“Fifteen-year-old boys are emotionally unstable by definition.”
“This will be more than typical. You might think him on the verge of . . . insanity at times.”
“Okay. You can see them whenever you like. But you have to let me know if you plan to take them anywhere, especially out of town.”
“Agreed. The house is paid for. It’s been in my family since it was built over a century ago. You can live there rent free with my children. But if you ever remarry, or bring another man home, I expect you to vacate immediately and I will take the children.” The last came out on a sneer, as if he still owned me and resented even the thought that our separation left me as free to pursue a new romance as he was to seduce coeds.
“Don’t worry. I’m rather soured on romance right now. But there is something I need to know.”
“Daffy, please don’t.”
“I need to know what you are, what you do, where your money comes from. Obviously, you aren’t a big-gun negotiator and troubleshooter for a software company. Globalwizardsoftware.com doesn’t exist. Where do you go when you are supposed to be in Shanghai or Budapest or Dubai?”
“Usually I’m in Shanghai or Budapest or Dubai. My job title is Sheriff to the old-fashioned men who employ me. I work for, and am handsomely paid by, the Guild of Master Wizards, an international collective and judiciary elected by all legally practicing magicians.”
“Sheriff?”
“Head of security and law enforcement.”
“What are you the sheriff of?”
“My job is to make certain that magic practitioners keep their spells benevolent, useful, and invisible. Emphasis on invisible. Mundanes outnumber us ten thousand to one. Only one in one thousand magicians have the kind of talent to disable a gun, and only one gun at a time. Full wizards with a broad spectrum of talents, like me, are even rarer.
“You can’t tell anyone about what you know. If someone like Bret—or your parents—got wind of this, there’d be another witch hunt. Look at how polarized society has become in the last few years, where hate of anything different is the norm and violence the only solution. Racism is now acceptable. Magicians can be classed as a different race. I’m serious. Unless you want to see a bunch of innocent people die horribly at the hands of very fearful fanatics, you won’t speak of this to anyone. I need to protect you and our children.”
I nodded, gulping back the agony of thinking my children might be caught up in horrors akin to Salem, Massachusetts, in the seventeenth century. I had a History degree and teaching credentials, but I made more money brewing coffee, baking, and catering than I would teaching school. “You must use that mind-erasing trick a lot.” I could live with that, as long as he didn’t use it on his girlfriends.
“Yes.” He looked away, gaze resting on a rack of cooling cookies. “I need one more favor, Daffy.”
He’d softened me up with acceptance of anything I might rightfully demand.
“What?”
“I have a safe embedded in the cement foundation of your greenhouse. I built the greenhouse for you and your herb garden. I took advantage of the foundation to encase the safe. No one else even knows it is there. It’s protected by multiple locks and magical wards. I’ve also placed wards all around the property, so you and our children are as safe as I can make it.”
“But?” Damn it! He’d built my favorite place in the world: glass windows and gazebo roof supported by a white wrought iron frame enclosing rows and rows of herbs and produce. He’d built it for his safe, not for me. More lies and deceit.
“I need to keep some evidence in that safe. At least until I build another, but it takes years to get the wards in place and up to full strength. Please, this is important.”
“What kind of evidence?” This was the first time he’d ever been open with me about his other life.
“If you don’t know, you can’t tell. I need to know you and the children are safe.”
That was the fourth or fifth time he’d emphasized our safety.
He’d said the word too often this morning and last night for me to dismiss the idea of potential danger spilling out from his job.
“Then why tell me your evidence locker is there?”
“So that you don’t accidentally find it when you get mad at me and tear the greenhouse apart.” He flashed me his quirky grin. “I half expected to find it in slivers this morning, just because I built it.”
Yeah, he sometimes knew I was about to do something before I even thought about it.
He grabbed three oatmeal, raisin, cranberry cookies with ground walnuts and took a large bite of one. “Hmmm, magic. You are the best baker west of the Rockies.” He ate the other two before I could slap them out of his hand.
But he’d said the M word. I knew he didn’t use it lightly. And that tied my stomach in knots.
“About the safe?”
“You can tie my golf clubs in knots if you want, but you enjoy the greenhouse too much to destroy it just because I . . . I can’t tell you.”
“You can’t tell me about your bimbos.” I almost laughed. He made it sound so normal. “Damn, you couldn’t even drive the extra mile to East Springfield where no one cares and everyone half expects men to stray. You were seen in old downtown.” No motels there. Or college dorms. Just tiny apartments above small businesses. Students rented them because they were cheap and within walking distance of the university. I’d lusted after one myself my senior year at the U.
“Try to believe that if I stray, it is nothing more than a triumphant celebration when I put away some bad guys.” He shrugged as if none of it mattered.
“You could come home for sex after taking down a bad guy.”
He shrugged again and looked elsewhere. “Mostly, I do.”
Mostly! Not always.
I grabbed my spoon and tried to hit him upside the head with it. He stayed my wrist easily with a firm grip. “Want to finish this back at my suite? I’ve got handcuffs in the car.”
I slugged his jaw with enough force to propel him out the back door.
Now my hand ached and I still had pastry to roll.
G waved to the homeless man leaning against the dumpster. “How’s it going, Raphe?”
“Same old, same old.” He shuffled down the alley, carrying his blanket over his arm. His floppy straw hat could shield a football field with its brim.
“Kind of late for you, Raphe? The sun has been up for over an hour. Closer to two.”
“Saw some dogs wandering. Didn’t want to move until they took their overly curious noses elsewhere.” Raphe draped his blanket over his head, covering any skin that might be exposed as he approached a shaft of sunlight at the end of the shadowy alley.
“Good. I need you to keep Daffy safe.” G grinned to himself and followed the shambling man with a hint of a limp. As he walked, he extended his senses, seeking stray movement within the shadows.
Then Raphe pulled a pair of wraparound prescription dark glasses out of one of his numerous pockets and covered his vulnerable, almost colorless, pale blue eyes.
At the alley entrance, Raphe stopped and turned to face G. “I was surfing the net yesterday and found some interesting vintage Zippos for sale on eBay.”
G froze in place. His blood heated just as it did before a chase—or a fight. “Are they selling well?”
“Not as well as expected. No one is bidding on the one with the death’s head or the skull and crossbones.”
G bent double in relief. He forced himself to breathe deeply, in and out, in and out. By the time he’d straightened, Raphe had disappeared into another alley a block east. Too much evidence contradicting what he knew had to be true.
The alley behind Magical Brews was free of the dangers he expected to pounce any minute. He always expected danger within the shadows. That was why he’d survived as Sheriff for the Guil
d for twelve years. A deputy for five before that.
He needed his field khakis for his next trip. Daffy hadn’t packed the clothes he kept in the office closet. Tonight, he needed to be in El Salvador to take down a village shaman who had begun demanding virginal girls as blood sacrifice in order to protect his village. If G hurried, he could retrieve his work clothes and hug each of his children before Daffy returned to get them going for the day.
A pang of remorse felt like a suffocating drill press around his heart.
He could delegate the arrest to a deputy. But he needed to be out of town as much as possible for now, to draw attention and assassins away from Daffy and the kids.
“This is for the best,” he told himself. “They’ll be safer from her if I’m not around. She wants revenge on me. If I stay away, maybe the bitch will ignore my family.”
“Cue music,” Maestro Bellini commanded, his slight Italian accent filling the auditorium. “And a one, two, three, four.” His hand came down in a sharp gesture.
Jason raised his arms and slid up onto the balls of his feet. The commanding beat of Night on Bare Mountain by Mussorgsky vibrated through the floorboards of the stage. His feet knew the steps. He didn’t have to think about them, just feel the music and let it command every movement.
“This is just audition,” he murmured to himself. “Do it right. Save spectacular for performances.”
“One and two, three and four!” Bellini shouted.
Jason felt the three other boys on stage with him falter as they forced themselves to catch up to the music. He kept right on going, using the rhythm to anchor him, feeling the composer’s fear and anger as he explored demons and dark beings rising from the crevices in the land.
And then . . . then the dance, the music, and his body melded into one being as they never had before. He was the demon, he was the dance. He was more.
Step, step, pirouette tall and straight with one arm up, the other on his hip. Tombé into a sweeping preparation and soar into the wings. Back out again on another grand jeté, finishing with a blinding series of six chainé turns, pause for double changement quatre entournant, twice, then another series of chainé.
His blood pounded in his ears and sang through his veins. He’d done it. He’d danced the routine he’d been shown once and did it in tempo. And he wanted to do it again and again.
“Nice, Jason. Stick around for the ‘Ritual Fire Dance,’” Bellini called. Then he dismissed the other boys.
“Nice?” Jason asked the milling crowd of dancers backstage, who were waiting their turn to audition for the autumn program of Halloween-themed dances.
“Silly, boy,” Tiffany Tyler laughed. The tall blonde, as tall as he with legs that went on forever, was the most beautiful woman in the world, and prima of the small regional pro/am company. She could have any part she wanted. “Don’t you know yet that, from Bellini, ‘nice’ is the best compliment ever?”
“Yeah, I guess so.” This was his first year in the company, his first audition. He had only rumors of the maestro’s sour temper to go on. “Yeah, that was nice.”
Four
“MOM? Did you know there’s a safe hidden in the foundation of the greenhouse?” Shara announced from the kitchen door. Not a question. A statement. I’d named her for my Scottish grandmother—the one with the second sight that my father hated almost as much as he did me.
Inwardly, I groaned as I sorted laundry, my usual Saturday afternoon activity.
My mind veered away from the forbidden topic toward something safe. Jason must be growing again, all his socks had holes in the toes.
“If it’s hidden, how did you find it?” I asked, trying desperately to keep panic out of my voice. Shara’s curiosity was becoming a problem.
Was already a problem.
“I dunno.” She shrugged, just like her father when he lied.
“Not good enough.” I beckoned Shara inward to the formal dining room of the century-old, gargantuan, Edwardian-homage-to-Victorian-Gothic house, complete with two towers and a widow’s walk. I loved the old place and hated the thought of ever having to move. I wondered if G knew what a favor he’d done for me in letting me stay here with the kids.
We never ate at the long mahogany table where I continued to sort laundry. It had been in G’s family since the house was built. Maybe they built the house around the table. We hadn’t used the formal dining room for eating except for major holiday meals since long before Shara started school. Homework, yes. Meals, no.
G had been gone the entire summer. An entire season to find my bearings and realize that I did miss him, but not horribly so. Sleeping alone, however. . . .
He’d been gone so much the previous two years that being alone with the kids had become normal.
The impending official divorce date loomed. I felt like we were all living in limbo until then.
My phone screeched an alarm. I grabbed it with one hand while holding up a hand to silence Shara.
One flick of my finger across the screen connected me with the alarm company for Magical Brews.
“Smoke alarm,” the tech answered my query. “No emergency vehicles dispatched. Ms. Gayla Burnett canceled the call. She said she has it under control with a portable fire extinguisher.”
I thanked him and flicked the screen twice to disconnect with him and reconnect with Gayla.
“Nothing serious, Sweet Pea. Just a bit of a grease fire. More smoke than fire, actually. I handled it. Though we’ll have to have the fire extinguisher recharged on Monday.”
“Grease fire?” I screeched almost as shrill as the alarm. “Where?”
“Middle of the stove top.”
“I cleaned the stove top yesterday. I always thoroughly clean the entire kitchen. There was no grease there. No olive oil, nothing!” I could not work in a messy or dirty kitchen. “And what ignited it? No one is supposed to be in the kitchen on Saturday except you and me.”
“Um . . . I’m not sure. But there is a greasy residue on the stove top that was smoking badly with a few bits of flame. It went right out.” Gayla sounded as surprised as I was.
“I’ll be down there . . .” I paused while I estimated how long before I could leave my chores at home. Such is the life of a small business owner, on call 24/7. “Probably after dinner, but I will clean the entire place again.”
“You sure, Sweet Pea? I can handle a little puddle of grease with baking soda and then cleanser.”
“If you say so. But I’ll make sure it is spotless tomorrow night after I start yeast dough rising.” I recited normal signing-off platitudes and returned my attention to Shara.
“Mom, what’s in the safe?”
Maybe Shara hadn’t breeched G’s wards and locks yet. “Now, why did you feel compelled to move heavy planters and search behind stacks of tools and bags of potting soil for something that isn’t there?” I wrapped my arm around her thin shoulders and pulled her against my hip.
“But it is there.”
Just like G, she’d learned early to divert and distract.
“Answer the question. Why did you go looking?”
“I dunno.”
My heart stuttered and then pounded hard enough I could hear it, feel it beating against my rib cage like it was trying to break free.
“Something sent you there and made you disturb my planters. I hope you put them back where they belong. I arranged them carefully for the best light.”
I’d rearranged them after I found the safe, making sure someone would have to work hard to find it, if they knew it was there.
“I can’t explain it. I just needed to look there. Like someone was whispering in my ear, demanding that I find whatever is there.”
Part of me froze. If G kept magical evidence in that safe, did that magic call to Shara’s about-to-bloom talent?
“Are you sure you didn’t watch
your father rummaging around out there?” I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I saw him slip into the backyard three nights ago around four thirty, about the time I got up to go to work.
“I’m sure, Mom. But Daddy called me yesterday and said he’d pick me up from computer camp and take me out for ice cream. I’d rather go to the antique mall. If he won’t take me there, will you? Next week before school starts.”
Nice of him to call me. I’d thought we’d agreed on that. A good excuse to call him and slip in the information that Shara was “manifesting” well before puberty.
“We’ll see if there’s anything left in the budget after we buy school clothes.”
“We didn’t have a budget before Daddy moved out.” She pouted.
“You’re the one who found the incriminating pictures on my computer,” I reminded her.
Actually, I could have kept the photos in my email a secret if Flora Chambers hadn’t called and asked why G was skulking around town when he was supposed to be in Dubai. He’d promised to bring me some silk for a new dress. I’d worn the little black thing with a fitted bodice and flared skirt too often. Waltzed with G too often while wearing it. I didn’t want to wear it again, but the silk had never appeared.
Gossip in this town spread far and fast. Flora Chambers seemed to be the central clearing house.
“Hey, Mom!” Jason screeched from the back door. He ran through the mudroom and kitchen toward me, letting the screen door slam behind him. I cringed as the bang sliced through my ears to my brain. He must be excited if he forgot my one irrevocable rule of no slammed doors or yelling inside the house.
“Mom! I got the part.” He skidded to a halt beside the big mahogany table.
“Which part, Jason?” I offered my cheek for him to kiss. I didn’t have to bend at all. At fourteen and five eight he stood an inch taller than me. Next week I expected him to be as tall as his six-two father. “There are cookies cooling in the kitchen. Oatmeal with nuts and dried fruit.” With mashed banana as part of the moisture. An easy way to sneak some nutrition into treats.
A Spoonful of Magic Page 3