Lowering her beer, Katerina says, “You have to tell me how you got them to sleep.”
Rush shrugs. “Drugs.”
Shaking her head and rolling her eyes in a way that is improbably sexy, she gives him a little shove, and a little light goes on in Rush’s mind … his skin goes warm and other things rise to the occasion. They’re flirting, and it’s working!
“No, seriously, tell me,” she says, scooting closer, so they’re almost shoulder to shoulder.
“Nope,” says Rush, taking a swig of his beer.
Katerina nudges him with her shoulder and says, “Tell me.”
It’s really nice being so cozy. Rush gives her a nudge back, glancing at the lips he’s about to be kissing. “Well … seriously … I sang them a lullaby.”
Katerina sits back, mouth agape. “That’s right. Ms. Hemsworth was saying you were singing out back.” Her nose wrinkles distastefully. “And I heard there was a unicorn; I hope magical beasts aren’t moving out this way.”
It’s nice that she isn’t fooled by unicorns; lots of people see them and think they’re so pretty they’ll just slip a halter on. They always wind up in the hospital, if not outright dead.
Rush looks away, not completely feigning shyness. “Deanna asked me to sing for her.”
“Would you sing for me?” Katerina asks, getting cozy again, and just that simple touch … oh, yes, the curse is over.
Holding his frame, Rush doesn’t lunge at her, or become a babbling fool. He parries instead. Touching the beer to his chest, he looks at her and grins. “Well, if I sang the song I sang for the boys, you might go to sleep.”
“Then sing something different!” Katerina says.
“Like what?” Rush asks, trying to keep his game, to play it a little cool.
Putting her beer bottle down on the coffee table, Katerina pulls her feet up under her and smiles. “Something I’d like.”
Rush’s eyes go to the CD on top of the ancient record player cover. Stifling a snort, he belts out the chorus of Rod Stewart’s “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy.” He hits the first notes perfectly, albeit in a slightly lower register than Rod’s. Magic rises around him, seemingly in approval.
“I think you’re so sexy, Rush,” she says, raising an eyebrow.
He’s joking, sorta, and he thinks she’s joking, sorta, so he finishes the chorus just for shits and giggles, and because the magic feels good. He’s just finished the line about just reaching out and touching him when Katarina pounces on him with enough force to knock him backward. His head bangs into the armrest, and he just barely keeps the beer aloft.
“I want you!” Katerina says, crawling over his body. “I need you!” Her lips connect with his, and they’re just as soft as he’d hoped, and her body is just the right amount of softness and firmness … and it’s all suddenly not working.
“Uh,” Rush says, coming up for breath and managing to put his beer down on the floor.
“Sing for me,” Katerina begs.
Which is when Rush realizes that magic is still humming in the room.
Katerina presses kisses to his face and his neck and grinds herself against him. “You’re like a drug!”
Rush’s eyes go wide in sudden terror as all the pieces in the last few moments fall into place.
“Go to sleep,” he croons in desperation. “Go to sleep, my little darling. Sleep all night, forget all about this, and I’ll see you in the morning.”
Katerina’s head crashes on his chest where her lips had just been making their way lower. Gasping in relief and shock, Rush gently crawls out from under her. Climbing up onto the armrest, he gazes down at Katerina, her long dark hair spilled out behind her, her skin healthy and glowing, her lips gently parted. She looks so pretty, and it does nothing for him.
Thank God.
He puts his hands through his hair, not sure how this could get any worse.
* * *
“What did you do to me?” Katerina cries, standing in the foyer of Deanna and Jeff’s place, the door half ajar behind her, letting in cold air.
Setting down his guitar and holding up his hands, Rush babbles, “Me? What? Nothing! I mean, you passed out on the couch, and I thought it was weird, but nothing happened.” He had tucked a few blankets around her, picked up the beer bottles, and left.
“I don’t remember anything about last night after … after … ” She clutches her head, and then looks up at Rush suspiciously. “Did you roofie me?”
Magically, he had, hadn’t he? Not on purpose, but it was still wrong. He rocks on his feet, hums softly under his breath, and knows he can’t tell the truth. “No,” he lies. “I didn’t, Katerina.”
Backing away from him and holding up a finger, Katerina says, “You did something, I know it. Stay away from me! And stay away from my kids!”
With that, she spins on her heels and strides out the door, slamming it behind her.
Backing up, Rush sits down on the steps that lead up to the kitchen and wipes his face.
“What happened?” Deanna’s whisper from the top of the stairs catches him off guard. He looks up. She’s wearing a pair of pink flannel pajamas, and Jeff’s green robe. Her hair is mussed, and her eyes are puffy with sleep; she’d been sleeping late again.
Rush shakes his head and looks away.
Deanna pads softly down the stairs and sits down one step above him.
The hairs on the back of Rush’s neck stand on end. “I didn’t do anything to her,” he snaps, thinking of men he’s read about on the internet, snared up in false rape claims, guilty until proven innocent.
“I know you didn’t,” Deana gasps. “But something happened … do you think there was something in the beer? Or something she ate ... I’m not a doctor. Could something like that linger? Should she be driving to work?”
Rush sighs. “No, she can drive. She’ll be fine. It wasn’t the beer.”
“Rush, what aren’t you telling me?” Deanna says, putting her hand on his shoulder. It’s so cold and light. Bowing his head, Rush hums and before he knows what he’s doing, he’s telling her everything. About how he’s magical, but he didn’t know that he had any particular magical talent until just recently, how he probably called the unicorns, and how his mom and Justin broke into Katerina’s car, how he put Diego and Roberto to sleep with magic, and the horrible outcome of Katerina asking him to sing for her. “I sang that song as a joke. The whole singing to make magic thing is so new to me, I didn’t think about it. When I realized what was happening, I panicked and sang her to sleep.” He winces. “And maybe told her to forget about it.” Putting his elbows on his knees, he drops his head in his hands.
He hears Deanna release a long breath, but she doesn’t pull her hand away. The clock chimes, and when it’s done she says, “What you did wasn’t right, but it’s understandable.” She smooths a circle on his back. “It would be good if you could apologize.”
“So I should come clean?” Rush asks, chest lightening as he imagined him and Katerina getting a fresh start.
Deanna sighs. “If you’d accidentally gotten her drunk, yes. But you … enchanted her—”
“Sort of the opposite,” Rush comments.
“—and she is afraid of magic,” Deanna says sadly, and Rush remembers her comments about the unicorn. He hadn’t thought much of it at the time; but she had said magical beasts … his shoulders drop. A magical beast, that’s what he is, isn’t it?
“I think you should do exactly what she asked and leave her alone,” Deanna says sadly.
Rush sighs. “There goes any chance I have of undoing Lewis’s curse in the next three days.”
Deanna’s hand stills. “Magical curse?”
Because apparently he’s in a sharing mood, or maybe because Deanna is so understanding, Rush finds himself grumbling, “She thought she’d cure my misogyny by challenging me to finding true love in two weeks.” He leaves out the physical implications of Lewis’s curse; it’s too embarrassing and he can’t share that much. Hi
s brows draw together. Did he just admit to a woman that he is a misogynist? Well, there goes any shot at understanding from her.
Deanna huffs softly. “Well, if anyone’s come by misogyny honestly, it’s you, Rush.”
Before he can ask what she means, she stammers, “I’m so sorry … we tried to become your foster parents when we found out you’d been put in the system, but we didn’t know how and your mother … I’m so sorry. We were afraid, after your mother ...”
Rush looks at his hands, a memory coming to him … Jeff or Deanna, yelling at his Mom for smacking him behind the head and his mother accusing Jeff of being a child molester. She’d been really drunk at the time and had actually called it in. Nothing had come of it after the police had arrived, but it probably was written up somewhere.
“I’m so sorry,” Deanna says again. “We weren’t sure what the best thing to do was. When you started showing up at our place again, we just hoped that it was enough.”
Jeff and Deanna, they’re not exactly sophisticated people, just good people. They wouldn’t have known how to get lawyers involved, and if he was put into foster care with someone else, he wouldn’t have been able to see them again, and that probably would have been disastrous. He blinks. He just thought of Jeff and Deanna as a “them,” but as a child he’d only thought of Jeff. He had been distrustful and jealous of Deanna. But that wasn’t right; she’d been a willing accomplice in Jeff’s unofficial adoption campaign. She’d let him sleep in their house, eat their food, use their washing machine. She hadn’t waited on him hand and foot, but she hadn’t waited on her kids either. She’d been just as busy with her career as a physical therapist as Jeff had been with his plumbing business.
“It’s not your fault,” Rush says, shaking his head.
Deanna smooths her hand down his back. “You’ve done amazingly well, Rush. You’ve beaten so many odds. Jeff and I are always so proud of you.” Her hand darts away, and he looks back at her. She’s started to cry … because she’d used the present tense?
Feeling uncomfortable and overwhelmed, he doesn't know what to say, but he manages to whisper, “Thank you.” Someone is proud of him.
She dries her eyes, and he confesses, “I saw Jeff’s ghost at the viewing. I’ve tried to call him back, but he can’t come. He said he had to go on his last deployment.”
He looks back at her; she’s gaping at him.
Shrugging, Rush says, “But he came to me to tell me to look after you.” He thinks it should make her feel good to know that her welfare was the very last thing Jeff wanted.
He looks away and bumps her knee with his shoulder. “It seems like you’re more taking care of me, though.”
Deanna is too quiet. Rush looks back at her, and she meets his eyes a little too evenly. “You have your own life to lead. You don’t have to take care of me.” She pats his shoulder, climbs to her feet, and goes up the stairs. He hears her bedroom door shut a few minutes later.
Picking up his guitar, he goes back down to the lower level and resumes tuning it. He’s plucked only one note, when the magic swirls around him … and with it comes understanding. Deanna is lying about something.
* * *
Something happens the next day.
Rush is sitting at the breakfast table, and Deanna hasn’t come out. He hears the shower turn on, and for a few minutes is mollified. But then he hears a crash from the master bath. He begins to sing to himself, “No, no, no …” then feels magic rise, and knows it’s too late.
Knocking at the door, he calls, “Deanna? Deanna?” in a sing-song voice. There is no response. Humming to himself, letting magic rise, he yanks off the doorknob and opens the door. Deanna’s lying on the floor, Jeff’s robe spilled open. She had a double mastectomy during her battle with cancer; Rush isn’t disgusted by the scars, and that shocks him a little bit. Finding his cell phone, he dials 911 and then he calls Bianca, downstate at the University of Champaign-Urbana.
When the ambulance comes, he tells them he’s Deanna’s son.
* * *
Rush’s mouth is dry, his throat hurts, and he’s famished. He’s looks at the clock on the hospital wall and realizes he’s been singing and humming for hours. He looks down at Deanna, the doctor’s words playing in his mind, “Your mother’s cancer metastasized. She has a tumor in her brain. She didn’t want to undergo chemotherapy again. I’m sorry she didn’t tell you.”
Deanna’s skin is pale and has an unhealthy blue cast; her hair is gray and limp on the pillow. He looks down at his phone. Larson hasn’t responded to his calls, which isn’t surprising. There is a dragon in Grant Park and he probably has his hands full. He’s not sure that Larson can help though. The only people who could are the mayor, possibly the mayor’s daughter, and Lewis. They’re all in Alfheim and cell phones don’t have inter-realm reach.
He hears footsteps, turns, and sees Bianca entering the room. He stands up, and instead of veering away from him she runs to him and presses her tear-streaked face and dripping nose into his chest. “They said there’s nothing they can do.”
He pulls her tight, and she feels like a real little sister … like Deanna feels like having a mom is supposed to feel. He’s just now realizing it, but it’s dawned on him too late.
And then he realizes there is still something he might be able to do.
* * *
Rush bites his tongue until it bleeds and kisses Deanna’s lips with Bianca looking on. It’s not so much a kiss as giving mouth-to-mouth; it definitely isn’t something sexual. He pulls back and looks at the blood left by his mouth on hers.
“Is that enough?” Bianca whispers.
He told her about being magical, of course. Let her know about the side effects, how getting pregnant would be dangerous without the supervision of a magic user much stronger and more knowledgeable than him. He’d think Deanna too old for that sort of thing, but magic is weird, and you never know how it will work out. Bianca said she just wanted her mom back. He wonders if Andrew and Anthony would feel the same way. Maybe that’s why he called Bianca first.
Rush sits back in the chair. “It’s a very virulent strain of the virus.”
Bianca stares down at her mother and bites her lip. “Saliva is kind of hard on viruses though, and it’s diluted the blood. Of course her immune system is probably compromised by the cancer, but without a canker sore in her mouth … I don’t know.”
“Oh, to the Norns with this,” Rush says. He pulls out his BLACKHAWK blade, slits his wrist, and holds it over Deanna’s mouth. Thinking on Bianca’s words, he smears the blood onto her cracked lips. He’s rubbing his arm against her lips, just to make sure the cracks are open, when the nurse comes in. She screams. Bianca screams. Rush starts singing, and magic starts playing. Before Bianca can implicate herself as an accomplice, Rush points the knife at her and says, “I threatened her with this!”
Bianca’s eyes go wide with shock, and as Security runs in, Rush mouths the words, “Take care of your mom.”
When they take him to jail, he stares long and hard at the phone, hums to himself, and dials Park.
Chapter 6
Rush sits on the bed in the tiny jail cell, wrung out, and hungry. He’d thought about trying to sing his way out, but it would wind up on camera, and that might lead to the police suspecting that he is a magic user, which might really get him in trouble for feeding his vein to Deanna.
He doesn’t know the time, or if Park was able to deliver his message to Lewis. Park had been helping Larson divert the dragon, and Rush had only managed a “Summon Lewis! I need her skills. I’m in jail in Arlington Heights,” before Park had to disconnect. Maybe Park thought he’d said, “Prospect Heights,” “Arlington Race Track,” or …
There is a rush of air, his ears pop, and he hears electric sitars playing in a jungle. He blinks and not just Lewis, but also Patel, materialize in front of him. They’re both wearing what he can only assume is elvish clothing; either that or they have stolen clothes from a Shakespeare troupe.
Patel is sucking on a lollipop again. The lollipop is magical. Rush can hear it singing a little ditty that sounds like “The Monkey Chased the Weasel.” The charge it gives Patel is probably what fueled their pop into his cell.
“Lewis, you’ve got to help me,” Rush says before they’ve even had time to breathe.
“Help you get out of jail?” says Patel with an evil grin. “Or do you have something else you need help with?”
Gulping, Rush ignores Patel’s fluttering eyelashes and meets Lewis’s gaze. “The curse can wait. It’s something else.”
Her lips purse. “Curse?”
Rush waves his hand. “You know, your cure for my misogyny by making me … by giving me …” He can’t quite finish, but apparently he doesn’t need to because Bohdi bursts into cackles. “You lost the bet, Amy! I told you it would work.”
Lewis puts her hands over her mouth. “Oh, no. Really? That’s terrible.” Her brow furrows. “I was just trying to psyche you out, I didn’t think …”
“I did.” Snapping his fingers and making a spark, Bohdi smirks.
“Oh, Rush, I’m sorry …” Amy stammers. “I … that was a horrible thing to do. If you want to report me ...”
Drawing back, Rush thumps his hands against his thigh and hums a little. He can’t quite explain it, but he knows she’s telling the truth. He should be furious, but he isn’t. He remembers accidentally enchanting Katerina. “It’s okay. I actually understand.”
“No, it’s really not okay,” Lewis protests.
Huffing, Bohdi rolls his eyes.
Rush hums, taps his thigh, and knows she’s being sincere. “Lewis … it really is. You can’t enchant someone without helping them.” A chill sweeps through him. He remembers Larson’s words, and wonders if all of his equipment had been working when he’d sung to Katerina, would he have noticed that he’d enchanted her?
Once Upon A Kiss: Seventeen Romantic Faerie Tales Page 37