A Spoonful of Magic

by Irene Radford

When I was rested enough to think straight, I’d lay down ground rules. If he couldn’t climb stairs to his apartment, then he couldn’t climb to my bedroom. And he was on his own during the day. I wasn’t going to lose work to stay home with him, and the children had school. We could move his old computer up to the dining room table from the basement.

  And his clothes that accumulated in my closet must move down to the armoire in my sewing room that used to be his home office. I could move some of my craft supplies from the shelves. The ribbons and laces were much depleted after I’d let the dancers use them to decorate the jars of bath salts.

  Did we have a spare bed among all that junk in the attic? If not, I supposed G could rent a hospital bed for a few weeks.

  By six, I knew I wasn’t going to sleep anymore, so I used up a lot of the hot water in a long shower, bundled myself into my jeans and flannel shirt, then tugged thick socks over my tired feet. Fleece-lined slippers gave me the illusion of warmth. Better. But not whole yet. I still needed a couple of nights of real sleep before I’d manage more than a rough routine, moving more by rote than thinking about it.

  I needed my wand.

  The exact moment I sat down to eat my strawberry waffles with whipped cream and a side of bacon (comfort food and plenty left over for the kids) my cell phone chimed.

  G.

  Of course.

  I took a big bite of waffle and cream and another long gulp of coffee (my third cup) before answering.

  “Can you come get me?” he asked, sounding more like a lost child than the Sheriff for the entire world of the Guild of Master Wizards.

  “What do the doctors say about that?” I asked and crunched a bite of bacon in his ear.

  “They said if I wear a knee brace 24/7 and stay off it as much as possible, I can come home, providing someone is there to monitor me for concussion until tomorrow. They need the bed for truly sick people. And I shouldn’t drive for a week.”

  “Sounds reasonable. Where are you going to stay?” I almost enjoyed making him grovel. Payback for some of the lies he’d told me over the years.

  The more I thought about it, the more I believed that if he’d been up front from the beginning with me about magic, I’d have been okay with it. Unlike Flora Chambers or my father, I wouldn’t have run away screaming about the sin of witchcraft. I’d probably have embraced the concept of magic and been a bit jealous that I didn’t have any. As Gayla had.

  Payback to my parents for their repressive attitudes.

  Having acknowledged magic, I might have manifested earlier and been better able to defend myself from BJ and his bullies in the park yesterday.

  I was beginning to think that lying was part of the condition of being a human male.

  Maybe not Ted. But I didn’t know him that well yet. I really liked him, though. His reliability and his devotion to his daughter weighed heavily in his favor.

  But he didn’t make my blood sing.

  I wasn’t sure G did either. My reaction to him was part of a spell. If he’d just been honest with me when he first seduced me, he wouldn’t have needed a spell to make me fall in love with him.

  G gulped loud enough for me to hear him swallow through the phone. “May I stay with you?” Pause. “Please?”

  “I suppose so. You can sleep on the sofa, or Jason can move the recliner into the sewing room if you want more privacy. Or you can rent a hospital bed. That might be easier for you to get in and out of.”

  “Not . . . ?”

  “You can’t climb stairs. And the answer would be no anyway.”

  “Okay.” He didn’t have to say, “For now,” out loud. I heard it in his tone.

  I had news for him.

  Checking out of the hospital took longer than G had spent in the ER. I swear that I had to complete more forms for insurance and stuff than I had the night before. On the line where I had to fill in the name of who would pay the bill if the insurance refused to pay, I really, really wanted to write Guild of Master Wizards. But that wouldn’t be fair to the poor clerk who had to process the paperwork. Instead, I put in the shadow corporation that provided the insurance.

  Then and only then was I allowed to take a change of clean clothes up to his room. Then I had to wait some more while nurses helped him dress.

  Eventually, an aide wheeled G to the front door while I retrieved his car from the parking lot. I figured it would be easier for him to get in and out of that vehicle than the high step to the van. Grudgingly, he accepted the aide’s assistance in standing and turning one-footed so that he sat on the passenger seat then swung his long legs in. I’d put the seat back as far as I could make it go. He still had to wiggle ungracefully to get his injured leg in without bending it.

  The aide put G’s bundle of torn and filthy clothing, a pair of crutches, and the hospital toiletries in the backseat along with the stack of papers, duplicates of the forms I’d completed along with detailed instructions about his care. The dire warnings about ignoring dizziness and blurred vision, slurred speech, or trembling limbs was almost enough to make me leave him with the professionals another night.

  “Don’t be a hero now. Use the crutches. Consider it a war wound and not a sign of weakness,” the aide said, then he slammed the door shut.

  G reclined the seat halfway to horizontal and closed his eyes. His skin looked gray and clammy.

  “You okay?” I asked, not putting the car into gear yet.

  “I will be as soon as I get home and beneath the pentagram. Pain is exhausting. Painkillers are obnoxious but useful in inducing sleep. I’ll grin and bear it.” The lines around his eyes and from his mouth to his chin deepened. He looked twenty years older than his forty-five years.

  Half a mile later some of the strain in his face and shoulders relaxed. I hoped he’d fallen asleep. Instead he spoke. “What did John Mooney say to you last night?”

  “Not much.”

  “Spill it. You are a terrible liar.”

  “Unlike you.”

  “Practice. It becomes a habit. A bad habit I intend to break.”

  “Do all men lie?”

  “Not all of us. Not always. I started lying to you to protect you. And the children. I don’t have to anymore. And neither do you. What did Mooney say?”

  I noticed that he used John’s real name rather than his craft name. Somehow John had lost the right to a craft name in G’s mind.

  “He warned me not to trust you, because you lie and you framed D’Accore for her crimes and that your malicious treatment of her caused her blindness.”

  He snorted a laugh, then grabbed his ribs. “Tell that to the three people who died in the apartment fire and my grandparents, and all the others I didn’t know about but were engraved on the back of her Zippo. She caused her own blindness trying to break her magically sealed straitjacket. We had to restrain her to keep her from hurting her baby. As it was, the doctors took him two months early by C-section to protect him. If anyone is lying in this case, it’s her.”

  “If John helped her escape last spring, that was long before he met me. He wasn’t a spurned lover then.”

  G paused long enough that I had to glance over to make sure he hadn’t fallen asleep.

  “No, he wasn’t. But he did date her before she met me. I’m the more powerful wizard—my powers were enhanced when I was recruited as a deputy for the Guild. We all have to be able to subdue out-of-control rogues. I now know she wanted my powers. Mooney has never forgotten that she left him for me—although she lied to me in the beginning and said he’d found someone else and threw her out. He’s not been overtly hostile until yesterday, but the snide jabs were frequent enough to put distance between us.”

  Which must be why I didn’t meet John until this summer.

  “I now believe she cast a spell on John when she ran to him for protection before I restrained her. She planted the
seeds then for him to accumulate the several fortunes he’d need to help her escape. I don’t think she anticipated that it would take fifteen years.”

  “Jason complained of a bad headache and blurry vision last night. This morning, before I left to fetch you, I went into his room to tell him where I was going. He wasn’t there. He’d moved his bedding to the attic and slept in the center of the pentagram. He said he felt better, but he’d gone up there because he couldn’t sleep anywhere else. I almost brought him with me to have him checked out. But he said he just needed more sleep.”

  “Could be backlash from his first real use of strong magic. I swear he hovered three feet off the ground and kicked the minions in the head and then the nuts. They collapsed and crawled off, leaving behind their half-charged wands.”

  “What was John doing?”

  “He held off until I’d defeated the minions. Then he tackled me from behind, butting his head into my already damaged ribs. I think his wooden flute flew into the woods. I didn’t break his wand, just kept him from using it. He’ll have a devil of a time finding it again.”

  “Especially with a broken ankle.”

  “That was Jason’s doing. He telekinetically put something very slippery beneath John’s feet. He fell when he leaped. Awkwardly.”

  I still bristled that G had endangered Jason. But at least the boy had held his own. And I guessed he had to learn to do that in a fight sometime. Just not yet.

  “What about D’Accore?”

  “She ran at the first sign of confrontation. She’s stolen power from a dozen lesser magicians when she killed them and stripped their wands. But borrowed or stolen talents are diminished by the transfer and they dissipate quickly when used. She’s not up to full power and hasn’t had time to absorb all the nuances layered into magic.”

  “Then how did she cast an illusion strong enough to trick you into believing she was me?”

  “I was not thinking straight, and I wanted to believe it was you. Only you.” His smile looked like a grimace. But he really was trying to make amends.

  Or get back into my good graces and, therefore, my bed with lies and manipulation.

  “Men fight. Men lie. I’m glad I’m single again.”

  “I’m sorry, Daffy. Maybe I protected you too much.”

  Twenty-Eight

  G SLEPT ON THE sofa with pillows piled beneath his knee. Jason slept on the floor of the attic. Belle and Shara napped on their beds with quilts drawn over their heads. Shara hadn’t napped since she was two. I should have tried for more sleep as well. But I was too wound up to bother. My mind spun with information and questions and wondering if G had ever truly loved me, as he claimed he now did, or if even that was a lie.

  Ted called when I was in the middle of putting together a grocery list and meal plan for the coming week. “I have three dozen cupcakes in a bakery box in the back of my truck,” he said after appropriate greetings. “What should I do with them?”

  Raphe wasn’t really homeless and didn’t need my handouts, though he appreciated them. I thought a bit about selling them at the shop as day old . . . “Let’s take them to the homeless shelter. Meet me at the shop, I’ve got some day-old bread and cheese rolls that can go, too.”

  “Deal. When?”

  I listened to the house, no one stirred but me. “Ten minutes.”

  He greeted me with a gentle, reassuring kiss. I leaned against him for a long, restful moment.

  “Rough day yesterday?” he murmured into my hair, holding me close.

  “Very.”

  “I saw Jason leave the market with his father. Neither of them looked happy. Then later I heard about the dustup in the chess park. Are you and the girls okay?”

  “Yes. The girls are shaken. BJ Chambers has been a near constant companion since he and Jason were in preschool. His malevolence felt like a betrayal. I should have seen it coming. He’s been erratic for a few months. I thought it was hormones.”

  “That is rough. What about Jason and his father?”

  “They got mugged on their way to help me. G is hurt pretty bad. Jason is sleeping off the shock. Can we talk about something else? I need a respite.”

  “Of course. Do you have an escort to the premiere of This Is Halloween?”

  “Not yet.” I smiled up at him, still clinging.

  “May I escort you?” He kissed my nose, and I giggled.

  “Yes. Thank you. Now let’s get these baked goods over to the shelter, then I need to go to the grocery store.”

  A gentle, everyday kind of conversation that had nothing to do with magic or evil wizards or pentagrams.

  “My offer to help Jason refinish your attic floor still stands. I’ve got all the equipment. I know how to make that pale inlay really shine,” he said when we’d finished our errands together.

  My insides froze. This was the third time he’d asked. Was he truly only trying to help, or did he want access to that pentagram.

  The one person in all this mess I thought I could trust had crossed the line. I watched him cautiously while he transferred his groceries from my van to his truck. Was that a hint of levitation lifting a heavy bag or just a strong man doing what he had to do?

  G opened one eye cautiously the moment he heard Daffy slip quietly out the back door. He had work to do. A quick survey of his injuries and he knew he had to start delegating. He had to trust his deputies to do the jobs he’d trained them to do.

  He hated working by remote control.

  Fortunately, Daffy had left his phone in his pocket. He fished it out, careful not to twist and irritate his lightly taped ribs. He’d have a devil of a time taking a shower. But if Daffy helped . . .

  Not right now. He could barely manage to remember phone numbers—he never left deputy numbers on the memory card and carefully deleted call history every time—let alone seduce his ex-wife.

  Dale in Portland and Suzie in Sacramento still had fresh bodies to deal with. He checked in with them and reassured them they were doing a great job; they didn’t need him. Las Vegas was always a hotbed of minor magicians trying their “luck,” so he shouldn’t pull Adam from there. Peter in Seattle was getting ready to retire; he didn’t tackle physical problems anymore. His talent was intact, but his knees weren’t. G decided to give him one last case so he could leave on a glorious high note.

  “I’ll take dismissal and a reduced pension before I deal with that broad again,” Peter grumbled. “As much as I want her dead, I want to live to enjoy my old age. Go ahead and fire me. I’ve got a fishing cabin in the San Juan Islands all paid for. No cell phone and no Internet.” He hung up.

  G couldn’t blame the guy.

  Melinda in L.A. was new, only on the job eight months. Had she settled into her augmented powers yet? Time to find out.

  “I’m prepping to go to trial on a civilian case tomorrow.” She had a great day job as a public defense attorney. No better place for her to be for rooting out rogue magicians who used their powers for criminal purposes. “I need this case to establish my reputation in L.A. I can’t help you later if I desert clients at the last minute.”

  Damn it! He needed Paul. But he’d been one of D’Accore’s and Mooney’s earliest victims.

  How had they zeroed in on G’s strongest allies? Raphe. Raphe was the registrar for the Guild. He had spreadsheets that covered every aspect of life and magic of every registered magician and wizard. Mooney owned the building where Raphe and G rented an apartment. Even with wards and alarms, mundane and magical set all around the building and inside the apartment, Mooney, as landlord and a powerful wizard—more powerful than they thought—had access.

  Mooney had selected the victims by powers that D’Accore needed. He’d provided transportation—hadn’t there been an unverified rumor of a private jet owned by a shadow corporation parked at the local airport? But she had to murder the victims in order t
o absorb their powers and get their wands away from them long enough to strip them.

  They were both guilty, and he didn’t have enough strength or clear-mindedness to track down and arrest either one.

  G’s head hurt. He couldn’t think beyond the West Coast to find another deputy capable of helping him. Reluctantly, he put the phone on his chest and rested his head back on the arm of the sofa. Just a few minutes. He only needed a few minutes to close his eyes.

  He woke two hours later when Daffy let herself in by the back door, none too quietly.

  By sunset, my family began to stir and look to me for food. Sometimes I thought that’s all I was, a giant feeding trough. I had a hearty beef barley stew simmering. It needed another half hour. Time enough for them all to wash the sleep out of their eyes and assess the state of their homework. All three children needed several hours at the dining room table tonight with supervision to keep them from wandering off or playing computer games.

  The doorbell rang just as the sun set.

  “That will be Raphe,” G said on a yawn. He struggled to sit up and get the crutches under him.

  I answered the door and left G to manage on his own. He’d have to learn to do that sooner rather than later.

  Raphe stood on my doorstep. His khaki sweatshirt hood covered his head, and he wore wraparound sunglasses on a gloomily overcast day.

  “Raphe? You look different.” He’d cleaned up prettier than I expected, shaved and with trimmed hair. His clothes—khaki slacks and a mint-green shirt beneath the sweatshirt—were also clean and respectable.

  “As much fun as I had pretending to be your pet homeless man living behind your dumpster, this is the real me. I’ve got the rest of G’s things in my car.” A big boat of a classic red convertible, white soft top up to protect against the rain, sat in my driveway.

  “Come in.” I opened the door wider and gestured him in.

  “Uh. No, thanks. I’ll just leave his stuff here on the porch. That pentagram gives me the shivers.”