Waiting for Magic

by Susan Squires

  Kemble saw disruption on the horizon for their family no matter how this turned out.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Devin couldn’t sleep as he waited for Brina, though he’d turned out the light. He was trying not to think about leaving so he wouldn’t barf all over his bed. He knew what that meant. He only hoped Brian attributed it to his injuries. People barfed from pain, didn’t they?

  Kee had a power and it was a doozy. He actually recognized the painting she raised. It was the one at the end of the hall in the modern art part of the museum. The vines looked like those intricate frames around the elongated, graceful people from what she called “fin de siècle.” He was proud of her. So proud.

  Didn’t change what he had to do. Don’t think about that. In his heart, he tried to wish her well with her curator. He wondered what power Christian would get. He’d only met him the once, so he couldn’t say. And he might never know.

  Brina slipped into the room and closed the door softly. “Sorry it took me a while to get to you, Devin,” she apologized. “Mind if I turn on the light?”

  “Go ahead.” She’d know the worst when she healed him anyway. “Shouldn’t spend your energy this way.”

  “Devin Tremaine, what better way to spend energy than helping the people I love best in the world?” She clicked on the bedside light. It cast a softer glow than the overhead. Still he blinked. She went still. “Bastard,” she said softly. “I hope he burned to death before he suffocated.”

  “It’s not that bad,” he lied. He wished she didn’t have to know about the other part.

  “Don’t you tell me what’s bad and not bad, young man,” she huffed. She reached out and touched his hair. “You were very brave tonight. You saved at least four members of the family.”

  Of course they would have told her he had a power. “They wouldn’t have been up there in the first place if not for me. I … I’m sorry, Brina.”

  “We’ll talk about that later.” Her voice was soothing. She sat beside him on the bed and put her hand on his shoulder, just gently. He hissed in a breath, but then the warmth of her healing took over, and he was back to being a nine-year-old boy again, looking up at her from the bed in the orphanage. His eye had been swollen almost closed and he’d had a split lip from fighting because a couple of the older boys bullied him. When the ward nurse said there was someone who’d come to try him out and maybe take him home, he’d been scared. Who wanted a kid with a swollen eye? Then he’d seen her. She was so pretty. She had a face that was used to smiling, he could just tell. He’d wanted her to pick him so bad he couldn’t even talk. She’d put her hand on him and he’d felt the warmth and the wellbeing flow through him, just like it did now. The swelling in his eye had disappeared. It hadn’t even gotten black the next day. And she took him home.

  She moved her hand to his butt cheeks. He should have been embarrassed but the warmth was so gentle. Then it went deeper and he knew she was healing the damage inside him. That meant she knew everything. Tears started to his eyes. He wiped them away with the back of his hand and turned his head away. He sure hoped Maggie and Kee hadn’t told her about his other shame. He’d know, though. He’d always know that Pendragon made him come. Her hands moved to his thighs, his ankles. Then she just held his wrists.

  “Better?” she asked softly. Her breath was coming a little fast, and it reminded him that healing him cost her.

  “Yeah.” He almost choked on the word. “Thanks, Brina.”

  She didn’t leave. She continued to sit beside him, her breath steadying. “I’ve always been a little … surprised that you didn’t call me Mom, or Mother,” she said. “But I guess you can only have one real mother.”

  He realized he’d hurt her by calling her Brina. He turned his head back toward her. Her face was above the circle of light from the lamp. He could barely see her in the dimness. “You always treated me like your real sons. But I knew I wasn’t.” He half expected her to protest, give him some garbage about being her son in every way that counted. She was that generous.

  Instead she said, “No, you’re not. You share a great-grandfather on my side with my biological children. I think that makes you cousins—twice removed? I’m never sure. But pretty distant. We would never have known about you except I was looking for anyone who might share the gene. And it turns out you do.” She smiled. “Even though no one else in your family showed any signs. At least that I could tell.”

  Oh, God. He felt himself flushing. Did she know he got a power because he loved Kee? Had Kemble told her they’d had sex? He wouldn’t need to leave tomorrow. She’d throw him out.

  “Shhhh,” she said and pulled some of his hair back from his damp forehead. “It’s okay.” She bit her lip. “Brian tells me you want to go tomorrow.”

  “It’s for the best.” He started to choke on the pain in his belly.

  She nodded, but like she was thinking, not that she agreed. She touched him absently and the pain disappeared. “Before you go, just make sure you’re going for the right reason.”

  What? He sure hoped she didn’t know the real reason he was leaving.

  He must have looked puzzled because she hesitated, then continued, “Sometimes we deny ourselves what would be best for everyone concerned just because we think we don’t deserve it. It’s a kind of, I don’t know, self-censorship? You make your life less than it can be before anyone else can tell you that’s all you’re allowed. Don’t ever make that mistake, Devin.” He blinked at her and then looked away, unable to meet her eyes. “Sometimes … it’s hard to hold onto things, even just for a hug, when you think they’re going to be taken from you,” she continued. “But you’ve always had courage.” Glancing up, he saw she was smiling fondly. “The way you take those big waves nobody else dares ride. The way you survived a plane crash, an orphanage, and still came out a loving, intelligent, responsible man. The way you protected Keelan and Maggie and Kemble tonight. And Brian. He had no defense but you. Do you know how hard that was for him? But then he’s always loved you so very much. When you love people as much as we love you, you understand whatever they do because you know their heart.”

  Had she ever talked to him this way, like one adult to another?

  “You’ll survive tonight, too.” She grabbed the far corner of his spread and pulled it up over him. “Don’t let what happened make you lose heart. People in this family are counting on you. You deserve so much. Don’t ever let what others think stop you from getting it.”

  But he wasn’t going to get what he wanted most in life. “I’m…I’m leaving tomorrow.”

  “Oh, but you can’t do that,” she said, as though she was surprised. “That would hurt Kee, and you need to at least see that she’s going to be okay before you just abandon her. Right? She didn’t wait for an answer, but rose. “I’ll send Maggie in. She has a kind of healing she’s only just discovering.”

  He shook his head, convulsively. “I don’t need her. I’m fine.”

  Brina softened. “No, you aren’t. But you’ll let her help you because she wants to do it and you’re a kind person. And you will be fine. Maybe not tonight, but soon.” Then she just went quietly out the door, leaving him alone in the small cone of light, wondering if she’d just said what he thought she might have said, or whether he’d imagined the whole thing.

  Did she know? And had she just given him permission to love Kee?

  *****

  Kee started at the knock on the studio door. Firm and insistent. Shit. It was her mother. Who else would it be? Maybe she could wait her out.

  “I know you’re in there, Keelan, because this is where you come when you don’t want to talk to anyone. I just trudged up two flights of stairs, so I’m not leaving without seeing you.”

  “I … I can’t let you in,” Kee called in a voice that was a lot smaller than she’d like. She’d stacked all the pictures of Devin face-in to the wall. Her mother wouldn’t know the worst just by looking. But Kee was pretty sure she couldn’t trust herse
lf talking to her mother. She was too confused, too raw. She’d walked into the kitchen just in time to hear that Devin was leaving tomorrow. The thought made Kee feel ill on some cellular level that warned she’d be ripped apart if he did. Turning his images to the wall wouldn’t get him out of her heart. Even now she could feel him down in his room and it was making her crazy for him. She wasn’t sure what her mother might see in her eyes. Her mother must never know how she felt about Devin.

  “Don’t you want to know how Devin is? I promised to give you a report.”

  Her mother never played fair. Well, she’d just have to muster some camouflage. Kee stomped to the door and turned the old-fashioned latch lock. Then she went back and slumped on the daybed. Luckily, the light was dim. A single lamp hit the blank canvas over by the windows like a spotlight. Maybe her mother wouldn’t see anything in her eyes. She tried to shut down.

  Her mother came in, looking around curiously. “It’s been years since I’ve been inside the inner sanctum,” she murmured. She stopped for a moment in front of the canvases stacked face-in toward the wall, but she said nothing. Instead she came and sat on the bed next to Kee.

  “So how’s Devin?” Kee asked, voice steady, in total control.

  “I healed him, of course.” Her mother ran her hand over her forehead and Kee was shocked to see it was shaking a little. “What that man did to him.” Kee had never heard her mother’s voice so venomous. “Brian wanted to rend Pendragon limb from limb. I would have helped. Gladly. Except he’s already dead.” She glanced to Kee. “Did you know?”

  “Yeah.” Kee couldn’t bring herself to offer more. To think what Devin had suffered.…

  “I sent Maggie in to Calm him. But he’ll need a lot of support in the coming days.”

  Kee felt that like a slap in the face. “I’m sure his girlfriend will provide all the solace he needs.” Did that sound petty and spiteful? Oh, yeah.

  “Do you think so?” Her mother sighed, overlooking Kee’s lapse into psychopathic jealousy. “Jane says he made her up.”

  “Jane says that?” Kee was surprised into sitting up straight.

  “Of course, Jane could be wrong.”

  Jane was never wrong about things like that. She was the most wise and sensitive person Kee knew besides her mother. “What do you think?” Kee ventured warily.

  “Just the kind of thing he’d do,” her mother sniffed.

  “Why?” Kee was truly at a loss.

  “To spare someone else feeling guilty that she’d found a boyfriend. He’s a considerate, caring man and a hero into the bargain, so I think that’s just what he’d do.” She got up suddenly. “Well, I must go. A night spent worrying yourself sick is exhausting, even if I didn’t paint the Pendragon mansion with a new reality or call a mudslide to end all mudslides. They also serve who only wait and worry.”

  She was out the door before Kee could even protest or think what to ask her. As she closed the door, Kee heard her mutter, “I feel like Shakespeare’s Nurse.”

  Kee sat in the dark, stunned. Was her mother saying that Devin made up a girlfriend so Kee wouldn’t feel guilty about having a boyfriend? What boyfriend?

  Christian. Devin thought Christian raised her power? Stupid. She’d gone out with Christian to please her parents. She’d told Devin that, hadn’t she? Maybe not. But he’d overheard her talking about it with Kemble, she was sure.

  Devin thought she was lying. It struck her like a light bulb going on over her head in a cartoon. He thought she’d gone out with Christian every time she went up to the museum. She was sure of it. Did he attribute his own motive to her, thinking she minimized her relationship with Christian so she wouldn’t hurt him?

  And what the hell did her mother mean, she felt “like Shakespeare’s Nurse?” As in a playwright’s caretaker? Or a nurse character…. Uh-oh. She only knew of one character called Nurse in Shakespeare’s plays: the nurse in Romeo and Juliet who shuttled back and forth between the lovers with messages. Kee realized she wasn’t breathing as the implications washed over her. Her mother meant for her to hear that muttered protest. Did it mean she knew? And if she knew, why wasn’t she yelling?

  And what would happen when her mother told her father?

  *****

  “Well?” Senior asked, as Kemble’s mother came back into the kitchen.

  Kemble couldn’t believe that Senior was taking this whole thing so calmly.

  “I don’t know,” she sighed. “I’ve done what I could. He needs time to heal emotionally from his experience tonight. I only hope we can keep him from leaving before he can do that.”

  “Kee could help him with that,” Drew said.

  “If he’ll let her,” Maggie observed.

  “And if she feels like that’s something she can or should do,” his mother shrugged helplessly. “You know she’s always been such an obedient child. Loving him is upsetting her.”

  Kemble shook his head. Keelan wasn’t good all the time. Not lately. “Maybe we should get her drunk again.”

  His mother took a breath. “No. We’re going to do nothing. We’re going to give Devin time.”

  “What does that mean?” Drew asked. His sister wasn’t the passive type.

  “It means,” his mother said severely, “no pushing, no prompting, no hints about what they should do. They have to come to this on their own.”

  They all just stared at her. Of course, she was right. Both Devin and Keelan were probably fairly fragile right now. Especially Devin.

  “Maggie, if you could just soothe him every once in a while, that would help.”

  Maggie nodded. “Okay, Brina. I just did some of that with him. I did say, ‘Whatever happened up there tonight with Pendragon, none of it was your fault.’ Was that okay?”

  “That was fine, and I’m sure your Calm helped him.” She turned to Kemble. “Devin needs a counselor experienced in this kind of thing. Can you find us one?”

  “The best, and one who does house calls, coming right up.” Kemble was just glad he had something to do. He’d get somebody out here first thing tomorrow. He just hoped Devin would talk to the guy.

  His mother looked around at all of them. “So Maggie is going to do what she can for Devin with her Calm. Kemble is going to find him somebody he can talk to besides family. Otherwise, hands off. We act with Keelan just like nothing has happened. Is that clear?”

  Nobody was going to disobey that direct order.

  Senior stood. “So right now, I guess we go to bed, with your permission.” He shot his wife an amused look. She nodded and softened, shaking her head.

  Bed sounded damned good to Kemble.

  *****

  It had been more than a week since that night at Pendragon’s. The whole thing seemed almost unreal to Kee now. It had been eclipsed by the Purgatory she was living in. Devin was a remote ghost drifting through the house or sitting on the bench at the edge of the cliff looking out to the ocean, even in the rain. Every day he appeared at the bottom of the stairs as she came down for breakfast. Like clockwork he asked if she was doing better, until she could just scream. What did better mean? Better than what? Better than someone whose Destiny looked like he was about to walk out the door? No matter what she answered, he examined her face carefully, sighed and turned away. She’d tried “Pretty good, how about you?” Fine,” “Just dandy,” “How do you think I’m doing?” and finally “What’s wrong with you?” at which point his face crumbled and he stumbled outside while she collapsed in guilt. Now she was not doing fine. What was wrong with her? Was that any way to treat someone you loved? Maybe she was on edge because she still felt so damned aroused whenever he was anywhere near her. As if that was an excuse.

  The Breakers had turned into Stepford Family Land. Everyone was cheerful, though Kee could surprise concerned expressions when they thought she wasn’t looking. Kemble and Drew were back looking for Talismans. Her mother was planning holiday decorations, and they all had gotten this falsely festive attitude that made her ill. De
vin should be asking them how they felt. The place was an insane asylum.

  She couldn’t paint. She went to the museum twice, but she was pretty useless and she could see in Christian’s eyes that he didn’t quite know what to do with her. She was so worried about Devin she couldn’t concentrate on anything. But he was so remote it almost seemed like he was already gone. S. G. was nowhere in sight. Had she abandoned him in his hour of need? Or was her mother right, and Devin made her up? She sometimes thought she’d imagined that whole conversation with her mother. Devin didn’t seem to be recovering from his experience at all. After visits from the shrink, he’d often disappear, not even showing up for dinner. Maggie was doing her best, but she couldn’t keep him sedated all the time.

  Which was why Kee was lying in wait this afternoon in the foyer as the short December day dimmed.

  “Dr. Farley,” she said, jumping up from the chair by the door. “Could… could I have a word with you?”

  He really didn’t look like a shrink. Okay, the little beard was kind of shrinky. But the well-cut suit and the boyishly handsome face weren’t. He gave her an easy grin. “Sure. Keelan, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. There are so many of us, I know it’s hard to keep us straight.”

  “I’d never forget you. Devin talks about you a lot.”

  He did? That made her blink. She shook her head to clear it. “I know about confidentiality and all. But I’m just so worried about Dev.” The doctor opened the door and she slipped out onto the portico with him, closing the door behind her, for privacy “Is he making progress? He looked like he’d been crying a couple of times after you left.”

  “He’s working through it. That’s sometimes painful.” The doctor chuffed a laugh. “At least he’s talking to me now. Some.”