by Debora Geary
He sighed and kicked a rock in disgust. “What happened is I’m an idiot. You haven’t had any training. Your control is impressive, so I managed to forget that for long enough to fly you into the sky and coat you with my power stream. No untrained witch could handle that and keep her own magic quiet.”
Romy frowned. “Your magic set off my magic?”
“Yeah. Maybe not during the first part, but when I decided to show off and fly us in a loop, that requires a power turbo-boost. It would have seriously zinged your channels. Looks like when that happens, you make big fireballs.”
Her hands were trembling. “I haven’t done that in a really long time. I was hoping maybe I’d grown out of it.”
Jake couldn’t resist his need to comfort, and he didn’t want to think too hard about why. He sat down on the sand and pulled her down beside him, taking her shaking hands in his.
Magic needed to be trained, not shut down. Damn Alvin for condemning her to ten years of trying. “Did you have trouble with sparking as a kid?”
“All the time.” She pulled her hands out of his.
He took them back. “Tell me about it.”
Romy sighed and looked away into the sky. “It started on my eleventh birthday. I got really excited; Gran had one of those inflatable bounce houses set up in the back yard, and half my class at school had come. I was inside jumping with my best friend Boise when the bounce house started smoking. Gran told me later the fire had come from my fingers.”
That didn’t compute. “Your Gran knew magic?”
“She was a witch,” Romy said. “Or at least she believed she was. She was sick, and she said it took the magic from her. Cancer—she died six months later.”
“I’m sorry.” Jake wrapped his arm around her shoulders.
She shrugged, but left his arm in place. “I went into foster care after that, and the sparking happened more often. Gran said she would teach me how to make it stop, but she didn’t have time.”
Jake frowned. The rest he knew from her file, but one big question wasn’t at all clear. “And where were your parents?”
“I never knew them. Gran wasn’t my blood relative; she took me in when I was a baby.” Her voice trembled. “She called me the child of her heart.”
Now, Jake understood. Romy’s Gran had been a witch, and witches took care of their own.
Chapter 6
Romy sat at a table with the menu up in front of her face and stewed. She was humiliated and hungry, and that was a bad combination.
“The lasagna’s good,” Jake said. “Or the ravioli, or pretty much anything except the eggplant thingie.”
The waitress who had just strolled over whacked him on the head with a menu. “Just because you don’t like vegetables, mio caro, doesn’t mean my Franco’s eggplant parmesan isn’t out of this world.”
Jake grinned. “Tomatoes are vegetables. I like those.”
“Fine, I’ll bring you a bowl of tomato sauce.”
“Put some spaghetti under it, and I’ll be a happy man. Romy, this is Carla, the owner of this fine establishment. Carla, this is Romy, a new friend of mine.”
Carla winked at Romy. “Collecting pretty women again, is he?”
Romy rolled her eyes. “I’m hard to collect. What’s good tonight?”
“Everything, bella, but the manicotti is better than sex.” She leaned in. “And when the same man can give you both, you should lock him up and swallow the key.”
Then she whacked Jake on the head again. “See—you’ll never get one of these lovely girls to keep you unless you learn how to cook.”
Romy laughed as Carla walked away. “She’s quite the character.”
“You should meet her husband, Franco. Looks like he played a bit part in the Godfather, but he’s a magician in the kitchen.”
“The witchy kind of magician?” Romy spoke around an unbelievably good bread roll.
Jake shook his head and swiped half her roll. “Nope, just garden variety culinary genius. Carla’s the witch; Franco still insists she must have nabbed him with a love potion. They lived in New York until a year ago, and then moved out here for the warm weather and the grandkids. Franco’s cooking is one of the reasons I agreed to take this zone for Sentinel.”
Romy cast a cautious glance around. A covert witch organization was the last thing she wanted to be talking about in a public place.
“Relax,” Jake said. “One bite of Franco’s cooking and no one will notice if you danced naked on the tables.”
“You first.”
Jake sighed. “As much fun as that would be, Carla would probably banish me, and then I wouldn’t get any spaghetti. She’s strict like that.”
Romy told the tingles in her belly to settle down. Why did she always go for the bad boys with a sense of humor? This one had tried to kidnap her, for cripes sake. She needed to work on some higher standards.
“Sounds like she runs a tight ship.” Romy snagged another roll.
He laughed. “Just you wait until after dinner when she gets started on you.”
“Why me? I’m not the one threatening to dance naked in her fine restaurant.”
Jake suddenly looked very serious. “She’s one of Sentinel’s mentors. Without the royal screw-up in this zone, you’d have been matched with someone like her years ago—someone who could help you access your magic and control it.”
Her control had been fine for years, until some he-man had tried a witch snatch-and-run. “I don’t want to access my magic; I want it to go away.”
“Why?”
She could feel her teeth clench at the gentleness in his voice. “Because all it’s ever done is send my life up in flames.”
“Yeah, I get that. But it doesn’t have to be that way.”
She was an actress, dammit. No one got to churn up her insides this way unless she meant for it to happen. Time to change the script.
“So, tell me about the screw-ups in this zone. Why did I get left to rot in juvie? Sounds like this organization you work for isn’t very competent.”
Carla slid a plate of manicotti in front of her. The smell alone could have made her beg. “When you’re done eating this, you come see me. We’ll talk about that magic of yours.” She walked off before Romy could say anything.
Jake motioned to her plate. “Try it.”
Carla was right. It was better than sex. When she opened her eyes, Jake held out a forkful of spaghetti. “Now try this. My mama’s been trying to replicate Franco’s tomato sauce for twenty years, and she’s nowhere close.”
Actresses could always use potent experiences to help trigger emotions onstage. The next time she needed tears on command, she’d just imagine someone snatching her plate away before the next bite. Food filled your belly—this was going to fill her soul.
And wow, that was waxing far too lyrical over some noodles. Even deliriously good ones.
“So back to the fun stuff. Let me guess. The system screwed up, a kid or two fell through the cracks, and you’re here to make sure it never happens again.”
Jake grimaced. “Unfortunately, it’s worse than that. The system royally screwed up, a lot of kids fell through the cracks, and thanks to the sexist jerk who monitored this zone for forty years, they were almost all girls.”
Romy put down her fork slowly. She’d designed a special place in hell for people who preyed on defenseless girls. “How many?”
“Over eighty.”
“And what happened to these girls?”
Jake’s face got mean and hard, which caused more odd tingles in her belly. “Most of them didn’t turn out as well as you did. Quite a few died young. Too many turned to drugs, probably trying to make the magic go away, or at least tune it out. One’s doing twenty-to-life in California. A couple are married with kids and seem pretty happy.”
“Wait. You know what happened to each of them?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I did a little digging. I figured the least Sentinel could do was try to clean up some of the w
reckage. There’s a lawyer heading to California tomorrow; we’ll try to get the woman there out on time served. Most of the rest will be assigned back to me.”
Something still wasn’t computing. “Why are they stepping in now?”
Jake shrugged. “Want some more of my spaghetti?”
Romy had worked with delinquents for years. That pathetic an attempt to distract her was hardly going to work. She took his plate and handed over the remains of her manicotti. It wasn’t a very even trade; she’d eaten a lot faster.
“So what exactly did you hang over their heads to get them to care about a bunch of girls they abandoned years ago?”
“New information. Alvin monitored this sector for forty years. Sweeping a couple of girls a year under the carpet probably wasn’t all that hard. It wasn’t until I added up forty years of data that the totals were pretty stark. I painted a picture for the folks at Sentinel headquarters, that’s all.”
She had plenty of experience with bureaucratic systems. They didn’t shift gears because some data geek showed them a few tables and charts. Romy reached out a hand and grabbed Carla on her way by. “What did he do? At Sentinel, to make them pay attention.”
Carla nodded in sharp approval. “Word has it he rode in there like an avenging angel. Threatened them with mayhem and field staff revolt if they didn’t do what they could to clean up the travesty.” She patted Jake’s cheek. “And that was before he caused a little earthquake. Nice magic, my boy. I’ll go get you some tiramisu—you earned it.”
He’d tracked down information on a bunch of lost girls, and then thrown a witch hissy fit? Romy could feel the tingles in her stomach mate like bunnies.
Dammit. She’d grown out of heroes a long, long time ago, and this hero’s story had at least one pretty big hole. “So how exactly did you come by all this data on the girls in the first place? I’m guessing Alvin the Asshole didn’t leave a file lying around.”
Jake just grinned. “Fortunately, no one at headquarters thought to ask that question.”
Chapter 7
Romy yanked the veil off her head and picked up the smallest flower girl, who was looking a little cranky. Because of all the children involved in the Old Fashioned Wedding scene, they had to keep rehearsals short, but that didn’t mean they were any less exhausting.
Today was dress rehearsal with full costumes, and late nineteenth century wedding apparel hadn’t been designed with the comfort of the wearer in mind. The little girls had been squirmy all rehearsal.
Annie Get Your Gun was one of Romy’s favorite musicals, but she wasn’t overly fond of the scene where she had to go flouncing around in a wedding dress. It tended to remind her of the ending, where she got to lose a shooting duel with her husband-to-be to soothe his ego. Tough way for a strong female role to end.
However, you couldn’t rewrite a great musical, even if the ending was a little behind the times. And, as Annie, she got to sing her heart out.
Romy looked around for someone to help her out of the wedding dress. Stupid thing had two hundred little buttons up the back, no doubt designed to make sure the bride of the 1880’s stayed a virgin until well past her wedding night.
“Let me help you with that, honey,” said a voice from the sidelines. Romy turned around as Carla stepped out of the shadows and held out a bag. “Franco had some leftover lasagna from last night, so I brought you some.”
Romy had snuck out of the restaurant the night before without saying good-bye to Carla. The last thing she’d needed on top of the buzzing chemistry with Jake was a conversation about why she didn’t want any help with her magic.
Looked like the conversation had come to her, and Franco’s lasagna was a very good bribe. “Thanks. How do you not weigh five hundred pounds with a husband who can cook like that?”
Carla winked. “Really good exercise. I tell my Franco he has to help me burn off all the calories he feeds me.”
Romy snickered. Judging from Carla’s figure, her husband must be a very happy man.
“The magic helps, too,” Carla said. “Good spellwork works off a lot of pasta. That’s probably why you’re such a skinny little thing. Jake tells me you have some pretty nice firepower.”
“Walk outside with me, please?” No one in Romy’s life knew about her unfortunate spark-plug alter ego. She intended to keep it that way.
She led Carla to a patch of grass outside the theater and sat down. “Look, I appreciate you coming down to see me, but magic isn’t something I want to be part of my life.”
“It’s been a burden for you; I understand that.”
Romy felt her temper flare. “Do you? Do you know what it’s like to wake up in a house full of smoke and know you probably started another fire? Do you know what it’s like to have everyone think you did it on purpose? There was a baby sleeping in one of the houses—the firemen barely got her out.”
“It’s a true crime you were left to deal with that alone,” Carla said. “But we can’t change the past, and you’re a grown woman now. Let me show you how to work with your magic.”
“No. I’m sorry, I don’t know how much clearer I can be. I don’t want this.” Romy felt miserable, but she was very clear that magic had no place in her life.
Carla looked off into the street for a moment, and then spoke softly. “It will get away from you again one day, mia cara. A moment of great fear, or great emotion, and the fire will come again.”
Romy shook her head, and tried not to think about how she’d sparked at Jake when he’d tried to kidnap her. “I can control it. I have to.”
Two dark-brown eyes drilled at her. “You can’t. Do you know when I felt my magic most strongly? When I birthed my babies—it ripped through me. Then about six months after my youngest was born, a driver almost ran me off the road with my baby in the back seat. I nearly incinerated him, and I’d had trained control over my magic for a long time.”
Romy curled up and rested her forehead on her knees. Magic had taken every good thing from her life. If Carla spoke the truth, it denied her any kind of normal future as well.
“Are you going to feel sorry for yourself all day, or are you going to quit sulking and learn?”
Anger lifted Romy’s head just in time to see a dancing ball of light float into the air off Carla’s palm. “Fire magic doesn’t have to burn and destroy. It can be a light in the dark, or warmth in the cold. That’s up to you.”
Romy stared at the ball of light. “My magic isn’t soft and sweet, Carla. I make fireballs, not sweet little globes.”
Carla’s face stormed in temper. She reached one hand to the sky and let loose a blast of flame. “There’s nothing tame about my magic either, girl. Let’s get that straight right from the beginning. I can match you in power—now you learn to match me in skill.”
Then her eyes softened. “Sorry, we fire witches tend to have hair-trigger tempers. Your magic can be many things, cara mia; you just need to learn to work with it, not against it.”
Romy couldn’t name all the feelings clawing at her throat. “And how exactly do you tame a firebolt into a well-behaved ball of light?”
Carla twinkled. “You already know. You think you only know how to fight your magic, but your soul knows how to dance with it as well. You only need to go inside and listen.”
Romy could feel her eyebrows hit her hairline. No bleeding way she was trying some kind of inner dance with a fireball.
“Magic is instinctive, like genetic memory.” Carla made another ball of light and floated it to Romy’s hand. “You know how to do this; you simply need to remember. It’s in your blood.”
Her Gran had said the same thing. Go with the magic, Romy-girl. Your heart knows what to do.
Romy brushed away the heartache. All she’d managed to do was get herself locked up for starting fires in her sleep.
Carla touched her hand. “Do you know Tabletop Rock?”
“Sure.” It was hard to miss, a mini-mountain in the distance on her way to the Center.
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“Meet me at the top tomorrow morning at nine, and we’ll do some work together.”
“I thought you said magic was instinct.”
“It is, but you’ve been fighting what you know for a long time. Your instincts are going to be a little wobbly for a while.”
Romy was afraid to ask. “And why are we meeting at the top of a big rock in the middle of nowhere?”
Carla grinned. “Because wobbly instincts in a fire witch usually mean leaving scorch marks in unintended places. Tabletop Rock gets hit by lightning on a regular basis, so you probably can’t do too much damage. Wear tight-fitting clothing.”
Now there was a comforting thought. Not.
“Be there, or I’ll track you down.” Carla stood up. “I’ll take you back after so Franco can feed you.”
As Carla walked off, it took Romy a minute to identify the most uncomfortable sensation crawling up her insides. It was hope.
Chapter 8
Jake leaned on Romy’s station wagon and waited for her to come out of rehearsal. He hoped the proposal he was about to make was a good idea. For some reason he didn’t want to examine too closely, it mattered what she thought of the work he did.
Her eyes changed from amused to suspicious as soon as she saw him. “What is this, Gang-up-on-Romy Day?”
That wasn’t the start he’d been aiming for. “I was hoping I could get you to come on a field trip with me.”
“Does it involve big, flat rocks?”
“No, a cute seven-year-old. Why?” He took the stack of papers out of her arms. His mother had tried to teach him manners, and occasionally he remembered them.
“Carla was by earlier. She wants me to go do magic lessons with her on Tabletop Rock tomorrow. I thought you might be here to make sure I went.”
Go Carla, thought Jake. “Nope. Carla can handle that all by herself. Are you going to go willingly?”
Romy sighed. “She’s bribing me with food before and after. Does anyone ever say no to Franco’s food?”
“No one I know. So, will you come on a ride with me? I have a check-in to do.”