Love Charms

by Multiple

  Dei Lucrii moved a leg, lurching toward us. I shifted so I stood between them.

  “I say let’s take her to Caleb. See if that helps,” the little one said. “Between the match bind and the doubling up on a human, she might be able to fight it.”

  “You two handle it,” the redhead said. “I need to return to a birth.” She opened a brown leather bag and disappeared into it.

  “Whoa. Was that her portal?” I wanted one of those.

  “Jet, come here immediately.” The little one held out her hand.

  I didn’t want to leave Rah.

  “That means now.”

  I frowned but tore myself away. Dei Lucrii was moving now, stiffly. Dad had also managed to change his position. Poor Rah, though, I guess since she was human, was still stuck.

  “They will figure out their own issues,” the plump woman said. “For now, we’re off.” She took my hand.

  I tried to ask, “Where —” But we were already in blackness.

  27: Selective Memory

  We landed on Caleb’s front doorstep.

  “Whoa,” I said. “You don’t need a portal?”

  “We’ll train you on travel as soon as we get this little hitch ironed out,” the little one said.

  “Why didn’t you take us inside?” the plump one asked, straightening her skirt. “It’s cold.”

  “No need to send Genevieve into a panic,” the little Golden said. “She’s already closed all her portals.” She looked pointedly down at me. “No doubt due to this one.”

  I tugged the scarf around me. “Can someone ring the doorbell?”

  The little one reached over for it. They weren’t shivering like I was, and the snow around their feet was already melting. “Hey! Teach me the warm-up spell.”

  The plump one shook her head. “You need proper training from the ground up. And a new attitude. Goldens have a certain reputation to maintain.”

  “As soon as we verify that this match will continue, we’ll take you to a safe realm so you may learn your craft and avoid costly mistakes like this one.” The little one looked down at me. “Did you happen to put a failsafe in the potion?”

  “I don’t know what that is.”

  “It’s one of the variables,” she said.

  “Like grasswort to wear off after a baby is born, and Poison Lyceria for life?”

  “Yes, like that, only this one is for distance, how far the lovers can be apart before the potion begins to lose effectiveness.” The short enchantress poked the other. “What is it again?”

  “It’s the tears,” the plump one said. “Dying tears reach beyond all realms. Wedding tears reach across oceans.”

  I hadn’t used those. “I put in newborn tears.”

  The little one smiled. “Ah, that was a wise choice. It only works as far as a mother can walk before her baby cries.” She peered at me. “How are you feeling?”

  Now that she mentioned it, my need for Rah had settled to a dull ache rather than the rage I’d felt at home. “Not as bad as before.”

  The plump one frowned at the door. “Where is that beastly woman? We’re going to have to barge in.”

  “I’ve had enough,” the little one said. “This generation has lost its manners.” She shoved her palm forward, and the door popped open.

  Dang, she hadn’t even said any words. I looked at my hands. This was going to be fun, eventually.

  We entered the house just as Genevieve rounded the corner to the foyer and jumped a foot in the air. The two Goldens had their glow on.

  She knelt down. “I am honored for your visit. How can I —”

  I was closer to the door, but I knew the moment she spotted me.

  “What is SHE doing here?” Genevieve’s voice was more like a sputter.

  “Jet, come here,” the little one said.

  I walked forward.

  Genevieve peered up at me. “Is that a golden mark on you?” She turned back to the other two. “She’s a Golden?”

  “Indeed,” the plump one said. “And we have need of your son Caleb. He is her match, and we need him to test the limits of her spell.”

  “He—he’s her match?” Genevieve’s voice cracked.

  The little one frowned. “Were you not aware that your own son had dismissed his other matches and performed two rituals?”

  Genevieve glared at me. “You lured him into the second ritual?”

  I held up my hands. “I don’t even know what they are!”

  “Genevieve, it is an honor to be matched to a Golden, and don’t you forget it!” the little one snapped. “Send your boy here at once.”

  Genevieve glanced at the grandfather clock. “I—I can’t. I performed a dissolve.”

  “How much time remains?” the plump one asked.

  “About four hours.”

  “Close enough.” The little one gestured to me. “She’s untrained, but she’ll do.” The two Goldens held hands, and the plump one grasped mine.

  “You need to know our names to break a spell. It’s not something to take lightly, and it requires three Goldens who are acquainted but not affected by the enchantment,” the plump one said. “I’m Ellondra, and this little thing is Deja.”

  “Ellondra and Deja. Got it.”

  They began an enchantment I couldn’t follow. I watched Genevieve instead, who was backing toward the wall. Ellondra held my hand firmly, and as they finished speaking, I felt a spark fly between us, like an electrical shock. “Don’t let go,” she warned.

  Caleb began to materialize from the ground up, first his shoes, then his jeans, his shirt and arms, and finally his face. He shivered for a minute, then seemed to shake it off. When he saw me, he dashed forward. “Jet! You’re all right!” He pulled me close.

  “Of course I am. I’m not the one who crumbled like a cookie.”

  He pulled back, frowning, and I could see confusion in his turquoise eyes. “Are you hurt? Did he do something to you?”

  “More like she did it to herself.” Ellondra shook her head. “We need you to help her with a little potion problem.”

  Caleb stared at my forehead. “What is this?” He pushed my hair aside to look more closely. “Why are you bearing the mark of a Golden?”

  Deja clapped her hands. “You didn’t tell him?”

  “I barely knew it myself!”

  “We can be together without exile!” Caleb’s expression filled with such pure joy, I didn’t know how to break it to him that I wanted Rah.

  He saw something on my face again, though, and turned to the Goldens. “What happened with the potion?”

  “She drank it.”

  He snapped back around. “Are you in love with Dei Lucrii?”

  “No no no,” Ellondra said. “She was clever with it. Well, mostly. She and Dei Lucrii are both enchanted by a human. We expect it should be easy enough for a young match like you to overcome.”

  “You can’t break the spell?”

  “Cristaba won’t agree. Dei Lucrii would also be released,” Ellondra said. “Apparently he was giving Jet here some trouble.”

  “He was,” I said. “I made the potion so he wouldn’t come after you.”

  Caleb pulled me close again. “We’ll figure this out. I’ll help you. We’ll find a way.”

  “That will have to wait,” Deja said. “Since you have confirmed your match, we are going to take her off to training now. We’ll be back in two years.”

  “Two years!” Caleb and I said it simultaneously.

  Deja crossed her arms over her petite chest, all business. “Normally you’d come with us when you were sixteen, so you’d be fully Golden in time for your match. Gem made this mess for you.”

  “Can you just give us a minute?” Caleb asked. “Alone?”

  Deja sighed. “Young love. All right.” She turned to Genevieve. “You have any poppy milk in this place?” The three of them disappeared down the hall toward the kitchen.

  Caleb didn’t waste even a minute before pressing his mouth on
mine. I railed against it at first, thinking only of Rah, but then I remembered him, yes, we’d done this many times, and I’d liked it quite a lot. Even though he only struck me now as some boy I’d once known, there did seem to be some place in my heart where he’d been.

  He pulled away and looked behind him. “I know where we can go.”

  “Aren’t all your portals closed?”

  “Where we’re going, we don’t need portals.” He grasped me firmly against his chest and began a chant.

  Immediately we were down in the dungeon, the human wing where they’d kept Dad.

  I guess we had found it romantic before. Something urgent began to pulse in my belly, and I remembered how it felt to press my hands to his spine, the jolt that was both thrilling and comforting, a closeness I hadn’t even gotten to try with Rah. Now that we were down in the earth, my need for her lessened, and I could focus on Caleb.

  “It’s got an old-world charm,” I said.

  “This section is not resistant to magic.” He began a song that sounded like an Irish lullaby, and the walls of the dungeon began to shift and change until they were completely gone and above us was night sky. The concrete gave way to cool grass, and with one flip of his hands, cicadas began singing. He raised an arm, and the temperature rose several notches, completing the sense that we were outdoors on a summer night.

  “This better?”

  “I can’t wait to learn to do that,” I said.

  “I thought you’d like it.” He sat down and tugged on my hand so that I would come down with him. “In the dissolve, all I could think about was you.”

  “Really?” I wanted to melt into him, but still, the drumbeat of Rah, while slow and faint, wouldn’t quite go silent.

  He lay back. “It’s a strange place, the dissolve. You have no body, no sensations. It’s pure thought.”

  I settled next to him, staring up at the sky. He’d made it accurate, with constellations and a perfect moon, unlike the bad fake in the spirit realm. “Sounds like an escape,” I said.

  “You don’t feel any urgency, no matter what was going on before you crumbled.” He laughed a little. “I never heard anyone describe it like that.”

  “Scared the crap out of me.”

  He shifted to his side, propped up on an elbow, and leaned in to me. “I can’t believe I’m finally here with you.”

  “Oh, believe it!” I felt the urge to sit up and move away, back to Rah, but also the need for him to touch me. They warred within me, so I just stayed there, listening to both needs, two discordant notes.

  His fingers slid along my arm, light against the textured knit of my sweater. “Your hair is the perfect shade of yellow.” He pinched a lock between his fingers. “I wonder how you’ll look once you are Golden.”

  “Are you okay with that? I mean, you were all fine when I was a nix.”

  “How can I not be? It’s the biggest honor in our world.”

  “So you still want me as a match?”

  “I would take you any way you came, just as long as you were you.”

  His eyes searched my face, and in the low light I couldn’t see our twin colors. “I can feel the potion working in me.” I had to admit it.

  “I can feel it too. Do you want to move forward? See what happens?”

  “You mean with the rituals? Deja said we had already done two.”

  He smiled. “The first one was the kiss, of course. I told you that. Most all matches get that far.”

  “What was the second?”

  He reached for my hand and led it across his body, under his shirt, and against his spine.

  The electric charge jolted through me one more time, as powerful as it had ever been. “That is the second.” His face was so close to mine that his words were a breath across my cheek. One of the factions battling in my head gave way, and I arched toward him, wanting him to touch me too, and our lips met again.

  This time, I felt the heady dizziness I remembered from before. Caleb reached around and threaded his hand beneath my sweater, shocking my system a second time and completing the circuit, a bolt that fizzed through us like a fuse, spine to head to mouth to chest, touching every tingly part of me.

  I rolled tightly against him without any thought of Rah, or the Goldens, or getting caught, or what ritual we might be on or how enchanter babies were made. I wanted all of him, every bit, and surely the world would not interrupt us again.

  Caleb must have sensed I had reengaged, as he pulled my sweater up and away, tucking it under my head like a pillow.

  “You couldn’t have conjured a bed?” I asked.

  “If that’s what you want.”

  The grass was fragrant and cool, the earth beneath it not hard but spongy, like a soft mat. “No, you made this spot perfect.” I brushed my fist against his jaw. “I bet you bring all the enchanter girls here.”

  He got perfectly solemn then and shook his head. “Just you. There was never anyone but you.”

  My throat tried to close up, and through my vision flashed the partners who had been in these places with me, not the least of which was Gordon, the one who’d rejected me last. “Is there a forget spell?” I asked.

  His eyebrows drew together. “Like to erase your memory?”

  “Not all of it.” I squeezed his hand. “Just parts.”

  “It depends. You’d want to really narrow it down. A spell like that can’t be undone, not even by three Goldens.”

  I almost laughed, realizing I’d already done one of the most powerful enchantments in this realm, using a Golden trio to break a spell. “It’s pretty specific.”

  “Can you tell me what you want to forget?”

  So many things, I thought, all those boys, the wishing that they were the right boys, and the messy breakups, ugly moments like when Gordon walked away. But that was too much memory to let go, and I’d learned from them. “I want to be like you,” I said finally.

  “Like me how?”

  “I don’t want to know what it’s like.” I fumbled for words. “I want to be with you like it’s my first time too.”

  I could see understanding wash over him. “Really? You want to forget having done that?”

  I punched him lightly again. “Unless you think we can’t figure it out without my experience.”

  He laughed. “No, I think we can manage.”

  I drew in a deep breath. “So do it.”

  “Okay.”

  “Do you need a potion?”

  “No. This is one of those enchantment-lites.” He smiled. “Except this is sort of a big one. It’s a high-level spell.”

  “Can you do it?”

  “I can. I was sort of a spell-geek during training.”

  “Like Hermione.”

  He laughed. “Without the hair.”

  “Okay, let’s make it all go away.”

  He grew somber. “I want you to run through the experiences in your mind, right now, for practice. Close your eyes.”

  I lay with my bare back against the grass, going slowly through my history. Two in high school, Barrett and James. Fumbling affairs, just encounters, nothing steady. Then freshman year in college, a longish stint with Gary. A heartbreaker, as he’d left school when his mom got sick and never returned. After that, a string of them. I tried to keep each face in my head a moment. “I think I got them all,” I said.

  He shook his head. “You just think? Maybe it’s a good thing we’re performing an erasure.”

  “Definitely a good thing.”

  “You ready to run through them again while I do the spell?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t let your mind wander, or you might lose something else.”

  “Got it.”

  He began an incantation, soft round syllables in no recognizable language. I closed my eyes to the stars and ran through the moments again. Bedrooms. Backs of cars. A lake. Two bathrooms. Several sofas. The dorm room. Gordon’s apartment. Then, just to see if it might help, I thought of Rah.

&n
bsp; I opened my eyes. Caleb completed the line and dropped into a low hum. His face swirled in front of me, and suddenly I worried I had thought of him! My head grew light and airy, like a balloon, although when I touched my hair, everything seemed normal.

  Caleb continued to hum the melody, and I felt sleepy. I began to drift until even behind my closed eyes, all I pictured were the stars.

  “Jet?”

  I realized my eyes were actually open. “Is it done?”

  “Do you want to keep the awareness that you purposefully forgot your experiences?”

  “Should I?”

  “Up to you.”

  I considered this. “Yes, I want to remember that I did them, just not the details.”

  “Then that’s what you’ll get.” He took my hand and pressed his lips against my palm.

  I tried to remember Gary, since he’d been around the longest. I could picture him, a lopsided smile, a mop of sandy curls. I could remember kisses and falling asleep and waking up tangled in the blue sheets of his bed. But nothing else. “It’s done.” I hugged him, dragging him on top of me. “You did it!”

  He continued the roll until I was on top of him, and I sat high, my knees on either side of his hips. I ground against him. “I can feel that,” I said.

  “You’re pretty saucy for someone who can’t remember how to do anything.” He bumped out my elbows, and I crashed into his chest.

  “I was born saucy.”

  He rolled us back over, the weight of him pressing me flat. “I believe that.” He lowered his head and met my lips, and I realized that I didn’t have to forget the other kisses to know that his was the one that fit me best. My blood beat in my ears, my heart thumping with outrageous speed.

  I shivered against the grass, and Caleb moved his hand through the air, warming the temperature another degree. He grazed his fingers along my throat, down my collarbone, and settled along the cup of the bra.

  I reached for him, running my hands beneath his shirt to touch the hot skin of his back. I wondered what it would feel like for our bodies to connect, belly to belly, and so I tugged the fabric up and over his head, breaking the kiss.

  His chest was firm and smooth, lightly muscled and lean. I ran my hands along his stomach, and he sucked in a hard breath when I brushed against his belt. I knew I had touched men there, but I couldn’t remember what it was like. I wasn’t ready for that yet, so instead I wrapped my arms around his back and pulled him close.