by Mindy Klasky
“What?”
I forced myself to speak more slowly, to enunciate the words so that something other than a hummingbird could actually understand me. The effort made me shiver, a bone-deep trembling as if I’d been caught outside in a storm. “I need to tell Neko about Graeme. I’ve been going nuts, trying to keep them from finding out about each other, and it’s just going to be worse when Graeme gets back from London on Wednesday.”
“It was a Friendship Test!”
“It was. And I’ve kept it so far. But I think that this is something real, Melissa. I think Graeme’s going to be around for a while. I’ve spoken to him every night that he’s been away, but I can’t keep hiding what’s going on. Neko does live in my basement, you know.”
Oh. Bad choice. Mentioning my basement had to conjure up a picture of the couch that my familiar slept on. My familiar and, often enough, his boyfriend du jour. Most recently, the Frenchman who had spurned Melissa for the tender mercies of a cat-man.
Before I could figure out a way to make my argument stronger, the door opened and Siamese twins walked in.
Oh. Wait. They weren’t actually joined at the hip: they only looked like it. While Melissa waited to take their order, the pair of young Goths took a long minute to kiss, intent on raking each other’s tattooed shoulders with their black-painted fingernails. The girl finally came up for air, and Melissa took advantage of the break in the action to say, “Can I get you anything?”
“Um, yeah,” the guy said. “Two plain coffees.”
“Sumatran Samba or Colombian Caramel Cream?”
The customers had a whispered conference, requiring much nuzzling and—I tried not to look—a quick dart of his tongue stud against her teeth. “One of each,” came the guy’s final answer.
“With lots of room for cream,” the girl added helpfully.
Melissa nodded and poured two cups. The tough Goths proceeded to take them to the fixings bar at the end of the counter, adding enough milk and sugar to simulate coffee ice cream. Steaming coffee ice cream.
The rain chose that minute to pick up. Rather than risk their eye makeup running down their faces, the Goths huddled at a corner table, slurping their coffee like five-year-olds with glasses of chocolate milk.
Before I could resume my argument in favor of telling Neko about Graeme, the door opened again. I bit back an exasperated sigh and quenched another shiver. This was the bakery that Melissa worried wasn’t busy enough? The newcomer was a regular; Melissa grabbed for a carryout cup before the guy had even reached the counter.
Money changed hands, and I cleared my throat, anxious to make my point before yet another customer could interrupt us. “It’s just that I feel like I’m lying,” I said, keeping my voice low enough that the Goths couldn’t hear me. Not that they’d be listening all that carefully. They seemed intent on breaking whatever law of physics said that two bodies couldn’t occupy the same point in space and time. I turned so I couldn’t be distracted by their acrobatics. “Lying to Neko and lying to Graeme.”
“‘Lying’ is a pretty strong word,” Melissa said. I could see she intended to fight me on this. I should have waited to bring it up. The whole long-term life plan thing must really be bothering her. And the fact that Neko’s current boyfriend was another stop on her long road of dating failure only heightened her resistance. I gritted my teeth. I was sorry about Jacques—I really was. And I was sorry about the octopus Dedicated, and sorry about every other bad date Melissa had ever suffered. But I didn’t think it was fair for her to put the kibosh on my own happiness.
I opened my mouth to tell her so, but the damned bakery door opened yet again. As Melissa served up four Cinnamon Blondes to go, I held back a pointed comment about the bakery’s constant patrons. When the harried young mother added the pasteboard box to her shopping bags, I almost offered to open her umbrella for her, to get her out of the shop and back into the rain. My fingers twitched, eager to turn the sign around on the door, change it from Walk On In to Walk On By.
Instead, I delved back into my argument, no, my discussion with Melissa. “It does feel like lying,” I insisted. She continued to look unmoved. “I’m hiding a pretty essential truth. How would you feel if I hadn’t told you about Graeme?”
“But you did tell me. You had to. I’m your best friend.”
My sigh of exasperation threatened to burst into an angry shout as yet another crowd of customers came in. There were four this time, and each wanted a complicated coffee drink, along with one of Melissa’s trademark sweets. As the inevitable clanging and banging began, I forced myself to stop thinking about the Friendship Test, to set aside my frustration with Melissa. Today just wasn’t the day.
Besides, I had plenty of other things to worry about. I glanced at her calendar again. October sixth. I had three and a half weeks left. Twenty-five days until Samhain. Until I was tested by the Coven. Of course, if I lost my books and Neko in the testing, then I’d hardly have to worry about divulging the secret identity of my boyfriend.
“There!” Melissa exclaimed, and I realized we were once again alone at the counter.
“What?” I looked over my shoulder.
“You were doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
“Zoning out. Going somewhere. Dropping out.”
I hunched my shoulders defensively. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You get this look in your eyes. Like you’re staring inside instead of outside.”
I forced myself to smile. “No great inside/outside going on here. I’m just trying to enjoy a great cup of tea.”
“You don’t even like Earl Grey that much. Listen, you’ve got to stop dwelling on things.”
She was one to talk. “I’m not dwelling!” I realized how loud my voice had gotten, and I glanced at the Goths. I was only marginally comforted by the fact that they were busy testing each other’s tattoos for secret Braille messages.
“You are dwelling. You’re stewing. Look. Keeping Graeme a secret from Neko is not that big of a deal. It’s not like you and that cat-freak are lovers or anything.”
“That’s a terrible thing to say!”
This time, the Goths did look over their shoulders, staring at me as if I was a madwoman in some bizarre zoo. The boy whispered something to the girl, and she nuzzled his neck. By apparent mutual agreement, they gathered up their leather jackets and braved the great outdoors, leaving behind cups, stirrers and a litter of extra sugar packets.
Melissa clicked her tongue. “Come on,” she said. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. It’s just that you’ve become so distant. Sometimes I feel that if we didn’t have the Friendship Test, we wouldn’t have any friendship at all.”
“I’m not distant. I’ve been busy!”
Melissa cocked one eyebrow at me—a gesture that always made me jealous, because I couldn’t do it.
“I have been!” I said. “Nothing’s changed between us. It’s not like we’ve stopped being friends or anything. You’re exaggerating, to justify your stupid test.”
“All right,” she said, spreading out a hand towel on the glass-fronted refrigerated case. “Tell me what I’ve got inside here.”
“What?” Her question made no sense.
“Yeah. It’s a Friday afternoon, and you’ve been standing here for over an hour. If you’ve paid any attention to me, to what’s important to me, you’ll have an idea of what I’ve got in the case.”
I didn’t have the slightest idea what was underneath the towel. “That’s ridiculous,” I said.
“Come on. Don’t stall. You usually notice right off the bat.”
“I’ve usually heard you talking about it, all week long.”
“That’s my point, exactly.”
Oh.
I closed my eyes, trying to remember what I’d seen when I’d walked into the bakery. Nothing. I didn’t have any image in my mind, no thoughts at all.
I thought about nudging behind the towel with my wi
tchcraft. I should be able to do something. Maybe a mirror spell, working off of the chrome finish on the sides of the refrigerated case…
I glanced at Melissa’s set jaw, and I realized that using my powers would only make things worse. Well, I knew her repertoire. I could make a guess—an educated one. Like best friends make.
“Hazelnut Claires de la Lune, Latin Lemon Merengues and Savory Basil Crèmes.”
“Wrong, wrong and wrong!” Melissa shook her finger at me with each incorrect guess. She was really angry. Really, truly hurt. And when she pulled back the towel, I began to understand why.
Devil’s Nips—rum-drenched chocolate truffles.
Lime Stars—miniature key lime tarts, built on star-shaped pastry.
Mint Pillows—mint-infused meringue floating on a bed of homemade chocolate pudding.
Rum, lime and mint. The ingredients of mojitos, our bonding cocktail of choice.
Melissa’s voice shook as she said, “The rum would have kept, but the limes were drying out. The oil in their rinds only last so long. And the mint was absolutely on its last legs.”
“Oh, Melissa,” I said, suddenly realizing how much I had missed our evenings together. How long had it been? Over three weeks.
And then, before I could justify everything I’d been doing, before I could explain about Haylee and Renaissance art and the Kennedy Center and the centerstone—if I even could explain about the centerstone—the door to the bakery opened yet again.
This time, it was a mother with two adorable children, both under the age of five. Both barely able to see the baked riches spread out on the counter and in the glass case. Both afflicted with a terrible case of indecision, as they weighed the relative merits of Lemon Bears versus Chocolate Dreams, with the Mint Pillows thrown in for good, guilty measure.
I waited for the mother to chivy them along, but she seemed in no hurry. I waited for Melissa to make some excuse, so that she could at least turn back to me, at least acknowledge my awkward discomfort. I waited for the children to make up their minds—this wasn’t the last time the two kids were ever going to eat!
And when another minute ticked by, and another, and another, I realized that I couldn’t wait anymore. I couldn’t stand there as if nothing was wrong. I couldn’t hang out, and try to come up with an apology that would mean something.
I felt trapped. And that made me angry.
I shoved my tea mug back on the counter, and I gathered up my soggy umbrella. Melissa flashed me a “wait” look, but I only shrugged. What good would it do for me to wait? What could I really say, to justify myself? Why should I have to justify myself, when I had so many other things going on? And how the hell was Melissa worried about her long-term savings when she had so many customers that a friend couldn’t get a word in edgewise?
When I got to the door, I turned back, but Melissa was smiling down at the indecisive little girl. The Devil’s Nips glared at me from the refrigerated case, like baleful eyes witnessing my departure.
I stomped out onto the cobblestones, my feet slipping in the sodden remains of a pile of leaves. I cursed and forced myself to walk a little more gingerly. I had been right to leave. I needed a friend who had time to listen to me. Time to help. Not someone who sublimated her passive-aggressiveness into freaking baked goods.
I ducked into the lobby of the giant Barnes & Noble store on the corner. While my umbrella dripped onto my shoes, I reached deep in my purse, digging until I found my cell phone. I punched in Graeme’s number, taking a perverse pleasure that I remembered the digits, that I didn’t need to rely on the phone’s memory. I didn’t have any idea what time it was in London, but this was an emergency. I needed to hear his voice.
One ring. Two. Three. Four.
His answering machine. I swore under my breath and hung up. No reason to leave him a message. No reason to tell him I’d just had a fight with my best friend. A fight that she wasn’t even fighting.
Before I flipped the phone closed, I got another idea. I scrolled back through recent calls I had placed. Sure enough, the number was still there, from when I had called to confirm our earlier meeting.
“Haylee?” I said when she answered on the second ring. “It’s Jane. I know it’s short notice, but I was wondering if you were free to join me for dinner tonight?”
18
Well, at least the rain had stopped falling.
Not that I could be certain, locked away in my basement, kept company by no one but my warder and my familiar. David had insisted that we extinguish the overhead lights for our all-day Saturday session—we needed to distance ourselves from the modern world and focus on ancient power. Blah, blah, blah.
We’d already burned through one set of six tapers, tall dripless candles that had been brand-new when we started. I had just replaced them in the matched silver candlesticks that were part of my collection of witchy books, magic wands and other artifacts. Part of the collection that would be forfeit to the Coven if I failed to set the centerstone.
Let’s face it—I enjoyed a romantic candlelit dinner as much as the next girl, but this was a little ridiculous. There was nothing romantic about trying to read by candlelight. In fact, in the past several hours, I had gained a healthy respect for Abraham Lincoln. I wouldn’t have lasted one week, doing school homework by firelight. Our former president supposedly made it through years, studying in his log cabin.
That was then. This was now. My fingers itched to turn on the Sylvania 60-watts above our head.
“You need to concentrate,” David said.
“You’ve been saying that for hours,” I groused. Neko winced and shifted a little farther away from me, as if he didn’t want to be caught in the backlash of my warder’s anger.
“You’ve needed to do it for hours.” David sighed and pushed back from the table. “This isn’t just some theoretical study, you know. That jasper egg was real. That e-mail was a threat. You need to know how to defend yourself magically.”
“I know,” I said automatically. I wasn’t going to tell him about the three other e-mail messages I’d received, all with similar pictures and messages. I knew that self-defense was important. I needed to learn how to protect myself from ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties. And things that go bump in the night.
But really. How many consecutive hours could one girl spend studying?
My stomach rumbled, and I cringed with embarrassment. My lunchtime peanut butter and jelly sandwich seemed a long time ago. Even if I had eaten a huge dinner with Haylee the night before.
She had agreed to meet me for supper, and after a bit of back and forth, we’d decided to get together in the city. Between the rain and my nonconfrontation with Melissa, I was feeling deeply in need of comfort food, so we descended on Café La Ruche, a French bistro just off Georgetown’s main street. I started with French onion soup and moved on to spicy lamb sausages, all served with fresh, crusty baguettes. There was no need to observe First Date Rules of dining decorum—it wasn’t like I needed to worry about looking foolish as I struggled with strands of melted cheese from the soup. Or at least, I didn’t worry very much.
Haylee and I weren’t through talking when we finished our main courses, so we ordered dessert (chocolate mousse for her, a homemade apple dumpling for me, complete with caramel sauce and fresh whipped cream.) I actually found myself quite pleased with my ability to smother my sorrows in a blanket of fat.
I’d told Haylee about my spat with Melissa, and she’d confirmed that my bakery-obsessed friend was out of her mind. There was no need to expand a business that was so busy the owner couldn’t find five minutes to converse with a friend.
Haylee had asked me about how things were going with Graeme. I told her that he was out of town, and that I was going a bit insane waiting for him to get back. She’d laughed knowingly. Sympathetically. No, empathetically, as if she knew how hard it was to wait for a loved one to return.
And there was something else.
Haylee taught me a
new spell.
It had started as a joke. We’d wanted to linger at our table, long after ordinary customers would have paid their tabs and left. When the waiter came by to refill our mugs of tea for the fourth time, Haylee had touched his wrist with one of her long, perfectly manicured fingers, cupping her Torch with her other hand and muttering a few words under her breath. “We’ll call you if we need you,” she said.
I watched as he blinked, confused and unbalanced for just a moment. When he stepped back from our table, he stumbled, as if he’d been sleeping on his feet. Haylee repeated her touch and the hastily spoken spell when the hostess stopped by to see if we needed anything, and again when the manager drifted over to see why we were lingering for hours. Each person who approached us left with a dazed look and an inability to remember that we were sitting at the table.
Which wasn’t a problem until we tried to pay our bill. I attempted to catch the waiter’s eye, with no luck whatsoever. I waved to the hostess. I actually reached out to touch the manager’s sleeve. At that last gesture, Haylee had laughed. “Don’t worry,” she’d said. “You can’t reach them.”
And we’d left—like high school kids skipping out on a meal of burgers and fries. I’d felt totally guilty but also strangely thrilled by the power. In fact, my fingers tingled when Haylee accidentally brushed against them, our hands meeting in mid-air after I tried to flag down the manager. “How long will they be like that?” I’d asked, before we parted ways by Haylee’s Mini Cooper.
“Until I release the spell. I’ll do it before I go to sleep tonight.” I frowned, uncomfortable with the notion of shoplifting an evening’s food and drink. Haylee’s laugh was clear as the rain-freshened air. “Don’t worry, silly. They’ll be good as new in the morning.”
I waved as she drove off, but then I sneaked back into the restaurant to leave some cash on our table. There’d been no need to sneak, though. No one noticed me at all, and our dishes were still sitting on the abandoned tabletop. I had sighed and told myself that someone would be able to notice the money in the morning.