by Josh Lanyon
Then at dawn on Sunday came the Transformation of the Stag, which was a sober and solemn occasion bearing zero resemblance to any mortal stag-party ceremony.
So yes, just as Great-aunt Coralie needed to know whether to order champagne for forty people, Andi needed to know whether to cancel reservations at trendy Misdirections.
That didn’t mean the question didn’t hurt or that I didn’t struggle to answer.
“I don’t know,” I said.
Her face twisted with commiseration. She opened her mouth to apologize yet again but stopped. She knew. She knew the moment the love spell was lifted, my hold on John would end.
A wave of uncertainty washed through me. Was I being too hasty? Perhaps Andi was right. Why not wait? Give John’s artificially induced feelings a chance to take root and grow into something real. Why risk everything? What was the hurry?
Strangely, the face that came to me in that moment of doubt was not John’s. It was Sergeant Pete Bergamasco’s. His expression of glowering incredulity when he listened to John telling me the only thing that mattered in his murder investigation was that I was fine.
I loved who John was with me, but it was painfully clear that whoever that man was, it was not the John everyone else knew and loved.
I made myself say with a firmness I did not feel, “Let me know when it’s done.”
On the sidewalk outside her shop I felt for my phone and made the call with shaking fingers.
When John’s voice mail came on, I’m not sure if I was disappointed or grateful. The person I now turned to in times of trouble was the trouble. I wasn’t sure I could hold it together if I actually had to talk to him.
John’s recorded voice tersely instructed me to leave my message.
“Hey,” I said, and my voice wobbled. I steadied it as best I could. “I just wanted to say…I love you. I always will. Meeting you…” I suddenly ran out of air and had to squeeze out the rest of it. “Changed my life. Whatever happens, I’m never going to regret that. I just…thought you should know.”
I clicked off, dropped the phone in my pocket, and spoke the words. When the door appeared, I had to blink a couple of times before I could see it.
Chapter Four
I had forgotten there would be reporters.
They were lying in wait outside Blue Moon Antiques, a small mob armed with microphones and cameras. News vans were parked all along Grant Street. Reporters and camera crews milled around the front door of the store, coffee cups and cell phones in hand.
The lights were on inside the shop, so Blanche must have locked them out.
That would not be good for business, though I approved her strategy.
Luckily, the news teams did not spot me lurking anxiously in the alley opposite. I stepped back into the shadows, conjured another doorway, and slipped through. The door opened upstairs in Blue Moon. I flicked the latch, pushed open the narrow door of the giant longcase clock, and stepped into a room lined with burnished floor-to-ceiling cases crammed with books and atlases, the upper shelves accessible only by way of ladders set on tracks and rollers. Maps and vintage prints were rolled into tubes and planted in old whiskey barrels. Old photos in protective sleeves rested in produce crates or placed in thin-drawered desks with hand-scrawled cards denoting regions and period. The entire second story of the shop was devoted to books, prints, and maps.
Everything was in order. I listened. All was quiet. The muted overhead lighting, augmented by a few laser-focused spotlights, gave the huge room an almost sepia tinge. I let out a breath, feeling myself calm, as I always did up here. There was something about this elegant collection of old maps, old prints, and old books that reassured me. Comforted me. Maybe it was just the simple reminder that kingdoms rose and fell but life went on.
I headed down the staircase to the main showroom. At the sound of my footfalls on the wooden steps, Blanche put down the phone, gazing upward. The look of startled fright on her face gave way to amazement. “I didn’t know you were here! Have you been upstairs the whole time?”
Blanche is fifty. She’s tall and curvaceous with long, curly black hair and blue-green eyes. By that I mean one of her eyes is blue and one is green. She favors rhinestone glasses, and her makeup style is similar to that worn by sorceresses in 1960s Sinbad movies. She’s not a sorceress, however; she’s Wicca. Wicca is a charming and useful thing, but it is not Craft. I don’t suppose Blanche even believes in Craft.
“I didn’t mean to startle you. I didn’t realize you’d come in,” I said.
“It’s after ten.”
“Yes. I— Is it?” I stared at the Orfac sun clock behind the counter. Yes, it was now after ten. It felt as though a million years had passed since I had stood outside Seamus’s closed shop. Why in the name of the Goddess hadn’t I walked away?
“However did you get past all those reporters?”
“I sneaked in through the back.”
Blanche shook her head. “You look terrible. Is it true about Mr. Reitherman?”
I nodded.
“Murdered?”
“Yes.”
“And the police suspect you?”
My heart went cold. My mouth dried. “Is that what the reporters are saying?”
“They said you’re a person of interest.”
“I do try,” I joked, but my heart wasn’t in it. Blanche didn’t bother to smile. She looked as worried as I felt. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “John says no, but…I was there.”
Behind the rhinestone-framed cats-eye spectacles, Blanche’s eyes widened. “You…were?”
“Not when it happened, of course, but not long after. He—Seamus—invited me to see a book he thought I might be interested in. He said I could have first bid on it.”
She said doubtfully, “That was generous of him.”
I understood her skepticism. She was well aware that Seamus and I were rivals—and not friendly rivals.
She glanced down at the phone. “A Karl Kolchak left a message. I think he said he’s a police detective. He wants to speak to me.”
“Karl Kolchak? Isn’t that the name of the guy in The Night Stalker?”
Blanche looked blank. It’s amazing how many mortals don’t know their own culture. “You look terrible, Cosmo,” she said again. “Were they— Was it—?”
What?
I turned to study myself in the gilt geometric mirror with floral leaf design border we had priced to sell at $1400. I did look seedy. Maybe more so because I’m usually on the, well, fastidious side. I needed a shave. My hair—dark, spiky, with gold highlights—was flattened to my skull as though I hadn’t showered in a week. There were purple shadows beneath my eyes and lines around my mouth. My clothes looked like I had been roughed up, though of course no one had laid a hand on me.
“No rubber hoses. No blinding lights,” I said.
“No. I mean finding…him.”
“Awful,” I admitted, suppressing a shudder at the memory of Seamus soaking in his own blood.
“Blessed be.” She made a quick horned fist. “What should I do about the detective?”
“You’ll have to talk to him.”
“Yes, all right.” She sounded uncertain.
“But?”
“If they ask me about Mr. Reitherman…”
Oh.
I considered, said, “Well, you can’t lie. You don’t have to go out of your way to say Seamus and I didn’t always get along. But don’t try to cover up anything. I’ve done nothing wrong. I didn’t harm Seamus. I was there because he invited me.”
“Of course.”
Yet she looked worried. Did she think I was lying? Did she think I was capable of murder? It was a troubling idea.
I said, “Hopefully, I didn’t throw the note Seamus sent. I’ll have a look for it now.”
“All right.” As I headed for my office, Blanche called, “I had to lock the front door. A couple of those reporters were insisting they had a right to come in.”
“That was
a good decision.”
“The phone was ringing off the hook earlier.”
“I don’t want to talk to anyone.”
I went into my office, half closed the door, and sat down at the Gampel and Stoll ebony lacquered elephant desk. I rested my head in my hands, closing my eyes for a moment. All at once I was so tired, I wasn’t sure I could keep my eyes open.
But there was no time for lolling about. Person of Interest in a murder investigation could not be a good thing. I straightened and began searching through the scattered invoices and bills of lading for the note Seamus had sent.
I didn’t find the note. I rifled through the wastepaper basket beside the desk. Nothing.
I rose to ask Blanche if she had been in my office, but my cell phone rang. I glanced at the caller ID, and my heart bounded awake, all weariness gone.
John.
I clicked, said in a voice I had not expected to sound so unsteady, “Hi.”
“Hey. I’ve only got a minute. What’s going on?” John asked.
I hadn’t expected him to call back. I’m not sure why. For all I knew, Andi hadn’t even removed the spell yet. Even if she had removed the spell, we were still engaged. He would still return my phone calls. It was silly to be flustered, but knowing what I did, I felt…off. Diffident. Like I was talking to a stranger. Because I was. I now knew that everything I had previously believed about him and about our relationship was false, or at least predicated on an illusion.
Worse than that really, because John had inadvertently been wronged through me. He had been forced into emotional intimacy, forced to feel things he had no wish to feel: desire, longing, loyalty, love. And there were practical ramifications too. We were buying a house together. There was already an offer on his old home. He had paid for half of this ridiculously extravagant wedding, and he had paid for our honeymoon: a two-week stay in Scotland.
So his brisk What’s going on? was a question I couldn’t begin to answer.
“Cos? What was that cryptic message about?”
I cleared my throat, said, “Sorry. I just…wanted you to know.”
He gave a funny laugh, a little exasperated, a little not. “Thank you. I do know. I also know you’re worried sick about the investigation, but everything is under control.”
The crazy thing was, after learning about the love spell on John, I hadn’t given the missing grimoire or Seamus’s death another thought until I’d seen the mob of reporters waiting for me.
“Right. Of course.”
He added lightly, “And I love you too.”
I made a sound that hopefully passed for amusement.
“Okay, well, I’ve got to go. Are you at home or at the house?”
“I’m at the shop.”
“What?”
“I’m at Blue Moon.”
“I specifically told you to go home.”
“No, you didn’t. You said…” Actually, yes. He had said to go home. Go home and stay there. I hadn’t paid much attention because I never had any intention of going home.
“Yes, I sure as hell did,” John said in a tone I’d never heard from him before. Or rather, I’d never heard directed at me. “I told you to go home. I said don’t speak to anyone until you heard from me. I—”
“I haven’t spoken to anyone,” I cut in. “Not about Seamus. Blanche didn’t even know about it.”
“Goddamn it, Cosmo. Is the press there?”
I felt sick at that goddamn. I know it’s different for mortals, but within the Craft, a curse in the name of the Lord or Lady is…not something you would ever direct at someone you love.
“Yes. I didn’t speak to the press. They didn’t see me. I slipped in the back entrance.”
“I don’t understand why you would flout my orders. Do you not understand how serious this situation is?”
That flout my orders put my back up just a little.
“Certainly I understand. But I had to— I couldn’t not show up.”
“That is exactly what you could and should have done. What the hell is so important at the shop, it couldn’t wait a day or two?”
“I thought I’d have a look for Seamus’s note. To prove that he invited me to the Creaky Attic.”
“No one questions he invited you.” John added into my doubtful silence, “It’s immaterial.”
“Why would it be?”
John said curtly, “Reitherman’s after-hours invitation doesn’t address his actual state of mind, nor your state of mind in accepting the invitation. It doesn’t prove the two of you didn’t fall out in the course of your meeting.”
When I didn’t respond, he added, “Which is why you should have gone home as I asked. Blanche seems more than capable of running that place for a few days.”
The word days jarred me. The realization that this investigation might be something that went on and on for days, maybe weeks. It was not what I wanted to hear.
“If it’s going to be for a few days, all the more reason for me to check in with her!”
“There’s this new invention called the phone,” John said. “I bet you could try using that.”
Sarcasm. That was another new one. And although I’m known in my circle for being on the sarcastic side, it hurt.
I protested, “A few days on top of my already taking—”
I stopped, my heart seeming to deflate as I remembered.
“On top of already taking what?” John snapped.
“On top of having to take time off for our…honeymoon.” I added gruffly, “Assuming we’re still getting married.”
A sharp silence followed. John sounded strange as he replied, “Of course we’re getting married. What kind of comment is that?”
“I don’t know. I just… I’m sorry.” I stopped because it felt like I was making it worse with every word. What do they call it? Self-fulfilling prophecy? See, there is magic in the mortal realm.
“Look, Cosmo.” I could hear his struggle for patience. “You’re upset. I understand. Finish up whatever you’re doing and go home. I’ll call you when I can.”
“Yes. All right.” I took a steadying breath. “What about tonight’s rehearsal dinner?”
He was silent. “Damn,” he muttered.
I waited numbly for his decision.
It felt forever—though it could only have been a few seconds—before he said, “The dinner is still on. The rehearsal is still on. We’re getting married on Sunday.”
Words were beyond me. I managed a choked sound.
John hesitated. When he spoke again, his voice was softer. “Cos, nothing has changed. We just have to be smart in the way we handle this.”
“I understand.”
“The optics have to be considered.”
“Yes. Of course. I’ll finish up here and go home.”
Yeah, no, of course I would not. Because there were things that had to be done, things that had nothing to do with Blue Moon Antiques.
Another uncharacteristic hesitation from John. “Why don’t you go to the house. There’s plenty to do. It’ll help take your mind off things.”
By “the house” he meant the 1939 five-bedroom townhouse we had purchased together on Greenwich Street. Our “forever” home as his sister, Jinx—er, Joan—called it.
I understood that he was making an effort to reassure me that everything was fine. I could proceed with my plans to repaint the loft in the master because we would be sleeping there in our Victorian brass bed for years to come.
Illogical emotion closed my throat yet again. I managed to say around the tightness, “Yes, good idea. I’ll do that.”
“I’ll see you at three.” John hung up.
I rested my face in my hands, breathing quietly, trying to get control. A thought occurred. I checked my phone, scrolled through my messages, and saw that Andi had sent a message: Done.
I checked the time. She’d messaged while I’d been on the phone with John, which meant she had probably finished reversing the spell before he called. Or p
erhaps during our conversation. I thought back over our conversation. John had definitely been different—shorter, sharper—but maybe that difference was due to the fact that his fiancé was the prime suspect in a homicide investigation.
Or maybe not.
But my earlier thinking had been flawed—of course John would not instantly stop loving me.
No, it would be a more gradual, and possibly even more excruciating, process. With the love spell removed, our natural incompatibilities would begin to assert themselves. Traits he had previously been blind to would start to irk and annoy him. He would start to question his feelings. Eventually, inevitably, he would recognize he no longer loved me.
But was it inevitable?
As of this moment, John did love me. Was it possible that I could prolong his feelings, give them time to take firmer root if I tempered my behavior? Not pretend to be someone I wasn’t, but…tried harder to be my best self. My more loveable self.
Stop arguing with him, for starters. Stop “flouting his orders.”
Presumably there were things about me he did genuinely like and appreciate. We were sexually compatible. That was a big one, right?
Blanche rapped on the half open door. “Cosmo?”
“Yes?” I cleared my throat. “Come in, Blanche.”
She pushed the door wide. Her smile was apologetic, awkward. “Ambrose Jones is here to see you.”
“Who?”
I assumed a reporter had somehow finessed their way through the front entrance, but Blanche added, “He says Mr. Grindlewood sent him.” She dropped her voice and whispered, “He’s looking for work.”
“I can’t—” Deal with this right now was what I was going to say, but the kid was hovering right behind her, gazing over her shoulder. I caught a glimpse of a thin, pointy face, wild black hair, and pleading dark eyes.
He couldn’t have been much more than twenty. Just a bit younger than Jinx, my soon-to-be—maybe?—sister-in-law.
I hesitated. With Antonia moving to Seattle, we did need a second assistant, though I’d planned to wait to hire someone until after the honeymoon. But if Ralph Grindlewood thought this kid was worth sending to me, he must have had a good reason.
I sighed. “All right. Have him come in—and close the door, please.”