Chick with a Charm

by Vicki Lewis Thompson

  Lily buried her face in the dog’s ruff. “Oh, Daisy, I don’t know what to do. If you truly are a magic dog, I could use some help.”

  Chapter 15

  Griffin didn’t sleep much, and when he did, he dreamed constantly of Lily. He woke up with an erection, of course. After a cold shower he thought about calling her, but he knew she wouldn’t be awake yet. Thinking of her in bed made him want to go over there. He had a key, so he could let himself in and . . . no. She’d made it plain she didn’t want him there right now.

  He wondered if Daisy would get her morning romp in the dog park. When she’d gone home without Griffin the night before, had she taken Daisy down to Harvey’s Hangout? The thought of her talking to Brad Harvey made his blood boil, so he decided to stop thinking about it.

  Dragging himself to the office, he debated his next step, and decided to send her flowers. He’d just placed an order for three dozen red roses when Kevin walked in carrying two mugs of coffee.

  He set one in front of Griffin. “It’s hot and it’s strong. I didn’t dilute it with any cream, even though you like it that way. From the way you looked in the elevator, I decided you needed straight caffeine, so drink up.”

  “You were in the elevator with me?”

  “Yeah, along with about four other people from the office. You didn’t say anything to any of us.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t sleep well.”

  Kevin took one of the two chairs positioned in front of Griffin’s desk. “That’s obvious from the red eyes and dark circles. Did you spend the whole night going at it with Lily? If so, I hope you had fun, because I doubt you’ll have much fun here today.”

  Griffin picked up his coffee and tried to act nonchalant. “What’s up?”

  “When I was getting your coffee in the break room, I ran into Biddle. He’s on the warpath, so I wanted to warn you before he calls you in. And he will.”

  “About what?” Griffin was trying to focus on what Kevin was saying, but mostly he wondered if the florist would get the order right and if the roses would be partly opened buds, as he’d requested.

  “Apparently one of your clients, Jack Schooner, called him this morning to complain that you missed an appointment yesterday. Schooner’s the one—”

  “Yeah, I know. The one Biddle turned over to me as a special favor.” Griffin winced. “I’d agreed to meet him at the end of the day.”

  “You didn’t say anything about that when we left for the Bubbling Cauldron.”

  “That’s because I forgot about it.” Griffin looked down at his desk, and there, tucked in his blotter, was a note written by his secretary, Marcie, before she’d left at five. Jack Schooner, 5:30. She’d done her job. He hadn’t done his.

  Worse yet, he didn’t much care about Jack Schooner. He was more worried about Lily’s state of mind today, and if the flowers would help, and whether she would let him stay over tonight.

  “No, you didn’t forget,” Kevin said. “What happened was, I got this shooting pain in my left arm, and there’s a history of heart problems in my family, so you, Miles and I took off for the ER. We were there most of the night. Fortunately it was a false alarm.”

  Griffin stared at him. “Do you have a history of heart problems in your family?”

  “No, you moron. That was the best I could come up with on short notice. I wanted to make sure you knew what I’d told him. And if I were you, I’d call Jack Schooner and kiss ass.”

  “I’ll call him.”

  “Griff, you’re going off the deep end.” Kevin said it gently, but he wasn’t smiling.

  Griffin gazed at him, unable to argue that point. “Lily wanted some time apart last night. We weren’t together.”

  “And you look like this? What’d you do, stay up all night pining for her like a loser?”

  “Something like that.”

  Kevin groaned. “I thought you could have a little fun for a change, date somebody who is certifiably hot, but this is not good. You’ve been involved with her for three days! Nobody gets that hooked on a person in three days. It’s like she’s cast a spell over you, man.”

  Griffin almost laughed at that. “Well, she is an amateur magician.”

  “Hey, maybe she hypnotized you! Think back. Was there ever a moment when that could have happened?”

  “No.”

  “I once dated a stripper who could twirl tassels with her tits. I damn near got hypnotized watching those tassels go round and round. Are you sure something like that wasn’t part of your bedtime routine with her?”

  “No twirling tassels, Kev.”

  “Even so, that magician angle could be the clue to what’s going on. They’re trained in the fine art of misdirection. I’m going with my hypnosis theory, and maybe she’s so good that she can hypnotize you without any pendulum swinging.”

  “I hope to hell I would have noticed if she’d hypnotized me.”

  Kevin sat forward in his chair. “Seriously, what’s in her apartment relating to this magician thing? Is there a ticking clock? She could have used that.”

  “I don’t remember a ticking clock.”

  “Aha!” Kevin pointed a finger at him. “It was probably there and you were so involved with her you didn’t notice that thing going like a metronome, putting you under her spell. Now she’s got you in her clutches. She could probably make you cluck like a chicken.”

  Griffin put down his coffee and scrubbed both hands over his face. His chin hurt where he’d nicked himself shaving. His head ached from all the thinking about Lily. He was a disaster.

  “That’s just it,” he said. “I want to be in her clutches, but instead she rejected me last night.”

  “That could be a tactic. You know, to see whether or not the hypnosis worked. I’d love to get a look at her apartment, check out the scene of the crime, so to speak.”

  “Kevin, for the last time, she didn’t do anything like that.”

  “I’ll be damned if I have a better explanation. You’re not yourself at all. And Miles agrees with me. If you don’t snap out of it soon, you’re gonna jeopardize your job.”

  Griffin noted that he wasn’t nearly as worried about that as he should be. “You’re being overly dramatic.”

  “You’re being overly complacent. Do you have a key to her place?”

  Griffin hesitated. “Why?”

  “Because something’s going on, and you’re too lovesick to figure it out. Do you have a key or not?”

  “Maybe.”

  “So you do have one. That’s a break. We need to go over there this afternoon while she’s at work and check for a ticking clock, and look around for . . .”

  “For what?” Griffin didn’t like this idea at all. “Magic potions? Voodoo dolls? I knew you shouldn’t have gone to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. You’re too impressionable about stuff like that.”

  “Look, make fun of my suspicions if you want to, but I promised you I’d keep you from making a huge mistake. I take that promise seriously, and I now see you in the process of making one. We need to investigate her apartment. Miles should come, too. He’s stealthy.”

  “We’re not doing it. I can’t violate Lily’s trust like that.”

  Kevin pointed at him again. “Think about this, buddy boy. Has she been completely straight with you? Do you feel as if you know everything there is to know about this woman?”

  Griffin remembered the whole weirdness with her parents last night, which, come to think about it, had centered on a discussion of magic. But magic was just a parlor trick. Wasn’t it? Anyway, Lily hadn’t wanted to explain that discussion to him, so she wasn’t being totally open.

  “Griff, if you were drowning in a deep lake, I would jump in and try to save you.”

  “I know that, and I appreciate that you’re thinking about my welfare, but going into Lily’s apartment when she’s not there to snoop through her stuff feels very wrong.”

  “We’re not going to ransack the place. You’ll be right there. You can direct the a
ction.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  Kevin wore his hard-ass lawyer expression. “What about this compulsion you have to be with her all the time? Does that feel normal?”

  Griffin had to admit it didn’t. He’d never been so tied to a woman, never forgotten his responsibilities because he was so absorbed in the relationship. Yet he couldn’t imagine how Lily had done anything to him that would explain his behavior.

  “Think of it as easing my mind,” Kevin said. “I’m worried about you, and if I get a chance to look around Lily’s apartment and don’t find anything unusual, then I can conclude that she’s got you by the balls because she’s the sexiest woman on the planet. I just want to make sure we’re dealing with normal lust and not something more exotic.”

  Griffin knew Kevin was only trying to watch out for him. The guy had already told a whopper this morning to protect him from Biddle. Griffin knew Kevin, and now that he had this hypnotism theory he wouldn’t let it go until he could be proved wrong. “So if we spend ten minutes there, you’ll get off my case?”

  “I’d rather have twenty.”

  “Ten.”

  “Fifteen.”

  Griffin sighed. “Okay, fifteen minutes, and you don’t touch anything without asking me first.”

  Kevin held up both hands in surrender. “I will be the soul of discretion.” Picking up his coffee, he stood. “Call Jack Schooner.”

  “I will. And thanks for watching my back.”

  “Always. It’s what friends do.”

  The roses had shown up at eleven, breaking into a morning that had turned into a frenzied attempt on Lily’s part to forget about Griffin. She didn’t even have her folks to distract her today. Jasper’s parents were arriving this morning, and Anica had planned some touristy things for the afternoon and evening so the two sets of in-laws could get to know each other.

  Therefore Lily had filled her hours with a long session in the dog park, exercising Daisy, and way more cleaning than she usually bothered with. She could have cleaned her entire apartment with magic, of course, but usually that wasn’t worth the extra adrenaline that doing a cleaning spell pumped into her system. Besides, magic wouldn’t have taken any time, and she needed to take up time.

  She’d been washing windows when the florist truck pulled up outside. With a sense of inevitability, she watched the driver haul an enormous bouquet of red rosebuds out of the back of his van and walk toward her apartment building’s front door.

  If she’d hoped that a few hours away from her would dial back the power of the spell on Griffin to a more reasonable level, she was now disabused of that notion. She was afraid she’d put Griffin—and herself, truth be told—through a night of misery for nothing. The storeroom sex probably had contained a double dose of binding ability because it was so illicit.

  She went downstairs to get the flowers, not wanting to put a harried delivery guy through the process of carrying them up three flights. But as she climbed the stairs, cradling the mammoth vase and surrounded by the heavenly scent of roses, she realized she’d have to call Griffin. More than that, she should ask him to lunch.

  Of course, lunch would be the perfect venue to tell him that she was a witch. But she couldn’t do it yet. After this weekend, after the engagement party was over, then she would figure out a way to tell him.

  She’d be doing Anica a favor by holding off, she told herself. It wasn’t really rationalizing, because if she told Griffin now, he might go a little crazy. She didn’t dare try to break the spell prior to the weekend, in case she goofed it up.

  So telling him would do nothing except placate her father, who had no clue about the elixir. Griffin would still be bound to her by the adoration elixir, but he wouldn’t be happy about it. He might cause a scene at the party, which could ruin what was supposed to be a wonderful celebration.

  Convinced that she had to let this weekend play out as if she and Griffin were a normal adoring couple, she set the roses in the middle of her coffee table. She decided to read the card before calling him, but the roses couldn’t be from anyone else. She pulled the small envelope from its plastic holder and opened it.

  Please don’t shut me out of your life. I need you. Griffin

  The words made her heart ache. The poor guy was pitiful, and all because of her. She’d thought this kind of adoration would make her feel good, but instead it made her feel like a manipulative bitch, and that rhymed with witch, and that stood for trouble.

  With a sigh she went in search of her phone, which she’d left somewhere in the kitchen. Then she realized that she had no phone number for him—not for his cell or his work. She hadn’t needed to contact him, because ever since he’d taken the elixir he’d been the pursuer.

  She could call information if she knew the name of his law firm, but she’d never taken note of that, either. Unless she wanted to forget her plan of calling him and inviting him to lunch, she’d have to use magic to get his number at work. Well, why not?

  She knew why not. Doing magic, even a light information-gathering kind, caused her to get a little high. She wasn’t always totally rational after a magic session, and she tended to be way too agreeable and to forget things.

  But then she looked at that gigantic vase of flowers and knew that the man who sent those was desperate to hear from her. He probably didn’t realize that she’d never paid attention to where he worked and had never asked for his number. She pictured him waiting to hear whether the flowers had arrived and getting only silence.

  After all he’d suffered already, and knowing that nothing would happen this weekend to change that, she couldn’t let him agonize over the flowers. She’d use her crystal ball to find out where he worked.

  Her crystal ball needed cleansing, though, and she didn’t have time to let it sit in salt water or put it out in the sun for a while. She’d use a smudge stick. Rummaging around in a cupboard where she kept all her magic supplies, she found the smudge stick and lit it with her small butane torch.

  She’d always wondered if the makers of those little torches had been magical folks, because the lighters were so much handier than matches. She’d have to ask her dad, because he’d written a paper about the contributions magical people had made to society. He’d told her that wheeled suitcases had been invented by a wizard, and microwave popcorn had been dreamed up by a witch.

  Waving her smudge stick over her crystal ball, she mentally divested it of any negative energy it might have picked up in the past couple of months since she’d used it. Once she was satisfied the ball was clear, she moved her furniture to the perimeter of the room and set the ball in the middle of her living room floor. Then she placed candles in a four-foot circle around it.

  Daisy watched from the corner, where she lay with her head on her paws. She seemed curious but not particularly surprised.

  Lily glanced over at the dog. “I haven’t worked with my crystal ball since you arrived.”

  Daisy thumped her tail on the floor.

  “I know this seems like a lot of trouble for one silly phone number, but I honestly don’t know how else to get it. I can hardly go through all the law firms in Chicago asking if Griffin Taylor works there.”

  Daisy lifted her head and whined.

  It was the strangest thing—at moments like this Lily could swear she could understand what the dog was trying to tell her. Lily tended to respond to those intuitive thoughts. “I don’t dare go over to Anica’s and use her computer to look him up, either. I don’t know her schedule for sure, and it would be just my luck I’d get there at the same time as her in-laws, which means it would take forever to get what I need and leave.”

  Daisy sighed and settled back down.

  “Trust me, this will be faster.” Lily walked around the circle, lighting the candles. Then she mentally closed the circle and faced the crystal ball. “Smoky orb, where secrets lurk, show me Griffin’s place of work.”

  Crouching down, she stared into the depths of the crystal ball and
finally made out a brass plate, one of several on the elevator wall of a large office building. “Biddle, Ryerson and Thatcher. Thanks, Crys.” She patted the ball. “You’re a pal.” She put out each candle with a snuffer, opened the circle and went to get her cell off the kitchen counter.

  Within a few minutes she’d obtained the number, reached Griffin’s secretary and was now waiting, her fingers drumming on the kitchen counter, for him to pick up. As usual, working the spell had put her on edge. Patience was never one of her strong suits, and after performing magic, she was absolutely no good at waiting for anything.

  “Lily?” He sounded eager, way too eager. “Did you get the flowers?”

  “Yes, and they’re—”

  “The buds were supposed to be just opening. Is that how they look?”

  “They’re perfect, Griffin. It’s the most beautiful bouquet of roses I’ve ever been given in my life. You didn’t have to do that.”

  “I wanted to.”

  “Well, thank you. Listen, I—”

  “Meet me for lunch.”

  The low urgency in his voice sent shivers of desire up her spine. She’d missed him more than she cared to admit. And he’d asked her to do something. She liked agreeing to do things. “Where should I meet you?”

  “There’s a nice little restaurant in the Hilton, and that’s close to my office. I’ll meet you in the lobby at noon, if that’s okay.”

  “I should be able to make it there by noon. But go ahead in and get us a table.”

  “I’ll do that,” he said, “but I’ll still meet you in the lobby.”

  There was no point in staying on the phone, arguing with him, and in her frame of mind she didn’t want to argue, anyway. She would have trouble getting ready and down to the Hilton on time as it was. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Bye.”

  Racing back through her living room, she realized that the candles and crystal ball were still in the middle of the room. Oh, well. She’d clean that up when she came back to get ready for work.

  Chapter 16

  Griffin gave himself permission to be devious. Critical times called for critical measures. When Lily walked into the hotel lobby, he knew any man in America would forgive him.