my hard-on in private?”
“Okay,” Kerry said. “Who are you, and what have you done with Stephen?”
He laughed. Charlie spoke on his behalf. “Herman is a wonderful girl. She has once and for all put our Stephen in his place. Given him his place, rather.”
“To Herman!” Bryce said. Wine glasses clinked in the center of the Jacuzzi; the taste of the wine, the heat of the room, the fragrance of the incense, and the company of four beautiful women all wove together in Stephen’s mind, each point making him wish he could be alone once again with Herman and the baby she bore in her womb.
They joined hands and Kerry began. The words wove into lyrical prose with a rhythmic chant, as she prayed that by passing on Margaret’s ring, she would pass through the desire she felt, and come to accept that it was unreciprocated, and always would be. The second part was for her to move on, to find new love, and to keep the love she felt for Stephen in the past.
Kerry broke the chain of hands to quickly place the ring in her mouth. She passed it, mouth to mouth, to Charlie on her left. As Stephen took it with his tongue from Charlie’s, the tension crept up in a line from his balls to his chest. He turned to Bryce next, and she in turn passed it to Sarah, and then it went back to Kerry. She asked that the spell commence with the compulsion to read the newspaper, and then she closed the spell with well-wishes for Margaret and a long life to come. All five shut their eyes for a moment of silent contemplation.
When Stephen opened his eyes again, all four women were looking at him. Kerry took the ring from her mouth and handed it back to him.
“I vote we go out for a movie after dinner,” he suggested, “but first I have to call Herman and umm, you know. I’ll meet you all downstairs in half an hour.”
“Shall I try to wake Margaret?” Charlie asked him.
“You can try, but she was pretty baked last time I saw her. I wouldn’t try too hard if I were you.”
He got out of the Jacuzzi and the four ladies applauded. When he realized they were looking at his erection, he smirked and bowed deeply and dramatically from the waist.
“OW!” he said, standing up with his hand over his eye.
Bryce giggled. “In your dreams, Dagmar!”
He wrapped himself in a towel and made a quick exit, leaving behind the sound of laughter.
It was already eight in the evening in Kingston, which meant it was six in Edmonton. Herman was chewing when she answered the phone.
“Sorry to catch you while you’re eating,” he said. “I’m taking the girls out to a movie. We’re going to eat soon, and I wanted to call you first.” He lay down on the bed. While he listened to her excuse herself from the table, he stared at the wall, thinking about which of the boudoir pictures might look best there.
“Did you try the spell?” she asked at length.
“We tried one, yes,” he said, ashamed that he wasn’t telling the whole truth. He told her about their test with the newspaper instead. “It will be a matter of waiting until the morning to see if it worked.”
“If it doesn’t, you’ll have two more days to try again, right?” she said, sounding hopeful.
“It’s a good spell. I’m hoping it will work.”
“Well, I guess I’d better let you go and have fun with the girls. Just not too much, okay?”
“I couldn’t possibly have too much fun without you, my love.”
“I wish I could be there with you.”
“So do I. I’ll call you in the morning. Sweet dreams.”
“You too, Stephen.”
He hurried into his clothes and down the stairs where Sarah and Kerry were sitting in the foyer on one of the velvet benches that lined the walls. They converged on him like magnets to metal.
“It’s so wonderful to be back here, all of us, together,” Kerry said with a smile.
“I’m just sorry you didn’t get to meet Herman,” Stephen said. “You must all come back when our daughter is born. I’d like to place a blessing on her.”
“That would be great,” Sarah said.
Stephen turned at the sound of Charlie and Bryce chatting as they strolled down the stairs.
“There’s no way we’re going to drag Margaret out in that shape,” Charlie told him.
“We’ll make it up t
o her,” Stephen said, feeling ultimately responsible for her condition. “Did she look comfortable at least?”
“She’ll be fine.” Charlie took his hand. “Now let’s all go drink to page three of tomorrow’s paper, shall we?”
* * *
Much later that night, with his four dinner companions settled for bed in the playroom and no sign of Charlotte back from the station, Stephen slouched in the chair in the guest room and watched Margaret sleep. A lifetime ago, before he hit the road as a career magician, he would have slept in the attic rooms with them, dozing between nocturnal joinings, bathings, and play—six young, healthy, lusty beings with nothing to lose. The memory caused his sternum to clench into a tight ball, but not of desire. His yearning for Herman was a physical ache, as though part of him had been torn away, leaving that old empty shell where she should be: in his arms. He didn’t want to go to bed without her. His evening with the girls hadn’t relieved his mind’s reach toward her.
Nor had it taken his mind off his worry for Margaret. How he had allowed her feelings to escalate to this point confounded him, and her pregnancy made things all the more confusing. He would hate to lose her, but lose her he would if they were unable to find a spell that worked.
Despite the longing he felt for Herman and his loyalty to her, he wished he could crawl onto the bed with Margaret and simply hold her. He trusted himself to do so without being tempted, even though she lay there beautiful and desirable to any sane, straight man. He could make out the delicate contours of her body, the sheet wrapped tight over her breasts and drifting in a silken sweep over her hip. So perfectly feminine with her dark hair draped over the pillow and her pretty pink lips parted; he wanted to comfort her and promise her it was going to be okay. But that would likely undo any of the good the spell might have cast upon her subconscious, so he let her sleep, and eventually he closed his eyes and drifted off.
His first sensation upon stirring from the heaviness of sleep was a pain in his neck from his position in the chair. The second, coming quickly on the heels of the first, was the weight of something pressing on his legs, just above his knees. He opened his eyes to the morning’s light and Margaret, fully dressed, kneeling with her forearms resting across his lap and her head bowed so that she looked at the floor between his feet. He reached out and stroked her hair and she lifted her head. Her frown spoke of her apology.
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