Fire. The fire was my responsibility. Transform it. Into what? It had to remain essentially fire, or its component parts. Fire was heat, and light. It had its own internal chemical reaction, just as baking did. Fire wanted to transform fuel into heat, light, smoke, and ash.
Why not more light than anything else?
A flick of my wand while I concentrated on light, lightning, blinding flashes. “Close your eyes!” I commanded in my most authoritative mother-knows-best voice. And I followed my own orders.
Red-and-yellow bolts of lightning showed behind my closed eyelids.
Male voices screeched followed by pounding footsteps. “My eyes! She’s burning out my eyes. Get me some fucking water!” One of the males wailed.
When the flashes of lightning ceased, I cautiously opened my eyes. Three hunched-over figures darted into the shadows across the street. One of them was dragging the other two who were trying to claw out their own eyes.
Ted had better aim with the powder than I did.
“Come back here!” the woman yelled. Then she turned on her high heels and followed the sounds of the retreating boys, stumbling and flailing until some residual smoke found and guided her. A pale hand reached out from behind a tree and grabbed her wrist. She stabilized and let the hand guide her deeper into the shadows. No words. Blind trust.
Mooney?
“We have to go after them!” I started forward, ready to kick off my shoes and run.
“Not this time.” Ted caught my hand. “We aren’t enforcers, or even deputies. That’s G’s job, and he’s in no shape to apprehend and arrest them.” Gently, he smoothed my hair and brushed a layer of ash from my coat sleeves. “We have children performing in just a few minutes. We need to be inside for them. That’s the most important job in the world.”
G settled into his theater seat three rows back from the orchestra. He remembered coming here to Saturday matinees of horrible B-grade monster movies as a child. The place had closed about the time he entered high school, then reopened a few years later as a favored venue for vintage rock bands on reunion tours. Restoration had cleaned up the old place quite nicely.
He grimaced when he read the back of his program to find that bands he’d listened to as a teen were now vintage and on the gray-hair circuit.
Now community theater companies performed plays here, too. And the pro/am ballet company. They had priority on their lease. The other events might make more money, but the prestige of the ballet company elevated the status of the other groups.
He’d gone to all of Jason’s recitals—or at least as many as he could when in town—wincing in sympathy at every missed step, or forgotten sequence. School Christmas pageants with off-key voices; he’d endured those, too. The girls didn’t seem interested in anything artsy. All the artistic talent in the family had landed inside his boy. A young man now.
Pride filled G’s chest when he read Jason Deschants in the program. Daffy should be here to share this special moment.
Where was she? Five minutes to curtain. The seats at the center of the first row—reserved for the families of the two principal dancers and people who knew which strings to pull—remained empty. The rest of the theater was full to overflowing. Like any wizard worth his salt, he extended his senses in search of Daffy’s emotional frequency. It hummed in the back of his throat, like a welcome taste of dark chocolate laced with cherry liqueur.
Panic. Fear. Shock.
He grabbed his cane and cursed as he tried to leverage himself upright. The docs said he required another ten days of the damned knee brace. Daffy needed him now.
A new emotion telegraphed along his open senses. Bewilderment followed by accomplishment. He relaxed in his seat a bit. Just a bit as he opened the text function on his phone. The blasted thing vibrated and buzzed with an incoming text before he could type the first letter.
Smoke got in our eyes
fire turned to lightning
perps fled. TT
“What the hell does that mean?” G gasped, not caring if the audience around him heard.
A disturbance ahead and to his left. Daffy and Ted Tyler scuttled past the orchestra pit. They excused themselves to the rest of the row and settled into the two remaining seats in that row. Ted glanced his way and flashed a thumbs-up before turning his full attention to the printed program book.
Daffy enthusiastically pointed to the lists of performers and leaned her head close to Tyler’s, never acknowledging G’s presence. She looked happy, if a bit windblown.
G’s heart wrenched. She should be sitting beside him, joyfully sharing Jason’s success with him. He couldn’t remember seeing her this happy since. . . .
She hadn’t been this happy in a long, long time. Not with him anyway.
Their divorce was final. Perhaps . . . perhaps it was time to let her go.
And if he had to let her go, he couldn’t think of a more honorable man for her to go to than Ted Tyler.
But it burned in his gut like battery acid.
Thirty-Three
THE LIGHTS DIMMED. The conductor emerged from behind the curtains and bowed to the audience. He acknowledged their applause and tripped lightly down the stage stairs to the pit. Another bow and he turned to face his orchestra.
I took a deep breath, anticipating the first strain of the jerky music “This Is Halloween” from Nightmare Before Christmas. My fingers drummed familiar themes melded together into an overture, and I closed my eyes to appreciate the fun tunes before the dancers commanded all of my attention.
At last the curtain rose on a misty cemetery. One by one, the ghostly dancers in wispy tatters of gray chiffon rose from trapdoors in the stage floor. And so the spooky tale proceeded. Jason excelled as I expected. He soared into ghostly attacks on a young couple—Tiffany and Aaron—as they attempted a lover’s tryst where they shouldn’t be. Tiffany commanded every eye to follow her through her performance. In the way of all good characterizations, her portrayal grew from shy and innocent to fiercely defensive to collapsing into death and rising again in elegant but ghostly white for one last embrace.
The other dances proceeded with similar perfection. I didn’t think I’d see any flaws, even if I looked for them. This was my boy’s night to shine. And Tiffany’s to glow.
Then the scene transitioned into a blank open space. The lights hinted at sunset, a ritual bonfire—the fire was all lights and crackling tin foil—for the “Ritual Fire Dance”—I think the music actually started as a sword dance with a driving rhythm by a Russian composer. Matt and Denise performed a stylized contemporary piece with lots of sparks, danced by the corps de ballet. Different dance style, different body types from Aaron and Tiffany, but worthy successors.
During the intermission, I checked on Belle and Shara with Gayla sitting between them. Wise move. My girls might love each other, but they were sisters and bickering was a new hobby. But tonight they were as awestruck by Jason as they were by Tiffany.
“I’m still glad I gave up dance lessons before the first one was over, but she does make it all look easy,” Belle confessed.
“Jason is doing okay,” Shara admitted.
I sank into my seat with appreciation. Ted returned from the lobby with glasses of champagne. I accepted one with a smile and a new warmth for my companion. This was his night to celebrate the success of his child more than mine. The champagne was excellent. Something G might choose.
Banish that thought.
The ballet continued for the dramatic second act. I heard more than a few gasps at the special effects through Night on Bare Mountain, followed by Tubular Bells. And then we ended with The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Aaron looked nothing like Mickey Mouse in his oversized robe and pointy hat. Tiffany danced as his broom in a parody of a ballroom number. I think the corps de ballet had fun splitting into more and more brooms, getting more and more out of hand.
At the end of the evening’s performance, the audience stood and applauded until our hands hurt and our arms ached with fatigue. And still we clapped. Ushers presented bouquet after bouquet to Tiffany and all of the soloists, including a huge one of at least two dozen roses of mixed hues.
“That one’s from me,” Ted whispered, clapping as loudly and enthusiastically as everyone else.
Tiffany and her company took one final deep bow and tiptoed off stage. The curtain came down and stayed down.
“Want to go backstage?” Ted asked as the audience began gathering belongings and preparing to leave.
“Try to keep me away.” I couldn’t help smiling.
And then I noticed G at the end of the aisle, his right leg stretched out straight into the passageway beside him and his cane propped up against his theater chair. He smiled and applauded like everyone else. But something around his eyes looked shadowed, dark, and painful.
My heart twisted for him. On this night of celebration he sat alone.
Two gunshots blasted through the near perfect acoustics of the place. People screamed and hastened for the exits, clogging at the doorways and leading to more screams.
My heart leaped to my throat. Fear paralyzed me until I picked out one particular screech amongst all the others. Belle and Shara crowded close to me. I pushed them down, out of the line of fire.
“Get G on his feet,” Ted called as he vaulted over the seat in front of him, and dashed onto the stage.
“I’m up. I’m moving,” G said to Daffy as she shoved people aside in the clogged aisle to get to him. Six people had bumped his knee and sent lances of fiery pain to his heel and all the way up to his shoulder. One man, the last to leave, had paused to offer him a hand up. G had dismissed him. All the others were caught up in the wild panic of a shooting in a crowded venue. Too often in recent years, large numbers of people had died or been maimed in just this kind of scenario.
“Stay with the girls!” he ordered Daffy. Not that he expected her to obey. At least he tried.
With his cane in one hand and his wand in the other he limped down toward the stage. By the time he reached the short flight of steps in the corner, his knee had eased. The small brace beneath his trousers allowed him a little movement, but it still kept his leg straight, making stairs a slow process. No one was watching him, except maybe Daffy. So he tried a little of Jason’s self-levitation.
For once it worked. His adrenaline levels must be higher than he thought. Fear for the lives of one’s children will do that.
Then Daffy was behind him, her own wand, that ridiculous spurtle in her hand. At least the thing looked something like a wand and had undertones of her Scottish heritage. Psychics hid behind every rock and tuft of heather in the highlands.
“I thought I told you . . .”
“Forget that. He’s my boy, too. And I have a vested interest in all of those dancers.” She pushed the small of his back forward to make room for herself. A marauding mother hen—descended from a T. rex—with chicks in danger.
Backstage, he picked out the forms of dozens of costumed dancers cowering in corners and alcoves, behind sets and curtains.
“Jason?” he called in a stage whisper that would reach every corner of the area without sounding loud and alarming.
“Up here, Dad,” Jason panted. “I can’t hold him much longer.”
G looked up, and up, and up, to the top of the flies where a slim young man in silver tights with a brocade tunic clung to the catwalk. His legs held a squirming BJ in a scissor lock around his neck. BJ gibbered in panic, eyes huge, a pistol dangling from one finger as he flailed his arms.
“Stay still,” G ordered in the tones of a drill sergeant.
Instantly, BJ stopped. He turned those wide, desperate eyes toward him with the tiniest glimmer of hope that he might get out of this alive.
Behind him, G sensed Daffy gathering up the dancers and herding them into dressing rooms and prop rooms. No sign of Ted and his blonde daughter.
“Okay, Jason, let go of the catwalk when you are ready. Do not, I repeat, do not drop BJ. I’ll guide you down. Just like in dance class, land slowly, gently, light as a feather. No noise.” He extended his wand and thought a cushioning bubble into place around the boys.
Jason took a deep breath and released his hands. They dropped abruptly about three feet. BJ screamed and dropped the pistol. A revolver. It landed with a thud and the explosion of a single bullet.
No time to mark the trajectory.
No one screamed. A blessing that he’d claimed no victims with that careless action.
Jason made an alliance with gravity. He’d succumb to the elemental pull, but on his terms and schedule.
G breathed a bit lighter as they descended as if supported by special effects harness and wires.
BJ was a gibbering mess, knees collapsing upon contact. Jason released his stranglehold on his former friend’s neck and came down beside him, a little jerky and uncontrolled but safe.
Daffy dashed out from her hiding place and enveloped the boy in a motherly hug. Holding him close and admonishing him for endangering himself at the same time. Her fingers arched in a desperate clutch on his back.
G left his son’s welfare to her as he banished the protective cushion. Three steps and he pressed his cane against BJ’s throat to keep him in place while he sent a stasis spell through the wand into the boy’s mind. BJ collapsed against the boards.
“Now what?” Ted asked emerging from the shadows. Tiffany tiptoed behind him as if she disobeyed his orders to remain concealed, but couldn’t keep herself from watching.
G tilted his head in the girl’s direction with an unspoken question.
Ted frowned, staring at his daughter, hand on hips, anger in his eyes. She returned his glare with one of her own.
“Wipe her memories,” Ted replied and pulled out a length of rope from his suit pocket and began binding BJ’s hands. His pockets were notoriously like Mary Poppins’ carpetbag. And he said he had no magic.
G breathed a little easier. If BJ had had help, they’d fled the scene right after he started shooting. Just like D’Accore to send a boy to do a man’s job. Or maybe BJ had rushed in to finish what she started earlier, just to please her.
He wondered what sort of thrall she held over her minions. Sex? Money? Magical power? A release from social constraints to give in to their baser instincts? Or, in BJ’s case, freedom from his parents?
A siren’s talents, but she didn’t need magic for them. Plenty of mundane women could do that.
“Is anyone hurt?” he called to the far reaches of the theater.
“Both shots went wild,” Jason said, still clinging to his mother. Daffy. His real mom, not the woman who had given birth to him. “I got to him just before he fired the second time. I think the bullet may have taken out a light on the catwalk.”
“Mundane weapon. Mundane authorities,” G pronounced and dialed 911. “I’d like to see your father get you out of this one, BJ.”
Thirty-Four
“WALK ME THROUGH THIS one more time, every detail, every sensory perception, and your thoughts, no matter how random,” G said. He limped painfully around the living room. Ted and I sat on the sofa, shoulders touching.
I repeated everything I’d seen, heard, smelled, and thought when D’Accore and her anonymous minions tried to smoke the dancers out of the theater before the performance. I contemplated the texture and taste of the air. And when I got to the part about seeing a ghostly pale hand reach out from behind a tree to steady D’Accore’s blind retreat, he asked me to repeat it again and again. How had I known it was Mooney? The off-center balance of the silhouette suggested a man walking with a cast. No, I didn’t see a face or what kind of clothing he wore. It was dark. He wore dark.
Then G zeroed in on Ted with the same interrogation. This is what television portrayed as standa
rd police procedure.
I was exhausted. Both men had discarded jackets and ties. And still G persisted.
“That’s enough, G,” Gayla finally announced from the kitchen doorway. “You aren’t going to squeeze any more information from them tonight. Let them sleep on it. Maybe their dreams will conjure something new or different.”
“Gayla, this is not your business,” G said sternly, in what I’d come to describe as his “sheriff’s” voice.
“Yes, it is. Daffy’s my best friend and my business partner. What affects her, affects me. Besides, your eyes are little more than dark hollows in your skull-like face. You’re limping badly, and your speech is becoming slurred. You need to go to bed, and I need to get home. I’ve put your children to bed, except Jason, and he’s too wound up to settle anywhere. At least he’s not bouncing off the ceiling anymore.”
“Thank you, Gayla,” I said, truly grateful for the way she had tended to my family when I couldn’t.
“You’re welcome.” She retreated toward the back door.
“I should be going, too,” Ted said. “I want to make sure Tiffany made it home okay after her date. I’m afraid there will be tears. She was going to break up with her current boyfriend before she heads to St. Louis.”
“She’s wise to do it now. She’ll have time to get over her guilt before she leaves and not take that kind of baggage with her,” I replied.
“Sleep well, and call if you need anything.” He looked at G, then bent to kiss my cheek.
“I’ll walk you out,” I insisted. I wanted more than that quick peck. G’s frown and low throat grumble was enough to put off the most ardent of suitors.
We did kiss in the semiprivacy of the mudroom. But the best part was the tight embrace, the hands clutching desperately to each other for reassurance, and the long moment of stillness with our foreheads pressed together. We’d been through a lot this evening. And it was only going to get worse.
A Spoonful of Magic Page 25