The Trouble with Magic

by Madelyn Alt

  "I see," I said, though I didn't.

  "She was writing him letters. God, she was so selfish! So freaking selfish. Did she think I wasn't sharing Roger's bed, too? When that was the only thing he was good for?" The wrong end of the gun was waving around erratically. "She said… she said she was in love with him. Letter after letter. She wanted him to leave me. To run away with her. Love," she spat. "My mother wouldn't know love from a hole in her head. Not until I showed her the difference."

  I was starting to feel light-headed, standing there on the braided circle. So much venom. So much hatred. The voice from the cemetery came rushing back. Letters, my letters…

  "Your mother's letters," I said, desperate the shake the strange feeling from my head. "Someone will find them. Someone will put two and two together. Maybe even Roger. They're evidence—"

  "Not anymore." The smile that touched her lips chilled me to the bone. "I burned them. Every last one. And I deleted them from her computer and e-mail that morning. Poof. No one else will ever have to know my mother was a whore."

  Now I understood. Too late.

  Something was burning in my palm. As if from a dream, I watched my hand open to display the hematite round within. Mental clarity, Maggie. Clear thinking.

  "You know, I have to thank you," Jacqui was saying, her voice sounding tinny and far away. "They say confession is good for the soul, and they're right. I've never felt so marvelous."

  From the windows above us I saw the dark clouds split open with a great, blinding flash of light. From there time seemed to shift into slow gear. I saw Jacqui lift her head momentarily to gape at the windows. The hematite flew up from my hand, arcing end over end toward the stairs. It clattered down the steps, making a racket I would never have suspected from such a small object. Jacqui's head whipped leeward in obvious confusion.

  Before I knew what I was doing, I lurched forward, toward her. She seemed to have forgotten about the gun in her hand for the moment, and as WWMD (What Would Magnum Do) flashed through my head, I decided to take full advantage of the opportunity at hand before I could change my mind.

  She saw my approach from the corner of her eye at the last second. Her head, and the gun, came back around toward me, her mouth wide in an O of surprise. But it was too late. As if I'd planned the whole thing, my foot swung up in the perfect imitation of a cheerleader's high kick. My boot connected with her hand, knocking the gun up just as a flash of light and a horrendous reverberation of sound filled my head. Glass shattered and bits of it came raining down upon us from a skylight.

  Everything happened so fast. Before I could form a thought as to what came next, Jacqui took a single instinctive step backward in response to my charge. She threw up her arms, pinwheeling them for balance. I reached out to grab her, heedless of the gun now hanging limp in her hand, but my fingers caught air as she tumbled backward out of my grasp and thudded painfully down the stairs.

  My mouth open in shock, I peered over the gallery rail at her body lying still and twisted in the open doorway. Slowly I became aware of a muted banging coming from elsewhere in the store. Another ghostly warning? The answer came seconds later as urgent voices filled the storeroom below and I heard someone calling my name just as my knees caved away beneath me and I sank to the floor.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I came out of it to find a familiar face hovering over me. "Jacqui… ?"

  "She'll live, unfortunately," Marcus grunted uncharitably as he helped me sit up. "A bit broken up, but bones heal. She got lucky. They're getting her into an ambulance as we speak."

  "How did you… how did you know?"

  "Evie," he said, cradling me against him and stroking my hair as though comforting a child. "She's been trying to call you for hours. She saw you. This room. A gun. The phone rang busy, no answer. She felt certain you were still here. She tried sending you a thought message, but apparently it didn't work."

  I thought of the eerie voice I'd heard. "So she called you?"

  "And me."

  I turned to find Tom Fielding standing four feet away, watching us. I started guiltily. "Tom…"

  He turned away, his gaze traveling in a slow circle around the room, his face oddly expressionless.

  "Jacqui killed Isabella, Tom. Her mother was sleeping with her fiance, and I guess she flipped. She blamed her for everything."

  "A woman scorned," Marcus murmured. "Jealousy is a very strong motivator." Then under his breath, I heard him say, "Dark energy."

  "She was also responsible for the attack on Ryan Davidson with a gun from Felicity's house. She thought she'd pull the noose around Felicity's neck just a little bit tighter. She even thought she'd bring Marcus into question."

  I pulled gently away from Marcus and walked over to where Tom stood staring up at the night sky through the hole in the skylight, rain dripping down upon his head. "Tom—"

  "I took her into custody for her own safety, Maggie. Maybe it was wrong of me; I don't know. It was obvious that something wasn't right about the whole situation, but I couldn't put my finger on it. I thought, maybe, if I could get the perp feeling comfortable enough, something would slip. I was trying to tell you that earlier. I just couldn't get you to listen." His eyes met mine. "Or maybe you just didn't want to listen."

  Everything happened all at once then. Other officers came to take evidence. I gave my version of the night's events several times, and had to promise to come in the next day to give a formal, signed deposition. And then it was all over. The police wandered away, two by two, their popping, bubblegum lights fading into the night until it seemed impossible that they had been there at all.

  Tom disappeared before I could thank him. The last time I saw him, he was standing silently by the long glass cabinet, arms crossed over his chest, one hip cocked against the glass as he watched the rest of us picking up the pieces with that same masked expression that drove me crazy. I knew a moment of regret when I discovered him gone. We had a lot to talk about, but it looked as though it wouldn't happen tonight.

  At long last, needing to be alone with my thoughts, to make sense of what had happened, I sent Marcus away even when he would have stayed.

  I wandered around Felicity's ritual space with a sense of awe and gratitude, touching the shelves of books, the cabinets full of treasures, the things she loved. I knew in my heart that my safety tonight had been somehow tied to this room, this sacred place, and to the words Marcus had spoken over me. I felt at a loss to explain everything, but what I did know I associated with Felicity's protective presence. For she'd been with me tonight, guiding me, watching over me. I'd felt her, just as surely if she'd stood by my side. I think I'd made her proud.

  As for me, I felt somehow different. Had I been changed by the events of the past two weeks? Well, I no longer thought that living in Stony Mill meant leading a humdrum existence. And I was ready to make a few changes in my life. No longer would I lead my life worrying so much about what others might think, or suffering crippling guilt when I thought of acting on my own behalf. Tonight I'd thought for myself, and while it had been touch-and-go for a while there, everything had turned out just fine. It was high time I grew up, once and for all.

  As for magic coexisting in the world around us, well, the jury was still out on that point. Let me just say that my mind had been… opened to the possibility.

  * * * *

  They released Felicity that very night. I know because she showed up on my doorstep, as elegant and cheery as ever, even with the mist clinging to her hair and dampening her clothes. I laughed with relief when I saw her, threw my arms around her neck, and hugged her tight. So much in my life had changed in the past two weeks. So much of it could be attributed to this fascinating, honorable, wonderfully eccentric woman. In spite of everything that had happened, I wouldn't have it any other way.

  Jetta James never knew for sure how close she'd come to her own unfortunate end, but I'll bet she suspected, once the whole story came out. I ran into her at the Java Hut a week
later. Her gaze skated past me as she sailed confidently toward the door in a tight black suit and overtly sexual three-inch heels, but at the last minute she'd paused and glanced back. In that moment we exchanged a look of understanding and recognition, a look of shared experience. We'd each done the two-step with death and come away unsinged. That's quite something.

  Jeremy Harding left town for a while, but I heard through the grapevine a few months later that he was back in town and up to his old tricks with Jetta, who may or may not have cast Ryan Davidson aside. Who knows, maybe Jeremy and Jetta deserved one another after all. Lately I've heard rumors that he might be considering a bid for town council. A scary thought, but everyone knows it's the privileged few who control things for the rest of us. Such is the way of this crazy, mixed-up world. Maybe someday Jeremy and Ryan would get together and bury the hatchet. They had a lot more in common than either would admit to.

  Or maybe not.

  I wish I could say that things between Tom and me had been settled, but I hadn't seen him since that night. I wish I could say that our little town soon eased back into its quiet little routine as if nothing had ever happened. I'm sorry to say I can't. You see, something was awakened that fall, something dark and powerful that in these early stages only sensitives felt. Something I didn't completely understand but knew enough to fear. And I couldn't help remembering Marcus's words of caution:

  I have a feeling something is going to happen, he'd said. At this point it could go either way…

  Fresh on the wind was a sense of trouble not far behind, tainting the very air we breathed. Stony Mill old-timers gathered on weathered wooden benches in the park and complained about how much things had changed, and how isolated they felt from everything they'd grown up knowing. Farmers who gathered at the feed store for the combined pleasures of purchasing grain and shooting the bull ended up swapping stories about how the goddamned kids didn't respect property anymore; more than one had gone to dire straits to protect his roadside mailbox, first with bricks, then massive fieldstones, finally giving up entirely, trading up for a post office box in town to save himself the expense. And forget about respecting their elders—did kids even understand the .word anymore? Road rage raised its ugly head unexpectedly on our quiet, tree-lined streets. But worse than all of that was the scope of evidence the N.I.G.H.T.S. had been quietly amassing that gave proof we were not alone on this physical plane. Even with my limited understanding of such otherworldly things, I knew this couldn't be good.

  Because I, too, had sensed something big on the horizon. Something that went beyond the real world and that delved into a shadow world that until then had been hidden to me.

  Real or imagined?

  You be the judge.

  END