A Spoonful of Magic

by Irene Radford

  I knew the wardrobe well. I’d loved it when I first moved in with G. But it wasn’t large enough to hold both my jeans and his suits. So, as soon as we converted the nursery to a bigger closet and a suitable bath (shower stall big enough for two but no tub), the magnificent piece of furniture with inlays of blond wood against the dark cherry, and artistic scrollwork around the edges had been banished to the attic.

  We’d added that bathroom about the time I got pregnant with Belle and morning sickness made the trek down the hall to the only other bath on that floor problematic.

  “How many pieces is the wardrobe in?” I wanted to bang my head against the old-fashioned white cupboards with glass fronts. Instead, I grabbed the wooden spoon in my back pocket and thought about the chemistry of baking powder versus baking soda combined with cream of tartar.

  G had exacted a promise from Jason that he couldn’t sell, donate, or trash anything in the attic until he got home and could make decisions on family treasures. The wardrobe was one of those treasures.

  “It’s still in one piece. Except . . .”

  “Except what?” I demanded, patience exhausted.

  “Except maybe the mirror inside the left-hand door.” He sounded mighty casual about that.

  “Isn’t breaking a mirror supposed to be seven years’ bad luck?”

  “Nah. Dad told Belle not to worry about that when she dropped a magnifying hand mirror. Someone invented that old superstition because wizards frequently break mirrors to close a spell. And being caught being a wizard during the Burning Times was bad luck. So breaking a mirror was a sign of being a wizard and you got hauled off to jail.”

  That was news to me and omitted from every history book as well as the ones about mythology and superstition. Clearly, I needed to read more on this. Did Coyote Blood Moon have a book in stock?

  “Why did you push over the wardrobe? It weighs a ton and took your dad and two other men to move it up into the attic.”

  “I think I sorta remember that and wondering if it was a portal to another realm like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”

  He would have been two and a half or three at the time. I’d been reading to him since the day I moved in with his father.

  “Answer my question.” He was getting as good as his father at diverting conversations.

  “I needed more room to practice.” He turned to bounce up the stairs, probably with as much or more noise as when he descended. “Um . . . I thought real hard about where I wanted it and then I pushed, and I guess I thought a bit too hard ’cause it slid across the floor real fast and hit some trunks and a dressing table, then tumbled forward.” He had the grace to redden and look abashed.

  Then he brightened and his eyes widened. “Does that mean I’m really telekinetic? Dad said he thought that was the source of my power jumps.”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me.” Nothing would surprise me anymore. “Well, get it upright the same way you shoved it. After lunch, we’ll see about moving it to my sewing room. I can at least make use of it.” I thought about calling Coyote Blood Moon and Ted Tyler. While neither was as big nor as strong as G, with Jason’s help they’d probably manage it.

  And I’d like to see both men again. But not necessarily at the same time.

  “I won’t need help,” Jason replied blithely. “I’m telekinetic, remember?”

  “Don’t push it. Remember what your dad said about new power driving people insane. And headaches.” Or did the headaches lead to insanity? I couldn’t remember. “You already get migraines during allergy season and when you have to study for a math test. We’ll get you help, and you will accept that help graciously.”

  “Sure. Whatever.” He caught sight of the plate piled high with sliced ham and cheese. He smiled and moved farther into the kitchen, relinquishing the position of power that was really only an illusion. For about five minutes I still had the authority of mother. And he knew who prepared the food in the house.

  Training a teenager is a lot like training a dog. Speak their name very clearly to get their attention. Give them one specific chore, and only one at a time. Reward with food.

  Belle came in through the mudroom, muttering the words to that damnable song. She carried two fists full of dry sticks and leaves with bits of torn cloth in the mix. It looked like the makings of a bird nest without the coherence of a bird’s instinctive weaving.

  “Belle, what is that?”

  She placed her treasures neatly into the big porcelain sink. “Dad said that my talent was like attracting a moth to a flame. Dangerous but irresistible, so I need to learn to control both the flame and the dousing of it.” She sang two notes and smoke wafted upward.

  The fire alarm screeched. Jason grabbed a towel and waved it in front of the device to dissipate the smoke and silence the ear-splitting life-saving noise.

  “NO! Not in my sink.” I turned the water on, dousing the mess before it scorched anything. Actually, since it was almost a magical fire, I believe “scortched” was the proper spelling.

  “But, Mom, it’s the only safe place to start a fire, and there’s water close by to douse it if I need to.”

  “There is a perfectly serviceable brick barbecue/fireplace in the backyard. The one with the tall chimney, the grill, and the spigot.” I think it might have started life as the chimney for a log cabin long before the house was built.

  I had to hold on to my wooden spoon so tightly I thought I’d break the handle. But my balance steadied.

  “Go find Shara and bring her to the lunch table.”

  “She’s probably in the basement, trying to hack into Dad’s old computer,” Jason said, aiming for the steps beside the set that led upstairs.

  All the heat drained from my face. The spoon wasn’t enough to contain my reeling head. I needed the stove, which, thankfully, was cold.

  “That’s okay, Mom. Dad said she could,” Belle reassured me. “He said that if she could get past his passwords and firewall, he’d see about getting her into the computer programming club Mr. Coyote Blood Moon is running for teens after school.”

  I sat down hard on the floor. My world had spun out of my control.

  It was Saturday on a holiday weekend. I had no excuse to run down to Magical Brews—we were closed Saturday and Sunday—and bake up a storm of stress relief.

  So I set about making a cake for anyone who stopped by to help move the massive wardrobe.

  Thirteen

  “HOW IN HELL DID you get this thing up here?” Ted Tyler asked, standing with hands on hips, after he finished measuring the wardrobe and the stairwell.

  Jason had already cleaned up the glass—under my careful scrutiny—and I was still trying to decide if I needed to replace the mirror or not.

  “I don’t know how it got moved.” Back then, I’d been too busy throwing up with morning sickness that lasted all day. “My ex called two friends and they wrestled and wiggled it up here about thirteen years ago and it hasn’t moved since,” I explained.

  “I was one of those two friends,” John, or rather Coyote Blood Moon, said. He wore jeans and a pocket T-shirt today, very much the real estate agent on his day off.

  “Hey, BJ didn’t have anything better to do, so I asked him to help,” Jason said, stomping upward. He stretched out his arms within the stairwell to define the width of the space. He nodded as if he’d figured out that the wardrobe would fit.

  “It’s going to be tight, but . . . Daffy do you have some blankets we can wrap around it just in case we scrape the sides?” Ted asked shifting his dolly along one end of the wardrobe.

  “Coming right up,” I replied, digging through a cedar dowry chest full of surplus linens I didn’t want filling the linen closet. All I could find were some king-sized flannel sheets. I threw them toward John.

  “I’ll get some twine,” Jason said, “To tie around the sheets and keep them
from slipping.” He and BJ disappeared down the stairs.

  I heard them all the way to the kitchen, laughing and clomping, competing to see who could make the most noise. Like two puppies wrestling for domination. Just like old times.

  While we waited for them to return, Ted positioned the dolly while John and I shifted the wardrobe just enough to let him slip the device lip under one end. That little bit of movement revealed a band of different colored wood in the floor, inlaid rather than painted on or resting atop the floorboards.

  Curious, I traced the stripe away from the wardrobe and lost track of it beneath an old three-mirrored dressing table. On the other side, it veered off at a sharp angle to disappear beneath a bunch of stacked boxes. Neatly stacked with G’s kind of precision and order, a block of three across and three up, all the same size, not a millimeter out of alignment. Belle would approve.

  John shrugged his shoulders like he didn’t know what, if anything, that stripe was.

  But he’d been up here years ago. He should have noticed it when he helped move the wardrobe in place. Unless he’d had his back to it until the wardrobe sat atop it.

  I wondered in that moment if G had maneuvered the huge piece of furniture into place, at an oblique angle to the stacks of boxes. Obscuring the nature of the inlay.

  When the boys returned with twine and we’d draped the sheets to best protect the lovely wood, then tied them in place, the four males positioned themselves to pull, balance, and push. Jason put both hands flat against the piece at the head, while John took up a position behind Ted who managed the dolly. And BJ didn’t do much other than hold up a trailing corner of the flannel sheet. A year ago, he’d have been in the thick of the project, directing the adults. He wasn’t always right, but he pretended to be in charge, just like his father. For him to stand aside and look bored was new.

  Belle said he was hanging around with new friends—bullies. I wondered if I should “chat” with his mother about other personality changes. School health classes drilled this into students, to look for signs of drug use and intervene before it was too late.

  I grabbed a broom from the corner where Jason had stashed it during his cleaning blitz.

  The attic was not as filthy as I expected. The aftermath of my son’s ministrations or something else? He’d had an allergy attack and migraine the first day he was up here, but tried to hide it from me. So the dust had been thick at one point.

  I winced with every bump and creak. G would . . . what would he do? I realized I’d never seen him angry or out of control. In all our years together, the only fight we’d had was the night of our anniversary, the night I asked for a divorce. Any other time we’d disagreed, we’d talked it out logically and calmly. Then fell into bed for truly great make-up sex.

  And he always won every argument through logic. Or lies and manipulation. But the sex was still great.

  If we damaged a valuable antique from his family, what would he do?

  Probably just repair the piece with magic and compel me not to move anything else in the house, ever again.

  I spun around and plotted how to get that beautiful dressing table into Belle’s room. She was old enough now to appreciate an adult piece of furniture and to use it to apply makeup (only a pale lipstick for now) and dress her hair with her ivory hair sticks. The three mirrors would give her a better view of the sides as well as the front.

  Shara had long envied her sister’s white painted, small chest of drawers with the purple unicorn and pink flower stickers. Her own small and ordinary unfinished chest of drawers was cheap and had started to fall apart.

  Yes, the time had come to shift many things in our lives.

  I lowered the broom to remove any lingering dust and stopped short. Moving the wardrobe had revealed a pointed angle that looked tantalizingly familiar. I shoved the dressing table into position to take it downstairs. Another angle. Back into the shadows toward the eaves, a third angle.

  My heart thundered in my ears. I reached for the wooden spoon in my back pocket to ground myself. It wasn’t there. Panic galloped through my veins. The broom handle had to suit. I clenched it with both hands, closed my eyes, and did my best to control my breathing.

  “That’s it. Breathe in. Breathe out,” John whispered from right beside me. “Let the air fill your being. Draw light in and exhale the darkness of your fears.”

  I obeyed, as his words compelled me until my body accepted the pentagram on the floor as a natural part of the house.

  He handed me the spoon. It had apparently fallen out of my pocket while shifting stuff. “G’s great-grandparents included the pentagram as protection in the original design of the much smaller house. This place is a safe haven for all of our kind. But if a mundane sees it and suspects, the hatred and fear of those who do not understand us, those who refuse our help because they cannot conceive of it coming from their God, will bring fire and destruction down upon us all. Fire is the only way to destroy the protective wards.”

  “Understood. I’ll keep Ted and BJ in the kitchen while you and Jason move the dressing table down to Belle’s room. I think the mirrors come off for safe transport.” Tonight, I’d change the batteries in the smoke alarms, just to be sure.

  I headed for the stairs, dropping the broom with a loud clatter. “Join us for cake and coffee in a few moments. Please.”

  “Certainly. Jason could probably move this himself. He took most of the weight of the wardrobe with his telekinesis. He didn’t need me at all other than to steady and ground him.”

  “He’s that strong?”

  “Youthfully so. That will sap some of his strength and befuddle his mind. But he needs to learn better control. In the meantime, I suggest you find some cork as an insole for his shoes.”

  “Cork?”

  “It’s made from tree bark.”

  “Of course. Wood next to his feet instead of rubber and linoleum. I see a trip to the craft store in my very near future.”

  I walked down the stairs with plans and visions, and a lot less fear. Coyote Blood Moon was good for me.

  “You know, the insulation up in the attic is intact. Not as efficient as modern bats or spray foam, but still adequate. Finishing the walls and ceiling and adding a half bath up there wouldn’t cost much. Actually, I could easily run the plumbing up for a full bath and the wiring for a kitchenette. Then you’d have an apartment you could rent to college kids. Is there a separate entrance?” Ted asked while toying with the last crumbs of the Boston cream pie I’d made for my work crew. He mashed bits of cake, custard, and dark chocolate frosting together with his fork, making sure he didn’t miss a molecule of the desert.

  “Um.” I looked to John for confirmation that we didn’t want anyone outside the community up there. “There used to be an outside staircase from the garage area. But it fell apart about the time I moved in here. G removed it and barricaded the door inside and out with plywood. Last time we painted, the coverings just sort of blended in like a part of the siding.”

  John gave me a brief nod.

  We sat in the breakfast nook while Jason and BJ had taken their cake to his room, as they’d been doing since they were in first and second grade—old enough to hold a plate steady while climbing the stairs. Belle and Shara were in the greenhouse with their desserts, sitting on the little white wrought-iron filigree chairs with a matching table, pretending to take tea in the conservatory.

  “I think remodeling anything is a bit outside my budget at the moment,” I demurred.

  “When you do decide to remodel,” John said, “I can recommend Ted and his crew. He’s brought a number of properties I’ve handled up to code and modern concepts.”

  I gathered that John and G would do something to the pentagram to make it invisible. When G got home. If G came home.

  I’d had three texts from him in the last week—something unheard of—all cautionary. All w
arning me to keep the kids close and not let them roam as they were used to. Eugene still had many characteristics of a small town, low crime rate and people watching out for each other and monitoring where and when every child was spotted.

  But that changed every time the university football team had a winning season, or the U hosted Olympic trials, and more and more outsiders came to town.

  The texts had tracked G from Marseilles to Florence, and yesterday to Bruges.

  “We’ll see about updating the space later. Right now, I promised Jason the attic as a dance studio. It’s not far from the bottom of the stairs to the main bath. He’ll make do.”

  “Okay.” Ted smiled at me with enough concentration that I suspected he might be offering to do the job just to spend more time with me.

  Warmth invaded my tight and chilling tummy. More time with Ted was something I wouldn’t mind. For now, however, I needed to remember that G’s job was to keep magic invisible, real magic and not the pagan attempts at parlor tricks by nontalented people.

  A horn beeped outside.

  “That’s Tiffany,” Ted said, rising from the bench seat. “My truck had a flat tire this morning, so she dropped me off here before running her own errands. That dang truck is starting to nickel-and-dime me to death. And it’s only fifteen years old with two hundred fifty thousand miles on it.”

  John smiled behind his hand. A vehicle that old and well-used sounded like a candidate for the junkyard to me.

  “Please take a piece of cake to Tiffany. There’s one left, and if you don’t take it, Jason will eat it and not even taste it.” I quickly put the little slice on a paper plate and wrapped it in plastic.

  “Thanks, anyway, but I doubt she’ll eat it. My girl is dedicated to getting maximum nutrition from every low-calorie bite she takes. She’s a dancer first and foremost.”

  “Then you eat it.” From the way he’d savored every mouthful of his own portion, I guessed he didn’t get desserts at home very often.