Bast jumped up on my lap and butted her head against my chin. I jerked back, startled. I hadn’t realized the cats had followed us in.
“You should calm down. You’re frightening the cats,” Maggie said with a chuckle. She picked up a cookie — some sort of Milano, I thought — and bit the end.
“Excuse me for getting upset when someone accuses me of killing people,” I snapped.
She shrugged and took another bite, chewed, and swallowed before speaking again. “You don’t look entirely yourself today. All sorts of energy flying around you that’s not usually there, and I can only get hints of what it’s from, which bothers me. My Sight is usually more reliable. So I provoked you.”
I wasn’t mollified. “I hope you got what you wanted.”
“Not really, no. Air, earth, something more that I can’t place, and yes, a hint of death, but as if you’ve brushed against it, not caused it. That’s all I’m sure of.”
Air — might be the Lung dragon. Earth was certainly the trolls. It wouldn’t surprise me if she couldn’t identify Haris. And the death? “The ghost touched me this morning when I was circling her with salt.”
“And did that help in your neighborhood?”
“A little.” I picked up my teacup again, wincing as I saw the chip. “Feelings were muted, but not gone.”
“Pity. I was hoping it would be more effective. I haven’t had a chance to ask the others if they know more. I’ll call you after I do.”
“I don’t suppose your patron gave you any clues?”
She frowned at me. “That’s not the way it works. That’s not even the way my Sight works, but if I get any insight, I’ll pass that on as well.”
“Just not during the dinner tomorrow night.” I grinned and winked. I didn’t mean it; if she found out anything, I wanted to know as soon as possible. I’d just rather she got the information to me sometime that wasn’t my one social engagement for the year.
“Right.” She pointed at the closet door on the far end of the room. “The dress is in a garment bag in there, along with shoes and accessories you can use. Dry clean it before you give it back, please.”
Chapter 8
After I’d gotten back from Maggie’s and picked up the kids from school after-care, I set to work on creating the ward from Hsien. The whole building benefited from the ward he had given me. It had taken me hours to figure out how to map the paper onto the house, assigning each room to a fragment of the turtle’s shell and scribing the symbol from the shell into the room — hardest in the restaurant, with the people entering and leaving and disrupting my work — and more time still to circumscribe the unbroken Lung dragon to circle everything. For the final circle, I’d tapped into the electric circuitry of the house and used existing wiring to form the loop — not all of it, just what I needed for an unbroken circle.
And with that, the tension pounding at everyone had cut off, leaving the building an oasis of peace.
Which made work even more trying the next day, dealing with disgruntled people all day long. I took a few quiet minutes to check on the results of my computer search, but they were useless. The only unidentified bodies were a bearded man and a woman who looked old enough to be my grandmother, and neither of them matched any of the missing persons reports. The one flag I found was that the maintenance man for the garage had been reported missing by his family. That might be worth following up on, although he obviously wasn’t the ghost. Not today, though.
That was all the break I got, though, and by the end of the day, I was so exhausted, I didn’t know any more if I even wanted to go to the reunion dinner. Everyone there was just as likely to be under the ghostly influence, in which case I was letting myself in for several hours of pain and misery — misery I wouldn’t feel at home.
That peace helped me get through the process of getting ready, even as I told myself I didn’t want to go, and the calm was the first thing Matt commented on when he came to pick me up. “I feel better than I’ve felt all day. Why am I so relaxed?” Then he looked at me and whistled. “That’s more than you ever dressed up when we were dating.”
He might have been exaggerating, but not by much. The sleeveless dress I’d borrowed from Maggie was plum with just a hint of silver thread, with a demure neckline in front and a plunging back that just barely escaped obscenity. My hair was piled on top of my head, caught in a silver not-quite tiara with just a few loose ringlets to tease onlookers. I’d even taken the time to put on more than eyeliner and mascara.
On the other hand, Matt was no slouch himself. The tux he was wearing showed off his surprisingly broad shoulders and slim waist quite well. He hadn’t bothered with a tie, which made it look even better.
“Likewise,” I said. “On the other hand, it would be silly to wear this to grill pizza at the park.”
“Maybe we should try it sometime, just to see what kind of questions we get.”
We were both still laughing when Celeste walked in. “I could hear you two downstairs when I walked in off the street.”
We laughed louder at that and only stopped when Jian and Bella came in. “What’s the joke? We want to laugh, too!”
“We were just talking about cooking,” I said.
Jian looked scandalized. “Grandfather always says there’s nothing funny about good cooking.”
“Not about the cooking, no,” I agreed.
“Where are Tina and Gavin?” Bella wanted to know. “Mom promised we were going to play.”
“They’re in the middle of a Pixar marathon.” I looked at Celeste. “I told them they’d have to stop when you came to get them.”
She waved her hands dismissively. “This is the most peaceful these two have been all day. I brought them with me to give Nate a break for a few minutes, but I think we’ll just stay here. Easier all around.”
Her kids whooped and raced into the other room to join Gavin and Tina.
And with that, the last of my worries for the evening vanished. I’d been ready to stash copies of the ward in the kids’ pockets, but now they weren’t going to be running into anything outside the house. Not tonight, anyway. The wards would be going in Bella and Jian’s pockets before they left tonight, though. The Lung dragon had been clear that all of the children needed to be protected.
“Sounds like a plan,” I said.
Matt said, “Can we take your car, then? I was going to borrow Mom and Dad’s, but we’d have to walk all the way to the garage.”
I shivered involuntarily, but no one noticed. Just as well, as I didn’t want to explain.
Celeste said, “As long as you don’t mind kid toys and loose, stale French fries.”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been in a car that kids have ridden in before.”
She threw her keys at him, and he deftly caught them right before they hit him in the face.
“It’s parked in the alley — next to the No Parking sign. Go. Have a good evening. Take your time getting back.” She glanced after her kids. “Goodness knows, time away from the kids can be pretty rare.”
Tina’s head poked around the door jamb. “Are you leaving now? I want to say goodnight to Daddy.”
“Me, too!” Gavin yelled.
It took another ten minutes to say all our goodnights and get the kids settled again, and when we left, Matt had a soft smile on his face. He was a good father.
On the way down the stairs, I stopped him. “Put this in your pocket, please.”
“You’ve got a purse.”
I did not give him a dirty look, although I was tempted. Instead, I unfolded the paper to show him what was on it. “Yes, I do. And I have one of these in there.” And one as the lockscreen on my phone, although I didn’t mention that. “Please.”
He hesitated. “I thought you preferred tech for … this.”
Matt had always been reluctant to talk about my magic. He accepted that it existed, but tolerance for him meant silence. The only time he’d willingly brought it up was when he asked me to have h
is children, and that might be part of why I agreed. I didn’t want anything to happen to the Lius, don’t get me wrong, but the actual acknowledgement of who I was meant a lot to me.
So when I answered, I tried to be as indirect as he was.
“For me, it's often more reliable. But this helps with … the heightened tension we've all been feeling lately. And it's why this house feels so peaceful.”
He frowned but took the paper and slid it into the inside pocket of his jacket before resuming his way downstairs. “It's not just me, then.”
I’d have to talk more about it, but I waited until we were in the car, with him sitting down before I told him about the ghosts and how I suspected they were projecting their fear and anger. “I'm trying to deal with it, but it's harder than Holtzmann makes it look.”
“Well, sure, but you didn’t major in engineering.”
“I'd be a little overqualified for my current position, don't you think?”
“You already are, as your mom mentions frequently.”
I groaned and slumped in my seat. “Almost as frequently as I mention my make-believe siblings. Maybe they would have some of her drive. But noooo, she only wanted one.”
“Something ours won't have to worry about. Most likely, their kids either.” He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “Magic’s weird. I wish I could shield them from it sometimes.”
I swallowed the words that leapt to my lips, on how I never worked magic around them, didn't talk about it, and did my best to make sure they grew up with nothing more than his mother’s tales to help them believe in something beyond the mundane. Even though I knew they had pools of magic inside them. He only wanted to protect our kids, just as I did. Where was the harm in that?
Cheiron was in the suburbs, although I imagine when it was first built, it had just been out of town, draped across most of a hill, with the President’s house at the very crown. When we got close to the campus, I directed Matt to the visitors’ parking. It had been clearly marked on the PDF of the campus, which was fortunate. The old parking lot was now a bookstore, and the old student union where the bookstore was had been razed. The new chemistry building stood in its place. I didn't know why a small liberal arts college needed a dedicated chemistry building instead of housing it with the rest of the sciences, but I was willing to bet it came down to money.
The dinner was being hosted by the current senior class in a large meeting area of the new student union. Like the rest of the campus, the building was built in a neoclassical style. I looked around as we entered, admiring the friezes and the larger-than-life doors that had always been a fixture at Cheiron. I was impressed by the fidelity of the friezes to the Greek ideal and wondered where the school had gotten them. They looked like they could have been raided from Greece in the nineteenth century, along with so many other artifacts, but this was a new building.
“Pepper Karalis, is that you? Life after college has treated you well!” The booming voice belonged to one of my favorite instructors, Professor Dimitriou of the Drama department.
I turned eagerly to greet him and stopped with my mouth open, words unspoken. After a moment, I managed, “Professor Dimitriou, you're …”
‘A centaur’ was what I wanted to say. From the waist up, he looked as he always had — burly and bearded with bushy brows that matched the black and silver of the rest of his hair. From the waist down, however, he was pure stallion, black dappled with silver. He was also a couple feet taller than I remembered, which probably made those over-large doors comfortably sized for him.
It was unlikely to be cost efficient to make such doors for one member of the faculty, however much they asked alumni for donations. I wondered how many other centaurs I’d been blind to over the years.
“Senior class advisor this year, yes. They finally roped me into it. I must say, I'm glad they did. So many familiar faces here tonight. Although that young man next to you isn't one.”
I forced myself to act normally, not stare at his well-groomed tail. Were those actually ribbons? “Sorry, Professor. This is Matt Liu, a good friend and the father of my children. Or rather, I'm the mother of his.”
The professor’s eyebrows flew up. “That sounds like an interesting tale. Are you going to be around this weekend so we can catch up?”
“No, just for tonight, I'm afraid. But we should catch up. I could give you my card. Or if you get into downtown, head south to the Wicked Whatever Coffeehouse, where you'll find me most days.”
“I'll do that.” He nodded toward the meeting room. “Your friend Beth is already inside. Enjoy your evening.”
I felt muted prickles on my arms, and a sense of unease crept over me. There was a witch here, one I didn’t know, but their magic was dim, muffled as Maggie’s had always been back when she’d been a T.A. for my English classes. At the time, I’d thought nothing of it, as I knew few witches. Now I wondered — perhaps Cheiron had its own magic, a special ward that helped to hide the nature of those here. If that were the case, I did not expect to be able to pick out the witch in the crowd, even if I were speaking to them.
Matt took my elbow as we stepped inside. “I feel like I missed something there, although I do appreciate how you referred to the twins.”
“Simply the truth,” I murmured back. “And I feel as though I missed a lot of somethings my entire time here.”
Before he could respond, Beth grabbed my other arm. “For that dress, maybe I can forgive you not coming to Primark with me, although you definitely outshine me.”
I gave her the once over. She'd touched up her hair, adding highlights that gave the wild colors more depth and drew the eye. Her dress matched her hair, although with its plunging neckline and peekaboo panels, most people weren't going to take the time to compare them.
“Nobody is going to look twice at me with you nearby. Don't you think so, Matt?”
“I know everyone will be jealous of me for accompanying two such lovely ladies. Where did you want to sit?”
I didn't care and would have said as much, but Beth said, “There are three open places at that table near the windows.”
Matt followed Beth’s lead, and I moved with him. True to what she'd said on the phone, she was headed straight for Brian, the college boyfriend who'd cheated on me with her. Two others sat at the table with him, his best friend Clay and a woman I didn't know.
Brian had the kind of all-American high school jock looks that set hearts aflutter, along with other portions of the anatomy — hair blown back, square jaw, brooding eyebrows. My mom had hated him, which helped his case. She had been right about his shallow personality, and judging from the way his skin was starting to bag under his eyes and his belly pushed against his belt, she was right about his looks not lasting, too. She would be happy to hear it, and I was happier than ever that I’d let him go without a backward glance.
His friend Clay had aged better, the years honing his features and giving him a steely look. Prominent cheekbones and a decisive jaw made him look like a knife, ready to cut into any conversation. His gray suit with the razor-sharp pleats increased that perception. He wasn’t unattractive, but the whole effect was off-putting.
The unknown woman, a honey blonde with unnaturally purple eyes who looked barely out of college herself, gave every indication of hanging on the words of both men. If she took out her colored contacts, I wasn’t sure I would be able to pick her out of a crowd.
I expected our reception to be chilly, but Clay smiled broadly. “Pepper! And Beth! It's like old home week.”
“Old school weekend, actually,” I said. “That's the point of a reunion, isn't it?”
His face soured for a moment. “You haven't changed, have you?”
“Actually, I have.” I smiled. “Matt, this is Clay and Brian. I'm afraid I don't know their companion.” I was acutely aware that I was with the most attractive man at the table, sharp, classically dressed, and pleasant. My smile widened.
Brian spoke for the first time. “M
y fiancée Karen.” He looked at her. “We went to school with Beth and Pepper.”
Beth went still at the word “fiancée,” although a smile touched her face when he named her first. All these years later, and she still thought we were competing for him.
I forced a smile. “It's going to be so great to catch up. First, though, Matt and I are going to grab drinks at the bar. Need anything?” When they demurred, I said, “We’ll be back.”
I wasn't surprised that Beth remained behind.
While we waited for our drinks, Matt looked back at the table. “So that's the ex?”
“Yeah. My mom was right about him.”
“Your mother has excellent instincts.”
“Of course you'd say that. She loves you!”
“As I said.” He winked. “I’ll bet I noticed two things you didn't.”
“I'll bite. What did you notice?”
Matt held up one finger. “He still thinks he's in love with you.” I would've answered, but he held up his second finger to cut me off. “And no one here is acting angry the way everyone is at home.”
Looking around the room, I could see he was right. Whether it was too far away to be affected or it had its own system of wards, the college didn't appear to be affected by the plague of ghosts. If I asked him, would Professor Dimitriou tell me about special wards that centaurs knew how to make? Not tonight, of course, but I hoped he did come by the coffee shop so we could talk. There was a lot more going on here than I’d ever suspected.
Chapter 9
Glasses of wine in hand, we returned to the table, where Clay was regaling Karen with stories of Brian sneaking out of class to have lunch with Beth, then borrowing my notes to copy when we met up at the dining commons for dinner. Beth didn't look nearly as amused.
Clay ended with, “It wasn't until the end of the semester that I found out he was in Beth’s evening class and was borrowing her notes so he could spend time with Pepper.”
Ghost Garages_A Boston Technowitch Novel Page 6