For Love or Magic

by Lucy March

  Oddly, I wasn’t really scared. When I didn’t know what was happening, or what I could do about it, I was petrified. But knowing what my job was, even though it would likely kill me, gave me an odd sense of peace.

  I walked down my driveway, and the first thing I saw was Judd’s crappy blue Chevy truck sitting right where I’d left it when Desmond had come to pick me up the night before. I’d put Seamus outside before we’d gone, and had set water and food out for him by his doghouse, just in case I ended up spending the night at Desmond’s. The thought seemed so funny now, that I could have just innocently spent the night with my boyfriend, rather than dealing with the consequences of my father’s single-minded ambitions.

  “Seamus!” I called out, knowing he couldn’t hear me, but still. It felt good to say his name. “Seamus!”

  I walked around the house to the side yard where I saw Seamus, sleeping half out of his doghouse. It made me tear up to see him there, just snoring away. Part of me wanted to let him sleep, but I couldn’t take the chance of not saying good-bye to him, so I gently rubbed the scruff of his neck. He raised his head, then got up and came toward me, tail wagging. I walked him over to the side steps and sat down, patting him as I spoke.

  “I’m gonna try to come home, sweetheart,” I said. “But if I don’t, I’m gonna need you to look after Desmond, okay? He’s kind of hopeless. Can you do that for me?”

  Seamus wagged his tail and lay down next to me, resting his head on my lap. I sat there, rubbing his neck, enjoying what time I had left.

  When my phone rang, I was expecting it to be Desmond, wondering where the hell I was, but instead, the ID text just read, “Unknown Number.” I knew who it was, and accepted the call.

  “Punkin?” His voice sounded weak, and tired, which was no surprise.

  “Emerson,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm, even as my hands were shaking. “Where are you?”

  I focused on Seamus, petting his head and finding comfort in his presence.

  “In a hotel room,” he said. “I’ll be gone by the time anyone finds me. I just wanted to call so you would know what happened.”

  I sighed. “Are you in town? I’ve got a … cure. Everyone here in town is going to be fine. Can you get here?”

  There was a long hesitation. “No. I laid my lot with those people there. That’s how much I believed it was going to be okay. Our small trials all worked out fine.” He let out a long, shaky breath. “It must have been the scale of it that made it go bad.”

  “Jesus,” I breathed. “You’ve been running trials? Even after Lott’s Cove?”

  He gave a weak, wheezy laugh. “It’s my life’s work, punkin.” He sounded awful, much worse than anyone else I’d seen so far.

  “Emerson, have you been using your magic?”

  The line went silent, and I felt a jolt of panic run through me. “Emerson?”

  “So, you say you’ve got a cure brewing? Desmond work up a concoction to save the day?”

  I entertained an angry, vengeful thought about telling him the truth for a moment, but only for a moment. Emerson Streat was dying alone in a hotel room somewhere, and it seemed cruel to tell him what was really happening. All the man wanted was a happy ending for me, where I could live openly and magically. As incredibly single-minded and reckless as he’d been about getting there, I just didn’t see the point in telling him that he’d killed his only child along with himself. It just seemed mean, and honestly, I didn’t have the heart to do it.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m pretty sure everyone’s going to be all right.”

  I felt as much as heard the sigh of relief. “You’re a good girl, Josie.”

  I stayed on the line for a while, listening to him breathe. After a while, I couldn’t hear that anymore, even though the line was still open. I disconnected from my end and held my phone in my hands for a moment.

  It was time.

  I kissed Seamus on the top of his head and stood up. “Gotta get moving, baby. You wanna come inside? It’s gonna be a little hot out today, and this shouldn’t take too long. Desmond will come and get you in a while.”

  I stood up and opened the side door, entering through the kitchen, and that’s when I saw them.

  Gerbera daisies.

  Everywhere.

  They were left in pretty little piles on the kitchen counter. They covered the dining room table, a handful of them exploding from an old milk pitcher that had been here when I got here, but mostly, they were just … everywhere.

  I walked through the house, and they lessened as I walked through. A bunch in the living room; a few sticking out of a Mason jar on the bathroom sink where I kept my Q-tips. One last stray pink one sitting on my pillow.

  I walked over and sat down, twirling the daisy in my hand. Emerson had day magic. He must have waited for me here last night so he could charm me into forgiving him one last time. By the time morning came, he must have known that his grand experiment had gone south, and he used the last of what magic he had to make all these daisies for me. The upside of that was, maybe he wasn’t that far away. If he was still within the blast range, if he wasn’t dead yet …

  I didn’t realize I was crying until I saw a drop fall on Seamus’s head, which was resting on my knee. I swiped my face and put the magical daisy on my pillow. It would probably be gone by the time I came back, but there wasn’t a huge chance I’d ever be coming back, and I wanted to remember it there, pretty and magical, resting on my pillow.

  I slid my phone out of my back pocket and took out my earrings and, finally, pulled my wedding set off my left hand for the first time since Judd had put it on my finger in that courthouse eight years ago. I set the pile of items on my bed and looked down at Seamus.

  “I gotta go,” I said, standing up. “I love you, you little asshole.”

  And then I left.

  *

  It was only eight o’clock when I made my way to the town square to find Nick standing in a group with about twenty people, most of them women. Stacy was there, and Leo. An angry English teacher in her late forties named Dierdre Troudt was still wearing her floral pajama set. A young redheaded girl, Clementine Klosterman, nervously chewed her lip. Grace and Addie were there, and by Stacy’s side was a small, elegant, impossibly thin woman dressed all in black, her white-blond hair pulled back into a bun so tight you could bounce a quarter off it. She gave me a look of withering disdain when Stacy introduced us, and before Stacy said a word, I knew; this was the Widow Lillith Easter.

  And then, at the edge of the circle, Liv and Betty. I walked over to them and took Liv’s hand.

  “You have to go,” I said. “You’re already weak.”

  “I’m fine,” she said, smiling a little too brightly. She was obviously tired, but honestly, she probably looked better than I did at that moment. “You can’t turn down my power right now. We need it.”

  “I’ll keep an eye on her,” Betty said. I smiled and grasped her hand, too, then looked back to Liv.

  “And Desmond?”

  Liv’s expression darkened. “Tobias is delaying him, but if you don’t want him here for this, we don’t have much time.”

  “Okay,” I said, releasing a heavy breath. “Let’s get started.”

  I turned around to look at the group.

  “I need everyone to join hands, in a circle,” I said, “and in a moment, I’m gonna run my magic through you all.”

  “Wait, run it through?” Dierdre Troudt said, looking at Nick. “You didn’t tell us about anything running through anything.”

  Nick shrugged. “My job was to get you here. I did my job.”

  “Forget it,” Dierdre said. “It’s bad enough I’ve got magic that makes little cartoon birds fly in a circle around my head, but now I’m supposed to be some electrical lead in this chick’s magical hippie love circle? I don’t think so.”

  “She’s legit, Dierdre,” Stacy said. “And she’s here to save your sorry ass. Shut up, get back in line, and trust her.”
<
br />   I looked up, surprised to see Stacy Easter grabbing her mother’s hand at one side, and Nick’s at the other.

  “Go for it,” Stacy said. “Do your thing.”

  I smiled at her. She didn’t smile back, but that was okay, because following her lead, everyone joined hands as well, and no one said another word. I took Nick’s hand in mine, and Clementine’s in the other, and as soon as the circle connected, I could feel the power zipping through me like a wild charge. It rattled my teeth and made me dizzy. A loud buzzing ripped through my ears, and I saw a concerned look on Stacy’s face as she mouthed, “Eliot?” and I knew I didn’t have much time.

  So I threw my magic outward, and that was it.

  It was weird, like a gentle pop, not unlike a well-controlled champagne cork. Just pop and I was out of my body, floating above the crowd. Time was weird; it was both slowed down and nonexistent. I could see the initial blast of electric blue light, shooting outward, bouncing off everyone in the circle exactly as I’d hoped it would, using them as amplifiers, each one increasing the signal exponentially. The blue lightning zipped over the town at wild speed, looking like a blast radius that moved ever outward, until finally dissipating well after the outskirts of town. I would bet it reached even farther than Emerson’s original shot, and while there might be some confused people in Findley Lake with flask-shaped doorknobs that morning, everyone in Nodaway Falls was safe. They were also magical now, and god knew there would be a lot to deal with on that score as things progressed, but they would be safe, and that’s all I’d wanted.

  It took me a while—hours, days, seconds, I had no idea—to realize that my little magical circle was in a frenzy about something, and when I moved back to focus on our area in town square, I realized that they were in a frenzy about me. I couldn’t hear anything, but I could see Stacy by my body, doing CPR. Nick was running through the group, trying to find a phone that still worked so he could call 911. Chances were good, considering my power to alter metal, that there wouldn’t be a working phone in the boundaries of Nodaway Falls for at least a few days.

  But that was okay. I was gone. I was done. It was over for me, and I was shocked by how incredibly peaceful it felt to know that. No more running. No more hiding. No more lying about who I was …

  “Feels pretty good, don’t it?” a cheerful, Boston-laced voice said from behind me, and I turned to see Judd standing there in a space of white limbo, grinning like an idiot.

  “Judd?” I couldn’t believe how good it was to see him. All my anger, all my resentment … it was just gone. I reached out and hugged him, and he put his arms around me, and it was really him. He was really there.

  Either that, or this was just my dying brain hallucinating, but whatever it was, it was good.

  “It’s kinda weird, isn’t it?” Judd said when we pulled apart and I looked back at my body, where Stacy huddled over me, frantically pounding on my chest. He nudged me with his elbow. “Wish I had a girl that hot working on me when I was first gone.”

  “Shut up,” I said, and slapped at him. Then I felt it, a moment of … not so much pain as pressure, a deep thud within my chest as Stacy hit me, hard.

  “Don’t worry,” Judd said. “The connection will sever for good in a few minutes, and then we can go. It just takes a little time. Honestly, for me, I didn’t even know I was dead until it was all over. Christy and I were still fighting over what we’d been fighting about when the brakes went. And I still don’t get why she was so mad. She asked me to tell her what she could do better in bed, and I told her, and then she lost her freakin’ mind.”

  I pulled my attention away from Stacy and her distress and looked at Judd. “Oh. Yeah. About the accident, Judd—”

  He held up his hands and grinned at me. “I know. It’s okay. Your dad had me killed. Honestly, I figured it’d be a father that did me in eventually. That’s a risk you take, bein’ a guy like me.”

  “Yeah,” I said, and laughed. “I guess you do.” I motioned toward the vast, empty white space behind him. “So, what do we do now? Go through there?”

  Judd glanced over and shrugged. “Beats the hell out of me. I don’t know. I’ve been a little worried about it, honestly. I’m not sure what’s waiting for me on the other side.”

  “So … what?” I asked. “You’ve just been … here? All this time?”

  “Well,” he said, spreading his hands. “Time here isn’t exactly like it is there, but … yeah. Pretty much. Been hanging out with you.”

  I stared at him, and it took me a moment to realize what he was saying. “You mean … that was really you? You were really there? That whole time?”

  Judd shrugged. “Yeah. I didn’t want to leave you.”

  I reached out and hit him, and there was a firm connection of … not a physical body, but something. I got a sense of satisfaction from the hit, anyway.

  “You let me think I was nuts!” I said.

  “No, you listened to that doctor who told you I was all in your imagination,” he said. “I just didn’t argue about it. And then, after a while, it seemed to make it a little easier on you when I could come through, and you stopped expecting me to answer all your questions, so … I maybe fed the idea a little.”

  He made a “teensy bit” gesture with his thumb and index finger. I was about to hit him again when I felt a sharp pain run throughout my body and I doubled over. Judd caught me, and there was a strange kind of existential dizziness as I felt us being pulled away from the white limbo and back into the town square.

  “Oh, Ellie? You don’t look so good.”

  I didn’t feel great, either. I tried to get my bearings, but the pain was wild. It was like, in just those few moments of peace I’d had, I had forgotten what pain felt like. But now, it was rippling through me, and it took me a moment to identify it as emotional pain. I felt my feet land on earth, and when I looked up, Judd and I were in the town square, and the white limbo was fading.

  And Desmond was walking toward my body. He wasn’t rushing. He already knew there was nothing to be done. He knew he was too late.

  “Oh,” I said simply at the sight of him. There was something about being without a body that made every sensation so powerful and sudden that it rocked you, like being on the bow of a ship in wild swells. There was no anchor strong enough to keep you grounded.

  Stacy was kneeling next to me, her knees tucked under her in defeat. Desmond fell to his knees beside her, his face stony. She said something to him, and I could see tears on her face. He didn’t look at her, his eyes were focused on me, but he reached out and squeezed her hand. She squeezed back, and another wave of pain and longing and sadness shot through my entire being.

  Desmond released Stacy’s hand, and slid his arms under me. I looked like a rag doll in his arms, but he held me close, protectively, despite the fact that there was nothing to protect me from anymore. I wanted to touch him, to comfort him, to tell him everything was all right, that I was okay, but when I reached out, my hand went right through him.

  “Yeah,” Judd said from behind me, his voice thick. “That’s really hard. I was there when the cops came to the door to tell you. I was with you after they left. Took you a while to see me there. I had to really work for it.”

  I didn’t respond to Judd. I didn’t care. All I wanted was to be with Desmond again. The pain of separation was unbearable, and yet, I couldn’t leave him. I knelt beside him as he held me in his arms.

  “Ellie?” Judd said. “Maybe you don’t want to do this. You’re not gonna make him feel any better, and you’re only going to make yourself feel worse. Maybe we should just go back.”

  Nodaway Falls was in chaos; people coming out of their houses, wandering in the street, trying and failing to start their cars. Magic everywhere. Somewhere not far from where Desmond sat next to my body, a child made snow in summer, and laughed. For all the temporary destruction I had wrought to mechanical and electrical items, the people were okay, and there was a town where magic was out and ope
n and normal.

  But none of that mattered to me. I’d given my life for it, but all I could see, and feel, and know, was Desmond. He held me in his arms and his face was still a mask of stone, but I could feel the storm inside him. Not having a body to process emotion for me meant that every emotion hit at full force, even other people’s. I felt Desmond’s despair, his grief, his guilt, his devastation. His love. Some of it was mine, too. The idea of leaving him, of ever leaving him, was unthinkable. I would stay here, by his side, until … until …

  “Hey, Ellie,” Judd said behind me, his tone tense. “We really need to go.”

  Desmond smoothed my hair away from my face and kissed my forehead. “My dear little girl.”

  “Oh!” I said, and turned to Judd. “I heard him! I can hear him! Can he hear me?” I waved my hands around him, trying to touch him and failing. “Desmond! Desmond!”

  And that’s when a pain, white hot and terrifying, ran through me, and I crumpled down, falling to the ground. I could hear the grass crunch under me, and Desmond glanced my way quickly, but saw nothing, and then turned his attention back to my body.

  “What’s happening?” I asked, looking up at Judd.

  “Yeah.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, rumpling it. “There’s a thing you should probably know.” He hesitated while I watched him, panting under the pain.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You can go back, if you want to,” Judd said finally.

  Elation ran through me, followed by hot spasms of wild pain.

  “It’s gonna hurt,” Judd said. “It’s gonna hurt a lot. But if he’s worth it to you—”

  Pop.

  I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t. My body felt like it was lying on spikes that were slowly sinking into me, ripping me apart from within. My lungs burned as I gasped for air, and the world spun around me, pulling me into darkness.