The Complete Novels of the Lear Sister Trilogy

by Julia London

  Rachel instantly knew what she was up to and waved a hand at her. “No way! That witch thing is your deal, not mine.”

  “What have you got to lose?” Dagne asked cheerfully.

  “No.”

  “Come on,” Dagne pleaded.

  “No.”

  And on it went through dinner and another glass of wine, until Rachel was feeling pretty agreeable.

  Dagne picked up the big canvas bag she carried everywhere she went and pulled some items from it, including a pink leather-bound spell book (purchased on eBay, Dagne proudly proclaimed, and seemed not to appreciate the irony of someone hocking her spell book); a silver chalice; a leather string tied to an amulet that looked, from where Rachel was sitting, like a peace sign; and several candles of varying sizes. “We really should be outside, you know, calling on Mother Nature and all that, but it’s too damn cold tonight,” she explained, and pulled out a clump of dirt. “I’m pretty sure it doesn’t matter.”

  “What are you doing?” Rachel asked as Dagne arranged her things on the dining room table.

  “Making your spell, hello! A little magic to bring you peace and prosperity.”

  “Can you do one for a knight in shining armor?” Rachel asked, all chipper now. “That would be way cool. Make him tall. With dark hair. And available.”

  Dagne frowned at her lack of seriousness. “We can do a spell for love, but you have to be serious or it won’t work. White magic is all about belief.”

  Rachel stifled another giggle. “Okay,” she said, and held up her hand. “I’m serious. I beeee-lieeeeeve.” Except that she couldn’t possibly believe it and burst into another fit of giggles.

  “Rachel!”

  “All right, all right.” It was obvious that Dagne was getting perturbed, so Rachel tried very hard to wipe the smirk from her face.

  Dagne arranged the candles according to size, from the tallest to the shortest. She then instructed Rachel to get another bottle of wine (Rachel voiced her doubts about adding another bottle of wine to the mix, but Dagne insisted), and poured a generous amount of wine into a chalice that still had the Big Lots tag stuck to the bottom.

  Dagne laid the leather string in a line below the candles, reached into her canvas bag, pulled out a tiny brass incense holder, a stick of incense, and lit it. “Air,” she said in a loud whisper, “is for change and lightness and freedom.”

  “I’m all for that,” Rachel agreed.

  “Sssh! “ Dagne hissed, then poured some wine for herself and stood back, motioned for Rachel to come around to the side of the table. “Now. Are you serious?”

  “I am. I really am,” Rachel said, nodding emphatically at Dagne’s dubious expression.

  “You better be,” Dagne said, and handed Rachel a fireplace lighter. “First, we’ll do the weight-loss spell. Light the candles from tall to short, and say this as you do it: As the moon wanes, so shall I decrease.”

  Rachel took the lighter and looked at the candles. “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. The rest is up to you.”

  How fortunate for Dagne that Rachel had had just enough wine to make her pliable and think this was all sort of fun. She picked up the lighter, lit the tallest candle. “As the moon wanes,” she said soft and low as she began lighting the five candles, “so shall I decrease.” She finished lighting the candles and looked at Dagne.

  Dagne glanced at the spell book, shrugged, and took the lighter, put it back in her canvas bag. “Now for the next one. Prosperity.” She handed the chalice of wine to Rachel, then picked up the clump of dirt.

  “What is that?”

  “Earth. You crumble this in your wine, and you say: Add this earth to my wine, and prosperity shall I find. And then you drink.”

  “Wait, wait—are you saying I have to drink dirt?”

  “Do you want a job?” Dagne shot back.

  Rachel sighed, took the clump of dirt, and with a frown for Dagne, repeated solemnly, “Add this earth to my wine, and prosperity shall I find,” as she crumbled the dirt clod into her wine. When she did not immediately pick up the chalice, Dagne poked her, and reluctantly, grimacing, Rachel picked it up, held her breath, and drank it as quickly as she could.

  It was kind of tasty in a weird, earthy way. Rachel smacked her lips, shoved the chalice back across the table toward a beaming Dagne.

  “Okay!” Now Dagne took the leather string and amulet, which, on closer inspection, really was a tiny pewter peace sign. “You have to make three knots. And this is what you say: As these knots I do entwine, find the heart to link to mine—”

  “Oh please—”

  “Just do it, Rachel.”.

  Rachel sighed. She picked up the leather string, and tied a loose knot. “As these knots I do entwine,” she said, tying another one, “find the heart to link to mine.” She finished with the third, twirled the little peace sign around her finger and off again, and handed the string back to Dagne. “So what, he’ll come knocking any minute? How do I look?”

  “No, wait,” Dagne said, with a thoughtful frown. “That’s not right.”

  “What’s not right? I tied three knots like you said.”

  “No, the spell,” Dagne said as she reached for her spell book and began to flip through the pages.

  “Maybe you forgot the part where we dance around the campfire,” Rachel suggested.

  “Would you stop?”

  “No, really. Don’t you dance around fire or something?”

  “Stop. I need to look something up.”

  Rachel fell into her chair, wished for the brownies.

  “Aha! This is it!” Dagne said excitedly, jabbing her finger onto a page. “Do you have any rose petals?”

  Rachel rolled her eyes. “No.”

  Dagne looked up and around, saw a bunch of alstromerias in a vase on the hutch. “Those will have to do,” she muttered, and stood up, marched around the table, and pulled one out of the vase.

  “Hey!”

  “Just the one,” Dagne said, and put the stem on the table, picked up the chalice, and went into the kitchen.

  “What are you doing?” Rachel called after her.

  “Cleaning this and adding purified water!” she called back, and appeared a moment later with the chalice in hand, the water magically purified. She motioned for Rachel to stand, she said, “The first spell was to find the guy. But you need one to see the guy. You have to know who it is, right?”

  “Dagne—”

  Dagne thrust the alstromeria at her. “Tear the petals into small pieces and put them in the water,” she said, “and then say this before you drink it in one gulp—”

  “With the petals?”

  “You drank dirt, Rachel. Surely you can drink a flower. Tear them up, then say: In the night I sleep and there shall I glean, he who steals my heart from his image in my dreams.”

  Rachel’s wine buzz was definitely wearing off, and she shook her head. “The first one was better. Simple, to the point. This one isn’t even proper English. And besides, I think you’re going overboard.”

  “You can’t compare them—they are different spells.”

  “I don’t care. The first one will do the trick and I don’t want to drink flowers.”

  “Come on, Rachel!”

  “No. This is stupid and I am not going to glean anything from my dreams.”

  “Yes, you are, because I put a dream spell on you. So do it,” Dagne said, thrusting the flower stem at her.

  “Make me,” Rachel shot back, folding her arms across her middle.

  “Thanks a lot, Rachel! Thanks a whole helluva lot! This is my first real attempt at beneficial magic and you are screwing everything up. Would it kill you to try a spell? Would it kill you to help me out?”

  The drama queen had arrived. “Fine,” Rachel sighed, and snatched the flower and the chalice, and ripped the petals of the alstromeria apart, put them in the water, and picked up the chalice, holding it before her. In a stage voice worthy of a Tony Award, she said drama
tically, “In the night I sleep and there shall I dream—”

  “Glean! Shall I glean!” Dagne corrected her. “Start over!”

  “Bossy much? In the night I sleep and there shall I GLEAN,” she repeated loudly and clearly, “he who steals my heart from his image in my dreams.” She tossed the water and the alstromeria petals down her throat, and slapped down the chalice.

  Dagne indicated she had a part of a flower on her lip; Rachel brushed it off and said, “That may have been the dumbest thing I’ve ever done. And that is saying a lot.”

  “Have another glass of wine,” Dagne said blithely.

  After that, she needed one.

  That night, Rachel had an extremely vivid dream of a knight, who rode a purple horse with a pink mane that vaguely resembled a toy pony, and who was very much in love with her.

  Chapter Three

  The next morning, Rachel awoke with an uncharacteristically enthusiastic mind-set about her new diet and exercise program. She showered, donned the requisite spandex for the gym, and checked her horoscope. People who respect your power are in short supply. You may need to step up . . .

  Not exactly the auspicious beginning she was looking for, so she checked the other water signs, Pisces and Scorpio (Focus on accepting your faults; recent financial risks might not get the return you hoped for), and gave up on that idea. She checked her e-mail instead. There were two.

  Subject: Grandpa’s Irregularity

  From: Lillian Stanton

  To: Rachel Ellen Lear

  Hi Little Angel! This is your grandma. Is it cold in Providence yet it was 90 degrees yesterday and I damn near had a heatstroke working in the garden. Your grandpa hasn’t been regular in two weeks and if something doesn’t unplug that pipe I might kill him. You ain’t never seen him so grumpy but I remember at Blue Cross you told me about some natural something I could give him to help loosen him up. What was the name of it again? Thanks, angel. Luv U. Grandma. P.S. I almost forgot I am sending you this seaweed diet from the Internet because I know how much you like things like seaweed.

  Rachel quickly dispatched a response to Grandma that did not invite any discussion about Grandpa’s problem, nor did she correct Grandma’s misinterpretation that a seaweed wrap was edible. The next e-mail was from her oldest sister, Robin.

  Subject: Hey

  From:

  To: Rach

  Yo, whassup dawg? Ha HAAA. Coming home for Christmas? Hope so. Listen, remember that night out at Blue Cross when we drank the bottle of tequila and you tried to explain the theory behind the universe or something equally boring, and Bec and I were laughing at you? Not to be confused with all the other times we’ve laughed at you, but the tequila night in particular. One thing you said sorta stuck with me—the tantric sex thing, remember? I was just wondering if there’s a website or a video or someplace like that where inquiring minds could go nose around. Some people in Houston might be interested.

  Subject: Re: Hey

  FROM:

  To:

  Dear God, could there be trouble in PARADISE? Didn’t you say once that you had the best sex life of any woman under the sun? WHAT HAPPENED??? So what, you have a baby and the spark is suddenly gone? As in kaput, snuffed out, drowned? I’ll look around and see if there is a website, but most of what I was TRYING to tell you came from books. I’m amazed anything stuck with you at all after all the tequila you drank. You and Jake should make a date for the library some evening. You may be delighted and titillated by what you find there.

  Rachel, who thinks it’s funny you need a little spice in the boudoir.

  That was all her mail, and as nothing earth-shattering was happening in Texas, she grabbed her gym bag and stopped in the kitchen for a bottle of water as she headed out.

  She stuffed the bottled water into her gym bag, hoisted it onto her shoulder, and started for the back door . . . and instantly noticed the brownies from last night staring up at her from the breakfast bar, screaming her name. No, really, they were screaming, Rachel, Rachel, you’re going to the gym anyway, so what’s one brownie?

  The brownies had a point. Surely she’d burn off any brownie calories in the first half hour. In fact, she could do the power Yogilates class to be extra sure . . . which really gave her license to eat two brownies.

  She managed to escape the kitchen before a third brownie jumped into her hand, and she paused at the back door, peering furtively out the little window to make sure her next-door neighbors weren’t outside and obsessively-compulsively engaged in their excessive yard work. This was not something she could exaggerate—there was something seriously wrong with the Valicielos. As in, Mr. Valicielo spent most afternoons trimming something—shrubs, grass, trees, even their ridiculously tiny dog. And when he ran out of things to trim, he mowed a new pattern in the lawn—crisscrosses, checkerboards, gridirons.

  Likewise, Mrs. Valicielo was forever on her foam rubber knee pads, her enormous butt high in the air while she weeded the garden, although it was hard to see how a weed could possibly even root, much less bare its ugly head, as vigilant as she was with her trowel.

  The Valicielos were so obsessed with that yard that when the elm in Rachel’s backyard succumbed to root rot and fell over, landing squarely on top of the Valicielos’s chain-link fence, she knew it was big trouble. Sure enough, Mr. Valicielo was over within the hour, anxiously gripping and ungripping his gardening hat as he inquired as to when she might have the tree removed.

  “As soon as I can, Mr. Valicielo,” she’d said. “I don’t have the money just now.”

  “Aha,” he’d said, and looked at the tree laid across his fence again, wincing. “But it will ruin the fence . . . There’s gotta be something you can do.”

  Rachel had looked at the tree. “I guess I could try and move it,” she’d said, and the two of them did indeed try to move it. But they at last gave in and stood there, hands on hips, huffing with the exertion of having tried to move a tree that seemed much larger on its side than when it was standing up. “I won’t leave it, I promise,” she’d wheezed. “I’ll have it moved just as soon as I get paid.”

  Mr. Valicielo had looked at her like he thought that was a load of crap.

  With good reason, as it turned out. It had been three weeks now, and Rachel still didn’t have the money to have the tree removed. So she’d adopted the attitude of hide and watch, and when she was certain the Valicielos weren’t around, she’d make a mad dash for her VW Beetle, tear out of the driveway as if she was fleeing the scene of a murder, and burn rubber all the way down Slater Avenue.

  The only problem with her approach was that the Valicielos were just as determined to casually run into her and badger her about that tree. On more than one occasion, Mr. Valicielo had chased her down the drive and into the street.

  Fortunately, this morning there was no sign of them, so Rachel tiptoed out to the yellow convertible Beetle, fired her up, and raced backward out of the drive. As she backed onto Slater Avenue, she noticed that while she’d been busy hiding, her neighbors (Welcome to Our House! a plaque on their door read, Tony and Ermaline Valicielo) had added two new plastic deer to accompany the five-hundred-head herd, the plastic giant frog, and the pinwheels on their perfectly manicured and festive lawn.

  Rachel hit the gas and sped down the street, just in case one of them was looking out the window.

  A quarter of an hour later, she bounced into the gym, carrying her extra-large café au lait. Lori, the gal at the desk, almost choked on her tomato juice when she saw Rachel. “God, I thought you had, like, died or something.”

  Rachel laughed as she signed in.

  “No, seriously, I thought I heard that,” Lori insisted.

  All right already, so she’d missed a few weeks at the gym. “I’ve been out of town,” Rachel said with a shrug.

  “For a whole year?”

 
That was so stupid. It hadn’t been more than ten months, max, Rachel thought as she proceeded down the hall.

  Her power Yogilates instructor—who had been Rachel’s yoga instructor ten months ago—seemed a little confused, too. Her face scrunched up as Rachel when she came into the studio. “Diane, right?”

  “Rachel. I’m in your yoga class?”

  The instructor blinked. “I haven’t taught yoga in like . . . a year.”

  Well pardon her, was she the only one in Providence to have ever taken a little time off from the fitness program? Why didn’t they just run something over to the paper and announce it had been A YEAR since Tubby Rachel Lear had been to the gym?

  She walked to the very back corner of the room, where no one could possibly get in behind her, and rolled out her mat.

  The class started out great. She remembered the moves and was feeling very rejuvenated. And then the power part began, and she was quickly dizzy from not being able to breathe and her muscles felt like jelly. All she knew was that if the session didn’t end soon, someone was going to have to call an ambulance.

  When the session, at last, did end, one girl leaned over Rachel—who was lying on her mat, staring at the fluorescent lights above her. “Are you all right?” she asked, looking concerned.

  “Fine,” Rachel wheezed. She made herself sit up, and marveled at how sadly out of shape she was. Well, no more. Rachel Lear was a new person!

  She headed for the gym and the stationary bikes—just a little something to get the juices flowing. Her pace was leisurely, and she set her monitor to random hills.