Except BJ. He stared longingly at Belle. She sat with her back to him, ignoring the invitation in his eyes. But she hadn’t removed her hair sticks. Was she playing with him, or just uncertain of what to do and how to do it?
“Okay, math genius Belle, please divide it into seven pieces and start cutting. I’m putting coffee on.”
“Decaf, if you please,” Ted asked meekly.
“Tea for me,” Tiffany added, accepting the first piece of cake on its little plate. She set it down before gathering a fork and placing a napkin on her lap.
“Eight pieces, so Jason can have some more at midnight,” Belle said. “Besides, it’s easier to divide into eight than seven.”
I put the teakettle on and made a small pot of decaf. I didn’t need caffeine this late in the day either. “Jason, I need a tall person to get the teapot off the top shelf.”
Ted appeared behind me, his body pressed close to mine, suggesting a level of intimacy not there earlier, almost an announcement to our families that we were “together.”
“Let me.” He reached up over my head for the little porcelain two cupper. I ducked under his enveloping arms to find the assorted teas and bags in a different cupboard. Gahd, I wasn’t ready for this.
Would I ever be?
My phone screeched an alarm before I could think harder on that issue.
Gayla wasn’t home. Saturday night she played Bunko, some bizarre card game that addicted people, at her church. The alarm company reported that fire trucks had rolled.
“Save us some cake,” Ted called as we ran out the back door.
The landline rang. “Jason, deal with that!”
Ted’s car was parked behind my van, so we took the little sedan.
We found a single bright red engine just rolling to a stop outside the front of the shop. Smoke crept under the door. The fire crew dropped to the ground from the back and the cab of the truck. I rolled out of the sedan almost before Ted pulled up the parking brake.
I held my keys up to the first responders so they wouldn’t have to break down the door. The man in charge—hard to determine age or description behind his face mask—took the keys. First, he held his open bare hand near the doorframe, shrugged, then placed the same hand flat against the door itself. “What the fuck? It’s cool.” He unlocked it and stepped back as he pushed the door inward, allowing the smoke to exit. Then he and five others barreled inward.
Gayla drove up, looking pale and shaken. “Why us? Why two fires in a week’s time?” she kept mumbling to herself.
I hugged her close, too numb to even speak.
Old Raphe lurched around the corner, mouth working as if speaking. But with all the noise of the churning diesel engines and the bangs and thumps from inside, I couldn’t hear what he said. He raised his head enough to see me and aimed his halting steps toward where I hugged Gayla and Ted hugged me. “She has smoke for eyes. The smoke sees. Smoke goes everywhere. No barrier to smoke. She has smoke for eyes,” he whispered as he drew closer.
“What’s he saying?” Ted asked, trying to draw me away from the reeking man.
Gayla and I exchanged a long stare. Neither of us knew for certain that magic was involved. But Raphe was creeping me out. I needed to talk to G.
As usual, G was not here.
“I’m hungry, Mz. Daffy. Got any leftovers?” The vague trance state cleared from Raphe’s face. He looked at me with clarity, and an awareness of reality I didn’t get to see often.
“We’ll see if there’s anything edible left. Oh, no! I’ve got six dozen cupcakes in the walk-in cooler for tomorrow’s party!”
“It’s okay, Sweet Pea.” Gayla rubbed my back. “I’ll help you redo them first thing in the morning.”
“And if you’re tied up here longer than you like, I can hold the fort for you at the house,” Ted offered.
Tears burned beneath my eyelids. “Thank you,” I sobbed, incapable of saying more.
“She has smoke for eyes.” Raphe reverted to vague and mystic. “Mist conceals. Smoke probes.”
“This is the weirdest fire I’ve seen in ages,” the fire chief said, scratching his head. He’d shed his face mask, helmet, and gloves as he returned my keys. “Too much smoke for that little bitty fire in the middle of the work counter. Can’t even tell what was the fuel and the ignition source.”
“I was here this morning baking. I swear I left the place clean. I always leave the place as if I’m expecting the health inspector,” I protested.
“We know you do, Daffy. We know you’d never tempt a single ant to come into your kitchen, let alone a stray spark,” Gayla said, still rubbing my back and speaking in soothing tones. Ted began to pace, looking at the ground. Was he searching out clues? Like glowing footprints?
“May I go in?”
The fire chief shrugged. “There’s no sign of forced entry. I’ll have the electrical inspector out here Monday morning. Maybe some of the wiring in these old shops sent sparks. We’ve had a few power surges lately.”
“We updated the wiring in our section of this building when we bought the place five years ago,” Gayla insisted. “Our shop is up to code, top and bottom levels.”
“But are the shops on either side of you?” The chief looked skeptical.
“The previous owner sold the shops piecemeal so developers wouldn’t come in and level the block in favor of glass-and-steel skyscrapers. Everyone had to update in order to get a mortgage.” Gayla took on the look of a Texas Bulldog. Or maybe a Comanche lady warrior.
I slipped inside the shop with Ted in tow. “I’ve got some heavy-duty fans I can loan you to get rid of some of the smoke smell,” Ted said, covering his nose and mouth with his arm.
I had to hold my cotton sweater over my lower face to breathe easily.
Inside, the firemen had opened the back door to help alleviate some of the smoke. Two of them poked at a pile of dry ash on top of my marble pastry board, now cracked from the center out along the wandering mineral veins. That would have to be replaced.
“That fire could not have produced that much smoke!” Ted protested.
“She has smoke for eyes. Needs lots of smoke to probe and poke where no one would let her come. Smoke sees. Smoke travels where she cannot,” Raphe said. He walked right toward the back door and access to his burrow behind the dumpster.
I aimed for the walk-in cooler in the back corner. “Breathe,” I reminded myself. The door came open with its usual ease. I had expected resistance, like the rubber seal around the door might have melted. Inside, I was greeted by row after row of rolling racks, six feet tall each, with slots for eight two-by-three–foot trays. During a normal week, we used only two or three racks to restock the front cases. Tonight, I found three trays on one rack filled with cupcakes, each with a towering swirl of frostings. One tray of pink, another of chocolate, and a third of cream cheese with sprinkles. I hoped to please all of the varying tastes of twenty sixth-graders and a bunch of their parents.
Thankfully, the smoke had not penetrated the heavy steel door of the cooler. Just to make sure, I filled a plate with a sampling of each of the three kinds of cupcakes.
The firemen proclaimed them not only safe to eat but worthy of a second helping. Gayla had a pickier palate, and she also decided they’d do for a bunch of middle schoolers who had no appreciation for perfection. Ted took one bite and nearly melted at my feet. “If the Black Forest cake in your kitchen is half this good, I’ll kidnap and marry you in a moment.”
I hid my blush by closing the cooler and washing the now empty serving plate.
The fire chief came back with paperwork. Gayla promised to handle it and ushered me out the door. “Go home and get some sleep. We’ll deal with this in the morning.”
“What time do you want the fans?” Ted asked, resting his arm around my waist as he urged me out the front door.
“Is eight too early?” I asked. “That’s when I’d planned to load up the cupcakes for the party.”
“I’ve usually been working for two hours at eight,” Ted said.
“Oh, good, he’s a morning person just like you!” Gayla chortled.
We left.
“Are you certain that Raphe said, ‘she has smoke for eyes’ and that it was Raphe and not a whisper on the wind?” G asked Daffy at noon the next day.
“I am certain. It creeped me out. He kept repeating it as if it were important,” she replied as she set finger sandwiches on a platter for the family and loaded decorative serving trays with cupcakes. The lemonade was chilling, and he’d scattered little bowls of mixed nuts about the main level of the house and on portable tables on the patio, as she directed. He was actually surprised she let him help. Jason and BJ were busy blowing up balloons, while Belle was busy avoiding BJ.
That scene at the mall had bothered Belle more than he thought at first. Instead of preening in her new glory, she shrank within herself, hunched posture, tucked chin, and making sure a full room separated her from her admirer. And she tripped over shadows more frequently.
“This is worse than I thought.” G ran his hands through his usually smooth hair. He needed to find “Smoke for eyes” fast, before she did any more damage. And he needed to talk to Belle. He glanced askance at the party decorations and food. “There’s no way you can cancel this?” His attention focused on the gray sky that looked too much like smoke.
“Don’t even think about it. The clouds are thickening, but we have three hours and forty-three minutes before it starts raining. As long as you don’t interfere.”
So one or all of the children had told her about his affinity with water.
“I don’t weather witch unless abso-friggin-necessary to save the world.” He held up both hands in feigned innocence.
“Who is Raphe?” she asked. “We’ve always had homeless people around, but he took over the alley last summer and hasn’t moved. That’s unusual. And he’s never around during the day, but always at night. I know he’s important to you in some way, or you wouldn’t have questioned if he was the one who spoke mystic words as if an oracle in a trance.”
G looked everywhere but in her eyes, searching for a plausible lie. He had none. Time for honesty, not only to salvage something from their relationship but for her own protection. “Raphe’s my first cousin, his mother and my father were siblings. He’s gone, she’s still alive. Raphe’s a year and a half younger than me. We grew up together.”
“If he’s family, why is he homeless? We have lots of room here.”
“He has an aversion to sunlight. His parents had to home school him because he always, from the day he was born, slept all day and was wide awake all night. Every time he looked out a window during the day, he’d scream and clamp his eyes shut. He lasted half of a half day in kindergarten. I’m sharing the apartment with him, which isn’t bad since we mostly keep opposite schedules. I’m paying him to keep watch on the shop and the house. Though he’ll never come closer than the driveway.”
“What does he do when you don’t pay him?”
She had to ask. She’d always probe to the heart of an issue.
“He’s the registrar for the Guild. It’s up to him to maintain the database of all our members, past and present, most recent contact info, next of kin, talent and wand, etc.”
“Why won’t he come closer than the drive?” Her eyes glazed, remembering. Remembering something important.
“Because for me the pentagram in the attic is protection, it makes the entire house out to the exterior walls a safe haven from magical attack. Raphe finds it repelling. Not that I’d ever believe him capable of black magic. He’s just different. Almost backward in his life and his magic—dyslexic about reading and magic. But numbers don’t bother him, thus the database. For all I know, his warding spells may welcome magic intrusion.” G gulped as new thoughts and doubts raced through his mind. “I have to check it out.” He pulled his car keys out of his trousers pocket.
“Oh.”
“I appreciate that you offer Raphe leftover pastry. He sometimes forgets to eat.” G had things to do. Urgent things. So why did he linger, savoring every moment of conversation with Daffy?
“I’ve always given what I could to the homeless who take up residence in my alley.”
“That’s one of the reasons I love you. Now I have to go. My present for Shara is on the dining room table, all wrapped nice and neat with a pretty bow and card.” He made hesitant steps toward the back door.
“Who wrapped it for you? No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”
He kissed her cheek, leaving a sizzling imprint of his lips behind—old habits die hard. Time to get out of here before he confessed about the three hours he had to kill in Tallahassee before he caught a plane to Chicago.
Nineteen
I HAD TO PRESS a cold cloth on the tingling patch on my face before I faced the family and guests. The first of which was Gayla, come for lunch and with a bounty of little girl treasures, like a first lipstick in pale pink, pink dye for hair streaks, cute hair doodads, and tiny earrings in gift bags. My present to Shara was the promise of a trip to the doctor to get her ears pierced this week. I’d done the same for Belle two years ago.
I drew a deep breath and prepared to tell Gayla everything G had said. If he was worried about “Smoke for eyes,” then I should be, too.
After the party. Could I tell her about the magic? Should I?
G was adamant about keeping magic invisible to all normal people.
Gayla was my best friend. She knew how to keep secrets and often figured them out before anyone confessed to her. And everyone confessed to her, from the college kids we hired to the owners of the shops adjacent to Magical Brews, to the business people who bought our coffee and pastry.
We’d talk after the party.
By midafternoon, the kids had run off a lot of their sugar rush by breaking the piñata and racing around in a weird variation of freeze tag. They kind of made up the rules as they went along. When touching the windows of the greenhouse became a safe zone, I judged the time had come to move indoors to the dining room and open presents. The clouds were thick enough that I expected the first fat plops of rain any moment. Right on time.
G walked in with a shrug and a shake of his head. Whatever he’d set off to do hadn’t worked.
“Mom.” Belle tugged at my sleeve while I filled the teakettle for the parents.
“What, dear,” I replied absentmindedly. I was really contemplating whether the last pitcher of lemonade would last through the final ritual of the day.
“Can you tell BJ that he’s not invited to my party?”
That shook me out of my reverie. BJ had been a part of our gatherings for as long as I could remember. But he and Jason had been buddies, keeping to themselves, away from the girl cooties. “What did he do?”
“It’s just . . . just that he’s always right behind me, always intruding on my conversations with other people, always asking questions about the attic.”
So he had seen something when we moved the wardrobe.
“I’ll ask Jason to talk to him. They are friends. He can soften the blow of being deprived of your presence. Or you could take the hair sticks out of your bun.”
“No!” She slapped her hand protectively over the jade charms. “I have to wear them all the time. Dad said so.”
“Then talk to your dad about it.” I’d reverted to that old ploy too often of late. This magic thing was more than I could handle. I didn’t have enough information and experience to deal with it.
Right on cue the doorbell rang. Who could that be? I’d counted noses earlier. The only person missing was Melissa who had to have a gluten-free and vegan diet because of some strange autoimmune disease. I’d offered to bake special treats just for her
, but her parents opted to keep her away from temptation.
When Jason opened the heavy front door—wider and taller than most modern homes with stained glass embedded in the top quarter—I gasped at the sight of Bret and Flora Chambers, dressed as if they’d just come from church. He’d shed his tie and she her dainty hat with a veil. Otherwise they looked as if they’d come on a formal call. Or had stepped out of a time warp from the ’50s.
Then I spotted the campaign fliers sticking out of Flora’s prim pocketbook.
“We wanted to offer the birthday girl our congratulations,” Bret Senior said jovially.
BJ disappeared out the back door the moment his parents arrived.
All smiles and proffered hands to shake with the adults, they moved through the living room to the dining room. Flora made polite, but lustful, remarks about the magnificence of the antique table. Nodding as she counted each of the twenty pre-adolescents squeezed in around it, some two to a chair. “Perfect for a campaign fund-raiser,” she muttered under her breath, but I heard her. And so did some of the adults as they moved away from the intruders. Bret and Flora stood in the middle of an island of silence.
Then Bret spotted G who was trying to retreat to the kitchen and followed him. I opted to position myself in the doorway. A quick gesture to Gayla, and she organized the present-opening ceremony.
Flora sidled up to me. “You have some influence in the neighborhood around your shop,” she said. She lowered her voice, but it still carried. “Isn’t there anything you can do about the ugly pagan insignia in all those shops? And the street dancing? Even now those heathens are dancing in the street in the rain, spinning in some kind of devil-worshipping trance. Tearing off their clothes!”
“Last I heard, it’s a free country. First Amendment gives us the constitutional right to worship as we choose, so long as we harm none,” I replied.
A Spoonful of Magic Page 14
