Some Practical Magic

by Laurie C. Kuna

“More or less.”

  Cassie felt a rush of unexpected anger at the agent’s words. Mick was risking his life? Trained experts should be setting this maniac up—not Mick. What a noble, heroic idiot. Realizing her face was probably starting to flush from raised blood pressure, Cassie took a mental step back and glanced around. Everyone with the exception of Jamison stared silently at Mick. And the agent wasn’t looking at her, so most likely no one—except Endora—knew she was furious.

  Right on cue, her familiar weighed in. Should we say something, Cass? I’ll bet the killer is that bastard who attacked me.

  Cassie suddenly took a keen interest in the water glass on the table in front of her. She stared at it intently, as if she could read the future in the ice cubes as they melted. I’m certain he is. But if we intervene, we have to expose what we are.

  That’s a point, Endora admitted, sitting back in her chair and glancing at the others. And witches really don’t get involved in human problems if they don’t have to. She was silent for a long moment. But you’re not just worried about ignoring coven policy, are you? You’re afraid of Mick’s reaction to what you are.

  Cassie nodded, unable to put her fears into any other form, telepathic or otherwise.

  Under the table, Endora gave Cassie’s knee a sympathetic squeeze.

  The gesture broke through her mental daze. If I did decide to intervene, how do I start the conversation? ‘By the way, I’m a witch and Endora’s my familiar, a shape-shifting cat. We think we’ve run into this killer a couple of times on this tour’?

  I suppose that’s one way to approach it.

  Cassie’s frustration sizzled down their mental link. Jamison would lock us up as psychos!

  C’mon, Cass, he’d never be able to hold us. We’d be out of there before he could say “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”

  The glass actually shook, although Cassie didn’t touch it. This is no time for jokes, Dora.

  It’s the perfect time for jokes, Endora shot back unrepentantly. Some of the best jokes ever created came from bad situations. Someone in this group’s got to look on the bright side. You do the worrying, and I’ll take care of the comic relief.

  You’d be a lot less of a pain in the butt if you were a normal familiar.

  Normal is boring. Ennui would paralyze you after ten minutes with another familiar.

  I’ll have to try that sometime. Soon.

  Endora had to fake a coughing fit to keep her snort from being heard.

  Mick spoke again, and Cassie gladly turned her focus back to him.

  “You don’t have to stay on this tour, Steven.” Mick’s intense blue gaze encompassed everyone in the room. “None of you do.” He gave a half-laugh. “You can all go home, and I’ll finish this alone.”

  “How much danger are you in?” Jones asked.

  Cassie held her breath waiting to hear the extent of what her foolish hero risked.

  “None,” Jamison stated firmly. “The killer is following his idol’s writings. If he harmed Mick, there would be no reason to kill, no blueprint to follow. And the killer has no guide to threaten any of you.”

  There was another long pause.

  I swear that maniac bastard won’t get his hands on Mick. No matter what it takes, Boss. Familiar’s honor.

  Those words warmed Cassie entirely. Endora had just unquestioningly pledged herself to protect Mick. Dora, I’d hug you, but it’s not the time or the place.

  I’ll just settle for a good scratching behind the ears when we get back to the room.

  You got it.

  “Anyone who wants to go home,” Jamison was saying, “is free to do so. The only restriction is that you’ll have to abide by a gag order until this case is closed.”

  “I, for one, am staying right here,” Steven Jones stated quietly. He flexed his massive shoulders, then reached for Louise’s hand. “I’m not about to abandon my man M. S. Kazimer. And maybe by staying, I’ll be a part of bringing an animal to justice.”

  “I’m with Steven,” Louise said quietly.

  Steven’s physique and Louise’s dignified courage and unshakable belief in her husband somehow made Cassie feel better. She looked at Endora. “We’ve got nothing on our calendar until May, right?”

  “Actually, I don’t think until the summer solstice,” Endora confirmed.

  “So, we’re in, too.” Cassie tried to keep her heart out of her eyes as she looked at Mick, daring to hope that the gratitude in his expression was mixed with true affection. It didn’t matter, though. She loved him, and she could do little about it. Regardless of whether he loved her in return.

  His eyes held her gaze alone as he stated, voice husky, “I appreciate all of your support.”

  Not a single author went home.

  THE AFTERNOON’S planned tour of Memphis had been canceled, and Mick and Cassie didn’t really feel like venturing out on their own, even if Jamison sent agents with them. They stayed inside, ordering room service for lunch.

  At 10:30 PM, the group would meet in the hotel lobby, board the bus and be taken to the train station. There, a sleeper car reserved exclusively for them waited on a side rail. In the wee hours of the morning, The City of New Orleans—on its run from Chicago to the Delta—would pick up the car. By midmorning, they would be in the Crescent City. New Orleans. The Big Easy.

  Voodoo Capital of the World.

  Cassie and Mick’s lovemaking was poignant and intense that afternoon, as if the true circumstances of the tour had quelled any previous inhibitions regarding their emotions. They gave to and took from each other in equal measure.

  Temporarily sated, Mick rolled to his side and smiled at Cassie. “Wow, lady, you’re something. Where’d you learn that last move?”

  “Kama Sutra Monthly. It was the featured position for December.”

  Mick laughed and pulled her to him, cradling her head against his chest. “How can I get a subscription?”

  “I think you’re doing just fine without one.” She stroked his chest with her hand, then planted a soft kiss over his heart.

  He squeezed her gently, and they lay together for several long moments, just holding each other close.

  “What’s your most prized possession?” Mick’s question ended the companionable silence. “The one thing—besides friends and family—you can’t picture not having.”

  “Hmmm . . .” Cassie’s fingers drew patterns in the black hair on Mick’s chest while she contemplated her answer. “Tough question.”

  “C’mon, Cass. Fess up.”

  She cocked her head, still thinking. “From a strictly materialistic standpoint, it has to be my Mercedes.”

  “A car?” Mick’s eyebrow shot up as he raised his head to look at her. “I took you for the type of person who’d say, ‘My humanitarian award,’ or ‘My Nobel Peace Prize.’”

  “Had I won a Nobel, that might have been the choice. However, if you’re talking strictly an object, the Mercedes wins. No contest. I flat out love that car.”

  “I know I’m being sexist here, but isn’t that more a male fantasy?”

  She laughed. “Well, it’s not just any car. It’s a silver ‘55, 300 SL gull-wing coupe.”

  Mick sucked in an audible breath and sat up. “You’re kidding!”

  “One of the very few things I never kid about,” Cassie stated solemnly as she slid up the headboard to sit beside him, “is my 300 SL.”

  Mick’s incredulous look only got more comical. “My God, just fourteen hundred of that model were manufactured in four production years. Where’d you get it?”

  From the factory in Sindelfingen, Germany the day it rolled off the production line, Cassie thought smugly. My father’s present to me on my fortieth birthday. Since she assumed Mick could at least do simple math and draw some very uncomfor
table conclusions, she didn’t say that, though. Instead, she told a white lie. “I bought it from an ancient car buff who’d decided any ground conveyance that topped out at one hundred fifty-two miles per hour was too much for him.”

  “Straight six engine, Bosch direct fuel injection?”

  Cassie nodded.

  “Four speed manual transmission?”

  Another nod, and when Mick groaned in appreciation, she added, “Zero to sixty in eight point two.”

  “You’re killing me here, Cass.”

  “Well, let me nail down your coffin lid.” She grinned smugly. “It’s got an alloy body.”

  “One of twenty-nine alloy bodies? Twenty-nine out of the fourteen hundred cars?” He clutched his chest melodramatically and fell over in her lap. “Nothing short of preventing Armageddon would make me give that car up.”

  It was on the tip of her tongue to ask if stopping a serial killer counted as Armageddon, but that was far less a matter for joking than her car, and she wouldn’t downplay the situation by making light of it. Instead, she ran her fingers through his hair. “I guess making someone really happy was his motivation. Believe me, I was ecstatic.”

  Mick’s blue gaze turned serious, and he whispered, “I’d like to make you ecstatic.”

  Cassie’s heart caught in her throat at his words. At the look in his eyes. “You do.”

  “Not just in bed. I’m talking about—”

  The sudden hammering on their suite door had both of them jumping for clothing like a couple of teenagers caught necking in the back seat of a parked car.

  “Cassie!” came Endora’s call from the hallway. “Are you in there?”

  You know I am! Cassie chided mentally. And there’d better be a damn good reason you’re here.

  The sound of a lock releasing echoed through the suite.

  “Get decent, you two,” Endora called from a now obviously open door. “I’m coming in.”

  “Whatever possessed you to give her a key,” Cassie hissed under her breath to Mick as they hastily put themselves back together.

  He shrugged. “She is my manager for the time being.” He reached out and caught Cassie’s hand as she tried to squeeze by him through the bedroom door. “We have to talk, Cass. But the time’s not right just now.”

  I’ll say it isn’t, Cassie thought. “Tonight, after we’re on the train,” she whispered before turning to confront Endora. “Dora, where’s the fire?”

  “You’ve got to come to the room with me right now,” Endora stated, voice unusually tight. “We have important things to do before we leave for New Orleans.”

  Cassie shot her an annoyed look. “And this absolutely could not wait because . . . “

  “Because it can’t.”

  “Well, that explains it.” Cassie turned back to Mick and bussed his cheek with a quick kiss. “See you later.”

  She could tell by the look in his eyes that he was more than a little frustrated with the interruption, but he kissed her back with a smile. “Okay, doll.”

  Endora quirked an eyebrow. “Doll?”

  Mick grinned impishly. “I’m in retro-Forties mode,” he stated. “Live with it.”

  Once out in the hall, Cassie turned the full power of her own frustration onto her familiar. Dora, you couldn’t have picked a worse time to show up. I think Mick was about to propose.

  I know he was. That’s why I rained on your little parade.

  THEY HAD REACHED the bank of elevators, and Cassie did a quick half-turn toward Endora.

  “What?” Judging by Endora’s wince, Cassie knew she’d shrieked the word, but she couldn’t have cared less if she’d just shattered her familiar’s eardrums. “What are you implying?”

  “I’m not implying anything,” Endora said with quiet intensity. “I’m saying I deliberately interrupted because I knew Mick was going to propose.”

  “Endora, that is way out of bounds!”

  The familiar held her ground in the face of Cassie’s fury. “I don’t think so.”

  Without a word, Cassie spun on her heel and strode off toward their suite.

  “You don’t want to hear why I interrupted?”

  “Not here in the corridor.” And not telepathically.

  More angry than she’d ever been in her life, Cassie deliberately cut the mental link between them.

  Eleven

  “I ACTED IN YOUR best interest,” Endora stated for what seemed to Cassie like the hundredth time. “Just because you don’t like it doesn’t change the truth.”

  Cassie sat in the armchair in their suite’s living area, feet propped on the coffee table and arms crossed tightly over her chest. She glared at Endora, standing at the wet bar. “I’m not speaking to you right now.” When she saw her familiar flinch under the lash of that cold statement, realization of how deliberately bitchy she was being hit Cassie like a repulsion spell. In a softer tone, she said, “Give me some time with this, Dora.”

  The familiar planted her hands on her hips and stared. “Exactly how much time do you think you’ve got?” she asked evenly. “It’s almost six. We’re due in the lobby by ten-thirty to continue a book tour. Since Mick is the reason this tour was organized, he will also be in the lobby at ten-thirty. That gives you approximately—”

  “I can do the math.” Cassie didn’t fight the sudden impulse to bite her right thumbnail to the quick.

  The silence in the room lengthened to minutes, then finally Cassie straightened in the chair and turned to Endora. “All right. What is the truth, as you see it?”

  “That you’re a witch and Mick’s a human and you’d better think long and hard about everything that could possibly happen if you married him.” Endora managed the entire spate of words without pause, as if she feared taking a breath would allow an interruption.

  “You don’t think it could work between us?”

  Endora paced from the couch to the wet bar and back, rhythmically rubbing the back of her neck as if she were swishing her tail. “I’m not saying that. But this is not a television sitcom. It’s your real life.” Sitting on the coffee table right where Cassie’s feet had been propped, she leaned toward her friend. “Have you given any thought to the implications of a human-witch marriage?”

  The heat Cassie felt in her cheeks could only mean she was blushing furiously. She swallowed hard. “Actually, I haven’t considered much beyond the fact that I love Mick.”

  “Does he want kids?”

  The urge to wring her hands was there, but Cassie successfully fought it. Her thumbnail again tempted. She leaned forward to let her hands hang between her knees and get that nail as far from her mouth as possible. “He told me he does.”

  “How does he feel about biracial babies?”

  “Dammit, Endora!” Cassie shot to her feet, took two steps away from the chair, then feeling her familiar’s gaze boring into her back, resumed her seat. Her chest tightened like a vice.

  “Does he know what you are?”

  “No.”

  “Plan to tell him, or just going to wait until he’s eighty and asks why you don’t look more than fifty?”

  Incapable of speech, Cassie shrugged then stared out the window.

  With a tenacity unusual for a familiar, Endora prodded, “What about Medusa? She’s hell-bent on getting you married, but would she prefer a human to no marriage at all? Accept Mick as a son-in-law? Suppose you somehow convince her. How will you deal with the rest of your relatives? Not a single nominee for Open-minded Witch of the Year among them.”

  “I know,” Cassie mumbled. “I know.” Turning to face Endora, she tried to shrug nonchalantly but burst into tears.

  Endora instantly moved to gather Cassie in her arms, hugging her close. “Oh, Cass.”

  “What should I do?”

&
nbsp; “Tell him.”

  “What if he rejects what I am?” Cassie sobbed. “What if he can’t love me enough to overlook our differences?”

  Endora stared until her friend raised her head and met her gaze. “Tell him. Otherwise, your relationship is a complete lie.”

  Cassie pulled away. “You think I’m playing Mick because I haven’t told him what I am?”

  Even though she was very much in human form, Endora jumped like her tail was on fire. “No, by the goddess!” She paced again, hands and arms gesturing her points. “All new couples keep things from each other. That’s a natural preservation instinct. It’ll only become a lie if you marry him without telling him.”

  Cassie flopped down on the sofa, absently twisting the silver pentagram ring on her right hand. “Dora, quit pacing, for goddess sake. I’m not going to hit you or anything.” She sighed, wiping away tears with the backs of her hands. “I need your honesty right now. More than ever.”

  Endora stopped moving but regarded Cassie warily from a good ten feet away. “What if my honesty hurts your feelings?”

  Tipping her head back, Cassie studied the ceiling. “It already has, and I haven’t attacked you, have I?” She straightened and turned her gaze to her familiar.

  Looking guilty, Endora took three cautious steps closer.

  “Come on, Dora, sit down.” She patted a spot on the sofa beside her. “You have to help me.”

  “Sure?”

  “Absolutely.” An emphatic nod punctuated the word.

  Endora complied, settled, cocked her head and launched her best cat stare at her friend. “What do you want me to do?”

  The sigh escaped before Cassie could control it. “I’ll probably regret this, but I want you to continue being brutally honest. Play devil’s advocate, so to speak.”

  “I don’t really like Lucifer all that much,” Endora quipped. “How about if I just function in the manner Medusa would, were she here.”

  Cassie smiled wryly. “No need to be that extreme.”

  Impulsively, Endora reached for Cassie’s hand, and knowing what a difficult thing that was for the familiar to do, Cassie didn’t pull away. She waited patiently while Endora appeared to be weighing her words.