by Lucy March
My entire body tensed, and my stomach went south. “Agency?”
“Yeah,” Peach said. “He worked for Allied Strategical Forces. It’s like a magical FBI or whatever, have you heard of them?”
I put on what I hoped was an impassive expression. “Yup.”
Addie made a face. “Well, then you know that ASF isn’t exactly the good guys, but they’re not as bad as the other one. RIAS, whatever that stands for.”
“Regional Initiative Action Services,” I said automatically, and Stacy raised an eyebrow at me.
I swallowed. “My father ran RIAS when I was a kid. Before he caused the disaster in Lott’s Cove and had to resign. I’d bet he’s still got a lot of connections, though.”
“Oh,” Stacy said coldly. “Great.”
“Regional Initiative Action Services,” Betty huffed. “What does that even mean?”
“Nothing,” I said absently, putting my picked-over brownie on the coffee table. “That’s the point.”
Addie touched my arm and lowered her voice, glancing in the direction Liv went. “Whatever about the agencies. Tobias loved Liv. And I don’t mean he liked her a lot. He loved her.”
“Loves,” Stacy corrected gently, and she and Addie shared a dark, worried look. That’s when I realized that they thought he might be dead.
Addie turned back to me. “I’m sure ASF called him away on some mission and made him write that note. He would never leave her on his own. He just wouldn’t.”
Maybe he wouldn’t, I thought. Maybe my father came to town and saw an agency guy, especially one from the opposing team, as a threat. Guilt washed over me, not because it was my fault that my father had likely disappeared Liv’s boyfriend, but that I was too much of a coward to voice my suspicions out loud.
At that moment, Liv walked back into the room, and we all shut up. She had something red and ceramic curled up in her arms like a pet, and at first I wondered how much of a toll Tobias’s leaving had taken on her. She set the thing on the coffee table between us and I studied it. It was … weird. It had obviously been a red mug at one time, because the tail wasn’t a fluffy bump at the back, but rather, formed from the ceramic handle. I was about to say something kind and nonjudgmental, but then the ceramic bunny wagged its tail and I jumped back.
“What is that?”
“That is Gibson,” she said.
It waggled back and forth as the ceramic nose sniffed at the table, and the ceramic feet shuffled toward me.
“I made him when I first got my magic,” Liv said. “Kind of accidentally. He’s blind and deaf and a little clumsy, but … I don’t know. I just love him, I guess.”
“Oh my god,” I breathed as I bent over lower to study the thing. “You have source magic? That’s rare. I’ve never even seen it before.”
“Source magic?” Peach said, looking up from the brownies balancing on her stomach. “What’s source magic?”
Liv looked at her. “It’s when you can give life to something independent of you.” It appeared Tobias the Agency Guy had been schooling his girlfriend, which was good. At least there was one of them I wouldn’t have to explain everything to. The rest of them, however, were watching me with interest, so I explained a little.
“There are different kinds of magic,” I said, and started rattling off my knowledge the way fourth graders rattle off state capitals. “Source magic, like Liv’s, is when you can give life to inanimate objects. Elemental magic, people who work with earth, air, fire—”
“Fire,” Addie said, perking up. “That’s you, Stacy.”
“You’re a fire elemental?” I asked, feeling tense at the thought. You wanted your fire elementals to be the calm, rational sort, and Stacy Easter didn’t seem that type to me.
“I’m a conjurer,” she said, her voice even. “When I’m under the influence of someone else’s magic, I start fires.”
“Good to know.” I squelched an instinct to apologize for being rude, but thought twice about it. I wasn’t about to make myself submissive to Stacy Easter. If I’d offended her, she could just deal with it.
“Okay,” I went on, “so, let me see … there’s also kinetic magic, where you can affect speed and motion. Perception magic, where you can create visual impressions, but there isn’t anything physically there. And there’s creative magic, where you can make things appear from thin air—”
Peach snapped her fingers. “Like Betty! She can make baked goods just by snapping her fingers. Her baklava is amazing.”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” Betty said humbly.
Gibson got to the end of the table, and I picked him up before he could fall off the edge. He already had a chip on his nose. I … well, for lack of a better word … cuddled him to my chest and looked at Liv. “Are you day or night magic?”
Liv’s face tensed a bit. “Both. It’s a long story, but … yeah. I can do it whenever.”
It was clear that Liv understood exactly what she was, exactly how rare she was, and what that meant about her power, but her friends obviously didn’t, because they didn’t look worried at all, so I tried not to react too much. It was her place to tell them, not mine.
I handed Gibson back to Liv, and noticed that while Addie was petting Seamus and Peach was pushing the baby’s foot out of her rib cage, Stacy was watching me carefully, and not missing a thing.
Liv leaned forward. “So, you think your father spiked your lasagna and unbound your magic? Why would he do that?”
“Because he needs me, I guess,” I said. “It’s really difficult to bind magic, practically impossible to bind a grown magical, but it’s crazy easy to unbind it.”
“Yeah,” Peach said. “Liv got hit in the face with some herbs in a gym sock and that’s all it took to unbind her magic. It was crazy.”
I smiled. In a weird way it was kind of nice, being able to talk about this stuff again. “My father used to compare it to entropy. You know, chaos. Magic is a force that wants to be free, that kind of thing. So maybe my father dosed the Welcome Wagon lasagna—”
“Oh! Bastard!” Peach said, offended at the thought.
“But it’s also possible my magic could have … I don’t know … just come loose from being around”—I deliberately didn’t look at Liv—“this much magical energy. Maybe. I don’t know.”
Stacy huffed, and Addie said, “What?”
“Seriously? You guys aren’t seeing this?” Stacy looked at Liv. “Desmond walked her home from Happy Larry’s last night.” She said his name in the same tone people use for politician or herpes. “Desmond was with her today when her magic erupted. Maybe she’s in on it, maybe she’s just his victim, but I can’t believe you guys don’t see the common factor here.”
Liv looked at me, torn. “I don’t know. What do you think, Eliot?”
And all eyes were suddenly on me. I looked from one of them to the next and then said, “Hell if I know. You all know him better than I do.”
“Well, let’s start with the obvious. Did you drink anything in his presence?” Stacy asked. Her tone was less confrontational now than it had been before, but I guessed that was less about her coming to like me and more about the fact that she wanted information.
“He doesn’t have to give her anything to drink,” Betty said. “Remember what he did to Leo last year? With that hypodermic needle?”
A flash of pain crossed Stacy’s face; apparently whatever Desmond had done to this Leo, it had been pretty bad.
“Who’s Leo?” I asked. “What happened?”
“Leo’s my boyfriend,” Stacy said. “Desmond gave him a potion that wiped out his feelings for me.”
“Oh, wow.” For a moment, I felt some sympathy for Stacy Easter. Not enough to like her any better, but whatever.
“Desmond can’t be trusted,” Stacy said. “Don’t think it’s a coincidence that your magic unbinds the day after you meet him. I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts, it’s not.”
“C’mon, guys,” Peach said, making it obvious who the peacek
eeper was in this group. “Desmond doesn’t do that stuff anymore. He was under the influence of the potions at the time, too. Stacy cured him, and he’s been … you know, okay. He’s doing landscaping work for Nick this summer, and we haven’t had any trouble with him all year. It might be time to give the guy a second chance.”
Liv seemed to take this under consideration, and Addie gave a grudging shrug, but Stacy was having none of it.
“Do whatever you want,” she said. “Just don’t come crying to me when magic bites you in the ass. Again.”
Liv gave Stacy a warning look. “I think Eliot would know if Desmond stuck her with a needle.”
“He’s smart,” Stacy said. “And he’s devious. He could drop something on her skin, she’d never know.” Stacy looked at me. “Did he touch you?”
“I don’t know. We shook hands, but … I don’t think he administered anything to me. And the only other stuff I ate was that Welcome Wagon lasagna.”
Addie’s eyebrows rose a touch, and she gasped and put her hand over her mouth. “Gladys Night!”
I glanced around the group, thinking for a moment that perhaps Addie had just had one of those strokes that makes people say random words, but they all seemed to know what she was talking about.
“Oh, crap,” Betty said.
“Wait,” I said, leaning forward. “Are you guys talking about … Gladys Knight, Gladys Knight? What does any of this have to do with ‘Midnight Train to Georgia’?”
“Nothing,” Stacy said. “Gladys Night. No K, no Pips. She lives down the street from my mother. She’s not magical. She’s fifty-four years old and she believes that flowers bloom when angels fart. There’s no way she’d put anything in that lasagna.”
Stacy’s mother’s neighbor, I thought, and I looked at Stacy as I thought it. She looked back at me, reading my expression easily.
“Don’t go pointing that fearsome intellect at me,” she said. “I didn’t lace your stupid lasagna.”
Liv shook her head. “No. Stacy would never, ever, ever give anything to anyone against their will. Not after what Desmond did last summer. Just … never. Trust me.”
“Never say never,” Stacy said under her breath, eyeing me with mild threat in her eyes. She was like a cat, puffing up to look more dangerous than she really was, and despite the fact that she was pointing that puffed-up act at me, I could sympathize with where it was coming from. If I had friends and a town like this, I’d want to protect them, too.
“The point is,” Betty said, getting us back on track, “that Gladys Night spends every weekend doing volunteer work for Community Cares.”
The room went silent. I sighed. “And my father runs Community Cares.”
“Well…” Addie gave me sympathetic eyes. “Yeah.”
“So we’ve got him on opportunity,” I said.
“What’s the motive, though?” Liv asked.
“The same as it’s always been,” I said, feeling suddenly exhausted. “To make all the nonmagicals magical.”
Addie smiled and looked around. “Well … that doesn’t sound too bad,” she said. “Might even be fun.”
“Yeah, it was sure a blast when Desmond did it to me and three other people last year,” Stacy said. “It was a hoot until we all almost died.”
“My mother did die,” I said, and it was then that I saw the first spark of shame in Stacy’s expression. “So did my best friend, and a bunch of other people from my town. I won’t let that happen again.”
If you can help it, a traitorous voice at the back of my head added.
“So,” Betty said, ever pragmatic, “what do we do now?”
It was a good question, and none of us had the answer. Eventually, everyone shuffled out, and Addie gave me and Seamus a ride home. I slept, dreamt of a locked room filling with daisies, and when I woke up the next morning, pissed off and still tired despite a full night’s sleep, I knew just what I needed to do.
Chapter 6
“Emerson Streat,” I said breathlessly to the skinny redhead behind the desk. “I need to speak to him.”
Amber Dorsey eyed me for a moment, sizing me up. She had hair like Little Orphan Annie, a wild fiery coif punctuated with little rhinestone dragonfly clips on either side. She wore low-rise jeans and a midriff top that exposed both her hip bones and lower ribs, which you could see clearly even when she was sitting down. Her eyes were dancing pinwheels of crazy, and she was exactly the kind of unexpected wild card Emerson would put on his front desk, the way someone else might install a fish tank of fascinating sea life for people to gawk at while they waited.
Some things never changed.
She cracked her gum and said, in a staccato and obviously put-on affectation of professionalism, “And what is your business with Mr. Streat?”
I could tell that, given a more natural environment, her response would have been, Yeah, and what the fuck do you want? My father always loved to play Henry Higgins to the town’s most hard-edged Eliza Doolittle; it made him look like a hero to the people who liked her and a saint to the people who didn’t. Plus, having crazy in the front office usually meant that people paid more attention to her and less to Emerson and whatever he was up to. This particular flower girl was fresh out of Covent Garden, as far as I could tell; the edges Emerson liked to smooth out on his front-desk women were still sharp and ragged.
“My business with Mr. Streat is personal. Where is he?” I pointed to the closed door behind her desk. “Is he in there? Is that where he is?”
Amber reached one hand, punctuated with bright red acrylics, toward the mouse. She cracked her gum again and clicked it without pulling her eyes away from mine.
“Let me peruse the calendar for Mr. Streat’s next availability,” she said coolly.
“Now,” I growled at her. “He has an opening right the fuck now.”
She didn’t move, just pulled her hand back from the mouse. Her body was still, but it was also lithe and dangerous, angry energy coiled and just waiting for an excuse to strike. He’d picked a live one this time.
“I will request that you maintain a professional tone in this—”
“Emerson Streat!” I shouted, giving up on getting anywhere with Amber Dorsey. “Get your ass out here, or I swear I’ll—”
The office door opened and Amber shot up from her seat. “I told her she had to make an appointment, Mr. Streat. It’s not my fault. She’s obviously crazy. Do you want me to call the police?”
He smiled at me; it was obvious he’d been expecting me. At least he respected my intelligence enough not to feign surprise. He set the files in his hand on Amber’s desk, and said, in a voice hued with a southern sunset and perfectly cracking with just the right hint of emotion, “It’s okay, Amber. This is my daughter.”
Amber’s eyes widened, and she looked me up and down. “Are you sure? She doesn’t look like you.”
Emerson Streat chuckled and said, “No, she doesn’t. She got her momma’s genes. Proof of a benevolent god.”
Amber blinked. She didn’t appear to have any understanding of benevolence. Emerson pulled his eyes away from me and put a hand on her shoulder.
“Tell you what, Amber,” he said, pulling some bills out of his pocket. “Why don’t you take an early lunch? On me. I’ll see you back here at two.”
Amber, who obviously knew a good deal when she saw one, snatched the money out of his hand with her bright red talons and popped up on her toes to kiss him on the cheek.
“Thanks, Mr. S.” She tagged me with one last look of caustic disapproval before shooting out the front door and leaving me alone with my father and my dog.
Emerson just stood there watching me for a while, a sad smile on his face. I tightened my grip on Seamus’s leash, and I must have been putting out near-hysterical vibes, because the dog moved closer to me and rubbed his big rock of a head against my hip.
“You look beautiful, Josie,” Emerson finally said. “The spittin’ image of your momma.”
“The name is
Eliot now,” I said. “But you know that.”
He didn’t even blink. “Yeah. I know that.”
“You brought Judd out here,” I said, sick with myself at how obvious it all was. How had I not seen it from the start? “How much did you pay him not to say anything to me about it?”
Emerson was quiet for a long time, and I relaxed a bit. He was quick with lies, a little slower when he was telling the truth. “There may have been a small monthly stipend.”
My stomach turned. Judd had lied to me, all this time, for a small monthly stipend. Of course, that wasn’t counting the lies he’d told me for free, but that was another issue altogether.
“And you gave him the money for the house.” I stated it as fact, because there was no other way. Judd never had so much as two nickels to rub together. No way had he gotten his hands on one hundred thousand dollars cash, and if he had, he would have blown it in Atlantic City.
Emerson nodded. “Family is allowed to give a one-time gift for that sort of—”
“Did you tell him my real name? Did you tell him I was magic? Did—”
He held up his hands. “I told him I was your birth father, that we’d never met, that your mother had you without telling me. I told him that I just wanted to be sure you were taken care of. I flew him out here for four hours, to sign the paperwork, and that was all he knew. In case of death or divorce, you would get the house.”
“And you expect me to believe that’s all there was to it?” I held his eye, refusing to back down, even though my breath was ragged and my muscles were shaking.
Emerson undid his jacket button and sat one hip down on the edge of the reception desk, looking like every hometown politician ad ever made. Just a good man doing a tough job, his stance said.
Except I knew better.
“Whatever it is you want,” I said, “you can forget it. I’m leaving town as soon as I can pack up my stuff. You can take that house back and sell it, burn it, give it to your little redheaded wildling, I don’t care. But whatever you think is going to happen here, it’s not happening.”
He nodded, and hung his head a little bit in an affectation approaching shame. God, he was good. He was so good, he almost had me fooled, and I knew him better than anyone else in this world.