The Trouble with Magic

by Madelyn Alt

  Steff was pawing through my things, shoving aside a compact, lipstick, comb, the ever-so-discreet pink plastic tampon case, my wallet and checkbook, a couple of bills I needed to pay… Reversing her steps, she seized upon the wallet she'd passed over a few seconds before, fanning swiftly through it until she came across Felicity's business card in the change purse.

  "Okay… Got it. Okay. I hope… damn it, where did everybody go, you'd think we were the only people in the world who had reason to be at this cemetery. You okay, Mags?" She didn't wait for a nod; her fingers had already dialed the number.

  She sat very still with the phone held to her ear while a phone rang off the hook several miles away. Consternation carved itself deeper into her face with every passing moment. "Damn it, no answer."

  She was interrupted once again by the roar of a car engine and the sharp bark of skidding tires as a sleek black sportscar turned too fast off the road into the semideserted graveyard, chewing up gravel as it thundered straight for us.

  "Who the hell—?"

  Chapter Eleven

  How Liss knew I was in trouble I had no idea, but I wasn't about to complain.

  Her door flew open and she burst out like an avenging an gel, her forehead furrowed with worry. "Maggie, is that you? Good heavens, child, are you all right?"

  Steff stood up as Felicity hurried over. "She just collapsed," she explained quickly, "As fast as she went down, I thought she'd twisted her ankle, but there doesn't appear to be any sign of injury. Her vitals check okay. It's possible she hit her head. Pupils look normal, but I think we'd better take her in, just in case."

  I managed to shake my spinning head. "No, I didn't—"

  "Don't try to talk yet, dear. Here, let's get her to the car. Mine might be a trifle more comfortable.'"

  Together they managed to get me to my feet. My knees fell as watery as half-formed Jell-O, but supported between the two of them as I was, I made it to the passenger seat of Felicity's car, where I collapsed again. Nausea enfolded me in a smothering embrace. I couldn't remember the last time I felt so ill. So… overcome.

  Felicity knelt in the grass at my feet without a thought for the mess the grass was likely making of her fawn wool slacks.

  "Now, where does it hurt? Your ankle?" she asked, somehow managing to sound both businesslike and caring at once. "Can you tell us what happened?"

  Felicity's presence proved to be exactly the medicine I'd needed. Far away from the cloying air of the Mausoleum, the fog that shrouded my eyes began slowly to lift. My thoughts cleared. My lungs expanded without struggle. "I didn't… turn my ankle." My lips were as dry as beach sand drying in the sun. I ran my tongue over them. A futile effort. Sand against sand. "I felt… something… in there. Heard something."

  Her hands went still on my ankle. She lifted her gaze to mine. "Like yesterday? At your apartment?"

  I nodded. "Yes."

  Steff had been hanging back, her arms wrapped around her waist, but now she stepped forward, a question in her eyes. "What about your apartment, Mags?"

  Tears sprang to my eyes unbidden, because as reason and logic filtered back into my aching head, I knew what all of this must mean. The smile I gave them was meant to be reassuring, but I knew it didn't fool either of them. Hell, it didn't even fool me. "I think… I think I might need to see a psychiatrist."

  Felicity said nothing. Steff, on the other hand, spluttered in disbelief. "Of all the foolish things to say. Why don't you just tell us what happened."

  I took a moment to gather my thoughts, then began haltingly to tell them what had happened. Everything, from the voice at my apartment, to the mysterious force I'd encountered at the viewing, and finally, to the strange events at the cemetery and, more importantly, the Mausoleum. I left nothing out. When I'd finished, I leaned back, a little breathless, and waited for them to agree with me. Yes, Maggie my girl, you're right. You do need professional help. Only a complete lunatic hears voices no one else can hear.

  I mean, walls of energy holding you back? Come on.

  I didn't have to wait long.

  "Well. If you expected to shock me with your little… revelation… then you're sadly mistaken, Margaret Mary-Catherine O'Neill," Steff said, stiffening her spine in her best impression of my mother. She did a good job, actually. I'd never seen her so ready to squash my objections. If she'd had a wooden spoon within reach, I'd have quailed in fear. "You're one of the sanest people I know."

  Felicity nodded. "I would have to say I agree with—er, terribly sorry, I don't think we've been introduced—but I do agree with you, in any case."

  Steff held out her hand. "Stephanie Evans. But please, call me Steff."

  "A pleasure, my dear. Felicity Dow."

  "You know, I'm glad you're both getting along so famously," I interrupted, losing whatever shreds of patience I had left, "but if neither of you think I need a psychiatrist, then what do you suggest I do about all of this?"

  Okay, so I sounded petulant. I couldn't help it. The psychiatrist had been my first and best solution. Without it, I felt as though I had lost my only hope.

  "Well," Felicity said in a calm voice as she got to her feet and dusted off her knees. "First things first—it appears we need to convince you that you're not a candidate for the local lunatic asylum."

  "Aren't I?"

  "No," Steff asserted firmly, jumping right in. "In all the years I've known you, you've never once shown signs of being delusional. Except maybe when you were fifteen and you were so certain that you were meant to marry Johnny Depp. I think you must have written Mrs. Maggie Depp on every single flat surface you came into contact with."

  I smiled in spite of myself. "Well, I still say we were meant to be together, but he hasn't come to his senses yet."

  "That sounds like you. You must be feeling a little better."

  "A little. But still having trouble accepting the whole woo-woo factor."

  "You need to open your mind, just a little."

  "It's just that the idea that ghosts… spirits… whatever you want to call them, walk the earth… it's a little too much for my poor brain to comprehend at the moment. I mean, I was brought up old-time Catholic in a world where modern, scientific thinking became a kind of religion all its own. You know what I mean, Steff. And just when I finally had come to terms with the disappointment that there is no God, no Devil, Heaven, Hell, nothing beyond a temporary life on this lonely water-covered lump of rock…" I shook my head, unable to keep on with that line of thinking. "I mean, so ghosts really do exist. What's next? Fairies? Elves? Pixies? Trolls?"

  I giggled, but it was a nervous giggle, because from there, it sure wasn't a huge leap to witches and magic. Real magic.

  Criminey.

  "Oh, I don't know, Mags. Is it so hard to believe? I mean, that woman we met this afternoon—what was her name, Jacquilyn Something-or-other?—she could easily have been a troll in disguise," Steff said, making a madcap stab at humor.

  I winced. That was Felicity's niece Steff was roasting in such unflattering terms. Maybe I should have explained the connection…

  But Felicity only chuckled. "She can be a bit troll-like, can't she? My niece hasn't quite gotten the hang of social niceties."

  Steff looked stricken. "Oh. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know she was related."

  "Never mind that. I would attribute it to her parentage, you know, but it isn't nice to speak ill of the dead. Though as for Jeremy, well, his behavior speaks for itself, doesn't it." She paused a moment as if considering her next words carefully. "Maggie, I have some friends I think it's time for you to meet. If you're of a mind to. It might help you come to terms with what's been happening to you. Do you have any plans for this evening?"

  Dinner with my parents and a possible encounter with Tom Fielding, the prospect of which I found slightly more terrifying than the idea that I had been hearing the voices from The Great Beyond. "Kind of."

  "Can you meet me at the store at eleven o'clock tonight?"

  I agre
ed, but I couldn't help wondering what I was letting myself in for.

  My mother wasn't expecting me until five, but I decided to go out just as soon as I'd dropped off Steff at the apartments. The old homestead wasn't my usual choice for a lazy Saturday afternoon, but just now I felt a strong need to be back among the world of the living. The normal. Back to where the sun rose and set, the dead stayed dead, and the living were as screwed up as they had always been.

  There was something so reassuring about that.

  I puttered to a halt beside the curb in front of the ancient, two-story farmhouse that had once belonged to my grandparents, and it had been old then. Grandma Cora was long since gone, and Grandpa Gordon suffered from emphysema and now lived in a little apartment that had been tacked on to the back of the garage in order to accommodate his electric motor-chair. Just within the official borders of town, the house had once been in the country but had since been swallowed up by subdivisions and minimarts. True, the old-style farmhouse with its carriage barn-cum-workshop-cum-garage looked out of place in the midst of the fresh, new, neutral-toned houses, all of which suffered from a dreadful Stepford kind of sameness, but it was sturdy enough to withstand ten decades of steamy Indiana summers and harsh winter winds, and no doubt it would withstand many more decades of the same, long after its high-style companions had dwindled to dust. To me it represented hearth and home, stability, a family that sometimes irritated the heck out of me but whom I loved just the same.

  Normalcy.

  I rolled my window down to ensure Christine's continued cooperation, then walked slowly up the brick path beneath the widespread bowers of three sturdy maple trees that towered over everything in sight. The strong afternoon sun filtered through the lacy cover of brightly colored leaves, dappling the path with flecks of light. Pausing there, I smiled, holding my hands out and watching the lights dance across my palms. A sudden breeze touched the windchimes on the front porch and sent a smattering of dried leaves skirling about my feet. I toekicked them, my mood suddenly lighter than it had been all day.

  "There she is! Hallo, Maggie-May-I!"

  Grandpa Gordon had a gazillion pet names for me, but Maggie-May-I was the one I'd heard most often throughout the years. I turned toward the sound of his voice, a smile and a big hug at the ready. "Hey there, Gramps!"

  My grandfather was one of my most favorite people in the world, and a dearer, sweeter man you would be hard pressed to find. Emphysema had hit him hard seven years ago, greatly restricting his abilities and forcing him to carry an oxygen tank by his side, but still he greeted each day with laughter and song, and a respect for the world at large. I'd often thought it sad that my mother had taken after her more austere mother than Grandpa. Perhaps Grandma Cora's stern influence had been too strong to oppose.

  "Come to have dinner with us, have you?"

  "Well…"

  His rheumy eyes didn't miss a thing. "So you had a better offer, did ya? Hope the young buck's worth the effort. Your mother will be fit to be tied. You know how she gets."

  "Yeah. I know." Boy, did I ever.

  "That's all right, then. Watch out, girl, I'm coming through. Tally-hoooo!"

  He barreled forward along the path with a clatter of rubber wheels and a mighty electric hum that forced me to skitter out of the way or be run down right there and then. At the last second he twirled his joystick control fiercely. The rotating seat of his wheelchair whipped around and he whooped like a kid spinning on a piano stool. The whoop brought on a hacking cough that racked his frail shoulders. When it was done, he inhaled deeply through his oxygen tube and sighed.

  "Ya know, I love this thing," he wheezed with a grin as he gave the motor a fond pat. "Best invention there ever was. I could be laid up in there sick as a dog with tubes stuck up my ying-yang, moaning and groaning about my lot in life until the Grim came to claim my scrawny bones. Gettin' old's the pits, don't ever let anyone tell you different. But instead, here I am out in the glory the Good Lord gave us, a-wheelin' around like a young boy on a boxcart. Ain't life a wonder. Now where was I?"

  "Mom's going to kill me," I reminded him.

  "Well, you know yer mum pretty well. She's been slavin' away in that kitchen since before lunch."

  Yeah, but I'd take a ticked-off mom over what I'd left behind at the cemetery any day. "It's okay, Grandpa. She'll get over it." Eventually.

  "Best get it over with, I reckon," he said, setting his wheels into motion once again in a trajectory that would guide us both around the house toward the mud room outside the kitchen. "Want me to run interference?"

  "Oh, Gramps." I couldn't help smiling.

  "I'm gettin' pretty good at it, ya know. Years of practice."

  "No, Gramps. I'm a grown woman. Besides, Mom would see right through you."

  We had reached the bottom of the wooden ramp Dad had hooked up to the back porch to allow Grandpa easy access to the kitchen. Grandpa Gordon looked up at me as if he intended to say something more, then he shrugged. "Suit yerself." He started up the ramp. "Just don't say I didn't warn you."

  I trudged up after him, steeling myself for the impending storm.

  Grandpa rammed his motor-chair into the unlatched kitchen door. "Patricia, look who found her way home!"

  A quick shuffle of feet met my ears as my mother rushed forward, her eyes flashing intent while she brandished a wooden spoon in one hand. "Really, Dad! Do you have to bash around like that when you come in the house? You know I have a cake in the oven!"

  "Oh, put that thing away, missy. I brought your daughter in to ya."

  My mom's eyes cut my way and her stance softened, if only slightly. "You're early, Margaret."

  I cleared my throat. "I know. I—"

  "I'm glad, actually. I could use a hand peeling potatoes." She walked back into the kitchen without waiting to see if I'd follow.

  Grandpa Gordon arched a grizzled brow at me. Are you coming in? I mouthed to him hopefully. He held up his hands as if to say, Sorry, little girl, you're on your own. The coward. I squared my shoulders and followed my mom into the house.

  "Potatoes are draining in the sink. Peelers there," she said, opening the drawer where the odd kitchen utensils such as potato peelers and rubber bowl scrapers and barbecue shish kebob skewers and turkey basters had been kept for as long as I could remember.

  The thing was, I hated potato peelers. I could never get the hang of them, they never failed to pinch tender fingers, and the potatoes always ended up looking like they'd gone through a paper shredder. I selected a knife instead and grabbed a potato from the colander in the sink.

  "What are you doing?"

  I looked up. My mother was watching me with an expression of mingled incredulity and annoyance. "I'm getting ready to peel potatoes."

  "With that?" Her eyes jabbed distastefully at the slender blade as she stirred a mystery concoction on the stove that smelled like nirvana. "That's why God made potato peelers, dear. It wouldn't be right to turn up our noses at something he put on this earth to make our lives easier, now would it?"

  Just once, I would like to be able to do something without being reminded of God's wondrous interventions in our lives. And for something as trivial as a potato peeler, for Pete's sake. You'd think He'd have more important things to muck with.

  Sighing, I set aside the knife and picked up the metal instrument of tuber torture. After only a few strokes, the knuckle of my first finger throbbed like a fresh bruise. By the time I'd finished one potato in teeth-gritted silence and let it slide into the battered pot already half-filled with water, I decided I'd best get my confession over with. Maybe Mother would get so irritated she'd cast me out on my ear, before I was forced to finish the entire pot of potatoes.

  That almost sounded like a plan.

  "Uhm, Mom…"

  She didn't even look up. "Yes, dear?"

  I cleared my throat. "Er, would you be terribly put out if I missed dinner this evening? Just a postponement," I hurried on as the big wooden spoon froze om
inously in midrotation. "You know I hate to miss it." Was that my nose growing longer? "I wouldn't even ask if it wasn't something important." That much, at least, was true. I did have some sense of self-preservation. "Something really, really important."

  "What is so important that it's more important than your family?"

  Ooooh. Good question. I scrambled my brains for an answer. "I, uh, have a date."

  That got her attention. "A date?"

  I didn't like her tone. I mean, just because I didn't have a lawyer husband like Mel and just because I didn't have to fight the men off with a baseball bat and a well-timed bucket of ice water like Steff didn't mean I couldn't get a date when I wanted to.

  "Yeah. A date," I said, my tone just a teensy bit snappish as I threw the potato I'd been peeling into the pan with a splash and seized another.

  "Margaret! Careful. I just cleaned the ceiling." She covered the concoction she'd been stirring and put it in the oven. "Now, tell me. Who is this young man of yours? Have you been seeing him long?"

  Hmm. Maybe I should rethink this. I wasn't sure that a first date would qualify as an important enough event according to my mom's rigorous standards. "Well, I've known him a long time, as it turns out. We went to school together. He was a few years ahead of me. We're, uh, going out to dinner. And a movie."

  Actually, I had no idea what we were doing, or even if I was still going to go through with it at all. I had my doubts, and they were starting to get the better of me.

  "How nice. You know how much your father and I hope to see you settled. A nice Catholic man from a decent family. He is Catholic?"

  "Of course," I lied shamelessly.

  That seemed to settle it for her. No longer did she appear on the verge of telling me I was grounded and couldn't leave the house. "What's his name, dear?"

  "Tom. Tom Fielding."

  "From the police department? How wonderful. Your dad works with his father, you know. You should invite him to dinner with us soon. Just a nice, quiet dinner with your father and me. And Grandpa Gordon, of course. To get acquainted."