“The magic of a good pair of boots,” Carlos said. “Specifically, the boots I’m trying to convince Pepper she needs to buy for her next date if she wants to see results.”
As though boots were necessary to make sparks fly for me and Haris!
“I’m trying to go slow. Too many other things to dive in too fast.”
“Love is like the ocean,” Anneke said. “Deep, chaotic, and all-encompassing. No reason to go slow.”
I shivered at her words. Tiamat’s embrace didn’t remind me of love, but of death. Not the image I wanted on my mind when I was with Haris.
“No reason to tell others how to live their love lives, either,” Carlos said sharply.
“I thought all Americans lived for their dating life.”
All three of us glared at her — not really sure which one was glaring the hardest, but she seemed oblivious to us all.
“Not so much,” Lashonda responded. “If you’ll excuse us, we’ll move so you can get to the cookies more readily.” She pushed past Anneke, headed toward the sun room in the back — not that the sun room was sunny or warm in November, but it was less populated than the kitchen and dining area.
Darkness pressed against the glass walls of the sun room, and the air was at least ten degrees cooler than inside the house. I shivered a little, but I could put up with the cold if it meant being farther away from the magic emanating from Anneke. The room showed signs of disuse, with the furniture neatly stacked to the side of the sliding door, and the throw rugs arranged carefully side by side across the room as if they’d just been swept clean, rather than arrayed in the overlapping layers that Maggie usually favored.
“Some people go out of their way to irritate people, don’t they?” Lashonda said, shaking her head. She grabbed one of the wicker chairs from next to the door and moved it out to the middle of the room, fluffing the pillows before she sat down.
Carlos and I followed suit, though I also shifted one of the small metal tables so I had somewhere to rest my tea. One of these days, I’d bring coffee to one of these get-togethers. Just because Maggie preferred tea didn’t mean I had to feel restricted to it.
“No wonder Dorothy keeps trying to talk to her,” I muttered.
“I noticed. One good thing about Dorothy meeting her here, though.”
I couldn’t think of anything good in it, and I said so.
“They meeting up here, they haven’t formed their own little ‘Evil Witches Are Us’ group,” Carlos said. “Yet.”
“Okay, there is that.” I propped my left foot up on my right knee and leaned back in the chair. “Just keep reminding me there are silver linings.”
Sekhmet jumped up into my lap and began kneading my leg. I petted her. “Where’s your keeper? I haven’t seen Bast today.”
Carlos gave me an amused look. “I thought Maggie was her keeper.”
I glanced over at him but didn’t stop petting the cat. “Not to hear her tell it. Bast is the one who picked Sekhmet out and brought her home. Maggie says she was distracted with other things at the time.”
Lashonda said, “Makes sense. Bast runs the place.” She was rewarded for her loyalty by Bast landing on her shoulders. Lashonda reached up a hand to scratch Bast behind the ears. “See?”
“How come the cats always come to you two?” Carlos waved his glass of tonic. “I’m not complaining, mind you — who needs cat hair everywhere? — just curious why cats are attracted to some people but not others.”
“Maybe they don’t like the smell of your motorcycle?” I offered. I’d been grateful for his motorcycle — and the extra helmet he carried — but I wasn’t a cat.
“Aw, that’s too bad. Can’t you see me with a sidecar, all fitted out with extra cushions and everything?”
“I can picture you putting a cat in one, just to watch it hop out the other side,” Lashonda said. “Over and over and over again.”
“Heh. Sounds about right.” He drank some of his water.
“What about you?” I asked Lashonda. “You have any pets?”
“You’ve seen my pet rock. On my desk at work.”
It was true — she had a white rock with a single black spot painted on it.
“I meant something you have to feed and clean up after.”
“Ha! Actually, I do. When my neighbor goes out of town to visit her kids, I take care of her pugs, Addams and Wednesday.”
I looked hard at her, but I couldn’t tell whether she was joking. She and Carlos shared a smile, and I guessed there was another story there I wasn’t going to get, at least any time soon.
In my distraction, I’d stopped petting Sekhmet. She turned around in my lap, stood on her hind legs with one paw braced against my chest, reached up with the other one, and bopped me on the nose to get my attention. Amused, I rubbed the back of her neck. “The twins would like a pet, but I think we’ll wait to see what kind of stability we’re going to have.”
It wouldn’t do any good for them to agree to walk a dog twice a day and feed it if their father then got custody of them.
Sekhmet looked at me, then jumped down and walked over to jump into Lashonda’s lap.
“See? They completely avoid me,” Carlos complained.
“Maybe you should bribe them with tuna,” I said. A chill swept over me, and I rubbed my arms. Judging from the prickling along my spine, though, it wasn’t the temperature of the room this time. It felt like Dorothy, but Dorothy with a harder, colder edge than I’d ever experienced before.
“She’s coming.”
“You know that’s creepy, right?” Carlos leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “You give off this weird vibe. Hard to get used to.”
“So I’ve been told. Recently.”
“You didn’t do too many creepy things while we were out shopping. Besides arguing with me about the boots.”
“No matter how hot I look in them, I do not have any desire to fall and break my neck.” I reached for my tea, which was cooling rapidly out here. I grinned over at him. “But I did go over and buy them during my break today.”
A burst of chatter from the front of the house informed us that Dorothy had, indeed, arrived. I looked away, trying not to seem creepy in the way I always knew when other people were about. “I wish I knew what she’s up to this time.”
“No, you don’t,” Lashonda said. “Because if you knew and couldn’t do anything about it right this minute, it would eat at you.” She pointed a finger at me, and Bast reached out to bat at it. “You focus on what’s in front of you and what you’re doing now. Grab the good while you can.”
Focus on what was in front of me? That sounded a lot like the advice my mom had given the first time she met Haris. Did I spend too much time worrying about what might happen instead of living in the present? Perhaps I did, but unlike any of the people giving me this advice, I was aware of just what my future might bring, and I wanted to remain conscious of it so I didn’t take the wrong path inadvertently.
“Maybe I could head her off at the pass before we wind up with sirens singing a lament to half of Boston next time.”
Both of their eyes opened wide. “Sirens?”
I waved the question away. “It was all in a good cause, and they were just protecting their family.”
“Yeah, but — sirens?” Carlos asked. “How cool is that?”
“Wicked cool,” I agreed. “I’ll introduce you sometime if you introduce me to the nereid.”
“I don’t know if he’s fit to take out in public yet,” Lashonda said. “Bit of a user, that one.”
Melanthios crossed my mind. “Guess you don’t have to be human to be a jerk.”
“I’m glad it’s not just us,” Lashonda said. “How ‘bout I come by this week, and you tell me all about these sirens? I haven’t been by in a while.”
“I might forget how to make your favorite drink, you stay away too long,” I teased. “Not that I can blame you for giving up on teaching me.”
Bast butted her head against
Lashonda’s cheek, and Lashonda turned to look at her and croon. “No, I’m not forgetting you. You know I wouldn’t do that.” She petted Bast while staring at me consideringly. “I didn’t give up. Call it a tactical withdrawal. You need to work in other areas for a while.”
“I’m certainly doing that.”
She nodded approvingly. “Good.” She nudged Bast out of the way and grabbed one of her braids, twisting the hair and pulling the bead off the end. “Take this. You’ll have it when you need it. It’s primed to take a binding spell more easily than some random object. Use my pet’s name, cast the spell.”
I leaned forward and let her drop it in my palm. Pale blue polymer clay was shot through with streaks of green. It prickled a little against my skin, and I realized that when she said it was primed, she meant she’d already tied it with her magic to make bigger bindings quick to cast. I slipped it into my pocket.
“Thanks. I don’t know when I would need such a thing, but—” I wanted to tell her how much it meant that she trusted me now. In June, she’d been sure I was trying to destroy the city, casting revenge spells and leaking hatred everywhere. “—I’ll keep it with me. I don’t want to need it and not have it.”
“Good call,” Carlos said. “You don’t want to be on her bad side.”
“No. No, I don’t.” And not because there were enough people whose bad sides I was on already. I just wanted to stay right with my friends.
I stayed longer than I had the previous week, and finally Svetlana and Anneke and a few others left, at which point I reclaimed the wrapped gifts — from both Carlos and me — that had been stashed in Maggie’s closet.
“What’s this?” Lashonda asked.
“You didn’t think we spent all that time on one pair of boots, did you?” Carlos asked.
“You can get pretty set on those.” She turned his wrapped package over in her hands, half a smile on her face. “No octopus?”
“No octopus. No pugs, either.”
“All right, then.” She carefully removed the ribbons, eased off the gilt paper, and opened the box, then exclaimed over the maroon sweater. “Perfect!” They exchanged hugs before she picked up the bag I’d used as gift wrapping.
I shrugged as she looked up at me. “I saw something that looked like you.”
When she freed the dress from the mass of tissue paper, her mouth dropped open. “You need to go shopping more often if you can find treasures like this. Thank you!”
We hugged, too, and then Maggie joined in the hugging, whispering in my ear, “Told you that you belong here.”
Even with the behavior of the other witches earlier, I couldn’t argue with her.
The twins weren’t happy with me when I finally got home.
“Are we going to do this every Monday now?” Gavin whined.
“He’s just unhappy because Uncle Jeixing played the scales better than he did,” Tina said, walking up the stairs backward. “That’s not a real problem.”
“Oh, like you, bored and annoyed because you don’t get to practice where they can see you?”
“That’s enough,” I said mildly. “You both agreed to your lessons. Gavin, you take the first bath while Tina can get in a little practice time. Little.”
She had reached the top of the stairs, and she turned around to race to the door. It opened at her touch, and I hoped she wasn’t abusing the fact that I’d re-keyed the spell to allow her access.
Gavin stayed next to me. Before we went inside, he tugged at my coat sleeve. “Mom?”
I stopped. Most of the time when he wanted to talk to me, it was about some cool new game feature, or how kids at his school didn’t understand the differences between movies and books. If he was going to say something, I wanted to listen.
“What’s up, sweetheart?”
“When do I get to learn magic?” His voice was plaintive. “It’s not fair that Tina gets to make light and everything, and I just have to focus on music. I want to do cool things, too.” His voice sank. “And I’m not even very good at the music.”
I dropped to my knees to look him in the eye, resting my hands on his shoulders. His magic was more ordered than it had ever been, but organic, trees growing tall near a pond, the scent of pine flooding my senses. “The music is going to take practice to be good. Most things worthwhile do. All things worthwhile take time and attention, even if we’re already good at them. And you are getting better.”
“And the magic?”
“Is flourishing,” I said honestly. “Your magic is growing within you, and Hsien will teach you how to channel it through the music, joining two creative acts in an expression that goes beyond them both. Did you know he can use different tunes to call people as easily as I use a cellphone?”
“So … I’ll be able to do that someday?”
“It seems likely. But I think he probably wants you to have better control of the music, to live the music, let it inhabit you the way the magic does, before he teaches you to combine them.” I gave him a lopsided smile. “I can’t say for certain, of course. If you want to know, you’ll have to ask him.”
He chewed his lip for a minute. “I don’t think I’m ready to do that. But I can practice more if it means I get to do magic sooner.”
“You might discover that you like the music for its own sake, too.”
He screwed up his face into a doubtful expression. “Maybe.”
I hoped so. If he thought of the music as just a tool, he would never be as fluent with it — or his magic — as he wanted to be. Standing up, I said, “You’re still up first for bath.”
While he took his bath, I kept half an eye on Tina practicing in the dining room. She had become proficient with summoning the ball of light, and now she was working on making it change colors. Every time she got to purple, the light would pop like a bubble. Rather than cry in frustration, though, she frowned in determination and kept trying.
I was in the kitchen, the counter covered with herbs, dried flowers, and green tea leaves. I’d brought my honeysuckle vine in from the balcony for the winter a week ago, although I wasn’t certain it was going to survive, and plucked off all the flowers it still had. Now, it was time to mix up more of Carole’s tea to have on hand. I’d even put some into tea sachets to have ready to go into a travel mug.
I’d gotten into the habit of making a cup of Carole’s tea first thing in the morning to make sure my magic was topped off for the day. I never knew any more when I’d be called on to use my magic — sometimes for big projects, like for the trolls — so that seemed the wisest course. I drank that while getting the kids ready for school.
Maggie still wasn’t happy that Carole had given me the recipe in the first place, but since she didn’t have a choice in the matter, she had given me all of her notes for substitutions that she’d found over the years — she told me she’d had a very hard time locating borage until she planted some in her sun room. She also told me things not to use, like lavender. “And never chicory or dandelion root.”
She didn’t need to remind me of that one. I’d never be the potion expert she or Dorothy was, but I remembered the taste of doctored tea that left me susceptible to Dorothy’s will. Not an experience I ever wanted to repeat.
I needed the tea, though. For years, I’d managed with the magic that naturally filled me. If I used too much, it replenished while I slept. Now, I was using it almost as casually as drinking water, acting like it would always be there when I needed it, and I knew that wasn’t the case.
Then, too, the tea enhanced Sight, even in those who didn’t naturally have a talent for it. I’d learned to See the bindings Lashonda used and the healing energy that Chris channeled. Maybe, if I stocked up on the tea, I could actually See more of the problems with the bedrock that the trolls had me dealing with, See what Sverth had helped me to feel. Suiting my actions to my thoughts, I put a kettle on. I would start with another cup now, tonight, before bed. And maybe I’d even let the twins have a diluted cup, though that might bri
ng me more trouble down the road. I would live with the trouble if it came — I could not regret encouraging my children with their gifts.
Chapter 20
After the twins left for the bus stop the next morning, accompanied by Jinhong, I prepped my French press with ground coffee and poured freshly boiled water in to steep. Tea was all well and good in its place, but I wanted my coffee.
Carole’s ringtone chimed from across the living room.
Carrying my cup of coffee, I crossed to the table to pick it up. “You’re up bright and early.”
“I’ve already taught my first class, and my next is in forty-five minutes.”
“I forgot how many eight o’clocks you had. Does anyone else in the department even get in before ten?”
“One or two,” she said. “Some of us like the morning hours.”
It wasn’t as though I was a lay-a-bed. Opening shifts got me to work before most people cracked an eye open. Even Carole. Today, I was home and off to a leisurely start because I was working a later shift.
I carried the phone back to the couch and settled in to chat. “To what do I owe the pleasure? Usually, you call me during your lunch.”
“I just finalized my travel plans, and I wanted to talk to you about them. During spring break, I’m going to be out of town, and I’d appreciate it if you could keep an eye on the campus for me.” She paused. “It’ll give you more of a chance to catch up with Professor Dimitriou, as well.”
“I told you I’ll call him in January!”
“Yes, and I’ve no doubt you will. The fact remains that I will be leaving town, and although I haven’t Seen any disasters coming, I have caught glimpses of things on campus that concern me. I’d feel better if I knew you were around.”
A reputation for putting out metaphorical magical fires was better than a reputation for always causing trouble and visiting anger and revenge on people’s heads, but it also involved a lot of extra work. Not that I would turn down the request — Carole’s trust in me gave me a warm glow — but it did mean I was going to have to plan for extra coverage at the coffee shop. As though I could plan that far ahead! I also needed to check it against the twins’ break — assuming that I had custody, which was a big assumption right now, but I had to be prepared.
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