A Spoonful of Magic

by Irene Radford

  “There’s something in the water around here that makes this town a vortex of . . . of magic, great and small. Magical ley lines converge here. There are rumors that this was once the home of many fae races who have interbred with humans.”

  “So how does this explain the woman you took to a motel?” He’d lied to me on so many levels I’d stopped counting. But this magic thing . . . another lie. And it scared me.

  It also spiked my curiosity. I needed to know more.

  Not tonight.

  “Don’t be like that, Daffy. I’m trying to protect you. And the children. You need protection now, more than ever.”

  “Don’t change the subject, divert my attention, and then seduce me into forgetting while you delete the pictures on my phone. Let me tell you I downloaded those pictures to my computer and uploaded them to . . . gee, I don’t know, ten social media sites just waiting for my password to go live. And don’t tell me you know my password. You know the one I use for online banking. You’ve guessed the one I use for my baking blog. You do not know this one.”

  I marched toward his car, the big, midnight blue town car he bought to impress clients. Clients of what?

  When he tried to follow me, I spun around and slapped him. He reeled back three steps. Just far enough for me to get into the car and lock the doors.

  As I started the car, I rolled down the window two inches. “You can walk home. I’ll leave a packed suitcase and your car keys on the porch. And I’m changing the locks in the morning.” Actually, I’d had the locksmith out this morning.

  So why was I crying all the way home?

  Because now I had to tell the children.

  Two

  WHEN I CAME IN through the kitchen door beside the driveway, I found three young faces staring at me in bewilderment, eyes wide, and chins trembling.

  Without a word, I knew that they knew. I gathered them all into a big hug that lasted far beyond their normal comfort zone.

  Finally, I sniffed back my tears and asked, “How did you know?”

  “Shara found the pictures,” Jason said. He swallowed deeply and straightened his shoulders like the strong young man he was becoming. At nearly fifteen, he was responsible for his two sisters when I was out. And often when his father was in.

  I let go of my children and marched toward my office space in the sunroom—previously a screened back porch. My desktop computer sat on an old school desk with the monitor still on and one of the photos of G and the blonde bimbo.

  “Shara?” I didn’t have enough energy left for anger, but still, I tried to let her know I was not pleased that she’d been mucking about on my computer.

  “Mom, you know she can’t resist a locked door or a puzzle. Computer passwords are games to her,” Jason said. Always defending her.

  “Yes, I know. But that is no excuse for invading my privacy. Locked doors are one thing. Passwords on private files aren’t.” But it saved me a lot of explanations and dancing around the issue of their father’s infidelity.

  “Shara?”

  “I know, Mom. I know I shouldn’t, but I was doing a search on active volcanoes for an extra credit report I have to make up for my hacking the school computers, and that storage thingy kept blinking at me demanding action. . . .”

  Shit! I hadn’t totally backed out of the program.

  Okay, half my fault. But the girl really needed to learn some manners.

  “Does this mean that Daddy isn’t coming home?” Annabelle asked, bringing me back to where we needed to be.

  “Yes.” My tongue tied in knots at anything more.

  “Ever?” Shara demanded, big tears spilled over her lashes. Her father’s big blue eyes that could charm the socks off anyone, or the pins out of any lock.

  “Not forever. He’ll come visit. He just won’t be living here anymore.”

  “Can I call him for rides and such? We’ve got auditions coming up for the autumn and holiday programs,” Jason asked.

  “One way or another, you will all get rides to all of your events. You can call your dad in an emergency. But you know how often he’s out of town, out of the country, for work.” Not that I really knew what he did work at anymore.

  “Most likely he’s at that motel rather than out of town,” Belle said in disgust. Named for G’s grandmother, she seemed to know his mind better than I. But that was where the resemblance ended. Heavy glasses and heavier braces had become almost a mask of disinterest when the “cool” kids ignored or bullied her for being a klutz and a geek. She pushed her glasses farther up her nose.

  We all turned our backs on the computer screen.

  “Chores done?” I asked, trying for blithe and not quite making it.

  “Yeah,” came the chorus from all three.

  I checked the kitchen clock. Not even eight-thirty on a Wednesday evening. The sun sets late around here in June. They should be headed for quiet time before bed, but I wanted them close and thinking about something other than the removal of their father from their lives. “How about a movie, something where there’s lots of explosions and guns.” I wanted to blow up more than a few things, starting with G.

  “You know, Mom,” Jason whispered as his sisters ran for the living room. “Dad is really ripped. No wonder that girl fell for him.” He looked down at his own skinny abdomen. “I need to start lifting weights.”

  “Oh, Sweet Pea, you need a big ’ol dose of comfort food!” Gayla Burnett exclaimed, much too loudly, as she wrapped her long arms around me. I found my face buried in her bony shoulder. Try as she might, she couldn’t quite shake off all of her Texas drawl despite living in the accent-neutral Pacific Northwest for close to thirty years.

  Multiracial with near equal mixes of Anglo, African, Cherokee, and Asian, she’d been my best friend and substitute mother for longer than G and I had been married.

  My parents disowned me when I married “That Man,” and he took me out of their control.

  Well, their judgment of his untrustworthiness was right. But I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of “I told you so.”

  So I turned to Gayla with my tears.

  Tears threatened to flood again as my partner at Magical Brews rubbed and patted my back as a mother would comfort a teething toddler. The other remedy for a teething toddler—scotch rubbed on the gums—wouldn’t hurt either. But I wanted more of the cure than just a few drops on the gums. I wanted half the bottle. Make it an Islay single malt while you’re at it.

  “What did he say?” Gayla asked, pouring us each a tall mug of black coffee from the pot we kept in the kitchen. Then she paused and handed me a mini cinnamon bun on a napkin. She nibbled at hers delicately, savoring every bite. “Magic. I don’t know what you do or how you do it, but your baking is pure magic.”

  There was that word again. I didn’t dare utter it lest I spill G’s secret. He was a lot more powerful than a party entertainer.

  I ate my treat in one gulp, the first solid food I’d had since the disastrous dinner last night.

  “He said not enough and too much.” I ground the words out through gritted teeth. He’d left me with more questions than answers and new secrets I couldn’t unload on my best friend.

  I took out some of my anger at G’s lies and secrets on the yeasty dough for the next batch of cinnamon buns. I punched it down and slapped it against the marble countertop. I liked my work space for pastry cold. Marble stays cold for nearly forever. Like G’s sense of morality.

  Not satisfied, or mollified, I pounded the dough with my favorite wooden spoon. That felt better. Without thinking, I tucked my cooking tool into my jeans back pocket, as I often did, and started rolling out the dough into a large square with a marble rolling pin.

  Gayla surveyed the rack of finished pastries, cookies, and breads ready for customers when we opened at six. In fifteen minutes.

  “You been here all
night?” Gayla asked, donning her pale blue apron painted with stars and quarter moons.

  “Only since four.” Normally, I started at five, left at seven to get the kids off to school, then back again at nine or ten to start the second round of baking. When I left for the day at two, I’d have cleaned the kitchen from top to bottom and set dough to rising for the next day. Weekends we were closed, so I came in Sunday night to start more dough for Monday morning.

  “So what are you going to do, Sweet Pea?”

  I shrugged. “I kicked him out, but we didn’t talk much. I tried, but he pulled his usual G dance of waltzing away from any answers.”

  “If you need an advance on last month’s profits to make ends meet, we are in the black again. And if you feel guilty about the advance, we could use more help in the afternoon.”

  “Put it in the reserve fund. If I need it, I’ll take it, but I don’t need it yet.” Then I choked back a laugh. “You forget I have three kids who aren’t old enough to drive yet. I live in the minivan from the time school lets out until dinnertime. Sometimes until bedtime. Jason has ballet classes and rehearsal from three to six. Belle has chess club and Math Olympics from three thirty to five. And Shara is only nine, and I don’t dare leave her alone for five minutes let alone three hours.”

  “What’s the little imp up to now?” Gayla emptied her coffee with two long swallows, put the mug on its special shelf so I wouldn’t wash it, and angled toward the front of the shop to open the coffee/bakery/mystical-doodads-so-popular-these-days shop. I’d already set up the cash register and ground enough roasted beans to last the day.

  I didn’t want to talk about Shara’s little adventure with my computer. “She broke into the principal’s locked office just to prove she needed only one of my hairpins to do it.” I started to run my hands through my long, ash-blonde hair, currently captured into a ponytail and confined by a hairnet. Then I stopped before I could dirty my hands with hair and my hair with flour.

  “Then she hacked his computer and changed some of her teacher’s comments from ‘lacks focus and has the attention span of a gnat’ to ‘excels in all subjects and behaves well.’”

  We both shook our heads in dismay.

  “Um, Sweet Pea, G is waiting at the front door, and from the way his nose is pressed against the glass, I don’t think he’s in a patient mood.” G never used the alley door because he might run into our latest homeless guests or have to smell the dumpster.

  I took three deep breaths for fortification. Still five minutes to official opening. “Let him in. I’ll talk to him back here while I finish off these buns.”

  If my hands were busy shaping and rolling dough around an aromatic filling, maybe I wouldn’t slug him.

  Maybe.

  Three

  “DAFFY, WE HAVE TO TALK,” he said without preamble.

  One glance at his long legs encased in casual slacks and his muscular chest (yeah, he was really ripped) straining at the seams of a knit golf shirt—pen/wand in the breast pocket—and I almost gave in to the tears and flung myself into his arms. Almost.

  I bit the inside of my cheek to remind myself of all the lies he’d told me over the years. All the manipulation. The more I thought about it, the more I wondered if he’d ever truly loved me or manipulated me into thinking we were in love so that I’d raise his son while he traveled so extensively for his “work.”

  “Talk. I’m busy.”

  “Daffy, I . . . I’ve taken a suite at the residence hotel by the airport until I can find more permanent lodging. Here’s the number in case . . . there’s an emergency.” He slapped a business card on the counter beside me. “The kids have my cell number, my real number that will find me anywhere. You do, too, if you haven’t already deleted it from your contacts list.”

  I had.

  “Thank you.” If I didn’t care what happened to him, why was I so relieved that he was safe?

  “How do you want to do this, Daffy?” His voice turned soft, almost plaintive. “I need to know that you and the kids are comfortable and safe. I can’t protect you if I’m out of the house. But I need to separate my life from you to keep certain . . . people from targeting you to get to me.”

  I resisted looking into his eyes. But my shoulders relaxed.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never filed for divorce before.” I’d never been intimately involved with anyone else either. G was my first and—I’d thought—my only, but now I didn’t know.

  “Divorce. Not just separation?”

  “Not unless you stop lying to me and manipulating me. And tell me why and who you went to bed with.”

  “Daffy, I can’t.”

  “I’ll make an appointment with Bret Chambers this afternoon.” Flora’s husband was a divorce lawyer and a fundamentalist Christian who had no patience with adulterous spouses. He’d get along great with my parents. He might already know them through his church connections.

  G winced and pinched his nose as if fighting a headache, just like Jason did during allergy season. “If I give you the kids, child support, alimony, and the house, will you find a different lawyer?”

  I was pretty sure I’d get that much at least with Bret at my side. “What’s the ‘but’ after getting all I want?”

  “Open visitation rights with the kids, or joint custody.”

  “Yes. You’ve never hurt them, and you are their father—of that we can both be certain.” Who knew how many other children of his were out there.

  “I know, Daffy. I know you’ve been faithful.” A gentleness I hadn’t heard in years smoothed his voice. He reached to run his finger down my cheek, then jerked it back as I leaned away from him.

  “Did those girls—I presume there was more than just the one I saw—did they know what they were doing? Did they go with you of their own accord, or did you use your mind whammy thingy on them?” Just like you used it on me.

  That was the most important issue for me.

  He puffed out his chest in indignation—or was that peacock in full mating display?

  “I don’t enthrall. There’s no satisfaction if my partner doesn’t remember.” Now he sounded as bitter as I felt. “And those pictures were not what they seem.” He didn’t elaborate about what they actually were.

  “Oh? Care to tell me what they really were?” I asked smugly. I didn’t trust him to know the truth if it bit him in his fine ass.

  I felt him approach, the heat radiating from his body along my back. A month ago, I would have melted into his touch. I still wanted to.

  “Give me your phone and I’ll transfer my new contact data,” he ground out.

  I twisted so he could retrieve it from my apron pocket—a duplicate of Gayla’s protection garment, but not so clean—I didn’t want to get my hands dirty in the middle of brushing the mixture of cinnamon sugar and melted butter over the dough. My movements brushed my hip against his. A sharp stab of desire swept over me.

  I swear I didn’t do it on purpose. It’s just . . . just that old habits die hard.

  He did the automatic transfer thing that I could never figure out, then tucked the phone back where it belonged. His fingers slid up and down my hip and belly.

  Old habits die hard.

  But I knew what was happening this time and jerked away in a move a belly dancer would admire.

  G sighed, as if he dragged the air from his heels all the way to his mouth. “Jason is almost fifteen. He’s started shaving and his voice is deepening. If he’s inherited any of . . . my talents . . . he’ll need my guidance. Any day now. I need to spend time with him. Teach him control. I will not turn an untrained magician loose on the world ever again.”

  What?

  “Are those talents age dependent?” A safer topic. I sensed he would avoid the issue of an untrained magician wandering around.

  “Mostly. A few demonstrate signs earlier, Shara�
�s only ten and hasn’t shown any signs of anything unusual, so she’s safe for now.”

  He obviously didn’t know that our youngest daughter had yet to meet a lock, password, maze, or puzzle she couldn’t defeat, mechanical or electronic. Now if she just attacked her schoolwork with the same enthusiasm, she wouldn’t be facing summer school. Unless she finished her extra credit report before Friday noon.

  “In the general population, only one in ten thousand has a true magical talent—even if only parlor tricks. Most magicians manifest at puberty, and a very, very few blossom in adulthood, usually a very minor talent that doesn’t qualify for Guild voting rights.” He looked at my wooden spoon stuck in my back pocket, narrowing his eyes. “I expect Jason to start doing weird things any minute now. Annabelle, too, since girls mature earlier than boys. They need me, Daffy. Don’t keep me away from them. I need to know if they adopt an implement, something, anything, that might become a wand.”

  He eyed my wooden spoon. “Your grandmother had the second sight—according to your mother—which is not unusual in the Scots. I’m equally afraid and surprised you haven’t shown any signs of even parlor trick magic. You’ve almost got the wand.”

  I shrugged that off. I’d heard too many fanatical rants against my beloved Granny from my pastor father. I didn’t want any magical talent even if I had any.

  Oh, God. Belle had used most of her allowance to purchase a pair of Chinese ivory hair sticks embellished with dangling agates of cream and soft green shaped like a chess queen and bishop. At almost twelve, she’d suddenly developed an interest in fashion and boys that had nothing to do with her next chess tournament. She stuck the sticks into her long dark curls even when she wore them down. All three children had G’s dark hair. Only Belle inherited my waves.

  “Jason? Other than his ballet slippers, I haven’t noticed anything.”

  “I don’t see how ballet slippers can become a wand. Keep your eyes open; he’ll find something. He might show some signs of . . . emotional instability coping with his new powers.”