by Gina Kincade
“Did I ever tell you I met Joe Kenda once?”
“Only about a million times,” Thomas said. He stood up too and bent down to kiss his father on the top of his head, a gesture I found completely endearing.
***
“What did you do to my father’s drink,” Thomas asked when his father and sister were out of earshot.
“What?” I asked, stalling for time.
“You’ve got a pickpocket’s hands—that little bit of misdirection with the cufflink while you did something to his drink.”
“I just added a little something to make him more comfortable,” I said. I could sometimes restore health with one of my meals, but I’d only had success with stuff like stopping a cold in its tracks or curing a yeast infection. The best I could do for John Eakins was take the pain away.
“Kaley says you’re a witch.”
I gave him a look that I hoped conveyed my utter disbelief, and changed the subject. “Is your sister taking care of your father full time?”
“How very sexist of you to assume that,” he said.
“You’re right,” I said. “Sorry.”
“We’ve got 24-hour nurses. Ajay’s off tonight. Maya’s only here until the end of the month. I’ve moved in…for the duration.” He said this lightly, but I could hear the weight of his grief.
“It’s good she could get the time off,” I said.
“She’s supposed to be on sabbatical while she writes her next book, but she wanted to spend some time with dad while he still remembers her.”
“Sabbatical?” I said.
“She’s a constitutional law professor at George Mason,” he said. “Her book has something to do with the Ninth Amendment.” I must have looked puzzled because he said, “Nobody’s ever heard of it, but the Ninth Amendment is actually kind of interesting. Basically, it’s the result of the founders realizing that if the Bill of Rights didn’t actually specify every single right there could be, that future scholars would argue those rights didn’t exist.”
I think he might have gone into more detail, but he was interrupted by a beefy bro-type. “Tommy E,” he said. “How the hell are ya?”
“Fine as wine, Declan, you?”
Instead of answering him, the guy leaned forward and breathed bourbon breath on me. “Hiiiii,” he said, drawling out the word in a way that told me we’d be pouring him into a Lyft at the end of the night. “Excuse me,” I said and left Thomas to deal with his drunk friend. Everyone was finishing their second piece of cake before Thomas caught up to me again.
“Sorry about Declan,” he said. “He just got divorced and he’s over-compensating.” He took a big bite of the cake. “This cake is delicious,” he said. “Magically delicious.”
I caught the emphasis on the word “magic.” I gave him a look. “The only magic involved in making this cake was the carving of the white chocolate doves and the chocolate roses.”
“I never saw the point of white chocolate,” he said.
“And yet, you’re eating cake filled with white chocolate mousse,” I pointed out.
“It’d be better with bittersweet chocolate.”
“Hand me that plate,” I said.
He pulled it back. “I’m not finished with it.”
I touched the plate. “Try it now,” I said. He looked down. The cake slice was now filled with chocolate mousse.
“Cool,” he said happily, and took a big bite. I looked around for a chair. All that was left for me to do was clean up and I’d have to wait until the guests left. My feet were killing me, as I’d predicted.
Thomas followed me over to a table and sat down opposite me. “Was your father a lawyer like you and Maya?”
He shook his head. “Cop. Worked with the Feds on the Green River Killer task force.”
I shivered. Gary Ridgeway had committed most of his crimes before I was born, but I was eleven years old before he was finally arrested.
“Dad always said they couldn’t have caught him without Ted Bundy.”
“Ted Bundy, really?”
Thomas nodded. “Bundy was on Death Row, and everybody and his brother wanted to talk to him. He reached out and said he had some ‘insights’ into the Green River Killer’s psychology. So Dad and a couple of other guys interviewed him.” Thomas glanced at me, as if to gauge how strong my stomach was. “He was the ones who told them to look into the necrophilia angle.”
“Eeuw,” I said.
“Yeah,” Thomas said. “Couple of publishers wanted dad to write his memoirs. True crime sells.”
I knew that was true. I had a friend who devoured it, said it made her feel better because no matter how messed up her own home life had been—and it had been plenty messed up—she hadn’t ended up a serial killer.
“Is he going to write a book?” I asked.
“He’s thinking about writing a mystery,” Thomas said. “My stepmom wrote mysteries. That’s how she met my dad. She wrote and asked him if he’d read her book and tell her if she got anything wrong. He read the book, hated it, and met her for lunch.”
“Hated it?” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “My dad’s not as tactful as I am.”
I laughed.
“She laughed too,” he said. “Called him a Neanderthal and a sexist, but the lunch lasted three hours and then they ended up in bed. She ended up winning an Edgar for the book and he ended up winning her, so it was a good deal all around.”
“Are they still married?”
“No, Violet died when we were kids. Breast cancer.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Me too,” he said. “I couldn’t believe that two of my mothers could die of the same thing within a couple years of each other.”
“What kind of cancer does your father have?”
Thomas looked a little embarrassed. “He’s got breast cancer too.” I must have looked surprised because he added, “Breast cancer in men. It’s a thing.”
“I know,” I said softly. My mother had died of breast cancer too, but fortunately, I didn’t have the marker. “Eff cancer.”
“Yeah.”
We sat at the table for a while and people-watched. Or rather, I people-watched and Thomas watched me. The sensation of being the object of scrutiny that intense was unfamiliar, but not unpleasant. When he reached out to take my hand, it seemed like the most natural thing for me to squeeze his and let our joined hands lie on the table before us.
Sarah and Brian and Kaley were dancing together and all three looked happy. I was glad to see it. The grandparents danced past and stopped to say something. I was happy to see the grandmother hug Sarah. My work here is done, I thought.
“This place is a mess,” Thomas commented. “You want some help cleaning up?”
“I just have to pack up the food and gather my serving pieces. The condo cleaning crew’s going to come in tomorrow and tidy up.”
He looked disappointed. “I’ll be here tomorrow,” I said. “I’m doing a brunch for the tenants in 902. Maybe we’ll run into each other.”
“Are you torturing me?” he said.
“Maybe a little bit,” I said.
“Taste of India is open all day on Saturdays,” he said.
“I thought we were going to lunch on Tuesday.”
“They have an extensive menu,” he said. “We can eat there every day of the week if you want.”
“Except Sunday,” I said. “They’re not open.”
“Well, on Sunday we could go to my second favorite place,” he said.
“Or I could cook for us,” I said. I never offer to cook for guys.
“Am I growing on you?” he said.
“Like a fungus.”
“Until tomorrow,” he said and lifted it to his lips to drop a kiss on my knuckles. Smooth move, I thought, but I didn’t say it. Me and Tommy E? I thought, and then I thought, Why not? It was Valentine’s Day after all.
The End
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Read more by Kat Parrish
Tales Out of School; A Collection of Paranormal, Supernatural & Magical Academy Stories
The Shadow Palace Trilogy:
Bride of the Midnight King
Daughter of the Midnight King
The Midnight Queen
Deus Ex Magical: Ostrander Witches #1
Secret Hexe: Romanov Witches #1
The Summer Garden
Tales of the Misbegotten: An L.A. Nocturne Collection
Misbegotten: L.A. Nocturne #1
Rezso: L.A. Nocturne #2
About the Author
Kat Parrish is an internationally bestselling author. A former reporter, she prefers making things up! An Army brat, her motto is "Have passport, will travel." She has lived in seven states and two foreign countries and would love to celebrate her 100th birthday with a trip into space. She lives in the Pacific Northwest near a haunted cemetery.
Love, Creativity & Magick
A Steampunk Valentine’s Day Tale
Kiki Howell
3 Flames
Skip To Next Story
ISBN: 978-1-927415-00-9
First Edition 2012
Published by: Naughty Nights Press
http://naughtynightspress.com/
Cover by Shane Willis, RAD ACT Photography
http://www.radactphoto.com/
Copyright Kiki Howell ©2012.
Names, characters and incidents depicted in this e-book are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author.
About Love, Creativiy & Magick
All acts of magick take on shades of gray in the end. Especially for Emma, one of four, female witches, who, by birthright, belongs in the social circles of the privileged, upper ten thousand in London. Yet, by rumor of the unknown and the misunderstood, she stands apart, cut by her peers along with her cousins.
Most of their nights at parties and balls were spent creating a magickal comedy of errors. Nowhere was the color of steam more evident than helping the uptight aristocracy side step their fastidious standards. Only, this year, Emma is not quite sure what is happening to her. Something dark and seductive, something not of this world, is luring her, possessing her, and she has no comprehension of what, or who, the presence really is.
When he does finally show his face, and she feels him to be a nightwalker, she must fear not only the threat he poses to her blood and to the magick he can suck from her, but also the danger he poses to her heart.
To complicate matters further, his propositions are as exciting as they are scandalous. When Valentine’s Day rolls around, a secret is revealed, leaving her even more unsure of her future.
Chapter One
Through lowered lashes, Emma glanced in inappropriate ways at the masculine forms striding into another room, one where men of the upper ten thousand spent too much time devoted to hedonistic pleasures. Where they were going port would be drunk to access, talk would be dirty and the wagers would be dangerously high.
She was not paying particular attention to the exquisite tailoring of their clothes or the perfect knots in their neck cloths, which kept those in the privileged aristocracy at rapt attention. Instead, she mellowed without a drop of spirits by looking upon the places where the fabrics these men wore touched close to their skin, outlined for her the beautiful mysteries beneath. If the chaperones watching over their spectacles could follow the path of her eyes, scandal would erupt with their swooning cries.
Old ladies close to hysterics and tears just might amuse her more than usual tonight, days away from London’s time to celebrate love. Valentine’s Day to those of the female persuasion without suitors seemed wrought of the devil himself, a damnable and confounded affront against them. It surly would not be long before lacy papers, love knots and puzzle purses would start being exchanged, sporting all sorts of sweet rubbish. Puzzle Purses! Who wanted to go about the trouble of reading the many verses scattered among their many folds? Hell and blast, what is wrong with me? Even I’m not usually this cynical.
Of late, she’d no comprehension of what was happening to her. Something from outside, someone not of this world it seemed, pursued her, begged for her, haunted her. This being was dark and seductive, luring her into a state where sexual desires took over, built a lust, which couldn’t be quenched. Restless, she longed for something, someone she couldn’t find, for things she knew little about. She was a witch, a strong one, and yet, she couldn’t help fearing she was being possessed. Emma had played with scrying mirrors, but even she didn’t mess with demons.
“Well, of all the deuced, Devilish things! By the by, all the rakes have left the room earlier that usual. What shall we do now?” Miss Cecilia Ingram’s chin lifted as she spoke. Emma’s eyes scanned the room.
Her group stood in a quiet spot, a tiny alcove with windows overlooking the gardens. With her and Cecilia were Miss Isabella Hunt and Miss Laurisa Abbott. They were cousins, witches each of them, the only ones from families with magick in their circle of London. Their elders had taught them respect for their powers even when mixed with a spanking amount of fanciful mischief. On the other hand, if a lesson was warranted, then white verses black magick could be hard to define. All acts took on shades of gray in the end. Nowhere was the color of steam more evident than in the matters of justice, a slippery term to define. Yet, they’d made defining the laws of society their mission.
“Why, dare I say, Emma, we’ve created quite the magickal comedy of errors here tonight, and you’ve barely lent your hand to the cause. Some rebel you are, standing here quietly in such a bread and butter fashion, acting according to the rules, being a wallflower. Do you suddenly disapprove of our ways? Because, remember, we believe there are such ornaments of society present that would thank us for the chance to side step society’s fastidious standards. Such pretense is a bore.” The words of reprimand dripped from Cecilia’s tongue.
“Disapprove? Such a ridiculous notion. However, if it were up to you we would all keep to gentleman’s hours giving no heed to the dictations of civilized society at all,” Emma touched her fingers lightly to her chest feigning disapproval. Excitement tingled over her fair skin.
Tonight, the presence lingering around her promised. Looking at her friends, it was obvious she was the only one who heard the voice.
“We have a purpose of freedom,” Cecilia continued in a huff. “We’re setting the women of England free from wheedling away the hours either dancing or talking behind their fans.”
“And, we’re raising quite a breeze. I mean we must have something to do to pass the time.” Isabella added. “Tonight I have observed many who’ve shown contemptuous behavior upon meeting and greeting, such disrespect as a lady failing to bow when happening upon a gentleman has gained many a chaperones scowl. In fact, poor Miss Elizabeth over there in her high collar gown, all a sickening shade of moss green, her behavior tonight has been so scandalous that she may soon have a demi-rep to contend with. Oh, she will just die of embarrassment when her grandmamma learns of her doubtful reputation, will she not. Yet, during all of this fun, Emma, you’ve remained as if in a swoon, your eyes glazed as if you were in love or something. Look at you!”
The idea of love had occurred to her. That is what all of this felt like, at least in comparison to the stories she had been told about such things. Families with magick tended to be more open than others. Emotions were a necessary evil when working with their gifts. Yet, if she was indeed in love, it was with something unknown, a phantom, the promise of someone to come, someone only hinted at by the breeze, which felt like a man’s warm breath through her hair. Even s
o, this man couldn’t be just human. So, what was he then? And was he dangerous was more the question.
“Love?” Emma shook her head, and half-lied. “It’s boredom which claims my attention. I’m just so tired of polite conversation that I would rather stay home and butter toast with the kitchen servants than to have to be privy to any more of it. Why already tonight, I’ve heard endless drivel about how beautiful the weather has been of late. And if I hear once more of that new steam-powered card-shuffling contraption, I think I may just march right into that room over there and break the thing. Give Lady Davenworth something to really skitter on about besides that damnable spring powered robot her husband, the mad scientist that he surely is, made her. She claims it actually helps her servants. From what I hear, her servants have nothing but bandy words to say about their employer. I ask you now, would this be so, if they were getting their chores lightened by some spring-powered robot? I think not!”