Magic Spark

by Sara Dobie Bauer

  “I heard,” Liam said as he unlocked the huge, wooden front door. “I won’t be here. I have a swanky fundraiser thing for Zoe’s school.”

  “Lucky bastard.”

  Inside, the Bistro carried the lingering scent of melted butter and wood polish. Liam stared up the grand staircase that led to not one but two additional stories. The liquor bottles downstairs glowed dim shades of orange as the sun made its entrance down the center of Broad Street outside.

  Liam sighed. “Gotta love the south.”

  Rue walked into Sea Books around lunchtime in a flowing skirt and peasant blouse, which meant she was trying to cover…

  “You can’t just walk around Charleston barefoot, Mother,” Cyan said as she lounged in an old chair, yawning and reading a book about astral projection.

  “You, young lady, wear combat boots in August. You are not one to judge.”

  Cyan sighed into the book’s binding and considered a nap.

  “Rue!” Sybil’s soft voice emerged from the secret back room, and she soon made an appearance, her red hair a mess. She leaned forward and kissed her elder sister twice on the cheeks. “What’s all this?” She gestured to three canvas bags Rue carried gracefully on her shoulders.

  “Oh, I thought I’d get a jump on that skin treatment class this weekend.” She dropped one bag at a time, a couple overflowing with dried flowers.

  Cyan didn’t have any use for skin treatments and anti-aging potions, but she knew they worked just from looking at her mother, over forty and not looking a day over twenty-eight.

  Cyan got her blonde hair and gray eyes from her mother. She got her attitude from her daddy, Drake Burroughs—a construction worker with massive strength and a touch of the dark side to his magic. Drake could have gone either way: light witch or dark. He said it was her mother’s love that kept him good.

  Rue eyed her daughter’s lax pose. “Slow day today?”

  “It’ll pick up. You know it always does, especially with your herbal remedy class coming up.”

  As if Sybil’s prescient words beckoned the bell on the door, it rang, and a woman in a white pantsuit and black fur entered, removed her sunglasses, and gave the shop a sniff.

  Sybil moved into action, smiling in that gentle way of hers. “Welcome, Mrs. Wagener. How are you this beautiful morning?”

  Cyan thought the rich woman could use some of Rue’s skin treatments, but it might be too late. She’d ruined herself with plastic surgery—her face was shiny from over-stretching and her eyebrows raised in a constant state of surprise.

  Mrs. Wagener tucked her sunglasses into a massive leather purse. “It’s about my husband. Rue, I am indeed pleased to see you, child.”

  Rue crossed her arms. “Oh, I am sure, Elizabeth.” She gestured to Sea Books’ back room. “Come on.”

  Cyan went to follow, but Sybil put her hands on her niece’s shoulders. “You watch the front of the shop, dear. I’ll help your mother.”

  “But—”

  “Sweetheart.” Sybil touched one of Cyan’s braids as her brow furrowed. “You don’t have the touch yet. Just stay out front and help any customers, all right?”

  Cyan sighed and sat back down on the couch, resting her elbows on her knees. “Stupid prophecy,” she muttered as her aunt disappeared behind the midnight blue curtain. She leaned back in her chair and thought about what the astral projection book had been saying—about incantations and rising from the corporeal form. She folded her small, pale hands on her stomach, took a deep breath, and thought about rising out of her body, but all that did was make her fall asleep.

  By the time Rue and Sybil returned with Mrs. Wagener, Cyan had slept a good forty-five minutes. She watched her beautiful, blonde, barefoot mother usher the rich woman to the front door and wave her out into the street. Then, Rue turned and sat on the arm of Cyan’s chair.

  “What was all that about?”

  Rue looked at Sybil, and they both chortled.

  “What?”

  “Well, as you know, Mr. Wagener isn’t the best looking of gentlemen, although I’m assured his pocket book is something to see.” Rue rolled her eyes. “She wanted us to decrease his libido.”

  Sybil giggled into the palm of her hand, covered in rings of different stones.

  “God, why would you want to do that to your own husband? As I understand it, sex is supposed to be fun.”

  “Oh, honey,” Rue said, “not all men have the animal magnetism of your father.”

  Cyan winced. “Gross.”

  “Maybe if you tried dating—”

  Cyan cut her mother off with a groan. “We’ve talked about this. I’m not putting some man in danger prior to the War just because you want me to lose my virginity.”

  Rue winced and looked a lot like her daughter. “I’m not talking about… Christ Almighty, Cyan, can’t we just have a conversation about boys? There must be some on this peninsula you find attractive. Unless you don’t like boys?”

  “I like boys,” Cyan barked.

  “Of course she does,” Sybil agreed. “No way you’ve forgotten the beautiful man that’s her destiny, Rue.”

  “Please don’t make it sound like we’re in a Disney movie,” Cyan spat.

  “Oh!” Sybil clapped. “Let me show you the most recent painting!” She dashed to the back room, where she kept all her paintings of Cyan’s supposed true love.

  “Any sign of the Dof?” Rue asked.

  “I’m not ready, and it’s not time. You know it’s not time.”

  “He might show up before the War,” Rue said. “Then, what’ll you do?”

  Cyan curled a long braid around her fingertip. “Keep him safe,” she whispered.

  Liam looked at his reflection: dark hair in an idyllic swoop, clean shave from his trusty—and old-fashioned, perhaps—straight razor, and green eyes sparkling like the Emerald Isle where he was born. He adjusted his black bowtie in the mirror: checking its proper alignment had almost become a nervous tic.

  “It’s straight.” Zoe appeared reflected behind him. She set a glass of red wine on the counter. “You are so OCD.”

  “I’m not OCD,” he said to her retreating back. “It’s just always crooked in pictures.”

  He grabbed his wine glass and took a sniff. Previously trained as a sommelier, he recognized a California Cabernet by smell alone.

  Tonight would be his first meeting with all Zoe’s co-workers from the fancy private school where she taught. Earlier they’d gone over the list of things not to discuss—including but not limited to gay rights, Paula Deen, and Catholicism—and Liam felt oddly insecure. He was about to meet some of Charleston’s most posh, and he was just a bar manager. Granted, at one of the most expensive restaurants in town, but still just a bar manager.

  Liam stopped fiddling with his tie and noticed the evening outside the window glowed gold. He felt so alive in Charleston—magnetic almost, as if he could do anything there. The town really did seem to shimmer, and the nights smelled like lilac. He was peacefully enjoying his wine’s oaky bouquet when the spike of pain hit, right across his temple, behind his eyes. He gasped and bent forward.

  The pain was like the scorch of burnt flesh—only inside his brain. He crushed his eyes shut and pressed on his forehead as if he might be able to push the agony away. Slowly, it dwindled, until he was able to breathe. Luckily he hadn’t dropped his wine glass and Zoe had already left the room. His headaches upset her, and it upset her even more when he said they were “nothing.”

  He joked about having a brain tumor—well, it was sort of a joke—because he actually didn’t know anything about his family health history except that his mother died of some kind of cancer and his father a heart attack when Liam was no more than a toddler. He came from money, lots of money, which was why he attended high-end boarding schools until the age of eighteen, when he decided to run away and start over in America, in California.

  He found his niche there in the food world, working his way up from dishwasher to manage
r to sommelier. Then, he met Zoe. He was drawn to more than her beauty and intelligence. She was an orphan, too. Her parents died in a house fire that happened while Zoe was away, having a good time at a sleepover birthday party, unaware her life was being destroyed. Unlike Liam, her family didn’t have money, so she spent much of her childhood lonely in a Catholic orphanage like some Broadway musical travesty.

  Sometimes he thought their shared fear of being left alone—again—made them desperate for each other. There were nights when their lovemaking felt more like cannibalistic clawing than pure passion, as if when her nails drew blood on his back, she reminded herself that he was real and alive. When she bit at his chest, she perhaps sought his heartbeat. He had similar affectations. In the middle of the night, he occasionally reached out half expecting to find her body cold, her soul departed. When he found her warm and breathing instead, he laid as close as possible to simply feel her heat.

  Yes, perhaps broken people fit together like puzzle pieces. Liam abandoned his wine on the bathroom sink and went to kiss the woman he hoped might one day be his wife.

  At 6 PM sharp, Sybil forcibly removed her niece from Sea Books, claiming, “You must eat and sleep like a normal person.” Only in Cyan’s family would “normal” sound like such a horrible thing. The city was almost dark with the descending late autumn sun as she walked down Broad Street. It was packed with people trying to get home from work or downtown to bars. Cyan kicked at loose rocks on pavement and tried not to run into anyone.

  She wouldn’t have noticed the dark figure lurking in the alley ahead if not for the minute glow of red oozing from beneath his long, black jacket. She couldn’t see his face but, when he raised his hand, she saw the glow came from his very skin.

  She’d seen things like that before in her own household—all witches projected their own individualized colors. This was something else, though, something that made her shout, “Hey!” People turned to look at her, as did the man with the glowing red hand, but her call was too late. The force of his power erupted over the street like a volcanic tidal wave and then, chaos.

  A peaceful green trolley, filled with businesspeople and tourists, flew straight off the pavement and high into the sky. It landed with a horrible screech, crashing down on several cars below. People screamed and ran, but Cyan remained calm and looked to the man in the black cloak. He had, of course, disappeared.

  “Shit,” she hissed.

  The trolley caught fire, its flames illuminating the street as people tumbled and bled on it. A woman five feet away cowered behind a palm tree, and Cyan shouted repeatedly at her to call an ambulance until the woman nodded and pulled out her cell phone.

  Cyan took steps toward the trolley, the crushed cars. A dark blue Mercedes had taken the brunt of the trolley’s wrath, so she was understandably shocked when the driver’s side door opened, and a man in a tuxedo rolled out into the street. She hurried to pull him from the wreckage, wrapping her hands around his upper arm.

  “Can you walk?” she shouted over the sound of moans and crackling fire.

  Blood covered his face from what looked to be a head wound, and he said something.

  “What?” Cyan leaned closer.

  “Zoe.” He pulled away from her to go back to the crushed car, the back of which glowed with orange flames from the trolley.

  “Hey!” She tried to drag him backwards, but he had about six inches and eighty pounds on her slight frame. “You can’t—”

  He turned suddenly and took hold of Cyan’s shoulders. “Help me,” he said. “Help me get her out.”

  She would have nodded and moved a lot faster. She would have said something. She would have remembered to breathe if she didn’t know his face so very well—the face she’d known since childhood, since the first time Sibyl’s visions of Cyan’s true love led to painting after painting after…

  “Oh, my God,” she gasped.

  “Please,” he begged.

  She did nod, finally, and followed her destiny toward a burning mass of metal. He leaned in first, but somehow, they both fit through the door. Cyan winced when she saw the woman, dressed in a beautiful, black gown and covered in blood that resembled an oil slick. The man at Cyan’s side didn’t hesitate as he reached for her.

  “The seat, it’s…” He looked around. “Something’s…”

  The passenger side door was crushed in, as was the roof above. The woman was similarly crushed into her seat—all this as the flames moved closer. Sweat dripped from Cyan’s forehead and into her eyes like tears.

  “Let me get in the back,” she said. Once there, she saw how the back of the passenger seat was bent forward. “I think I can pull backwards on the seat, and we can get her out.” She looked up at his familiar face. “Okay?”

  He nodded, taking firmer hold on the woman in evening dress.

  Cyan wished she had her father’s strength, her mother’s magic. Instead, she had her skinny legs, which she planted against the door as she pulled on the passenger seat. She pulled until she thought her arms might give out, until she heard a sound like a sob escape the man’s lips and he finally tugged the woman free, out of the car, into the street. The flames licked up the outside of the Mercedes; the windows glowed red.

  Cyan tumbled out onto Broad Street beside the couple. Sirens grew louder, approaching, as the man in the tuxedo brushed blood-soaked hair from the woman’s face. He kissed her forehead, her cheeks. “Zoe, wake up. Zoe.”

  Cyan watched him. It was him, wasn’t it, her Dof? It would have been easier to tell if he hadn’t been covered in his own blood, if his face hadn’t been wrinkled in anguish over the limp form in his arms—if the only light hadn’t been the dancing flames of a burning Charleston trolley.

  He lifted the unconscious woman from the street and cradled her in his arms before looking up at Cyan. “Thank you.” His eyes were red and wet. “Are you all right?”

  With his beloved in his arms, why would he ask her such a thing?

  “What’s your name?” he asked, his hands caressing the cheeks of the unconscious woman.

  “Cyan Burroughs.”

  He nodded. “I’m Liam. And this is Zoe.”

  The dancing lights of an ambulance replaced the fire beyond. “She’s going to be okay,” Cyan said, unsure if it was a lie. She wanted to reach out and touch his shoulder—give some kind of physical comfort—but didn’t.

  “Yeah,” he said over the sound of rushing feet.

  Then, there were paramedics pawing at them. Cyan pushed their hands away and stood, said she was fine. She stepped back and watched Liam, sitting near Zoe as they worked, even as his own head wound continued to paint his face red.

  And then she ran.

  Cyan ran away.

  Liam watched her through glass as he talked quietly to the doctor in the hall. He’d never seen Zoe weak before, never seen her in a hospital bed, tied up to tubes and covered in bandages as the beeping machines measured how much life she had left.

  “She suffered severe head trauma and lost a lot of blood. She’s in a coma, Mr. Cody.”

  He wanted to hear her laugh. He wanted to twirl around the floor at her school fundraiser. He wanted to squeeze her body to his until she whispered his name.

  “Mr. Cody?”

  “Sorry.” He looked away from his broken love. “What?”

  “Is there any family you can call?”

  “No, she doesn’t…” He shook his head. “She doesn’t have any family.”

  “What about you?”

  “No.” He ran his hand over the top of his head, through his hair, and winced when he hit the bandage on his forehead, stitches beneath. “Orphans, both of us.”

  “How about friends?” The female doctor smiled up at him, trying to be kind. “You should have friends around you right now.”

  He thought of the people from work: the restaurant owner, the chefs, the bartenders and waitresses. He wouldn’t call them friends. “We only moved here three weeks ago. Her boss. I should call
Zoe’s boss. We were on our way to a fundraiser.” He gestured with a shaking hand to his bloody tux. “Were a lot of people hurt tonight?”

  The doctor nodded, hands in her white lab coat pockets. “Many. Some dead. In a way, you’re lucky. Zoe still has a chance.” She took steps away from him, back toward the ER downstairs. “Will you be staying the night?”

  He stared at Zoe’s limp body. “Yes.”

  “I’ll have a cot brought up.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “I won’t sleep.”

  At the sound of the doctor’s retreating footsteps, Liam entered Zoe’s room. The place smelled of gauze and disinfectant. He pulled a cushioned chair close to her bedside, sat, and folded his hands in his lap. He watched the machines record her heartbeat and breathing.

  He needed to call her boss, her school. Surely, by then, news of the tragedy on Broad Street had reached the Brighton School fundraiser, and perhaps, people were wondering why Zoe wasn’t there, maybe knowing she lived below Broad. Maybe already suspecting the worst.

  Yes, he needed to call her boss, but first, he stood and took her cold hand in his. “You’re supposed to talk to people in comas,” he whispered. “Or at least I think I saw that on a TV show, like you’re supposed to be able to hear me or something. Can you hear me, Zoe?”

  The machines chirped.

  “I had something in mind for tonight. See, I’ve been carrying this ring.” He laid his palm over his suit coat pocket. “I bought it in Charleston, actually. I was walking up East Bay and saw it in the front window of a jewelry store. You’re going to say it’s too much, but I saw it and knew I wanted to marry you. I want to marry you, Zoe, so you can’t do this stupid thing. You can’t lay here like this. You have to wake up. You have to wake—”

  “Mr. Cody?”

  He closed his eyes against the voice at the door.

  “Mr. Cody, you have a phone call.”

  He glanced over his shoulder to find a young woman in purple scrubs.