Waiting for Magic

by Susan Squires

  She stood, trembling in the dark, staring out at the rain. She couldn’t catch her breath. Okay. Okay. You know what to do with obsession. Another jagged knife of lightning flashed through the room.

  She pulled on jeans and an old t-shirt, shoved her feet into the very unfashionable rubber shoes she could stand in all day, feverish in her haste. The thunder struck. The storm was rolling closer. Good. Less chance she’d wake the family. She turned the knob on her door carefully and slipped out into the corridor. She refused to tiptoe, but she tried to quiet her steps as she headed for the back stairs that led up to what had been the servants’ quarters, back when the Breakers had been the hacienda of a Spanish land grant. The irregular lightning coming in through the line of high clerestory windows along the third-floor hall more than lit her way. She pulled open the little door onto the bigger room at the far corner of the house, the one that faced Catalina Island. No need to be quiet up here. She slammed the door behind her and leaned on it. A flash of lightning through the big window revealed the stacks of canvases leaning against three walls, the easel and stool set so her back would be to the window and the light, the rack of paints and newly stretched canvases under the window, all revealed in cold blue-white flashes.

  She didn’t hesitate, but flipped on the light switch and bathed the room in golden light to banish the steely lightning. She strode to the first stack of canvases and began going through them, flipping the frames forward. This was the oldest of the lot. The paintings were childish, if still precocious, more like a primitive American style. Like a woman with the devil at her heels, she pulled out canvases of all sizes and shapes and leaned them around the room, all pictures of Devin. She moved to the next stack and the next, journeying forward through the years. Where was it? Finally she came to the ones she’d done this fall. Lightning crashed again and again, its unforgiving light battling the warm glow in the studio. She was crying, silent heaves as her tears streamed down. All these styles and none of them hers. She was a copyist, no more. But somewhere in this record of her life, something had changed. She backed into the middle of the room, her gaze darting from picture to picture, looking in her history for the exact moment it had happened.

  Devin as a Renoir, Devin (sort of) as a Brach, Devin as a Picasso in his Blue Period. Devin as an Andy Warhol, echoed sixteen times in different primary colors. Her gaze jumped around the room. When had everything changed?

  There. There it was. On the last stack. This one was more realistic—her latest copied style. Devin stared out at her, almost accusing, captured in the late afternoon light, reading one of his oceanography books under the pergola. The fall of his longish hair was soft, the bicep that made his t-shirt stretch was rounded and smooth and tan. He was golden. That one was different. Kee tried to get her breath. What was it? Nothing she could point to, not really.

  She stared, transfixed.

  What was different about this one was that it was infused with emotion. She’d put herself into the painting, including her fear of Devin’s scorn if he realized what was in her heart, even though she hadn’t admitted it, even to herself at that point. She walked to the stack and flipped other canvases forward, ones that weren’t of Devin, looking for emotion. Nope. Sterile. All of them. Only the one of Devin glowed with feeling.

  Isn’t that just a bitch? She’d been such a good little art student all her life, studying each style that took her fancy and reproducing it faithfully, that she’d never put herself into any of it. She realized she’d been glad when her parents wouldn’t let her go to study in France. She’d always known she wasn’t good enough and that she’d just be letting herself in for derision. But she’d never understood why she wasn’t good enough. She’d always thought that more work, more study, more teachers, more diligence would make her into the artist she wanted to be. But being diligent wouldn’t do it. Putting herself into her paintings would. Even if what was inside her wasn’t pretty. It was what Christian had been trying to tell her. Hell, it was what Pendragon told her just tonight.

  She sucked in a breath. Well, then.

  She turned and locked the door then went to the racks of supplies and picked out some colors, a palette, some brushes. Then she put them down. Too early for oil. She had to start back farther. She grabbed a box of charcoal and a huge pad of heavy paper, which she set on her easel.

  The medium would change, but there would only be one subject. Well, two. Devin and herself. It was time to stop being a good girl and try figuring out who it was who saw Devin that way. She was going to track that person down and capture her on the paper or the canvas.

  Because only then might Kee be a real artist.

  And maybe putting down in charcoal and paint the pain of how she felt about Devin when she couldn’t have him would keep it from tearing her apart. Let the pain live on the canvas and leave her alone. Because only then could she stay sane.

  *****

  Hardwick stuck his head into the bedroom of the suite where Jason was just strapping shut the old woman’s luggage. She was pulling on soft leather gloves and a hooded raincoat that made her look like Red Riding Hood, if the coat color were venous and dark rather than the bright red of arterial blood that Red always wore. She turned her yellow eyes on Hardwick.

  “Any bodies found have been identified,” he said, his voice flat. As he’d grown older, Jason thought he looked even more like Boris Karloff than in their early days. He and Jason had been the first of the old woman’s followers. Unlike Jason, Hardwick seemed to escape the old woman’s peculiar form of punishment, however, which made Jason hate him more than he hated most people. Perhaps it was because he was her means of punishment sometimes.

  The old woman looked up, her eyes narrowing. “Make contact. I want to know if they’re alive.” She stripped off her gloves. “We’ll wait to move until we hear.”

  “You know contact is dangerous.” Hardwick even had the courage to challenge her. “We risk revealing our source.”

  “If Phillip has failed, I want to know.” Her voice was flat.

  Jason sure did not want to be Phil if the Tremaines were alive.

  *****

  Devin leaned on the archway from the sunken living room into the foyer and watched Brina and Maggie pull on coats in the foyer. These last days had been hell. He’d patched up the holes he’d punched in the plaster and painted the archway. The family put his tantrum down to post-traumatic stress. Feeling Kee up there in her garret studio had made him almost constantly erect, so he’d been avoiding the family lest they see his shame. But Devin had grown worried about Kee. She hadn’t been out in days. So he held a copy of the Palos Verdes Prattler casually but strategically between his hips and waited for his chance.

  Maggie wore a simple yellow slicker over her jeans, plaid flannel shirt, and boots. Marrying into a very rich family hadn’t changed her at all. “You sure about this?”

  “Absolutely, my dear.” Brina slipped into a black trench coat. “I can only heal a few of the worst cases. Your calming influence will help many more than I can reach. A little peace in their souls has to be good for their bodies.”

  Brina’s healing always took it out of her, which is why her family hated to take advantage of her. Like she’d allow them to be sick. Devin remembered the marvelous feeling of wholeness when she’d healed the arm he had broken skateboarding and the lizard bite. She’d even healed his tongue when he had bitten through it falling out of the coral tree. He almost envied the worst-case kids at the Children’s Hospital today.

  “How do I get a weird power like Calming things?” Maggie muttered. “I’m sure not calm.”

  “Maybe you got that power because it’s what you needed,” Brina said softly, choosing a bright blue umbrella from the umbrella stand. “We have only a few offhand comments from a questionable source and spotty historical references to tell us how the gene works. You just have to accept what you have and make use of it.”

  Maggie chuckled. “You mean, ‘calm down about the whole thing.�
�� ”

  Brina laughed. “I guess I do. We often can’t do for ourselves what we do for others.”

  Devin realized with a start that he’d never seen Brina heal herself. Did that mean…?

  “Well, I’ll give it a go,” Maggie said, pressing her lips together. “Now that Jesse’s four, I need to find my place in the world.” She heaved a sigh. “I only hope I can focus it. Don’t want to put the nurses into a coma. And I need to get a brake pedal. I seem to just shower everybody with the max and they fall asleep.”

  “That’s why you’ve been practicing. You’ll do fine.” Brina smiled fondly at her. Everybody at the Breakers loved Maggie’s courage and her forthright manner. Even Mr. Nakamura fussed like a mother hen through her pregnancy. He was almost as bad as Tris.

  Brina glanced over to where Devin leaned. A little worried frown drew her brows together. She was a really beautiful woman, even in her fifties, like one of those movie stars who never seemed to age, just mellow with time. He forgot that about her until he looked at her as more than his adopted mother. “Are you okay, Devin?”

  “Never better,” he lied. But this was his chance. “You, uh, check on Kee?” He couldn’t go up and knock himself, for obvious reasons.

  “Yes.” Brina sighed and shook her head. “That whole incident in the river upset her more than she let on.” Then she gathered herself. “But you know Kee. She has to work it out on a canvas. And we have to let her do it,” she added pointedly. “She’ll come down when she’s ready.”

  Devin nodded. Well, at least they weren’t ignoring Kee. Mr. Nakamura was sending up food. Brina was checking on her. It was as much as he could ask. “You two have a good time.”

  The open door revealed a ’76 Ford 350 pickup with sparkling new green paint and shiny chrome, standing in the downpour. Maggie loved that truck. It was the one Tris bought so she could drive him back home after his accident. She’d probably drive it until the day she died and Tris would keep it running for her. Maggie strode out the door, but Brina paused, examining Devin’s face until he had to look away. “Have you been keeping late hours, young man?” She used her “mother” voice on him.

  He shook his head. They were actually early hours, so it wasn’t really a lie.

  “Well, get some sleep, hon. You look tired. The cards say you’re going through a hard time. Kee, too. This situation is stressful for all of us.”

  Oh, God, she’d been casting for them with her tarot deck. Only one of the reasons it was hard to keep secrets from Brina. They all thought she’d gone around the bend when she took up tarot. That is until Drew proved the tarot actually went back to Merlin, and then they’d found that the Tarot Talismans he created weren’t just an El Dorado for all those priests who looked for them. Brina came by her fixation on the tarot through her genes. Her readings were remarkable. Not a good thing, in this case.

  The truck pulled away, followed by a black Escalade with two of Edwards’ men in it. Devin let out a sigh of relief.

  But that left him looking around, vacantly, no guidance, no focus. He feared Kee suspected his feelings for her and was avoiding him at any cost. Should he just go up there, in spite of what Brina said, and demand she open the door, and tell her…. Tell her what? That he wasn’t a danger to her. That he’d never force himself on her. But what if she didn’t know how he felt? Then he’d just have blown the whole thing.

  He could tell her he was glad she’d found her lover, even though he wasn’t. Why wasn’t she trotting off at every opportunity to see Museum Guy these last few days? Maybe she was afraid of what was happening to her. Devin could comfort her if she’d let him. He wanted so badly to protect her from any fear or pain. But he was probably the last person she wanted to see.

  He hadn’t slept in three nights, not only because of the constant driving sexual need he couldn’t shake but also from trying to figure out what to do.

  If he considered only his own emotional wellbeing he should leave the Breakers. Maybe get an apartment in Westwood, close to UCLA. But what did school matter anymore? He couldn’t care less about it. So he could go anywhere. Except for two things. Even the thought of leaving Kee made him sick to his stomach. And while once he might have thought the Clan wouldn’t target him, now he had a power which had been on display the other night with a Clan member in the vicinity. Maybe they knew, maybe they didn’t. But it upped the ante.

  Then there was the fact that he was pretty sure Pendragon had a Talisman. Something the family needed if they were to defend themselves against the Clan. At first he’d thought he’d tell Kemble and they’d go after it together. Kemble knew Devin had a power. Michael and Drew could verify that with a power, Devin could have felt the Talisman. But then Kemble would realize Kee had been affected by the presence of the Talisman too. And Kee’s secret wasn’t Devin’s to share.

  Of course he wasn’t positive Pendragon had a Talisman. It was likely but not sure. Kemble might go after it alone, after Brian’s shit fit about him taking Devin and Kee. He’d sure never take Brian. Not good. Pendragon might be an old faker, but the Clan would be on the watch, now that they’d failed to kill three Tremaines. If Kemble couldn’t get it, or it wasn’t there, even if he managed to escape the Clan and come back alive, it would reinforce Kemble’s fear that he wasn’t as good as Brian, or even Tris or Michael since they had magic. Whether Brian stayed calm or threw a fit, Kemble might be broken by his own failure.

  So, go or stay? Tell Kemble about the Talisman or not? Tell Kee she was safe from his attentions or not? It had all been running around in his head twenty-four/seven until he was a basket case. And what was he going to do with a power over water?

  Don’t tell anyone. That’s what he’d decided this morning. But as easy as silence had been in those early years after the accident and the orphanage, silence was killing him now. There was the ever-present possibility Kemble would reveal Devin’s power, or Drew had seen more than she was telling, or Brina would somehow use her tarot cards to find the truth. If they figured out he had a power, they’d know he had it bad for his sister. He couldn’t bear that. So he’d have to continue his lie and tell them Sybil raised his power. Then what? He hadn’t lied to Kemble in the cab when he said that would be a disaster.

  He walked out in the rain, imagining he could feel Kee in the third-floor corner room. She wasn’t looking out at him. She was painting. Probably painting for Museum Guy. He inspired her, no doubt. But just the feel of her up there started the blood rushing to Devin’s groin.

  Devin sat down under the pergola at the cliff end of the garden. Even in winter, the magenta bracts of the bougainvillea tried to cheer up the gray and sodden day. They were so thick they almost sheltered him from the rain. Not that he needed that. Water felt natural, even the cold November rain. He stared down at the ocean, whipped by the spatter of rain into gray-green metal, punctuated by whitecaps. Surf was big. Not as big as that night he’d surfed, but big.

  He couldn’t bring himself to grab his board today, though it might help heal his mind. He just stared and suffered with thoughts of Kee. His groin was so swollen he was uncomfortable in his jeans. That was penance too. Dark fell early. He hardly seemed to notice.

  Footsteps scurried down the path. He didn’t turn. It wasn’t Kee. The footsteps stopped.

  “Dinner, Devin.”

  Jane. Jane had always been kind to him.

  “Not hungry.”

  Silence for a minute.

  “Okay. You don’t have to eat. But you look like you could use a stiff drink.”

  Jane? Quiet and shy Jane was offering him a drink? That was surprising. He turned his head. He couldn’t see her expression, silhouetted as she was against the warm glow of light from the windows of the house. “Yeah. I guess I could.”

  She took his arm as he rose. “Will you hold the umbrella?”

  As if he wanted an umbrella to shield himself from water. “Sure.” He held it over Jane as they made their way back to the house.

  She gui
ded him the back way to avoid the dining room where he could hear that dinner was in full swing. The living room was dim, lighted only by the channel of light coming out of the dining room and dim light over on the landing of the stairs. “Rum and coke?” Jane asked. That’s what he usually drank. She didn’t turn on a lamp, but opened the doors to the sideboard and rummaged inside just as if she could see in the dark. “Or I could make you a gin martini, or … or there’s some Scotch or tequila, vodka.…”

  “Scotch.” Rum and coke was too slow tonight. He wanted drunk and he wanted it now.

  She poured some of the Springbank Michael had been working on the other night, and made herself a gin and tonic.

  She didn’t ask him what was wrong. She didn’t mention Kee either, though if anyone knew about Kee having a power and being in love with Museum Guy, it occurred to him that it might be Jane. She was always the quiet one, sitting in the shadows. She saw a lot.

  “I hope Kemble didn’t rope you into going to Mr. Pendragon’s house against your will,” she said, after a minute.

  “Don’t blame Kemble.” He snorted. “Even though everybody else does.”

  “No, no.…” she protested in that gentle way she had. “Not his fault at all. I … I asked him to be sure and … well, include you in things.” She must have seen his incredulous look, because she rushed on. “Well, after that night you went out surfing when it was far too dangerous … I … I just knew you were upset, that’s all, and I thought Kemble….” She trailed off.

  Jane knew he’d surfed that night. The night where he’d first encountered his power. He didn’t know what to say, afraid she knew too much about why he had been in such pain he’d run to the sea. “No,” he finally said. “I wanted to go.”

  She just nodded. After they’d sipped in silence for a while, she sighed. “Guess I better get going. It’s getting most inconvenient to go home to develop my pictures.”