Spellbinder: A Love Story With Magical Interruptions

by Melanie Rawn

  “Not at all,” Holly assured her. “Anybody can make colors in a fire. Me, I’m more likely to blow up the lab.”

  Susannah snorted. “I remember, I remember! Professor Harbison banned you from the science building.” Leaning gently against Bradshaw’s arm, she mused, “I wonder what happened the first time somebody accidentally dropped salt or whatever into a campfire—you know, huddled at night on the savanna, listening to the sabertooths growl, and then colors suddenly spit from the flames—” She laughed. “The first magician!”

  “Oh, magic started long before that,” Holly said.

  Bradshaw fought his misgivings, telling himself that the quickest way to arouse suspicion was to change the subject. Best to brazen it out. Or so Holly obviously thought; she started a lecture.

  “The first magicians had to have been singers. Think about it. What must’ve happened the first time someone grunted a rhythmic chant—probably in time to a heartbeat? Primal. Elemental. Certain organ notes can elicit a feeling of awe. Voices do the same.”

  “Pavarotti,” Elias said, intrigued in spite of himself.

  Holly made a sour face. “Susannah’s told me that you can’t carry a tune with both hands and an SUV, but must you equate ‘Nessun Dorma’ with some grunting Cro-Magnon? And I think it has something to do with the music itself as well. Mozart. Beethoven.” She grinned. “The Beatles!”

  “Absolutely!” Susannah agreed. “But the first time someone hummed something that caught the emotions of someone else, it probably got him or her offed in a hurry. It’d be terrifying, the first time it happened to you.”

  Bradshaw nodded. “A voice that touches something inside, creating a response without physical contact.”

  “Spooky,” remarked Lachlan. “But what’s it like to be the one doing the singing?”

  Holly tilted her head slightly as she looked over at him. “What it feels like to make music … the control of air in your lungs, the vibrations in your throat, the buzz in your head, the concentration on getting the notes right—”

  “—the look on other people’s faces that means you have power,” Susannah added. “People who could make music that provoked reaction were perceived as having power—a reaction they recognized and used. They became magicians by mutual consent of singer and audience. Imagine sitting in a cave around the fire, with voices echoing off the stone—”

  “It would be religious in a way, don’t you think?” Holly sat forward, eyes bright, scratching Mugger absently. “It’s called ‘singing’ a Mass—and in Judaism the cantor sings the words. Ritual requires words—put the words together with the music, and the magic intensifies. And wasn’t the universe created by a Word?”

  Elias had a sudden vision of what Susannah and Holly must have been like in college—bouncing ideas off each other, the synergy almost electrifying. This was a kind of magic, too.

  Holly went on, “The written word has always been magical. During the Middle Ages, about the only people who knew how to read and write were priests—and they had a direct hotline to God.”

  “Rhythm, music, words,” Lachlan murmured. “Sounds like that adds up to you, Holly.”

  This was getting a little dicey. Bradshaw said quickly, “But what about dancers? Artists? Some people respond to the dance—and the people who do the dancing certainly do. I’ve watched you two ladies often enough to know that,” he added with an attempt at humor.

  Holly gave a dismissive shrug. “Any idiot can jump around and wave his arms. The rhythm is internal, not shared.”

  “Not art, either,” Susannah agreed. “It must’ve been wonderful to be able to take a stick and draw in the dirt and have it look like something—and even better to use pigments and create Lascaux. But that was much later. And it’s the response of the audience that really counts. Drawing a map to where the mastodons were herding wouldn’t’ve elicited anything but feelings of hunger!”

  “Works for me,” Lachlan drawled.

  “Feed him and he’ll follow you anywhere.” Holly grinned.

  “Shamans were healers, weren’t they?” Susannah asked. “Maybe that’s when magicians really got started, when somebody found out that if you ate a certain herb your bellyache went away. I mean, that would be real, wouldn’t it? Demonstrable. Painting and dancing and singing and so forth provoke emotional reactions that are unquantifiable. But healing someone with herbs—now, that would be magical.”

  “Personally,” Lachlan observed, holding up his brandy snifter, “I think the first doctor or magician or whatever you want to call him was the guy who figured out how to brew hooch. And I bet he was Irish.”

  As they all laughed, and conversation drifted into a comparison of whiskies, Elias relaxed. It wasn’t until he and Susannah were leaving that he met Marshal Lachlan’s gaze and again saw the knowing there.

  “So say something,” he invited, sotto voce.

  “Such as?” Although amused curiosity shaded Lachlan’s voice, his eyes were merciless. The two men were almost of a height, Elias an inch or two shorter—but he had the years, the experience, and the magic. None of it felt like much when confronted with the look in those hazel eyes.

  He cast a glance at the women, who were busy making plans for lunch that week. Both were scratching Mugger’s ears; the cat refused to leave Holly’s arms. “It’s not something any of us advertises, as Holly will have told you.”

  “That’s not the issue.”

  “What is?”

  “Her.” In that one word was a world of warning. “My old man never had anything useful to say about women,” Lachlan went on, “but my granddad did. He told me you never know what they’re really like until you get caught in the rain. If she screams and tries to protect her hair and makeup, take her home and don’t ever call her again. But if she starts to laugh—” He smiled slightly. “—you laugh with her, and then make sure you’re always around so nothing less gentle than the rain ever touches her.”

  Elias regarded him with new respect. “It’s my job to take care of her just as much as it is yours,” he murmured.

  “Not exactly.”

  “No,” he agreed. “Not exactly. But you know what I mean.”

  “Just as long as we both know.” Lachlan paused. “And Susannah doesn’t.”

  “No.” Reluctantly, he added, “Thanks for—”

  Lachlan shrugged it off. “See you Monday morning, Your Honor.”

  Eleven

  HOLLY NUDGED THE FRONT DOOR shut with a hip, hoisted Mugger higher in her arms, and turned to face Evan. “Okay, let’s have it.”

  He made wide, startled eyes at her. “Right here in the hall?”

  “Very funny. You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, but my interpretation woulda been more fun.” Sauntering back into the living room, he poured them both another brandy. “Y’know, a couple years ago there was this guy from Mexico on trial in Bradshaw’s court. Pete was on duty that first day, and in the wife’s purse he found this grimy little bag of rocks and chicken bones and stuff. He let her keep it—said it smelled to high heaven, but she didn’t want to give it up. So I knew to look for it the next morning, and he was right—stinkiest thing I ever ran across. After the guy was convicted, I heard her say to her sister that her mojo bag had always worked before, down in Mexico, and she didn’t understand why it hadn’t worked on this judge.” Raising his glass to Holly, he finished, “Now I guess I know why.”

  “Yeah,” she said, seating herself wearily. Mugger resumed his place in her lap, hardly opening an eye. “Now you know why.”

  “Why didn’t you get into medicine?”

  Left field? This one hadn’t even come from inside the ballpark. “What do you mean?”

  “Just what I said. Why not Work with a doctor?”

  She countered with, “What happens when we start curing people?”

  “They get to live.”

  “Evan, think about it. I have,” she added bitterly. “Word spreads that surefire cures are available. In
vestigations start. Witchcraft? Insanity! But it’s proved, over and over. The scientific community goes nuts. The Church gets involved—all the churches. Just because you accept what I am doesn’t mean other people could.”

  “Even if they let you live, and if the government didn’t get you, somebody very rich and powerful would—and keep you in a cage.”

  “Yeah. And the really fun part is that they bleed me on a regular basis while taking exquisite care of me for the rest of my long, locked-up life. What happens when I finally die? Everything goes back to the way it was before. So what purpose has my life served in the long run?”

  “That’s not even considering your kids.”

  Holly gave a start, nearly dropping her brandy snifter. Mugger grumbled at the interruption of his nap. “What?”

  “Haven’t you ever taken it that far? They’d harvest you, lady love,” he said gently, “hoping that at least one egg turned out to have the right genes.”

  “I never even considered—,” she whispered, then gathered herself. “When I was old enough to understand, the technology didn’t exist for—for that kind of thing. So we never had to think about it, Alec and Nicky and Aunt Lulah and I.” Eyeing him narrowly: “But you obviously have.”

  “Only to swear that it never happens.” He took a swig of liquor. “So tell me about Elias Bradshaw.”

  She thought about that instant when she and Elias had looked at each other this evening with identical alarm—a look that had shut Evan out; how swiftly he had recognized the need for secrecy; how smoothly he’d gotten Susannah out of the room, despite what must have been a rampaging curiosity.

  Holly gave a shrug. “It’s a rather luscious irony that he’s a judge in public life, because within the Craft he’s a judge, too. More formally, a Magistrate.”

  He seated himself on an ottoman near the empty hearth, gesturing with his glass for her to go on. Forbidding herself to react as if she were on trial, she began.

  “After Mr. Scot died—” She interrupted herself irritably. “Sorry, he was this amazing old man, a real Magus, incredibly powerful. I think Aunt Lulah met him once, in D.C. He had a network of people like Alec and Nicky, who went around solving problems and bringing people to him for justice. But he knew he wasn’t going to live forever, and before he died he set up a new system. Elias is one of his hand-picked Magistrates. There are others all over the country—I Worked with the one in L.A. when I was in grad school. There are similar systems all over the world, but not connected like when Mr. Scot was alive. Everybody agrees we have to discipline ourselves for our own safety. But things are more piecemeal now, even though individual Magistrates have more power within their regions. Every five years they all meet to review the system, make any necessary adjustments.”

  “The United Nations of Witchcraft,” Evan murmured whimsically.

  “Not ‘united,’ no. It’s usually a muddle. Still, at least they make the effort.”

  “And Bradshaw runs New York.”

  “He likes to think he does,” she answered, chuckling a little. This was going better than she’d expected.

  “What do these Magistrates do, trade you around like a first baseman?”

  “The fact that they can’t is something I owe to Alec and Nicky.” As Mugger shifted slightly, she started rubbing between his shoulder blades to hear him purr, wishing it were as easy to sweeten her lover, whose dragon’s eyes were watching her narrowly as she said, “Aunt Lulah had her suspicions, but it wasn’t until they came along that we knew what I am. They made sure I got to live my life. There are always people watching over me—”

  “Mr. Hunnicutt downstairs, for one,” Evan remarked.

  “Well, yes. How’d you know?”

  “It’s obvious. Go on.”

  “Okay. I’m a valuable commodity, so everybody who knows about me protects me. But Alec and Nicky made sure I wasn’t stifled. I’m sure a few people had fits when I went to Europe with Susannah that time—if somebody had decided they wanted me to stay there, it’s not as if there are any extradition treaties! But I proved I could take care of myself.”

  “I’ll bet somebody was watching you the whole time. You just didn’t know it. And I’ll also bet that it still happens whenever you leave New York.”

  She shrugged edgily. “You’re probably right. I don’t think about it much.”

  “You said you proved you can take care of yourself. What happened?”

  “We were in Greece. Someone tried to run us off the road. Delphi is up in the mountains, and driving those winding roads—I thought we’d plunge over the side. We were both terrified. Susannah didn’t know, of course, she just thought it was a bunch of men who saw a couple of American girls on their own and—well, you know. I guess driving the Virginia backwoods and L.A. freeways stood me in good stead, because eventually I lost them. Back in Athens that night we drank ourselves to sleep—with all the lights on and the dresser shoved against the door. The next morning there was a piece in the paper about some Bulgarian tourists who went off the road near Delphi. Their car exploded. They died.”

  “Jesus,” he whispered.

  “Nicky checked into it after we got home—he left Europe a long time ago, but he still has connections—and it turned out the Bulgarians were working for the Berlin Magistrate, who also happened to be connected to the East German secret police. Things were pretty nasty in the Warsaw Pact countries then, and this Magistrate wanted a trump card, I guess.”

  “I hope somebody fried his synapses.”

  “Next best thing,” she told him. “The Greek Magistrate—a wonderful old woman on Santorini—she sent me a case of her best wine to apologize for what had happened within her jurisdiction—anyway, she and the Hungarian and Romanian Magistrates un Worked this man’s magic. Which ain’t easy, but they did it. It was a punishment, but also a warning.” Finishing her brandy, she set the glass aside. “So that’s the story. I suppose I didn’t really prove anything, except that I know how to drive. I was just so goddamned furious that Suze had been put in danger—”

  “And she didn’t know. Will she ever?”

  “It’s not something easily admitted, Evan.”

  “I understand that, he said impatiently.”Don’t you trust her?”

  “Of course I do!”

  “With everything but this.”

  “It’s up to the individual about who to tell and who not to tell. Not everybody is as tolerant about it as you’ve been.” She eyed him considering. “And I keep wondering why.”

  “Would there be a point to having hysterics?” he asked wryly.

  “That’s not an answer, Evan.”

  “Okay, how about, ‘I love you no matter what or who you are’?”

  “Better.” But she smiled again.

  “Holly, I wish I knew why it doesn’t bother me that much. Maybe because I’ve never had to see it up close and personal. I believe in it—your thing with fire, and whatever happened here tonight—speaking of which, what the hell did happen?”

  “ELIAS, WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?”

  “Hmm?” he asked, pretending he was absorbed by traffic.

  “Don’t play dumb, Your Honor. I know when I’m being hustled out of a room so the people in it can do something they don’t want me to witness.”

  “You think Holly and I made mad, passionate love on the carpet?”

  Susannah laughed aloud. “First of all, you barely tolerate each other. Second of all, you may be pushing fifty, but you’re good for at least ten minutes and Evan and I were back within five.”

  Bradshaw turned a glower on her. “‘Ten minutes’?”

  “At least,” she teased. “And third of all, rug burn isn’t your style. Come on, what are you hiding? And why?”

  What I am. Because I love you. And because he loved her, he lied to her. “She was about to read me the riot act over that priest—the history with Lachlan’s mother. I didn’t want to screw up a pleasant evening, and evidently neither did she—or Lachlan.”
>
  “So you did a wink-and-nod at Evan to get me out of the room?”

  “Yeah.” He wondered if he could get away with changing the subject, and decided it would be too blatant.

  Susannah, bless her, did it for him. “I’m glad they’re getting married. I always knew they’d be perfect for each other.”

  “The kids will be interesting,” he commented. And then some.

  “I can’t wait to be an auntie. Of course, I’ll have to battle Holly’s Aunt Lulah over who gets to spoil them the most!”

  Miracle of miracles, there was a parking space near his brownstone. He escorted Susannah up the stoop and nearly had a heart attack when a quiet, feminine voice came from the shadows of his doorway.

  “Judge Bradshaw, may I have a moment of your time?”

  “Lydia. Of course.” Cursing lyrically, if silently, he opened the front door and switched on the hall light. “Susannah Wingfield, Lydia Montsorel.”

  “I’m sorry to interrupt your evening,” Lydia said softly.

  “Not at all. Shall I make coffee?” Susannah asked.

  “Uh—yes, thanks,” he replied, feeling a fool.

  Susannah vanished down the hall to the kitchen. Bradshaw drew Lydia into the living room, asking low-voiced, “What are you doing here?”

  “I couldn’t get you on the phone.” She glanced around nervously. “I need light, Elias. Please.”

  He obliged, knowing that his Sciomancer was afraid of shadows. Lydia’s was an odd talent, intense and erratic. The only predictable thing about it was that when it hit her, it really hit hard. With the table lamps on, he saw the wildness in her dark eyes, the tumble of her long black hair, the quiver in her delicate fingers.

  He guided her to a chair. “Quickly, before Susannah gets back.”

  “Yes, of course.” She fixed her gaze on a lamp, pupils pinpointed, face ashen. Her lips parted slowly, her breath a labored whisper that worried him.

  “Lydia.”

  Startled, she looked up at him. “Elias,” she said, as if only now recognizing him. “I had to tell you—I was downstairs in the bakery this evening and I happened to look up and there was something moving in the corner—”