Bell searched his eyes for a few seconds before laughing out loud. “Good luck,” was all she said before leaving the same way Wednesday had gone.
Rally sighed and reached for the last onion ring. The little tavern might earn a place on his short list of world’s great restaurants. French chefs could find their way around a chateaubriand, but given the choice, Rally would go with the burger and onion rings every time. Especially if it came with piña coladas and beautiful witches flaunting copious amounts of attitude.
By the time it occurred to him that Bell could be useful, it was almost too late. She’d been gone for almost a minute. He charged for the door, ran through, looked right, then left. A little thrill of satisfaction made his heartbeat settle. Bell had stopped a half block away to talk to someone.
He closed the distance quickly, jogging along the raised sidewalk.
Bell glanced his way when she caught movement in the corner of her eye. Rally heard her tell the woman she was talking to that she’d see her later just before she turned to face him.
“What’s up, ‘Might Be’?” she said.
He didn’t like the sound of that. The rather belligerent nickname made him sound indecisive. And what red-blooded warlock wants that?
“It’s Rally,” he said. “Sorry if I seemed rude.”
“That’s okay. You were focused on Wednesday and I’m not sure warlocks are capable of dealing with more than one thing at a time.”
“Wow. Did I really, really, really offend you, ah, Bell?”
Bell smiled and shook her head. “No. I’m just dorking with you.”
“Dorking?”
“Never mind. What can I do for you?” Bell turned her head toward the sound of shouting.
It was the kid who’d been serving them at the tavern. “HEY! Piña colada!” When he caught up to Rally and Bell, he said, “Forget something?” He glared at Rally and crossed his arms.
Rally was momentarily confused by why a local kid would be chasing after him. Then it dawned on him that he’d run out of the tavern, looking like it was his intention to stiff them.
“The check!” Rally said, like it was the answer to a riddle.
“Yeah, man. The check. It needs to be paid. Right?” The kid glanced at Bell like she was in cahoots with the freeloader.
“Don’t look at me,” she said. “I paid my bill.”
“Sorry,” Rally said pulling a hundred dollar bill out of his pocket. “I was coming back. I just had to catch her before she got away.” Handing the bill to the kid, he said, “Keep the change.”
“Well…” It was hard to keep a stern look when the young server had just received the biggest tip of his life. “Thanks.” The kid gestured with the hand holding the Ben and walked off with a big smile, reveling in being eighty dollars richer than he had been a minute before.
Rally turned back to Bell, who said, “You were about to tell me why you came running after me? Without paying your bill?”
“I would’ve paid the bill.”
“Uh-huh,” she said.
Making a frustrated face, he said, “I let your friend leave without getting her number.”
Bell laughed. “You let her leave?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. I get it. Masculine fragile ego and all. I’ll let that go. The fact is that Wednesday would find a way to make me very sorry for giving you her number if she didn’t want you to have it.”
“Who says she doesn’t want me to have it?”
“Does she?”
“She does.” He sounded sure. Bell didn’t look convinced. Rally pursed his lips before admitting, “She just doesn’t know it yet.”
Bell chuckled. “Look. I can’t give you her number, but there is something I can do if you promise to name your firstborn Voldemort.”
Rally looked at Bell like she was crazy. “I’m not naming anybody Voldemort and I’m sincerely hoping that’s you trying to be funny.”
She laughed. “Keep your pants on.”
“That will not be a problem,” he said drily.
“It’s an expression.”
“Okay.”
“Do you know about the spring rites?”
Rally paused, like he was searching his memory. “Witches choose a mate?”
“You make it sound like a nursery song. It’s a little more complicated, but that’s the general idea.”
“What does that…?”
“Wednesday is one of the two lucky brides-to-be this year.”
He was shaking his head before she finished the sentence.
“Hold it right there. This is going way too fast. I was thinking dinner and a movie. Not handfasting.”
Bell shrugged. “Okay. See ya.” She started away, but Rally stepped around in front of her and stopped her progress.
“Wait! Just give me a minute. Let me think.”
“About what?”
“About… This year?”
“This year as in three weeks from now.”
“Shit.”
“Or get off the pot.”
“What?”
“Never mind, warlock.” Bell crossed her arms in front of her. “You’re feeling like the timing is not ideal.”
Rally nodded enthusiastically. “Exactly.”
“But the important things have their own rhythm and their own timing. You know that. Right?”
He searched her eyes. He wasn’t sure that he did know that, but didn’t want to be disagreeable. “I guess.”
“Well, then. It looks like you have a choice between now or never.”
“Give me her phone number.”
“Already told you I won’t do that.”
“Come on,” he pled. “I won’t tell her where I got it.”
“Who are you calling stupid? Me? Or her?”
“Ah…”
“Look. I’m not going to give you her phone number, but I will do you a bigger favor than that. I’ll get you an invitation to the choosing. I know the guy who runs it. If you say that’s what you want right now.” Rally was still as if he’d been flash frozen. “Well?”
“I’m thinking!”
“Counting to ten.”
“Don’t do that. I need time to…”
“Four.”
“Hold on.”
“Eight.”
“Alright!”
Bell chuckled. “It’s always fun to see how the Powers That Be match people up.”
“If that is what’s going on here, let me tell you, it doesn’t feel like fun.”
She smiled. “I predict it will. So see you in three weeks. Go home and decide what you’re going to wear.”
“What I’m going to wear?”
“Yeah. Don’t you want to look your best?”
“Fuck.”
“I guess that’s the goal.”
When she started to walk away, he said, “Don’t you, ah, need my, ah, address? Or email or phone? Or something?”
She turned and cocked her head. “You warlocks ever hear of magic?”
A preteen sauntered by walking a beagle. “Hey,” she said. “Nice evening, huh?”
Rally looked around. It was dusk. The air was getting cooler and for some reason felt softer at seventy degrees. “Yes. It’s nice. What’s your dog’s name?”
She laughed. “It’s not my dog.”
He grinned. “You’re kind of young to be a Peter Sellers’ fan.”
“Looks can be deceiving?”
Rally nodded. “So they say.”
He walked to where he’d parked his car a block away and decided he might as well go spend the night in Austin. Maybe hit Sixth Street and hear what bands would be the next big thing.
CHAPTER FOUR The Invitation
Once he was back home in Savannah, Rally found that his thoughts were constantly drifting between Wednesday, when and how his invitation would arrive, and, strangest of all, what he was going to pack to wear. He wasn’t the sort to pay a lot of attention to clothes and thought Queer Eye was a comedy
, but Bell’s question had come with both information and a veiled warning.
You’d better look good if you want to win.
He did some research on the spring rites and, from what he gathered, they were magically quirky. Among the men invited, would be somebody who was the ‘one’. Apparently the charade was about creating an illusion of winning for the ‘one’, who’d been determined by craft methods to be closest to a perfect match. In all the world.
It was, perhaps, the surest matchmaking service anywhere, but that didn’t mean it was foolproof. Armed with the sort of self-sabotage that comes as standard issue with a sizable percentage of males, it could be fucked up. Using his sister’s method for hacking esoteric records, no matter whose, no matter where, he learned that there had been several cases of spring rites gone south and one that was a near miss. That one, some poor devil named Willem, being very recent.
He did make a mental note that there had never been a case of separation or divorce once a mating was settled. That being the case, it was only logical to conclude that the witches knew what they were doing when it came to love. When the ramifications of that sunk in, Rally began to feel his skin prick.
If he had to wrangle an invitation through Bell, that could only mean that he wasn’t the one who’d drawn the winning ticket. That meant that there was some dickwad walking around with Wednesday’s brand invisibly stamped on his forehead.
He also established some historical patterns. With few exceptions, witches and warlocks married humans. There were frequent hookups with other species, and one pledge to a demon, but by and large, humans were the species of choice.
Rally knew in his gut there had to be cases of warlocks and witches mating, but those records must have either been before family trees were kept or among the records that had been destroyed at sacred depositories such as the library at Alexandria and the caves of Endor.
He’d traveled to Wimberley, a small Texas Hill Country river town that was pleasant, if a little warm. It had a history of attracting artists and now, increasingly, retirees. The motivation to seek out such an obscure place was a belief that a witch had targeted him with an attraction spell, and that he must have had his guards down because it seemed to have attached with the permanence of a horror movie alien. In the interest of self-preservation, he’d been choosing to think of it as an ‘attraction’ spell because calling it a ‘love’ spell might cause hyperventilation at best and cardiac arrest at worst.
When he’d finally come face to face with Wednesday and heard her voice for the first time, he was all the more anxious about getting the damn curse removed. Because everything about Wednesday wrecked his belief in his status as perpetual player.
As she dismissed him with a flippancy that should have been a deal breaker, he gradually began to allow for the possibility that his state of mind wasn’t a curse, but some other sort of damnable phenomenon.
At first his feelings about that were in perpetual vacillation between panic and excitement. But as days went by, he’d become more convinced that he was the fucker who was supposed to win Wednesday and face the end of life as he’d known it. He supposed that only time would sort out whether that was fortunate or not. Either way, one thing was for sure. Once he’d allowed his mind to cross the line of possibility, he was on board the ride and staying on until the end. No matter how scary that was.
He looked up at the little tinkle of chimes. It was a delightful musical sound made possible by magic. Rally had warded his Savannah townhouse so that he was alerted whenever anyone with what he called magic juice approached.
He stepped to the open window that looked down on the street. Aodh, anticipating that Rally would look through the window, was standing back far enough to be seen.
“Let me in. It’s hot out here,” Aodh said.
Rally picked up a handheld device and remotely unlocked the front door from upstairs. Within a minute Aodh was bounding through the door of Rally’s bedroom, which looked more like a graduate student’s living quarters than the home of a warlock powerful enough to conjure, or take, anything.
Without saying hello, Aodh stopped and looked around. “You moving?”
“No,” Rally said.
“Then what is…?” Aodh was looking at clothes strewn around the room, hanging from everything that could be used as a hook, draping from everything that offered a surface.
“Special occasion.”
“Special occasion? What’s that mean?”
Rally stopped and looked at Aodh. “Why are you here?”
“Wow. Nice to see you, too, bro.”
“Look,” Rally ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t mean to hurt your widdle feewings, but I have to figure out what I’m wearing to a…”
After a pause, Aodh suggested, “Special occasion?”
“Yes,” Rally said. “Don’t ask.”
Aodh shrugged. “Is this why you’ve been ignoring us? You don’t want to do anything with anybody because you’re figuring out your wardrobe?” Aodh sounded incredulous.
Rally turned around and was holding salmon-colored shorts up to a button down madras plaid shirt when he heard a rustling. He looked up to see that a raven had flown through the open window and landed on his book-laden desk that butted against the foot of his bed.
“What’s this?” Aodh marveled as the bird dropped a parchment scroll. “So you’re fucking Harry Potter now?” As he laughed and reached for the scroll, the bird scolded him as only a raven could, squawking rather than singing. “Mind your own business,” he told the bird.
The bird spread its dark-as-night feathers in indignant response and looked at Rally accusingly. But it was too late. Aodh had already picked up the scroll with a gleam in his black eyes and a smile that was demon wicked.
“Give it to me,” Rally said.
“In a minute,” Aodh said as he unrolled the scroll. “You are invited to enjoy an all-expense-paid trip to Wimberley, Texas.” He gave Rally a curious look as he repeated, “An all-expense-paid trip to Wimberley, Texas?” Sounding incredulous, he asked, “Who is this? And are they serious?”
Rally snatched the parchment from Aodh’s hand and, turning to the bird, said, “Thank you. Blessings.”
To Aodh’s amazement the bird sort of bowed, then flew out the window. “Okay, really. What are you into?”
Rally shook his head. “You really don’t want to know. Go on and have fun. Thanks for checking on me. I’m fine but in the middle of a project that doesn’t involve the rest of you. When it’s resolved, I’ll share.”
Aodh cocked his head. “Is this project feminine in nature? ‘Cause it looks like straight up crazy shit and women are always behind that stuff.” Apparently something in Rally’s expression gave him away. “So that’s it. And we’re talking about…” Aodh was tapping his temple with three fingers and Rally knew it was an attempt to read his mind.
“Stop that!” Rally said. “Friends don’t pry.”
“Are you insane? Of course they do.”
Rally huffed a breath out through his nose. “If I tell you, will you leave me alone and keep this to yourself?”
Aodh’s expression went instantly serious just before he performed a mimicry of the boy scout salute.
Rally knew that was the best he was going to get. “There was this witch at that Aspen thing.”
Aodh flopped onto Rally’s bed, put his hands behind his head and crossed his legs at the ankles like he was getting comfortable for a long story. When Rally didn’t immediately continue, Aodh tried to help. “So you met a witch in Aspen…”
“No. I didn’t exactly meet her. I just, ah, saw her.”
“You saw her,” Aodh repeated, trying to keep judgment out of his tone. “But you didn’t talk to her.” When Rally shook his head, Aodh knew that he’d failed at keeping judgment at bay. “You mean like a panzy-ass preteen human who’s scared of girls?”
Rally gave his friend a look. “If you’re going to…”
Aodh held up his
hands and shook his head. “No. No. I’m not going to whatever you were just going to say. What I’m going to do is be quiet and still as can be while you dish.”
“No. I didn’t talk to her. I just saw her a couple of times. But then after it was over I couldn’t stop thinking about her.”
“Uh oh,” Aodh said. When Rally shot him a warning look, Aodh pretended to zip his mouth closed.
“I figured it would go away. Just some random witch chick. Right?”
When Rally looked his way, Aodh said, “Am I supposed to talk now?”
Rally looked impatient. “Anyway. It didn’t go away. So naturally I started thinking…”
“Curse!”
“Yeah. So I decided to go look her up, make her take it back.”
Aodh nodded. “That’s what I’d do.”
“I found out she lives in…”
“Let me guess. Wimberley, Texas.”
“That’s right. I went. I found her. I confronted her. She didn’t do it. At least not intentionally. And it wasn’t a curse.”
“I don’t like where this is going.”
“Well, neither did I. But there it is.”
“Where is it? Exactly?”
“Once I realized that she didn’t spell me, I let myself open up to the possibility that, you know, what I was feeling was something.”
“Something.”
“Yeah. Something.”
“Are you going to name this thing or make me guess?”
“I’m not going to name it and neither are you. I’m going to this,” he gave Aodh a pointed look, “special occasion and see where things go.”
Aodh stared at Rally for a couple of beats, looking more serious than Rally had ever seen him. “You’re scaring me.”
Rally laughed. “Don’t be melodramatic.”
“You can’t get tied down to one woman. You’re only… What? Five hundred years old?”
“Technically she’s not a woman. She’s a witch. And I didn’t say anything about being tied down.”
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