by Lucy March
“I will stop you from talking about magic in public,” he said, his voice low and dangerous, “and I’ll do it by whatever means necessary. Underestimating me will not serve you well, I can promise you that.”
I met his eyes, saw danger there, and heard Addie’s voice in my head.
Desmond Lamb is not a good man.
I let out a breath and opened my mouth to say something sharp and cutting, but I must have burned up all my anger, leaving me with nothing but grief left to express, and I started to cry, a hard, ugly, sobbing cry. Desmond released my arms immediately, looking almost as freaked out as I felt.
“Ms. Parker? Are you all right?”
“No,” I sputtered, sobs breaking my words into pieces. “I’m not … all right, you idiot. I just saw … my father.” I motioned back down the street, toward the office where my father was amiably going over bullshit office busywork with his crazy receptionist. “I haven’t … seen him … for sixteen years.” My voice cracked and my stupid eyes flooded with heat and tears and I began to whine like a radiator springing a leak, releasing pressure that would scald me if I got too close to it.
“Are you … um … would you perhaps … um…?” he stammered. It was almost comical, considering how moments before he’d been idly threatening me, and now he was acting like Hugh Grant in his fumbling romantic-comedy phase.
Men. A few tears and they fall apart.
“I’m fine,” I lied, swiping at my face. “I’m okay. Great, in fact. Never been greater.”
“I have no doubt,” he said. “I would still like to walk you home, if I may.”
I sniffled and looked up at him. “Can I stop you?”
He had the decency to look a little ashamed even as he shook his head. No.
God, he was so … weird. He was wearing a crisp, white button-down shirt with brown pinstripes, and brown pants, and a brown tie. He looked so starkly different from the rest of the people in this town, and oddly, he made me feel … I don’t know. Less alone, somehow. Plus, I’d been raised by one bastard and I’d married another; it maybe wasn’t a sign of mental health that I felt comfortable around someone like Desmond, but it made a twisted sort of sense.
“Fine,” I said, and pointed in the direction of home. “Let’s go.”
I swiped at my face as we walked. After a few moments of tense silence, he reached into his pocket and offered me a pristine white handkerchief, folded into a perfect square.
“I know they’re horribly old-fashioned, but my mother never let me leave the house without a handkerchief,” he said. “It’s one of the enduring habits of my childhood.”
I took it from him and swiped my face. I was beginning to feel calmer. The gentle rhythm of walking, with Seamus on one side of me and Desmond on the other, was helping me even out emotionally. Still, every few steps, I’d feel it rise up again … the panic, the sadness, the anger … and keeping it in check was exhausting me. I had to have a distraction.
“Talk to me,” I said after a few moments, and he glanced around us again. There weren’t many people on the street, but it was a summer day in a village, so there were enough, and he said, “I’d like to wait until we’re in private.”
“Not about … that,” I said. “Tell me a story. Get my mind off things. Believe it or not, the thing with your mother and the handkerchiefs was kind of working.”
“Oh. Right.” He gently took my elbow and led me across the street, and we headed in the direction of my new home.
“I’m afraid there isn’t much more to the story of my mother and handkerchiefs,” he said after we’d crossed. “It really was just an absurd obsession of hers.”
“So, tell me something else. Where are you from?”
“Southern Kentucky,” he said, without missing a beat, and I laughed.
It wasn’t quite a full smile, but there was a glint of humor in his eye as he looked down at me. “Is there something funny about that?”
“My apologies,” I said. “So, what does your family do in Kentucky?”
“Bourbon, naturally.”
“Oh, naturally,” I repeated.
“And grudge feuds,” he added.
“Professionally?”
“No, we were more grudge feud hobbyists. Cousin Hamish once—”
“Wait!” I said, holding up my hand. “Hamish? Seriously?”
Desmond blinked at me, all innocence. “Kentucky has a rich Scottish heritage.”
“Maybe, but it breaks the fiction,” I said. “Kentucky’s more a Billy-Bob, Bobby-Jack, Jethro, Cletus kind of place.”
“Is it your contention that there are no Hamishes in all of Kentucky?”
“I’m sure there are, but it’s just not believable,” I said. “It kicks me out of the story and then I have to come back to reality where my own crappy life awaits, like a pile of dog poop that’s so big you can’t help but step in it.”
“That’s quite the poetic imagery.”
“I’m goddamn Yeats, Jethro.”
The almost-smile played again in his eyes. “All right. May I continue with the story of my cousin Hamish…” He paused for a moment, then added, “Bobby-Jack?”
“Your cousin is named Hamish-Bobby-Jack?”
“My family’s naming conventions are no concern of yours,” he said, with an air of haughty dignity. “Cousin Hamish-Bobby-Jack … nickname, Cletus…”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Cletus is a name of English origin, by the way.”
“It is not!” I laughed.
He slid sideways eyes at me. “Who is telling this story?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, leading us out of the village and onto the county road that led toward home. “Please continue.”
“Well, Cousin Cletus was a drunkard of legend, which is a thing that happens from time to time in the bourbon-making families…”
“Occupational hazard,” I added supportively.
“Yes, quite.” He cleared his throat and went on. “As fate would have it, Cletus fell in love with a woman from a family of religious teetotaling Mennonites, a Miss…” His eyes narrowed and he looked at me as he decided on a name. “Miss … Hazel … Brown?”
I nodded. “Acceptable.”
“You’re very kind. Well, Miss Hazel would not accept Cletus’s flurry of proposals until he gave up the drink, and Cletus, while being a burly man of great physical prowess, was sadly powerless over his addiction.”
“Wow. Sad story.”
“Yes, quite tragic.” We crossed the street, making our way onto Wildwood Lane.
“One day,” Desmond continued, “poor Cletus, wild with desire for both bourbon and Miss Hazel, was presented with a solution from our other cousin … Sir Harold—”
“Sir Harold? Please,” I objected.
“Do shut up, Ms. Parker,” he said, and while his face was still deadpan, there was genuine amusement in his eyes. “Sir was his first name; Harold was his last. Kentuckians are as prone to whimsy as anyone else. Anyway, Sir Harold was a rapscallion and a rogue, but Cletus was desperate, so when Sir Harold suggested that Cletus allow himself to be locked in an empty whiskey barrel for four days as a cure for his condition, Cletus agreed.”
We turned down my dusty driveway, and Desmond pushed the overgrowth at the mouth of the driveway up to gain free clearance for his height.
“Oh, this doesn’t end well, does it?”
“I’m afraid not. Sir Harold, as it turns out, was also in love with Miss Hazel. She was quite the regional beauty, you see. In the four days during which Cletus was locked away in a barrel, engaging in his courageous battle against the demon alcohol, Sir Harold managed to convert to the Mennonite religion, woo Miss Hazel, and marry her. When he finally released Cletus from the barrel, the tragic wretch was too weak to kill Sir Harold with his bare hands, so he immediately went home to retrieve the weapon of choice of jilted lovers—”
“Oh!” I gasped. “Shotgun!”
Desmond let out an impatient sigh. “Duel
ing swords. Do I appear to hail from a family of savages, Ms. Parker?”
“No, you certainly don’t,” I conceded.
“Well, Sir Harold was no match for Cletus’s brawn, even in his desiccated and sober state, but he had cleverness, an advantage which had always eluded poor Cletus, and he told Cletus that if he allowed Sir Harold to live happily ever after with Miss Hazel … now Mrs. Harold … he would sign over his entire share of the family bourbon fortune to Cletus.”
“And Cletus gave up his one true love for money?” I said. “That’s kind of a bummer ending.”
“No, he gave up his one true love for more bourbon than a man could possibly drink in a dozen lifetimes.”
“Still,” I said. “Bummer ending.”
“Perhaps, but only if you believe in one true love,” Desmond said.
“You don’t?”
He looked at me in silence for a long moment and said, “Possibly for those men who have the quality of character to truly earn it. Cletus was something of an arsehole.”
I laughed, stepped up onto my porch, and turned to face him. Even with the porch step under me, he was still a little taller than I was.
“Thank you,” I said. “I feel better.”
“I’m glad.” He met my eyes and held them, looking earnest. “I don’t work for your father. We were professionally associated, some time ago, but not anymore, and I know he’s a … complicated person. When you asked about him, I wasn’t trying to dodge your question, I was just surprised that you’d mentioned him, and a little concerned.”
Judd had taught me what to look for in people when they lie. Either Desmond was telling the truth, or he was the most amazing liar I’d ever met.
“Okay,” I said. “I believe you, and I’m sorry I yelled at you.”
He nodded, then went on. “I am a conjurer, but I don’t practice actively at the moment. I’ve never worked for either of the magical agencies. I didn’t know who you were when you walked into the bar yesterday. I was reading Sartre for pleasure.”
“Well, that’s a lie,” I said, snorting. “No one reads Sartre for pleasure.”
He didn’t exactly smile, but there was a light in his eye that seemed to be as close as he got.
“But I believe the rest of it, so … don’t worry about it.”
“All right,” he said, and looked relieved.
I sighed and glanced at the house behind me. “I guess I’m going to pack up and leave now. Are you going to let me?”
“Is there anything I could do to stop you?”
“Do you want to stop me?” I asked, feeling a little strange at the phrasing of the question.
He nodded. “Yes.”
“Why?”
He hesitated for a moment. “You’re Josie Streat. The missing daughter who survived the disaster at Lott’s Cove.”
My heart flipped in my chest at the shock of talking to someone who actually knew my history. It was a strange sensation, having no secrets. “I’m not Josie Streat anymore. I haven’t been for a long time.”
He nodded, understanding on his face. “Fair enough. But your father is planning something, I’m fairly certain of it, and I think he needs you to finish. The only question is … are you here to help him, or to stop him?”
Having his suspicion land on me so suddenly threw me off a bit. “What? What the hell are you talking about? I’m here because my husband bought a house here without my knowledge, and you just saw me freak out at seeing my father again. Why would you think I was here to help him?”
“Why did you think I was sitting in wait hoping to trap you with Sartre?”
I sighed, understanding. “Because neither of us would put anything past Emerson Streat.”
He nodded. “Your father went to a lot of trouble to get you here, obviously. Which only confirms my suspicion that he’s up to something, and he must need you very desperately for whatever that is.”
The confirmation of my own fears shot panic through me. “Why would he need me?”
He shook his head, his eyes locked on mine, actively recording any clue my expression might give him.
“I don’t know,” he said.
I watched him for a moment. Addie had warned me against him, and I’d seen what she was talking about on the street, when he’d grabbed my arms and threatened me. But for some reason I couldn’t rationally justify, I trusted him. I felt comfortable with him. And if he was telling the truth, which I believed he was, then we wanted the same thing … to stop my father from hurting any more innocent people.
“I’m not staying,” I said. “If he really needs me, then the best thing I can do is leave before he gets what he wants.”
“I understand,” Desmond said, “but if you could answer some questions before you leave, it might help me stop him if he decides to move ahead without you.”
“Fine,” I said finally, pulling Seamus with me as I turned toward the door. “Come on in, Jethro.”
*
I started with the kitchen, packing up what few utensils and kitchen stuff I’d brought to begin with. Packing wasn’t going to be a big job, so I did it slowly and deliberately, mostly so I’d have something to do while we talked. Desmond sat on a three-legged stool I’d brought with me, watching me from across the counter.
“Go ahead, Des,” I said. “I don’t have much to pack, so if you’ve got questions, ask them now.”
“Can you tell me what happened in Lott’s Cove?” he asked, his voice low.
I went quiet. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to tell him. I did, if for nothing more than to reassure him that my ass skipping over the town line was likely the solution to his problem. I just didn’t know how to start.
“I know it’s probably not easy to talk about,” he said, reading my mind, “but if your information can help…”
I took a deep breath, my stomach roiling. “So, you know my father was really high up in the agencies, then? Kind of like a magical J. Edgar Hoover, without all the cross-dressing?”
“I’m familiar with your father’s history, yes.”
“Okay … well. We moved around a lot. A lot. Being an agency kid was like being a military kid, always some new outpost you’ve got to go to. I didn’t know much about what my father did for work, but after a while, even as a kid, I could put the pieces together. He was obsessed with giving power to nonmagicals. When he was a kid, his mother was killed for being a witch. It was in South Carolina, in the late fifties. She had elemental magic.”
Desmond’s eyes lit at this. “That’s rare.”
I nodded. “It is. Even in our family, she and I are the only elementals. She was water. I’m earth, metal mostly. Anyway, she and my father were walking home from the store one hot summer day, and she made it rain over his head to cool him down and someone saw. Two days later, someone lodged a firebomb through the bedroom window and my father was an orphan. And ever since…” I shrugged. “I guess his philosophy is, if you can’t beat ’em, make ’em join you.”
Desmond looked confused. I didn’t blame him. “Why would he want to give power to his enemies?”
“Well, first, let’s just say … most power is silliness anyway. Some magicals can’t do any more than change the color of their eyes, which is fun, but not necessarily dangerous. People with real, applicable power are rare. I think mostly it was just that he wanted to be free of it all. Imagine … like, if a black person had the power to make everyone black. Then, suddenly, it’s not a factor anymore. You can breathe, you can exist, without being afraid that some idiot is going to do something irreversible to you just because you’re different. I mean, it’s wrong with magic, it’s dangerous and it gets people killed, but you can sympathize.”
Desmond nodded, a little. He didn’t entirely sympathize, but that was okay. He hadn’t grown up a magical, and my father’s obsessions were kind of screwing with his town. No one understood that better than me.
“So…” he pressed on, “that’s what happened at Lott’s Cove? He used you t
o make nonmagicals magical? How?”
I sighed. “I don’t know.”
Desmond gave me a look of frustration, and I said it again, to reassure him I wasn’t playing games.
“I don’t. I have no idea. I have elemental magic, and I work with earth. There are minerals and metal compounds in blood. That’s how I can tell if someone has magic just by touching their skin; I can feel it humming in them. I’m connected, somehow, to other people’s magic. My best guess is that it must have transferred that way … maybe?”
I could tell by his expression that he thought it was a weak hypothesis, but whatever. He wasn’t there. I was.
“All I know is, one day, all I could do was make friendship charms out of forks, and the next, I was magical Typhoid Mary.”
I looked at my hands, which were mundane and sparkless, but in my mind, I could still see the electric-blue light dancing from my fingertips, hopping from one person to the next. Del, her mother, my teacher Mr. Gleason, the lady with the blue hair who played the organ, and, finally, my mother. My entire body was humming with emotion; for sixteen years, I’d shared this with exactly no one, and suddenly, I was dredging it all up for someone I didn’t even know. My legs were shaking under me, and I was afraid I might wobble, so I leaned one hip against the counter and kept talking. Telling my story was upsetting, but it also felt kind of good. Freeing, I guess.
“I was seventeen, and there was a group of kids going on a trip to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity. Mom and I went down to the church with a bunch of other people to pack up toolboxes and supplies. I was the only active magical there, and—”
“Your mother wasn’t magical?” Desmond asked, a curious lilt in his voice.
“It was daytime. She had night magic.”
He nodded, understanding.
“Anyway,” I went on, “we were in the basement and the lights went out, and there was a flash of blue light, but it wasn’t regular light. It was like tiny, thin strings of lightning, dancing around the place. Like magical light.” I held up my nonmagical hands. “My light.”
“You felt it? Coming from you, I mean?”
I shook my head. “From me. Through me. Hell if I knew. I held up my hands. I saw it flash out in a circle from where I was standing, arcing from person to person. It was like static shock dialed to eleven. And then … that was it. The pastor found the fuse box and the lights came back on and we all finished packing the tools and went home.”
