Waiting for Magic

by Susan Squires

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  This had been the most horrible day of Kee’s life, hands down. The hangover made her supersensitive to sounds and smells. She could hear everything going on in the house, even from up in her garret. Her sense of touch was aggravated, too. The scrape of her nipples against the old, soft t-shirt under her painters’ work shirt was almost more than she could bear. Her core was swollen and sensitive in a way that should be bad. She put her hand to her heart, over the rash from the scrape of Devin’s unshaven jaw against her breasts, feeling it flutter and thump in turns.

  Even the thought of last night brought Devin’s stricken expression up in her memory, the regret in his voice. A little moan of anguish escaped as she clutched at her shirt. She’d hurt him. That was the last thing she wanted. What had she been thinking, seducing him like that?

  He’d been so tender with her. She hung her head. She’d practically forced herself on him, and he’d been gentle and concerned about it being her first time. He’d said it was his first time too. That was a little odd. She couldn’t believe he hadn’t done the deed with Surfer Girl. He was a guy. Maybe S.G. was holding out. Or maybe he’d lied to spare Kee’s feelings. That would be just like him. He was generous. How he’d gotten that way, Kee didn’t know. She bet most kids who were orphaned spent all their time grabbing for as much in life as they could. Not Devin. He was a giver. She’d had to insist he accept even her friendship when he first came to the Breakers.

  Her tears were gone. Unlike the world outside her window, she was dry inside. The frenzy of painting was gone too. Blank canvases were stacked in the corner. They weren’t the ones that stared accusingly at her. Those would be the pictures of Devin, still arrayed around the room. As painful as they were, they might be soon all she had of him. He’d take his S.G. and run as far away from the Breakers as he could. All because she couldn’t control her lust.

  Being a bad girl pretty much sucked.

  She gazed out the window at the rain as the hours passed. Darkness fell on the cliffs. Would it never stop raining? Drew and Michael were talking about the effect of the weather even now. That was odd. She shouldn’t be able to hear them from up here.

  “Mudslides in the canyons,” Michael was saying. “Malibu and Seal Beach are sandbagged against high tides. The Santa Monica Pier sustained some damage.”

  “This must be the worst El Niño we’ve ever had.” Kee could imagine Drew leaning over her husband as he read the paper, rubbing his muscular shoulders.

  “No end in sight. Storms are stacked up over the Pacific, waiting their turn at us.”

  Kee shifted her focus. Her father was talking with Miles, going over some proposal. They’d be down in the office wing. Lanyon was playing something morose somewhere, and the new dog Tammy had finally named Lancelot was barking at Bagheera. Jane and Kee’s mother were chatting as they cooked. Only the person she wanted most to hear was silent.

  She could feel where he was, though. He was in his room. Had been since he came up from the beach this morning.

  Wait! Her heart began to beat faster. She could hear the others. That was strange enough, like she was attuned to some frequency her senses hadn’t received before. But she couldn’t feel them. Devin was quiet, but she knew where he was. She stilled. It was as if there was a band between them, pulling taut to draw them together.

  Oh. My. God. The heightened senses, the attachment that bordered on physical with a man with whom she’d just made love…. It all clicked into place. She started to hyperventilate.

  It wasn’t just that she lusted after Devin. He was the One for her. That sense of connection, of always knowing the other’s location, was just what Tris and Maggie, Drew and Michael described.

  She gasped. Her Destiny was her brother? Who had been here all along? No lightning strike. No instantaneous revelation.

  But he couldn’t be the One. He didn’t have the gene. She must be imaging being able to feel him. Her brain went into overdrive. Of course. She’d been imagining lots of stuff lately.

  She flashed on that night at the river. She’d imagined all sorts of things that night: Devin having swirling blue-green eyes and behind him a wall of churning brown.

  Uh-oh. How exactly had they gotten out of the river?

  It came rushing back. All of it. She’d been lying on the riverbed in the mud when she’d looked into Devin’s swirling eyes. The car had been upside down beside her. The brown heaving background had been water all around them. But not engulfing them. Oh, dear Lord. Devin’s arm was stretched out, palm up, as though he was holding the water back.

  She blinked slowly. Devin had the gene all right, and power over water. She tried to get her head around that.

  She loved Devin. It reverberated through her like a thrumming engine in her core.

  Wait, wait. Of course she did. Like a friend, like a brother. But then the lusting part came in and now she was just confused. She’d had sex with a man who was her brother in all but a genetic sense last night, and this morning she was mortified and miserable. Not exactly the nirvana of true love her siblings reported. And she hadn’t gotten a power. No sign of magic other than her acute sense of hearing, and the fact that she could feel Devin down in his room. Maybe if your soul mate was your brother, you didn’t get a real power because you didn’t deserve one.

  And what about him? That expression of horror and regret she’d seen on his face this morning didn’t exactly fit with just having made love to his Destiny. He was miserable too. There was some mistake here somewhere. She wanted to scream.

  But he had gotten magic. All those years of feeling like an outsider and now he was the one who got power when she didn’t? Why? What was the difference between them?

  Her heart sank. She remembered his horrified look this morning. Not the look one saw on your true love’s face. So he got a power because his love wasn’t tainted with an impurity like being in love with your sister. And that meant someone else raised his power.

  She took a huge breath. The incident at the river had been after he’d started dating Sybil Whatever-her-name-was. Surfer Girl.

  Could fate be that cruel?

  Or maybe she deserved her fate. She lusted after her brother and was jealous that he’d gotten a power when she’d been waiting for magic all her life. Hers was not a pure and transforming love. She was bad in a way she’d never intended. Selfish. Small. Real love didn’t start in a bottle of tequila for one thing. She flushed with shame. Devin had let her have sex with him because he was trying to be kind, right up until he couldn’t stomach any more this morning. She was too small a soul for true love.

  Was this really the end of her dreams? Something fluttered in her chest. Was it hope or denial? A thought whispered through her head. Maybe she already had magic and just didn’t know it. Maggie hadn’t realized her power for a while. Kee had to know the truth. She pushed aside an easel and stood in the center of the room.

  “Okay,” she said, through gritted teeth. “Come out, come out wherever you are.” She stared at a spot on the wall and clenched every muscle she could find. Nothing. She gasped as she realized she’d been holding her breath. She shook out her arms and tried again. No clenching this time. Just force of will.

  After about five minutes she went and sat in the window seat again, empty. Her insides felt numb. Maybe she had half a Destiny. Lust after a brother who didn’t love her back, get the connection and the senses, but no power. Her gene was some kind of mutant.

  And she deserved no more.

  The yard darkened. The wind whipped the fronds of the big date palms until they looked like hysterical women in the dark and the slashing wet.

  A knock sounded on the door to studio. She felt Devin on the move. The imaginary band between them stretched.

  “Kee?”

  It was Drew. “Go away.”

  “Time for dinner.”

  She could not face dinner with the family. “No dice.”

  “Mr. Nakamura shouldn’t have to bring f
ood up all these stairs.”

  Drew was trying the guilt trip. “I don’t want anything to eat.”

  Silence. Drew finally sighed. “Look, I know it’s hard that somebody tried to kill you. Somebody tried to kill me once, too.”

  What? Oh, yeah. That’s what they all thought she was upset about. Thank God.

  “You have to come down sometime, and no one will mention it if you don’t want to talk about it. Mother will keep them in line.” She could practically see Drew’s wry smile. “Everyone misses you. They’ll all be there, including Jane. Well, except for Devin. He took a sandwich into his room. He’s got an exam tomorrow.”

  Dev wasn’t in his room. He was down by the garages. But the sandwich meant he wasn’t coming in for dinner. They’d pester her until she complied. That was obvious. “Okay.”

  “Good.” But Drew didn’t make any move to leave the door.

  “I’ll meet you down there.”

  “Not happening. You’ll chicken out. I’m the family’s ambassador and your escort.”

  “More like a guard,” Kee muttered.

  “I heard that.”

  Yeah. Drew had the same hearing Kee now did. No wonder it had always been so hard to keep a secret from her family. But there was one secret she had to keep. She glanced around at the paintings of Devin. She couldn’t bear to destroy them. But no one must see them. Kee heaved herself to her feet. She was stiff and her butt was numb. She picked up the old-fashioned key from the table, turned out the light, and opened the door just enough to squeeze through. Drew looked concerned, but she quickly changed her expression to that of an ambassador thoroughly bored with her assignment. Kee pulled the door shut and carefully locked it. She hoped she could survive dinner.

  “She starts, she moves, she seems to feel the thrill of life along her keel,” Drew drawled. Then she softened. “Come on, hon.” She put an arm around Kee’s shoulders. “It’s pasta night. Jane’s made her tiramisu for dessert.”

  *****

  There was much whispering in the dining room as Kee and Drew came down the stairs.

  “Shush,” her mother said, sotto voce. “No deviations.”

  The smells were heavenly. Kee could identify each spice that had gone into her mother’s justly famous ragu sauce that cooked for three hours on the stove. She could smell the coffee and the cream in Jane’s dessert, the chocolate shavings on top, and the lemon in the salad dressing.

  “Keelan, just in time,” her father said cheerfully as she came into the room. “I was just sending the salad around.”

  Everybody else made a show of talking as though they’d been in the middle of some conversation. Kee saw some eyes go a little round. She must look a sight. She glanced down. Still wearing the t-shirt and her work shirt covered with splashes of paint. Not normally dinner attire, but nobody said anything.

  “Sit by me,” Tammy said, pointing to one of the three empty chairs at the gigantic, old Spanish-looking table.

  “Who’d want to sit next to you with that cat on your lap?” Lanyon muttered.

  “Tammy,” her mother admonished, looking under the table. “How many times…?”

  “I know. I know,” Tammy groused. “He’s still growing, though.” She shooed the very black cat with huge chartreuse eyes off her lap. “He’s always hungry.”

  “He’s five,” Lanyon objected. “He’s not a kitten.”

  Kee didn’t say anything about the equally black long-haired Belgian sheepdog lying quietly at Tammy’s feet, strategically positioned for falling crumbs. Her mother must have seen Lancelot. But her mother had a soft heart. She wouldn’t say anything and Lanyon hadn’t noticed.

  Kee sat at the table, being as still as she could. Conversation swirled around her. Tammy, on one side, put a helping of Italian salad on her plate, and Tris, on her other side, heaped spaghetti and meatballs next to it.

  “Enough?” he asked helpfully. “There’s more.”

  “She could maybe get through that in a week,” Maggie observed on Tris’s other side as she tucked a napkin into Jesse’s striped t-shirt. He sat in a booster chair Tris had made him. It looked like miniature version of one of Tris’s Ducati bikes, red metal with lots of chrome.

  Tris blushed. “Just wanted to make sure you’re getting enough to eat,” he muttered.

  Ah. Mr. Nakamura must have spilled the beans that she hadn’t been eating. “I’m good,” she murmured. Not true, of course.

  “What was with that wave this morning?” Kemble asked. He had a “determined to act normal” look about him. “I thought it was an earthquake.”

  Kee tasted her salad and was positively shocked. It tasted wonderful. Not just really good, but maybe the most delicious food she’d ever eaten. She’d heard the expression “made your taste buds sing.” But hers were singing La Traviata. She schooled her face into stone. The last thing she wanted was questions.

  “Channel 7 says it was really weird,” Tammy announced around a mouthful of spaghetti.

  “Did they have an expert on to say that?” Lanyon asked innocently. Then he went into the voice of a newscaster. “Now, here’s Edwin Rollins, MD, PhD, J.D, etc., etc., of NASA and the Weather Service to give us his expert opinion about the wave. Dr. Rollins? ‘It was really weird.’ ” This last in a whiney voice. Then he went back to resonant. “Thank you, Doctor.”

  Tris let out a laugh, Maggie and Jane giggled. Jesse shouted in laughter just because everybody else was laughing. Even Kee had to smile.

  “No, Mr. Smart Alec,” Tammy pouted. “They said that no one had ever heard of an isolated wave like that. It didn’t hit anywhere but the peninsula. It was maybe thirty feet.”

  “No wonder it felt like an earthquake,” her father said.

  The spaghetti sauce! She’d had her mother’s ragu a hundred times, but it had never tasted like this. She noticed that Kemble was looking at his plate with a strange intensity, like he didn’t trust himself to look anywhere else.

  “We’re lucky we didn’t get wet,” her mother said.

  “Wetter,” Tammy muttered. “Will it ever quit raining?”

  The talk washed around the table, creating little tide pools when two or three people started side conversations. Jesse finished and tore off to where he was building something with Legos out by the TV.

  “Michael, Miles says Bondurant got the maximum sentence,” her father announced.

  “Good,” Michael said, his brow darkening. “Guys like that.…”

  “Incest is unforgivable,” her father agreed.

  Kee’s heart stopped. She felt the color draining from her face. Thank God Devin wasn’t here. She blinked, glancing around the table. Kemble looked stricken too. Did that mean…?

  “How is the girl doing?” her mother asked.

  “She’s got a good foster situation,” Michael said, around the last of his spaghetti. “And she’s in therapy.”

  “You know, maybe I could help out in cases like that,” Maggie said.

  “Maggie, that’s a great idea.” Her mother smiled at Maggie.

  Tris squeezed Maggie’s arm, looking proud. “You’d be good at that, darlin’.”

  Jane delivered a dessert plate of tiramisu to Kemble. He looked dazed. He knows. Of course he knew. He was in the room next door. Oh, God, and Devin hadn’t held his hand over her mouth the last time. Kee felt herself flushing eight shades of crimson. Had he told anyone? She glanced around. He was the only one with that expression. His eyes flicked up to her. Dear God, there was sympathy there. He knew everything then. Sure. He must have seen Devin’s power at the river. He knew Devin didn’t love her. And he knew she’d given in to her lust last night and seduced her brother..

  She froze in her seat and stared at her plate, afraid to meet anyone’s eyes, lest she shatter and start to cry or scream.

  The rest of the family drifted away. Maggie and Tris volunteered to clear the table and load the dishwashers.

  “I’m taking off too. I have some film to develop,” Jane apologiz
ed, standing.

  “I wish you’d let me build you a darkroom,” Kee’s father said. “State of the art, I promise.”

  Her father didn’t realize that saying that made it even less likely that Jane would agree to his largesse. Kee kept her eyes riveted on the plate, but he probably had the “Captain of Industry” look where his jaw seemed to get stronger. “Well, I’m going to build a darkroom in the old root cellar. And then if you don’t use it, maybe someone else will. Or maybe it will go to waste, but I’ll have done just as I pleased.”

  Jane blushed. “You’re … you’re just too kind to me, Brian.”

  “Nonsense,” her father huffed. “A woman tells me I can’t build a darkroom and I just rise to the challenge.” Kee chanced a glance to see him ruin his act by giving a little secret smile at his victory.

  Kee’s mother was smiling too. “Drive safely, Jane,” she said.

  Kemble got up and peered out the dining room windows. “It’s raining pretty hard. Want me to drive you?”

  Jane chuckled. “It’s all of two miles. I’ll be fine.” She went to get her coat from the foyer closet, leaving Kemble with his hands in his pockets. He was about to drift off to his office, when Kee saw Drew beckon to him.

  “Dear, I’m so glad you came down,” her mother said, scooting over into Tammy’s empty chair. Her father headed for the office wing and his after-dinner emails. The television went on in the family room. Treasure Hunter was ritual for Lanyon and Tammy ever since Drew first saw Michael on the show.

  “Sorry I worried you,” Kee muttered.

  “Do you want to talk?” Her mother put her hand over Kee’s.

  “No,” she said, too loudly. She managed to take a breath. “I’m fine. Really. I was just, you know, upset by the whole river thing.”

  Her mother’s gaze was waaaay too penetrating. Her mother sat back in her chair. “The road is hard sometimes, honey. But you have to follow the road.”